We Are Taking Only What We Need

by Stephanie Powell Watts

  “Right, right,” Mr. Clean said.

  I heard Mama’s trilling giggle from outside. I hadn’t heard that sound in a long time, maybe never. But now that I think more about it, I couldn’t remember hearing that sound before. She did seem happy. I should have been glad for her, but the cruel, little person, bitter with a long memory, was growing in my stomach, thumping loud enough for me to feel it in my chest.

  Mama and Reggie didn’t seem to be coming back anytime soon. I’d stayed awake but ended up missing Johnny Carson anyway. Mr. Clean wanted to watch some old black-and-white movie. He canted forward in the lawn chair, the start of stretch marks showing in the space between his shirt and shorts.

  Annie Belle rested on her back, looking at the new round ceiling fixture. “Look how clean that light is,” she said, pointing out the fixture to me. I looked to the ceiling.

  “This place is new,” I said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

  “That’s what I’m saying, girl,” she said. “Everything is new, the carpet, the lights, everything. Ya’ll are some lucky asses.”

  I was exhilarated when adults talked to me like I was grown. Maybe we were lucky asses. I wanted Annie Belle to know I understood.

  “Yeah, I’ve been lucky a few times,” Annie Belle said.

  “Who is that on the screen, Clean? Peter Rabbit?”

  “Where you see Peter Rabbit? This ain’t no cartoon.”

  “Clean, you know any black man named Peter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, you don’t,” Annie Belle stretched big, her shirt lifting over her pouting stomach. “You should go on to bed,” she said to me. “Your mama’s fine.”

  I wouldn’t look at Annie Belle. I wasn’t worried about Mama. I was afraid of the life we were building, an unhappy, unknowable one, at least for me.

  “Well, if you’re not going to bed, go in the kitchen and hand me that bag of potato chips.” Annie Belle arranged a blanket on the floor. I handed her the bag that was mostly just crumbs. She shook it. “This is almost too much trouble to eat,” she said, picking greasy crumbs from the pads of her fingers until the bag was empty. Annie Belle then stretched out on the blanket she brought, turned her back to me. “Clean, turn that mess down,” she said, “and the light. Somebody turn off that light.”

  IT WAS LATE. Later than I could ever remember being awake. Still, Mama was not back in her bed. I grabbed a plastic tumbler and took it to the bathroom. The water gurgled over the top of the large tumbler like a fountain, but I let it run, the way I never would at home with Daddy hovering, waiting to cry out some complaint I’d feel wave first in my knees and then just behind my eyes. Daddy was not here. I could do what I wanted. I waited at the sink, listening for some evidence that Annie Belle or Mr. Clean was awake. Annie Belle had looped her body around a blanket, and Mr. Clean’s thick neck was resting on his shoulder, the black-and-white figures on the television playing on his face.

  “Hello,” I whispered. “Hello,” I said a little louder. If someone woke and saw me, they could stop me. A single stream of water leaked along my forearm into the sleeve of my shirt as I carried the tumbler from the bathroom to Mama’s. I thought about taking the water with me to bed. I could use it in case of thirst, in case I woke with a cough, but I knew I wouldn’t. The sheets on Mama’s bed were twisted into a ball. I hated to see it. When this time comes to me in my future, I will not see the two flat sheets on the floor in a roll, the lumpy stained mattress lonesome in a boxy room. I will not see my mother’s clothing or the torn condom wrapper on the side. I poured the water onto the mattress. I couldn’t see it, the water soaked all the way through. I filled the tumbler again and two more times until the top of the bed was slick with it, my retreating hand left a puddle. My mother would think of me when she came to bed. That was enough for now. Gary was already asleep. I thought that I might have trouble, but I don’t even remember taking off my shoes, just finding an empty space.

  MY MOTHER JERKED ME AWAKE, her hands on my wrists. Come here, she said pulling me into the hall.

  It was still night, though barely so, and I heard few sounds, a distant car or two, but no voices. My mother held my wrists in front of her, her face twisted and tight, breathing into my face.

  I can see the words on her mind, words that she can’t decide whether to say.

  I want her to tell me what she will not suffer. I want her to rant at me, spit flying from her lips as she explains what is what. Mama flings my wrists back to me, folds her arms over her chest. “Where do you think you’re going to go?” she said and walked back into the apartment. I would have cried if I’d thought of it, but I hurried behind her, afraid she would lock the door.

  “What the hell’s wrong with her?” Reggie said as Mama returned to the bedroom. I didn’t go back to my bed. I couldn’t be sure that Reggie hadn’t flooded my side. I didn’t want to find out by feeling the clammy sheet on my back. The certain knowledge that my mother had chosen him.

  TWO DAYS LATER was a quiet one. Reggie left early with Annie Belle and Mr. Clean. I heard their commotion in the hall, Mama’s thanks over and over.

  “Tasha,” Mama called.

  “In a minute,” I whined.

  “Your daddy’s coming.”

  I felt guilty. I was guilty. Like the time I hovered over a rusty bucket in my grandfather’s basement afraid to go to the only bathroom in the darkest part of the house. I fumbled with the buttons on my pants, my hands damp from the trickle of piss I couldn’t control.

  Daddy must have heard about Reggie, about everything. I glanced at Mama as she washed the few tumblers and dishes, trying to see if she was nervous, too.

  “Is Daddy going to be mad at us?” Gary said. The very thing I wanted to say.

  “I don’t know,” Mama said, and she sounded like she really didn’t. I could hardly stand it. Couldn’t she do us the service of pretending everything was going to be fine?

  Gary watched from the window.

  “Get away from there. He’s coming soon enough,” Mama said. But every few minutes Gary would sneak back to the window.

  “Daddy,” Gary yelled and ran outside. Daddy parked beside Mama’s car, but before he could even get his door open, Gary was standing beside it. “Hey, baby,” he said, opening the car door. “How you doing?” Daddy kissed Gary quickly on the lips.

  I stood in the doorway not sure what to do.

  Daddy carried Gary on his chest to the door. “You gonna say something to your daddy?” Daddy put Gary down and stretched his arm out to me. I didn’t think of him as a real human being, never had, but in his arms I felt the tremble of his fingers as he gripped my shoulders.

  Daddy smelled good. He was dressed in the plaid shirt I’d seen a million times. His suit pants and Sunday shoes. Even I could see he tried.

  “Nora, you all right?” Daddy said, looking around the living room.

  “I’m fine, Calvin,” Mama said.

  “Good,” Daddy said.

  “Ya’ll okay. What have you been doing?” Daddy directed the question to Gary but watched my mother lean into the wall.

  “Nothing,” Gary said, rolling his eyes, eager to confess everything.

  “Good. Good.”

  “If you want to take the kids to eat there are plenty of places down Six Forks. The road you came in on. The kids are ready.”

  “I’m ready, Daddy,” Gary said.

  “Okay,” Daddy fingered the keys and change in his pocket. “Nora, I want to talk. Can we talk a few minutes, would you do that?”

  Mama pried herself from the wall, fastened her lips together. “Ya’ll stay in here,” she said.

  “Where are they going?” Gary whispered, but I wouldn’t look at him. I couldn’t answer anyway. We sat on the floor and waited, neither of us comfortable to sit on Reggie’s furniture. We pretended to watch television, but I turned the sound almost off, my parents conversation like the murmuring of water.

  “Okay,” Daddy said after a few minutes. �
��Come on, let’s eat.”

  Gary and I stood up, not sure if we should stay or go.

  “Go with your daddy,” Mama said as she walked to her bedroom, slammed the door, even the hollow door making us all jump.

  I went to sit up front in the Gran Torino, a treat I seldom experienced. I loved the black interior, clean but dingy from the red dust on our dirt road. Even the mysterious dashboard panels wearing thick plastic hoods, looking like eyelids. “Daddy, did you see my room?” Gary said.

  “Yeah, I saw it,” Daddy said, looking ahead.

  I opened the dashboard as Gary chattered. He was a good boy. I would not always appreciate that. I riffled through the papers the way I never would have before, Daddy’s obvious grief making me bold. An owner’s manual, bills yellowed and crinkled like they’d once been wet, a necklace I didn’t recognize broken at the latch. I couldn’t remember ever looking in the dashboard before. Any other time, I was sure Daddy would have noticed and yelled, slammed the plastic door shut without warning.

  Daddy stopped at Pizza King, a restaurant I didn’t remember, although we were five minutes from the apartment. We took a booth near the exit sign, in what I was sure was the coziest place there. Daddy ordered us sodas and pizza, and the three of us sat, not sure what to do.

  “When did Reggie come?” Daddy said, trying to make his voice sound light and unconcerned.

  Gary looked at me to answer.

  “I don’t know,” I said, but the lie fooled no one.

  “That’s your mama’s business, right?” Daddy stirred the ice in his tea. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or if I was supposed to answer.

  “You like him?” Daddy said, looking out the gingham-curtained window.

  “He’s okay,” Gary said.

  “I hate him,” I said, but I hadn’t realized I did until I said it out loud.

  “It’s wrong to hate,” Daddy said but seemed pleased.

  “I don’t really like him either,” Gary said.

  A white family entered the restaurant, young parents, with four little children. I wondered what we looked like to them: two kids without a mother, a divorced father? A widower? Was there anything about us that said rich, happy days?

  “This don’t feel right, does it?” Daddy covered the top of his head with his hands like he was being arrested. “Why did she come all the way down here?”

  Gary and I stared at our pizza and picked off the pepperoni and stacked them into piles.

  “Is your mama happy now? That’s all I need to know.” His neediness had a smell that almost gagged me.

  “She might be, Daddy,” though I didn’t know exactly what he meant. I thought happiness was living day to day without too much trouble, I didn’t know of other distinctions. Daddy leaned back in the booth.

  “Ya’ll are all I got,” he said. “I’ll come for you anywhere. You hear me?”

  THE WOODS ON EITHER SIDE of the road were being cleared of all the top-heavy pines to make way for strip malls and restaurants, a car wash sometime soon the sign said, a future bank. All this progress happening every day, making the remaining woods look out of place, a reminder of something that just didn’t exist any more. Forest Acres was quiet when we returned. Though it wasn’t late, I can’t remember a single person sitting on a stoop, watching a child or out for a minute of air before bed.

  “Are you staying, Daddy?” Gary said.

  “I’ll stay a little while,” Daddy hesitated a moment before opening the door to the house. Mama was on one of the folding chairs. She jumped when the door opened.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you, Nora,” Daddy said. “I knocked.”

  Reggie was sitting in the brown recliner. He stood when Daddy entered. He looked nervous, his one leg scratching the other heel making him look unsteady on his feet.

  “Reggie,” Daddy said and held out his hand to shake.

  “How you doing, Calvin?”

  “I’m all right, man.”

  Reggie didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.

  “It’s late. Go on to bed,” Mama said to Gary and me.

  “Ya’ll go ahead,” Daddy said putting the period on Mama’s sentence like we were back home. Neither Gary or I moved.

  Here is where some of the elements of the moment are vaporized and only here a few images flash into my head crystallized and complete. I know Daddy pulled a package of Camels from his shirt pocket, dangled a cigarette from his lips. I know the refrigerator motor started, a waste for just the six-pack of cheap beer, the single slices of bologna and cheese. My mother was a skinny girl in a T-shirt, her hair pulled tightly in a bun.

  “You want a beer,” Reggie said.

  Daddy studied his nicotine-stained fingers, “Naw,” he laughed. “I don’t want a beer.”

  “You should go on, Calvin,” Mama said.

  “I don’t have anywhere to go,” Daddy laughed and flicked the ashes from his cigarette to the floor.

  Mama didn’t say a word but watched the ashes fall to the new carpet. More than anything that had happened yet, her silence just then told me our lives were suddenly operating by different, more complicated rules.

  “Go to bed,” Daddy yelled, embarrassed that he raised his voice but too tired to take it back. We did move this time, but to the other side of the room.

  “Come on outside, Reggie,” Daddy motioned like he was coaxing a puppy. “Come on.”

  Reggie looked at my mother. He didn’t love her. Never had and now he never would. But that was part of what she liked. I have to give Reggie his due, he would play this thing out.

  “You don’t have to go, Reggie,” my mother said.

  “We can handle this, Nora,” Daddy said gently.

  “Calvin, just leave.”

  “I want to talk to the man. He’s the kind of man I’d like to have a beer with. Ain’t that right, Reggie?”

  “Right, Calvin,” Reggie smiled to reassure himself.

  It was five days since we left home. Still the middle of May, but every hour of it had crept around the clock. In this slow-motion life anything at all could happen. Our job it turns out was to wait for it, lean into it, hope to get a glimpse of the other side.

  “Can I go with you, Daddy?” I said.

  Daddy looked at me and Gary. I like to think that he hesitated, wanting better for us than what he’d planned.

  “Get your stuff,” he said.

  “Can I go too, Daddy?” Gary said.

  “Go on get your stuff.”

  “What are you doing?” Mama screamed. “Don’t you do that, Calvin.”

  “This is what’s happening, Nora,” Daddy laughed, but there was no joy in it.

  Gary and I packed as quickly as we could, the best things we could find we stuffed into pillowcases.

  “Calvin,” Mama grabbed Daddy’s arm, “let’s talk. Let’s just talk. Reggie go on, now.”

  “Don’t let me see you again,” Daddy said to Reggie. “I mean it. I’ll kill you,” Daddy said, but his declaration sounded like a question.

  “Gary, Tasha, put all that back in there,” Mama yelled.

  But nothing could stop us now.

  “Tasha, if you leave now, don’t come back, you hear me?” Gary started to cry, so I couldn’t. Besides, coming back to that place was the furthest thing from my mind. I wouldn’t turn around. There is no way I could stand to see my mother’s body rushing backward, receding from me until she vanished from my sight. I wouldn’t witness that with my own eyes.

  When we were in the car pulled out of the parking space, Daddy stopped. Gary and I had set our attention to the road ahead, the next day, the moment to come, but before we knew it, Daddy had jumped out of the car to his truck, a board thick as his arm in his hand pounded on the door. When Reggie opened the door, Daddy swung the board into his chest, taking Reggie’s breath, standing over him like a gladiator.

  WE HEARD IT WAS NO TIME before Mama got rid of Reggie. We all predicted that. For a couple of years, Mama stayed in
Harmony, a close-by town smaller even than our town. We saw her a few times when she’d meet Daddy in the parking lot of a Williams grocery store and we’d get into her Nova and ride, always going somewhere, spending the day like tourists.

  We lost track of her after that. A cousin said she went to California with a friend. Somebody told us she was right under our noses in Lumberton. I don’t know for sure. I do know that she thinks of us. Though I doubt she could afford to spend every single day doing it. No matter what, you have to figure out how to live in the day you have, not the ones you can’t get back. Soon, I may look her up, just to let her know things turned out. That she doesn’t have to feel bad about anything. That life runs in different speeds depending on the situation and some times and days and moments get away from you before you really know what’s what. I’d tell her that I wouldn’t mind being her friend. Family ought to be able to be friends, I’d say, hoping I sounded wise and centered, like a woman with her head on straight. I wouldn’t talk about missing her or sad old times, or the hours we spent explaining her to ourselves and especially not the quiet nights in the dark trying the best we knew how to remember anything she ever did or said that made us laugh.

  Do You Remember the Summer of Love?

  The new Best Western in Birmingham, Alabama, serves complimentary drinks until the bar closes at seven o’clock. Complimentary. That means free, without cost. Except nothing’s free. To get the drinks you have to spend time in the dark, already dingy little bar at one of the four small tables littered with plastic, half-empty bowls of redskin peanuts and pretzels (the remnants of the worst cocktail party); and behind the counter: a grisly black bartender, erupting from the brick-like linoleum like a chocolate Venus on the half shell. Nothing’s free. But turns out there’s plenty cheap.

  Jerri tried not to think about the bar or what was turning out to be a most inauspicious beginning to her cross-country road trip and concentrated instead on the steady progress of the too-full drink to her waiting hand.

  “Thank you,” Jerri said and fished the shriveled lime wedge with the stirring straw. “It’s been a long day. This is just what I was needing.”