Something She Can Feel

by Grace Octavia

  “But if you can’t take it, you have to tell Daddy.”

  “I’ve been trying to tell your father to cut the hair growing on the tops of his ears for forty years—you think he’s going to listen to me about a church?”

  “But this is your life, too. You have rights.”

  “I know. But when I signed up for this thing, marrying your father, I knew I’d have to share him ...” —she paused—“with the church. The pastor’s wife is never selfish.” She spooned the soup and then looked up at me, a refreshed smile now on her face, but thin tears in her eyes. “So, tell me, how are things with Evan?”

  “We’re fine,” I said. “Just doing what we do.” I knew better than to tell her about the fizzing in my stomach.

  “Your father tells me that Evan’s really considering running for mayor next year.”

  “He’s still getting some things in order. If we get the right backing, I think he’s going to try.”

  “That’ll be something, won’t it? A black man in the mayor’s office in Tuscaloosa and one in the White House in Washington, D.C.” She matched my grin with a hearty laugh.

  “Let’s not speak too soon.”

  The waitress slid our bill onto the table as my mother looked off reminiscently.

  “I remember a South where none of this was possible. But it’s good to see you young people changing things. Chasing your dreams,” she said.

  “Yeah, I’m still trying to figure out mine.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, putting cash onto the table.

  “Nothing,” I said, regretting my slip. I didn’t want to become the topic of conversation. And I was already late meeting Billie at my house so I could take the test.

  “No, really. Tell me,” she pushed.

  “It’s nothing, Mama. I just wonder sometimes what I’m doing with my life,” I blurted. “Jr is begging me to come work at the church. Daddy wants me in the choir. The kids need me at the school. Evan wants me at home. And I have no idea what I want. I know I love teaching, but I don’t know if I want to do that forever. It’s like you said at church the other week, I’m thirty-three and I feel like I should have all this figured out by now.”

  “Dear, I told you that so you could see the blessing that your life is and move ahead in that peace,” she said. “You know your father picked out your name, and sometimes I think we cursed you with it. Because, forever, you’ve been trying to find somewhere to go when your life is right here.” She pat me on the hand and smiled meaningfully. “I’m not saying you need to just accept whatever life gives you, but you must have the wisdom to know when you have a good thing going.”

  “I know, Mama. But sometimes I wonder if a good thing is enough to make a life on. Like maybe there’s somewhere else for me to be. Something else for me to have.” I thought of Kayla and how she just packed up her life and moved South to chase love. I wished I had that kind of passion for anything.

  “No, listen to me. Some people search the planet looking for something to fill them up, never happy with anything. But in the end, they realize that everything they needed was right in front of them. They wouldn’t notice it only because they thought they could find something better.” She sat back and laughed. “When I was young and we were trying to go into town to just sit at white restaurants like this one and order a soda, we had a little joke. We’d ask if the apples in a black yard were better than those in a white yard. We always said the white ones were better. Bigger. Sweeter. But really, they just seemed better because we’d never had them ... and when we did have them, we’d fought so hard to get them that they just seemed better, bigger, and sweeter. But you know, after you have five of those apples, you realize that they’re all the same. In fact, those black apples are better because they came from your yard.”

  We got up and walked to the door and I tried to make reason of what she’d said. My mother always had a way of making everything sound so easy.

  “Now I don’t remember fighting over apples at all,” she added. “The joke was really about the way people see things.”

  We stopped in the doorway and she turned to look at me, her honey eyes soft and calm.

  “Your life is what you perceive it to be, Journey. If you want to be happy, you will be. If you don’t want to be happy, you won’t. It’s that simple. You have a good life. You just have to take time to look at it,” she finished, rummaging in her purse as we both searched for our keys before walking out of the airconditioned opening.

  “Oh, no,” she said, peering down in the bag. “I think I left my keys on the table.”

  “You sure?” I asked.

  “I had to.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get them.”

  “You don’t have to,” she offered when I’d already turned to retrieve the keys.

  As I headed back toward the door, I noticed my mother standing outside talking to Deacon Gresham—one of my parents’ childhood friends who’d been with the church forever. He was a handsome man, one whose good looks hadn’t faded with gray hair and a cane-assisted step. Deacon Gresham was always sharply dressed and wearing or carrying a hat to match his handkerchief-donned jackets. A retired attorney, his wife of forty years had died a little over a year ago and he’d become the choice chatter of my mother’s circle. Grandmothers and some great-grandmothers, they sounded like teenagers when they plotted over dessert as to who’d get with Deacon Gresham.

  I could see that his face looked stressed, his jaw was tight, and he hadn’t smiled. He looked at me and then shifted his eyes very sternly back to my mother. She turned to me, shooting a blank stare, as he said something and then walked away.

  “You found the keys,” my mother said, smiling nimbly when I came out.

  “Yeah, they were on the table.” I handed her the keys and looked down the street to see the back of Deacon Gresham. “Why didn’t he stay to say hello?”

  “Oh, Journey, I don’t think he saw you.”

  “He looked right at me.”

  “We were,” she started slowly, “supposed to have lunch.”

  “I thought you said you canceled a business meeting.”

  “We just meet for lunch sometimes. He’s still very sad about Emma, so we talk about old times.”

  “Okay, but I just don’t understand why he walked off like that.” I looked back down the street. He was gone now. “Anyway, I’d better get going. I have to meet Billie.” I looked at my watch.

  “Give her my love,” my mother said, asking not one more question about where we were meeting or what we were doing. This was more than a rarity, but a welcomed departure I was in no position to question.

  “Okay,” I said quickly.

  We traded pleasant kisses and departed.

  In the car ride home to meet Billie and take the pregnancy tests, the discussion I had with my mother reverberated throughout my mind. Here, I’d signed up to start a new life and it seemed I had no clue how I fit into my own. Now how was that? How was I thirty-three and so unsure about everything around me? I wanted to put on my high-heel shoes, click around confidently like Kayla, chasing love and life like I knew exactly where I wanted to be. When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being bold like that. Of just doing what I wanted to do and not caring about what other people thought. But at some point, I just went numb and accepted less from myself.

  “That’s how life’s lined up,” Jr said to me when I was sitting in the passenger seat of his car after he’d been sent to get me from a party in shack town my parents specifically told me I couldn’t attend when I was fourteen. Billie was in the backseat and we both had our arms folded over our chests, angry at the world that he’d barged in and embarrassed us. “You can’t go acting however you want out in public. You’re a wild child, Journey, but you’ll learn that people don’t like to see you step out of line.”

  And he was right. After years of being kicked in place, I realized that I was just happier when people liked to see me. I hated to think about that. How I’d learned to
stand in line and like it. How I’d been numbed.

  But was my mother right? Was I ... was Kayla ... seeking apples that weren’t sweeter than the ones we had?

  If being a happy adult meant being thirty-three with a mortgage, husband, tenured job, and loving family and friends, then I’d done that. I was something my family could be proud of, healthy and as happy as I’d expected I could be in my grown mind. Yes, I still had unfulfilled fantasies and got tired of being where I was being, but in no story I knew had an adult not felt that way. It seemed that, like my mother said, people were always just chasing something else. Maybe she was right.

  The Storyteller

  June 23, 2008

  Afternoon in the Sky

  “Were you pregnant?” Kweku asked, sitting up impatiently. The dignified demeanor he maintained when we boarded the plane at sunrise in Accra had now been reduced to that of a high school girl sitting in the bleachers, listening to the latest gossip. “What happened at the house with Billie and what was going on with that deacon at the restaurant? Did you ask your mother about it again?”

  It was early afternoon. And the flight attendants announced that we were halfway to a layover in Amsterdam. Kweku and I eased into our routine as neighbors, chatting and passing snacks and drinks along when the flight attendants did their rounds. The baby a few rows back was crying again, but we’d been in the air for a long time now and Kweku and I joked that she must be wondering why on God’s earth her mother still had her on that plane. “Let me off,” we joked, translating her cries.

  Kweku was a great listener and even though he was a man, I felt so comfortable sharing even the most intimate things with him—some things that two months ago, I wouldn’t have dreamed of uttering to another person beyond Billie. But here I was, not giggling or covering my mouth, but sharing my story like a grown woman and knowing deep down that this was a good thing. I needed to hear my story. To remind myself of how things were before that plane touched down. In this way, I guessed Kweku wasn’t a friend or even the guy who was just sitting next to me on the plane. He was an ear. And I really needed someone to listen.

  “No, I wasn’t pregnant,” I said. “Billie and I did all fourteen of those tests and each time we saw a ‘negative.’ ”

  Kweku repositioned himself worriedly.

  “I wasn’t upset,” I said, patting his arm. “It was odd, but when I realized I wasn’t pregnant, I felt kind of relieved. Like ... maybe it wasn’t meant to be or ... maybe it wasn’t time yet. Evan and I hadn’t been trying long and if we really wanted a baby, it would come. God would see to it. I had to trust that.”

  “Faith is sometimes the only thing that can get you through times like that.”

  “That and a little uncertainty,” I said. “Maybe God knew I needed a little time.”

  “So what did Ms. Billie have to say about it?” Kweku asked. He seemed to like hearing about her.

  “She’s my best friend, so she had my back either way. We hugged and she said it would be okay. But really, I think she knew what I was thinking inside about it. Your friends tend to know what you’re really feeling—even if they don’t say it aloud.”

  Kweku turned and looked through the sliver of space between our seats at a white man who’d been listening, I was sure, to most of my story. Each time I lowered my voice, I saw him nod forward. And sometimes, when we were laughing, I heard a chuckle come from behind.

  “Are you okay ?” Kweku asked the man gruffly.

  “Yes.” He responded and turned his head as if to say he was no longer listening to us, but I knew better.

  “Anyway,” Kweku went on. “I’m afraid to ask, but what about the deacon?”

  “At the time, I just kept thinking of reasons why my mother would be meeting with Deacon Gresham. I mean, it was clear something was going on. My mother was no liar and ‘lie’ was written all over her face. And then when I got to the house, I ran it past Billie and she reminded me of what Deacon Gresham did for a living.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a divorce attorney. One of the biggest in the city. And if my mother was meeting up with him for lunch ...”

  “She was trying to get a divorce?”

  “You’ve already heard—my father wasn’t the easiest man to be married to. And with everything she was complaining about at lunch, it had to be so,” I said. “And the sad thing was that I was only a little upset. I was more concerned about my mother and that she was obviously going through this on her own. I wished I could be there for her, but she wasn’t the kind of woman I could call up and say, ‘Are you trying to divorce Daddy ?’ That would break her heart. She still thought of me as a baby. I had to wait and catch her at the right time.”

  “I know this. My mother, whenever you say too much she doesn’t want to hear, she just stops listening. Like she’s deaf. You call her, and she says nothing,” Kweku said, and we both laughed ... along with the man behind me.

  “American mothers do the same thing. Just block you out. I think it comes with giving birth.”

  “So, was your husband sad about your not getting pregnant ?” Kweku asked, folding back to the start of our conversation.

  “I didn’t even tell him. Evan and I were having so much fun just being lovers again that I didn’t want to ruin it. I figured I’d keep things quiet until he asked. And there was the business of his running for office. The school. The church. We were already dealing with a lot. Mentioning the test would just make the baby thing a race. That’s his way.”

  “Yes, and this Dame fellow,” Kweku said and I felt my heart flush its blood out everywhere. “It sounds like that was troubling you, too.”

  “Yeah,” I started and pressed myself back into my seat. “That was another part of the story.”

  I looked out of the window and saw that the sky was so bright that it seemed it didn’t expect that sunset would ever come.

  I gasped and tapped at the glass, covering one of the clouds with my fingertips.

  Was I ready to tell this part of the story ? I wondered in my long pause. Was I ready to remember those good times ?

  PART TWO

  Taste

  Chapter Nine

  April 29, 2008

  Tuscaloosa, AL

  Everybody was moving. From here. To there. Over and around. The school was like an ant farm turned upside down. And not just the teachers either. The kids. Girls and boys I hadn’t seen in months were posted up in the hallways giggling and holding books in their arms I knew they hadn’t seen since the first day of school. I had full attendance in all of my morning classes and even a few students who didn’t have my class were trying to get in. And I couldn’t say no. The cafeteria was overflowing. From the cafeteria workers to the oldest teachers who knew nothing about Dame or his music, it was apparent that this was the biggest thing that had ever happened at Black Warrior. The most attention we’d gotten from the world in ... forever. Television crews? A star? In our school? Our school? The little old school for black kids that was started in a farmhouse on a plantation that once had slaves? Everyone was beside themselves. But I’d yet to feel the excitement.

  I was still uneasy about my role in this whole thing, but a new piano, instruments for the band, and a proper sound system made it easier to accept the check from Dame. “You heard your father at dinner,” Evan said, bringing up the topic again one night as we sat out on the lake talking. “That boy has a bad reputation and that could hurt me later on. Those white boys downtown would love to tie me to some rapper when I run for mayor. That’s all they need. But if you do it, we can say he was one of your students and that’ll be it. Besides, he asked for you.”

  When fourth period came, and we were all just a few seconds shy of Dame’s arrival, I stood in the lobby of the school with my fourth-period students collected in a huddle of excitement behind me. Along with a few other classes, mine was selected to greet Dame at the door for his tour with the camera crews from BET, while the other students waited in the auditorium. />
  “When he coming?” Opal asked after I’d just managed to calm down my class again. Like a few other girls, she was wearing a T-shirt that read “The Same Dame” across the front and had a picture of Dame with no shirt on, oiled completely and flexing in the middle.

  “My cousin say his tour bus just left the Waffle House on McFarland,” Devin King, the jokester of the class, said, tucking his cell phone into his pocket.

  “What, that fool want his hash browns scattered, covered and smothered or something?” someone said, and everyone laughed.

  “Yeah,” Opal jumped in, fanning herself. “Get his order. I want to know what he’s eating, so I can make it in the morning.”

  “Girl, you ain’t got to worry about nobody being with you in the morning with those buck teeth you got,” Devin said, and the laughter grew louder.

  “Okay. Okay. You all calm down or we’re going back to the classroom,” I threatened, beginning to feel their anxiousness.

  The BET camera crew was busy setting up. Men dressed in T-shirts and shorts with equipment hanging from their hips pointed to this and that and recalculated measurements for some other thing. Bright flood lights were perched here and there in the lobby like we were on a real television set. And while I’d opted to do my own makeup, they even had Evan in a folding chair in the bathroom with a stylist. He decided to wear his favorite tan suit with a blue shirt and golden tie. He looked like a regular good ol’ frat boy. Just one of the guys.

  “Move fast!” I heard one of the crew people say to a man carrying a camera as they ran by. “I want to get a shot of him walking in. Shoot him and then these people standing all around.”

  “You guys ready?” another crew member asked, standing on a ladder and trying to organize the growing crowd. “Dame’s about to come in here and we’ll all get a glimpse of him. Let’s just remember to be patient.”

  Having stepped away from my students to stand in a row of teachers who lined the head of the crowd blocking the doorway, I looked up to see Billie’s eyes frozen, transfixed on the door. “He’s coming,” she said breathlessly as she might have at a Bobby Brown concert when we were thirteen. Her brown eyes were opened wide and the flashes from cameras flickered there for a second.