by J. J. Murray
I turn off the mixer. "You like my pound cakes?"
"Yes, they're delicious."
"Then, don't criticize the process"
"Dag, I was just sat'in'."
I pour bowl number two into bowl number one and add a few dabs of vanilla and lemon extract into the mix. Tonya actually counts the number of drops out loud. Then I blend it all together till it's smooth.
"That's it?"
"What do you mean, that's it?"
"It only took you ten minutes."
14So?"
"I thought you spent all day making those"
I hold up a beater and flick a gob of batter at her. "I make at least two every time I bake, girl."
"Still, that d only be twenty minutes."
"Cookin' ain't all that hard if you know what to do."
I pour the batter into the round cake pan and smooth out the top, putting it into the oven at three hundred fifty degrees for ninety minutes.
"Why so long?" she asks.
"I don't know. Grandma always cooked it that long back in the day."
"Cook for ninety minutes cuz Ruth's grandma says so," Tonya says as she writes.
We return to the necking room. "I know you've had your share of white men, Tonya, but did you ever have any feelings for a white man?"
"Once, but that was a long time ago"
"The married man?"
She nods. "The man was fine, kind, and I thought he was mine. I never met a more decent person."
"How could he be decent? He cheated on his wife."
"Except for that, he was decent. He sent me flowers, called me at all hours, visited whenever he could get away from his wench of a wife. We never went out, of course, so we spent-"
"Why didn't you go out?"
"He was married, girl."
"So it wasn't because he was white and you were black?"
"No."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, I'm sure"
I don't know if I believe her. "Who ended it?"
"I did."
I don't believe her for a second. She was so broken up about the whole thing, her depression lasting a week. I had made a pound cake for her then, too, and the bitch ate the whole thing and still didn't gain an ounce. "That's what you told us, Tonya, but that ain't the truth."
She sighs. "He's the one who ended it, but don't tell Naomi. I got back into her good graces when I told her that I broke it off."
"How did he end it?"
"He just came over one last time and gave me a goodbye fuck. Said he had decided to try to make his marriage work, no hard feelings, I'll have a bunch of nice memories, see you around. After that I swore that I'd never mess with another married man, and I haven't." She frowns. "Just wish there were more men my age that didn't have any baggage, physical or otherwise. Last week at the bowling alley, this man who had to be at least sixty started hitting on me, tried to buy me a beer, asked me for my number."
Tonya and Naomi bowl in a league every Wednesday night, and they say even the holy bowlers flirt with them, their holy wives sitting right there watching. "What d you do?"
"Told his ass off, and I'm glad I did. Naomi tells me he has sixteen children, ten of them older than me. The youngest four are, get this, two, four, five, and seven years old, and each one of them has a different mama" She stands and stretches. "Yeah, that bowling alley is a regular meat market. You ought to come out some time and see it for yourself"
"I don't bowl."
"Judging from our team scores, neither do we. It's just for fun, girl. Some of the folks are serious, but we ain't. We just there to tease and please."
"I thought Naomi was a good bowler."
"She is, but the rest of us ain't. Shoot, I bet you could bowl better than at least two of our team members. I should add you to our team"
I shake my head. "I'd only embarrass y'all." But I've never really been to a meat or did she mean "meet"? market like that. It'd be nice to get some attention. "But I will come to watch"
"Good. I'll pick you up at five-thirty tomorrow."
After ninety minutes, I open the oven and see a beautiful, brown pound cake. "Girl," I say, "it's late, and I know I'll have a lot of hair to cut tomorrow. Let this cool off overnight, then dump it carefully on a tray or something flat in the morning. Wrap it up tight in aluminum foil and bring it with you when you pick me up."
"You want to drop it by his place before we go to the alley?"
"Yeah. And don't bring Naomi."
"Okay. But you're just going to drop it off and say `bye'?"
"What's wrong with that?"
She crosses her eyes. "Nothin'. It just ain't very romantic."
She's right. "How do I make it romantic?"
"Put a note in with it."
"I hardly know the man"
She takes a pad of paper and a pen from a drawer. "If you don't write it, I will."
"Gimme them," I say, and I write Dewey a note:
Mr. Baxter,
I hope you enjoy the cake, and I hope Dee is doing okay. Welcome to the neighborhood.
Ruth Borum
Tonya grabs it from me and sucks her teeth. "You about as romantic as a fish, Ruth" She hands it back. "Put some more life in this."
I tear off another piece of paper and write:
Mr. Baxter,
I made this cake for you. I hope Dee is doing okay. Welcome to the neighborhood.
Ruth Borum
I hand it to Tonya, and she sucks her teeth again. "C'mon, girl. You can do better than this."
I really don't know how. "Well, what would you write?"
She raises her eyebrows and writes for almost a minute. "Something like this." I take the notepad, and my eyes pop out:
Dewey,
I made this cake especially for you. I hope you enjoy eating it as much as I enjoyed making it. I hope Dee is well enough to attend Avery soon, because I really miss him. If there's anything I can ever do for you or your family, please give me a call (555-6467).
Ruth
"I can't be givin' out my number, Tonya!"
"How else you expect him to call you?"
True. I want that. "And why'd you underline so much?"
"So I could write it louder."
I have to admit that it's a nice letter. It says what I want to say and says it better than I can say it. "You don't think it's too pushy?"
"I don't think it's pushy enough. We should put a few drops of perfume on it."
"Might ruin the taste of the cake"
"Might, might not. Least he'd know you want more than just to feed him."
I don't give her another objection and rewrite Tonya's letter in my own somewhat sloppy handwriting. "Just put it in an envelope first, okay? The cake might be moist, and the words could get smudged." I feel a tingling inside, like I've already made contact with Dewey. "I better be going. Thanks for everything."
"Any time."
When I get home, I pick up that jump rope to rid myself of the fish, the root beer, and the popcorn. While I'm jumping, as softly as I can on a square of carpet, I remember one of those hand-clapping chants and whisper it loud:
"Went downtown to see James Brown, he gave me a nickel, I bought me a pickle, the pickle was sour, so I bought me a flower, the flower went dead, and this is what he said: peanut butter, peanut butter; peanut butter; peanut butter° ..
I collapse onto the couch, giggling like the little girl I'm becoming. Lord, it feels nice to giggle again.
eleven
The next day, I stand in one place, cut hair, and get some badly needed rest for my knees and my forty-year-old body. I can't act like a child every day. What was I thinking? In the past forty-eight hours, I've tried to cross the monkey bars, ridden a bicycle, jumped rope, and walked several miles. I need a day off at work.
As soon as I'm done with my first customer, I call Avery to check on Dee, and Mrs. Holland says that he isn't there again. I resist the urge to call Dewey (I don't want to wake Dee), and I am so lost in though
t about the man who'll be eating my cake tonight that I almost leave Mrs. Blackwood's perm in too long. Heifer probably wouldn't have noticed anyway. She's about bald as it is.
"Girl, you look like you're walking in a dream today," Diana says.
"Just had a busy day yesterday." But I am sort of walking in a dream, and maybe this time the dream will have a happy ending.
Diana sends me home early since we're not as busy as usual. I really think it's because I sing "Understand It Better By and By" all day long, and she just does not like good gospel music sung by someone who can't sing. I rush home to get ready and stare at the clothes in my closet. What do you wear to a bowling alley if you're only watching? Do I dress up? Folks shouldn't be looking at me. They should be looking at the pins. I put on some jeans and a blue sweatshirt and wait on the porch. I can't wait to see Dewey's face up close again. I can't wait to see those children again. I can't wait to see Dewey smile again. I can't wait to see-
Then I see Tonya and Naomi show up in Naomi's car! It was just supposed to be me and Tonya! How we gonna pull this off without Naomi figuring it out?
"Hi y'all," I say as I get in. "Got the cake, Tonya?"
"Yes."
"Who's the cake for?" Naomi says.
Does Naomi already know? "Just for some new folks in the neighborhood,' l say.
Naomi turns to Tonya. "You cooked it last night?"
Tonya looks at me. "Yeah"
"I thought you were PMS-ing," Naomi says.
"Oh, yeah," Tonya says. "I needed something to take my mind off it, so I called Ruth. She talked me through it, and it came out as if Ruth made it herself." Tonya is the best liar I know.
"That's so nice of you two."
So Naomi doesn't know. I can relax. I direct her to Sixteenth Street. "Pull in over there"
She pulls in to the parking lot, but I don't see Dewey's truck. Is he even here? Then I see Nanna's truck. Okay, Dewey's out, and Nanna's in. He's probably at work catching up on his hours. I'll just give her the cake and go.
"This isn't your neighborhood, girl," Naomi says.
Tonya hands me the cake through her window after I get out. "I'll only be a minute."
"Hurry," Naomi says. "I don't want to be late for shadow bowling."
"For what?"
"Practice, Ruth. We get fifteen minutes of practice."
"Oh."
I take only one step toward that apartment door and get nervous. Why? I'm just dropping off a cake. That's all. I did it all the time as the preacher's wife. No sweat. Then, why are my hands sweating little rivers? The light's on in the window of Dewey's apartment, so maybe I can even see Dee and Tee. I knock, and Nanna opens the door.
"Hi, I'm Ruth, and I just wanted to welcome y'all to the neighborhood with this cake" That sounded so ... lame.
I hand her the cake, and she smiles, the many wrinkles in her face disappearing. Nanna has a child's face when she smiles. Dewey has her pointy nose, brown eyes, and light brown hair, only her head is half as big as his. "That's so nice of you," she says with the same country twang. She acts like she's weighing the cake. "This is a real pound cake, ain't it?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"You make it with sour cream?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"That's the way. Won't you come in?"
Naomi chooses this moment to blow the horn. "I'd love to, but my friends are waiting. How's Dee doing?" Nanna squints. "Oh, I volunteer at Avery and work with him two days a week. Is he feeling any better?"
She steps out of the doorway and closes the door behind her. "No, he ain't better at all."
BEEP. I turn to the car and mouth "in a minute." I turn back to Nanna. "Is it the medicine?"
"Yep. It's wearing his little body out. All he wants to do is sleep."
BEEP. Naomi, you wench! "Could you tell Dee, next
time he's awake, that Penny said hello?" Nanna blinks. "That's my nickname."
"I'll tell him."
"Oh, and say hello to Tee, too. Is she behaving any better in school?"
"No. The child is an absolute terror. Four more fish today."
"Four more fish?"
Nanna blinks her eyes rapidly. "The child likes to feed the fish when they ain't supposed to be fed"
I want to laugh, but I don't. BEER "I better go"
"Surely. You take care, and thanks for the cake."
"You're welcome."
Naomi beeps one more time as I'm getting in the car, doesn't say a word to me, and drives like a bat out of hell to the bowling alley. Tonya turns to me and smiles, but she doesn't say anything either. We wouldn't want to piss off Naomi any more because she's late for shadow bowling.
After cussing the management of Mountainside Lanes for having too few parking spaces, Naomi parks illegally in front of a dumpster, gets out, snatches her bowling bag from the floor behind her seat, and runs to the side door of the alley.
"Girl takes her bowling seriously," I say, following Tonya to the door.
"Nah. All the girl needs is a thick, stiff dick." I'm beginning to agree with Tonya. Naomi is just too tightly wound sometimes. A good stiff dick might loosen her up. "Was that Dewey's mama at the door?"
"Yeah. She's nice."
"She only about four feet tall. Dewey's daddy must have been a giant."
Inside Mountainside Lanes, the noise is deafening, the air thick with cigarette and cigar smoke, the tables loaded with pitchers of beer and plastic cups, every one of the forty lanes swarming with people, balls flying down the lanes, pins crashing. There's even a certain rhythm to the noise, like a drummer is playing boom-ditty-ditty-ditty-CRASH continuously. Tonya stops me at lane thirty-four where we find us an empty table. I immediately notice that the folks from lanes one to twenty are white, and the folks from lanes twenty-five to forty are black. Segregation, Calhoun style.
"This the black bowling league, huh?" I say to Tonya as she puts on her bowling shoes.
"Uh-huh. A few sisters bowl in the other league, but not many."
While Naomi rolls a few practice balls, Tonya, who wears the tightest little miniskirt and T-shirt, introduces me to her team. "We're called NYTBM," she says, "and it don't stand for `naughty young thing bowel movement,' though we bowl like it sometimes. We naughty, we pretty young, and sometimes the pins is constipated. NYTBM is just our initials." She points at a very tall black woman rolling a practice ball. "That's Yvonne. She bowls all right if she don't fall down"
"She falls down?" I didn't think bowling was a dangerous sport.
"Least once a night. She says the floor is too slippery."
"Is it?"
"Sometimes it's too oily, but not that oily. She just tall and clumsy." She points at an older black man, short, almost stumpy, with big arms and flecks of gray at his temples, waiting for his turn to bowl. "That's Bill. Believe it or not, he's married to Yvonne, and they have six children all her size. If he's on his game, and he ain't on most nights, we have a chance" She looks around. "Mike ain't here again? If he do show, he'll either be drunk or high or both. Boy barely breaks a hundred. That's why we need you to bowl with us, Ruth. When he don't show, we have to use his shitty average minus ten pins. I know you can bowl higher than a ninety."
"I've never bowled before" At an all-night bowling party for the teenagers at Antioch years ago, I had contented myself merely with keeping score back when you could keep score. They got these computers doing it now.
"It ain't hard. Just roll it down the middle. We could put you on as a substitute, and whenever Mike don't show, you get to bowl."
"Like tonight?"
"Why not?"
"I'd rather watch tonight if you don't mind." I see lots of folks lined up to roll practice balls now. "Ain't you gonna practice?"
She smiles and stretches, putting her head on one knee. "And miss my grand entrance?"
Some unintelligible voice crackles from the loudspeakers, and the bowling alley becomes silent. Blue screens above the lanes flicker on, and in less than a minute, the ball
s start flying down the lanes again.
Tonya bowls first for her team, and she is definitely a distraction. She picks up her ball and shines it with a towel so slowly, smiling that little smile of hers with her tongue on her lower lip. She is so nasty. She takes up her position and wiggles a long time before stepping toward the pins and releasing the ball. While the ball is rolling, she poses, sticking her ass out as far as is legally allowed in public in this state. I check the men all around us, and they are all staring. She only knocks down five pins, but I know she knocked out quite a few more eyes.
For the next half hour, I watch some of the most anal behavior I have ever seen in my life. Bowlers are a funny breed: they shine their already shiny balls, they tighten their already tied shoes, they blow on their fingers, they squat and do strange exercises, they talk to the ball, they talk to the pins, they sometimes use a different ball to pick up a spare, they cuss the floor, they cuss their scores, they cuss their shoes, they cuss the ceiling. One elderly gentleman even cusses his beer.
I focus on a woman about my size a few lanes down to see how she does it. She picks up her ball with both hands and inserts her fingers into the holes. She takes a deep breath and brings the ball up to her chest. She kicks out her right foot and takes a long step, then pitter-pats toward the pins before hurling her ball-into the gutter. She looks good, though. Hell, even I could do that.
NYTBM loses the first game by over a hundred pins, and Naomi won't speak to anyone, not even me. She had a nice game but kept fussin' because she didn't get any strikes. Tonya rolls her eyes a lot at Naomi, and the other team makes fun of Bill whenever he gets a split, which is right often. Mike, who showed up just in time to take his turn, bowled a measly eighty-seven but smiled and hooted like he had bowled a good game, giving and getting dap from anyone he could reach, including me.
"We suck, don't we?" Tonya asks as she reties her shoes for the tenth time. I think she does it so she can stick out her ass between turns.
