I can’t bear going back inside my hot prison, so I walk in search of the answer to the question he didn’t ask.
THIRTY-FOUR
The Reason Is Not the Answer
I move west on Dauphin until I reach Eighteenth Street. Eighteenth runs me into Diamond, and I pause in front of the Church of the Advocates. It’s one of the most splendid churches I’ve ever seen and the best American example of Gothic revival. The lavish architectural sculpture, stained-glass windows and flying buttresses seem more appropriate for a little village in Europe than North Philadelphia, but that adds to the promise and beauty. It’s the only cathedral of its kind built specifically for the working class, and Gran has been a big fan of how they have served the community for decades.
As a girl, whenever we passed the church, she’d tell me the same story about attending the church’s first ordination of women. “It was a moment in history. Eleven women became priests for the first time ever in an Episcopal church. “’Fore your time, gal. Back when we women had to fight for every little thing.” She’d pat my head.
Little did Gran know but I was still fighting, just in a different way.
I keep going on Eighteenth Street until I reach the corner of Norris, where I run into my alma mater, George Washington Carver High School for Engineering and Science. My fingers curl around the chain-link fence, and I pull myself as close to the school as I can get. Wonderful memories of jumping double Dutch until my hair turned back kinky, eating hot dogs and soft pretzels from Pop’s food cart, starring in the drama club’s production of Grease as Patty Simcox, hiding books on my lap, and reading during class when I didn’t feel like paying attention. The images swerved through my head as fast as a motion picture.
On my first day as a freshman, I sat in the auditorium on wooden pews for ninth-grade orientation. Our principal, Dr. Travis, peered out into the audience and said, “Look to the person on your left. Look to the person on your right. One of those students will not be at graduation with you.”
I didn’t think she was talking to me. Not even after I left school at the end of tenth grade with a bogus doctor’s note saying that I had pneumonia, but was really hiding out, waiting on the baby. I missed two months of the school year. When I came back from Virginia worn, heartbroken, and childless, Dr. Travis’s prediction of graduation echoed in my head, serving as a constant reminder that the odds were stacked against most of us. I became determined not to be a statistic.
Not long after graduating from college, I had a role in a short documentary film directed by an NYU film student. The short was intended to bring attention to the poverty cycle of African Americans and was shown at a film festival during Black History Month. The production highlighted the cycle of poverty and why it was so rampant in the black community. I remember the data like we shot the script yesterday.
Seventy-three percent of African American children are born out of wedlock and raised in fatherless homes. When there is no father in the home, children are more likely to grow up below the poverty line, receive a poorer education than their counterparts, and eventually engage in criminal activity. I’m sure this could be traced back to slavery, but the filmmaker didn’t connect those dots. He focused on a more seeable culprit called welfare.
The rise of welfare in the 1960s contributed greatly to the demise of the black family. A mother received far more money if she was single. When the woman married, her benefits were reduced by 10 to 20 percent. This made illegitimacy affordable and acceptable in the community. The three most vital components one needs to rise above poverty are education, marriage, and work, and when I met Preston I was more than ready for the upsurge.
I walk up Norris toward Temple University, still seeking to understand why I omitted my truth from Preston. It was those broken pieces inside of me. Those shards of secrets that only stopped speaking when I’d swallow down a happy pill. The damn voice. I was afraid that if Preston saw my scars, knew I was a damaged damsel from North Philly whose father tried to kill her mother, got pregnant at fifteen, had a baby in secrecy, and then spent her entire adulthood like none of it ever happened, then he wouldn’t love me. Would not want me. Then he wouldn’t take my hand so that we could jump over the broom and off the cliff into another world where things were possible, pretty, and had the potential of being perfect. I had already rewritten my history with gaping holes that I filled along the way. Preston was the one who pushed me to the finished product with his flawless ideas of family, and I don’t pretend to blame him, because I wanted it too. I had already experienced the other side.
* * *
Gran left a plate of fried chicken and collards in the oven for me, but all I want to do is sleep. In her bedroom I find the bottle of sleeping pills and instead of taking a half, I take a whole one. When I wake up the next day I have a sleep hangover, so I take another one. The bed is my comfort, and I cuddle in the leftover traces of my children. As I drift, I hear a man’s voice calling out to some woman named Tammy. It reminds me of the commotion my father would cause standing outside of our apartment window, calling for my mother.
I hear a siren in the distance and think of the nuns praying at my old school. The pill takes over and I can’t keep my eyes open. It feels nice. Manette. Mom. Mommy. A smile creeps onto my face and I let go. Relinquish myself to the pull of the tide, sleepy water washing over, pulling me back. Way back. Far back.
* * *
Mommy and I are sitting on Gran’s front steps, the marble and white ones they don’t make anymore, the ones Gran used to make me scrub with a hand brush dipped in Clorox and water until they sparkled clean. The renters couldn’t care less about the debris that blew up and down the street or the syrupy carbonation that spilled from kicked-over Coke cans.
Mommy and I are sitting three steps from the bottom. Her Poison perfume elbowed its way up my nostrils and put me at ease. She is brushing my hair so softly the bristles barely touch my scalp, and I am eating a freeze pop. Green, my favorite flavor. I was such a nervous child, always on guard, anxious to be the buffer between my mother and trouble. Her fingers in my scalp always soothed and reassured me.
“You know, Sweet Potato, it’s not your fault what happened to me.” My mother always called me Sweet Potato.
“It is, Mommy. It is my fault. All my fault,” I answered in my little smoky voice. It held a quality to it that led most people to believe I could sing. But years in the children’s choir proved that I could not. The choir director stuck me in the back, as far away as possible from the microphone.
“You were a little girl. It wasn’t your job to protect me.”
“But I just stood there and let him hurt you. I didn’t even save Crystal. That’s why she hates me so much.”
Mommy took a section of my hair and twirled it with her fingers. “Can Twyla save you?”
“She’s only three, Mommy.”
“I know you felt like a big girl, but you were only eleven or twelve, baby. Your daddy was sick. There was nothing you could have done to save me.”
She pulled the comb through my hair and it felt like she was dragging out a weight wedged into my roots. I wanted to see her but she kept me facing forward, looking out onto the tiny street. “Stay still, honey, this isn’t the time to be tenderheaded.”
I took another slurp from my freeze pop.
“Crystal getting stabbed by your father wasn’t your fault either.” The teeth of her comb scratch my scalp, and she yanks the comb forward. A heaviness lifts from my head.
“Your father committing suicide. Well, that was the city’s fault.” My head tilted backward as she ran her bare fingers through my hair and then wrung out the ends like she was trying to extract water.
“Martin was your pain medicine. I don’t agree for many reasons, but I understand.” The coconut oil that she would purchase from the health food store was massaged between her fingers until it liquefied. Then she let the oil drip down to her fingertips so she could knead the oil into my head, soothing all of th
e tender spots she had created by pushing and pulling.
“The baby, Angel.” She whispered the secret name I had given the child. “Let that go.”
Somewhere a church organ started the beginning of a song. Mommy pulled at a tangled knot in the nape of my hair that didn’t want to budge. But she didn’t give up. She held the piece tightly and worked the comb over small sections, piece by piece, until the hair flowed.
Then braids started going through my hair two at a time, like she had four hands instead of two. “Let it go and enjoy your chance at better. A better life, baby.”
The organ was playing something fierce, and Mommy, who could sing, started humming while she worked. A church song. “Amazing Grace.” I always loved that song but it seemed I only got to hear it on TV or at funerals. Mommy hummed it, nice-like, happy-like.
“And Preston.” I tensed. Then saw some of my hair float down the steps. I was pulled from that space with Mommy by the sound of a bird pecking on the windowpane. It was so insistent that I cracked open my eyes. A beautiful white bird was sitting at the window and looking at me straight through the fan. It held my eyes, moved its head, and flew away.
THIRTY-FIVE
The I Don’t Know What
“Cut it all off,” I said, sliding my butt into Mr. Stanley’s barber chair. Once the bird woke me up, I realized that I had exhausted all of the sleep in my body. There was none left, so I showered and ransacked all of the leftovers in Gran’s fridge. Once my belly was full, the decision on my hair was made and I half jogged to the shop.
Mr. Stanley has been the neighborhood barber since I was a little girl. His corner barbershop on the corner of Sixteenth and Dauphin is the one staple in the changing neighborhood and, in my opinion, should be declared a historical landmark.
Mr. Stanley was much older than he was in my memory, but the first person I thought of when I made my decision to chop my hair off. I was surprised that he even remembered me.
“’Course I remember you, Faye. Used to cut your daddy’s head before…” His voice trailed. “You have beautiful hair, girl. Ladies running over to the Ko-reans to buy hair to look good as you. Why you want to do that to yourself?”
“Mr. Stanley. If you don’t cut it, I will.”
After a long grunt, he drapes me with a cape, fixes the television on one of those talk shows Crystal always watches, and pulls a pair of scissors from the barbercide green liquid.
“All this hair,” he mutters while cutting.
“I’ll pick it up and donate it to cancer patients.”
Snip, snip, snip. My hair fell around me and I could feel the weights that Mommy pulled in my dream drop to the ground. When I walked outside into the sunshine I felt light and amazingly free.
THIRTY-SIX
The Sift and Shift
It couldn’t be put off any longer. Gran had gone to Saturday afternoon service with Sister Marie and didn’t say what time she would be back. So that she wouldn’t worry, I leave her a note on the dining room table.
I’m dressed in the cute skirt and top I bought to wear for my good-bye with Martin. The clothing still had the tags on them. I brush a little blush onto my cheeks and slide a pink-stained gloss over my lips. When I open the front door, the sky is overcast with clouds, and a dim gray hovers. I consider going back for an umbrella but I don’t want to turn away from my destination for fear I may lose my nerve. I pad down the front steps.
“What the hell did you do to your hair?!” It’s Crystal, yelling from the corner. I stop and stare.
“You know hoes goin’ be callin’ you a ball-headed bitch now.”
I flick my hand in the air at her and start moving toward my car.
“Just kidding, Faye. Listen, I need a ride.”
“I can’t.”
“Why? You going to see Martin? It’s on the way.”
“No, I’m not.” I suck my teeth. “You need to mind your business sometimes and learn how to stay in your damn lane.” I do some serious eye rolling as I turn away from her.
“Come on, Faye, seriously. It’s important. It’s just a few blocks away.”
When I unlock the car, she gets into the passenger seat.
“Thanks. Make a right onto Fifteenth Street.” She starts fiddling with the radio station. I push her hand.
“I’m not listening to your crap.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
We drive in silence.
“Turn onto Cecil B. Moore. Right there, I’m going to Lamar’s.”
“You’re going to a bar in the middle of the day?”
“Yeah, I heard Ronnie was in there with this trick from down Twenty-Ninth Street. Come with me. I need backup.” She starts climbing from the front seat, and a switchblade falls out of her back pocket.
“Crystal, I know you aren’t carrying a damn knife. Aren’t you too old for this?”
She tucks the blade in her back pocket and starts moving toward the door. I contemplate pulling off. Fighting in a damn bar over some two-bit boy was not on my agenda today. Still, for Gran’s sake, I unbuckle my seat belt, feeling obligated to make sure Crystal doesn’t do anything stupid. I follow her into the cavernous beer garden. It is dark and bluesy on the inside, with a long bar and a few tables scattered. An early hit by Nas and Lauryn Hill plays.
In the back, I see the same guy who felt Crystal’s booty when I dropped her off last week. He has on sunglasses and is posing with some girl against the jukebox.
“What the fuck is this?” Crystal is up on them both, weave swinging.
“Nothin’, baby.” He reaches for Crystal and holds her in his arms before she can reach into her back pocket. “She ain’t nothing, Boo.”
“What you mean, I ain’t nothing.” The girl snakes her neck at him, her bra straps peeking from beneath her purple top.
“Yo, chill.” He grabs Crystal’s hand and they move toward me and the other end. I guard the front door like I am the police. Crystal bumps the girl with her shoulder. The girl looks like she wants to say something, but it’s easy to be intimidated by Crystal. Everything on her is meaty.
“This my niece, Felicia.”
“Hi.” He looks me up and down, eyes lingering a bit too long. I look away. I’ve been down that road with Crystal, her man trying to get at me. I didn’t need that drama today.
“Niece?”
“Yeah, don’t ask.” She links arms with him.
“I’ma go.”
“All right.”
“I can’t buy you a drink?” asks Ronnie.
I crinkle my nose and shake my head no.
Outside, I am happy for the fresh air. How could Crystal still be stuck here, doing this? Where were her children? She was never going to change, and it made me want to scream.
* * *
Back in the Nissan, I plug in the address on my phone’s navigation system and start heading toward the Schuylkill Expressway. I used to have to catch the C bus to Center City, and then the 125 bus. It took forever to get out to Valley Forge that way. Driving is much more convenient, and the hum of the highway relaxes me after that ordeal with Crystal. India Arie’s latest hit croons softly from my radio, the windows are down, and the breeze swishes away the nagging dread of what may come.
Valley Forge Homes has always been an intimidating brick building for me. When I was younger, I was scared to death to walk through the sliding glass doors. It tore me up to see my once beautiful mother as nothing more than a space-staring shell. The other patients scared me, too, nodding, scratching, and talking to themselves. It made my stomach hurt, like I could throw up the salt and vinegar potato chips and butterscotch Krimpets that I devoured on my way. Each time I returned to Gran’s heavy with grief, I vowed never to go back. I didn’t want to see my mother like that, unable to communicate, walk, go to the bathroom unassisted, or feed herself. But Gran insisted that I go, every second and fourth Saturday of the month, and that’s what I did.
The Nissan eases into
the parking lot, and I take a hefty breath as I remove my key. Surrounding the perimeter of the buildings are well-manicured shrubs and bushes sprinkled with coconut petunias, vibrant dahlias, and bursting marigolds. My mother lives on the third floor. A young woman with a braided bun stands at the front reception desk. She greets me with a smile, clear braces.
“May I help you?”
“Manette Hayes.”
“Sign her name and your name here.” She points to a sheet for visitors. “Give me one second.” She moves to a file cabinet.
“You also have to sign here.”
“What is this?”
“It’s a record of all the guests visiting a particular patient.”
I write my name on the ledger. My eyes scan over the names before mine. I recognize Aunt Stella, my mother’s girlhood friend, and Uncle Jessie, her favorite cousin, but there was one name that I don’t. Kita Reeves.
“Thank you.” The woman takes the ledger from me. “You can go right up.”
Who is Kita Reeves?
On the elevator I stare up at the ceiling as the car creeps to the third floor. I haven’t been here since Twyla was born. When the doors open I pass the nurses’ station but don’t recognize any of the staff. The corridors cling to the same smell. Cooked cabbage mixed with disinfectant.
I check the common room first, and find Mommy sitting in front of the big bay window. Her back is slumped and her neck is lulled to the side, as if it is too heavy for her head. Her ponytail is long, but her hair lacks luster and shine. It is mostly gray. She seems thinner than when I saw her last. Weaker. I watch her from the entryway for a while, unable to move toward her. Then she turns her head and looks right at me. My heart takes off. She recognizes me.
“Mommy.” I take the few steps toward her. She looks at me, eyes on my eyes.
“Mommy. It’s me, Faye.”
Then she looks away, and her eyes glaze over like she wasn’t seeing me at all. I pull up a chair next to her and stare out the big window with her, trying to push away that unflattering feeling of desertion.
Second House from the Corner Page 20