Fate? Yes, she had considered the possibility it was all preordained. Maybe she was meant to be shoved aside, relegated to a life on the other side of the shotgun double, separated from Mama Joon by walls, however thin, from the source of real power, away from the money, away from the action, away from the—she could say it now that Mama Joon wasn’t here to deny it to her—away from the love. Maybe her lot in life was not to be loved in a way that made her feel like a winner. Maybe she was a born loser.
But no, now the game had changed for Team Ramsey. Mama Joon’s death had combined with Alicia’s to reposition Clarissa. She was no longer sidelined, a lesser sister, a ne’er-do-well daughter. Maybe her destiny was not to be doomed, after all, not to be worthless but to be—at last—endowed. She was the one who was alive. Not Alicia. Not Mama Joon. As fate would have it, she was the last bitch standing.
When she had cleared the closet of Mama Joon’s clothes, all that remained were countless rows and columns of shoeboxes stacked against the back wall. The cardboard cases, all lidded, rose up to her waist. If the jungle of clothes had given her the impression of camouflaging something, this neatly arranged cache looked capable of doing the opposite: revealing. She stepped toward the boxes, so meticulously aligned they might have been an architectural detail, wainscoting or tile. As she lifted the lid off the first box, bulging and misshapen with envelopes, she felt as if she were performing an excavation. Forcing out one envelope at a time, she registered confusion at first, then anguish—then utter disappointment. She didn’t even have to pull them completely out to know what they were. A logo branded every return address. AT&T. COX. ENTERGY. STATE FARM. SEWERAGE AND WATER BOARD. VERIZON. She opened an Entergy envelope. Along with an invoice dated February 20, 2012 (only a few months ago), for $147.33, she found Mama Joon’s canceled check for the same amount. Bills! And no—not just bills. Also the documentation of payment. Then she began randomly removing a single envelope from a box here, a box there, and found that Mama Joon had been filing away these payments for years, if not decades. A Cox Communications cable bill from August 14, 2010. A Tulane University Medical Center bill from September 3, 2001, which must have been a payment for Alicia’s hospital stay. A Macy’s credit card bill from March 1998! Frustration mounting, Clarissa lifted lid after lid, ripping out more envelopes in the hope that somewhere beneath this monument to Mama Joon’s debt-free life was something that did not indict her own entire existence as being in arrears. But there was nothing. Every proof of payment was another charge against her personal account with the planet, a line of credit she hadn’t, until now, acknowledged she’d ever opened. In her agitation she began thrashing at the boxes, toppling them, tossing up fistfuls of envelopes that fluttered around in the closet before landing with a feathery lightness, a near weightlessness indicative, certainly to her, of the sum of their parts.
A familiar emptiness invaded Clarissa, the sensation that she was nothing, and yet, in tears, she sank to the floor with a mighty thud, an ironic density of self-doubt. She looked down and realized she was still clinching the Entergy envelope. A message in bright red letters warned: KEEP YOUR DISTANCE. STAY AWAY FROM POWER LINES. When a teardrop landed on the envelope, dampening DISTANCE, she irrationally twitched, as if the liquid of her emotions, striking this electrically charged advice, were capable of conducting a shock. She whisked the envelope away, onto the heap her frenzied actions had created. Sobbing, she crawled blindly out of the closet and dragged herself onto the bed, where she fell back on the hard box spring. Her head bounced a few times to the rhythm of her deep shudders, before her body settled there, trembling with shame. Even in her absence, Mama Joon had found a way to humiliate her.
Clarissa wallowed there until she felt embalmed with the vice her mother’s blatant efficiency showcased in her: sloth. If only to counter the accusation of sluggishness and immobility, she bolted upright and stared at the mess she had made. Cleaning it up would be her first task, a rebuttal to Mama Joon’s now posthumous charge that she was lazy. It’s all trash, she thought. She was being trashed by trash. A dead woman’s debtlessness. What could be more worthless than that! She would bundle it all up and throw it away. But then what? She didn’t know. One thing at a time. The important thing was to do something. Surely doing something, anything, was the only way to defeat the legacy of Mama Joon.
As she sat there trying to will herself to move—but not moving—the box spring began to irritate her. When she reached down to rub away some of the discomfort, her hand, instead of touching the synthetic fabric of her dress, slid across the sharp edge of a folded sheet of paper.
“Ow!” she yelled with surprise and pain, for the paper had cut her middle finger like a blade.
Looking down, she saw a red droplet ballooning at the tip of her finger, and she brought it to her mouth and sucked away the blood. Then she rolled over a little onto her left hip and dislodged the offending object.
Upon closer inspection, she saw there were in fact three pages of old copy paper folded together. They must have been pure white once, but they had darkened, grayed, perhaps on their way to acquiring the taupe of the mattresses they had been sandwiched between for who knew how long. She unfolded the pages and flattened their creases. Then she read the date at the top of the first page—February 14, 1980—which chilled her, for it was a date she had envied since the world had ticked it into being. Alicia’s birthday. Valentine’s Day. Even love was her birthright. The offending date, like the rest of the letter—it was obviously a letter, not some ultra-important financial document that warranted concealment, say a big bank statement or a deed—was inked in blue in an authoritative, masculine script. Though written in a hand unknown to her, its meaning streamed forth to Clarissa with a remarkable lucidity, lending it an air of inevitability and the veneer of truth.
My Dearest June:
She is even more beautiful than I dreamed she would be. I did not believe I could ever know such happiness, such joy, such hope! What is it about a daughter that gives a father such a feeling of completeness? I’ve been contemplating that all evening. I suppose he feels the possibility that all of his inadequacies might be refuted by her perfection. All of his filth might be expunged by her relative purity. I think a man looks upon a daughter and senses that the scales of his life, so imbalanced by the weight of masculine imperfection, might be righted by the gravity of her feminine grace. It’s the judge in me talking, perhaps. It seems the only poetry I can muster is rank with the prose of my profession—but there it is. We are who we are. A boy can’t give a father that. Only a daughter. And I love my boy. You know I do. But this one, this one, whom you say you’ll call Alicia, after the girl in Wonderland, will lighten the load of my life, and of yours, too, I suspect. She will make everything all right. We must cherish her. Lavish her with comfort. A fine home. Everything she needs. I will see to that, for in some way, my life depends upon it. Upon her. Whatever salvation there is for me, for you, too—for us!—shall somehow pass through her. Because of her, the grave looks less grave.
Do you know what I mean? The other one—she could not do that for us. Conceived while Martha was still alive, while you and I were conspiring to deceive, committing crimes we thought would have no punishment, the spiritual felony of infidelity—she was not marked with grace, could not be. If anything, she was destined to bear the stain of our betrayal. She was the scar of our treachery. The embodiment of our unfaithfulness—unholiness. You and I both knew that—even if we were powerless to stop ourselves. As a result, she is shrouded in darkness. How could I ever embrace that? How could you ever, really? We’re not those kinds of people. We’re better than that. To embrace that child fully would have been to cling to what was wrong with our love, to submit to its darker implications—to accept our transgression, celebrate our sin.
Is that just the judge in me being judgmental? Maybe so, but I always knew instinctively she would be as tainted as the circumstances of her creation. And the proof is in the person. Just look at he
r. Her selfishness, her gluttony. The daughter of desire—illicit desire—she will always want things she should not have. Things that rightfully belong to others. Things that make her fat. Things that make her mean. In the end, maybe no crime goes unpunished, even a crime of the heart. Maybe she is our punishment. I must say, to look at her, the few times I have, has been to feel indicted. To feel on trial. To feel pronounced guilty as charged. To feel imprisoned by regret. Your bravery and generosity in raising her have only strengthened my admiration for you. I could not have endured the constant presence of my accuser. I could not have fed my prosecutor. I could not have nurtured the judge, jury, and jailor of my soul! (Bless you, June, for your sacrifice. No doubt, for this you shall be rewarded.)
Which makes the birth of Alicia all the more important! I have found that when in life, as in a court of law, one is presented with compelling evidence, it’s important to acknowledge it and to let it guide you to the truth. It is as if, upon appeal, the original verdict in our case—Dumas and Ramsey v. The United States of Passion—has at long last been overturned. In Alicia—born on this sweet day, as if a sign of her meaning—we have a tribute to our love, not a symbol of our sin. As evidence goes, the date is perhaps circumstantial, but Alicia’s being is direct; she is the absolute proof of our love. Love absolves! Love expunges! Alicia is the proclamation of our innocence!
And, of course, I have you to thank for her—you, who might have lived a different life, a far better life than you’ve probably admitted to yourself, but for being tasked with loving the likes of me. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Today, for the first time in many years, I feel clean, I feel just, I feel free!
Love,
Manny
It was as if Clarissa, at the age of forty-nine, was staring into a mirror and seeing, for the very first time, its true response to her. Before, what she’d seen had been misted with secrecy. Her real reflection—she knew this now for sure—had been obscured behind the fog of all she didn’t know about herself. Oh, the outline of her face, the outline of her, had been there and, looking at only a shadowy likeness, she had even been able to pretend she didn’t feel ugly inside. Maybe, she had sometimes told herself, the her she didn’t know was actually beautiful. Maybe what was hidden from her and the world was a beauty. Maybe one day that would be revealed to her, ridding her of self-doubt. But every line of the letter was like the swipe of a hand removing mist from the mirror. Now she saw herself whole, her silhouette filled in with the textures of specificity, the garish colors and jagged edges of the truth. As she had madly searched through her mother’s things, mere greed had seemed her motivation, but she had really been looking for her own beauty, for “evidence,” to use her father’s word, of her own worth. What she had found instead was her singularity, the thing that made her special. But no—it wasn’t pretty; neither was she. Yet there she was. There it was: the portrait of someone too grisly to look at—or, so it was written, to love. Not who she was necessarily meant to be, but the improbably horrid thing that had been made of her.
“Okay,” she mumbled, folding the letter and tossing it back where she’d found it, thinking that as good a place as any for it to remain buried. Fine! If beauty and love were Alicia’s birthright, then ugliness and hatred would be hers.
Charged with the acceptance of her fate, she got up and muscled the top mattress back onto the bed. After hastily and sloppily making the bed, she gathered the clothes, bills, and boxes, flung and shoved them all into the closet, and shut the door. As she was walking out of the room, she stepped on the twenty-dollar bill she had found under the mattress. She picked it up and casually fanned her face with it. This simple, wristy motion engendered in her the illusion of composure, softening for the moment her hardened heart. Heading down the hall on her way out, she could almost be said to have been sauntering. Sustaining this act, she opened Ramadan’s door, flounced into his room, and extended the twenty to him.
“Here you go,” she said sweetly.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“I found it in Mama Joon’s room. I’m sure she’d want you to have it.”
Ramadan shook his head and went back to his studies. Clarissa dropped the money at the foot of his bed and hurried out. He glanced at the bill and saw the portrait of a frizzy-haired Andrew Jackson. Picking it up, he noticed a striking resemblance between the warrior president and the heavy-breathing Clarissa. The chaotic masses of hair swirling wildly on both their heads were remarkably similar. But the brooding brows were more concerning, poignant even, framing a sadness in their eyes as they stared off at something troubling or frightening only they could see. They both looked like they needed a hug.
When Clarissa had given the money to Ramadan, it reminded her of the time she had not picked up the crying Alicia, but then went back later to console her. Here she was doing it again, not being the bad person her instincts sometimes begged her to be, someone who would deny care but then give it, someone who intended to take what she could from its rightful owner, actually taking it—but then giving it back, correcting the error of her ways. When push came to shove, she could sometimes give the world what it wanted from her, what it wanted from itself, really, the pretense of goodness.
She did feel bad, of course. But by the time she exited the front door, she had recovered, regained her fury, and was feeling bad—but in a good way. As in bad-ass. When family let you down, rejected you, you had to get in where you fit in. If her boys, like millions of other afterthoughts, could find their humanity in the hound and be self-proclaimed, forthright dawgs, then she could be a bad-ass bitch in what must be a long line of bad-ass bitches. Some ancient lineage, a mongrelized Amazonian race of wounded, castaway women forced to make a way when there wasn’t one.
They took everything from her, now something’s gotta give!
She had to lose it all before she learned how to win!
She’s a bad mother—shut your mouth!
So what if the climax of her life story was just a pithy Blaxploitation tagline. So what! If somebody was going to play you in a movie, you could do a whole lot worse than Pam Grier. At least Clarissa was still here. Mama Joon wasn’t. Alicia wasn’t. Her ever-hating daddy, whoever he was, wasn’t, and he never had been here! Not for her, anyway. She was here, planted in this place, in this time, knee-deep in the mess that was her life. Her existence counted for something, and she was determined to make the most of it. Everybody else would just have to get over themselves—and they’d better watch their backs.
A propulsive instrumental buoyed her thoughts. Okay, so no—maybe she wasn’t the mama now. Maybe she never would be. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be a mother at all. What was motherhood, anyway, if Mama Joon was the measure? Mama Joon, who most people considered the mother of their dreams—but who had made of Clarissa this nightmare.
No, she thought. I’m not the mama now. Just like my no-count daddy never was the daddy. I’m the bitch who bred a bunch of dawgs. I’m not the mama. But I’m a bad muthafucka!
She stood on the porch and closed her eyes to the vision of her new self, a woman whose father had written her off, but whose name was now—she could see it—writ large:
10
The Disappearance of Ramadan Ramsey
When it happened, only a week later, Ramadan was on the front porch in the same spot where hopelessness had electrified Clarissa into an action-movie heroine in her mind. Some sites, by design or destiny, which may be the same thing, solicit arrows of energy, torrents of it, like lightning rods or any place nicknamed “Tornado Alley.” Suffice it to say, when fortune, good or bad, ordinary or outrageous, sets its sights on you and/or the place you’re standing, there’s no eluding its aim.
The sound of a brass band coming down St. Philip Street drew Ramadan and his cousins out of the house.
“It’s that second line for Mr. Rock,” Damon said when they first heard the trilling and thumping of various instruments, as he, Romeo, Julius, and Ramadan all sat in the living ro
om playing video games.
Mr. Rock was a beloved neighborhood tuba player who had recently died. A huge, round man, whose silver horn fit him snugly, like a suit of armor or a metallic hoodie, he would walk up and down St. Philip Street, going back and forth between his house and Jackson Square, where he busked. Mama Joon had liked him, and Ramadan thought about how, if she were alive, she would have cooked something and brought it around the corner to Miss Eunice, his wife, for the repast. She used to joke about his rotundity. “Big as a boulder, really. But ‘Mr. Boulder’ ain’t got no kinda ring to it.” So Mr. Rock it was. Had been.
“Let’s go, y’all!” Damon said, when they heard the music getting closer. “Come on, Ramadan. You know you like second lines. We can watch from the porch.”
Damon led the way, followed by Romeo and Julius. None of them usually moved very fast, especially when, as now, they were puffing on marijuana.
“Damn!” Romeo said, rising, his head dipping into a smoky shroud of his own making. “Already? This nonsense ’bout to blow my high before it’s even a high.” As he moved toward the door, he passed the joint behind him to his identical twin like a baton in a relay.
“Say, dawg,” Julius said. “At least you got a hit.” Without breaking stride, he expertly pinched the joint, elbowed it up to his purplish, puckered lips, and inhaled deeply. Before taking a step, he released a spasm of coughs. Ramadan smiled as he watched their comic interplay. They were fifteen years his senior and should have been more like uncles to him than cousins. But no. Lean and naturally muscular, they looked and behaved like terminal teenagers. Ramadan, maturing quickly in every way, felt like their contemporary.
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