Blackbirds
Eddie got used to being home alone after nine o’clock, when his mother went to parties, or so she said. Every night a party? he thought at first. Sometimes she’d go meet a friend and return in twenty minutes. During the day in the schoolyard, he fought other fifth-graders who called his mother names, not convinced that they had any evidence, but at night the names reverberated in his head. Your mother is your mother, he would tell himself, and you have to forgive, no matter what people say, no matter if she did any of what they say she did.
In the mornings he’d sometimes find her facedown on the couch in last night’s outfit, one leg drooping above the carpet, a crust of spit caking the throw pillow under her snoring mouth. She would have left the television on, and he’d hear people talking for a long time about some guy named Dow Jones who had fallen down a lot. His mother’s dress would have crept up to expose the crease where her thigh met her butt. No one else lived in the apartment, and to discover his mother’s rump displayed so crudely moments after he had woken up with an erection always produced a confused sensation in his head. To silence the feeling, he’d find a sheet, draw it over her body, and kiss her cheek gently, attempting not to rouse her. It occurred to him that he was doing her job, but he didn’t notice the cloud of resentment forming in his love for her, his hostility growing darker. I’m the son, he whispered to himself. The son can’t take care of the mother.
Other nights she didn’t come home at all, and instead her keys jangled in the lock at dawn, startling him into alertness. The front door would bang open against the drywall, followed by the twin thuds of her handbag on the carpet and her body on the squeaky couch. He would close his bedroom door so as not to disturb her. Quiet morning sounds from the outside would smooth everything over. Cheeping birds, car engines, a rooster someone kept, perhaps illegally, in a backyard, somewhere in the complex of dusty two-level brick buildings from the early 1970s. Through his mother’s arrival he’d attempt sleep—though after struggling into slumber he’d always doze more comfortably for another hour or two before getting up for school, knowing Darlene had again escaped the nameless dangers of the night world.
One Tuesday morning in June, on one of the last days of fifth grade, as he lay between unconscious dreams and waking fantasies, he pictured a time years earlier, when they had lived in Ovis with his father, before coming to Houston. (We’re moving to be nearer to Aunt Bethella, his mother had said, but even at nine years old, he suspected she had ulterior motives.) Before the move, they’d had a blond-brick ranch house with a backyard—a real yard—a limitless rectangle of parched crabgrass that grew larger and greener in his imagination the further time ran away with it. In the evenings, crowds of grackles would settle in a live oak in the corner by the chain-link fence. Their black iridescent feathers had a natural elegance, and the birds peered at him with mocking intelligence, like well-dressed rich folks encountering a vagrant on a red carpet. They didn’t want some of his food, it seemed, they meant to cheat him out of all of it. Their raspy noises sounded more like broken radios than birdcalls, and to make their cries they widened their beaks and puffed their feathers with so much force that it looked like they might explode. The way they strutted and sneered, Eddie decided that these birds had inside them the souls of angry black people from the olden days, ghosts come back to settle some ageless vendetta.
His father, Nat Hardison, who could now qualify as such an outraged spirit, had lived in that house with them, but Eddie, who turned six the month after his father died, couldn’t summon many clear memories of him—a bedtime story about a whale, the green marbled tackle box they took on a fishing trip, the scent of Old Spice aftershave. His mother kept a photo of Dad in his air force uniform on a shelf by her bed, facing away so that she wouldn’t see it while lying down. The sun had turned the picture mauve, but from that pinkish dreamworld, his dad glowed back, displaying his L-square jaw and high cheekbones, showing his teeth as he smiled.
Eddie remembered chasing the grackles in the old backyard, maybe because their menacing weirdness barged in on his need for order. In his fantasy, Eddie knew that if he could only clear all the birds from the backyard, his father would return—not the stiff, fading image, but the real, lanky man whose crossed leg he would ride like a horse into that unhad future. He found a horseshoe embedded in the grass and tossed it at the fence. As the iron clattered against the chain link, black wings fluttered everywhere around him; piercing cries rang out across the neighborhood. The sense of his father’s presence came on so powerfully that it woke him.
Daddy? he said.
Then came the realization that he was alone in Houston, a thought that ripened into terror.
Ma?
He did not find her on the sofa, or anywhere else. He searched for evidence that she’d come in and left, but he didn’t see the bag, the shoes, not even the clothes she would sometimes hang on doorknobs or abandon near the bed, clothes he would later fold and put away, arrange neatly in the hamper, or leave on the bed for her as the photo of his father watched, he hoped, approvingly.
When the school day was about to start and his mother hadn’t appeared, Eddie left early and ran to Mrs. Vernon’s bakery to tell her that his mother had vanished. Mrs. Vernon, solid in as many ways as one could think of, owned her home and ran the shop practically by herself. The bakery sold staples like loaves and rolls but also red velvet layer cakes, cookies, and coconut towers for weddings. The smells lured kids, made her place their first stop at the strip mall, even before the video-game arcade. Mrs. Vernon could always tell who had big problems in their lives. The neighbors called it a gift, but everybody had issues; Mrs. Vernon just happened to ask the right questions and didn’t mind getting involved. To a certain extent.
Once she understood Eddie’s troubles, Mrs. Vernon immediately called the police. He watched the hands on the big clock above the glass display cases inch closer to the start of school while Mrs. Vernon remained on hold, the receiver wedged between her cheek and shoulder, pulling the looped cord taut. Eddie admired Mrs. Vernon’s levelheaded attitude as she sold beignets and translucent coffee even while attending to his predicament. He entertained the fantasy that she would adopt him if Ma never got back. But this thought came too close to wishing his mother dead and he felt guilty for it. Instead of coveting Mrs. Vernon’s motherly ways, he occupied himself by pretending he had his choice of the different cookies in the display—green pistachio leaves, pink and brown checkerboards, squares buried in chocolate. He breathed in their almondy aroma.
I’d like to report a missing person, Mrs. Vernon said. Name Darlene Hardison. She started to spell his mother’s name and stopped short. Oh, you do, do you? Mm-hmm. Another pause. It don’t matter about what she do, sir. It’s that she got a young son waiting on her, and he right here. Her voice brightened. Really, now? Would you mind checking your records?
Keeping the phone wedged against her ear, Mrs. Vernon gave someone change, paid full attention to customers for several minutes. A few times she made eye contact with Eddie and raised her eyebrows to say they still had her on hold. Then she said, dejectedly, into the phone, So she’s not down there, huh? She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and addressed Eddie. When the last time you saw her?
Last night, he said, around nine thirty.
Half past nine last night, Mrs. Vernon repeated to the cop on the phone, and froze her face into a pout during a long pause. Friday morning sound like a long time, Officer. Don’t you think—no, I suppose you don’t. At the end of the call, she sighed and said, Thank you for your help, and Eddie could tell she meant Thanks for nothing. He forced his tears back up into his head. Mrs. Vernon gave him a slice of cake in a Tupperware box to save for lunch but it only made him feel better enough to relax his face. The best possible cake couldn’t help.
Even one day to wait for your missing mother is forever. Eddie told a bad friend at school about his mother and the kid said, Every second you don’t do nothing, somebody could b
e killing her and you’re not preventing the killing of her! During recess a kid called Doody but really named Heath tried to cheat at finger football and Eddie stomped on his foot so hard Doody wept and said that Eddie had broken it even though he could walk fine after five minutes. No teacher witnessed this; no authority heard about it later.
Eddie looked for his mother on the humid, sweaty journey home. When he got back to the apartment, he kept thinking she would call if she could get to a phone. As he searched the rooms, he found that she had left a favorite blouse with gold threads sewn into the piping. His feverish inventory of everything she had not taken proved that she had not meant to disappear, to leave behind the possessions she cherished or anything else she loved. Who had kidnapped her?
Hours passed; the house remained silent. The street seemed quieter than usual, as if everybody knew that Darlene Hardison had gone missing and, worse, that they had hidden themselves to avoid caring. To drown the silence of the phone, Eddie turned up the television. Mrs. Vernon dropped by to see if his mother had shown up, and Eddie said she hadn’t. In Mrs. Vernon’s voice he waited to hear something tell him that he could spend the night with her, but that never came, only a complaint about her own full house and a promise to check in on him tomorrow.
Now, if this go on much longer, I’ma have to call protective services, Mrs. Vernon warned the next day when he visited just before the bakery closed because she hadn’t checked in the whole day.
No, Eddie whined. I can take care of myself. Plus my aunt Bethella lives across town if I need her. I’ve stayed with her before, he told Mrs. Vernon, though he thought at the same time that it would be impossible to contact Bethella. He knew that his mother and his aunt hated each other, and he felt that his aunt hated him because of his mother. No, he could never ask her help again. But maybe he could go it alone. I’m almost twelve, he said.
And you think you grown. Hmm.
I am the man of the house, he said, shoving his hands into his pockets, trying to sound logical and wear a serious, old expression.
I suppose you right about that, sir, Mrs. Vernon said soberly, forcing him, as rapidly as someone dropped into cold water feels a chill, to remember what made that a bad thing. He scuttled out of the store before she could see the shame take over his face or hear him cry.
At 9:30 that night, shortly after the time Darlene would normally leave, he turned off the lights and appliances, slipped out the front door, and locked it behind him. He walked downstairs into the parking lot of the complex, concerned that someone would see him and figure out what had happened or judge Darlene a bad mother for letting him stay out late. Car headlights suddenly shone on him, so dazzling he couldn’t see the vehicle behind them. The beams seemed to expose his aloneness and helplessness, sensations he couldn’t release even after scampering to the sidewalk and making his way to the strip.
He had been driven down parts of the long commercial avenue many times, sometimes when the school bus took a wrong turn or a detour, but rarely at night. Seeing it in this new way filled him with dread. A few sections, mainly the strip malls nearer the highway, supported restaurants and movie theaters. There were no sidewalks. In Texas, having a vehicle meant having a life—if you walked on the shoulder, everybody could see that you’d failed in some way. That you couldn’t afford a vehicle, that your car had broken down and you couldn’t pay for a cab, that you had no friends to call. Maybe you were too weird to hitchhike. Out by the curb, shaggy people with walking sticks and shopping carts guided mangy animals to nowhere. Teens who’d blackened their eye sockets and pierced the bridges of their noses shuffled toward Houston’s underworld. A decaying but popular bowling alley sat across from a lot that contained Mexican and Chinese chain restaurants, and farther down you could find one of those tremendous, shiny supermarkets that stayed open all night just because it could, its clientele growing sparser and freakier as the evening progressed. Whole sections of the road closed after business hours—a cluster of stores that sold antiques, ceramic tiles, and Christian books and supplies lay dormant in shadows, and farther on, beyond a bright gas station, stretched another chunk of avenue where several strip malls had failed and their gigantic unlit parking lots seemed to undulate like wide, deep rivers do at night.
At the corner, near the edge of an empty department-store parking lot, a woman waited at a bus shelter. She leaned against the light box, silhouetted, peering into whichever cars stopped at the traffic signal. This didn’t seem strange to Eddie until it occurred to him that the buses must have stopped running. Initially he judged the woman unfortunate, then ignorant and badly dressed, but as he figured out what she was doing, he saw her ingenuity. She had an excuse, if a lame one, to lurk in this territory. Suddenly he thought of his mother—first he had to rule out the possibility that the woman was her, then reconcile himself to the idea that his mother was no different, which he could not do. But he felt this woman might know his mother, or her whereabouts.
He passed, pretending not to notice her. After walking fifty more yards, he stopped and returned to the bus shelter. He stood away from her, watching her light a cigarette and toss the lit match casually into the street. The woman squinted at him, took a drag, and blew her smoke. The expression she sent his way—brows close together, mouth pursed—made him feel that he had offended her.
No, sugar, she said. Ain’t happening. She leaned out of the shelter and craned her neck in the opposite direction. Mm-mm. You too young.
I’m not that young, he announced. I’m almost twelve.
She took a step back and guffawed, and he saw her sympathy for him break open. What is happening to me? she asked the sky. I can’t believe I thought—she shook her head and sucked on the cigarette again. Good God A’mighty. Eleven years old. And what you doing out—
I’m looking for my mother, he blurted.
The gravity of the matter seemed to settle in her body, as if the same thing had once happened to her. Oh, it’s like that, she said. She on the street, hmm?
I reckon. I’m not sure where she is, ma’am.
The name Darlene Hardison did not sound familiar to the woman. Out here, she said, a lot of people—the names aren’t the names, you know. What she look like?
Like a normal mom.
You gotta do better than that, my dear. How tall, how fat, how black. Big boobs, small boobs, big ass—what her hair like? Natural, straight, weave, dye? Scars, tattoos. What she was wearing. Who she was with.
Nothing helpful came to mind. Vague adjectives orbited his head. Pretty. Nice. If he didn’t find her that night, he would need a picture. He struggled to create an image of his mother with his undeveloped tools, and watched his failure reflected in the woman’s blank expression. He could not handle this alone, but he didn’t let that thought enter his awareness. He had to hold back a riot in his chest that made him want to shout, or kick the bus shelter, or himself.
A gleaming white town car slowed at the bus stop. The woman broke Eddie’s gaze, flicked her unfinished cigarette to the ground, smashed it into the pavement, and leaned her torso into the window of the car. Loud rap music from inside drowned out their conversation. A voice whined, Don’t believe the hype! Presently the woman turned back and smiled. This my ride. She swung the door wide, leapt in, and slammed it. In Eddie’s imagination she became his mother, who might have done the same things, recklessly stepping over the line into danger, into oblivion, and—worse than wrapping herself in a stranger’s murderous arms, worse than dying—leaving him behind.
Only then did a vivid picture of his mother come to him. Slim, her edges round like a soap sculpture in the rain, fuller hips than her frame seemed able to support. She straightened her hair and kept it at shoulder length. She wore sleeveless floral sundresses in muted patterns and flat shoes—in particular he remembered a mustard-colored pair. At the old house, in Ovis, she would garden from October to May, when it wasn’t too hot to spend time in the yard, and she dreamed of getting a sprinkler system for the lawn
. He remembered eating a certain brand of chocolate sandwich cookie that matched her complexion, not the deep brown of stained wood but lighter and ruddier, like cedar-bark chips. She had grace, and painted her finger- and toenails a respectable shade of plum. A night sky of faint dots spread across her face, maybe from an adolescent ’bout with acne. He remembered sitting in her lap and tracing these constellations while she slapped his hands away. The makeup she used always compensated for the spots. These were some of Eddie’s earliest memories, which always gradually gave way to something else, as if Darlene had pulled a zipper and the halves of her body had fallen away, like a husk, to unmask another person.
This mental image lasted only as long as the flashing red sign that told him not to walk. Hazier still was the gap between that image and the woman he couldn’t find that night. Eddie’s father had also disappeared, nearly six years earlier, and they’d found him dead. During the Vietnam War, he knew, his father had flown an airplane, and after that, in college, he had played basketball. Eddie’s father must have done his job as a soldier well because he wore a medal in the shape of a silver star over his heart in that photograph near his mother’s bed. That’s for bravery, his mother had said, so often that he could say it with her. Charlie didn’t get your daddy, no sir. He had to come home to Jim Crow for that. Then she’d laugh, but not a funny laugh.
Eddie did a lot of asking that night. He encountered many peculiar people, etched in fluorescent light outside ratty convenience stores, walking across empty parking lots whose fault lines sprouted crabgrass and sparkled with nuggets of safety glass, peeking from inside dark concrete motel rooms with broken doors. Nobody remembered Darlene; some people did not know if they remembered remembering. Others forgot that they did not remember. Some spoke fast, for a very long time, and did not stop. Some people could not form words.
One skinny lady with sunken eyes claimed that she definitely had seen Darlene. Without question, she said, absolutely, on this very road. But she also insisted that it had happened ten years ago. We shared a slice of pizza, she went on, because we only had enough money for one, and your moms wanted olives on it, I member that clearly, and we had a little argument about that because I hate olives.
Delicious Foods Page 4