by Odie Hawkins
Busting Out of an Ordinary Man
Odie Hawkins
She struggled to her feet and reacher over to her knitting basket. She inspected the sharp points of two of the needles to make certain that there was no material attached to them, snatched her pillow from the bed and pulled a clean sheet out of the dresser drawer. She almost burst into tears as she walked back into the kitchen to find Lena staring at the table as though it were a slab in the city morgue.
“Did you wash it good?” she asked sharply, masking her feelings.
“Uh huh.”
“Good. Now here, help me.”
The two women moved slowly, covering the table with the sheet as though they were performing a ritual. Miss Rabbit placed the pillow at one end and two chairs, stirrup style, at both sides of the table at the other end. Efficiently, she checked the back door lock, made certain that the shades were drawn and came finally to stand in front of Lena.
“Now you have to lay up here, Lena … ’n spread your legs, just like you was gon’ have a baby, in order for me to do what I got to do. But first, lemme ask you again, are you sho’ you don’t want to have this …?”
A slow trickle of tears slid down Lena Daniels’ high cheekbones as she lay on the table. “Yes, yes … I want to have the baby, but we can’t afford it, Miss Rabbit … we can hardly feed the ones we got.”
For my sister,
Louise.
And all her children
Chapter 1
Monday
“My dearest Kwendi,
I hope you are past your depression by now, your last letter bothered me very much. I almost feel ashamed sometimes to admit that my love for you is so great, so profoundly tuned to what goes through you that the vibes from your letter told me that you were about to do something uncool.
Please baby don’t. You know how badly they want to wipe your strong, beautiful black ass away (you know what I almost said, don’t you, smile).
Kwendi, seriously, don’t do anything that would foul you up, the lawyers are doing all they can, your defense money is steadily coming in, people have become more concerned and aware of how rank the shit is here like, yesterday it was you, tomorrow it might be anyone, even one of the apathetic ones. At any rate, all I’m saying is that I love you, googobs, I miss you and, in order for us to ever be together again, to fight the battles with this crazy, weird, hypocritical racist ass society that we know have to be fought, to make the sweet black babies we’ve been talking through that screen about for the last five years, to do anything that we’ve planned, then You Must Be Alive. You know they want to kill you, baby you know that, and all they need is any kind of excuse, any kind.
I’m not trying to tell you to submit to anything, to be less than the man you are, or anything like that. I just want you to be cool and be careful.
Kwendi, I love you so much.
Because we both decided a long time ago, that we would be fair and honest with each other about our feelings, I don’t feel any need to hold back, to conceal this terrible hunger I feel inside for you.
Maybe the season has something to do with it (smile) fall always makes me feel more nostalgic than usual. I took a walk in the park yesterday, in search of some leaves to kick around, and spent an hour going through as many moments in our relationship as I could remember.
Kwendi, I love you so much.
The feeling gushes up in me, so strong at times that I feel almost like I felt the first time we made love. Remember me, baby? The eighteen year old innocent that you didn’t want to make love to because you thought it would be too heavy a scene for my head. Remember?
I laugh out loud sometimes, thinking about us two dumb eighteen year old fools who almost respected each other to death, you, afraid to ‘seduce’ a sister because you felt that that might be considered counterrevolutionary or some such thing, and me, with my stupid self, almost letting you get away with it.
Just think, if we had known what was going to go down, we would have been a lot less careful and maybe I would have your child now
Kwendi, I miss you so much. I feel so distracted, so alone, at times.
I’m takin’ care maximum business in every direction, feeling strong, but the thought that my lover, my man, is locked away from me weighs me down sometimes. But who in the hell am I to complain?
Many sisters might hesitate, I think, to write the man in their lives a letter like this, especially if he were in the joint. I am not now nor do I think I could ever be that image-ridden sister who refuses to let her carefully arranged ‘Afro’ mask fall away, telling herself, being rational, that her man only wants to hear nothing but the safe, pleasant, groovy things.
Emotionally, we’re both in prison and I can’t help spilling my guts out to the only person in the world who understands me.
As a writer, when I can write it out to you, spell words, say to my dearest, dearest Kwendi, darling I love you and know that you, as a fellow writer, as my man, will find more than anyone else could hope to find in those three words … when I can do that, it makes my nights more bearable.
I’m carrying on our people’s work as best I can without you. Djenkasi, Abdul, Nici, Maisha and a few others remain the hard, strong core The others remain more or less constant.
The main problem we have is lack of leadership. I know what you’re going to say in your next letter, that we should all be leaders, but, for some reason, it just doesn’t quite work out that way. The theater section of the group has started a thing they call G.D.! (‘Gittin’ Down!’), and it’s being given a good response by the community.
Several other projects are working out quite well also, I’ll tell you more about them on visiting day.
Does it seem strange to you that yesterday we were eighteen and now we are both twenty-three?
Time seems to stand still or pass itself by.
I’m afraid I must end this one now, leaving so much unsaid that we may need another lifetime to cover half of it, but it doesn’t matter, my spirits are high and my love is strong. With all my best love, Lubertha, your Kush
P.S. I’m sure you’ve heard about Baby June, but you’d have to see him to really believe the change unreal!”
Monday evening, the dreariest day of the week anywhere, but especially in the Afro-American ghetto; people, having taken hangovers and other symptoms of a fast weekend to their individual sections of the plantations around town, return, the weight of four more days (and maybe five) of clock punching and lockstepping ahead of them before the eagle flies.
Mrs. Nelda Washington, better known as Big Momma, shuffled her elbows, recrossed her arms and spat into the Maxwell House coffee can at her feet, barely paying any mind to the receptacle, being so certain of her aim, and turned her full attention back to the people passing back and forth on the sidewalk in front of her. She knew them all, some since babyhood. Lubertha, on her way to the mailbox with another letter to what was that child’s name? Kwenni? Kwanjo? Kuwani? Something like that.
Shame that they threw him away in jail like that
“Hi, Big Momma, how you doin’?”
Big Momma shot another swift stream of snuff juice into the can before answering, slowly, as was her habit.
“Ooooohhhh, I don’t know, Lubertha, passable, I guess Wid the good Lawd’s blessins I’ll live.”
“Well, you take it easy,” Lubertha answered graciously, “I’m goin’ down to the corner, you want anything?”
“Nawww, cain’t say that I do, daughter, just now … Bessie promised t’ brang me some snuff when she got home. Thanks anyway.”
Lubertha waved and kept on, her head held high, her back straight. Big Momma studied her movement for a few ste
ps, recalling the Lubertha Franklin she knew from five years back.
Lawwwwd in Heaven, she thought, nodding her head slightly, sin ’n a shame the thangs that happen to people Girl cain’t be but twenny twenny-two at the most, and she’s got them ol’ hard lines ’round her mouth like a woman thirty.
Well, guess that’s what happens when you lose your man.
She sighed deeply and nodded to a strange face that happened to look up and see her. The face, surprised at the neighborly gesture, frowned and picked up his pace.
Funny how much afraid peoples is when you try to be friendly.
Big Momma shivered, looked up at the narrow patch of gray sky that hung over her street and, at that moment, thought about her husband.
Wonder if Booker went t’ Heaven? Nawww, not likely, not much hell as that man raised. Thought he was the greatest thang in pants, wid his moonshinin’, his sly ways, and all that pride he had ’cause his Daddy had named him Booker, after Booker T.
Another autumn breeze eased through, bringing goose pimples out on her fleshy arms. She spat again and pulled her sweater a little tighter around her shoulders, her mind slipping away from her dead husband, dead for twelve years, to the thought of the hard winter she saw ahead in the clouds above.
She stood up slowly, a darker version of Ethel Waters, bracing her hands on her arthritic knees as she prepared to close down her window.
During all seasons, Big Momma sat … in the spring, summer and early fall, on the top level of the stone porch jutting out from her apartment building, in the late fall and winter, behind the glass pane, seeing and taking everything in.
She closed the window, a can of soup and some crackers already prepared, mentally, and stood at the window for a minute, her knuckles pressed down on the window ledge as she watched Baby June stride up the street selling the Muslim newspaper, The Bilalian.
“Baby June!” she called to him.
“Yes ma’am!” he answered, as though on cue, turning her way with fluid quickness.
“Brang me one o’ them!”
Baby June smiled slightly as he tripped up the stone steps to the porch, a paper already folded and held out for delivery. “Here you are, Sister Washington,” he said, leaning over from the edge of the porch to hand her the paper.
Big Momma reached out for the paper with her left hand as she fumbled down into her apron pocket with her right.
“There’s no charge for you, Sister Washington,” Robert 30X said graciously, knowing that her coins were, as usual, short.
“Well, thank ya, Baby uhhh Robert … Lawwwd! I just cain’t never remember to call you nothin’ but Baby June.”
“Oh, that’s quite all right, Sister Washington, quite all right.”
Big Momma smiled at Robert 30X, formerly called Baby June in his dope fiend salad days, feeling a maternal pride in his superneatness.
Too bad Sister Sadie didn’t live long enough to see the change happen, Big Momma thought.
Robert 30X stood at respectful attention, his heels together, feet spread at a precise thirty-five degree angle.
“Thanks again, now babeee … Robert! I’m gon’ read this with my mind open, just like you asked me to do.”
“I appreciate that, Sister Washington, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that only an open mind is ready for the truth. And please remember the offer I made to you, about attending services in the mosque, is still open All you have to do is just let me know when you’d like to go, and we’ll have a car pick you up and bring you back.”
“That’d be really nice, Bobby … really nice, soon as I’m feelin’ a lil’ better, I just might gon’ on over there.”
“Anytime, Sister Washington, anytime,” Robert 30X sang out as he bowed slightly in her direction and skipped away down the steps to intercept Lubertha, returning from the mailbox.
Big Momma closed the window again, watching Robert 30X match Lubertha stride for stride as she dug down into her jeans for the price of a paper. She lowered her shade and pulled the old, heavily brocaded curtains together and shuffled away from the window, fumbling to put her reading glasses on, hung on a string around her neck placed the paper on her all purpose kitchen table.
Opening a can of chicken noodle soup, counting out five saltine crackers and measuring a short glass of milk into a tall Mason jar, she read aloud the headline of the paper, “Raise your own food, Black man!”
Phyllisine Evans looked over the counter at the little dude wandering around the store, his nose bleeding a thin trickle of snot that he absently wiped off on the forearm of his sweater from time to time.
Watching him pretend that he was just a window shopper, inside the store, made her smile.
“May I help you, sir?” she asked in her most officious voice.
He looked up at her shyly, trying to be hip, and answered, “Nawwww, I was just lookin’.”
Frontin’ it off, huh? she smiled at him knowingly, and dipped into the oatmeal cookie jar, pulled out two of them and handed them across to him.
The little boy looked surprised for a second, snatched the cookies from her hands with one greedy motion and ran out of the store wolfing on one as he went.
Phyllisine shook her head sadly, knowing that he was probably eating his first meal of the day.
She backed into the high stool behind the counter, her eyes still on the door, the jangling bell above it, her thoughts still on the little boy.
Well, at least mine don’t have to go through that. Maybe Momma made a good choice after all.
She gazed around the store, a momma ’n poppa affair with two aisles and a small meat display counter.
Yeahhhh, maybe Momma did do the right thing.
Her stepfather, never called anything but ol’ man Jackson, the geechee, clanged through the door with a crate on his shoulder.
“Why don’cha git off that stool ’n come ’elp me?!” he called to her in his West Indian singsong.
Phyllisine, her thoughts jarred by his sudden entrance, stumbled as she dismounted the stool.
“Huh! What did you say?” she asked him.
“What’s the matter, ya hard o’ ’earin’? I said, come ’elp me!”
She skirted the edge of the counter, grinding her teeth together even after five years, she still found it hard to understand ol’ man Jackson sometimes, especially when he got excited and his Barbadan dialect thickened.
He was already inside the store with the crate; what did he want? She stood in front of him, hands clasped behind her back, a question mark on her face.
“’Urry up oat dere ’n git that large brunn bag in the front seat o’ the truck, make it quick else the dahm thieves’ll bee’cha to it.”
Phyllisine hurried out to his many dented pickup truck, rubbing her arms, suddenly chilled by the late afternoon cool. She struggled to pull the shopping bag from the cab of the truck, cursing under her breath.
“’Urry it up, Phyllisine! We ain’t got ahl day!” ol’ man Jackson yelled as he rushed to pull the burglar guard mesh across the front of the store.
Phyllisine muscled the sack of potatoes out and struggled into the store with them. She looked hatefully at her step-father’s back as he quickly removed the day’s take from the register, scurried around, checking the alarm system, turning off lights.
“Where you want me to put these?” He turned to her and, with that surprising burst of warmth that caught her off balance so often, said, “Ohhh, just leave ’em dere, ahl’ll dump ’em in the bin tomorra’.”
She watched him carefully reach into the meat display counter and give a final pat to the long, meat-loaf shaped piece of sausage he had brought in, that and the two dozen half-stale steaks cleverly covering each other, the result of dealing with the neighborhood dope fiends.
Damn, he really moves quick for an old dude, she thought, watching him scurry around one last time.
“Ahl set t’ go?”
Phyllisine nodded affirmatively in the dim light, anxious to get outside
, to find out what had gone down during the time she had been locked up.
“Where’s your mother?” he asked abruptly as he slammed the guard mesh together and padlocked it.
“She’s upstairs with the kids.”
Ol’ man Jackson frowned slightly, went over to the curb to make certain his truck was locked and returned to Phyllisine standing at the foot of the steps leading to their apartment over the store, growling, “You mean t’ say thot she left ya dohn’ere ahl by yerself in the store?”
“Not all day, she was down in the mornin’ and then I spelled her in the afternoon.”
Ol’ man Jackson, frowning, started up the steps mumbling, “Ah don’ lak dat, should be a grown up in the store at ahl times, ahl times.”
He was at the top of the steps before he realized she wasn’t behind him.
“Ya comin’ up or not?” he asked, his question as blunt and gruff as the rest of his actions.
“Uhhh, nawwww, not right now. I’m gon’ walk over to Mary Jo’s for awhile.”
“Well, don’ stay too long, ya know ’ow ya mother gets when ya leave ’er alone with the kids too long.”
“I ain’t gon’ be long,” she answered, easing away down the street. He entered the hallway of their building and slammed the door behind him.
Should be a grown up in the store at ahl times, ahl times. She corrected her thought. Shit! What was she, if she wasn’t grown? What did it take beyond having two babies and being eighteen years old to be considered a grown up? She dug her hands into her pockets, stepping into the brisk evening breezes, having no definite place to go.
Mary Jo’s was a lame excuse. Mary had gotten strung out two years ago and disappeared, but neither Mr. Jackson nor her mother knew, they didn’t care to know, being so busy trying to make ends meet.
Daddy! Maybe I’ll run into him, he’s usually someplace around the Dew Drop ’round about this time.
She walked a little faster, feeling happier about the possibility of seeing her father.
“Heyyy, Phyllisine! Phyllisine!” Billy Woods called to her from across the street. She watched him, a neutral expression on her face, dodge around and between cars, to reach her.
