by Daniel Black
Momma took her vengeance out on me because I didn’t know any better. Ignorant to the rules of gender and patriarchy, I was the only male she could abuse and exploit safely. She needed to do this to make at least one male in the family feel her resentment of men.
Walking home, taking the smallest steps possible, I noticed the night was more silent than usual. I heard no crickets, owls, or birds fluttering in the trees. It was as though nature had stopped to see what I would do or say. However, I had nothing to say, no drama to offer. I wanted to scream, to kick Daddy’s ass, to wake up everyone in Swamp Creek and ask why I was the last to know. Yet I didn’t have the strength. I was tired from being home—home can be a job—and a show at that hour of the night would have been senseless. I prayed I’d do the right thing with the truth I had found.
I reached the bend in the road and could see a small light in the house. I began to shake my head in disbelief. I chuckled out loud at the madness of all I had learned. How would I find out who my momma is? Daddy would never tell and certainly I wouldn’t ask Momma. Telling me would give her too much pleasure. I chuckled again. This was too much damn drama for such a small place.
The sweat rolling down my neck exacerbated my irritation. I wanted to say “fuck y’all” and go back to New York, but I couldn’t. I had come home for answers I couldn’t live without.
I stopped walking long enough to regain my composure. My eyes were full of tears, but I decided I didn’t care to feign stability by wiping them away. Hell, my momma didn’t care to know me, so I wasn’t going to stress myself over her. But what if she did love me? What if she wanted to tell me, to embrace me as her own, but Daddy forbade her? The thought made me want to know her all the more. “A mother of my own,” I said aloud. One who would love me, cuddle me, and be there for me regardless of what the world said about me. It was unimaginable. I was getting excited thinking about it. I really did care. I needed to. In addition to discovering the details of Sister’s death, finding my mother became the hope that justified my continued stay in Swamp Creek. I didn’t know where to begin searching, though. I couldn’t think of anyone Daddy would have been sleeping with had he been offered the opportunity, and my fear of him kept me from being able to ask him. “I’ll find out, though,” I promised myself. “If I have to turn this backward-ass place upside down, someone’s gonna tell me who killed my sister and who my momma is!” I laughed aloud. “Who am I screaming at?” I murmured, wiping tears from my eyes.
Passing Sister’s grave, I said, “Girl, you wouldn’t believe it if you heard it yourself! Lotta shit goin’ on in Swamp Creek, and it ain’t pretty.”
I had reached the back door of the house. I decided not to let my folks know I knew the truth although I was determined to discover who had birthed me. I wouldn’t leave Swamp Creek until I knew.
I walked into the house and Momma asked me where I had been.
“Down to see Ms. Polly,” I said.
“How she doin’?” Momma asked, unconcerned.
At that moment, I considered telling her everything but resolved to hold my peace. “She’s all right,” I said.
I sat down for a moment, hoping Momma might be ready to talk about Sister, yet after a second she rose and went to bed without saying a word.
9
Monday morning came much too quickly with a bright, beautiful sunshine beaming through the paper-thin curtains and blinding me in bed. I felt like I had only been asleep an hour. My restlessness stemmed from both my inability to guess my maternal origin and my unwillingness to discontinue probing the family about Sister’s death. I must have slept, however, because I recalled bits and pieces of dreams from throughout the night. One I remembered distinctly. A lady hugged me real hard and cried as she rubbed my head affectionately. She was beautiful, thin, tall, and walked with a divine eloquence. When she gazed into my eyes, I knew her, I felt her, I connected with her in a way only a son can with his mother. But I couldn’t speak. I remember trying to tell her I loved her, but no audible sound emitted from my throat. All I knew to do was to hold her and pray she would never leave me again. Yet when I woke up, she was gone.
I crawled out of bed and dressed hurriedly, embarrassed for not having risen with the rest of the family. I didn’t know what time it was, but I knew it was late because the sun was high in the sky. Swamp Creek folks didn’t think much of people who slept past rooster crow.
I peered out the window and saw Momma working in the garden. “Good,” I said jovially. “Maybe I can put this letter to George in the mailbox without anyone noticing.” I ran out of the house quickly, hoping to complete my mission undetected, yet when I turned away from the mailbox I saw Momma staring at me through narrow, slanted eyes. Attempting to ignore her, I walked to the garden casually, strolling like a tourist in an exotic land.
“Good morning,” I said cheerfully.
“Mornin’ been gone, boy,” Momma returned. She was picking peas, so I followed suit.
“Where are Daddy and Willie James?”
Momma feigned exasperation and said, “Cuttin’ hay over in the other field.”
“Why didn’t Sister have a funeral, Momma?” I asked out of nowhere.
“Don’t know,” she said lightly.
“Why don’t you?” I asked. “When people die—”
“I don’t know, boy,” Momma repeated, and kept on picking peas. She had on a big straw hat and an old floral-pattern dress that blew at the slightest breeze.
“Are you glad I’m home, Momma?”
“Are you glad you home?”
She had caught me off guard. “Um, yes,” I said much too slowly. “And now I wish you’d tell me what happened to Sister. I don’t understand why her death is such a big secret.”
“It ain’t no secret,” Momma maintained. “Everybody know she dead.”
“But everybody don’t know how she died.”
“Everybody ain’t suppose’ to know that. It ain’t everybody’s business.”
“But it’s my business, ain’t it?”
“Nope.” Momma glared straight at me.
“Why ain’t it, Momma? She was my sister!”
Momma shook her head, perturbed, and put peas in a #3 tin tub she used for a basket.
“Come on, Momma! Tell me. Please.”
“I can’t tell you nothin’’cause I don’t know nothin’.”
Momma studied my face like she really wanted to speak but then dropped her head and continued working. Suddenly, she cackled aloud, glanced at me in the next row, and declared, “You come back here after ten years and think folk oughta stop what they doin’ and answer all yo’ questions. You always was full o’ yo’self.” Her boisterous laughter frightened me. Indeed, she kept laughing as though she had heard the funniest joke. There was nothing I could say. I knew I was being patronized, and no one could do it like Momma. I finished the row hastily and told her I was going to help Willie James. She dazed at me blankly, obviously uninterested.
I took my time getting to the other field. My memory of farming in Arkansas was everything but nostalgic. When I arrived, Willie James was surprised to see me. He turned off the tractor engine and walked over to where I was standing under the big cypress tree.
“You come to work or to stand around?” he asked, wiping sweat from his brow.
“I can help you out if you want me to,” I said.
“Well, there’s plenty to do round here,” Willie James said and surveyed the land.
“Before I do anything, can I ask you a question?”
“It ain’t about Sister, is it?”
“Yes, it is.”
Willie James’s entire countenance changed. “T.L., why you keep bringing that up? I done already told you I don’t know nothin’.”
“Oh, come on, Willie James! I’m not crazy. Of course you know something. At least give me one detail. You know how close we were and how this is hurtin’ me inside. Help me out, big brother.”
Willie James stagnated and stated, “
I shouldn’t tell you nothin’. You ran off and left Sister like you didn’t care nothin’ ‘bout her. All she did was cry’bout you. Every day she would ask me if I thought you was all right. I said of course you was. You was strong and smart, too.”
“We’ve been over this, Willie James,” I intoned. “I was trying to save myself.”
“Well, you did that.”
Willie James made me feel like my entire life had been one gigantic mistake. I felt selfish, self-centered, and thoughtless.
“I overheard Momma tell Daddy that Sister was pregnant,” Willie James announced, and began to walk back toward the tractor.
“Pregnant?” I screeched.
“That’s what Momma said. They thought I was out in the field somewhere. They were yelling at each other like little children. Daddy couldn’t believe Sister was pregnant while Momma was sayin’ it like it was no big deal.”
“How could she have been pregnant?”
“How do most folk get pregnant?”
“You know what I mean.”
“That’s all I know. She couldn’t have been far along ‘cause she wasn’t showin’. Or maybe she was carryin’ small.”
“Who was the father?”
“How in the hell would I know? Plenty of boys round here her age.”
“Oh my God.” I covered my mouth in disbelief.
“Well, now you know. Don’t ask me no more questions.”
“Thanks, Willie James,” I said.
He nodded his head. “Do I still get the help?”
“Sure,” I said, approaching the old John Deere tractor. I dreaded every moment of handling that antique contraption, which boasted of neither power steering nor air-conditioning, but I couldn’t renege on the promise. Mounting the tractor, I said, “This certainly brings back old memories.”
“I’m sure it do,” Willie James jeered. He left me cutting hay in the field and went to fix the broken fence where the cows had been getting out.
As I bobbed up and down on the ragged tractor, my mind wouldn’t let go of Sister. Pregnant. Wow. She was only seventeen, which was certainly old enough to get pregnant, but it didn’t make sense. Sister having sex was a notion I never imagined. Sex was simply a reality that I didn’t associate with her, probably because she was a child when I saw her last. Still, Sister and sex collided in my mind to the point where I had probably made a eunuch of her. I never wanted to think it possible that another man would enter her most intimate space without my knowledge, yet I was forced to admit not only the possibility but also the fact of his entry. I wanted Sister to provide me details from the grave about this baby she had conceived and how the process of lovemaking had gone wrong. I could hear her in my head say, “It’s not what you think, T.L.” Nevertheless, I wanted to know who had violated my sister.
I had gotten to the end of the field and prepared myself for the fight to turn the old, rusty tractor around. The brakes were older than me. Somehow I managed, though, and soon felt sweat walking proudly down my back. It had to be one hundred degrees or better, and dust was flying like white folks around money. I started singing to myself the way I did years ago to pass the time more quickly:
“I found Jesus, yes I did, and I’m glad!
I’ll never, no never, be sad, my Lord;
I’ve tasted his love divine,
He’s with me all the time,
I found him, I found him, I found Jesus,
And I’m glad!”
Swamp Creek’s church choir sang this song at least three times a month when I was growing up. It was the only song the choir knew well so we sang it often. For many, we sang it too often. In fact, Grandma said God was sick of hearing it. Plus, God found us, she said,’cause we were the ones lost, not Jesus.
I surveyed the field and admitted to myself I’d be there until sundown. I didn’t remember the field being that broad. I was dying of thirst, coated with dust and sweat, and thoroughly miserable.
I determined to ask every young boy in Swamp Creek if he had slept with my sister. Of course, they probably wouldn’t tell the truth. Yet, honestly, I wasn’t as concerned about the sexual act as I was about Sister’s mental state before she died. Was she happy? Depressed? Did she talk about me?
These wonderings frustrated me until I had to stop pondering them. I sighed deeply, tired from handling the old tractor, which was whipping my ass, and sang another song:
“Oh, they tell me of a home,
where my loved ones have gone;
Oh, they tell me of a land,
so bright and fair—
Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day!”
This had been Sister’s favorite song. Although she was young, she would get to hollerin’ the notes and folks would get to shoutin’ and church would be on fire all day long. Sister would glance at me and smile’cause she knew her singing had moved me beyond words. I was her accompaniment, and every time she sang, I cried.
One day after church she told me, “We gon’ be famous one day, me and you. We gon’ go round de whole world singin’ and makin’ folks happy. Jes’ me and you.”
“Oh really?” I laughed.
“Really! When I git big, we gon’ jes’ leave one day and never come back. We can do it. I know we can.”
“What about Momma and Daddy? You ain’t gon’ come back and see them?”
“Nope,” Sister proclaimed confidently.
“Why not?”
She was hesitant.
“Don’t you think Momma nem gon’ worry about you?” I asked, curious to hear her response.
“Yeah, but—”
“But what?”
“They ain’t gon’ worry’bout you. And if they don’t like you, I don’t like them.”
I smiled. She was too young to be involved in the tension between my folks and me, although clearly she understood more than I had thought.
“Sure, we’ll go sing around the world. Me and you.”
We joked about headlines featuring our names and about all the money we’d make. We agreed to buy us an island where no one would live but us. Those were great days.
Sister was a smart child, analyzing things and figuring out stuff well beyond her years. For instance, I noticed her observing a caterpillar one day.
“What cha lookin’ at?”
“Jes’ this caterpillar.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothin’.”
“Then why you starin’ at it like that?”
“’Cause I’m gonna watch it turn into a butterfly.”
I laughed hysterically. “You can’t watch a caterpillar turn into a butterfly, girl.”
“Why not?”
“Because it takes too long.”
“I’ll jes’ have to wait.”
“You’ll be out here in the yard for days.”
“I don’t care. I wanna see it.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Then I’ll take it in the house and watch it.”
She scooped the caterpillar in her hands, placed it in a mason jar, and set the jar underneath her bed, afraid Momma might throw it out. After a couple of days, Sister didn’t understand why the caterpillar had not become a butterfly. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the caterpillar had died from suffocation in the tightly sealed jar and, now would never become a butterfly. Still, Sister kept her fingers crossed. Every day she would wake up hopeful her caterpillar had transformed, but after examining the jar, she would drop her head, disappointed. One morning, I heard her scream.
“T.L.! It’s a butterfly! It’s a butterfly!”
“A butterfly?” I said to myself. “That’s not possible.” I ran into her room.
“Here,” Sister said, crying tears of joy.
I studied the jar, but all I saw was the dead caterpillar.
“I don’t see no butterfly, girl.”
“It’s there! It’s invisible, but it’s there!”
She began to dance around the room happy she finally got what
she had been waiting for. I was worried; there was no butterfly in the jar. Nevertheless, Grandma told me not to fret. “Sometimes folks see what they wanna see,” she said. Maybe Sister did see a butterfly, I concluded. She saw a lot of things thereafter, like imaginary friends, spaceships, and angels. Her imagination was incredible for someone her age.
“Heaven is like a big church meeting,” she told me later the same day. “The angels sing all day long and never stop. And people shout and cry and dance and just be good all the time. You’re on the piano, T.L.”
“How can I play the piano in heaven and be down here at the same time?”
“It’s possible,” she insisted. “God preaches every day to make sure everybody stay nice. I’m the choir director.” Sister stood and flung her arms wide. “Heaven got flowers everywhere! There is a lot of tall trees and green grass and it’s the most beautiful place you ever seen. The animals sit in church with the people and listen to God. Some of them sing in the choir, too.”
I didn’t argue.
“But everybody ain’t in heaven. All the mean people live with the devil.”
“Who are the mean people?”
Sister hesitated. “A lot of white people.” I was about to respond when she added, “And some black people, too.”
“Do you know who they are?”
“Yes,” she said sadly, about to cry. However, to avoid emotional trauma, Sister simply dropped the subject altogether and resumed her original focus. “I like heaven better. There’s a whole lotta food, and Grandma don’t mind cookin’ all day long. Angels tell her, ‘Ma‘am, you sho’ can cook!’ And Grandma say, ‘Oh, git on outta heayh!’”
I roared exultantly. Somehow, Sister’s voice had metamorphosed and sounded exactly like Grandma’s. Sister was not simply imagining things; rather, she was living a life all her own, with ideas and possibilities she had designed. As a child, she knew she needed a life other than the one Momma and Daddy had given her, so she created her own world and it became her constant dwelling place.