by Pearl Cleage
Aretha turned to him with a look that would cut glass, and ShaRonda spoke up quickly. “This is my uncle DooDoo. He just came to pick me up.”
Uncle DooDoo grinned at Aretha. “The pleasure is all mine.”
Aretha looked at him for a second the way you do a cockroach before you squash it. “Don't you work with King James Johnson?”
DooDoo looked surprised, then cunning. “Who's askin'?”
“I work for Blue Hamilton,” she said quietly. “You're not supposed to be over here.”
His increasing surprise and obvious confusion morphed into defiance. “I came to pick up my lil' niece.” He reached out a muscular arm, and ShaRonda moved into the circle of it, her hair and makeup giving her show of familial support a strangely erotic flavor that I am sure was not lost on Aretha. “There's no law against that, is there?”
Aretha looked at him coldly, and then down at ShaRonda, who obviously wanted this moment to end before it got any worse. Aretha took a deep breath. “Nope. No law against that.” She turned to Lu. “You ready?”
Lu nodded, turning to wave to her friend. “Bye, ShaRonda. See you tomorrow!”
“Okay,” the girl said, hopping into the front seat beside her uncle, who cranked up the car and roared away before we even reached the crosswalk. There might not be a law against his presence around here, but he obviously got Aretha's point and wasn't prepared to push her.
Aretha turned a warm smile on Lu. “So how was your day, lil' bit?”
“Good,” Lu said. “Are we still going to Greenbriar?”
“Yep.”
They were catching the bus to the neighborhood's other mall. Medu Bookstore was having a reading, and Lu was interviewing the author, a historian, for her school project.
She turned to me. “You going with us?”
I shook my head. “Not this time.”
This was a big sis/lil' sis outing. I knew better than to intrude. Lu rewarded my intuition with a smile of relief.
We crossed the street, and, as we fell into step together, Lu waved at several of her friends mugging in the windows of the bus.
“How long has ShaRonda's uncle been picking her up?” Aretha asked, her tone clearly communicating that he was not the guy you want to see making the junior high school a part of his regular rounds.
“Couple of weeks,” Lu said. “Her mama had to go to rehab.”
“I thought she just came out of rehab.”
“She just came out, now she's back,” Lu said patiently. “She's got a new boyfriend and he wants her to have a baby, but she doesn't want to do it while she's smoking crack. Why you asking about DooDoo?”
“He's not a good guy,” Aretha said simply.
Lu shrugged. “He's okay. He buys a lot of stuff for ShaRonda.”
“What kind of stuff?”
Lu looked at Aretha and frowned. “Clothes and makeup and stuff. CDs. He's her favorite uncle. She's even named after him.”
“I thought her name was ShaRonda.”
“It is. Her mama's name is Shaunice, and DooDoo is her mama's baby brother.”
“So how does that translate into ShaRonda?”
“Shaunice and Ronald. His real name is Ronald.” “So why did she call him DooDoo?”
We passed a huge garden plot with an old woman and an even older man bent over checking something in the soil. Aretha waved, and they waved back.
“Everybody calls him DooDoo. ShaRonda said it's because when he was little, somebody said, ‘That boy is always starting some …’ can I curse?”
“Go ahead.”
“Some shit,' and his grandmother said, ‘Don't be cussin’ in my house,' so the person who said it changed it to ‘doodoo,’ and it stuck.”
I wondered briefly what it was like to go through life with a name like DooDoo. I guess ShaRonda lucked out when you think about it. She could have ended up ShaDooDoo.
“I don't think he's a good guy,” Aretha said again. “You already said that. What do you want me to do about it?”
Aretha looked at Lu, then smiled away her concern. “Nothing, lil' bit. You just be a friend to ShaRonda, and I'll keep an eye on DooDoo.”
Lu giggled.
“What's so funny?”
“It sounds silly when you say it.”
“It sounds silly when anybody says it! How you gonna be a grown man and call yourself DooDoo?”
“You should marry him. Then you'd be Mrs. DooDoo.”
Aretha crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, and Lu giggled helplessly.
“Mr. and Mrs. DooDoo!”
Now they were both giggling. I fell a few steps behind them to watch. There are moments that you want to remember exactly. Moments like this one. The three ofus, walking home on a warm, almost spring afternoon, giggling away the danger that is always nipping at our heels.
14
WHEN I GOT HOME, SOMEONE had slipped an envelope under my door. I opened it up and inside was a plain white card with black-and-white stripes around the border.
“Mr. Blue Hamilton and the usual suspects request the honor of your presence at their annual gathering. Come out. Drink up. Give back. Eight o'clock until. Club Zebra.”
On the back ofthe card, he had written: “I look forward to seeing you on Saturday. No sake will be served. Blue.”
I held it in my hand for a minute, enjoying the weight and texture of the paper and wishing I was like one of those psychic creatures on TV who can hold something and instantly know the whole history and intentions of the person who touched it last. Failing that, I closed my eyes and tried to project myself into next Saturday so I could check myself out at the party.
There I was, all right, walking through my own imagination like it was a movie. Getting dressed in a beautiful blue dress that clung where it was supposed to, and fluttered where it was supposed to, and made me look really sexy. My hair was cut in one of those little feathery numbers that Halle Berry works better than anybody, and I was even wearing a new pair of shoes with pointed toes and amazingly high heels.
I don't even wear high heels much anymore, but in this vision, I was fearlessly working some pumps that looked like the ones on those Sex and the City girls. Now there I was going downstairs to meet Flora, who was wearing a peach-colored silk tunic and some black silk palazzo pants. I saw us riding over in the limo, sipping champagne like we did this every day. I saw us walk into Club Zebra and then— That's where it stops. I can't actually get my mind past the front door. I can't conjure up the moment when Blue Hamilton comes over to greet me in my beautiful dress and I look up into those amazing eyes and say— See what I mean?
Good thing I have a week to prepare, I thought, giving the invitation a place of honor on my refrigerator door, right next to the picture of me and my mom on the front porch of the house when I was about nine. She's got her arm around me, and I look really happy, just like Lu does in the picture she took with her dad. Every kid should have those moments. Those moments when you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that your mama adores you and your daddy thinks you hung the moon.
But that was a long time ago. The question on the table right now is, where am I going to find that dress by next Saturday night?
15
SUNDAY MORNING IS ONE OF MY favorite times of the week. I'm also fond of Wednesday night and every other Thursday afternoon, but that's just me. Aunt Abbie and I had our weekly catch-up call as she headed out to whatever church she was visiting that week. She never joined one, but every Sunday she let the Spirit guide her to a place where she'd feel welcome. This morning, she was torn between the Catholic congregation around the corner from the house and the Baptist church a few blocks away.
As we signed off, I secured a promise that she would offer up a prayer for me wherever she landed, and she laughed.
“Why do you think I keep worshipping with these Negroes every Sunday in the first place?”
I laughed, too, but knowing that I had at least one person actively lobbying for my immortal soul
made me feel good as I walked over to the West End News and picked up the Atlanta paper, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, then came back home and put on a pot of coffee. I enjoy newspapers a lot more since I started exercising more control over what I allow them to put into my brain. It started a couple of years ago during all the news stories about a guy who was eating people.
You remember that cannibal guy? Well, one morning I found myself at the breakfast table, drinking coffee and reading the most horrific details about how he was killing, cooking, and eating random young men in his apartment. When I got to the part about how he dismembered some of them and froze his favorite parts for later, I closed the paper, poured out the coffee, and left the news alone for a couple of days until I could figure out an approach that didn't leave me full of scary information I don't need about unfortunate people I don't know.
I decided to apply a simple test. Before reading any story purporting to be news, I ask myself one question: Is this story a personal tragedy or a community challenge?
For example, as a responsible citizen of the world, I need always to remember that babies are being killed right now in whatever wars the men are fighting. I need to keep that awareness uppermost in my mind so I'll take personal responsibility and be an active voice for peace. On the other hand, a front-page story about what human body parts are favored by an isolated madman whose insanity manifests itself as cannibalism is not required, or even particularly helpful. My mother always said a steady diet of scary bad news was just a right-wing plot to make people afraid to trust one another, and I used to laugh, but I think maybe she was right.
I wasn't going to read the whole paper right now anyway. A quick glance at the Arts and Leisure section of the Times while I drank a cup of coffee, and it would be time to go downstairs to Flora's. I had heard the sound of Al Green coming from her place earlier, so I figured Aretha was right. Al Green singing gospel music is the perfect background for a catfish Sunday brunch.
I had gotten a good bottle of champagne from Mr. Jackson's liquor store up the street, and happenstance had sent me an offering I was sure Lu would appreciate even more than the sparkling apple juice I had for her. Late last night, going through a box of photographs, some labeled, some with notes on the back in Son's famously illegible scrawl, I came across a photograph of him with his arm around a guy whose open face and reddish cloud of hair looked familiar.
Son was in his shirtsleeves, and the other guy had on a T-shirt that said believe. They were standing in a group of boys around eight or nine and they had the believe shirts on, too. Son and the guy were both grinning at the camera in a way that made me know the person taking the photograph was an attractive woman. They weren't flirting. She just caught them in the act of being two fine black men and they were as happy about it as she was.
I flipped the picture over to see if there was identification on the back and Son had written: “Hank Lumumba. Good guy. Smart! Congressional material. Keep in touch.” And at the bottom: “July 2001, Detroit.”
It was Lu's dad, and he had made a big impression on Son. I thought she might like to see it and tell her dad what Son had had to say, so I tucked it in a folder to be carried downstairs with me at the appointed hour. I remember the first time I saw an old FBI photograph of my father making an impassioned speech from the steps of Frederick Douglass Hall in the middle of the Howard campus.
The students were getting ready to occupy the administration building, demanding black studies, and my father was firing them up for the confrontation that lay ahead. I remember being shocked at how young he looked and amazed that the FBI thought he was enough of a threat to start a file of his activities that continued for decades afterward, although he was never arrested or charged with a single crime.
It's exciting to bump up on somebody you love walking around in history. It makes you proud. Maybe I'll give this picture to Lu. Maybe she'll show it to her children, and her children's children, and say, This man is the reason your grandfather decided to run for Congress in the first place. Maybe she will teach them to say Son's name. I think he would have liked that. I think he would have liked it a lot.
16
BRUNCH AT FLORA'S WAS AN extended perfect moment. The food was sublime, starting with the fried catfish, cheese grits, and hot, homemade biscuits, proceeding through a bowl of the sweetest strawberries I've had in ages and some freshly whipped cream that literally melted in your mouth. The conversation was nonstop and convivial, with background music provided by the Right Reverend Al Green, who made loving Jesus sound so seductively secular that I was afraid the Lord would smack me down for the lust in my heart while I listened.
Lu was delighted with the picture of her dad and Son. She showed it to Flora with such excitement that Flora had to shoo her out of the kitchen where a frying pan of very hot grease and a four-hundred-degree oven made uninhibited displays of emotion less than practical. Lu couldn't wait to tell her dad.
It was Hank Lumumba's habit to call his daughter on Sunday afternoon for a good long chat. He spent the mornings, Lu told me, at a different church every Sunday to update one congregation or another on his progress against the dealers that had terrorized them for so long. He knew that the long trial process was mysterious to most of the people for whom the outcome would mean the difference between hearing birds or automatic weapons from their front-porch swing. So he asked each pastor for a few minutes of his or her time to say: “It's going our way. Don't worry. Don't be afraid. It's almost over. They can't win if we stick together!” Then he'd hang around afterward to talk to the old people who were the most scared and thank the pastor and make a small contribution to the building fund. Maybe Son's prediction was a prophecy. He was still a prosecutor, but Hank was already keeping a politician's schedule.
It was almost one o'clock and we were nibbling at the last of the strawberries when Aretha casually asked Flora what she was wearing to the party next Saturday.
Flora groaned. “Don't start!”
Lu rolled her eyes. “She's threatening to wear her overalls!”
Aretha looked at Flora and wagged a disapproving finger. “There will be no overalls worn at this party. Just because Hank can't get here this year doesn't mean you're supposed to come looking like a bum!”
“She's exaggerating,” Flora said. “All I said was if I don't find something soon, I'm going to be forced to wear my overalls.”
Lu stood up and started clearing the dishes. “Ask her where she's been looking,” Lu whispered to Aretha, sotto voce, as she headed for the kitchen with a load of plates expertly balanced on her arm.
Flora frowned after her daughter. “That is beside the point!”
“Ask her!” Lu's voice floated in on a laugh from the kitchen where we could hear her loading the dishwasher.
“Where have you been looking?” Aretha's voice was sweet as honey.
“At the Goodwill,” Flora said, raising her chin defensively. “There is no reason to spend good money on a new dress I'll probably only wear once or twice.”
“I told you,” Lu said, coming back for some more dishes.
I wanted to tell Flora the outfit she had on in my imagination had looked good on her. Maybe she'd have more luck if she could narrow her search down to a peachcolored tunic and a pair of wide-legged pants.
Aretha turned to me like Flora wasn't sitting right next to her. “See, what we've got here is a woman who is well intentioned, but confused. She thinks she's being righteously frugal and a true woman of the people by picking through the few festive outfits the Goodwill has on hand, but, in fact, what she's doing is denying a woman who truly has no other resources the opportunity to take advantage of what would otherwise be available in her price range.”
Lu was standing in the kitchen door, wiping her hands on a dish towel and grinning. So easy and natural was their teasing that they might have been three siblings.
Aretha turned back toward Flora. “Leave the Goodwill alone, Flo, and come shopping with me
tomorrow. Two hours in Little Five Points and I guarantee we'll find something as comfortable as your favorite overalls, and much more flattering.”
Flora looked hopeful but not convinced. “Two hours? And not a second more?”
“I promise.”
“Okay. It's a deal.”
Lu clapped her hands and gave her mother a quick kiss on the cheek. “Finally!”
Flora grinned at me and poured the last of the champagne into our glasses before we could decline. “With all my other fine qualities, you'd think these girls would forgive me a lack of serious interest in the world of high fashion.”
“How fancy is this party anyway?” I said, wondering if I should ask to be included in the two-hour shopping spree.
Aretha shrugged. “Pretty fancy, I guess. After-five stuff, although some of the ladies go formal. Mr. Hamilton and his guys always wear tuxes. The other men wear tuxes or dark suits and,” she smiled indulgently, “for the truly Afrocentric among us, a nicely embroidered ceremonial robe is always appropriate!”
“Remember that guy from Liberia who came last year?” Flora asked her. “He had those shoes that actually turned up at the end like a genie in a bottle.”
“Too bad he won't be there this year,” Lu said, grinning in Aretha's direction. “Maybe you could ask him to grant you three wishes.”
“I don't need anybody to grant me three wishes, lil' bit,” Aretha said, tossing her head so her long silver earrings danced and sparkled around her face. “I'm doing just fine, thank you!”
I wondered what she was wearing to the party. With her height and that lovely long neck, she could probably go as dramatic as she wanted to and not get lost in her look the way a smaller woman might. I'm only five three, so I have to be careful.
“Don't you want to make a wish about Kwame?” Lu was clearing up the last of the brunch feast without wasting this opportunity to tease Aretha.