“She’ll probably be calling soon,” Tish said as she patted the mound that was her stomach at six months pregnant. “Never fails, whenever I need to hear from her, the phone rings and it’s her. She gets annoyed because she’s always hated to hear me cry, but as soon as I hear her voice I start crying and she thinks I’m crying because I’ve been worried about her and they’re tears of relief, but really it’s because I’ve been in the middle of going through something and my situation is making me tender and then her voice just, you know, makes me cry.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” Nan said.
“I wonder if Neena even knows that, you know, how much she’s done for me just by calling the way she does.”
“Well, if she knows when to call like you’re saying she does, she likely knows how much you’re getting out of it, Tish. Now what else can I do for you before I head on home?” Nan asked, thinking about the blanket she wanted to finish for the grand flea market the church was having.
Tish hit the remote and flicked the channels on the television. “I hope the ratings don’t go up this week while I’m off air. That perky replacement of mine would love nothing better. Did you ever hear the story about her running away?”
“Who? the chile filling in for you?”
“No, Neena.”
“Neena? Running away? You mean when she was nineteen?”
“No, leaving at nineteen is not running away, Nan; that’s leaving. I’m talking about when she was sixteen,” Tish said as she turned the television off.
“Sixteen?”
“Yeah, remember?” Tish said, grimacing as she tried to sit up more, then waving Nan away when Nan stood to help. “I’m not even gonna relive by repeating all the commotion of that day after Neena’s sixteenth birthday, and the night before, for that matter. But, yeah, Neena got up in the middle of the night, she sneaked out through the bedroom window, and took the bus downtown to Miss Goldie’s.”
“Hush your mouth, Tish,” Nan said as she sat back down and twisted the ends of the scarf that hung from her neck. It was a royal blue velvet and silk burn-out scarf that Tish had given her for Christmas. “Goldie wouldda told me such a thing.”
“Apparently not if you never knew it happened. Neena said that she curled up on Miss Goldie’s purple velvet couch, remember that couch?” Tish closed her eyes and sighed. “I loved that couch with the brass nail heads. Remember how the back of it dipped in the middle so that the couch actually looked like a heart, and how plush it was, how sinkable it made your body feel.”
“I do, of course, Tish. I helped her pick the couch out. Couch was good and lived on by the time you and Neena came along. Now, what about Neena running away to Goldie’s?”
“Well, Neena told me that once she sank into that couch it was so easy for her to pour her heart out to Miss Goldie. Not that it was ever hard to talk to Miss Goldie, something about the way she looked at you, as if she was just a little bit amused by what you were saying, that, you know, was just encouraging, you know, even if you were admitting having just done some horrible thing, Miss Goldie’s expression just took the sting out of it. But anyhow, Neena said that Goldie just listened to her without judgment or chastisement. Said that before long she could hear Sam banging around in the kitchen and at first Neena thought that Sam was irritated that she’d shown up past midnight like that. Then a bit later, Sam called Goldie and Neena into the kitchen and she said he had set a table like it was a holiday. Had their plates sitting on silver laminated place mats, their tea poured in the silver-rimmed china cups, and in the center of the table between two light blue taper candles was a steaming bowl of buttered hominy grits and a mess of fried silver trout. He held their chairs out for them to sit and she said that on his way out of the kitchen he patted Neena on the top of her head and then squeezed the back of Miss Goldie’s neck. She said she could feel how much love they had for each other just by the way Sam squeezed the back of Goldie’s neck and the way Goldie leaned into his hand, as if at that moment Sam and Goldie carried on a conversation that no one else could understand but them. A mighty love, she said she witnessed that night. She said that she herself would probably never know that kind of love, but that I had a shot at it, that I shouldn’t settle for less.”
“Is that what she said, Tish?”
“She did. I was only twelve, but I shall never forget that. Abided by it too. You know, I could have a much more dazzling husband than Malik, but I wouldn’t have the mighty love we’ve got.”
“Wonder why Neena thought she wasn’t privy to such a love?” Nan asked. Asked herself more than Tish.
They were both quiet for a time, Nan still twisting then untwisting the ends of her scarf, Tish rubbing her stomach in slow circles. Then Nan asked Tish how was Goldie able to persuade Neena back home. Obviously that’s what happened, Neena made it back home before the sunrise, before Nan was able to miss her.
“Well,” Tish said, readjusting one of the several pillows at her back, again waving Nan away when she started to rise to help. “Neena said that her plan had been to spend the night at Goldie’s and then start off early for Newark. That’s the last place Mommy had called from and she felt it in her bones that Mommy was still there, in Newark. She had money saved from what she held back from her church dues and from her allowance. But then she ended up back home, anyhow. She half-joked that she thought that Sam sprinkled some go-back-home dust in her grits. Though really she said it was something about eating the fish, no offense, Nan, but she said it was the best fried silver trout she’d ever eaten, and she had to really concentrate on separating the bone from the flesh and that took her out of her own head for a minute. She said that it helped that Goldie didn’t tell her one way or the other what to do. Didn’t say that she was right or wrong for leaving. Though Goldie did say that Neena would regret it forever if she left without telling me good-bye. So Neena consented to do that, you know, sneak back in the house and tell me good-bye. Sam and Goldie gave her a ride home and she said that she took one look at me sleeping and said to herself, I really don’t feel like listening to this girl cry tonight. So she blinked the porch light per Goldie’s instruction if for any reason she changed her mind about leaving, and then she just got undressed and went on to bed.”
“Well, now,” Nan said, as she moved from twisting and retwisting the ends of her scarf to untangling the cord that hung from the phone on the table next to where she sat. “That’s quite a chunk, I must say, that I never knew. I suspected that Neena was sneaking out of the house from time to time when she got in that hot-in-the-behind stage—”
“No, actually,” Tish interrupted as she pulled one of the pillows from behind her and tossed it toward the foot of the bed, “most of the time Neena wasn’t being hot in the behind, she was being her own private investigator trying to find Mommy.”
“Well, whatever she was doing, Tish, wasn’t right for a teenage girl to be trying to take matters into her own hands like that. Superseded her means, she did. Wasn’t equipped at that age to be finding her mother on her own.”
Tish shrugged her shoulders. “I guess,” she said.
“You didn’t, did you, Tish? You missed your mother every bit as much and you been able to find peace with her leaving. All Neena had to do was lean on the Lord like I implored of her. Nobody’s suggesting it was an easy thing to do, but it was doable.”
Tish sighed and closed her eyes again. She didn’t dispute what Nan had just said. Though she also understood how differently she and Neena related to their mother. Understood it even more now that she was close to motherhood herself. Nan had been her mother, really. Unlike Neena, Tish had spent the bulk of her infancy and toddler years with Nan. She was accustomed to the rhythms of Nan: the cha cha sounds of the sewing machine floating through the early morning air; the soft humming as Nan cooked and cleaned; the way Nan swayed from side to side as she sat in church, always the same row, same spot on the pew. The rise and fall of her breaths when they spent summer evenings on the po
rch, Tish leaning against Nan while they listened to the street sounds of the handclapping rhyming games the girls played, and the smack of sneakers against asphalt as the boys relay-raced from corner to corner, and the swing-low-sweet-chariot-type moans as women in black veiled hats lined up to go in the church across the street for a nighttime funeral service. There was for Tish a calming predictability to life with Nan.
Time spent with Freeda was jarring in comparison, like riding in a prop plane during a thunderstorm and having to wrestle with the nauseating motion, the dips and hard wavers from side to side, the fear that the plane would hurtle to the ground and wondering if it would hurt when it finally did, would she feel it when her head crashed through the seat in front of her, when her knees pushed through the bones of her rib cage. Though even that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was the noise of it: the way that Freeda would talk back to the voices she’d hear, and then pull her hair and clutch her stomach as if she was getting tragic news from the voices. Her screams would wake Neena and Tish in the middle of the night and Tish would cover her head with her pillow and sob into the pillow while Neena ran to Freeda, Neena actually able to calm Freeda down as she almost sang to her mother in a soothing voice, It’s okay Mommy, there’s nobody there, see Mommy, it’s okay. At times like that Tish would pray for Freeda to leave, and once she was gone and they were settled back on Delancey Street with Nan, Tish would pray that her mother would never return.
“Tish, Tish,” Nan called. “You want more graham crackers from the pantry before I leave from here? More water? Another blanket? Pillow?”
Tish shook her head. “I’m fine, Nan. I got this thing to push if I really need something.”
“Well, is the television positioned to your liking? No sense in bothering them sitting around the nurse’s station if there’s something I can do.”
Tish didn’t respond. She was back there at six years old in the second floor of the duplex where she and Neena and Freeda lived on Market Street. The bay windows of their bedroom looked out on the el tracks and Neena would run to the window when she heard the train’s approach. “Here’s another one, Tish,” she’d call out excitedly. Though Tish found the interminable rumble of the el annoying; at night the line of lights would rush past the window like a long silver snake interrupting her sleep. But the worst was that day that the el seemed to run nonstop. Tish was in bed that day because she was suffering from the flu. Suffering too because Neena had gone to school so that Tish was home alone with Freeda and she was afraid that if there was an emergency with Freeda she wouldn’t know what to do. The walls of the room were hot pink and the color made everything more unbearable: how hot her skin was, how much her head ached, how loud the train was, as if the train was running through her head; even Freeda’s closeness was unbearable as Freeda sat on the bed and leaned over Tish, attempting to feed her chicken soup. “Mnh, Tisha, it’s so good,” Freeda said as she blew on the spoon and edged the spoon toward Tish’s mouth. Tish could smell the garlic and thyme coming together on the spoon. She clamped her mouth and lowered her head.
“But I made it just like Nan’s,” Freeda cooed. “I used the very same recipe that she used on me when I was your age. Come on, just take a couple of sips for Mommy.”
Again Tish refused. “Well, would you like a Popsicle then?” Freeda asked. “A cherry Popsicle might cool you off. You have to have some fluids, Tish.”
Tish pouted.
“Don’t you want Mommy to help you feel better? Don’t you think I can?” Freeda asked.
“No,” Tish said. “It’s poison.”
“Tish,” Freeda said as she chuckled, “Mommy would never hurt you. Please believe me. I would kill myself before I ever hurt you.”
“Then why don’t you just kill yourself then,” Tish said. She didn’t know why she said it, hadn’t even known that she’d been thinking it until the words were out of her mouth.
Freeda put the spoon back in the bowl and set the bowl on the nightstand. She stared off into space for what seemed like hours to Tish and Tish listened to the el as she counted the rising and falling of her mother’s chest because otherwise Freeda was absolutely still. When Freeda turned to face her again, Tish looked for signs that her mother had been crying. Once Freeda started with the crying she was soon to leave. She hadn’t cried, though Tish could see that her eyes were different, as if they were sitting back farther in her head.
Then Tish started to cry, convulsively. “I’m sorry, Mommy, I didn’t mean it, Mommy,” she said over and over as she cried.
Freeda grabbed Tish to her and held her in a tight hug. She squeezed her so hard that Tish thought that she was preparing to crush her bones. Freeda was wearing a mohair sweater and the wool was both soft and itchy against Tish’s face. Freeda rocked Tish. She whispered in Tish’s ear. “It’s the fever, Tisha. You’re burning up with a fever and a fever makes you say things. I want you always to remember that, you were burning up with a fever; a fever makes you say things.”
“It’s the fever, Mommy, I’m sorry Mommy,” Tish said over and over, even as her mother wiped her down with a cool washcloth and turned the air conditioner on, though it was wintertime outside.
Nan was up, standing over Tish’s hospital bed. Now she was dabbing Tish’s cheeks with a cool cloth, wiping Tish’s eyes, telling her that it was okay to cry, go ahead, cry. Just hold on to her faith even as she cried. Tish nodded. She hadn’t even realized until just then that she’d been crying.
Chapter 10
NAN KNEW ABOUT holding on to faith. Thought her faith had been tested and retested to the point where, if she’d been the type to question God, the why, Lord, why, would have been her nonstop utterance.
She turned up pregnant as a result of her climbing into bed with Alfred that first time. The pregnancy itself was not the calamity it might have been since by the time she knew for sure she and Alfred were already on the track to get married: Goldie had agreed to stand in witness; Sam had already offered cold cuts and Manischewitz for the reception; the people at her second job offered her a wedding-day dress. The stormcloud for Nan was not the pregnancy, it was that in her mind the child had been conceived too close in time to her sipping at the contents of that vanilla extract bottle and Alfred gobbling down what she had not. Worried from then on that the root may have lingered in their systems and damaged some workings of the baby coming to be in her womb. Though the baby by all accounts was perfect.
Alfred certainly thought the baby perfect as he looked at the infant through the receiving window. He never thought that such beauty could exist in human form the way that it did in that newborn. Nor did he know that such a feeling could happen to him on the inside that was so large that it reset everything about him, changed him. “A girl,” he said out loud to no one in particular. “Look at the mat of shiny black hair, look at the dark-as-midnight-eyes. I’m melting, I’m so very thankful.” He was also quite drunk as he staggered from the receiving room into the maternity ward where the new mothers occupied the beds that filled the length of the room. He was so overcome with gratitude for Nan giving him such a beautiful daughter that his eyes did him wrong and he cried in front of the bed that was not Nan’s and rubbed the foot of the woman who lay there. She woke and screamed. That started a commotion that rippled the length of beds until it got to Nan’s bed and the story was that a crazed drunk just tried to chop off someone’s foot.
Nan knew it had to be Alfred. The seven months of married life with Alfred had been filled to brimming with the embarrassing consequences of his love for drink. His putting his key in the wrong apartment door, and when the door didn’t open, just passing out there anyhow. His getting thrown out of bars and some Samaritan fetching Nan so that she could patch him up and cart him home. He’d insist that the mailman was late with the milk, he’d argue with the milkman because he’d not gotten his mail. He’d show up for work dressed for church, gone to church dressed as if he was preparing to unload cargo from a ship.
So
Nan couldn’t even look at Alfred now as Nurse Ratched’s twin led him to Nan’s bed, telling him that if he showed up in that condition again he wouldn’t be granted entry. Nan pushed deeper under her covers and faced the wall.
“Nan, please don’t turn away, Nan,” Alfred begged. Then he got down on one knee. “Please, Nan, I have something important to say, please, I need your eyes on me.” Still Nan kept facing the wall and Alfred dug in his pocket looking for a ring. Why? he asked himself then, was he looking for a ring. They were married already, weren’t they? He was confused. But since he found himself on his knee, it must mean that he was supposed to propose. “Marry me, Nan,” he said. “I never loved any woman like I have you, please, Nan. Please be mine.”
Nan could hear the snickers jumping from bed to bed and she told herself that the women were jealous; their husbands were neither as devoted nor as good-looking as her Alfred. She turned around then. “Get off that floor, Alfred,” she said through her teeth, trying to salvage any tatters of his dignity. The tone of her voice, the demanding urgency of it, went farther than the chewing of coffee grinds did toward sobering him up. Now he remembered what it was. The baby, as he stood and took Nan’s hand in his and started to cry all over again.
“These are tears not of a weak man, but of a changed man,” he said. “The sight of that baby has changed me, Nan. My ways, my ways, I lift my hand to Holy Heaven. My ways from this point on have been changed.”
Nan looked at him standing there. His nice royal blue handkerchief was tucked in under his collar instead of in his lapel pocket. His exquisite tan and white seersucker suit was buttoned wrong, the knot of his tie was turned backward. His beautiful dark eyes were bloodshot in the corners. His nose ran as he stood there sobbing. She was flooded with that same large feeling she’d gotten when she saw him that first time in front of Sam’s deli on Chestnut Street. Here stands the love of my life, she thought. May the Lord have mercy on my soul. Then she asked him if he’d taken his insulin yet today. Had he tested his urine for sugar?
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