I’d suspected that Coco was a lesbian. To my knowledge, she’d never had a boyfriend, and back when we’d spent summers in Chicasetta, whenever boys had approached her, she’d spoken to them rudely. “You’re bugging me,” she’d say. But I acted surprised when my mother revealed her big news about what was going on with my grandmother’s at-home nurse. And I nodded when my mother warned, don’t be prejudiced about your sister’s lifestyle. Times had changed: I had to keep up.
When she recounted her discovery, Mama had emphasized she was not a snoop. She only went upstairs at Nana’s house to use the bathroom. Nana’s personal toilet was downstairs, but it was too small. My mother liked to have space to move around, and once there, she reasoned that it was totally acceptable to examine the toiletry articles inside the medicine cabinet. She wanted to see how the rest of the upstairs had changed as well, and after checking the closets and bureaus of the other bedrooms, she didn’t see any evidence that another person slept in those rooms, which seemed strange to her since it was clear Melissa slept there—there were perfumes and lotions in the bathroom, and Coco didn’t like all that. Soap and water always had been plenty for her. Mama hadn’t thought herself nosy, either, for turning the knob of the closed door of her daughter’s room, the one that had been Nana’s. On the wall of the now-white anteroom, she saw several framed photographs of Coco and Melissa embracing, among the family pictures. (My mother was pleased to see three photos of herself on the wall, too.) And when she inspected the closet of the bedroom—okay, all right, yes, at this juncture, it was a complete invasion of privacy—one half of the walk-in closet had contained female clothes too tall and wide to fit her petite daughter.
“But isn’t this nice?” my mother asked. “I gotta tell you, Ailey. I thought something was wrong with your sister. She never had anybody. Lord, I’m so relieved. To God be the glory.”
The Sunday that I gave in to her nagging and attended dinner at Nana’s house, I noticed the house was smaller than I remembered. Her bedroom had been moved downstairs to the maid’s quarters, the walls of which were painted red and displayed her pictures. There was a bathroom a few steps from the bed, which was no longer a four-poster. The pill containers were kept on a shelf inside the carved armoire that was wedged into the corner.
My sister’s girlfriend was tall and plump and cinnamon-colored. She tried to serve, until my mother sweetly scolded, she better sit right down. Sunday was the Lord’s day, and Melissa needed some rest. Then Mama asked her, what did she want on her plate?
“You know I wouldn’t mind some greens, Miss Belle. Your greens are so good.”
After dinner, we moved to the living room and Coco turned on the VCR. None of the Black classics were out on videotape, so we watched my grandmother’s preferred movie, The Lion King.
“I’m bored,” my cousin Veronica said. “I’ve seen this movie, like, a thousand times. I’m ready to go home.”
My mother told my cousin she had a secret. That was her code for a hug, and the girl rolled her eyes. At twelve, she was too old for foolishness, but Mama held out her arms, and finally, my cousin sat down, snuggling into her. Our grandmother swayed to her movie as she sang about the circle of life.
Coco had told us Nana’s larger stroke hadn’t left her completely debilitated, but she’d never be the woman she’d once been. I looked at my grandmother, wearing the expensive housedress she’d called “a lounging outfit” in her stronger, acerbic days. The embroidered satin slippers on her feet. All my grandmother’s memories might not be present, but mine were. And I didn’t want to feel sorry for her.
I retreated to the kitchen, rambling through the fridge. Looking at the snacks that Nana never had kept in the house when I was younger. Individual containers of chocolate pudding, pound cake covered with plastic. Times had certainly changed.
Then, a tap on my shoulder. “Hey girl.”
It was my sister, sneaking up on me. She had our mother’s light, terrifying step.
“Coco!” I put my hand over my chest. “Girl, you scared me! Damn, you walk like a cat.”
She laughed. “Melissa tells me the same thing. Listen, I’m worried about you.”
“Me? I’m fine.”
“But you need to do something with yourself, Ailey. When med school starts back up next summer, you don’t want to be used to sleeping in every morning. You need to be able to hit the ground running, or that schedule will kick your ass.”
“Okay, I’ll look around for something. I think Worthie’s might be hiring.”
Coco put out a calming hand, like our father used to do. “Don’t be upset.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing bad! I only set up an interview for you at that free clinic where Daddy worked. They’re on Mecca’s community network.”
“How’d you know that?”
She looked away for a few seconds. “Just show up to the interview, okay? If you don’t like it, you don’t have to take the job.”
“How much are they paying?”
“It doesn’t pay, but it looks good on your résumé.”
“Volunteer work? How many days a week?”
“Two.”
“Two days a week and no damned money, Coco?”
“It would make Mama really happy, Ailey. And she’s been having a really hard time. She’s really sad.”
I sucked my teeth. “Fine, Coco.”
“You mad?” She bumped me with her hip. “Don’t be mad, okay?”
“I won’t be mad if you stop being creepy, sneaking up on folks. Wear a bell around your neck or something. Shit.”
The clinic where Coco had scheduled my interview was in my parents’ old neighborhood, over in the northeast quadrant of the City. My mother called the neighborhood a ghetto; we’d lived there when I was small, but I didn’t remember. After we moved, Mama never returned to that part of the City. She’d told me she was grateful she’d made it out, and she didn’t want her daughters going there, either.
My father’s practice had been in a nicer part of the City—that’s how he’d made his money—but Seven Principles Clinic was the legacy he’d helped to build, with the help of a friend, Mr. Zulu Harris. The clinic used to be called “The People’s Nguzo Saba Afya Center” but the name had changed, once the federal government began to give community grants.
That clinic had been my father’s passion, but I’d never met Zulu Harris. He and my father had been good friends, yet he’d never visited our house. I got the feeling that Mama never liked him much: whenever my father mentioned him, she would say, don’t let that nigger get him in trouble. He knew what she meant.
As I drove to that neighborhood, I saw that every fifth or six building was empty. Addicts with concave eyes sat on the steps, smoking and talking. But there were other houses with front lawns of blossoming pink and purple flowers and trimmed hedges. Only the bars on the windows let me know, this was a place to be careful.
On the clinic’s front steps, a handsome, goateed man stood. His head was shining bald and he wore a Cuban shirt, linen pants, and sandals on his feet.
“I cannot believe this is Brother Geoff’s baby! When I found out you were volunteering here, I said, I was going to meet you!”
When I stepped back a few paces, he laughed.
“Aw, darling, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m Zulu Harris.”
I joined in his laughter.
“Oh, okay! All right! My daddy used to talk about you all the time.”
“I hope so! We were best friends. I miss that man. He was my brother. And now, how your mama holding up?”
“She’s keeping, Mr. Harris. You know. It’s a little hard for her.”
“I understand.”
We sat on the stoop and he gave me the rundown of the neighborhood. Don’t forget the ten dollars for the group of little boys. They would protect my car in front of the clinic. The police ignored them, because Mr. Harris had a friend on the force. But the ten dollars was important, because if I did not
gain a reliable reputation with the little boys and pay them, the more dangerous grown men would take over.
“Otherwise, come outside and no car!” He snapped his fingers. “I pay fifty dollars a week myself. You’re on a sliding scale.”
And don’t mind the addicts at the clinic, neither. They were terrible, coming in with their fake coughs, trying and trying to get the drugs. They scared the new doctor, the guy who’d taken over for my father. When Daddy was alive, all he’d give them was three ibuprofens apiece. No matter how they cried. And finally, don’t lecture the teenage mothers about birth control. These girls were just doing the best they could.
“All right, the director of the clinic will show you the rest of the ropes next week, when you start. I’ve got a community meeting, but don’t forget to go ’round to my restaurant. Zulu’s Fufu. Your money’s no good there. Anything you want, just order.”
“Thank you, Mr. Harris.”
“And you tell your mama I asked about her. You tell her my brother wouldn’t want her needing anything and not getting in touch with me. Make sure you tell her.” He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pants pocket. “Here’s my number, just in case.”
Back at home, I let myself in, and Mama ran to me.
“Are you all right?”
She stroked my face, and I pulled from her onion-perfumed hands. “I wasn’t fighting in the Gulf War. I was across town.”
“You were in the ghetto, baby. Why can’t you just say it?”
“Because ‘ghetto’ is a politically incorrect term. It’s called an ‘inner-city neighborhood.’”
“It’s impossible for Black folks to be politically incorrect.”
I followed her into the kitchen, telling her I’d finally met Daddy’s best friend, Mr. Zulu Harris. He seemed really nice, and I thought he was well off. He owned a restaurant and some apartment buildings.
“I haven’t seen him in years,” Mama said. “What he look like? Is he all broke down and his teeth gone?”
“No, not at all. I mean, I don’t know what he used to look like. He had some gray in his beard. But for an old dude, he’s actually kind of fine.”
“Oh—Okay.”
“Mr. Harris asked about you, too. He said, if you needed anything just give him a call.”
Mama touched her collarbone. “Did he, now?”
* * *
That next week, there was a band of little boys blocking my way to the clinic, one so young, his two front teeth had fallen out.
I spoke to the tallest boy. “What’s your name, sugar?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I’d like to know who I’m giving my money to.”
“Maurice Bradley. What’s your name, lil’ mama?”
He stroked his hairless chin, and I resisted my urge to yank his ear. It was either ignore this child’s bad manners or leave my car at home and take the bus. My mother would never allow me to take the bus to this neighborhood.
“My name is Miss Garfield, and why do I have to pay you ten whole dollars?”
“’Cause we said so.”
“Where’re your parents while this is going on?”
Maurice stood taller and adjusted his baseball cap. He looked back at his miniature cosigners, and they nodded their heads.
“Who’re you, the social worker? All you need to know is your car will be here when you get through. That’s what you call a contract.”
“Here’s the deal, Brother Maurice: I don’t have but five dollars today.” I raised my hand. “I forgot my money, but I’ll have fifteen dollars for you next week. So how about I give you this five dollars, and as a good-faith gesture, you can have this?”
I pulled out a large pack of Now & Laters from my purse. I liked to tuck them in my jaw and let them disintegrate throughout the day.
Maurice’s cosigners made happy noises, and he snatched the money.
“All right, then. But I can buy my own candy.”
It was a day filled with trouble. After my exchange with the Colored Lord of the Flies, I’d tried to get an elderly patient to fill out a new questionnaire. She had been fully clothed but pointed her finger at me.
“What you think this is? I don’t know you!”
I clutched my clipboard to my chest.
“But Mrs. Bradley, this is just a new questionnaire we need you to fill out. We have to maintain statistics for the government.”
“I don’t give a good you-know-what about no statistics! Just cause I’m poor don’t mean I gotta to tell all my damned business to the whole congregation!”
I backed out of the room, but as I turned the corner, I heard a familiar sound. Lydia’s laughter, the free huskiness rising.
Disbelief gobbled my air, and I knew then, I’d never expected to see my sister, outside of my own memories. But there Lydia was: alive. There she was, a miracle standing at the desk, talking to the receptionist. My sister had that same charm, the ease of our Chicasetta women.
When she turned around, I rushed to her. The clinic was scheduled to close, but patients were backed up, staring as we held each other and cried. As Lydia called my name, rocking me in her arms. She called my name again. She called it one more time.
Song
How a Man Becomes a Monster
The fault of how Samuel Pinchard, the man who would be known by the Negroes on his land as “Master,” became an atrocity, a devil clothed in beautiful skin, bright hair, and the strangest of eyes, instead of a human being with a soul that listened to God calling in dreams, began with a woman. Or at least Samuel would fault this woman. She was the one who had thrust him out of her perfect, warm place and into a cold container that was not a true world but a hell. This woman was Samuel’s mother, who bore him by a father whom no child deserved.
Her name was Joan, and like all of her children, she was a woman of incomparable beauty, in the time and place where Samuel was born. She and her husband, Adam, had lived on the land the English called Virginia. That land had been taken from its original inhabitants, as all the land in this place on this side of the water had been taken, and Adam had built a farm that was not wealthy, but was not poor, either. There was a house of one level with two bedrooms, and a kitchen that served as a parlor. This house was built of split, sanded logs. A porch and two chairs that rested upon it, where Adam and Joan sat in the evenings and shared very few words. In the distance would be the lights coming from the cabin that seven of their Negro slaves shared. Adam and Joan thought little about these Negroes except to take their respect and (presumed) affection for granted, like all owners do for that which they consider things and creatures. As Adam took the wood of the chair that cupped his buttocks for granted. As he took the meat on his plate for granted and did not weep over the spilled blood of the animal who had crossed from the side of the living over to death. And why would he? He believed that Negroes were the children of Cain, the least favored son.
Adam was handsome, though of dark hair and eyes. His children with Joan had inherited her fair looks. Had it been this lack of resemblance, the blond hair of his children, that caused Adam to leave Joan’s bed in the night without a backward glance? To never consider if she was warm in the cold or if her stomach was full of supper? To consult the hole in his chest where his soul should have been, and then walk to the other room, which was on the left side of the large kitchen? The Bible lent him absolution, for there were stories of men who abused women, even their own children, as Lot had ravished his own daughters, in the days after the destruction of Sodom. Maybe Adam thought of Lot, that bearded, self-righteous man, when he chose one of his two daughters from the children’s room. Yet there was no justification for him on the nights Adam chose one of his four sons.
The six children of Adam and Joan were beautiful, and when the family arrived at church in their town, the only place where the eight of them visited together, it seemed acceptable to the congregation that the building where God lived should house such splendor once a week. The Pinchards sat
in a row up front. Their Negroes sat with the others of their tribe at the very back of the church, as there wasn’t a balcony.
Sunday nights were a reprieve in the life of Samuel and his siblings, for the other six days a week, that light would be followed by the demon-filled darkness. In the room that he shared with his brothers and sisters, his rest was never deep, for he waited for his father’s candle to appear in the doorway, and for Adam to pull the covers off one of the three beds and select the child he would take away and remain with that night. Each night the candle appeared, Samuel would suck in his breath and hold it. He would pray, and two or three times a week, his prayer was answered, for Adam’s hand would reach across Samuel to his twin brother, and Samuel would be saved. Or Adam would not approach Samuel’s bed at all, and he would pull the covers off one of the other two beds. And rarely, there were nights when the door to the children’s room would not open, and Samuel wondered, was his father at rest, or had God answered his prayers and killed the man?
Yet there were the nights when Samuel was chosen and led through the kitchen and outside to the barn, where a blanket lay on the alfalfa hay. A Negro man slept in the barn and Adam did not bother to tell him to leave as Samuel was hurt in the darkness. Often, he hoped that the Negro would save him, that the Negro would strike Adam on the head with a horse’s whip or the shovel used to clean out the stalls of the horses and the mule, and then Samuel would be free. He did not ponder what would happen to the Negro upon his father’s death, as surely the Negro did. He did not care that perhaps this Negro would be sold to cover the taxes of his father’s thirty-five acres. Samuel only wanted not to lie facedown on a blanket in a barn.
Once, on a night that Samuel was chosen, and Adam’s hand steered him through the kitchen, Samuel began to scream for his mother. He cried Joan’s name, he begged her to make it stop, he surely howled as long and loud as an animal soon to be transformed to meat, and Joan appeared at the door that opened from her bedroom to the kitchen. Her face was utterly perfect, lit by the candle she held. Samuel reached his hand toward that light. He cried her name—Mother—and Joan stepped back and shut the door.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois Page 40
