She calls it poison, and she takes her herbs and seems to live at the acupuncture clinic on Canal. I don’t worry about her in a way that shows, but in the back of my mind I’m always primed for the phone to ring.
She releases the girls in a prayer, and they approach her one by one to say goodbye.
“Love you, Gladys,” they whisper in her ear as they embrace.
They are teenage girls, many with two jobs, none with stable housing; they’ve got baby daddies and bills holding them below water, like me, but my mother has lifted them to another state just now, and it’s miraculous to behold.
When it’s just us, she walks over and tries to hug me, and I allow it for a minute but not much longer.
I know she’s not going to be happy with me, moving in with the other side, so I want to lay it out fast.
“Mama,” I say, but she cuts me off.
“Girl with the yellow braids lost her baby last time. She needs a lot of support. A lot of support.” She looks up at me like she’s coming out of a trance. “Anyway, I knew you were coming over today. I dreamed that I was on an airplane and we turned back before it ascended fully. Knew immediately what it meant.”
“Mama, what does an airplane have to do with me?”
“Expect the unexpected, it said. My grandmother, Lucille, she talks to me through transportation. Anyway, you look good, glowing. You off from work?”
“More or less,” I say.
“Uh oh. More or less, come into the kitchen. I’m going to need my tea for ‘more or less.’ Expect the unexpected,” she repeats as we walk.
Her kitchen was updated years ago but it still seems new with her granite island countertop overlooking the living room and the beige-and-coffee-brown tiled backsplash. Her floors are hardwood but there are Persian rugs that pop with color, piercing blues and orange and African masks on the wall from a trip to Zimbabwe two winters ago. She framed her favorite inspirational phrases, God is all there is. He is in me and he is me. There’s a pot of jambalaya on the stove. No sausage or shrimp inside, of course, but you wouldn’t know it from the smell, and I might as well be ten years old again wondering if I can have a scoop of ice cream after dinner for dessert.
“Mama, I moved,” I say.
She places a kettle of water on to boil and then walks over to stand beside me.
I know what she’s thinking, Again, and I wait for her to say it but it doesn’t come.
“It must be nice,” she says smiling. “You look happy, it must be nice.” She sounds almost desperate to believe what she’s saying.
“It is, Mama. I want you to see it. It’s really nice.”
“Well, where is it?” she asks. I hear the kettle go off. But she doesn’t get up to pour the water. She just looks at me.
“I moved in with Grandma Martha,” I say, and she takes it in. I remember when King was a baby and I would tell him no. He wouldn’t always react right away; sometimes he had to find his way over to the scream.
I keep talking to fill the void.
“She needed extra help at night. I was just laid off, and even when I was working, I was missing King. Some of the kids at school were after him. I told you about the fight.”
She nods.
“She’s paying me my old salary. Double when you consider it’s rent-free. Can you imagine what I can do with that money? No rent to pay. By the end of the year, I was thinking I could have enough saved up to buy.” I lower my voice. I’m scared just saying it. “A townhouse or something, nothing too big, but . . .”
She smiles, and I feel the release of the weight of the words inside me.
“What do you think?” I ask. “I would have asked you first, but it just came to me, like inspiration, you always say, and I didn’t want to have to ask for permission. I’m thirty-four now. I’m a grown-ass woman, and I guess I just got tired of running everything by my mama first.” I want to keep talking to smooth over the awkwardness building, but there’s nothing more to say.
She doesn’t respond for a while, just keeps staring at me.
“You did the right thing,” she says finally. “It seems to me you did the right thing.” She nods, while she thinks it over, like somebody tasting food, considering if she should add salt. “I mean, I always thought you would be such a good doula. If you wanted to try that now, it seems like it’d be the perfect time. You just have a special way with people when they’re not at their best. When you were a little girl, you’d always know when I needed an extra hug. On airplanes, grown people would sit next to you, tell you their secrets, stories they’d never shared with anyone else.” She stops herself. “Never mind, you did right, girl. I’m proud of you,” and she is that warm and loving woman I’ve glimpsed more with her clients than with me, but I’ll take it, especially because I never have to wonder what my mother is thinking. If she says it, it’s real.
“Thank you, Mama,” I say.
She goes for the tea.
“King in school,” she goes on. “You all closer with each other.” She is still nodding as she passes me my cup. “That all sounds right on, baby girl,” she repeats.
“Thank you, Mama,” I say. “I’m so relieved to hear you say that.”
She pauses to drink. “I’m not going to be here forever, you know.”
I set my own cup down. I hate it when she talks like this.
“It’s true, it’s true. Might as well face it, it’s the one thing we can count on. And you need to be self-sufficient once I’m gone, like you’re doing,” she adds. “Like you’re doing.”
I see her skin has become looser around the neck. I’ve heard enough this week about mortality, so when she suggests going to the back to work in her garden, I am right behind her.
She is nimble and quick on her feet. There’s a chair planted in the dirt and I sit and watch her while she knifes the stems of okra just above their caps. She talks while she works: she says that she still remembers the smell of the earth on her grandmother Lucille’s farm, that she never met her great-great-grandmother but that she knew she was a slave, that she’s been thinking about her more and more lately.
“Josephine,” she says, like I’ve never heard her say the name before. “Isn’t that pretty? I almost named you after her, but your daddy—” she shakes her head.
I tell her how happy I’ve been since I’ve moved, like all my mistakes from the past have been upended. I tell her about dinner the night before, how well I slept.
I lose time sitting there and when I look at my watch, it is after three, and I have to pick up King.
“Kiss him for me, you hear?” she calls out, running her fingers through the vegetables in her pail, and then she starts to say something, stops herself, then starts up again.
“And that lady, I know she’s good to you now,” she says. “And I’m happy for you, I am. But don’t forget you work for her. Don’t forget what she’s capable of. You’re her granddaughter, so it’s different, but I have to tell you, she wasn’t good to me. It was a different time back then, but I never forgot it.”
There she is, my old mother, but I don’t get upset hearing that. It soothes me rather; in this time of change, it is nice to be put at ease.
“Don’t get so caught up in the surroundings. Remember who you are. What did I used to tell you? Brilliant, beautiful girl. You have the power of your ancestors coursing through your veins.”
And I could have and I did. Until I met King’s daddy and twelve months later, I had dropped out of school and was cleaning up honey mustard sauce at the Burger King on Bullard. I went back to college when King turned two, finished even, but by then, the kids who had attended Ben Franklin with me had lapped me. I head west on I-10 now, get off on Claiborne, make a left on Napoleon, hit St. Charles. The Tulane girls run up and down the trolley tracks with their itty-bitty shorts on, and with the soft rhythm of the streetcars growing fainter in my ear, the mansions’ gas lamps flickering, I pass them by.
THINGS ARE SMOOTH FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS. I AM
tentative at first, a new guest, asking where the dry towels are in the morning, tiptoeing around Binh to pour the rum for the Dr. No’s my boy at Cure taught me, but by the end of the week I have made myself at home. I am calling up to King about cinnamon rolls, reorganizing the pantry so my grits are in the forefront. King is rifling through the fridge on his own initiative to make double meat sandwiches and lying down on the sofa to play Fortnite. Of course he makes friends, but it’s different this time. They’re little girls mostly, skinny white ones with blond hair they pull back in scrunchies, which are in again I guess. The main ones are named Harper and Claire, they wear tight yoga pants and neon shirts, and they wait with him until I pull up; then they follow him to the car, passing him notes, and hugging him, all, “Love ya, King.”
And to my absolute shock and horror, he responds. “Love you too.”
“Love you?” I turn to the backseat as we pull out. “What the hell is that about?”
He laughs. “Mama, they don’t really love me, it’s just how they say see you soon.”
“They better damn well say see you soon then,” I say. “I don’t like that,” I add.
“Calm down, Mama, they’re nice,” he goes on. “You said you wanted me to get comfortable.”
“I didn’t mean that comfortable,” I mumble, but I hear him. It’s nice to know he’s relaxing. In our old house, he’d bus home alone, and scramble together fragments of leftovers from the fridge. Here, I heat up exotic meals from the night before and sit with him while he starts his homework. It’s strange at first. I’m always trying to vacuum or chop onions only for Grandma to remind me there’s somebody here to do that for me, but I start to settle into the quiet. I hadn’t known how tired I was until I had the chance to sit down.
On the other hand, every now and then I yearn for a space of my own. Nothing outright unpleasant has happened. But as big as the house is, sharing it with Grandma makes it seem like close quarters. I am privy to the sounds of her sneezing, her clearing her throat, her women’s group filling up the dining room table knitting personalized pussy hats and weeping about Trump. She takes a nap at noon sprawled out on the sofa and her mouth hangs open. She usually dresses like her old self, but sometimes she comes downstairs uncharacteristically, once without her teeth and then a different time wearing large gold rings I wouldn’t have known she owned strewn out on every finger. I haven’t smelled the foul smell since that first time, but I am always on the lookout for it, and as much as I love her, I didn’t grow up with her, not really, and the intimacy of her decline feels too up-front.
It’s not only that, I can’t sleep, and when I do sleep, I don’t stay that way. I wake up and stare at the window. I’ve been having the same kinds of dreams as the first night, ghastly dreams that light up a sickening feeling I can’t place, and I am up with a start but it’s hard to remember anything concrete, only that someone was chasing me and nearly at my heels.
It doesn’t matter. I don’t dare complain. My money is piling up in my top drawer, cash because Grandma says she won’t allow me to throw half away to the man. I don’t fight her on it, but I count the bills each night for comfort. And King is happy. Every day he shares something he’s learned: coding, playwriting, film editing. For a midsemester project, he and the girls put together a music video to “24K Magic.” The camera shook so much it made me dizzy, and the girls danced like, well, bless their hearts, it was sweet to watch. I was just glad to see King’s curiosity is being stoked, and he’s safe—that’s all that matters.
THE LITTLE WHITE GIRLS HE BEFRIENDS HAVE MOTHERS. One day I’m waiting outside my car for King and I see them hurrying over to me, turning to each other and whispering, then picking up their pace. I’m on guard because of how pressed they seem but if I read it right, they are also giddy. They both have blond highlights, their brown roots poking out to say hello, but one wears lipstick and high boots with leggings and one is in workout gear with her hair pulled back in a bun.
“Are you King’s mom?” the overdressed one asks. She’s already smiling like she just can’t help herself.
I nod.
“I’m Claire’s mom.” She holds her hand out.
“And I’m Harper’s,” the other one follows suit.
I wait for the problem, for them to say something crazy about King hanging out with their girls. I prepare my response. If I’m honest, it’s been there waiting. I’ll tell them that King has a charm, that people from all walks of life are attracted to him, that it’s always been that way. I’ll tell them it’s their girls who call him every night and who initiate the texts, I’ve checked the phone. I’ll tell them that it’s harmless, that all they’re texting about is Bruno Mars, the Weeknd, and Janelle Monae, and he teaches them slang from his old school, but he doesn’t use curse words, I make sure of that myself. If they want it to stop, I’ll tell them to tell their girls to leave him alone, that King has options. But they are still smiling.
“We think it’s so great that the girls have taken to him so,” the dressy one says.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I mean they’ve always had each other. We went to Loyola together and the girls were in a nanny share, but it’s so nice to see them branching out.” This is from the athlete.
“I can already tell Claire’s more confident,” the dressy one says. “The teacher says she’s raising her hand more in class. She used to be so painfully shy, except with Harper.” The woman seems to be tearing up.
“We even have a name for them.”
“Three’s Company,” the athlete says.
“Three’s Company,” the dressy one repeats.
“I know it’s cheesy,” the athlete concedes, “but we think it’s so cute.”
“Did you ever watch that show?” the dressy one asks. “You’re probably too young. You look way younger than we do. We started late.”
“And I had to get IVF,” the athlete interjects.
The dressy one starts humming the theme song to the show, and the athlete joins her.
Sure enough, Three’s Company walk out now, arms linked, King in the middle. The mothers are singing, filling in the chorus with dance moves not unlike their daughters’ in the video. And a tension I didn’t know I was carrying seems to clear.
I’m so relieved I could join them in singing.
Instead we wave goodbye and get into the car. Grandma was napping when I left so King and I drive to Audubon Park for him to skateboard, then to my favorite snowball stand for a medium blue coconut cup for me and a large strawberry cheesecake for him. We walk down Magazine Street, window-shop in antique stores I can’t afford, and that used to bother me, but it feels like there’s a change on the horizon and I look in at the French side tables and armoires with an interest that feels justified, like it might lead me somewhere. The whole while I’m walking, I can’t get that song out of my head. I was too young to watch the show when it aired but Grandma Martha would play the reruns in the summer.
Come and dance on our floor
Take a step that is new
We’ve a lovable space that needs your face
Three’s company too
It’s dinnertime when I get back. King changes his clothes, and I look for Grandma Martha. She’s not downstairs or in her room. I check the library with its wall-to-wall bookshelves, Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, and a first-edition copy of To Kill A Mockingbird that Grandma Martha says she rereads each year. She’s not there either, and not in the study, the garage, or even out back in the yard with the fountain. Finally, I remember the laundry room and wind my way past the old servants’ quarters, and there she is, sitting in front of the washing machine hunched down, rubbing the crook in her neck. She’s wearing a bold pink sweater and red slacks. It would be unusual for her to choose just one of those colors, but her having paired them is alarming.
“Grandma Martha,” I say, approaching. “Is everything okay?”
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you, girl,” she snaps, and there is rage i
n her eyes.
She’s never spoken to me like that, but I am troubled more than offended.
“Are you okay?” I repeat.
“No.” She bursts into tears. “I can barely move my neck,” she says, “and you were supposed to be here.”
I settle in next to her when she won’t budge. I hold out my arms and she falls into them. Her face is wet against my chest. I look down and see a small line of blood trickling down her temple.
“Grandma, what happened?” I repeat, louder this time, reaching for a Kleenex in my purse. She says it’s nothing, that she didn’t notice her bathroom medicine cabinet was open, and I can see the flow of the blood has already ebbed. As she’s explaining, her medical alert goes off.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
She tells them it was a mistake, and she’s fine, and they hang up.
“Fix it,” she turns back to me. “Fix it, fix it.”
“Let me get a Band-Aid,” I say rising.
“No, not that, that’s nothing. I’m talking about the ache.” She points to the base of her neck, shouting all the while, until I am at work, curving my hands around her shoulder. She closes her eyes and moans, and I look away. It seems too intimate to witness so much pleasure, and to be the source of it. I am not quite sure what it stirs up in me.
“When did the pain start?” I ask to distract myself.
“About a month ago,” she says. “When I called you. It’s terrible, growing older, Ava,” she says. She is sobbing now. “You don’t know what to expect from one day to the next. Nothing stays the same, everything you thought you could count on is snatched out from under your feet, one at a time, in no particular order, no rhyme or reason.”
I am still kneading the spot, with the bottom of my palms now. “Nothing to be afraid of,” I say. “You got me now, and King.” I am still rubbing.
The Revisioners Page 5
