Now that both my parents had had their way—he kept me, she left with Cyril—neither was happy. Once again, a child’s death had spoiled everything. Daddy sighed so heavily my body rose as he took in air and then fell as he breathed out. “Let me put my baby down,” he said.
He carried me into the den and lay me across the sofa bed. “Rae Rae?” He’d seen my eyes flutter. I opened them as he sat on the end of the bed and leaned in, his face so close I could see all three colors of his inner lip.
He cupped my chin. “You hold on to every good memory you have of your sister, you hear me? That way, she’ll be with you forever.”
I stared at him, not fully buying what he was saying.
He let his hand fall, placing it on top of mine. “When my little brothers died, I felt like I shoulda been able to save ’em somehow. That there thing hit me so hard ’cause they looked up to me so. I was their big brother, their protector.” He thumped his chest. “I still carry them right here. And you wanna know why? ’Cause I never let myself forget. I can tell you about the times I wiped their little behinds and when they rode on my shoulders and when I took them fishing. It makes me feel good to remember. You understand?”
I nodded, not understanding the bigger issue: why little boys and teenage girls had to die.
“I’m a ask you to tell me stories about some of the fun you and Kimmie had this summer. And every time I do, you gotta come up with a new story. Hear me, now?”
“I hear you, Daddy.”
He rubbed my hand. “Okay, so tell me one right now.”
“Right now? Anything?”
“Yep.”
“Well.” I thought for a moment, my mind flying over the whole summer, from the first time I saw Kimmie standing there in her crinkly sundress to the image of her waving good-bye from the sunroof of Cyril’s car. I smiled. “One of those times we went to Belle Isle…in your car? We rode the Giant Slide over and over.”
“Yeah? What was that like?”
“It’s great, Daddy. You walk up a ton of stairs to get to the top. And then you get on this rug and you slide down. I was a little scared but Kimmie got on first and had me hold on to her waist, and then when she yelled, ‘Ready!’ the guy pushed us and we flew down the slide, and it was like being on a magic carpet and we went over these giant bumps and we were going so fast and flying and yelling and Kimmie had her arms straight up in the air and then I put mine up, and when we got to the bottom, we ran to the side with our rug and we started right back up the stairs.” I took a breath. “It was so much fun.”
Daddy squeezed my hand. “That’s a good story, Brown Eyes. Now whenever you get ready to be sad—and the next few days are gonna have some sad moments in ’em, I’m not gonna lie to you—whenever that happens you come find me and tell me another story. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“And if you can’t get to me, you crawl to that spot you love so much up under the dining room table and tell yourself a story. All you got to do is go up under there when you need to.”
I thought about that. “Yeah, you might be right, Daddy.”
He chuckled, oh so softly. “Now, back to sleep. But when you wake up this time, you got to eat a little something. For Aunt Essie’s sake, okay?”
“Is she staying?”
“For a spell. You gonna like her. Don’t worry.”
I lay there for a couple hours, listening to Daddy and Aunt Essie as they talked, their voices low. Heard her climb the stairs, heard doors closing and bathwater running, heard all kinds of normal sounds brushing up against this abnormal day. When night came, Daddy joined me in the sofa bed. I scooted over to make room for his wide body and finally drifted to sleep. This time I didn’t dream about Kimmie. This time I didn’t dream at all.
I heard the song before I opened my eyes. Da da da. Da da da, da da da. Mary wants be a superwoman, but is that really in her headdddd. I leaped off the den sofa and followed the music up the stairs. And all the things she wants to be she needs to leave behiiiind. There she was sitting on her bed, suitcase propped open, the album with its gold Tamla label spinning on my little red record player. One arm was in a sling. She looked up at me. One eye was purplish, swollen. I was awed by her wound and halted by her bandage. She was so lovely to me and so tragic, I couldn’t move.
Two days had passed since Kimmie died, days as thick and slow as the Alega syrup Aunt Essie poured on the Sunday morning pancakes. Nearly everything familiar to me was in those days replaced by Change. The phone rang a lot, coming at me like a plaintive wail for help. Each time I expected it to be Kimmie, calling from the road somewhere: It was all a mistake. I made it. You guys just couldn’t find me. I realized I’d never heard her voice through a telephone, and that absence in our relationship pained me. As the years grew, I’d add many things to the list of what Kimmie and I never did together. Aunt Essie, on exaggerated bowlegs, would waddle toward the phone, tell every caller the same thing. “Thank you kindly for offering your condolence. Vy is expected in any day now. Call back, won’t you?”
We waited for Mama to arrive so we could stop walking around Kimmie’s death like it was a gaping hole in the floor. Aunt Essie wanted to cook food for the stream of company she assumed would soon be pouring through, paying their respects. She wanted to rush Kimmie’s laid-to-rest outfit to the cleaners. She wanted to prepare the extra bedrooms for overnight guests and “get everyone situated” for the big day—do my hair and iron her silk slip and polish Daddy’s shoes. But she didn’t. Couldn’t until Mama arrived. And so to keep herself busy, Aunt Essie did what she called her general cleaning.
She was agile despite the bowlegs, scrubbing and vacuuming and dusting her way across the distance of those first days with military precision. When I told her about Miss Queenie, she sucked her teeth. “I can’t see a doggone thing she’s done around here,” she hissed, moving through the front rooms with grace and speed, attacking all dirt in her path. I was mesmerized by the rhythmic, circular motion of her arm, its loose skin jiggling as she cleaned glass-tops with balled-up newspapers and her own concoction of vinegar, water, and ammonia. Miss Queenie had always seemed distracted when she worked, her mouth filled with snuff, her mind on that pile of dirty clothes in the basement. Aunt Essie wanted to pounce on the den with her dust rag and scrub brush, but Daddy wouldn’t let her.
“This here is my private space, and it’s gonna stay that way,” he said. “I don’t want it smelling like a hospital.”
Aunt Essie wrinkled her nose for effect. “That you won’t ever have to worry about,” she snapped. Daddy ignored her. “It needs a good wipe-down is all I’m saying.”
“No.”
“The whole room needs airing out, JD. It’s so stuffy—”
“No.”
She sucked her teeth. “Two human beings living in one little bitty room, it’s bound to need some serious airing out.” She paused, then pushed harder. “And anyway, why you got that child sleeping up against you like that?”
“Don’t start, Essie. Do not start.”
“It don’t look right, is all.”
“Then damn it, stop looking.”
That ended that, and Aunt Essie turned her attention to the kitchen, which was a gold mine of smudge and grime and overlook. “I just don’t understand folks who throw a rag around the place and claim they doing something,” she complained. She peered inside the refrigerator and announced, “I am highly suspicious of anybody who takes money to clean another person’s house,” making Miss Queenie sound like an accomplice in a whole ring of conspiratorial cleaning women. “Certainly in this day and age, you got to be careful who you bring into your home,” she noted. “Folks got options now. What kind of woman still doing day work?”
Mr. Alfred rang our doorbell late Saturday afternoon. He sat on the living room couch, with Daddy in the opposite chair. For a few years, Kimmie had lived as Daddy’s daughter, and so JD deserved some respect-paying as far as his buddy was concerned. They talked about a couple
cars down at the shop, European ones with tumbled insides that didn’t work in any logical way and which kept Mr. Alfred “busy as all get-out.”
I disappeared on my bicycle that evening, desperate to leave that house with its Mr. Clean aroma, its nonstop phones, its standstill quality. Out there on the sidewalks of the neighborhood, no one knew Kimmie had died. Men still mowed their lawns, and Jehovah Witnesses carried The Watchtower door-to-door, and squirrels leaped up trees. Yet I couldn’t find Terrance Golightly anywhere.
On Sunday after the pancakes, Rhonda came. “I just can’t believe it,” she kept saying. “I just can’t believe it.” A hand clung to her throat as she talked. “Kimmie was so happy when she left. She had plans, you know?”
“To come back,” I said. “She was coming back.”
Rhonda’s eyes brimmed. “She wanted to be closer to you, Rae Rae. She told me that, that she wanted to be closer to her baby sister.”
“She did? She said that?”
Rhonda nodded.
My heart burned with fresh grief. “What else did she say?”
At that moment, Aunt Essie came into the living room and handed us glasses of orange pop. She offered food, but Rhonda said she wasn’t hungry, thank you. Aunt Essie gave her a sad smile of understanding. “You and Kimmie were best friends,” she said, as if she’d always known it.
“Since kindergarten, ma’am.”
Aunt Essie sighed as she cupped her soft belly and waddled off, the space between her legs an oblong O.
“You want to go for a ride?” asked Rhonda.
I didn’t know how much I wanted to until she asked me. I got Daddy’s permission, and we dashed out. It was to be the first and last time I ever rode in Rhonda’s baby blue Riviera, and I ran toward it with thirst as it glistened in the early September sun, beckoning like a backyard pool. She rode the Lodge Freeway with the confidence of a veteran, and before long we were rising up at Jefferson Avenue, past Cobo Hall and Tiger Stadium, headed for Belle Isle. She parked close to the river’s edge, just as Kimmie and I used to do. She reached over into the backseat and pulled out a bouquet of flowers—a medley of orchids and forget-me-nots and lilies. Together we climbed out of the car and walked to the water, where we took turns tossing the petals out and watching as they rode the waves.
“I don’t even have a picture of her,” said Rhonda.
“Me neither.”
“Not any at all?”
“Just the ones in my head.”
We watched as the current carried the stems and petals and leaves.
When Rhonda dropped me off, I went upstairs to my room in search of the heaviest book I could find so I could press the petals of the flower I’d saved between its pages. There I caught Aunt Essie scrubbing down a wall in Kimmie’s room, the same wall where a black-light poster of the zodiac wheel had hung. Kimmie was an Aquarius.
“Leave it alone!” I screamed, startling her so, she dropped the scrub brush.
“What??”
“Don’t touch it!”
Comprehension moved across Aunt Essie’s face, and she sat on Kimmie’s stripped bed to collect herself. “Well, Darling, now I’m sorry. I’m just trying to bring some order to the house, that’s all.”
“It’s not right for you to be in here.”
Aunt Essie gave me a knowing look. “Come here,” she said, patting the spot beside her. I sat, and she put her hands on me for the first time. They were like a varnished piece of bark, shellacked into softness. I could smell the Du Charm pomade in her hair.
“She’s an angel in heaven now, you know.”
“She is?”
“Yes, she’s with the Lord. And let me tell you, that’s a fine, fine place to be.”
“What’s so fine about it?”
“Well, Jesus is there, watching over everybody,” said Aunt Essie. “And at the pearly gates is Gabriel and Peter. You know about them?”
“No.”
“Well, I got my Bible, don’t never go far without it, and I can read you some stories that’ll make your heart sing.”
“Can you read me the one about heaven?” I asked, mildly curious.
“I sure can, Darling. Whenever you’re ready.”
I never was. My experience had taught me that God had two purposes in the universe: to snatch your loved ones from you, and to take back babies you send his way.
When Mama arrived, she came through the front door carrying her square cosmetics bag and matching suitcase. Aunt Essie waved at Cyril before he drove off in his rental car.
“You remember my sister,” said Daddy to Mama.
She looked at Aunt Essie with her good eye. “You haven’t aged a bit,” she said matter-of-factly. “Still strong as an ox.”
Aunt Essie paused, took in her sister-in-law, whom she hadn’t seen in a decade, since Daddy had carried his not-so-young bride to Tennessee and Essie saw through her, saw that her brother had married a woman whose heart was somewhere else. “What can I do for you, Vy Darlin’?” she said now, forgiveness and pity lacing her words. “Anything? I’m here to help.”
“Get me some cigarettes, would you? Kool menthols,” said Mama as she collapsed into the first chair available. “Somehow, I’m fresh out.”
Stevie sang on and on until finally, Mama held out her unslung hand to me. I moved slowly to receive it. Her fingers were freezing. “You’re all I have left,” she said, looking right at me. “You’re it.”
Sitting gingerly beside Mama on the bed, I suddenly realized that I’d been waiting all these years for her to focus on me again, as she did those two riot-filled days long before—to reach out for me, call my name with urgency in her voice. Right then and there, I decided to accept the trade-off, accept losing Kimmie so that I could have more of Mama. I understood in that instant the basic principle behind loss: when a loved one dies, a void is created that must be filled. I assumed we would do that for each other, fill one another’s void, and so I held her hand and waited, waited as Stevie asked: “Where are you when I need you, like right now? Right now, right now, right nowwwww…. Yeah, need you baby, need you, need you baby.” Once the song ended, Mama and I sat there listening to the silence left behind.
She was restless, like a wounded animal lost in woods once familiar, wandering around, aimless, limping slightly. She walked through the living room and across the dining room and into the kitchen, where she sat for a moment. Then she was up again and out onto the back porch. Then the front porch, back inside to the kitchen.
“Sit a spell, won’t you, Vy?” Aunt Essie finally said, worry etched between her brows. “You gonna wear a hole in the carpet.”
Mama looked over at her. “Can I have some water, please?” she asked, in a restaurant-customer voice. She was still standing, oddly balanced with her one good arm and one good eye.
“I’ll get it!” I yelled, running to the kitchen for the water.
When I handed her the glass, Mama gripped it tightly. “I’m going to lie down,” she said.
“You need to rest,” blurted Aunt Essie, as though it had been her idea all along. “I put some nice fresh sheets on the bed. And I laid out your nightgown.”
“Thanks, Essie,” said Mama. “Thanks for being here.”
Aunt Essie jumped into the opening. “No need to thank me. I’m here to help. I can help with the…arrangements, Darlin’. I know about these things. Done buried my little brothers and my own mother. Just tell me—”
Mama cut her off. “I’m going to bed right now. You want to come with me, Rae?”
I followed her, holding her slung elbow as we slowly climbed the staircase. Once in her room, I threw back the chenille blanket, pulled the top sheet out from its hospital corners, and watched Mama crawl into bed, fully dressed. The room was a hollow replica of itself now that her personal things were gone—like the vanity tray once full of cosmetics that sat on the dresser and the Naomi Sims wigs she’d kept propped on Styrofoam busts all over the room. But her smell was back. I handed her two ne
rve pills from inside her pocketbook, and she took them one at a time, chasing each with a tiny sip of water. The phone rang beside her bed. “Unplug it,” she said, turning over and curling up. There she laid, chenille blanket pulled to her chin, for the next twenty-four hours.
With Mama upstairs and off limits, the rest of the day passed in a haze. Aunt Essie moved through the house like a tornado, scrubbing it with frantic attention—from the stove to the toilet bowls to the floors to the crystals on the chandelier. Cyril respectfully stayed away, tucked into his room at the Sheraton Hotel on Washington Boulevard, where he nursed a bottle of whiskey to numb his own devastation. Daddy and I passed the time leaning against the den’s radiator cover, peering out at the street, holding each other around the waist. He had to tell his sister to Hush up, Essie when she strode into the den and started complaining that nobody was doing anything to get that poor child buried.
Truth is, we were immobilized, waiting for Mama to make the first move. What we understood intuitively was that hers was the grief that was greatest, and so we must defer to it. At first, we tiptoed around so she wouldn’t be disturbed. But the adults’ anxiousness grew as the hours did. Even I knew something had to be done soon. And that something loomed before us, a giant cloud of cruel detail waiting to open up and rain down on us with vengeance.
At nightfall, Aunt Essie sent me up to Mama with a tray of food. She wouldn’t touch it. I turned to Daddy for help. He went to her room, gently closing the door behind him. She refused to talk to him. When Cyril called for the third time, Aunt Essie climbed the stairs slowly, gripping the banister as she hoisted herself forward, determination lodged in her grim mouth, a history of blood clots in her battered legs. She too came back downstairs defeated. “Won’t budge,” she told Cyril. “I’m worried myself.” Finally, I plugged in Mama’s phone by the bed and placed the receiver to her ear. She grabbed it, whispered, “I just can’t,” and hung up on Cyril.
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