by Daniel Black
“My God,” I mumbled as I kept examining the photograph.
“She wuz quite a woman, boy. She woulda gave hu’ life fu’ you. In some ways, dat’s’xactly what she did.”
Daddy leaned over my shoulder and looked at the picture again. “You always did have a big mouth.” We both snickered. “And you neva did cry—till you came here.”
I frowned at Daddy, confused.
“The day I picked you up to bring you home, you looked at me and frowned somethin’ awful. I asked her what wuz wrong wit’ chu and she said she didn’t know. Ms. Swinton had bundled you up like you wuz de baby Jesus born in de manger. It was real cold, I remember. I had brought a blanket, too, and we put dat round yo’ li’l rump. And soon as I started walkin’ out de door, you started whinin’. I thought you wuz still cold or somethin’, but dat wunnit it.”
“What was it?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“You neva did wanna come wit’ me. Neva did. I tried to kiss you, hug you, and sing to you, but didn’t nothin’ make you feel betta. You wanted yo’ momma, and couldn’t nothin’ else substitute. Especially Marion. Every time she looked at you, you’d go ta holl’in’ and screamin’. She said she wuz gon’ raise you, but dat she didn’t have to love you. She said dat wuz my job. Me and Ms. Swinton.”
“Oh, dat’s why Momma never loved me.”
“I guess so,” Daddy confirmed, nodding his head. “She wuz doin’ me a favor by’lowin’ you to live in dis house. I asked hu’ to help me raise you, ‘long wit’ de rest of de chil’ren, and she said she would only if—” And Daddy stopped abruptly. He glanced out the window into the darkness of the early morning, then finished, “—only if I would have one more baby.”
“You didn’t want any more?” I inquired.
“Hell no, I didn’t. I didn’t wont no mo’ after Willie James. Then Shelia, Scooter, and you come’long, and I really didn’t want no mo’. But de ole lady said she wanted another girl. Shelia died not too long befo’ you wuz born, and she wanted hu’ little girl back. I told hu’ I didn’t want anotha mouth to feed, but she said she wouldn’t take you if she couldn’t have her li’l girl, too. We tried and tried and it seemed like she jes’ wasn’t gon’ have no mo’ babies. Then, one day, I come home and she tell me she pregnant. I started prayin’ right then dat it was a girl so we wouldn’t have to have no mo’ babies, and sure’nough it was.
“Yet dat ain’t what I’m here to talk’bout. I wanna finish tellin’ you’bout yo’ momma befo’ we bury her.”
“Thanks, Dad,” was all I could think to say.
“No need to thank a man fu’ what he oughta do. I owe you and yo’ momma this.” Daddy reached for the picture. “She followed me all de way home de day I brung you here. I told her it was a bad idea, but she said she needed to know dat you wuz somewhere warm and safe. She put on a coat and followed me all de way through de woods. She didn’t want people seein’ her, so she lagged behind a bit, hidin’ in bushes and trees. Right befo’ I got home, she asked me if she could hold you one mo’ time. I told her it was cold and I needed to git you in somewhere warm, but she begged me real hard to let her hold you one last time. We moved behind some trees and I put you in her arms. She lifted all those covers and you started smilin’ again. Dat’s when I knowed fu’ sho’ dat you didn’t wanna come, but we didn’t have no choice. At least dat’s what we thought back then. Now I ain’t sho’’bout dat decision.”
“Why?”
“’Cause once I took you back from Ms. Swinton and brought you on home, I ain’t neva seen dat smile again. If you woulda stayed wit’ hu,’ you mighta smiled fu’ a lifetime. I don’t know fu’ sho’, but my guess is dat you woulda been a lot happier. I know ain’t nothin’ I can do’bout it now, but at least I can tell you’bout de time when you wuz happy. I wish I could give you dat time back, but I can’t.”
Daddy returned the picture. “She used to see you at church and you would jump and kick till I thought folks was gon’ guess de truth. Any time you saw her, you would go ta grinnin’ and laughin’ like you had done seen de Good Lawd. Marion couldn’t stand it. She neva would hold you, change yo’ diapers, feed you, or nothin’. I couldn’t blame her, though. You wuz de evidence dat I had done messed up real bad. Since I couldn’t neva make her see dat you wasn’t de mistake, she always treated you like you wuz. I know. I saw it all. I jes’ couldn’t say nothin’ ‘bout it’cause it wuz all my fault.”
Daddy’s openness startled me. My cold hatred for him was transmuting into something warm, like love or respect. It was the last thing I expected to happen before I left Swamp Creek again.
“I did de best I could wit’ what I had, T.L. Ain’t nothin’ I can do now to make yo life no betta’xcept make sho’ you know dat yo’ momma loved you and neva woulda gave you away if she coulda kept you. But she couldn’t. She cried all de time ‘bout not havin’ you and she kept you afta school much as she could jes’ to git all de time wit’ you dat she could. Don’t be mad wit’ her, Son. De cards she got she played good.”
“I’m not mad at her, Daddy,” I wept.
“Then what chu cryin’ fu’?”
“Because I wish I could have had you two together.”
“Dat wunnit gon’ happen.”
“I know; I know. It would have been nice, though, to come home to a mother and … um … a father who loved me.” I hesitated. “You’re a good man, sir.”
Daddy’s glazed eyes looked away.
“I never understood you, Daddy. You always seemed a little, um, mean. I didn’t know, all the while, you were trying to make a life for me—and catching hell doing it. Thanks, old man.”
“I ain’t done nothin’, boy,” Daddy said, patting my shoulder lovingly. “What kinda life did I give you? One where I made you hate everything and everybody in Swamp Creek? That ain’t no kinda life. That’s worse than death. I prayed dat de Lawd would give me de courage to tell de truth and let you go, but I neva got dat courage. I wouldn’t o’ told you now, but you found out anyway. Dat wuz de Good Lawd’s way o’ tellin’ me dat He wasn’t gon’ let dis shit go on forever. I wanted to tell you. Really I did. I jes’ couldn’t find de right time. All dis bullshit happen wit’ cho’ sista and, well, too much wuz goin’ on at de same time.
“Wow,” I uttered and toppled onto the bed overwhelmed. Daddy had exposed a side of himself I thought nonexistent. He apparently had loved Ms. Swinton; however, I think he was telling me he loved me, too. Imagining him kissing and hugging me was both comforting and incomprehensible.
I left the house before Momma finished cooking breakfast. I told her I was going to help David with some last-minute details concerning the funeral. She shrugged her shoulders.
23
“Hey, little brother!” David’s loud, rapturous greeting warmed my heart.
“Wow. What’s gotten into you?” I asked, giggling.
“I just realized something,” he said boisterously, and began pacing the sparkling wood floor. “Momma went the way she wanted to—in her own house, with her sons finally united. What more could she ask for?”
“A lot,” I asserted pessimistically.
David’s face lost its luster. “Like what?”
“Like the right to have both her sons her whole life!”
“Oh, T.L,” he mumbled sadly, “that wasn’t a right. It would have been a privilege certainly, but Momma had no right to hope for that.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because the act of sleeping with your father was wrong. He was married and she knew it. Did Momma ever apologize to your mother?”
“No, I’m sure she didn’t,” I said slowly, understanding David’s point more than I wanted to.
“That’s why she had no right to have you. If she had done everything conceivably possible to correct the infraction, then maybe we could argue for her rights. Otherwise, she got the best deal.” David smiled cautiously.
“I never thought of it that way.”
“I see,” h
e said, and we walked onto the front porch and sat on the steps together. “Your mother is the one who has an arguable right. She was dishonored and disrespected by your father and our mother, and no one found it necessary to redress the issue? The world was supposed to accept their behavior simply because of who my mother or your father was in the community? That’s a lotta gall.”
“I swear I never thought about it that way.”
“Then you must not have liked her very much.”
My cackle confirmed his conclusion. “And she didn’t like me, either.”
“How could she?”
“Because she was my mother, for Christ’s sake!”
“And whose decision was that? Forced motherhood is surely not very fun.”
“She was already a mother!”
“Yes, but to children she bore!”
“You have a point,” I yielded calmly.
“It would be wrong of us to ask your mother for righteousness and integrity when neither your father nor my mother, it seems, was willing to offer the same.”
“That’s true,” I submitted.
“People here have an image of my mother that’s strange to me.” David glanced around the front yard arbitrarily. “I didn’t like her much as a kid. I wanted to be with her and she would never come get me. I thought she didn’t love me.” He picked up a dead leaf and began to shred it. “My dad was nice, but he wasn’t nurturing, and I knew my mother would be if I could just get to her. Yet I couldn’t. She wouldn’t let me come here and she hardly ever came to Detroit. After you were born, I relinquished the hope. She was so excited about how cute you were and how brilliant you were going to be that I knew I’d never have my mother. I was disappointed at first—probably downright mad—but then I adjusted.”
“I’m sorry, David,” I said compassionately.
“No need. I know Momma did the best she could for both of us. That’s why I love her so.” He buried his face in the palms of his hands. It was a short cry. “Oh, I have no regrets. God does all things well. I just wish I had been closer to her.”
I supplied tissue found in my pants pocket. “She was great, David. Brilliant, beautiful, proud, and committed to black people.”
“Yeah, I know. Some days I wished she had abandoned everything and come to get me. But I understand now.” His bloodshot eyes contrasted with his big, broad smile. “So, did you find out more about your sister?”
I almost told him everything. “Not really,” I lied. “My brother told me some stuff, but nothing really substantive. I’m OK with it now. What could I do about it anyway?”
David stared at me unbelievingly. I changed the subject.
“Man, I had the wildest conversation with my father this morning,” I announced enthusiastically. David invited me inside for breakfast and I followed without hesitation. I sat at a small oval kitchen table in front of a pretty bay window. The morning was bright and welcoming, and I knew it would be hot later.
“What did y’all talk about?” David’s back turned toward me offered a sense of comfort and distance. The smell of smoked ham and fried potatoes and onions was encouraging, too.
“He told me how him and Ms. Swin—Momma got together. He told me how much she loved me, and he gave me a baby picture of myself that she took on the day I was born.”
I handed the picture to David. “Oh my God! Look at the smile on your face!”
“I know. That’s the whole thing! I’m not smiling in any of the childhood pictures my parents have. I always wondered why I look mean and depressed in all my baby pictures, and now I get this one and I’m smiling like I’m in heaven.”
“Maybe you were,” David said lightly, scrambling eggs in the black cast-iron skillet.
“Yeah, maybe I was. Then Daddy took me and I went to hell.”
“Not necessarily. I’m sure there’s more than one heaven.”
“What?” I asked, angry that David was disturbing my analogy.
“Maybe God was sending you to a different kind of heaven.” David put the eggs and the ham on the table without looking at me directly. He returned to the refrigerator for jelly and orange juice and then said abruptly, “Part of our job here is to make a heaven for ourselves. All of us get enough hell to be depressed about it for a lifetime. That’s the challenge. To turn hurt and pain into joy unspeakable.”
David closed the refrigerator door and sat down at the table, nodding his head affirmatively. “Yeah, yeah,” he kept mumbling aloud as he stared out the window. Then he snapped back with, “The goal of each life is to see if we can become God. To see if you can take your hell and make heaven out of it.”
“I like your philosophy,” I said, reaching for the ham. “It leaves the power of your destiny in your own hands instead of waiting to see if you pleased an omniscient God. I feel you, big brother,” I smacked.
“You ready for the funeral?” David asked.
“I’m a little jittery, to tell you the truth.”
“Why?”
“Because our parents’ secrets and deception are about to get announced today. In public.”
David rose and put on a coffeepot. “Great! Why would that make you nervous?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want people to be uneasy. Or maybe I don’t want to be embarrassed.”
“About what?”
“The truth of my existence. Who my momma is and all that.”
David returned to his seat. “You don’t think folks already know?”
“Yeah. My brother Willie James knew. Yet how could everybody know?”
“I don’t know,” David said, surveying me. “Sometimes little towns like this have big mouths. People might not be surprised at all. And if they don’t know, who cares? They’re about to know! It’s not your mistake or your shortcoming we’re talking about anyway.”
“I know, but I’m the fruit of the error. I don’t want Momma to be gossiped about like a scandalous whore after she’s gone.”
David laughed heartily. “You can’t control what people say. All you can do is offer the truth and see what others do with it.”
“Maybe I fear people’s judgments,” I said, searching for the seed of my discontent.
“Then you’ve already judged yourself. How can other people’s judgments harm you unless you value their opinion more than you value your own?” David peered at me disappointedly. “Love yourself, T.L. Other people’s love for you is optional. It’s not the other way around.”
He rose, retrieved two cups from the cupboard, and filled them with coffee. “If you’re not careful, you’ll defame Momma’s name by being ashamed of what she and your father did,” he said, handing me a white coffee mug. “If there’s any shame to carry, they must bear it—not you. Your job is to see if you can recover the joy you had in the beginning.”
“Amen.” I perused the picture again.
“She left that to remind you that your joy is within you. Somehow she knew you’d need it.”
“A lot has happened in my life, David. Getting that original joy back could take a lifetime.”
“Yeah, or it could take a day, depending on what you can relinquish and what you can grab hold of.”
“Man, you always preachin’!” I said jokingly.
“That’s my job!” David refreshed my coffee. “The bottom line is that when a boy becomes a man, he must purge himself of all the garbage he collected in childhood. Hurt, disappointment, fear, pain. All those things represent what we collect as we search for happiness. Ironically, the happiness is usually never found because we collect too much other stuff along the way. The journey gets weighed down by baggage and we stop our forward movement after a while, never to resume. We think where we are is as good as it gets, and we make our home somewhere in the middle of this wilderness, having convinced ourselves that true happiness is an illusion. It isn’t. We simply lost sight of the original goal.”
“So I have to drop all the hurt and pain in order to discover the joy I set out with in the beginni
ng?”
“Not drop it. Transform it. Hurt and pain were guideposts you encountered on your way to ultimate peace. They were not the end result of the journey. Be clear about this.”
“Such a transformation can’t be simple. Or easy.”
“Sure it can. Most people hold on to hurt and pain because it’s all we have. But if people knew better, who wouldn’t trade that stuff for joy? Few people know the release of one is the beginning of the other.”
I didn’t say anything. I just kept drinking coffee, imagining my life trauma-free and unburdened.
“It’s a little scary, I admit,” David confessed. “Still, it’s a cleansing ritual every life must perform. Only then can love and happiness flourish in your heart. It’s your turn.”
“Yes, it is,” I said emphatically and leaped up.
“Did I offend you?” David asked with a worried expression.
“Not at all. You didn’t offend me one bit,” I hollered behind myself as I ran out of the front door. I knew what I had to do.
24
“Daddy, can I speak with you please?” I asked as soon as I arrived back home. He and Momma were sitting at the kitchen table although they had obviously finished eating.
“This is important. Please?”
Daddy stood and followed me out to the barn. He wasn’t curious, nervous, or apprehensive. Actually, he appeared rather expectant.
My original courage had turned to mush. Yet I was determined to move forward in search of that joy that had once been mine.
“Daddy … I … um …”
“Spit it out, boy,” he said impatiently, then sat on an upturned five-gallon bucket. His voice further unsettled me, but I knew if I didn’t speak then, I would be voiceless for the rest of my life.
“I never really understood you, Daddy. Not until today.” Sweat beads gathered at my temples. “You gave me an understanding of Ms. Swinton that keeps me from being angry with her for a lifetime. That showed me you really do have”—my voice cracked—“a heart. You always seemed withdrawn to me as a child, and, in fact, I never saw you express love to anyone. I thought that meant you didn’t have feelings like everyone else, but when you came to me this morning, I saw that that wasn’t true. Daddy, I never knew you loved people. I never guessed you spent your whole life protecting me and trying to make a home for me, especially when Momma didn’t want me. You could have sent me away to make life easier for yourself and your marriage, but you didn’t because you … wanted me, I think.”