Mama Day

by Gloria Naylor

  “Well, he did say there was a little professional rivalry between you two.” George smiles. “And I guess everyone feels that no one else can do their job as well as—”

  “He said what?”

  Both George and the chickens back away from the thunder in Miranda’s voice as she straightens up to face him with a storm brewing in her eyes.

  “Run that by me one more time. He said what?”

  “Look, Miss Miranda, if I had thought it would cause any trouble, I never would have mentioned it. These little friendly rivalries go on in any profession. The important thing is that you’re both serving the community.”

  “Serving the community! How’re you serving some community from the bottom of a liquor jug? You know what he gives folks when they got an ache in their left side? Moonshine and honey. And for an ache in their right side? Honey and moonshine. That is, when he’s not selling ’em worthless bags of—”

  Miranda snaps her mouth shut. This boy don’t really know her and he sure don’t know Buzzard. Ain’t been here a day and he gotta pick up with the worst Willow Springs had to offer. She warned Abigail not to have Buzzard go meet ’em at the airport. No telling what he’s had time to fill this child’s head with. Professional rivalry. She’d profession his rivalry as soon as she got her hands on him. And where was Baby Girl while he was out rubbing elbows with hoodoo doctors? Sleeping on her fanny, no doubt. But no point in flaring up and scaring this boy half to death.

  “Let’s just leave that be for now,” she says.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Naw, I ain’t upset, it’s just my way. But I see you like to get up early.”

  “Yeah, I always have.”

  “Well, you sure married the wrong woman. My niece can sleep through a hurricane, even if you put the bed outside. Always been an early riser myself. It’s right nice around here in the mornings when the air is still unused.”

  He laughed. “It’s amazing—I used to say that as a child.”

  “It’s the best time in the world to fish, too. You do much of that?”

  “No, but my business partner is a great fisherman. Trout.”

  “That’s freshwater. But you can pull some beauties up here with our saltwater. Let’s get us a few poles and go out one morning. We can have ’em cleaned and fried before Cocoa and Abigail gets up. Honey, you ain’t lived until you had hot drumfish with grits and buttered biscuits for breakfast.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  I never realized you were paying me such a high compliment whenever you said I reminded you of Ambush Duvall. There was something so steady and genuinely kind about the man. We were about the same age, but he appeared older than me, perhaps because he was married almost three times as long. But after a while I began to feel that it was due to his infinite patience. He had to have it in order to put up with the temperamental nature of the weather and his farm crops, and he certainly needed a good measure of it with Bernice. She was a nice enough woman, but nervous, nervous, nervous. We were sitting in that living room for only half an hour and she had hopped up twenty times—to take Charlie’s thumb out of his mouth, to retrieve Charlie’s stuffed bear from the empty fireplace, to help Charlie pry the top off of his Erector set, to gather the loose pieces that rolled under the sofa. Between all that—her fiddling with parts of her clothing, her coffee cup, the fabric on the sofa—for you to turn and say so casually that motherhood had calmed Bernice down a lot; I couldn’t imagine his life with her before that kid was born.

  There was only one time when she became still—totally still. I asked Ambush if Miss Miranda had delivered his son. He said no, but he had wanted her to. Mama Day had been very helpful to them when they were trying to have the baby. Obviously, Bernice had not wanted Miss Miranda as midwife, but there was no spoken reply from her, and I couldn’t read her stillness. The strangest thing of all was that Ambush couldn’t read it either. The confusion was there in the glance he gave her—a little hurt, perhaps—that however adamant that past refusal, it was built on something she’d never shared with him.

  But it was clear he adored his wife—a lid for every pot, someone once said. And if we could make it just as long as they had, we’d be in good shape. Except that I expected us to have three children by the time we were married eleven years—a compromise on my part, magnanimity on yours—and they were going to be much better trained. I didn’t believe in abuse, but a child definitely needed more discipline than this one got. Every time he screamed no and called his mother stupid, she laughed, you raised an eyebrow, and Mrs. Jackson turned over in her grave. A small cloud would pass over Ambush’s eyes but he sat through it, talking nonchalantly with us. I was ready to lynch that kid after the third episode, but it took Ambush until about the twelfth to turn his head, barely raising his voice to stop a tantrum midstream—“Little Caesar, go to your room.” He looked at his mother, but she had already looked at her husband, and whatever their private codes of body language, she knew he had had enough; and above all, the kid knew that they’d all reached a point where she couldn’t save him if his father got up from that chair.

  He was awfully cute, though, dragging his bear out of the room by the leg as though they’d both been condemned to life without parole. He got to the door and stood there, pouting and staring at his father, waiting for him to begin the motion that would swing him out of his chair so he could knock him back down in the way only a child could—“I have to kiss Aunt Cocoa goodbye.” Our silent laughter came from knowing exactly what he’d done and that he’d succeeded. Even his father was rooting for him a bit. There was a quiver in the pit of my stomach, watching you take him into your arms. So that’s how it will look—“Now, say goodbye to Uncle George”—and this is how it will feel.

  “Let that be your last goodbye, Little Caesar.” Ambush could keep the smile from his lips, but not from his eyes.

  Bernice wasn’t really complaining about the child’s name—“Ambush, if you keep calling him that, he ain’t never gonna know who he’s supposed to be.”

  “Well, I’ve been answering to Ambush all my life and I know my name is Charles. And I bet you can’t even remember Cocoa’s real name.”

  She couldn’t, so you helped her out. “It’s Ophelia.”

  “Anyway, Cocoa is a pretty name. But these know-nothings in Willow Springs just gave my baby that pet name out of spite.”

  “It wasn’t spite, Bernice. A pet name is just that.”

  “I think a mama should have a say about what she wants done to her baby—and his name is Charles.”

  “But don’t you call him Charlie?” Ambush teased.

  “It’s a lot better than Little Caesar.”

  “And that’s a lot better than Chick,” he said. “Remember how put out you were when folks was doing that?”

  She seemed angry about it still, wincing at the mention of it, her fingers beginning to pleat at the slipcover. “I ain’t talking about this no more. My own mama never gave me no outside name but the one I was born with—Bernice. And your mama didn’t either, did she, George?”

  “No,” I said. “She didn’t.”

  “I bet you’re glad.”

  “When I think about what I could have been left with, I guess I am.”

  “Tom-Tom, Rickshaw, Sue Bee—all that silliness.”

  “Aw, Bernice, lighten up,” you said. “I’d rather have older people tag him than the kids at school—they can be really cruel. Remember? You were Needle Legs and I was Lulu the Leper.”

  “I think the strangest one I’ve heard to date,” I said, “is Dr. Buzzard.”

  “Oh, you’ve met him?” Ambush smiled.

  “You know Dr. Buzzard always picks me up at the airport. And he and George have become fast friends.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “Aren’t you playing poker with him tomorrow night?”

  “I’d go along myself,” Ambush said. “But I don’t have the money to lose this m
onth.”

  “Why is everyone always saying that? Is he that good a player?”

  “No, he cheats.”

  “You’re kidding me. I heard at least three other guys at the barbershop agree to play.”

  “Yeah, but they all know he cheats.”

  “But then why—” You all burst out laughing at the look on my face.

  “We go because it’s fun,” Ambush said.

  “There’s no fun when someone cheats.”

  “Sure, it is. It ain’t like he does it now and then, he does it every hand. So the challenge is how much you can get away with not losing. It about amounts to the same thing.”

  Walking with Ambush through his fields was to watch the hand of a virtuoso stroke the instrument of his craft. An absentminded handful of soil worked between his fingers as the endless rows melted into the blurred outlines of the horizon. The weight, the texture, the smell, telling him of possibilities I couldn’t begin to understand. In the fading light it could have been his own skin flaking off gently into the ground. Four hundred and twenty acres.

  “It’s all going to my son.” He handed me a tomato, heavy and blood red. “But if I have my way, he won’t be a farmer. Unless by the time he’s grown up, they find a scale to pay you for what really goes into one of these.”

  The tomato broke between my teeth like warm flesh; the juices running down my chin were pure sugar. “Not a chance,” I said.

  “I know, and that’s why he’s going on to college. Let him sit up somewhere in a shirt and tie. He can build golf courses and swimming pools here for all I care. As long as he keeps the land, that’s what matters. But he’s gonna be tall like his mama’s side of the family, so it’ll probably be basketball courts.”

  “You know, I hadn’t thought about who our kids will be like. I guess her looks and my brains, I’ll be happy.”

  “Better not let Cocoa hear you say that.”

  “I’m just saying she’s an attractive woman.”

  “But do they ever figure things that way? You been married long enough to know better than that. Look at Bernice, carrying on in there. But you try to tell her a Charlie Duvall won’t be fit for nothing but designing ladies’ panties while a Caesar Duvall is gonna be welcome into many of ’em, and she won’t get the point.”

  “Ambush, I needed to hear this years ago. No wonder I kept striking out with a name like George.”

  “Well, you could borrow mine.”

  “It’s too late now.”

  “Know what you mean.” It was a deep, deep sigh. “But, man, there was a time …”

  You were going to talk about my breasts. We dropped Little Caesar at his grandmother’s. Had dinner with Bernice and Ambush. Listened to old rock ’n’ roll songs at my favorite club. Walked back to the house from the bridge road so we could hold hands and exchange the teenage memories that the music resurrected. The first broken hearts: a doe-eyed, caramel princess in ninth grade algebra for you, an ebony god with winged feet on the basketball court for me. A long, long kiss by that burnt patch of pines in which I tried so hard to repay you for every moment when I should have spoken but didn’t, when I spoke unnecessarily. We climbed the steps to the darkened house and quietly closed our bedroom door on an evening that was full and complete. But you were going to talk about my breasts.

  Bernice had guaranteed that. It was an innocent question, cushioned way back in the evening, part of an ongoing struggle between her and Ambush. She was arguing for the child’s name, but the issue was control. You offered her a possible ally and my stomach took a nose dive as soon as the words were out of her mouth: “My own mama never gave me no outside name but the one I was born with. And your mama didn’t either, did she, George?” I regretted having never told her the whole truth. But how could I reach cab drivers, storekeepers, news commentators, a dozen waitresses—all of whom were likely, through casual remarks, to freeze the muscles in the lower part of your jaw? Put that cold light in your eyes. When I finally made the connection, it was in the realm just beneath thought. To have thought it would be too ugly and so how to speak about the unthinkable? We held this secret between us that we couldn’t even reveal to ourselves. I knew after one of those incidents there was nothing to do but wait. You had to hurt me—just a little. It might be a playful jab, short of cutting to the bone. A crushing comment, its vindictiveness well out of place in a light argument. A matter-of-fact observation, bringing up an insecurity I had shared at some previous time: They are beginning to sag a bit—it’s to be expected at your age. That purple birthmark near the nipple does look like a scar.

  So as I undressed for bed I waited. No, I wasn’t going to linger in the bathroom, hoping you’d fall asleep. And yes, I slept in the nude—there would be no difference tonight. I would have given anything to call back Bernice’s words, but just let’s get this over with. You were sitting up in bed with your back against the headboard, staring out of the window. There was no moon; I couldn’t see your face once I cut off the bathroom light. Everything was pitch black, but I knew that room like the back of my hand. The mattress gave under my weight as I lay down, trying not to touch you. To give you any reason. Your face stayed turned and it was barely a whisper: I’d like you to nurse our children. I said nothing as I waited. The silence grew longer and longer. The silence stayed. You slipped under the covers, cradled your head between my breasts, and we never spoke about the tears.

  Miranda wakes up earlier than usual. Feeling mighty good this morning, mighty good. The liniment she rubbed her legs down with last night got ’em spry enough to join in the front line of them kicking girls at Radio City. If anything would take her to New York, that would. She liked the holiday commercials with them all decked out in their spangles and feathers, sending their heels almost up to their heads. Sitting up on the edge of the bed, she stretches her feet out in front of her and grins. All they need is me up there with these knobby legs—it wouldn’t be a matter of the manager giving folks back the price of admission, he’d have to find a way to keep himself from getting lynched. She gives her thighs a healthy slap. Well, you ain’t good enough for Radio City but you does all right here. They had carried her to Carmen Rae’s yesterday with a whole sackful of peaches on her back and she liked what she found there. Her little blackbird was doing fine—that’s what they oughta call him, with that pretty skin, Blackbird. And with a spirit like his that boy was sure to fly. It was encouraging that Carmen Rae had managed to keep that kitchen passably clean for two whole days—not encouraging enough to eat any of the sweet potato pudding Carmen Rae had baked special for her, but the signs were good. And these old legs were gonna carry her out fishing this morning. That is, if the other signs were right.

  Standing up and stretching, she listens to her bones go off like a series of firecrackers as they pop into their joints. They get louder each year. She sighs. And I guess I want ’em to get louder still, since I ain’t ready for ’em to quit. And it was about that, being ready to lay down and die. Sure, the body could get sick and put you down long before you wanted, but everybody held on until they had absolutely had enough. Sometimes the pain just got too much for the mind, the struggling got too much, the being tired of being tired. But in the end—the very end—you do give up the ghost, it ain’t taken away. She had it all planned for herself: something nice and simple. A warm flannel gown with ruffles on the sleeves. Propped up in bed with extra pillows at her back. Her windows wide open to let in whatever season of air it was. And Baby Girl’s children bringing her in little sips of soup, cups of tea, and heaping dishes of pistachio ice cream. She couldn’t with all certainty put Baby Girl in the middle of that picture, but the children she’d get from that boy, having only half of his heart, would be there for their old auntie.

  I know I ain’t giving her credit. Miranda laughs. She done mellowed plenty since this marriage. Soft around the edges without getting too soft at the center. You fear that sometimes for women, that they would just fold up and melt away. She’d seen it
happen so much in her time, too much for her to head on into it without thinking. Yes, that one time when she was way, way young. But after that, looking at all the beating, the badgering, the shriveling away from a lack of true touching was enough to give her pause. Not that she mighta hooked up with one of those. And not that any man—even if he tried—coulda ever soaked up the best in her. But who needed to wake up each morning cussing the day just to be sure you still had your voice? A woman shouldn’t have to fight her man to be what she was; he should be fighting that battle for her. It weren’t so in her time, though, and from what these young women tell her, it’s rare to find it now. So a lot of ’em is waking up like me, except they’re waking up young and alone.

  The day is just about to break when she leaves her trailer with her fishing poles and a can of bait. The wind’s blowing right—not too heavy and straight from the west. But look at those crazy chickens, roosting with their heads turned east so the wind is ruffling their tail feathers—you’d think a storm was coming. Not today, with the sky dawning like it is—naw, that horizon was shouting fair weather. Couple that with a new moon to bring in high-tide water for that little bay off by the ocean caves, the fish would be pleading for a hook today. But she couldn’t see dragging George all the way over there through the east woods. The Sound would make fair enough catches, and she had to keep in mind where he was from. With nothing to look at all his life but goldfish and canned tuna, he’d be more than thrilled with them puny two pounders taking a nap in The Sound. She ain’t waited on Abigail’s porch for five minutes when he comes out, clean shaven and smelling only a mite less fresh than the day. His blue plaid shirt is starched and the creases in his jeans are sharp enough to cut butter. Sleep still hangs around his smile, but it always takes longer to leave the young since they get into it deeper. This is a boy who wakes up smiling, she thinks, and it’s nice to know that Baby Girl has a little something to do with it.

  “Good morning, Miss Miranda. I thought I was going to come over and surprise you.”