We Are Taking Only What We Need

by Stephanie Powell Watts

  “Get your brother,” she whispered and opened the car’s tank-sized door. She gathered a garbage bag full of necessities. Gary had slept most of the three-hour trip. Suited me. I liked him best asleep, even when he was a baby; I’d watch him or suck on his downy ear. In many years from that day, Gary will be asleep in the back of my Honda, his cheek pressed against the circular door handle. He’d wake up to a bright open field in Allegheny County, decorated by my friends with balloons and grocery-store bouquets.

  “You’re getting married,” he’d say, like that was the first he’d heard of it.

  Mama fumbled with the key and the overstuffed bag. Instead of rushing in the door, she turned to us and smiled. It’s okay, her grin said, we’ve arrived.

  When I remember her walking those few steps from the car, starting her new life with us, I imagine her different, a generation removed, a fifties housewife with an elegant bun, the hem of her sheath dress hovering just around the knee. But the mind plays tricks. Mama was a seventies woman, fresh-faced and young with hip-huggers and a daisy print polyester shirt, green eye shadow to her brows.

  Gary and I entered the apartment behind Mama like moon walkers, our steps big and deliberate. We had never moved anywhere before and had never seen the nakedness of empty rooms. “Don’t worry, we’ll get stuff,” Mama tossed off like the insulation of things was something she’d never considered important.

  “Stay here,” she said and went back out to the car for the rest of what we’d salvaged from home this morning. We’d packed all we could get into trash bags. Only the necessities, panties, shirts, nightgowns, we stuffed as Mama conducted and raced around the house trying to remember what we had to have. “Faster,” she’d said again and again, making us panic and scared to get it wrong and have to start again. But this was no drill. Mama had been secretive for days at least, stretching the already long cord of the wall phone down the hall from the kitchen and into the bathroom. Through the crack between the cord and the doorjamb I could see her sitting on the toilet, waving her free hand, her words eaten up by the water she ran in the sink. When she came out, she wanted to talk, I knew it, but she wouldn’t. Gary and I would be dragging into school, our homeroom teachers looking grim—if I have to be on time, you do, too, on their pale faces—but she didn’t explain.

  “This will be yours and Gary’s room. It’s the biggest one,” Mama whispered to me. I was supposed to be impressed. I’d always wanted my own room. My best friend back home had one, but she was an only child. Things were different for them. Sharing this biggest room in the apartment was my mother’s olive branch to me, the only gift she had to offer.

  My mother walked to the end of the hall, running her fingers behind her. Her hand was shaking, her white-frosted nails tapping, betraying what I didn’t see in her face. “What a nice color this taupe,” she said. “We’ll need to get some taupe drapes to match, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t know where my mother got the word taupe, but I hated it. I wanted to tell her that she was lying, that she never said taupe before. I wanted to scream it at her to stop the singing in her voice. I had to put my finger to my own lips, squeeze my eyes shut tight to keep from screaming, tan, tan, tan.

  The tour done, we didn’t know what else to do. The events of the day had made us tentative and strange together. Anything could happen. We hung close to Mama. Kept her in our sights.

  Mama found our heavy yellow phone and plugged it up in her bedroom. Gary and I sat around it like adoring magi. The phone made us all more civilized, though it did look lonely on the floor by itself, Daddy’s childish lettering Alexander in the circle on the rotary dial. Our phone number for years 758–9349 underneath. Mama tried it, put the receiver to her ear. “Nothing yet,” she chirped, a little calmer now it seemed that she’d found something to do.

  “Mama, can we get two phones? Another one, I mean?” I hadn’t meant to sound like such a child or to get caught up in my mother’s excitement, but I’d inadvertently done both.

  “Two phones?” my mother laughed, a magician on the precipice of an even greater trick. “Tomorrow,” she whispered, “we’ll be ready to talk to the world.” That’s how she made the most mundane things seem like a wonder.

  THAT FIRST NIGHT we didn’t have a television or radio in the apartment, so Mama and I read to each other. Mama loved self-help magazines, anything to make us thriftier, more beautiful, our lives as neat and manageable as the white models on the pages.

  “Make a mask from honey and oatmeal that will get rid of those bumps,” Mama said, pointing to the headline and the peach-faced model on the page. I felt the outbreaks of tiny whiteheads on my forehead and chin. I feared their spread more than anything.

  “Give me one,” Mama said, letting the slick magazine fall in a heap over her crossed legs.

  “A little table salt will get out red-wine stains,” I mumbled, still worrying about my face, wondering if the bumps were that visible. Mama’s said that pimples don’t show so much on brown-skinned people. “What if you had pink skin?” she’d said. “You’d be a mess.”

  “Enunciate, Tasha, what does your magazine say about wine?”

  I read slowly and precisely. I wanted Mama to know I was mocking her a little. “Pour a little table salt on a red-wine spill for easy cleanup. Okay? Satisfied?”

  I’d never seen any wine in our house. We didn’t have wine glasses that I knew of. Sometimes when my mother and father had their friends around or Daddy’d play cards, I’d watch my mother take measured sips of beer from wide-mouth green bottles. She’d hold the bottle like a princess, not like the other wives who gulped like men, their throats bobbing and eager. Mama never finished the whole beer. Small as the bottle was, she’d make sure to leave a ring of fluid at the bottom, politely leaving some behind, proving if only to herself, I’ve got plenty. Mama had her rules.

  Daddy had rules, too. He wouldn’t allow the wet bottoms of the beer to touch his kitchen table he’d salvaged from Plant 3. He said that the tabletop alone would cost hundreds of dollars if somebody hadn’t forced the edge into the saw blade, killed the rhythm of the wood.

  “You never drunk any wine. What do you care?” I said with more venom than I actually felt.

  “Well, who knows what I’ll do now,” my mother said, picking up her magazine again. She didn’t seem irritated with me like she could sometimes. She was being sweet today, but her sweetness scared me. I wanted her to treat me like a child and a nobody, and then I’d know what to do.

  Mama motioned for me to help her with Gary, lead his sloppy body to the pile of blankets in our room. He whimpered a little, questioning if the full-throat cry was worth it, then he decided against it and went back to sleep.

  “Want to sleep in the living room?” Mama said.

  I nodded, not trusting my voice to hold steady.

  “Beds will be the first thing we’ll get, Tash,” Mama said, shrugging her shoulders in what looked like embarrassment. That was the worst. I didn’t want to see her anything but sure.

  Mama and I sat on the floor, our backs against the wall. We read our magazines a couple of times, until Mama decided we should sleep. The solitude of the room, new plastic blinds, the walls, and the tan carpet, all of it fit for a county hospital, with so little personality in so much light. Through the windows, the street lamps shone, and I felt exposed and microscopic. I could feel God examining me to determine disease. In Millsap, our home on our dirt road, we didn’t have a single street lamp. Not one. So the night never eased or seeped in but descended like a warehouse door. At home after dark, I couldn’t see my own hand waving in the air over my head.

  Gary’s heavy, sleep-thick breathing like a baby or a fat man was audible all the way in the living room. My mother only pretended to sleep. Her taut waiting curved her back in an awkward bow. She wouldn’t go unless she thought I was asleep. I knew that. After a while she stood up and shook the thin blue blanket from her legs and walked out the front door. The blue light from the lamp
flooded the room. The cavalry had come, I was found. The rescuers had finally arrived at the well we’d all fallen into. I waited until I heard the click of the car handle and the secure sound of the door closing on its frame. My mother sat behind the wheel, her hands like a child at play. She rested her head on the car seat almost reclining. I’d stand at the window, see her black silhouette. As long as I could I’d make sure she wouldn’t leave. Did she know how easy it would be to turn the key all the way, back the few yards from the parking space and drive away?

  “I HAVE TO GET A JOB,” Mama said. She’d saved enough money from her job back home to get us the apartment, but she didn’t have much extra.

  “Should we be buying doughnuts and things?” I said, looking at the expensive carton of orange juice my mother brought back from the store. We never got the name brands.

  “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” Mama smiled into her cup of coffee. “We can worry about it later.”

  Mama had already gotten showered and dressed by the time I woke up. She was going out for a couple of hours to find a job, any job.

  “You’re going to like it here, Tash. A big place like this, you can have everything you ever wanted.”

  I thought everything sounded very good. But I was wiping my icing-coated fingers on the same shirt I had on the day before. Everything seemed far away.

  “Don’t open this door for nobody. And if you go outside, make sure you take this key,” Mama pointed to the kitchen counter. “Or leave the door open. What have we got to steal?”

  I nodded, sipped my juice. I didn’t want Mama to go. I was afraid of this new place, afraid of being in all this nothing by myself.

  MAMA HAD BEEN GONE maybe an hour when Gary and I decided to go outside. I picked up the key from the counter, and we walked slowly outside into the grass, like visitors.

  “Let’s just walk to the end of the curve along here,” I said. We walked around the block, looking for kids, though we didn’t say so to each other. If there were kids around, they’d all be in school for hours still. I was already forgetting about the routine, my classroom, the cheerful bulletin boards, the small wooden desks, light-green commercial-grade carpet on the concrete floors, everything distant like it had all happened to someone else in another generation. I hadn’t been to school in two days, which wasn’t so ridiculous, but I hadn’t talked to any of my friends. They would have to wonder why I didn’t answer my phone or why I didn’t call. I thought they were probably jealous. I was on an adventure. Maybe Mama knew more about how life is lived in cities than she did in the country and all she needed was a chance to get out of the life that was holding her back, making her just a pretty face in a hick town. Maybe she had plans for me, too.

  No one back home would worry. In my childhood, people didn’t go missing, here now and gone forever. Later when I learned more, when the world changed and women, children, even men sometimes were lost in just one day, never seen again on earth, people took notice when someone didn’t show up. But nobody thought that way in 1975. Besides, Mama’s best friend Trina probably knew everything, and I know she would waste no time telling. I’d heard Trina say many times that if she thought she could do better than Little George she’d be gone in a minute. She’d said she would start all over somewhere easy as pie. Like life is a series of decisions for better or worse like the game you play with children. You hold your fists in front of you, where is it, the left or right hand? Either way, win or lose, didn’t matter, it was only a penny.

  We’d seen just a few people getting into cars or driving along the road, but not a single child. I reached into my pocket for the key, but it was gone. At our house in Millsap, at least one window was always unlocked. Once when Mama lost her key, she boosted me into the house. I crossed Gary’s dark bedroom, excited but afraid that some object would suddenly take on life or be someplace it shouldn’t. I’d felt in front of me with Frankenstein arms to the back door; ready to save the waiting family.

  “Okay, Gary, I need you to help me find the key.”

  “What key? I ain’t got a key?”

  “I know you don’t,” I said, feeling my voice thicken. “I had it, and now I can’t find it. You have to help me. Let’s start walking where we were, okay?”

  “Just bust the window,” Gary said, kicking his shoe against the curb. “I don’t want to walk anymore.”

  On the side of the apartment, the windows were the slide kind, not the up and down we were used to, and they were high. I tried to boost Gary but he couldn’t reach what we were both sure was a locked window.

  “Okay then, you stay right here,” I said pointing my finger at Gary. I walked around to where we’d just been. The key could be anywhere.

  “What we have to do is sit out here until Mama comes,” I said, feeling my mother’s fake cheerfulness on my face.

  “Let’s just bust one,” Gary whined. I wanted to agree. If Gary broke the window, it wouldn’t be so bad. He would be forgiven. Why we wanted to get inside I can’t imagine. The apartment creaked with emptiness. The few items looked like something forgotten or leftover. The outside should have comforted us and probably it would have if we could have recognized it. But this outside had no trees, a big menacing sky without the interruption of hills, young grass that would never take root in places. We sat in front of the door too defeated to play games.

  “Who are ya’ll?” said an older woman, her fuzz of white hair pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck, her face doughy and full.

  “We just moved here,” I said. “We just got here.” I could see over the woman’s shoulder, her big couch, console television and on the wall a painting of Jesus with a staff leading fluffy sheep. Clustered around Jesus were a dozen or so school pictures of homely children.

  “Why are ya’ll sitting out here?”

  “We’re locked out,” Gary said. I could have smacked him right then. Everybody didn’t need to know our business.

  “All right then,” the woman glared at us without speaking, like she would be watching our every move.

  AS SOON AS MAMA CAME, I was so relieved I could have cried. The day could change for us. Her presence was proof. Mama wasn’t smiling. Her hair had fallen around her face, and she’d taken off the jacket to her good suit.

  “I can’t trust you for a minute,” she yelled. “You’ve got a whole new life and you just waste it,” she said over her shoulder while she and Gary went inside. Gary closed the door behind him. I could wait. I wanted to tell Mama I’d put the key in my pocket, but it was gone. I wanted to promise something, but I couldn’t imagine what. But I knew she wasn’t ready to care, and right now it was best if she thought I suffered. I would stay outside until I died, until the weather or starvation killed me. She could stand some suffering, too.

  THE PHONE RANG for the first time at the apartment. I just knew it was Daddy. I had expected him to come to the door any minute. I almost thought I heard his heavy step that morning. He couldn’t know where we were. Could he? But I couldn’t shake the idea that he would find out somehow. But it wasn’t Daddy. Mama ducked her head to protect her words, a smile I didn’t recognize on half of her lips.

  “Who was that, Mama?” I said as my mother closed the bathroom door. She pretended she hadn’t heard me and turned on the water to the sink, rummaged through her pocketbook, the click of the plastic compact falling to the floor.

  “Mama,” I yelled. “Who called?” I pressed my ear against the door to listen for Mama’s sigh or the quick stop of her activity that meant she was angry and I’d gone too far.

  “Just a friend. Don’t be so nosy.”

  In the living room, Gary’d found a board game and had made up a version that involved throwing the game’s instruction cards on the empty board.

  “GET THE DOOR,” Mama yelled from the bathroom. Gary jumped up to open it for a man I’d seen before, somebody from home. Our washing machine had broken down months before, and Mama had to go to the Whistle Clean Laundromat at the c
rossroads. Mama never did anything without the children, so we all packed in the Nova around the stinky clothes, breathing the fumes from the detergent that always managed to spill on the floorboard. I hated the Laundromat and feared my friends would see me in there putting clothes in those common washers, feeding the dimes into the machines. If anyone I knew saw me, I was going to say that our machine broke the night before. Gary didn’t mind the place, but he minded little. Instead he entertained himself with the spinning clothes and long-slick tables to race his Matchbox cars. The man in our apartment had been there when we were. Not just once. A part of the mystery clicked into place.

  “Gary, you and Tash say hello to my friend, Reggie,” Mama said. “Say something.”

  “Wait one second,” Reggie said and ran out to his car, a portable television under his arm.

  “I bet ya’ll miss this, don’t you?”

  “That is so nice, what do you say kids?”

  “Thank you,” Gary said and sat in front of the box, trying to find a channel with any reception.

  “That is so nice,” Mama said, smiling up at Reggie.

  You could hardly make out anything for the snow on the screen, and the picture rolled, but Gary didn’t seem to mind. I could hear the song in my mother’s voice as she described the rooms to Reggie, the drapes she would buy. Reggie said little, seemingly used to my mother’s plans.

  “Watch television for a while. I’ll be back,” Mama said, and Reggie followed her out the front door.

  “Where are you going?” I said to my mother, trying to fix my eyes so that Reggie was not at all in my line of sight.

  “Just outside,” my mother grinned.

  I had known for a long time that my mother didn’t love my father. I just hadn’t realized until that moment that there might be consequences.