Keeper of Keys

by Bernice McFadden

  Chapter Three

  But that wasn't the memory that moved me off of the railroad tracks. It was the memory of the last time I saw her alive. The last time our hands touched, the kiss she planted on my cheek and the pink lips she left there, the way she waved good-bye and the soft folds her white skirt made when the summer wind blew around us. "Here," She said and stuffed a dollar bill in my hand.

  "Oh she don't need no money Alice," My grandmother had fussed. I was going to Georgia to spend the summer with my grandparents. I was ten years old.

  "It's a special dollar Kai," Alice said ignoring her mother's huffing. "You get to Sandersville and you buy whatever you like sweetie." Alice said and pulled me to her again. It was going to be hard for her, for both of us. We had never been apart, not like that.

  "Okay mom."

  I was so excited, it was my first time on a plane. I had a seat by the window, my Pan Am wings pinned securely to my chest and my special dollar clutched tightly in my hand. My stomach dropped when the plane tilted its nose to the heavens and I think I squealed like a mouse, but my eyes never left the window or the blue and white sky we sailed through. "It looks like the sky in mommy's pictures," I told my grandfather, who was sitting beside me. "And the one she painted on the ceiling and the pipes!" Alice was close to thirty and had never been high above the world and swallowed by the sky, but she'd gotten it just right. The piercing cobalt sky that lay beneath the powder blue closest to the sun. The clouds that resembled the thin smoke that slithered from Eve's long cigarettes, others that were fat and round like the cotton balls my mother cleaned off her eye makeup with. Alice had gotten it all perfect with out going any higher than the observation deck of the Empire State building. When I finally remembered my special dollar, the plane was touching the runway and the sound of applause blocked out the flight attendants welcoming words. I unrolled the bill, which was wilted and damp and saw that Alice had written something across George Washington's face. I love you always, Mom Alice's lettering was bold and spherical, like the bubbles that sometimes escaped from the Ivory Soap I washed my body with. I expected that one day her writing would carry her notes up, up, up and away, never to return.

  "You broke your what -" I heard my grandmother say a week into my stay. "Well how did you do that?" She said putting her free hand on her hip and shaking her head in dismay.

  "What?" I whispered. "What did she break? The cake plate? My record player?" Alice wasn't plain or boring, she was however, clumsy. My grandmother covered the receiver with her hand and whispered back, "Her arm."

  I wasn't completely surprised, I knew she'd eventually get around to breaking something on her body sooner or later.

  "Well how did you do that Alice?" My grandmother had a smirk on her face and was tapping her foot impatiently.

  "She won't be able to paint with one hand." I sang.

  Once again my grandmother covered the receiver, "She'll paint with her teeth if she has too." We both giggled.

  "Okay, well when will you get the cast off? Tests? Why?" My grandmother's voice changed with each question and her posture, usually as straight as a soldiers, slumped.

  "What?" She said and sat down in the winged back chair next to the small mahogany table that held the phone.

  "Oh, I see. No, no I'm not worried," She said and waved her hand to the air. "Not at all." She reinforced her statement, even though nothing but worry crossed her face.

  She caught the look that covered my face; the look that said: What's wrong with mommy?

  Her voice picked up again, like the French horns that come in suddenly during a symphony. She stood up again, smiled and began asking about Eve and how did the summer students like Hughes and Hurston.

  Her questions made me feel better. I was ten years old and still able to fool myself about certain things.

  "Okay baby, well here she is. Call me as soon as you know anything. Hold on."

  My grandmother handed me the phone. Her hand was shaking and it seemed the smile she offered me, pained her instead of giving her joy.

  She was out of the room and calling to my grandfather before I could even say hello.

  "Hal!"

  Her tone was too high and the urgency in her voice set their poodle Casey to yelping and running in circles.

  Chapter Four

  I asked about her arm and she told me that she had broken it while moving my dresser.

  "Why were you moving my dresser?" I asked, not considering the fact that her arm should not have simply snapped in two from moving a piece of furniture.

  "Well to sweep the candy wrappers from behind it, silly!" Her response was jovial but I knew her smile was missing and somehow I knew that the small tubes of paint had not been opened since I boarded the plane.

  "Oh," I laughed along with her and popped another Jolly Rancher into my mouth.

  "I guess you spent the dollar I gave you," Alice asked after telling me how much she loved me.

  "Uh-huh."

  "Candy?"

  "Yep!"

  "Oh." Her response was low and still. I felt something slip from me, but I didn't understand what that was at the time, I would understand weeks later when they lowered my mother's coffin down into the ground.

  "Well I'll call you again in a few days, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "Love you."

  "Love you too."

  A week later my grandmother was getting on a plane to New York.

  "Well you're not there and she needs someone to help her unscrew the paint caps and cook and clean and wash the clothes…"

  My grandmother was trying hard not to cry as she rambled off all of the reasons she had to go and be with her daughter, my mother.

  "Well then why can't I just go back home then?" I asked, baffled at why my grandmother was so upset, wondering if she disliked planes that much. She had complained, twisted and turned in her seat and called out to the lord more than once during the hour and half plane ride. "Lord knows I hate planes!" She hissed in my grandfather's ear when the plane started down the runway.

  "Viola you cutting my circulation off woman!" My grandfather had reprimanded her and after thirty minutes, finally snatched his wrist from her grip.

  "Well honey..uhm - well this is your summer vacation. No need in you being stuck in some hot apartment when you could be here with your cousins Precious and Poor Boy." Grandma said in a voice that was filled with distraction.

  She stopped talking for a while and just stared at the clothes she'd thrown in her suitcase. It was as if her mind had stopped working for a moment and then just as suddenly, she began talking and packing again.

  "I'll be back after your mamma gets back on her feet." She said and threw a worried look at my grandfather who had not moved from his rocking chair since my mother had called earlier that morning.

  "I thought it was her arm that was broken?" I said as I pulled the nylons she'd just thrown into the suitcase and wrapped them around my neck like a scarf.

  "It's just a figure of speech dear." She was flipping through the closet now, pulling out summer dresses and then putting them back in. Pushing the clothes hangers up and down the metal rod, but never finding what she was searching for until my grandfather finally cleared his throat.

  Grandma turned to look at him and I saw the tears. She turned her eyes on me and screamed.

  "Kai oh my God child what are you trying to do to yourself!"

  She rushed over and began unraveling the nylons from my neck. The tears flowed freely now. "Are you trying to kill yourself, are you!"

  The nylons tossed aside, my grandmother turned on me, gripped my shoulders and shook me with all of her strength. In my eyes, the whole room shook.

  "Viola!" My grandfather pulled her off of me. "Viola," he called her name again, softer the second time.

  She blinked at him and the rage went out of her eyes.

  "Oh, oh." She threw her hands up to her face and began to sob. "My girl, my baby girl." She wailed and I went to her and hugge
d her from behind. "It's okay grandma. I'm sorry. I was just playing. I'm not dead." I said because naturally, I thought she was talking about me.

  Two weeks later my grandfather and I were in the car on our way to the airport. I sat between Precious and Poor Boy, watching the green and brown of the country fly by outside the window.

  Their mother, Beck, drove the whole way without saying a word. That was unusual for her, she was what grandma called, a chattering chatterbox. My grandfather never stopped scratching his beard and never looked up from his hands that lay folded in his lap.

  I didn't realize how much I'd missed home until the taxi pulled up in front of my building. It was the beginning of August, the fire hydrants were on and my friends and a few new faces were dancing and screaming beneath the rushing water.

  My grandmother swung open the heavy metal door and greeted me with a look so broken I hesitated before I stepped into the apartment.

  There were boxes everywhere. Boxes piled up so high that they hid the broad leaves of the Banyan trees.

  Chapter Five

  "Where's mom?" I asked my grandmother as I dashed towards my mother's bedroom where I found more of the same. "Where is she!" I demanded in a voice I would never have used on any adult.

  "In the hospital." My grandmother must have practiced her response because it came out even and solid.

  Eve was at her bedside. Her eyes were red and swollen from tears and lack of sleep. There were books of poetry around her feet an eight track on the windowsill and a bunch of dandelions in a plastic cup on the table next to my mother's bed.

  "Kai-girl." Eve greeted me as she always did. But my nickname came out of her mouth in syllables that made me think that she had been missing the Banyan trees for a long time.

  Alice couldn't speak. Even without the tubes in her throat, she would not have said a word. She could hardly breath and should have been gone days ago, but my grandmother had begged and pleaded that they wait until I was able to come.

  "Is she sleeping?" That was the question that came out of my mouth, not any of the ones that were scrambling around my head. My best friend Deborah broke her arm two summers ago. It didn't put her in the hospital, so why was my mother here?

  "No…no. Well…yes….yes, in a way she is." My grandmother said and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. "She is in a very deep sleep." She was speaking into my neck; I could feel her tears dripping down my collarbone. "She's tired…tired and the doctor's think that it would be best if she sleeps….forever."

  Eve was crying and I had never seen Eve do anything else but smile and laugh.

  "Forever?"

  Eternity is not something you lay on a child suddenly. It's a concept that finds its way into their minds with maturity. I was ten years old and eternity was lying in the bed before me.

  She would be asleep forever.

  She would be gone forever.

  I would be with out her….. forever.

  "She's dead?" I asked even though her chest rose and fell beneath the white sheet that covered her body and I could hear her heartbeat from the machine above her head.

  "Dying." My grandmother said.

  I would find out that my mother had bone cancer, it had eaten away the marrow, making her bones as brittle as burnt wood and just as weak. Her limbs began to snap in two as easily as the colored pencils she used to sketch out her ideas with.

  It took her over quickly and there wasn't anything anyone could do to save her.

  My grandparents stepped out of the room right before Doctor Tate, our family physician, turned off the machines.

  Only Eve and I remained.

  Our fingers linked, we locked our breaths away in our chests as the last switch was flicked off and the white accordion in the bottle went flat and silent.

  I kissed my mother's warm cheek and wished that I could have left pink lips there for her to carry through her dreams.

  Eve leaned in and for the second time, I watched as she kissed my mother the way Joni kissed Chachi.

  My tires squealed against the steel of the railroad tracks as I pressed down hard on the gas pedal. My jeep jerked forward and out of harms way just as the 12:56 to Manhattan rounded the bend. I could see the startled face of the motorman as he pulled the red string that sounded the long foreboding wail of the whistle.

  I had forty dollars stuffed in the pocket of my jeans; some change in the ashtray a full tank of gas and tears in my eyes when I started on the seventeen-hour trip to Sandersville, Georgia.

  I had to get my daughter; I would not allow history to repeat itself. Would not have my daughter mourning the loss of a mother she never got to say good-bye to.

  I wouldn't have her aunts and uncles mumbling things beneath their breaths about the extra money it was costing them to feed and cloth her, just as my family members did after my grandfather passed away and my grandmother was put into a resting home.

  No, for now my child had a mother and a home and I was going to bring her back to me and never let her go again!

  The hours in the car passed as hours do, sometimes unhurried other times as quick as light and just as splendid.

  I would share that with this man that would forever remind me of the Masaii tribesman I had encountered on the pages of a National Geographic Magazine. The man that came into my life four years three months and two days after I'd convinced myself that I would never be held by another man.

  I would tell this man, this fixer of homes and repairer of spirit, that I felt my mother riding along with me that day. Felt her so strongly that I pulled to the side of the road and ran my hands along the leather of the passenger seat.

  "I could smell her." I told him. And I did, my car was filled with the light scent of the coconut oil she used in her hair.

  "She was there," Journey replied. And I knew he meant it and did not think I was insane for thinking it or even saying it aloud to him.

  It was almost midnight when I turned down the dark road that would bring me to Poor Boy's house. I still called him that, even though at age thirty he had decided to drop the nickname that had followed him since he was a year old.

  His mother had dubbed him Poor Boy because of the way his diapers hung off his narrow hips and how he tottered around, bent over as if he had the world on his shoulders and not a dime in his pocket.

  "It's James," he would say in a voice too dignified and out of place for a man who'd spent his whole life farming and slopping hogs.

  He was a wealthy man now. The half million dollars I'd given him from my lotto winnings had propelled him into socialite status, even though the elite he was apart of was small, new and consisted of his mother, wife, two daughters, his mother Beck, Precious, her four kids and himself.

  Precious on the other hand enjoyed the adoration her nickname afforded her. Helen wasn't a name to which people paid much attention. Precious on the other hand made you think of a smiling rosy-cheeked child or an expensive piece of porcelain.

  Precious enjoyed being compared with delicate things and took even greater pleasure in the sound of her name in the mouths of the men who courted her. She was a beautiful woman who had always been pursued by the men of Sandersville - she had four children to prove it - and had never been married once. Precious was still pregnant with her second child when she started dating the man that would father her third.

  "I'm changing my name legally to Precious." She announced the day the check I'd written out to her cleared. Aunt Beck, their mother, didn't even raise an eyebrow at her daughter's announcement, she just moved the phone she cradled between her cheek and shoulder from the right ear to the left and waited patiently for the representative at her bank to come back on and tell her the status of the check I'd written out to her.

  "I wanna make sure my headstone say Precious Lady on it."

  Lady was her surname and had been a great source of torment to her father Daniel Lady. If he had money he would have changed it, but he was poor his whole life and had died that way just days before t
he six numbers popped up out of the lotto machine on television, making me a millionaire.

  "Uh-huh, here lies Precious Lady, may she rest in eternal peace!" Precious squealed and began to jump up and down with glee. Her babies, three walking and one creeping began to squeal and bounce right along with her.

  "It cleared!" Aunt Beck screamed above Precious and her children's jubilance. "I'm rich, rich rich!" She yelled hugging the receiver to her chest.

  I turned into the driveway that would lead me up to Poor Boy's house. The dogs he kept in the yard began barking as soon as my headlights sliced through the darkness. I saw a shadow move behind the front window and then the curtain parted and Poor Boy's eyes were squinting back at me.