Mama Day

by Gloria Naylor

  She runs her hands along the fallen trunk of the pecan tree. Why, there was enough wood right here to give her light and warmth through most of the winter if need be. She wasn’t much on swinging an ax, but she’d bring George out here before they headed home. Use that young back of his before Baby Girl wore him out, now that it seems like they’ve made up. She knew that bedding arrangement with Abigail wasn’t gonna last too long—she’d slept with her sister, and Abigail kicks you in the side. If it hada been up to her, Baby Girl wouldna been allowed in there the first night. You make your bed hard, you just roll over the more often, Daddy always said.

  Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes. Miranda runs her fingers in the ridges of the tree trunk. Skin color close to this, and in later years them skillful hands knotted and hard just so. And now her hands was the same, knotted and hard, but ain’t half as skillful. John-Paul could carve flowers that looked more real than the ones she grew. Under the grayish light her skin seems to dissolve into the fallen tree, her palm spreading out wide as the trunk, her fingers twisting out in a dozen directions, branching off into green and rippling fingernails. She tries to pull her hand away, only to send the huge fingers and nails rippling and moving in the air. She cries out startled, pulling so fiercely she scrapes her knuckles before realizing her thumb is stuck under a branch. With a pounding heart she nurses the sore knuckle in her mouth, the stinging taste of blood on her tongue. Slowly, she looks from the fallen tree out to the garden gate and shakes her head, no. She takes a step back as she removes her bleeding hand from her mouth, her eyes never leaving the gate. But she can still taste her coming. From the south and past the bridge junction. No. But she’s driving steady and heading north. Her legs don’t want to support her no more; she sits on the verandah steps amidst the torn morning glory vines with her hands dropped still into her lap. Her shoulders are slumped. A light rain is beginning to mist in her hair. But she sits, staring at the empty garden gate.

  The main road looked as if it had been through a war—branches and leaves strewn everywhere—and in a way it had. I expected the sun to be shining, thought really that we deserved to have it shine after a night like that. Wasn’t that the way in those Victorian novels? A wild tempest, flaming passions, and then the calm of a gorgeous sunrise. Well, we were hardly going according to the script. The tempest had come in on cue, but you were still sleeping and I got tired of lying there waiting for you to wake up in a burst of flaming passion. And then the news that the bridge was gone—how were we ever going to get home? All of your grandmother’s reassurances that it would be repaired in a few days did not reassure me. A week in Willow Springs was enough to understand that words spoken here operated on a different plane through a whole morass of history and circumstances that I was not privy to. A few days could mean anything, and I had to return to work. No phone lines, so there was no question of calling. And on the transistor, there wasn’t a single mention of Willow Springs among the areas hit. It might as well not exist, and so there would be no Coast Guard coming to the rescue. It was incredible. What if there were casualties, a need for medical assistance? We take care of our own, your grandmother told me, and for her that finished the matter. But I began helping her clean up the front yard with the growing—and uncomfortable—realization that I was marooned on an island in the middle of the twentieth century. At least, I thought it was the twentieth century until I saw Bernice Duvall drive up to that silver trailer.

  Folks is sure to disagree for years about what caused the death of Little Caesar. A drowning in them gullies dug out by the storm. Live wires hanging from the electric poles. There’s no eyewitnesses to the condition of his body as his mama drives him up the main road—some things you just can’t watch. Nobody was there but everybody heard the door open up on that white convertible. Ambush sits in his living room chair, staring straight ahead at nothing, while Bernice glances up at the clouds and goes back into the house for his red rain hat and slicker. Little Caesar slumps over in the front seat, his head bent and arms slack at his side. She braces his neck to fit on the hat and works the sleeves of the raincoat up his arms, and she’s careful to buckle all them straps tight around him before she gets in and starts the motor. No telephones left but the news goes before her, Bernice and Little Caesar is in that white convertible heading north on the main road.

  Some things go beyond curiosity. Some things you just can’t watch. Nobody turns from picking up loose shingles, dragging broken tree branches out of their front yards, as the white convertible moves on past, heading north on the main road. She drives slow like she always does, slower ’cause the surface is slippery from wet leaves and debris. If too big a limb blocks the way completely, she brakes and sits there quietly until someone runs out and drags it away, never once glancing over their shoulders at the woman and her child in the car. Never once looking after her as she drives on past. The group at the bridge junction keeps on talking about it being a fair storm: the shacks blown down that shoulda been, the old leaning fences that needed replacing anyway, the screen doors hanging by a thread to begin with. Some is short-tempered about the bridge; they ain’t getting to work today and there’s crops to be taken over. No use thinking about the few boats that was, boathouse and dock is sitting at the bottom of The Sound. Out of the corner of their eyes, the white convertible moves on past without interrupting a word. After a while even the motor ain’t heard as she heads on north up the main road to that silver trailer.

  It would have been different if I hadn’t met Bernice Duvall. But I had sat in her home, a split-level ranch with central air conditioning. Her husband had plans for building on his stereo system and ordering a new diesel tractor. They had a high school yearbook, wedding pictures, and a tuition account for their son. I had talked to that couple about the advantages of municipal bonds over no-load mutual funds for that very account. She had brought me a linen napkin and served me coffee. She was tall and thin, brown skinned, with flecks of amber in her eyes. And she was lifting her dead child, dressed in a raincoat, out of her convertible.

  It was one of those moments when your mind simply freezes to protect itself from the devastation of a thousand contradictions, which freezes your body as well. If this was reality, it meant I was insane, and I couldn’t be—and she couldn’t be, because I had met that woman. I turned to your grandmother for confirmation of my sanity in her spoken words, in her eyes, perhaps. But she glanced across the road and silently returned to raking her yard. Bernice was carrying the child upright into the woods, her arms around his back and her shoulders cradling his head. No, this was the stuff of dreams. I spoke because I needed to hear the reality of my own voice, although my question was as insane as the answer I received: “She’s going to the other place.”

  The misting is turning to rain as she sits outside on the verandah steps and waits. A morning rain, it’s warmed by the clouded sun just tipping up toward the top of the pines. It’s an old face that waits in the rain. A tired face. Deep hollows suck under the creviced eyes, fine lines running from the chapped lips down around the grizzled chin. A face broken down with the weight of knowing what’s coming through the woods and that there ain’t no need to pray. No words to form the plea in her heart if there was another place to send it. Old hands grasp the walking stick, hands knotted with veins and splattered with warm rain. She rises from the verandah steps to walk the path running through her crippled garden. She stands at the gate and waits.

  She comes through the woods. Her flesh in her arms. Climbing over fallen trees that ain’t there. Wading through mud holes that ain’t there. Slipping and cutting her knee on rocks that ain’t there. She’s holding the only thing that is. The sun keeps moving up to another branch of the pines. The rains come down.

  She stops her at the opening to the garden. And they stand. Grasping her carved stick, she holds her head erect as the water wets her gray hair and runs down her face. The clouded sun reaches the top of the pines. The rain is soaking through the cott
on dress, outlining her withered breasts and corded thighs, matting the cloth into her back. They still stand. Water streams from the end of her chin, the end of her gnarled fingers; water flows in rivulets down her legs and into her shoes as the clouded sun begins its slow descent behind the other place. The rains stop. The evening winds come. It’s a crescent moon. A chill night. A clear sunrise. And the orioles take to wing, the bruised morning glories open. With the red rays filtering again through the bottom of the pines, she finally stretches out her hand to touch the broken face of the other woman. Go home, Bernice. Go home and bury your child.

  At first it felt as if I had a virus: the achiness in my head, the fever. I couldn’t seem to keep my eyes open, and when I forced myself to sit up in bed everything kept swimming in front of me through this crazy gray light. What time was it? How long had I slept? My throat was sandpaper and I needed to get to the toilet, but the floorboards were wavering up and down—it would have been easier to think of walking on water. I wasn’t the type to panic. I couldn’t be in that house alone, and if I was, it wouldn’t be for very long. I leaned against the headboard, closed my eyes tight, took a deep breath, and forced them back open again. That awful light was still everywhere but the floor had stopped moving. Making it into the bathroom, a few feet away, left my legs weak and trembling. I pushed open the connecting door to Grandma’s room. It was empty. I called out; my voice sounded as if it was coming through a tunnel. The effort of getting back into the bed broke me out into a cold sweat. When I wake up again, I thought, George or someone will be here.

  I was woken up instead, a firm hand shaking my shoulders, and two faces floating above me. By squinting I could finally focus you in with Grandma behind you. Your mouths were opening and closing, but there was a long lapse between your lips forming a word and its reaching me, like I was in the middle of a badly dubbed movie. And to make it worse, there was a lapse between my hearing a word, being able to comprehend its meaning, and then having it bring on any type of response. A whirl of confusing echoes—visual, emotional, verbal. You told me Little Caesar had died, and I answered no, I didn’t feel like getting up, it taking that long for me to understand the previous sentences. And by the time I understood that something had happened to Bernice’s child and started to cry, I could hear your voices echoing over and over—What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you? I tried to say that nothing was wrong, I only had the flu, I was just feeling so very sorry for Ambush and Bernice. It was easier to fall back into unconsciousness.

  You were sick and I was totally helpless. It was a feeling that I hated even though your grandmother said that it seemed as if you’d only caught a virus. Seemed as if wasn’t good enough for me. I didn’t like your paleness, those splotches of red around your temples, and the constant sleeping. I wanted to get you to a doctor, or at least call one about your symptoms, so we’d know what to do. But I saw a side of Miss Abigail I didn’t know existed, the no-nonsense, clinical efficiency with which she went about boiling something she called boneset tea and straining fresh chicken broth. You’d wake up and drink the liquids only to doze back off again. My protestations for a better—and, of course, impossible—solution fell on deaf ears, and she gave me the same look I’d gotten out in the front yard when Bernice pulled up in that convertible. Bernice’s car sat there all through the day, and when the rain began to pour I went out and put up the top. It was frustrating sitting behind that steering wheel, trying to reconcile the sanity that would slip car keys over a visor to the insanity of carrying dead children into the woods without so much as a word from anyone, and not being able to throw you into the back and just drive us the hell away from there.

  I tried to get a hold of myself. I was nervous, that’s all. I wasn’t used to your being ill, outside of a cold or an abscessed tooth. My own disability I always took in stride, knowing exactly what to do if I’d overtaxed myself and my heartbeat was fluctuating. But the thought of something serious being wrong with you was another matter—I couldn’t control what was going on inside your body. Still, there was no need to jump from my anxiety over my own helplessness to imagining weird, unnatural rituals behind those dogwoods. There was some rational explanation for what I had seen, another custom that I wasn’t privy to. This was, after all, the place that you really called home. And why not? Your grandmother was doing everything for you that anyone would do if they couldn’t reach a doctor. And it’s not as if they didn’t have a doctor. He lived beyond the bridge, and I had met him at the party. An ordinary-looking man in a room full of ordinary-looking people. People who knew and greeted him. No, they used doctors here. And they had televisions, radios, air conditioners. Tuition accounts for their sons. They were just … I looked through the veil of rain into those woods with my hands resting on Bernice’s steering wheel and sighed.

  I was a little girl again and it was so nice. My head cradled in Grandma’s soft bosom, her hands stroking my forehead as she coaxed me to take small sips of that awfully bitter tea. I liked it when she was there to promise me a new dress or a set of real silk ribbons if I’d take just one more swallow, while Mama Day would have promised me a spanking if I didn’t open my locked mouth. Are you feeling better, baby? Yes, call me baby again. You’ll be the one to make the gray light disappear. To protect me from that strange man peering over your shoulder. He reached out to touch me and I shrank away. I begged her to make him leave me alone. She’s out of her head. No, I was inside of my head and it hurt, God, how it hurt. The echoes had gone away. Now each word was a tight, tight pinpoint bursting in my brain. I needed silence. I put my fingers up to her lips to keep her from talking and I felt tears.

  Miranda doesn’t feel she’ll ever get warm again. And, wrapped up in blankets, she sure don’t ever want to move from in front of that parlor fire. She’s spent the day dozing off and on in that rocking chair, getting up only to heat another brick for her feet or to pour herself another cup of chamomile tea. Sitting inside the shuttered house, watching the kettle steaming in the fireplace, is comforting. More comfort than she deserves. You play with people’s lives and it backfires on you. As another wave of grief passes over her, she clutches her teacup and tries to rock it back into an ebb. More crushing, just a bit more crushing than that baby’s death, is the belief that his mama came to her with. There’ll be no redemption for that. She ain’t gotta worry about going on to hell. Hell was right now. Daddy always said that folks misread the Bible. Couldn’t be no punishment worse than having to live here on earth, he said.

  Naw, she knew about hell. In this very room, in this very rocking chair—and once before, in another like it—she’d seen all the hell on earth there could be. Miranda throws another log onto the fire and it sputters up, blazing blues and oranges, sparks flying at her face. She sinks back into the rocker with a sigh. Yeah, blaze on up, and if you tried to blaze on out I wouldn’t stop you. Maybe my sister was right, this old place needs to burn down. But something deep inside of her won’t let her truly believe that. A house is a house, ain’t it? Wood and plaster and brick. It’s the people that brings the sorrow. Or the hope. That same man told her that she had a little more than others to give. You have a gift, Little Mama. But who asked her for it? Who made her God?

  Miranda rocks and thinks of the things she can make grow. The joy she got from any kind of life. Can’t nothing be wrong in bringing on life, knowing how to get under, around, and beside nature to give it a slight push. Most folks just don’t know what can be done with a little will and their own hands. But she ain’t never, Lord, she ain’t never tried to get over nature. Hadn’t she seen enough in this very house to know that that couldn’t be? John-Paul woulda moved the earth for his wife, but with all of them lifelike carvings, he couldn’t give her Peace. And Abigail, trying to form with her flesh what Daddy couldn’t form from wood, still didn’t get Peace to live again. There is things you can do and things you can’t, Miranda thinks, looking into the fire. And there’s more sorrow coming. The rocker stops. No point i
n asking where the last thought came from. No point in trying to tell herself it ain’t so. She could now tell herself whatever she wanted. She could fling herself into that fire. But nothing could stop that front door from opening and them footsteps moving toward the parlor.

  “The Baby Girl is sick, Little Mama.”

  Miranda don’t look at her sister in the parlor door, she keeps staring into the fire. It’s a huge hearth, ’cause it’s an old house. She grew up seeing them rusted hooks empty over the mantel, but when the time came she knew what they were for. They hold her dried bundles of rosemary, thyme, woodruff, and linden flowers. Her chamomile and verbena. She makes her medicine from those and many others layered in clay jars inside the pantry. But Abigail wouldn’t set foot in the other place for that. So Miranda is staring past her dried herbs, past the birth of Hope and Grace, past the mother who ended her life in The Sound, on to the Mother who began the Days. She sees one woman leave by wind. Another leave by water. She smells the blood from the broken hearts of the men who they cursed for not letting them go. She reaches up and touches her own tears. Miranda lets them fall; she wouldn’t have the strength for them later. She finally turns her face to her sister, the weight on her soul reflected in the eyes that meet hers. “It’s gonna take a man to bring her peace”—and all they had was that boy.

  I had walked to the bridge at least six times that day. If there was a boat or even a raft, I would have taken it alone to get you help. I stood at the edge of the shore, with the broken planks and bloated fish floating in The Sound, and actually thought about swimming across. Quite a feat, since I couldn’t swim a stroke, but the memory of that glassy look in your eyes caused me to shudder. Didn’t people get something called brain fever? It had to be, for you not to recognize me. Why hadn’t I studied medicine instead of a subject as useless as engineering science? What good was all that math and logic now?