Leaving Lymon

by Lesa Cline-Ransome

  Daddy lit up another cigarette and shook his head like there was water in his ears.

  “Why you got me talking about this mess? How’s your Aunt Vera, Uncle Clark?” he asks me.

  “Good, but I don’t see them much since Aunt Vera started working over in Falk Foundry with Uncle Clark. And Dee just had ’nother baby so they been busy.”

  Daddy nods his head slow.

  “How’s Ma treating you?” he finally asks.

  “Same, I guess. Ma is Ma,” I tell him. “Her leg’s been getting worse, so she’s in the bed more. Can’t get up and around like she used to.”

  “Doctor been here?”

  I put my head down. “Ma says we can’t afford no doctor coming ’round here all the time. So, she has me cleaning it in the morning and at night. She has a salve I rub on too. Smells nasty.”

  Daddy laughs big.

  “Vera needs to help you. I’ll see her on my way out.”

  “Daddy, don’t say nothing to Aunt Vera. Ma’ll get mad if she thinks I said something. Said she don’t want Aunt Vera in her business. With what Aunt Vera gives, we got enough to get by.”

  “Ma is Ma, huh,” he said.

  “What you mean, way out? Thought you were staying for a bit,” I ask him.

  “Not this time, son. Got a gig over in Greene County next week and I gotta start making my way there. That reminds me.”

  Daddy pulls a case from his pocket. Takes out his A harmonica, the one he plays on with his band, then wipes it clean with a cloth. The words MARINE BAND on the side are almost worn clean.

  “Listen to this.” He plays a song slow and long, sounds like a woman crying. Daddy bows his head and closes his eyes while he plays, like he’s praying to God. I wonder what kind of sad he’s thinking to make music sound like that.

  “That sounds good,” I tell him. “Real good.” He laughs and hits me on the back. I pick up Grandpops’ guitar I brought into the kitchen. “Can you show me?” Daddy pulls his chair ’longside mine and shows me where to put my fingers and starts strumming. His fingers are ashy white ’round his knuckles and cracked ’round his nails. But we both got the same long, skinny fingers. My grandpops used to tell me I had “piano playing hands” just like my daddy. I ain’t never touched a piano, but I plan to one day.

  After watching Daddy for a bit, I try out the chords until I get it just about right, then Daddy joins in on his harmonica.

  Here in the kitchen making music, without Ma fussing, starts me with that wanting feeling I get sometimes. For a real momma, not a grandma I call Ma. And a house with me and my parents, all living together, making music, and feeling like family.

  NINE

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin 1943

  AFTER Daddy finished up his plate of food, I could see he was getting tired again.

  He stood up and piled his plate with the others in the sink.

  “Daddy,” I asked, “you ever hear from my momma?”

  He looked at me hard. His eyes were red and watery. He lit another cigarette. Took a little bottle out of his jacket pocket and took a long sip.

  “I hear she’s still living over in Chicago,” he said.

  “How far away is Chicago?” I asked him.

  “What, you writing a book?” He tried to laugh and stood up, but I grabbed his hand.

  “Tell me again how you met my momma,” I said.

  “I told you all this before, Lymon,” he said. “I’m gonna sound like a broken record.”

  I didn’t let his hand go, and he sat back down. “You gonna let me close my eyes after I tell it, right?”

  “Yessir,” I said.

  Daddy had to talk low ’cause we didn’t want to wake up Ma. I sat close, listening. Daddy’s voice always sound bigger than he was. Big and low and gravelly, like he should be seven feet tall instead small and skinny like he is.

  “First time I saw your momma was at a dance. She was in a flowered dress with a white flower in her hair, dancing with her cousin. I was playing in the band, at that little spot down by Harmon’s place near the lake, and I was out in front, so I could see everything. It was dark in there, but watching your momma dance was like someone had turned on a light. I smiled at her best as I could when I wasn’t playing, but she was too busy dancing to even notice. On my break, I went over and asked her name. She kinda rolled her eyes at me.

  “She said, real sweet, ‘Daisy.’

  “I was trying to be smooth, so I said, ‘Like the flower?’ and winked at her.

  “ ‘Just like it,’ she told me, laughing with those pretty teeth. Her eyes were so little they almost looked closed. Like I said, it was dark in there, but I swear, she was about the prettiest thing I’d seen in a long time. I told the boys in the band to gimme a few minutes and I put my harmonica in my pocket and took her out to the dance floor. I did my best out there, but I could barely keep up!”

  I stopped his story. “Were you a good dancer?” I asked.

  “I could always keep time, but I didn’t have nothing on your momma.” He laughed.

  “She must have appreciated me trying, ’cause she told me where she lived. Told me I could stop by and call on her. So, the next day, I borrowed Grandpops’ truck and made my way over there.”

  Even though I knew the story, I stopped him again. “Was she surprised to see you?”

  “Let’s just say, she didn’t close the door in my face.” Daddy poked me in my side. Even though Daddy told me he was tired, when he started talking ’bout how he met my momma, he looked wide awake now.

  “I should have known your momma wasn’t the kind of girl Ma and Grandpops be happy about me seeing. She was young, only fifteen, and her people, well they had a bit of a bad name. Wasn’t her fault her folks spent their time drinking and fighting. I could tell, even young as she was, she wanted something better for herself. So, I kept her a secret for as long as I could. But once she started coming ’round with me to my gigs, word got back to them.”

  “And they were mad?” I asked.

  “Mad ain’t the word. But not near as mad as when I told them she was expecting you. Your grandpops sat me down and said, ‘I thought you knew better, son. That girl’s barely a woman herself. What you all gonna do with a baby?’

  “I thought I was a man, and I told your grandpops, ‘We’ll figure it out, Pops.’ I meant it too. Didn’t think nothing else mattered long as we were in love.”

  “Were you gonna get married?” I asked.

  “Now you gonna let me tell the story or keep asking questions?” Daddy said. “Your momma wanted a big wedding. Said she was gonna plan it right. But your grandpops didn’t lie. We were just too young and dumb. When I quit school to work with him down at the mill, he could barely look at me. He was hoping I’d follow in Vera and Shirley’s footsteps, graduate from high school, maybe even go to the trade school over in Jackson. But now that I had a mouth to feed, that wasn’t something I could do.” Daddy looked like telling this part hurt bad. “Vera and Shirley were long gone out the house then, married, starting their own families. I felt like with all that extra room, me and your momma could live there, just till we got settled in our own place. But you know Ma. She said ain’t no way I was going to lie down in her house with any woman not my wife, even if she was carrying her grandbaby. Well that was just fine with me, so I went and stayed at her parents’ place over in Waltersville. But being there never sat right with me. First off, they were so loud they made Ma seem quiet. Drinking and fussing all hours of the night. I didn’t want any child of mine in that house. So, after you were born, I started bringing your momma by the house, hoping Ma and Grandpops see you, maybe they’d change their mind. Well, it worked. Partways at least. They took to you, but not to her.”

  “Was I a cute baby?”

  “Not at first. You looked like a wrinkled-up ham hock when you were born. Took a while, but you finally got your daddy’s good looks.” We both laughed ’cause we both knew I didn’t look nothing like my daddy.

  “She kn
ew Ma didn’t care for her. She told me once, ‘They think I ain’t no kind of momma.’ ”

  I laughed at Daddy’s girl voice.

  “I told her to give them some time to come around, but truth was, she couldn’t be a momma to you when she still needed a momma herself. Seeing how much my folks took to you, she started leaving you with Ma and Grandpops, and before I knew it, I started hearing about her back dancing all hours of the night.”

  Daddy stopped again like it hurt.

  “That’s when the fighting started. And she started coming ’round less and less. But I made sure you were at the house with Ma when me and Grandpops went to work at the mill. I kept thinking if she had help, she’d get the hang of being a momma. But the less she came ’round, the madder Ma got.”

  Now Daddy made his voice sound just like Ma’s.

  “ ‘What kind of momma don’t keep their baby with them at night?’ she’d say to Pops. When we worked late at the mill, and your momma didn’t come to pick you up one time too many, Ma made up a little bed in a bureau drawer and you slept there most nights. When you got too big, Grandpops pulled out my old crib from the shed in back and fixed it up with a fresh coat of paint and put it in Aunt Vera and Aunt Shirley’s old room. Woowee, you had a set of lungs on you. They could hear you crying next county over. But your grandpops knew what to do. Soon as you’d start to fussin,’ he’d take out his guitar, start playing, and you’d fall right to sleep.

  “When I heard your momma been seen around with Orvis Hall, I went to my daddy for some man-to-man advice. He was thinking on it, when I heard Ma at the screen door. You know how she don’t miss a thing.

  “ ‘When you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas,’ she told me. Now you know I love Ma, but I hated her then. I took off out the house, mad. Didn’t come back for days. After that, I didn’t see your momma much. ’Cept this one time when she came by the house and asked Ma if she could take you to see her people. Ma told me your momma was already big with Orvis’s baby and looked so pitiful. She had a load of washing ahead of her to do so she told her to go on, just have me back by supper. But when supper came and went, and we got home from work, Ma told Grandpops to start up the truck, and we all marched right over to your momma’s house. There was a house full of people, but there you were sitting alone on the porch crying. I didn’t even have time to open the door to the truck before Ma was out, up those stairs, snatching you up so fast, your momma didn’t have a chance to say much.

  “She had the nerve to say to Ma, ‘I was just getting ready to bring him back, right, Lymon?’ pinching your cheek like you all were bosom buddies. Ma got you in the car and said, ‘All that woman knows is how to talk foolishness.’

  “When she got you home, Ma gave you a long hot bath in the tub, and I could hear her telling Pops she needed to scrub off the filth from that nasty house.”

  I knew the rest of the story too. The part Daddy didn’t want to tell. That after that, I didn’t see my momma much. Guess with the new baby coming, she forgot all about the old baby. Me. Only Ma I ever really knew was my daddy’s Ma. My grandma.

  * * *

  Sometimes though when I think about my ma’s garden back in Vicksburg, and the flowers lined up there all in a row, I think about my daddy and my momma’s flower dress and the flower in her hair and a momma I don’t hardly know named Daisy.

  Daddy sat back on the couch cushions, tired again.

  “Can we go to Chicago to see my momma?” I asked.

  Daddy whistled out his teeth. “What’s got into you tonight boy? You trying to keep me up all night?”

  I asked the question I been scared to ask. “You think she wants to see me?”

  “ ’Course she wants to see you,” Daddy said.

  “Then can we go?” I asked again.

  Daddy always told me he’d been blessed with a daddy who never lied to him. Would look him straight in the eye and tell him what needed to be said, no matter how bad it hurt. Said he aimed to be the same kind of daddy to me.

  “Don’t work like that, Lymon,” he said. “Your momma got a whole other life now.”

  I put my head down.

  “Listen here.” He pulled my head up so I could look him in the eye. “Let’s talk about this in the morning. I can’t barely keep my eyes open.”

  I opened the door to the bedroom quiet where Ma was sleeping and took the quilt off of my bed. Time I got back to the front room, he was stretched out on the couch in his clothes sleeping. I took off his boots and covered him with the quilt, tucking it up around his neck.

  TEN

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin 1943

  WHEN I woke the next morning, I could tell by the sun coming in it was time to get up for school and could tell if I didn’t get a move on, I was going to be late. Ma was still sleeping good. I hurried out to the front room. The quilt I gave Daddy was folded up neat in a square at the end of the couch.

  “Daddy!” I called out, not caring if I woke up Ma. I looked in the kitchen, then the bathroom, but Daddy was gone.

  Even though I was gonna be late for school, I didn’t hurry. I put away the quilt, then brushed my teeth.

  I didn’t say goodbye to Ma when I left out. When I finally walked in the classroom, teacher said, “Lymon, how nice of you to join us this morning.” I didn’t turn, just kept walking to the back to my seat.

  “I said, how nice of you to join us this morning,” she said again. “Is there anything you’d like to say to the class?” she asked, walking toward me.

  “Ma’am?” I asked.

  “How about we start with an apology for being late.” She smiled. That same smile she gave when she asked me about figuring a problem on the board. I could hear the girls in the front row whispering. The rest of the class was quiet.

  I looked at her. At her pasty-white face and red hair. Her fat neck was poked out over a pearl necklace and she had red lipstick on her teeth.

  “I’m waiting,” she said, like she was singing a song.

  She had on a dress with big yellow flowers, made me think of the couch at home. And the folded-up quilt Daddy left at the end of it.

  “I ain’t apologizing for nothing,” I said to her.

  She looked like I slapped her. Her face got all red.

  “Get to the principal’s office right now!” she screamed.

  I stood up, walked back up the aisle, past the whispering girls in front, and straight out the classroom door.

  Instead of turning left out the door and walking to the principal’s office, I turned right to the side door. The hallway was empty, the floors smooth and shiny like they just been polished. I walked down the stairs to the door and out to the school parking lot. Back in Mississippi, Grandpops used to make sure I got to school, but after he passed, and Ma got sick, seemed like her sickness was all that mattered. Wasn’t that she didn’t want me going to school, but Ma and her sickness come before anything else. Even before my schooling.

  I walked down Fourth Street, then turned onto Walnut. The thing I liked best about Milwaukee was all the streetcars. On the corner of Third and Walnut streets I stopped and sat on the curb in front of Goldberg’s Pharmacy, watching men getting off their shift at the foundry. When the streetcar stopped, some women got off, laughing loud. Their white dresses were still clean after a day of cooking and keeping house for their white folks. Everybody looked a lot happier coming home from work than they did going. Listening to the streetcar clang by reminded me of the train we took to visit Daddy at Parchman, my only time on a train. Even when Ma told me that train ride was too long and Daddy would be home “soon enough,” I still asked Grandpops just ’bout every week when we were going back. But when he got sick, I stopped asking. After he passed, and we moved in with Aunt Vera and her family, I asked Ma, “How’s my daddy going to find us here?”

  “Vera sent word,” she told me. But then one year passed and another and he never came. I knew I couldn’t ask Ma again, so every week I asked Aunt Vera, “You sure you gave my
daddy the right address?”

  Aunt Vera’s real quiet, not like Daddy at all. She does her best to see me as much as she can since Ma don’t want her ’round the house. When we moved here, I could tell Ma was itching for a fight with Aunt Vera. Think she was still mad ’bout having to leave behind her house and Vicksburg. She’d mumble about how she was tired of Uncle Clark looking down his nose at her till finally he told Ma and Aunt Vera there was “too many grown folks under his roof.” I heard Aunt Vera crying that night, begging Uncle Clark to let us stay, but the next morning she started looking till she found us the house we stay at now. Ma looked through Uncle Clark like he was a ghost till the day she packed up our suitcases again, put them in the trunk of the car, and moved out. Aunt Vera had folks from church drop off their old furniture to help get us settled, but Ma said, “Vera ain’t got no kind of backbone.” Looked like she had a back to me, but I can’t ask questions when Ma starts her fussing. Most old folks start talking sweet in their older years, forgetting your name and calling you “Honey” and “Sugar,” but Ma don’t forget nothing, ’specially the hurts.

  Every time Aunt Vera came by to take me shopping for clothes, or to drop off money for Ma, I asked her ’bout my daddy soon as I got in the car. She’d hold my hand and say, “We don’t know when your daddy will be home Lymon, but, God willing, it will be soon.” So, I waited some more. It was just me and Ma for so long, I almost forgot I had a daddy.

  I got up from the curb and wiped the dirt off my pants. Walked down Third Street till I reached the diner. Only remembered then I was hungry. I had a few pennies in my pocket I took from Ma’s purse. Not enough to get anything good. I stood watching through a big front window. That’s when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “You look like a cat outside a fish store,” the man said. He was tall and thin as my daddy. Head full of white hair. He looked clean from head to toe.