“Ma, that makes no sense at all. Come on. Let’s have a dinner to celebrate the baby. Let’s give Kenny’s relationship some room. If she’s as smart as I think she is, she’ll drop Kenny and move on. If he’s got half a flea’s brain, he’ll find a way to keep her in his life.”
“Mama Tervo, did you see Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner last year? Spencer Tracey, my all-time favorite actor? Anyhow, he called his daughter’s love for Sidney Poitier ‘a pigmentation problem.’ I agree. Who gets to choose their skin color? Besides, it’ll be fun to see them together. We can talk tomorrow and compare notes.”
Maija looked at Maggie, then Sam, and said, “I give, but no more English lessons. It really pisses me off.” Under her breath, Maija said “Pigmentation my ass.” Sam squeezed Maggie’s hand and grinned. Sam had warned Maggie about his mother’s habit of turning thoughts into words under her breath. Maggie folded her lips between her teeth to mute her laughter and left the room.
By the time Kenny and Stella showed up, Maggie, Sam and Maija had emptied the first bottle of Blue Nun. Kenny was wearing a black suit, white shirt and a thin royal blue and black striped tie. Stella was dressed in black bellbottoms, a black turtleneck and a tan suede-fringed vest. Before Sam could take their coats to the bedroom, he and Maggie doubled over in uncontrolled laughter. Tears streaming down their cheeks, Maggie tried to talk, to explain, but the wine and irony were too much. She could not catch her breath.
Stella looked like she was ready to bolt. Maija paced the small kitchen. Kenny finally said, “Okay, you guys, what the hell’s going on? What’s so goddamn funny?”
Sam put his arm over Stella’s shoulder and with a soft tug said, “Oh, Stella, we’re so glad you’re here. I’m sorry for our bad manners, but we’ll explain. You’ll love it.”
Maggie brought the second bottle of wine into the living room. She kissed Stella and Kenny as she handed them each a glass. “Let me explain.”
By the time Maggie and Sam finished telling the story about their bet, and the pleasure they felt when they saw that both had changed for the other, everyone was toasting and laughing. Sam thought his mother’s enthusiasm was more about her not being the butt of the joke.
Maggie and Sam breathed easier when Maija managed to fill five plates with provisions for four without repeating her earlier comparison to ‘the miracle of feeding the multitudes.’ Four twice-baked potatoes became five generous potato pancakes. Four small steaks were turned into slices and served as French dip au jus. One small can of green beans provided a colorful garnish. Maggie took delight when she realized Sam’s agility to snag life’s curveballs was maternal, and let loose an exalted sigh that Sam had somehow sloughed off the genes that provoked Maija’s more sarcastic, complaint-bound nature.
Stella said, “Mrs. Tervo, you are a woman of my own heart. This is not only my favorite meal but the most delicious I’ve ever had!”
No one missed the wink Sam sent his mother or the smile Maija worked hard to suppress.
Maggie thought Sam saw Stella with new eyes, glimpsing a sweetness and kindness he hadn’t noticed before. Sam said, “So, Stella, how on earth did you two manage to keep a secret for so long with this motor mouth?”
Stella held up a finger as she finished chewing her food, shook her head up and down, and said, “Isn’t that the truth? When we first met at your wedding party he was so shy I thought I’d wear myself out getting him to open up. Boy was I wrong!”
Kenny looked at Stella with the unchecked adoration of a stray puppy brought in from the cold. Maija narrowed her eyes at Kenny then turned to Stella before saying, “Motor mouth? I’ll be damned. You got this boy to talk? Must be some kinda love!”
“Ma, let it go. Not talking for last few months was the only way I could keep myself from doing back flips down the street and shouting her name.”
Stella’s dark olive skin turned pink then red. Kenny reached over to kiss her cheek then said, “I told you my family would approve!”
Maggie leaned toward Stella, “How about your family, and Clyde and Blanche, do they know?”
“How do I explain? My parents spent most of their lives running from Jim Crow. Still are. Needless to say, they don’t much cotton to my work with the Freedom Riders. So, when I tried to tell them about Kenny, all kinds of hell broke loose. My dad said if I was looking to be lynched then I picked the perfect man. My mom, a lifelong hand wringer, wrung her hands, didn’t say a word. They’re experts at compartmentalizing. It must have kept them sane growing up on cotton fields in Mississippi. They weren’t slaves, but they were. I get their need to break with that past. It’s how they survived. Life in Detroit hasn’t been a picnic. My dad couldn’t get into the plants. He’s a custodian at Woolworths. My mom does dishes and mops the floor at the Coney Island below their flat. So they pinned their hopes on me. Sorry, I got carried away. But, no, we haven’t said a thing to Clyde or Blanche. Kenny and I wanted to tell you first.”
“Oh, Stella, I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you both. If you were in Europe it’d be easier. But here, in this back-ass-ward country, bi-racial couples are treated like they’re breaking some cosmic law. What the hell,” said Maggie.
A heavy stillness settled in the room. Through the ponderous pause, Sam moved like Jacques-Yves Cousteau under water, filling wine glasses in soundless depths. Maggie’s stomach churned before she realized she’d been holding her breath, hoping love was not too blind.
Breaking the surface, coming up for air, Sam lifted his glass and said, “To Stella and Kenny for their love and courage. Maggie’s right, it’ll be brutal. Although I’m in total awe of you both for coming out, I can’t help but worry. Our good friend Robin thinks mixing the races is the only way to abolish racism. She’s probably right. I know you didn’t sign up to be pioneers, but here you are. I wish you all the love and peace you can gather up and hang on to.” Sam made the peace sign as he sipped his wine.
Kenny returned the peace sign then looked at Stella. “I know this will be tough as nails for Stella, and I feel like a selfish S.O.B. to ask her to be with me and deal with the insults, name-calling, all the bullshit. We’ve talked this into the ground and there’s no way to know how well we’ll do until we do it.”
Maija turned to Stella and said, “If anyone gives you an ounce of grief, you call me and we’ll take ‘em out to the back forty and shoot ‘em.”
“Hey, Ma, thanks. We can use all the help we can get,” laughed Kenny.
Stella and Maggie stood up and began to clear the table. As Maija got up to help, Sam said, “Sit, Ma. Let’s you, Kenny and me shoot the breeze. It’s been way too long.”
Before Maggie handed Stella the first clean dish, she said, “God, Stella, I’m sorry your parents aren’t on board. If they saw you and Kenny together they might change their minds.”
“Not a chance. What my dad said was if I was intent on killing myself he’s got some rope in the trunk of his car. He said it would be a helluva sight better than a lynch mob. I know he sounds like an asshole, but it’s because he’s lived in fear his whole life. My dad doesn’t know how to protect me, so he’s trying to shock me into his fear. They won’t reject me, but it’ll be one cold day in Detroit if we decide to get married.”
“I wish I could reassure you, but I can’t. You’re going to get it from both sides—black and white. Sometimes love isn’t enough. If you decide it’s too much or Kenny’s not right for you, for any reason, I’m your friend. I love you and I’ll help you any way I can. Sam doesn’t have to be in the loop. If you decide to stick with Kenny, I’ll be here any time you need to talk, inside or outside the loop. Got it?”
Stella wrapped her long, skinny arms around Maggie and held her tight. She whispered, “I got it. Thank you.”
After Maggie threw herself on the bed, in her red flannel nightgown and argyle knee socks, she patted her head, sat up and began pulling the berries and leaves from her hair and unpinned her French twist. “It was so freaking weird. I kep
t looking at your mom tonight, wondering what she thought about when she was pregnant with you.”
“Ask her.”
“Maybe I will. So, what do you think about Stella and Kenny?”
“I think Kenny is one lucky S.O.B. Not sure I’d say the same about Stella. She’s surprisingly funny and not at all an ice queen.”
“They’re in love. No ‘bout a doubt it.’ ”
“Back rub? Since we’re both right, I owe you two.”
“Not tonight. I’m a dishrag, a content and happy dishrag, but totally wasted.”
Sam spooned Maggie and placed his hand on her belly. He imagined the mystical first home of their child—the soft warmth of the uterus, metronome of the heart and manna through an umbilical cord. “Mag, do you think the baby knows when we’re laughing or crying? Does she feel what we feel?”
“Sam, we talk to plants to keep them healthy. It makes sense that we hear sounds and pick up on feelings before we’re born. I’ve already introduced her to classical music, jazz and rock. No rockabilly country. And, please, no polkas! Okay, now I’m babbling, totally exhausted. Good night.”
“You too,” Sam said or thought he said. His mind was already lost in some psychedelic trip to recall the inside of his mother’s womb. The idea of it didn’t necessarily gross him out, but the image seemed a little kinky. Sam pulled Maggie closer, slid his hand between her legs and whispered, “How tired are you?”
Maggie answered with a sharp left-elbow-jab to his solar plexus.
19
Tipping Points
Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair, shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen—give me down to there hair, shoulder length or longer, here baby, there mama, everywhere daddy, daddy, hair flow it, show it, long as god can grow it, my hair.
—Galt McDermott, Lyrics from Hair
JANUARY 3, 1969—Maggie woke up thinking about Clyde’s New Year’s Eve party. She and Sam used to be the last to leave a party. Now they were the first to sidle their way to the front door. Home before the ball dropped in Times Square, sound asleep by midnight. Between morning sickness and fatigue, Maggie felt like she was sleepwalking through life, spending entire days in her red flannel nightgown or sweats. In retrospect, she thought being laid off was a gift, a mystical intervention. Maggie had no doubt that curling up in a fetal position and napping on the floor between her Freshman English classes would have resulted in a very public, scandalous firing. She could see the headlines now—‘Morning Sickness Sets Back Employment Rights for Pregnant Women Another Hundred Years.’
Tucked away in a box, the French coffee press had become what, Maggie thought, an icon of regrets—a reminder of unrealized, unrealistic dreams? Like so many of their plans, visions and schemes, this hovel of a house was no Toronto B&B. Breakfast was cereal and coffee was instant. The extra work to buy and press coffee seemed absurd, especially now. Maggie changed her mind about getting organized and let the warped cupboard door dangle two inches from being closed.
During the holidays, Issie surprised Maggie by showing up late one afternoon to drop off some maternity clothes she gathered from her friends. Maggie was in a flannel nightgown, her hair in tangles. Issie shook her head and said, “For kicks, let’s turn this scene into a soap opera. Sam spends his days with hip, young, chicks who put on miniskirts, dust their faces with powder, color their lips Jungle Peach and lengthen their lashes with Midnight Black. They bend over to serve him coffee and ask if there’s anything else he needs, with an emphasis on anything else. One day Sam looks up from his desk, and in the blink of a batted lash and the fresh scent of a woman, he’s reminded of his manhood. Later that evening, Sam gets home to find his wife, with matted hair and no makeup, napping on the couch in her thread-bare red flannel nightgown.’ Earth-to-Maggie. Pregnancy isn’t a nine-month furlough. In case you forgot, Sam is movie-star good-looking, smart and funny. Marriage didn’t change that. He’s out in the world every day. I get that you feel like crap, but you might want to get out of those flannels and bathe once in a while before someone who does turns his head.” Although Maggie replied in kind and mocked her ‘swift and slippery decline into ennui,’ she had a hard time shaking off Issie’s forecast. How could she describe how flat-out, excruciatingly bored she was with herself? Bottom line, thought Maggie, if I think I’m a drag, and act like a drag, I’m a drag.
Three short rings for their party line jarred her out of her head. “Hello!”
“Jeez, Maggie, were you sitting on top of the phone?”
“Hey, Issie. Just thinking of you. What’s up?”
“You sitting down?”
“No. Do I need to?”
“Sit down. You’re not going to believe this.”
“Okay, Iss, I’m sitting.”
“I got our bank statement in the mail today and there’s a deposit for twenty thousand dollars on December 22nd. TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS! I’m so freaked I don’t know what to do. Of course, it’s not ours, but my heart is racing so fast I had to call. Sweet Jesus, Maggie! I know I have to report it but part of me wants to pretend I didn’t see it and keep it. What would you do?”
“Oh my god, Iss. It’s your money.”
“Right, Maggie, you want me to spend the rest of my life in prison?”
“No, seriously. Listen. I forgot to tell you. Holy crap, twenty thousand!”
“Stop. What did you forget to tell me? Did you rob a frigging bank?”
“Issie, Jacques Ruivivar called me before Christmas and told me his accountant found some funds in our name. Funds set aside for us at Amadeus. He said he wasn’t sure of the amounts, but thought they were large enough to wire to our accounts rather than mail checks. When you and Eddy went to the Indy 500, way back when, and left the kids with his mom, you gave me a signed blank check from your account in case of an emergency. Also known as The Anna & Raymond Factor in case you died or disappeared. Anyhow, I had your account number so I sent it to Jacques. I was going to let you know, but between my morning sickness and the holidays I got waylaid. Sorry.”
“This twenty thousand is ours? Are you shitting me? Really?”
“Really. I don’t have my bank statement yet but there should be an equal amount for me. Imagine, Anna found a way to keep forty-thousand dollars of their estate for us.”
“Maggie, are your legs shaking? Mine are chattering. You have no idea how important this money is to us right now.”
“I don’t think it’s hit me yet. It’s way more than I ever thought I’d have. Sam is going to freak out. I’m beginning to freak out. I’ll call you later.”
Good morning, Jingo Personnel, may I help you?
“Hey, Maxine, Sam there?”
“Hey, Maggie! Sam’s meeting with the big guys. You need me to pull him out or you want to leave a message?”
“Message works. No emergency. I’m spreading good news.”
“My guess is he’s on the hunt for good news. With the auto show coming up in a few weeks, everyone looks like they’re walking around with wedgies in their patooties.”
“Hah! I thought that was their normal gait. How’s it going with you?”
“In Skip’s words, fair to middlin’. Post-holiday blahs. This deep, dark African-skinned body of mine landed in the northern tundra because my grandparents wanted to escape slavery. It might seem like a small price to pay, but I live in duck bumps ten months of the year.”
“Duck bumps? You mean goose bumps?”
“Nope, duck bumps. My Texas cousins claim duck bumps are bigger.”
“Figures Texas would come up with something bigger. Oh, Max, let’s head south for a few weeks. Miami?”
“I’m on it, after the auto show. Just tell me when you’re past that gag-reflex thing. Seriously, if I hear someone gag it’s all over but the shouting. The last thing we want is a duet.”
“Got it. After the auto show, no gagging and no duets.”
When Maggie was dialing Sam’s office, she’d noticed two gift-wrapped boxes
on top of the fridge. Barely visible, the colorful packages were tucked against a bunched-up macramé hanger collecting dust and bugs—behind Loretta’s neglected, yet lovely, spider plant. Maggie and Sam had decided to wait until they moved to their own house before screwing a big hook in a ceiling. How the plant survived the ice-cold drafts and random watering never ceased to amaze her.
Maggie pulled the packages off the fridge and placed them on the kitchen table. Wrapped in red and white striped paper, the largest gift had a hand-cut candy-cane-shaped tag taped to the front that read: To our baby girl or boy, all my love, Grandma Tervo. Inside the box, a precious hand-crocheted white receiving blanket and matching cap with white satin ribbon ties, reeked of cigarette smoke. Before her gag reflex made a move, Maggie tossed the blanket and cap in the dish tub and filled it with warm water and a splash of Ivory Liquid. Opening the door against needle cold wind, Maggie dropped the box and wrapping paper on the snow-covered side porch. The second gift was smaller, wrapped in silver paper with a blue bow. A matching silver card was signed, All our love to you and the luckiest baby in the world! Uncle Kenny and Stella. Inside the small narrow box was a blue felt bag holding a miniature silver spoon engraved ‘Baby Tervo.’ Maggie ran her finger along the lettering on the handle and thought about the symbolism of this gift. Would Stella and Kenny bring another Baby Tervo into this world? Would a silver spoon hold these same promises?
Maggie thought back to the night of the dinner. There was so little counter space for Mama Tervo to prepare the food in the kitchen, with all the other surfaces in the house covered by books, food or drink. Maggie pictured Mama Tervo putting her gift on the refrigerator and pointing to that spot when Stella and Kenny walked in. When the conversation went in a different direction, everyone forgot the dinner was about the baby. No one asked about the unopened gifts.
The risk of subzero weather did not subdue the menacing sensation that the walls in the house were closing in on her. Cabin fever reaching some delusional pitch, or new money burning a hole in my pocket? Maggie wondered. She pulled her navy pea coat out of the hall closet and slipped into a pair of old mukluks to walk to the drug store. Maybe pick out a new lipstick and grab some lunch at the counter. Her conversation with Issie made her feel flush. Although she rarely felt poor, Maggie never recalled feeling flush, and searched her memory for what that word meant in Poker. All the same suit? No, All the same suit in order, like 7,8,9—or was it only face cards? I’ll ask Sam.
If the Moon Had Willow Trees (Detroit Eight Series Book 1) Page 17
