Mama Day

by Gloria Naylor

  Down the road at the Days’ there’s busy preparation for a miracle that Miranda says has already happened: Cocoa’s marriage. She was beginning to think that she’d never live to see the day, and she’d geared herself up to live for a long time. It’s still kinda hard to believe that telephone call that came from New Orleans, but she’d spoken to the boy herself and they got the pictures in the mail this month. He had a strong face, and a good strong name—George. He was gonna need all the strength he could get to put up with Baby Girl, Miranda thinks. Just out-and-out aggravating, that’s what she could be—demanding to have herself a double-ring quilt as a wedding present. Like all folks got to do this winter is sit around sewing together tiny bits of cloth till their fingers ache. Not a bit of consideration for her arthritis or her grandma’s failing eyesight. And she knew they weren’t gonna let anyone else help—not for something like this. All the chalking, padding, stretching, and hemming was up to them if it was gonna be done at all. And you couldn’t send an old poor-mouth quilt with one double ring, no—from edges to center the patterns had to twine around each other. It would serve her right if it took till next year, and it probably would if they had the sense not to keep at it all day and a good part of the night.

  “Well, that’s it for me. It’s after ten o’clock.” Abigail bites off the knotted end of her thread. She sighs and runs her hand along her end of the quilting frame. “It may be taking forever, but it’s gonna be some kind of beautiful. You were right, Miranda, using that cambric muslin instead of a regular cotton lining is gonna make this feel like velvet. But it’s a pain in the neck to sew—a stitch will slip away before you know it.”

  “Just gotta keep waxing your needle.”

  “Next to threading, I think I hate waxing the most.”

  “I hate the whole mess. This cutting, shaping, measuring. And I told Baby Girl, don’t ask me for spit after this.”

  “But she did finally say she’d settle for a simple pattern.”

  “’Cause she ain’t got no pride. This’ll be passed on to my great-grandnieces and nephews when it’s time for them to marry. And since I won’t be around to defend myself, I don’t want them thinking I was a lazy old somebody who couldn’t make a decent double-ring quilt.”

  “Great-grands.” Abigail shakes her head. “It couldna been more than yesterday when I was a bride. And now we’re sitting here talking about my great-grandchildren.” Abigail’s eyes look off in the distance, pride and sadness all mixed up in one.

  “No, we’re sitting here planning your great-grandchildren.” Miranda licks her thumb to thread another needle. “You can’t count on nothing with these young people today. And knowing my grandniece like I do, if she ain’t found herself a saint, it’s gonna be a long haul between that honeymoon and her getting me that new teacup with Great-Great Aunt on it.”

  “Miranda, you’re always downing Baby Girl. If this doesn’t work out, why it gotta be her fault? We don’t know nothing about him.”

  “He told us all about himself on the phone.”

  “His name? What he does for a living? And a whole lot of promises anybody can make. Talk is cheap, Miranda.”

  “I know, that’s why I listened real careful to the way he talked. Remember what he said when you told him to take good care of her? He said, ‘She has all I have.’”

  “Yeah, real pretty. But how many right here in Willow Springs done heard them same words? Junior Lee probably said it to Frances, and you see where Frances is.”

  “No, Abigail—listen to him good now. The boy ain’t said, ‘All I have is hers.’ We both know that’s a lot of nonsense, ’cause nobody would—or could—give away all of themselves to somebody else. That person is an out-and-out liar, or if they was of that mind, they wouldn’t be nobody worth living with. No, he said—‘She has all I have.’ That means sharing. If he got a nickel, she’s got a part in it. He got a dream, he’s gonna take her along. If he got a life, Abigail, he’s saying that life can open itself up for her. You can’t ask no more than that from a man.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Abigail stands up and stretches her back. “Like you was right about this muslin. But I’m going to bed now. How much longer you sitting at this?”

  “Just a bit more. It’s less I’ll have to do tomorrow.”

  “Don’t forget to cut off my lights.”

  “Woman, don’t I always cut off your lights?”

  “No, ’cause you’re getting senile like me.”

  The old walnut clock in Abigail’s living room ticks away as Miranda’s silver needle slips through the layers of padded cloth: the curve of each ring is fixed into place by sending the needle down to the bottom and up. Down and up, a stitch at a time. She’s almost knee deep in bags of colored rags, sorted together by shades. The rings lay on a solid backing of cotton flannel; from a distance it looks like she’s bending over a patch of sand at the bottom of the bluff when it’s caught the first rays of a spring moon—an evening cream. The overlapping circles start out as golds on the edge and melt into oranges, reds, blues, greens, and then back to golds for the middle of the quilt. A bit of her daddy’s Sunday shirt is matched with Abigail’s lace slip, the collar from Hope’s graduation dress, the palm of Grace’s baptismal gloves. Trunks and boxes from the other place gave up enough for twenty quilts: corduroy from her uncles, broadcloth from her great-uncles. Her needle fastens the satin trim of Peace’s receiving blanket to Cocoa’s baby jumper to a pocket from her own gardening apron. Golds into oranges into reds into blues … She concentrates on the tiny stitches as the clock ticks away. The front of Mother’s gingham shirtwaist—it would go right nice into the curve between these two little patches of apricot toweling, but Abigail would have a fit. Maybe she won’t remember. And maybe the sun won’t come up tomorrow, either. I’ll just use a sliver, no longer than the joint of my thumb. Put a little piece of her in here somewhere.

  The gingham is almost dry rot and don’t cut well, the threads fraying under her scissors. She tries and tries again just for a sliver. Too precious to lose, have to back it with something. Rummaging through the oranges, she digs up a piece of faded homespun, no larger than the palm of her hand and still tight and sturdy. Now, this is real old. Much older than the gingham. Coulda been part of anything, but only a woman would wear this color. The homespun is wrapped over and basted along the edges of the gingham. She can shape the curve she needs now. Extra slow, extra careful with this one: she pushes the needle through, tugs the thread up—two ticks of the clock. Pushes the needle through, tugs the thread down—two ticks of the clock. She ain’t bringing that boy home mid-August. Miranda feels a chill move through the center of her chest. She doesn’t want to know, so she pushes the needle through and tugs the thread down—tugs the thread up. Or the next August, either. She tries to put her mind somewhere else, but she only has the homespun, the gingham, and the silver flashing of her needle. Or the next. It doesn’t help to listen to the clock, ’cause it’s only telling her what she knew about the homespun all along. The woman who wore it broke a man’s heart. Candle Walk night. What really happened between her great-grandmother and Bascombe Wade? How many—if any—of them seven sons were his? But the last boy to show up in their family was no mystery; he had cherished another woman who could not find peace. Ophelia. It was too late to take it out of the quilt, and it didn’t matter no way. Could she take herself out? Could she take out Abigail? Could she take ’em all out and start again? With what? Miranda finishes the curve and runs her hands along the stitching. When it’s done right you can’t tell where one ring ends and the other begins. It’s like they ain’t been sewn at all, they grew up out of nowhere. She’d finish off this circle with the apricot toweling, leave the two openings to connect in some of that light red crepe, and call it a night. This quilt was gonna be treated real tender, and it was gonna cover a lot of tenderness up there in New York on them cold winter evenings. But she won’t bring that boy home mid-August. Be a long time before Willow Springs sees h
im.

  She turns off the lamps before she leaves for home. She wasn’t gonna work on that quilt by herself no more at night. When Abigail stopped, she’d stop. If it took ’em longer, so be it. Some things you don’t need to know, especially when you can’t do nothing about it. The past was gone, just as gone as it could be. And only God could change the future. That leaves the rest of us with today, and we mess that up enough as it is. Leave things be, let ’em go their natural course. The night air hits her face, it’s sharp and chill, but she can feel the earth softening under her feet. Spring’s coming. Wild azaleas be blooming soon, the thorn apples and crepe myrtle. Them woods won’t look the same. No fertilizer, no pruning—no nothing, and they’ll beat her flowers blooming by three weeks. Yes, spring was coming. And would God forgive her for Bernice? But she wasn’t changing the natural course of nothing, she couldn’t if she tried. Just using what’s there. And couldn’t be nothing wrong in helping Bernice to believe that there’s something more than there is. It’s an old house with a big garden, and it done seen its share of pain. And I’m just an old woman who’ll be waiting in a rocking chair …

  The first new moon come spring. She can hear her coming, smell her coming, long before she makes that turn down by the old pine stump. Moving through the bush, guided by the starlight that glints off the two pair of eyes waiting and rocking, both unblinking. One pair cradled low in the lap of the other, soft rumbles vibrating its feathered throat. One pair humming a music born before words as they rock and stroke, forefinger and thumb, gently following the path of feathers, throat, breast, and sides. The right hand stroking, the left hand cupping underneath the tiny egg hole that sucks itself open and closed, open and closed. Two pair of eyes breathing as one when hope rounds that bend. She can taste the fear that hesitates on the edge of the garden walk; it’s thick in the air moving before the feet passing by the tuberoses, the camellias, the hanging vines of the dwarf honeysuckle. Feet passing into the other place where flowers can be made to sing and trees to fly. Fear trembling at the bottom of the porch steps, watching the gleaming of two pair of eyes, hearing the creak of wood against wood under the soft rumbling from feathers, the humming begun in eternity. But it’s hope that finds a voice: Mama—Mama Day?

  The right hand strokes, the left hand reaches out, the palm wet from the cradled egg, gray and warm. Confusion waits a bit too long. The shell dries and grows cold under the hidden moon. One pair of eyes unblinking, one pair frowns and smashes the egg into the porch steps. Silent, she pleads for another chance. But she must wait—and listen. Not to the humming, not to the creak of wood against wood. Naw: the moon inching toward the horizon, the tiny hole sucking itself open and closed, open and closed. The left hand reaches back out. Knowing takes the egg while the shell’s still pulsing and wet, breaks it, and eats.

  Now, it only takes a nod of the head to move them all inside. Pine chips smoking on the fire blazing in the parlor hearth makes the air steamy and sweet. Every shadow in the unlit room is dancing along the floor and walls. She ain’t gotta be told why the dining table is covered in a white sheet and has padded boards nailed upright on one end. She strips down naked, rests her head on the embroidered pillow, and props her feet high up into the scooped top of each board. It’ll be easier if she closes her eyes. In the morning she can tell herself it was all a dream. And it can’t be human hands no way, making her body feel like this.

  Nine openings. She breathes through two, hears through two, eats through one, the two below her waist, and two for the life she longs to nurse. Nine openings melting into the uncountable, ’cause the touch is light, light. Spreading each tiny pore on each inch of skin. If she could scream, she would, as the touching begins deeper at the points of her fingertips to expand the pores that let in air, caressing down the bones of each finger joint to the ones that join the palm, the wrist, the lower arms. Her shoulders, sides, and stomach made into something more liquid than water, her breasts and hips flowing up against the pull of the earth. She ain’t flesh, she’s a center between the thighs spreading wide to take in … the touch of feathers. Space to space. Ancient fingers keeping each in line. The uncountable, the unthinkable, is one opening. Pulsing and alive—wet—the egg moves from one space to the other. A rhythm older than woman draws it in and holds it tight.

  Sometimes I would wake up and ask myself if it really happened. I’d look over at you on your back, your right arm flung across your forehead, and think, Perhaps she’s just here for the night. You’d turn in your sleep, grasp the pillow, and then I’d catch a slight glimmer from the gold band on your left hand. I’d close my eyes and drift off again—sometimes at peace, sometimes not. Sure, there were a lot of doubts. We had plunged into this very quickly. That week in New Orleans flew past as an exhilarating blur while reality came slowly in daily increments: the jarring colors from a second brand of toothpaste on my bathroom sink, stumbling into a wicker plant stand where a space should have been, reaching blindly for a clean shirt to find a linen blazer in my hands. New smells, new sounds. Not always unpleasant, but always strange.

  I was living with a stranger, there was no way around that. And even if we had waited another year, the process of discovery would have still been slow and arduous. And it meant a whole year in which I would have postponed the delight of really getting to know you. You were the first female I had lived with, and that in itself was a challenge. I’d had no practice with sisters, cousins, or even aunts. I did what I normally did when a subject was new to me: I bought books. Forget The Joy of Sex and The Sensuous Man, Bruce told me through his six years of experience. If you’re going to be under the same roof with them, you better learn about their cycles. Of course, I had the rudiments: ovaries, a womb, Fallopian tubes. Those diagrams on Mrs. Jackson’s blackboard were graphic and indelible. And every twenty-eight days, give or take, the womb released its lining if there wasn’t conception. A period. I thought it an appropriate word, because it was a short phase. It’s arrival had brought relief if a mild inconvenience when it coincided with a night I wanted to sleep with a girlfriend. And that’s all the thought I’d ever given to it. Men see and don’t see those pastel boxes on the shelves in the drug store or supermarket. It made you squeamish if you dwelt on the fact that you were constantly surrounded by dripping blood, and a little frightened, too.

  But those books I bought horrified me. It seems it was more than “a period.” Women stayed on an emotional roller coaster: between being premenstrual, postmenstrual, and menstrual, they were normal only about seventy-two hours out of each month. That seemed a bit impossible to me: I’d watch you go about your day and wonder how you even managed to lift your head off the pillow if you were fighting that kind of battle with your hormones. Because you were saints, one female doctor kept harping, and just imagine how much more you’d excel if you didn’t have your nerves getting on your nerves, and men getting on your nerves. I found the whole philosophy of that particular book ridiculous. Every time you snapped at me or refused to be reasonable, it wasn’t you—it was your estrogen. No, I had met women who were simply miserable human beings, and this doctor had nothing to say about personalities. I made sure the next thing I read was written by a man. It was the same slew of depressing charts with another ongoing plea for tolerance: you were all, indeed, shrews through no fault of your own and men should try to be supportive. The inequality in our social system intensified your innate envy of us—the “tampon complex,” he called it. The shape of our sexual organs reminded you of the cruel trick biology had played on you. It became clear to me that I was never going to find a totally objective guide to what was going on inside of females, I was on my own. The goal was simple: I wanted to make you happy. And when you were irritable, I thought the easiest way would be to ask if it was something I was doing or that your body was doing: Are you premenstrual today, sweetheart? We got into some awful fights that way. And to be honest, I was hurt by your reaction. How was I going to understand if I didn’t ask? No, I found out very quic
kly that when living with a woman, the shortest distance between two points is by way of China.

  Not only your hormones but your minds are incredibly complex. You can manage disruptions and absorb ambivalences much better than men. It never ceased to amaze me, the hours you would spend tracking down a twenty-five-cent overcharge in our checking account. Where does she find the patience? And what was the point? It had nothing to do with practicality: the letter to the credit office or the phone call was going to wipe out the advantage of finding the overcharge. It’s the principle, you would say. I was all for principles, but women could expend tremendous energy on twenty-five-cent ones. Unlike some, I didn’t call it petty—it was a special complexity. But some things can be so complicated, they deteriorate into the nonsensical. My partner had warned me to expect to be awakened in the middle of the night because there was “something on her mind.” Sure, it had been sitting there all through dinner and the eleven o’clock news, Bruce laughed, but it’s that predawn moon that gets their juices flowing. I didn’t worry about that: you slept like a rock as soon as your head hit the pillow—you weren’t going to be one of those moonlight thinkers. Unfortunately, it was the sound of running water that set you off. I took long, hot showers in the morning. It was the one luxury I had promised myself when I left the shelter: no more two-minute splashes in tepid water because six other boys are lined up behind you. I didn’t sing during my half hours in the shower, but I was content enough to. Some mornings I could hear you puttering around in the bathroom, and before long I knew I was going to feel a cold breeze on my backside as the curtain was pushed open. You’d stand there, leaning against the wall with your arms crossed, and just stare. If I ignore her, she’ll go away. I’d duck my head under the nozzle and shampoo my hair again, letting the soap suds run into my ears. But you’d wait me out.