by Raqiyah Mays
“Daddy, can I have a dog?” I asked as he steered with his left hand. His right fingers stroked his scruffy goatee. “I wanna doggie.”
“Sure, baby, I’ll get you a dog one day.”
“Okaaay!” I sang happily, smiling, swaying from side to side, doing a little dance as I thought about playing with my puppy. But that day never came. Daddy didn’t get me a thing once his relationship with my mother ended. All he ever gave me were fleeting, insecure memories that made me question his love. Although I did inherit his last name—Butler—his looks, a slight overbite, and all five feet six inches of his height. I had his brown hair, which when under stress tended to fall out at the top of the scalp. I even developed the dry caramel skin that peeled and itched in the summer sun. And a back full of clogged pores and spotted with acne scars.
The stories Mom shared about my father, outside of his physical flaws, always began with “You look so much like him.” She’d stare at me in awe and then speak in the past tense: “He loved you so much. He loved him some Meena.”
She told me we had a wonderful relationship. I was Danny Butler’s little girl, wrapping my arms around his leg as he dragged me from room to room, cooing and giggling. The same couldn’t be said of his relationship with Mom, though. Their tumultuous romance turned dark, somewhere in the street, with fists and fights. There’s one episode she shared that stands out, because I was asleep in the backseat when it took place.
“Who’s that?” my father asked, waiting for an answer. He leaned on the Caddy with arms crossed. Toothpick in mouth, checkered applejack hat to the left, blue collared shirt opened to the chest, and black corduroy bell-bottoms sweeping the ground. He’d stopped to pick Mom up from NYU’s campus and take her to work. But she was always late, running with perspiration. The excuse this day: her missing book.
“Stupid,” Danny huffed. “How do you lose one of those big-ass million-page novels?”
“I told you not to call me stupid.”
“Why, Deena?” he asked as he gunned the gas and sped off, screeching down the block. “Would you rather me use one of those big words you learned in your big college books?”
“No, I’d just rather you pick one up and get some common sense,” she replied, buckling her seat belt. My mother’s sarcasm was legendary. Quick with the comeback, sometimes funny, often insulting, her mouth was her most powerful weapon and biggest downfall.
SMACK!
The sound came from my father’s right hand smashing into Mom’s exposed cheek. He somehow still managed to expertly drive with his left hand, maneuvering the steering wheel down the street.
Violence wasn’t a surprising occurrence between Danny and Deena. Although they’d been together three years, their relationship had moved as fast as a NASCAR race. Celebrating their six-month anniversary, they announced she was pregnant and moved in together. Over the following months, his tantrums escalated into pushes, grabs, and nighttime slaps. By day, he spent hours on the downtown streets of Brooklyn, sitting at a six-foot table, selling bronzed jewelry and mahogany figurines to black power people looking for African scenery. While away from him, my mother would map out an escape route inside her head, calculating. But at the end of each day, she always stayed. Even as the beatings grew more painful and frequent. Her love, entangled and twisted, was rooted in a codependent pity for a man she felt needed her, because he didn’t have the stable funds to rent an apartment alone.
“What now?!” he screamed with an indignant look of self-justification as he made a left onto Gates Avenue. My mother grabbed her throbbing left eye, exploding into a purple mass of swollen skin. “What now?!” he repeated, waiting for an answer, looking for a reason to strike again. “Smart-ass motherfucker.”
Mom cowered in the seat, tears flowing, her sight blurry. When the Caddy screeched to a stop at a red light, she jumped out, pulled off her black platform shoes, and limped down the block. Her Afro crooked, mascara running, she never looked back.
Cars blew horns as rubbernecking drivers stretched to see why some barefoot woman was walking down the block in November. My father watched, too, a tiny smirk on his face. He crept along behind her sad stride as she turned onto a quiet, tree-lined block and picked up the pace. Danny expertly parallel parked, pocketed the keys, hopped out, and jogged to catch up.
“Deena, come on. Meena’s in the car. You know I’m sorry,” he yelled after her. “You know I love you!”
“Fuck you, Danny!”
“I love you and Meena,” he said, out of breath. “You two are the family I never had. But you think you can say whatever to me, and my mama don’t even talk to me like that.”
“I’m not your mother. And don’t bring Meena into this,” she said, arms crossed, neck swerving. “Will you love her the way you love me? Look at my fuckin’ eye!”
He walked up and tried to caress her face. She dodged his hand with a swift back bend and body curve that made her lose her balance. She stumbled to catch her footing.
“Come on, Deena! What the fuck? See, that’s your problem, stubborn as shit.”
“You the one with the problem, Danny. Always wanna hit somebody.”
“You know what?” He paused to crack his knuckles, bending each finger slowly. Each bone rattled and unlocked itself into what my mother foresaw as an Ike Turner warm-up. Deena took tiny steps back.
“I gotta go to work,” Danny said, as he turned around to check on his car. “And so do you. You wanna stay out in this cold-ass street looking crazy, you go ahead. I’ll drop Meena with your mom.”
“Go then, bitch!” she screamed with disgust. “I hate you.”
My father stopped in his tracks. His right hand slowly curled into a fist, as he stared at the Caddy for a long, contemplative moment. My mother tiptoed backward, pursing her lips. She jumped for no reason as he headed to the car without a word, hopped in, and pulled away.
The next day, when he left for his daily hustle, Mom moved back into Grandma Fey’s tiny Bed-Stuy home on Putnam Avenue. She dodged Danny’s calls for three weeks. Until one day, the doorbell rang.
“Hey, Deena.”
My father, flashing a broad, toothy smile, stood on the front step with a long-stemmed bouquet of ruby-red roses.
“Hey,” she replied, stomach fluttering.
“You know I miss you and Meena. I’m so sorry, I love you so much. But I understand why you left. And I know. I know. I’m just sorry.” His tear ducts filled as he rambled along. “Can I just see Meena? Please? I miss my baby so much.”
My mother said she remembered taking an eternity to answer that question, staring at his pitiful face. He’d never looked uglier. “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “But you got five minutes, ’cause she’s asleep and I’m in the middle of a study group, so you can’t stay long.”
“That’s cool,” he said, nodding his head in agreement, smiling. “That’s okay.”
He stepped inside with a sweet and apologetic grin on his face. The vibe changed when he saw Mom’s classmate sitting on the living room couch.
“Danny, this is Marcus. He’s in my Black Studies class with me and we’re—”
“Where’s Meena?” My father’s cold eyes were frozen on Marcus.
“Upstairs in the bedroom,” Mom answered, voice shaking. “Lemme walk you up.”
When they reached the hallway outside my room, all that my mother remembered were the sudden sharp pains running through her face. They throbbed in patches, over her right cheek, at the tip of her nose, up to the middle of her forehead, piercing between her eyeballs as fists landed on her, punches on a human body bag.
She was laid out across the wooden floor, trying desperately to cover her face. But my father kept hitting her, body shots to the stomach, slaps to the head.
“Stop!” She huffed and puffed, gagging on blood trickling down her throat. “Stop!”
T
he beating ended when Marcus ran upstairs, grabbed my father from behind, and threw him against the wall. His skinny five-six was like a limp chicken pinned down under Marcus’s six-two, 250-pound frame.
“Get off me, man! Get off me!” Danny screamed. “This ain’t got shit to do with you.”
My cries echoed from the bedroom.
“You don’t hit women!” Marcus said, pushing him farther along the floor. “What’s wrong with you, man?”
“Fuck you,” Danny said, struggling. “Get the fuck off me!”
“I’ll let your pussy ass go when you leave.” Marcus tightened his grip, pulling Danny’s arm behind his back. Mom got up and ran into the bathroom. A bright red imprint of busted lip blood smeared the door handle.
“It’s cool, man. It’s cool,” Danny said, out of breath. “I’m leaving.”
Marcus loosened his grip, letting my father up off the ground.
“Watch out for that bitch,” he said, pointing toward the bathroom door. “She sneaky. I ain’t fuckin’ with her no more.”
And he turned and left. It would be years before I saw him again.
Chapter 8
During the time I was living with Dexter, I often missed the safety and closeness of being in a familiar, feel-good place. The plush rose carpet with purple swirl flower designs. The window seat that played home to stuffed animals I’d collected my entire life. The soft, fluffy pink comforter atop my canopy bed, matching light and airy curtains flowing from rods. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it all. I loved being able to walk downstairs and eat as I pleased. No empty OJ cartons to greet me. No fruit basket with just one grape left. I hated when Dex did that. Eat a whole bushel of red grapes and leave me two, like he was being thoughtful. No man to cook for. None of his loud radio static blasting through the rooms, filling the space with noise, clogging thoughts in my head. At home, it was just me, my bed, my closet. Me happily alone.
For the first week after I came back from Baltimore, everything was perfect. I’d sleep till noon and wake up to an empty house. Walk downstairs. Watch The Young and the Restless while cooking a huge Southern brunch of grits, eggs, potatoes, and biscuits. All were on my to-do list. At the end of the day, my mother would walk into the house with a smile on her face, asking about my day. I’d update her on the latest episode of The Bold and the Beautiful. We’d laugh. And it felt good, like a sisterly bond, rooted in her genuine happiness of my being home from school. But after a week, once she began to grow accustomed to my familiar presence, it was like I’d somehow soaked up all of the warm, welcoming energy, and made it turn to mildewy, stinking resentment.
“Meena, you could’ve cleaned these damn dishes up,” she snapped, throwing her purse on the counter. “You been home all day, you don’t have to live like a slob.”
I let out a slow exhale, trying to ignore her, feigning being focused on the TV, video bouncing across the screen with a long-haired girl gyrating to the beat. But it became hard to pay attention when my mother began speaking under her breath. Whispering and cussing in audible tones that made memories flash back, like deja vu, to childhood.
“Damn slob. Can’t clean up. All you gotta do is wash the damn dishes, clean up your own shit.” She sucked her teeth. “Meena! Come get your damn books from off this table. This is not your desk!”
I jumped as my mother hastily turned back to the kitchen sink. I slowly slid my Knicks cap off, remembering why I hated being home. Why growing up, I couldn’t wait to go to college and be away from the constraints of my mother and her venomous hold upon my heart and soul, which always seemed dampened by the wear and tear of criticism crashing my self-esteem. I wished she’d go to therapy. I wished she’d talk to someone about the miscarriage she’d had six months ago that doctors attributed to stress.
Jumping up, I bounced off the couch, hopped in the shower, and got ready for Meredith’s arrival. After I threw on my clothes and combed my hair into a tiny ponytail, the sound of her car horn made me fly downstairs. Strolling to the kitchen, feigning casual boredom, I realized my heart was beating through my chest. I’d never gotten over the childhood fear of asking my mother for permission to go somewhere. I’d never let go of the fear of her interrogations that preceded giving the okay to leave the house.
“Did you clean your room? You didn’t leave smears on the glass, did you?” she’d ask in this accusatory tone. “Did you finish your homework? Clean up these dishes first. Fold that laundry first. You clean that bathroom?”
And if I didn’t do those things, if I ever copped an attitude, rolled my eyes, cleaned up sloppily, interrupted her on the phone, or horribly timed an ask when she was in a bad mood—it prompted her to cancel the plans I’d dreamed of having outside the home with friends.
But I wasn’t in high school anymore. I was twenty-four. Grown. Living at home. Yes. But still grown.
“Mom, I’m going to the mall with Meredith.”
She didn’t say anything for a long minute, standing at the sink, washing dishes, giving no acknowledgment. No turn of the head. Acting as if she didn’t hear me. This was normal.
“Mom . . .” I repeated, moving closer but instinctively staying far enough away from her right hook. “I’m going to.”
“I heard you,” she snapped, falling back into a long, brooding silence broken by Meredith’s blowing horn. “Which mall?”
“Bluehill.”
“With who?”
“Meredith.”
“Bring some milk home. I need to make a lemon pound cake for your grandmother tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said, turning to jog/walk through the front door, a huge smile on my face as my heart slowed to a relaxed beat. Occasions like this made me remember the anxiety of the old days. When I absolutely couldn’t go as I pleased. Curfews as a teen were legendarily tight in my mother’s home, requiring me to be inside by two a.m. On some nights I’d be out of breath, sweat trickling down my forehead, Meredith driving twenty miles above the speed limit, tires screeching up the block as she rushed me home to make curfew.
Thank God for Meredith. Her knack for listening and laughter made me forget about it all. As soon as I got into her car, she pulled out of the driveway, gunning the motor all the way to a park around the corner. Under a tree in a shady spot, she pulled out a cigar and passed it to me. Taking out a small dime bag of weed, she began breaking it up inside a Dunkin’ Donuts napkin. I watched the preparations with a smile. A little nervous, a bit excited. I’d started smoking during freshman year of college. And not only did I like the way weed made me feel, but smoking was a bonding activity. At school, everyone would gather in someone’s room to puff blunts, filling the air with a smoky, pungent odor of sticky Jamaican ganja. Wu-Tang Clan blasted from the speakers.
Since then, Meredith had mastered the art of rolling a blunt. Taking her fingernail and cutting a line down the middle of the cigar, she emptied its brown grassy contents, then licked the empty leaf moist. Pulling out stems and separating clumped-up pieces of cannabis into tiny shredded morsels, like a chef using fingertips to sprinkle cheese on a salad, she delicately dropped flakes of weed into the open brown carcass. The final step: she picked it up, licked one edge, and rolled it into what looked like a small, fat taquito. Quickly drying her masterpiece with a lighter, she lit a side and inhaled. Holding the smoke in for ten seconds, puffing up her cheeks, she exhaled a sphere-like cloud that engulfed me. She pulled two more times, then gave me the honor.
“Puff, puff, pass,” she said, before letting out a hoarse laugh that ended in a dry, smoke-induced cough. “Damn, that’s some good shit.”
Weed. From the earth. Natural and free. I’d never heard of anyone dying from smoking marijuana. No heart attacks, hives, blister breakouts, or any side effect in fine print. One hundred percent safe. I put it in my mouth and inhaled into a two-second hold before blowing it all away.
“Noooo,” Meredith sa
id, laughing. “You gotta hold it in longer.”
“Why?” I asked, like a green kindergartener. “It hurts my throat.”
“’Cause you need to feel it.”
I pulled again. This time trying my hardest not to exhale for ten seconds. By eleven, I began to choke, dying from self-induced smoke inhalation. Meredith cracked up, damn near falling out the window.
“That was good,” she said, cheesing hard. “Now try to hold it in a little longer.”
“What am I, your guinea pig today?”
“No, just my entertainment.”
“Fuck you. I am not here to entertain your bored suburban ass,” I said, picking up the lighter. “Bitch.”
I pulled again, this time counting the hold in my head, keeping the smoke in for twelve seconds. When I exhaled this third time, I didn’t cackle, instead blowing the smoke out smooth, like a seasoned cannabis pro.
“Nice,” Meredith purred. “My little piggy.”
“Shut up.”
For the next fifteen minutes, we smoked weed until it dissolved into a tiny black butt. Meredith burned her fingertips trying to get the last of it, squeezing her lips tight to get the most from the roach. She looked like a crackhead.
“Um,” I mumbled, eyes closed, grinning. “Are you a weed head?”
“Um,” she answered, “yeah,” before we busted out laughing.
“Me too.” I opened my eyes to dig in my purse for a piece of gum. “Yup, head and weed. I like it.”
“Well, I like weed before head.”
“Well, I like head while smoking weed.”
“Ooh, you right, that sounds the bomb!”
“Yuuup,” I said, sucking on the gum’s frosted spearmint flavor before chewing it into a burst of freshness. “So good.”
I glanced over at Meredith, her eyes red, shut to tiny slits. She nodded her head harder than ever to the radio. Blasting Hot 97, with Puff Daddy and Faith singing “I’ll Be Missing You.”
