Shifting Through Neutral

by Bridgett M. Davis

  “That was a lifetime ago,” said Kimmie.

  “This one will be even better. Rhonda can come this time.”

  “I’m never speaking to that blabbermouth again.”

  Mama stepped into the room. “You’ve got it wrong, Sweetie. She’s the best friend you could ever have.”

  “Please, Vy, could you close the door when you leave?”

  Instead, Mama walked into Kimmie’s room, shutting me out. On the other side of the door, I could hear our mother’s muffled, desperate pleas.

  Days later, Kimmie finally opened her bedroom door. I promptly entered her room, sat down beside her. The four o‘clock Million Dollar Movie was on. We said nothing to each other, the television screen flickering before us. Every day of that week we watched the afternoon movie together—inevitably a fifties or sixties tearjerker. I saw Natalie Wood prostitute herself in This Property Is Condemned, Shirley Booth plead with Burt Lancaster not to leave her in Come Back, Little Sheba, and Lana Turner fight with her daughter over a man in Imitation of Life. In each of those tragic, bigger-than-life actresses I saw Kimmie. Perhaps she did too, because when we watched Natalie Wood in her white hat and white dress leaving Warren Beatty and his new wife behind in Splendor in the Grass, Kimmie cried.

  I’m not surprised. He’s that type. I saw that right away,” Mama said as she and Kimmie stood together in the kitchen, the automatic can opener humming under her words.

  “I can’t believe it. I thought…” Kimmie’s voice trailed off.

  “You thought he’d own up to his responsibility. Not all men are like your father, Kimmie.” Mama tossed the empty cans into the trash bag, and they clanged as they knocked against one another.

  “You think he just needs some time?” said Kimmie.

  “Time is not going to make him do the right thing.” Mama opened the refrigerator door. “A man will only be with you if he wants you. No other reason. Trust me.”

  “I hate…his guts.”

  “Well, I could say I told you so…”

  “Don’t.”

  Moments went by as Mama minced cloves of garlic, sound of the knife whacking against wood filling the silence.

  “Vy, you have to help me do something.”

  Mama tossed the garlic into the sautéing vegetables. She poured the sauce into a ceramic mixing bowl, added sugar, and stirred, her fork making a ting, ting, ting sound as it hit against the sides.

  “I can’t help you, not if it’s what I think it is.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t believe in that.”

  “It’s legal now. I talked to a woman counselor at this place here, and she said they could arrange everything once they get your consent. Airfare to New York is about ninety dollars, and then I just need another hundred and twenty five for the—”

  “Everything legal is not right.” The vegetables sizzled. “All kinds of laws set up against Negroes didn’t make them right.”

  Kimmie sighed. “It’s what I want to do. Mommy, please.”

  “Even if I did agree to something like that, which I never would, your papa is planning to come get us in just a few days. There’s no time.”

  “We could postpone things, until I get this taken care of.”

  “That is out of the question,” said Mama.

  “But I’ve got to do something.”

  “Have it.”

  “I’d rather kill myself.”

  “Stop talking like that.”

  “I swear I feel like sticking a hanger up inside of me.”

  “Stop, I said.”

  “I wish I could fall down some stairs and lose it.”

  “No, you don’t. I’ve lost one before.”

  Kimmie looked over at her. “I remember.”

  Mama slid the garlic and onions and peppers into a big pot, pouring the sauce in behind. “It stays with you. Even when God takes it away, it hangs over you.” She tapped a spoon against the side of the pot. “It was a boy, and I always wanted a boy.”

  Kimmie nodded. “I was waiting for my baby brother to arrive. Why didn’t you explain to me what happened?”

  “You were six years old. What could I explain?”

  Kimmie was silent.

  Mama stirred. “This situation you’re in, it’s not what you planned, I know, but that’s how life is. You accept things as they are until you can make a change.” She paused to taste the sauce. “It’ll be easier in Louisiana. There are plenty of old aunties around who could watch it for you while you finish school. It’s not such a big deal down South like it is here. We’ll just be a bigger family.”

  The pungent, sweet smell of the barbecue sauce drifted out of the kitchen, greeting me in the hall, where I was eavesdropping. “When I had you, it gave me something to live for!” I heard Mama say. “There you were, so pretty with your good hair and light skin and Cyril’s ever-changing eyes.”

  I touched my bushy braids, pressed my fingertips into the lids of my brown eyes. Saw nothing but darkness.

  Kimmie laughed a mean little laugh. “Yeah, a pretty little girl who had to slip and see her father behind his wife’s back for the first five years of her life, and then not see him at all for the next seven.”

  Mama threw the spoon onto the stove. It landed with a thud. “That was a nasty thing to say.”

  “All I’m trying to say is I don’t want that to happen to my daughter. I want to be married when I have children.”

  “I guess you should’ve thought about that before you did what you did.”

  “It’s no more than you did when you were my age.”

  “I was not your age, Missy. I was older. In college. And at least I had the courage to live up to my mistake. Luckily for you.”

  A few seconds passed. “I’ll get it done,” said Kimmie, finally. “Even if I can’t do it here, I’ll find a way down there. There are old women who live behind the French Quarter, you know, who’ll gladly do it.”

  “And you might die in the process,” said Mama.

  “Then that’s something you’ll have to live with, isn’t it?” Kimmie stalked out of the kitchen, through the dining room. I chose the next moment to enter, through the hallway.

  “Oooh!” said Mama, startled by my presence. “Lord, child, don’t tell me those big ears have been spying on us again?”

  “Is Kimmie going to have a baby?”

  “It’s not good to listen in on things you’re too young to understand.” She spooned out a little sauce, blew on it, pointed the spoon at me. “Here, taste this, tell me what you think.”

  It was yummy. Sweet, garlicky, a little spicy. “It’s okay,” I said, unmoving in the middle of the kitchen floor. “Is she?”

  “That is nothing for a girl your age to be asking,” said Mama. “And nothing for me to be telling you. That’s Kimmie’s business, isn’t it?”

  I supposed she was right and, feeling yet another shift about to occur in our household, left Mama alone in the kitchen standing over her cast-iron pot, stirring the barbecue sauce with her big wooden spoon. I moved toward the den, suddenly eager to play a game of gin rummy with Daddy, hold the spreads in my hand till I called “Gin!” and could hear him say, “You something else, Brown Eyes. You know that? You something else.”

  On the first day of relief from the rain, I finally let Terrance Golightly give me a ride on the handlebars of his three-speed.

  “Dang, it’s about time, Rae of Sun,” he said. “I thought you were gonna be a scaredy-cat forever!”

  “Just shut up and make sure you watch where you’re going.” The perfect size for his handlebars, I leaned back against his narrow chest as we took off.

  I close my eyes, and we are moving faster and faster, flying romantically through the streets, our cheeks touching, my hands gripping metal, when I forget to keep my legs out to the side and my toe gets caught in the spokes of the front wheel. I feel a bone break, feel my ankle twist as the tires turn around and around. Suddenly, I am screaming hysterically, gobs of bloo
d sprouting from my left foot. Terrance is dragging me to a grassy lawn, yelling for help, dragging me under my armpits, calling for help, when out of nowhere, Daddy appears. He gathers me into his strong arms away from Terrance and runs down the street to his car—panting, yet determined and elegant, like a cartoon hero in slow motion. Blood drips onto the floor mats of Oldie as he drives recklessly. At the hospital, the pain throbs as Daddy looms over me, my small hand held tightly by his rough, huge ones. I can feel the knife cuts along the meaty part of his palm. “You scared me, Rae Rae,” he says, looking as though he’s been chopping onions all day.

  When he carried me up the walkway and through the front door—my foot in an ankle cast—both Mama and Kimmie were waiting for me.

  Mama held her hand out to me. “You have to use better judgment,” she said. “Boys never ride their bikes safely.”

  “The important thing is that she’s okay,” said Daddy.

  “I got her,” said Kimmie, who put my arm around her shoulders and directed me to lean on her as she headed to the porch. “I’m going to make you some lemonade,” she said, dashing back into the kitchen and leaving me outside, where a ladybug landed on my knee.

  My broken toe brought Kimmie back to me. And I believed that this would change things, slow them down alongside my own limping efforts to get around. It seemed to me it was the one surefire guarantee of love and connectedness—physical debilitation of one sort or another. The pain was worth it.

  From that moment forward, Kimmie threw herself into the business of nursing me, which must have been right on time, as it gave her a focus in those waning days before Cyril arrived, with her maternal instincts bursting through, hormones overwhelming her. She promised to take me to see a Michael Jackson concert. And to the new movie based on his hit song, “Ben.” “Soon as your cast is removed, we’ll go,” she said.

  Best of all, Kimmie let me spend quality time in her room, no longer vigorously guarding it as her private fortress. Besides all the clothes and posters and the dog-eared copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull at her bedside, there was her altar, built atop a low shelf. On it sat tall, ever-burning white candles, incense, colorful Mardi Gras beads, photographs, glass bowls of sand and shells and stones, a mini-statue of a saint. “It’s my offering to the gods,” she told me. Sitting in the middle of the altar was a black-and-white photograph of Mama. In it, she was descending a staircase dressed in a dark evening gown, her hair pulled up, long elegant white gloves covering her arms. Her hand was extended toward a man in a suit waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. The photo caught him looking up at her lovingly. I was riveted by this glimpse of Mama’s life when she was young and maybe even free.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to the man, even though I recognized the face.

  “That’s Papa,” said Kimmie. “Back before I was born.” She picked up the picture, touched it gingerly with one finger.

  “They were in love?” I asked, envying Kimmie for memories she had of her parents together when I had none. Kimmie even remembered when my parents had gotten married; she’d told me the wedding took place downstairs in the living room, and that Mama wore an off-white short lace dress, à la Jackie Kennedy.

  Kimmie studied the picture, smiled. “Papa says I was made from love.” She sighed, put the photograph back on her altar. “But love is complicated.”

  It had turned out to be for her. Here she sat with two possible futures—returning to Louisiana and the risky visit to a back-alley auntie, or having a baby and the life of a teenage mom, thwarting her plans for Albuquerque. She couldn’t have liked either option and that must have been a terrible feeling to have at seventeen—that both your roads lead to a dead end.

  “Will you read my cards?” I asked, sensing her wistfulness and not wanting her to think about Nolan. “Since we never got to finish that first time?”

  “Okay, but just one question tonight.” Kimmie got her tarot cards from a drawer, and together we sat cross-legged on the floor. She shuffled, held them in the palm of her hand as she sat quietly for several seconds, grounding herself, becoming one with the cards’ energy. “Ready?” she asked as she held the deck out for me.

  “I’m ready,” I said, cutting the cards, then squeezing my hand closed as though the answer was inside for safekeeping. “Can I keep the question to myself?” I asked.

  “Sure.” Kimmie made a pile of cards, turned faceup. When an ace appeared, she stopped, made another pile, counting out thirteen cards. Then she made a third pile and again stopped once she got to an ace. “Ooh, the ace of cups and the ace of wands,” she whispered. “Those are good cards. Cups hold your strongest desires, and wands provide the force to make them real. So the answer to your question is definitely a yes.”

  I was pleased with the tarot. I’d asked the cards if I’d ever see Kimmie again after she and Mama left.

  “Can I do you now?” I asked, grabbing at the deck.

  “You don’t know how to read the cards.”

  That was true. “Can’t you do it on yourself then, while I watch?”

  “Well, I guess I could.” She reshuffled the cards, eyes closed, and I felt I could see her forming the question in her mind. Suddenly, her eyes popped open, and she made three new piles. “Oh, shucks,” she said as she turned over the last card. “Wow.”

  “What?” I looked at the cards, tried to make sense of what lay before me, but of course I couldn’t. I saw three colorful figures, no more. “What is it?” I asked. “Is it about the baby?”

  Kimmie put her hand to her mouth. “You know?”

  I nodded.

  “And you didn’t tell Daddy Joe, did you?”

  I shook my head.

  “’Cause I wouldn’t feel right about him knowing.”

  “It’s our little secret,” I said.

  She smiled with gratitude, pointed to the card in the middle. It had an ominous image of a man dressed in a black robe, brandishing a scythe. “This is a powerful card,” she said. “It overshadows the other ones.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  She never called it the Death card. “It means that one phase of my life is ending and another is beginning.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  Kimmie thought for a moment. “Yes, I think so,” she said. “You have to let some parts of you die away, so other parts of you can live.”

  The morning of the Going Away party, Kimmie announced that she and Rhonda planned to watch the Labor Day fireworks along the waterfront at Metro Beach. Mama was not happy.

  “I thought you weren’t speaking to Rhonda,” she said.

  “We made up.”

  “How are you going to go out when I’m having a party for us?”

  Mama and I were sitting at the kitchen table as I helped her make her shopping list. Kimmie rummaged through the refrigerator, looking for a snack. She finally settled on an apple.

  “It’s not our party, it’s yours,” she said, taking a huge bite. “Those certainly aren’t my friends who’re coming.”

  “Well, Rhonda is welcome to come.”

  “To tell you the truth Vy, she’s not interested.”

  “Have you asked her?”

  Kimmie took another bite, looked at Mama as she chewed. “Trust me,” she finally said, her mouth full, apple juice dripping down her chin.

  “Well, I know one thing.” Mama pointed her ballpoint pen at Kimmie. “You’d better be back here at a decent hour.”

  “We will. The fireworks are over elevenish, so we’ll be home by twelve.”

  “Twelve? I need you back earlier than that!”

  “What for?” Kimmie held the apple midair. “Your friends will still be here, drinking and playing bid whist and carrying on, so what’s the big deal?”

  “Well, for one, Metro Beach is mostly white folks, and you just never know what could happen.”

  “What could happen?”

  Mama grabbed a cigarette from the pack on the table. “I have a bad feeling about
you being out like that on a holiday. You don’t know how these fools in Detroit get. They start shooting off their guns and driving drunk and—”

  “Vy, please. We’ll be fine. God, you act like there’s a bogeyman on every corner of this city.”

  “I feel like there is, to tell you the truth.”

  Kimmie sighed. “We’ll be back home by eleven.”

  “You can’t get home sooner? Fireworks out there in the suburbs are not gonna go past nine or nine-thirty.”

  “We’ll be home by eleven, okay?”

  Mama shook her head. “I hope this isn’t part of some little plot of yours to mess up things, because if it is, I’m telling you now it won’t work.”

  Kimmie shrugged. “Rhonda and I just want to hang out one more time before I leave. You’re the one who said she was the best friend I ever had.” Kimmie studied Mama’s face. “Maybe you need a nerve pill, Vy. You’re really hyper this morning.” She tossed her apple into the trash can and sashayed from the room.

  Mama sat there, her face slack. As she turned to me, I noticed the puffiness around her eyes. “Rae, run upstairs for me and get my pills out of the—” She stopped herself. “You can’t run anywhere with that foot, can you?” The cast was coming off later that day. I couldn’t wait because it had been itching unmercifully for the last two weeks.

  “I can get upstairs easily, Mama.” I had mastered a one-leg hop.

  She shook her head. “Forget it. Forget I even said a word.” She lit the cigarette she’d been holding, the flame from the lighter causing the slightest twinkle in her brown eyes.

  I didn’t know whether or not to believe Kimmie either. The night before, she’d walked into my room as I pulled out the money Daddy had given me to hold. I was thinking I should give it back to him, now that we weren’t leaving.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  I told her.

  “Is Daddy Joe expecting it back?”

  “I think so.”

  “Do you mind if I borrow it?” Kimmie reached for the money. “I promise I’ll pay you back right away. As soon as I get back to Louisiana, I’ll send it to you. I have my own bank account.”