by Mia Mckenzie
I haven’t thought about this in years. Or, to be honest, I’ve only thought about the part where my mother acted a whole-ass lunatic. I haven’t thought about her saucy peace offering.
I lean back in my chair and rub my eyes. I think about the ways good and not-so-good times fold together and overlap, the ways a memory of stress and one of reparation can sleep like lovers in the same bed, touching fingertips in the quiet, and I question myself. Why do I pretend it was all bad?
“What are you thinking about?” Viva asks, sitting back down across the table a minute later. She seems more relaxed now, not annoyed anymore. “Your face is all scrunched up.”
What I’m thinking feels too new to talk about, so I say, “You remember that Thanksgiving when my mother—”
“Sí,” she says before I can finish. “Girl. How could I forget it?” She places the back of her hand on her forehead in a fake-swooning gesture. “Oh, Lord! Sweet Jesus!”
I burst out laughing and Viva does, too.
I don’t ask her if she really thinks I’m self-centered. Hearing the ways I suck sounds like a terrible way to spend breakfast. Also, despite what Tasha said, I’m not totally lacking in self-reflection. There’s probably not much Viva could tell me about myself that I don’t already know. The knowing is the easy part. It’s the shaking it loose that’s hard.
19
My mother still lives in the house we moved into when I was eleven, in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philly, on a mostly treeless block. Back then, when many of the homes were owned or rented by people in their thirties who had school-aged kids, like my parents, the block was kept up. People swept the sidewalks in front of their houses and threw away litter that blew into their yards—or, more often, made their kids do it. Not so much now. Many of the houses on the street still look fairly well cared for—their tiny front yards either planted with flowers or neatly paved over with concrete; their front steps intact; their trims repainted within the last ten years. But others look less well maintained—their yards overgrown; their front steps crumbling; the paint on their trims blistered and peeling. My mother’s house falls somewhere in the middle. The hedges in the front yard look to have been recently cut and the front steps have sections of new cement, like they’ve been recently repaired. But the house hasn’t been painted in what looks like decades. Coming up the steps, I see old supermarket circulars in the front yard, still in their plastic sleeves, thrown there by someone with bad aim and never retrieved by my mother or brother. On the porch, there’s a rusty rocking chair and, beside it, a tiny plastic folding table with an overflowing ashtray on top of it. Before her accident, my mother was actively trying to quit her forty-five-year smoking habit and, according to my brother, was having a good amount of success. She was down to three cigarettes a day right before her fall. After her fall, when she woke up after the surgery they had to do to relieve the pressure on her brain, the first thing she asked for was a cigarette. With her memory shot, she couldn’t remember that she’d been trying to quit and, with the stress of being newly disabled, she was no longer interested in giving up cigarettes.
I ring the doorbell. After about fifteen seconds, I see my mother peek through the blinds that hang behind the glass door pane. She sees me and looks confused. I hear the dead bolt click as she opens the door.
“Skye?” she asks, peering at me through the screen door that still separates us. “What are you doing here? Was I expecting you?”
“Slade asked me to come by and check up on you.”
“Oh. I wish you would’ve called first. I’m catching up on my shows.”
“I can go if this is a bad time,” I say, wondering why I ever thought this was a good idea.
“No, it’s alright,” says my mother, opening the screen door. “I’m glad to see you. Come on in.”
When I step into the house, the first thing I notice is how dark it is inside. All the curtains are drawn and the only light is from the television. My eyes actually have to adjust. Once they do, I kind of wish they hadn’t. The house is a mess. The end tables are strewn with half-eaten plates of food, half-drunk mugs of coffee, and empty soda cans. A bunch of old Ebony magazines lie scattered on the floor in front of the bookshelf. The carpet looks like it hasn’t been vacuumed in months. Since her accident, my mother either can’t remember, or just doesn’t care, to clean. The last time I was in this house, which was about a year ago, there were cockroaches everywhere.
“This is disgusting,” I told my brother then.
“She won’t clean up after herself,” he said.
“Why don’t you clean up, then?”
“I don’t have time.”
“You don’t even have a job, nigga!”
I called an exterminator, then Rosa, the woman who cleans the B and B, and booked them both. I told my brother that if I ever saw the house like that again, I’d put our mother in a home and he could live under the el for all I cared.
Looking around now, it’s not nearly as bad as it was that day. I don’t see any cockroaches. But it’s still not good.
“Where’s Slade?” I ask my mother.
“At his girlfriend’s,” she says, taking a seat in the recliner in front of the television and grabbing the remote. “I think. He doesn’t really stay here that much anymore.”
“What do you mean? He doesn’t live here?”
My mother isn’t able to live on her own, because we can never be sure she’ll remember important safety things like turning off the stove or locking the doors at night. She needs help and supervision, both of which Slade is supposed to be providing.
“I didn’t say that,” she replies a little defensively. “I said he’s at his girlfriend’s sometimes, that’s all.”
That’s not what she said. But okay.
“As a matter of fact, he’s supposed to come home later to take me to the grocery store. We’re out of food.”
I walk to the back of the house, to the kitchen, and open the fridge. It’s almost completely empty.
“When’s the last time you bought groceries?” I call out to my mother.
“I’m not sure,” she calls back.
I come back into the front room. “Well, what have you been eating?”
“I had a couple of Lean Cuisines in the freezer,” she says. “I think there’s one left. Are you hungry? I can pop it in the microwave for you.”
I’m going to murder Slade with my bare hands.
“I’ll take you to the grocery store,” I tell my mother. “If you want.”
She looks like she’s thinking hard about it, like it’s a tough decision she needs to mull over or some shit.
“Or not,” I say. “Whatever. I don’t really care either way.”
“Do you have a car?” she asks.
“No. We can just take a Lyft.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s like a cab.”
“Oh,” she says, sounding disappointed.
“Slade doesn’t have a car, either, Mom.”
“He drives his girlfriend’s car sometimes,” she says.
Why. Does. It. Even. Matter. How. We. Get. There. Though?
“I don’t like cabs,” my mother says. “They smell bad.”
“Okay, but it’s not actually a—” I stop myself. Because why am I even having this conversation? If my mother wants to sit here and starve to death waiting for her fucknugget of a son to come through, that’s her business.
“Okay, Mom,” I say. “Just wait for Slade, then. It’s fine. I’m gonna go now.”
“Alright,” my mother says, turning back to the television.
I head for the door. My hand is on the knob when I hear my mother say, “I don’t know what time he’s going to get back, though.”
SOMEBODY SHOOT ME IN THE FACE.
I turn and look at my mother. “So�
��do you want me to take you to the grocery store? Or not?”
“Oh, yes, that’s a good idea,” she says, like this is the very first time she’s hearing it.
* * *
—
When we get to the grocery store, which is about half a mile from my mother’s house, I ask her if she has her grocery list.
“I think so,” she says, rummaging through her purse. After about half a minute, she says, “Oh, I can’t find it. I guess I forgot to put it in my bag.”
“Do you remember what was on it?”
She thinks about it, then shakes her head. “Not really.”
I take out my phone. “I’ll text your son and ask him what you need.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Since we can’t stand around all day waiting for Slade to exit the vagina of whatever poor sucker of a woman he’s currently inside of and text me back, I tell my mother, “In the meantime, we can just walk down all the aisles and, if you see things you need, you can grab them.”
The produce aisle is right near the front entrance, so we grab a cart and start there.
“What kind of vegetables do you want? Broccoli? Green beans? These collards look good.”
My mother picks up a bunch of garlic scapes, examines them at length, then puts them in the cart.
I have never, not once in thirty-eight years of life on this earth, seen my mother eat a garlic scape. “You sure you need these?”
She nods. “Yes.”
“For…?”
She thinks about it for a second. “I’m not sure.”
“Is it possible you…don’t need them, then?”
“I’m pretty sure I do need them,” she says. “I don’t want to get home and remember why I need them and not have them.”
I shrug. “Okay.”
I push the shopping cart as my mother walks ahead of it, picking up different vegetables, deciding she doesn’t want them, and putting them down again.
“So, where are you staying now?” she asks me, holding a green pepper up to her ear and shaking it.
“At Viva’s.” I’m surprised by the question. I’m pretty sure she’s never asked it before.
“Oh, right,” she says, nodding. “I think she told me that.”
“You talked to Viva?”
“She calls me every now and then,” she says, “to check on me.”
I think maybe my mother is confused. She sometimes mixes up the present with the past. “She calls you every now and then?” I ask. “Currently?”
“Yes,” she says, putting the green pepper back and picking up a bunch of asparagus. “I spoke to her last Sunday. I remember because she offered to drive me to church. She told me you stay over there when you’re in town.”
Hmm.
“Did you know she’s a man?” my mother asks. “Slade just told me.”
I frown. “She’s not a man, Mom. She’s a trans woman. And yes, of course I know. We’ve all known for like twenty years.”
My mother looks at me, confused. “I knew?”
“Yes. You heard us talking about prom.”
“When?”
“Like 2003.”
She stares at me for a few seconds, then narrows her eyes. “Are you messing with me?”
“I’m not messing with you.”
She frowns.
I think about Viva, how awful that whole situation was for her then, and how terrible it would be for her to have to go through it all again all these years later, because my mother can’t remember any of it, including the part where she got over it.
“You were totally okay with it, too,” I say.
“No, I wasn’t.” Then, sounding unsure, “Was I?”
“You were,” I say. “We couldn’t believe it, either. But you were really open-minded. Way ahead of your time. We were all super impressed.”
“Oh,” she says, slowly nodding, as if she’s starting to remember now, as if it’s all coming back to her, how ahead of her time and open-minded she was. “That does sound like me.”
Mmm-hmm. Totes.
She puts down the asparagus and I follow her into the next aisle.
“What kind of bread do you want?”
“I don’t need bread,” she says.
“Are you sure? It’s a staple.”
“No,” she says. “I don’t remember that being on the list.”
“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t on the list. And even if it wasn’t, it’s still a pretty safe bet you’ll eat it, right?”
But she’s already walking past the bread. At the other end of the aisle, she picks up a bottle of fish sauce and puts it in the cart.
I start to argue but then I realize there’s no point. This is just how my mother’s brain works now.
“Where’s Slade?” she asks all of a sudden.
“At his girlfriend’s. That’s what you told me.”
“Oh, right,” she says. “I’m sorry. I forget things sometimes. Ever since I fell and hit my head last year.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Pop-Tarts!” she says. “That was on the list. Slade likes them for breakfast.”
We spend a couple of minutes looking for the Pop-Tarts and finally find them in the cereal aisle. My mother grabs eight boxes and dumps them into the cart.
“Speaking of Viva, when are you going to find somebody to marry?” she asks, as if we were just now talking about Viva and her marriage, which we weren’t.
“I’m mostly a lesbian,” I say. “Did you forget?”
“No, I didn’t forget,” she says, incredulous, as if she’s never forgotten anything in her life, as if her mind is a motherfucking steel trap. “Did you forget lesbians can get married now? You didn’t fall and hit your head, too, did you?” She laughs.
“No, Mom.”
“You can thank Obama for that,” she says, nodding thoughtfully.
Okay, this is weird. Seriously. My mother has never voluntarily engaged in a conversation involving my queerness. She accepted it a long time ago, in the way you accept something you know you can’t change, but it’s always been a Thing We Don’t Talk About Directly. Now here she is telling me lesbians can get married like it’s the most ordinary of discussions, like what’s on sale at Target.
“Well, then?” she asks, looking quite seriously at me.
“I’m…not looking for anybody to marry.”
“Don’t you still want a family? Children?” she asks, adding two more boxes of Pop-Tarts to the cart, bringing the total—in case you’re bad at math—to TEN. “I need some grandbabies. I thought Slade was going to give me some but…” She shrugs.
Now that I think about it, it’s actually kind of crazy that Slade doesn’t have any kids. He’s not exactly a responsible dude. I really can’t see him rushing out for condoms in the middle of the night. Or paying for some unfortunate girl’s abortion.
“I’ve never wanted kids,” I tell my mother.
“You wanted four,” she says.
“That must’ve been Slade. I decided I didn’t want kids when Penny Pee-Pee peed on me.”
She looks at me very seriously again. “It wasn’t Slade. It was you. You wanted four girls. You even had names picked out. You were going to call one of them Grace, after Grace Jones.”
Holy.
Shit.
She’s right. There was a time when I wanted kids, when I was about sixteen. I spent an entire year or so obsessed with it, picking out names for each child, imagining the family activities we’d do together, the cookouts and birthday parties, the school plays I’d attend. I fantasized about how I’d drop them all off and pick them all up from school in our green minivan with its Supermom bumper sticker. I even cut out pictures, from magazines and catalogs, of the few child models who had enough melanin to pass f
or my children-to-be, and pasted them into a Trapper Keeper labeled “My Future” that also had pictures of fancy houses I cut out of celebrity magazines. I’m not sure exactly when I stopped having those fantasies. But I did.
“I forgot all about that.”
“You only remember what you want to,” my mother replies. “You forget whatever doesn’t fit your agenda.”
“I don’t have an agenda. What does that even mean?”
“Everyone has an agenda,” she says. “I always thought Grace was a pretty name, though. I had a great-aunt Grace on my father’s side. I think? Who knows?” Then she laughs, shaking her head, like an old woman who forgets things in a way that’s funny, and not like a not-so-old woman who forgets things in a way that’s tragic.
“I think I’m done,” she says.
I look down into the cart. “Garlic scapes, ten boxes of Pop-Tarts, and a bottle of fish sauce? That’s your groceries, Mom?”
She frowns. “That doesn’t seem right, does it?”
“Why don’t you just let me get your food? I think I have a good sense of what you eat.”
“Maybe we should wait and see what Slade says.”
“Slade isn’t the only person capable of buying groceries.”
“I know.”
It doesn’t seem like she knows!
Feeling my patience disintegrating, I take out my phone and pretend to check it. “Slade just texted me back,” I lie. “He sent me a grocery list.”
“Oh, good,” she says.
I spend the next twenty minutes filling the cart with the groceries I know she needs.
* * *
—
When we get back to her house, my mother takes her seat in front of the television. “You wanna watch Ellen? I think she had Denzel on.”
“You go ahead,” I tell her. “I’ll put your groceries away.”
When I’m done, I consider cleaning up the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, some of them crusted with days-old food, and then possibly tackling the mess of dirty plates and mugs and soda cans in the living room, and maybe even vacuuming. But, honestly, that’s more work than I want to do. So, instead, I just wash the dishes and put the soda cans in a paper bag and leave the rest of it.