Before I’d heard my sister’s revelations, it hadn’t occurred to me that Nana might have left me on purpose all those Saturdays up until the year I was seven and Gandee died. I wasn’t sure that Nana had known what he was doing to me, but then, I wasn’t sure she hadn’t. And when I considered Nana’s behavior over the years—her casual rudeness toward my mother, her inability to consider anyone’s feelings but her own—I couldn’t come up with enough evidence to defend her.
I didn’t confront Nana, though, because there was something that I needed from her. That June, I didn’t want to be in Chicasetta by myself, thinking about my sisters. Lydia had disappeared. In a way, so had Coco, who’d phoned me to say a vacation wasn’t possible for her. She had graduated from Yale, and her medical school classes at Harvard University had started that summer. She had too much work to do. In Chicasetta, there would be no place I could go without thinking of the two of them. So I had a new plan: I was headed to Martha’s Vineyard, where I would stay with Nana. Up on the Vineyard, I could come and go as I pleased. And I could see Chris because his parents had a cottage on the Vineyard, too. Nana didn’t know that, of course, and neither did my mother. Only Lydia had known.
When I told Nana my summer plans had changed, she told me she’d be so happy to have me spend the summer with her. She took my hand and squeezed it, and I waited before I slipped away. Even her touch made me sick to my stomach. I could only play my game so much. But though I knew I was letting Lydia down, I kept on visiting Nana every weekend to get what I needed. I never mentioned the things that my sister had shouted that day.
* * *
By February, I’d told Chris I’d forgiven him, after his longing looks in school, and several contrite phone calls. I consented to meet him behind the school again, and he brought me presents. A pair of sterling silver earrings in a blue box. A mixtape he’d recorded for me of his favorite R & B slow jams. Chocolate chip cookies that his mother had made. He declared that he loved me, and I let him grind against me, outside my clothes.
In March, I promised Chris that we’d go all the way after my sixteenth birthday up on the Vineyard. I made him think it was only his idea, but it wasn’t. I was tired of being a virgin and trying to be everybody’s good girl. I only wanted to be myself.
In April, I told Mama that New England had great libraries, perfect for an avid reader. I praised the weather. On the Vineyard, the breezes chased away heat. No need for air-conditioning.
In May, I mentioned that Miss Delores spent the summers on the Vineyard. She did all the housework and cooking. I wouldn’t be a burden if I spent the summer with Nana, instead of down south in Chicasetta.
Mama and I were in the basement, sorting laundry. She liked to gear up early for our trip.
“Ailey, you do know your grandmother passes for white on the Vineyard?”
“Oak Bluffs is in the Negro section of the Vineyard.”
“I thought we hadn’t been Negro for some time—”
“But Uncle Root says Negro, too—”
“And Miss Delores is traveling with her now? Doing what? Miss Claire lives in that cottage all by herself. How dirty can it get? And a Black woman who can’t make biscuits or scrub her own damned toilet? I have never heard of such. I don’t get it. Kunta Kinte and them got snatched from Africa so they could clean somebody’s house, and now your grandmother does it to somebody else?”
“Nobody’s forcing Miss Delores to clean up. She’s not, like, a slave. She gets a salary.”
My mother put a towel to her nose, sniffed, then handed the towel to me.
“Does this smell funky to you?”
“No, it’s fine.”
She threw it in the dirty laundry pile. “I’ll wash it anyway. Look, God knows I’ve tried with Miss Claire. But the fact of the matter is something’s off with that lady. She doesn’t even associate with anybody who can’t pass. Besides us, that is.”
“That’s not true,” I lied.
She made a farting noise with her mouth. “Miss Claire gets on my last nerve, the way she celebrates her color. It’s sick and strange, that’s what it is. And I’m not sending my last child up there for her to make you sick and strange, too.”
“I want to go to the Vineyard. Please.”
“No, baby. Something might happen.”
“Like what? I might get hooked on crack? My name is Ailey, not Lydia.” As her face crumpled, I smirked.
Mama began counting out loud. When she reached ten, she sighed. “Ailey, why are you being so mean? I don’t deserve this. I gave up being a teacher to look after my girls—”
“I am so fucking tired of hearing this story—”
“Have you lost your goddamned mind?” She raised her voice to shriek. Took a breath, and then stepped back several paces. “Ailey Pearl, I’m the adult here, and I’m supposed to have some sense. So I’m going to ignore this tantrum, because you’re upset about your big sister. I am, too. But know this. You fix your mouth to cuss at me one more time and I’ma get real crazy on you. Now take your little disrespectful ass to your room. Go on, before I forget you’re my only planned child.”
That evening, Mama ignored my sulks at dinner. There were the two of us, and she had fried chicken and made biscuits. She put greens on the table but didn’t chide me to eat them. She’d made my favorite dessert, too, sweet potato pie, and let me drink coffee with her with no admonition that it would stunt my growth.
We sat together with no words, and after my second cup of coffee, I apologized to her, looking down at the table. I told her there was no excuse for my behavior and I hoped she would forgive me. Then she squeezed my hand and said she was sorry, too. She cut me another slice of pie but told me I needed to start packing in a week or so for Chicasetta. We were going to have a real nice summer down home.
* * *
On past nights before the Chicasetta journey, I’d set the alarm clock early. I liked to be in the kitchen with my mother, just the two of us, to have her to myself. That morning I woke early as usual, but in the kitchen, Aunt Diane was there, setting out her blueberry muffins. She told me that my father had a heart attack during his shift at the emergency room. Mama was with him now at the hospital.
I hadn’t seen my father in several days, not since Sunday dinner. He had been quiet, like he’d been for months. Not his usual laughing self. I’d tried to get some banter going, putting my fork in a huge piece of meat loaf, and teasing that I deserved it more than he did. But he didn’t catch on: he’d told me, sure, darling. Take it. He knew he needed to lose some pounds: his last two checkups, his doctor had been angry.
Aunt Diane pulled me into a hug, and I wept, my face mashed against her hair.
“What happened?” I asked when I’d calmed down enough to speak.
“I don’t know, darling. But he’s going to be just fine. The good news is he was finishing up his shift volunteering at the clinic. The other doctor arrived just in time to help him. Geoff’s at the hospital now.”
She put a blueberry muffin on my plate and told me Veronica was asleep upstairs in the guest room. They’d come in last night but hadn’t wanted to wake me. I took a small bite of my muffin in between sips of the coffee she poured for me. I knew from past experience that my aunt didn’t believe in overeating. I needed to make my muffin last, though she’d allow a second cup of coffee.
I breathed in the steam from my mug and thought everything would go my way finally. And no, I wasn’t a bad person for thinking that! My daddy was going to be fine, and I could go to the Vineyard like I’d planned. I sipped my coffee and tried not to smile.
“Are you packed?” Aunt Diane asked. “Do you have enough toiletries? I always forget and leave something behind whenever I go back to Maine. My parents live in the tiniest town, out in the woods. It’s thirty miles from the closest drugstore! Do they have a drugstore in Chicasetta? You’d think I’d know, as many years as Belle’s been going. And I went there once, when you were very little, but for the life of me I don
’t remember.”
“Um . . . I thought I’d be spending the summer with Nana. You know, up on the Vineyard, since Mama is looking after Daddy and can’t come. I don’t, like, want to be selfish. I know he needs her during this very difficult time.” I tried to sound as convincing as I could. To be mature and understanding.
My aunt told me I was so kind and considerate, but I was going down south by myself in two days. Mama already had called a travel agent. “And it’s going to be so fun for you on the plane! Your first time! I’ll drive you to the airport!” Her voice the same exclamatory singsong as when she talked to Veronica.
I was too cranky to appreciate my first ride on an airplane, or the way the blond flight attendant hovered over me, making sure I was taken care of. She gave me extra packets of nuts and let me keep the whole can of soda when she passed by my seat. But she wouldn’t pour me a cup of coffee, even when I reasoned that I was sleepy. It was very early in the morning.
“Coffee will stunt your growth!” she declared.
“I’m five seven and a half and one hundred and sixty-five pounds. I’m done growing.”
She patted my shoulder and told me there was enough caffeine in my soda. Drink up.
At the arrival gate in Atlanta, Uncle Root walked toward me with open arms. “Welcome, sugarfoot! How’s your daddy?”
I didn’t return his embrace. “He’s fine.”
“Excellent! God is good!”
“Uh-huh.” I was determined not to be friendly. Just because I’d had to go to Chicasetta didn’t mean I had to be happy about it. He took my bags, and I trailed him to the parking lot and his long, black town car. He unlocked the passenger door and it groaned open.
“That door is loud,” I said. “And this car is a gas guzzler.”
“That’s the point,” he said. “Negro men like big cars. We don’t believe in conserving energy. After all we’ve been through, we deserve to be wasteful.”
Uncle Root laughed, chucking me under the chin. I wanted to laugh, too, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. When he turned on the classical station, the radio man solemnly whispered, “It’s ninety-nine degrees in the Atlanta metropolitan area,” before he introduced “The Flower Duet” from Lakmé.
“How was your flight, Ailey?”
“Like a ride at Six Flags. I thought I was gonna throw up and then die when the plane crashed.”
“I will take that to mean your journey was unpleasant.”
I leaned against the car window, closing my eyes.
“Ailey, did I ever tell you about the time I met Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois? You know who that is, right?”
“Can’t you just let me take my nap?” I wanted to close my eyes and dream of the Vineyard, of the beach in front of my grandmother’s cottage populated with bourgie Negroes.
Uncle Root raised his voice and continued.
“I entered Routledge College in the fall of 1922. I was fifteen, and my father sent me there. The school at Red Mound didn’t go past eighth grade back then—that wouldn’t happen for a very long time. At Routledge, I had a professor who loved himself some Du Bois. His name was Mr. Terrence Carter Holmes, and there used to be all these rumors he was communist. He loaned me his copy of Darkwater and told me to be careful with it. After that, I just kept borrowing every book by Du Bois that Mr. Holmes owned.
“That next fall, there was a rumor on campus that Du Bois would be visiting Atlanta University. The great scholar himself! A friend told me. Robert Lindsay was his name, but we called him Rob-Boy. He was very good people and came from wealthy folks. You could always borrow a dollar if you got in a tight spot. That was some money in those days.
“Rob-Boy and I decided to drive to Atlanta. He was from there, so we would stay overnight with his parents. The last thing we wanted was to be caught after dark by some crackers. We woke early that next morning and after driving in Rob-Boy’s car, with no water or food, we were hungry. We hadn’t thought to pack a sandwich or even a bottle of Coca-Cola. But my hunger didn’t dim my enthusiasm. I thought about the conversations Dr. Du Bois and Rob-Boy and I would have. We’d let him know that we didn’t agree with the bootlicking policies of Booker T. Washington. We wanted to be intellectual, free Negro men, not somebody’s farmers!
“At Atlanta University, we found out where Dr. Du Bois was staying. We ran up the stairs to his building—three flights, I’ll never forget it. We knocked, and the great scholar answered, himself.”
Uncle Root twisted the radio knob, lowering the volume.
I sat up. Despite myself, I was interested. “It was Dr. Du Bois? For real?”
“Indeed, it was him! He didn’t have a lot of hair left.” The old man ran his fingers through his thick silver curls. “And he was shorter than I was, but he had a way about him.”
“Sort of like Elder Beasley at church?”
“Exactly right. He knew he was important, and everybody else did, too.”
“What’d he say, Uncle Root?”
“‘Yes?’ he asked. I had to catch my breath. Those stairs had tired me out. ‘We came to see you, Dr. Du Bois! We came to see the great scholar!’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘now you have seen me.’ And he closed the door in our faces.”
“That was it?”
“That was it.”
“Permission to speak freely?” Since I’d started high school, the old man had allowed me three curse words per week, if I didn’t slip up in front of other elders.
“Permission granted.”
“Dr. Du Bois seems like a real asshole.”
The old man giggled. “Oh Lord! Please, don’t ever speak of him that way in public. I beg of you.”
“I won’t, but doesn’t he sound like an asshole to you?”
“No comment, and you only have one curse word left this week.”
He pulled the car onto Highway 441.
* * *
No matter how many times I’ve navigated that stretch, there is a feeling. The odor of cow manure. County Line Road and a long, red dirt driveway. The peach trees: an entire continent when I was a little girl. Cotton planted almost two centuries ago, and then soybeans to rest the soil.
Miss Rose sitting on a porch. Beside her, a bushel basket of ripe peaches or tomatoes. The drunkards buzzing, but easily smashed with a swat. Early mornings, she starts singing, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and that’s your cue to rise. To eat the heavy breakfast that will keep you full all day. Once you’ve helped her with peeling those tomatoes or peaches, there are weeds to be plucked from the garden, from around the vegetables that will show up fresh on the supper table. Fish need cleaning if Uncle Norman comes through with a prize. After dinner, the piecing together of quilt tops from remnants until the light completely fades. The next morning, it starts again. A woman singing off-key praises to the Lord. The sweet fruit dripping with juice. The sound of bugs.
I thought of what Mama liked to say: to find this kind of love, you have to enter deep country.
Creatures in the Garden
Without my sisters and mother, the sameness of the country was grating. There were only two television stations, and both came in grainy. It was hot—so hot—and though there was the air conditioner unit in the living room, the plastic-covered furniture trapped the heat.
When I rang the hospital on Saturdays to check on my father, my mother wouldn’t put him on the phone. He wasn’t well enough, she said. Coco called down from Boston, but she was useless, talking in confusing, technical terms—she thought she was a doctor already.
“What does that mean?” I asked. “Is he going to die or not?”
“Yes,” Coco said.
“Why would you say that? You’re so mean!”
“I’m trying to dispel this fantasy you have. Very few Black men live to be senior citizens, especially ones who’ve had heart attacks.”
“Coco, I’m only fifteen years old! Can’t you let me have my dreams?”
“All right, then, Daddy’ll be fine. He just needs to change his
diet and lose seventy-five pounds. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I’m glad you’re happy. And by the way, you better be careful with boys. You know what I mean.”
On the mornings when my granny’s hymn-singing didn’t drive me from bed, she would knock on my door.
“You ain’t up yet, girl?”
“Miss Rose, I’m still sleepy.”
“You too young to be tired. Come on and get this breakfast.”
As we ate, she gave her regular advice: don’t worry about my father. I needed to put everything in the Lord’s hands, because He was in control and nobody else. If I kept busy, I wouldn’t worry, so she ordered me to pluck weeds from the garden with her and Aunt Pauline, who walked over from her house across the field. We followed Miss Rose, walking between rows so as not to squash the vegetables. The dirt flew everywhere, in my two plaits, underneath my nails, as I plucked weeds, the oppressors of food. They had to be killed, violently wrenched from the earth before they put down roots: Pull. Throw in the aluminum pail. Brush the dirt from your hands. Repeat.
Miss Rose bent over, her broadness lifting the faded dress she wore. The backs of her fleshy knees were crisscrossed with stretch marks and purple, broken veins. As she plucked weeds, she offered non sequiturs: Zucchinis took over any patch. Snapping beans had given her arthritis in her left hand. A long time ago she had ground her own corn grits and meal, but now she bought them ready at the store. It was too much work and her arthritis made it hard to grind now. She paid no mind to the rabbits hopping around the edges of her garden. That’s what the chicken wire was for, to keep them out. On the other side of the wire was the clover patch where my former playmates and I had searched for four-leaf specimens. But it served another purpose: the clover diverted the rabbits from human food.
“Who told you that?” I asked.
“I don’t recall, baby,” she said. “Just seemed something I always have knew ’bout rabbits—hand me that there bucket.”
I pretended I didn’t hear the broken verb. In the City, my mother and Nana ruthlessly corrected my grammar, but down south I wasn’t supposed to get above myself. There’d be trouble if I insulted an elder.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois Page 15
