by Jesmyn Ward
My mother had buried her dreams on that long ride from California to Mississippi. She’d secreted them next to my brother in the womb, convinced as she was, with a sinking dread, that they were futile. She’d tried to escape the role she’d been born to, of women working, of absent fathers, of little education and no opportunity. She’d tried to escape the history of her heritage, just as my father had. Going to California to join my father had been her great bid for freedom. When she returned, she thought it had failed. She’d returned to the rural poverty, the persistent sacrifice that the circumstance of being poor and Black and a woman in the South demanded. But the suggestion of that dream lived on in her conception of my father. It’s part of why she loved him so long and so consistently, and it is part of the reason it hurt her so to meet him at the door with his leather jackets, black sweatpants, and black fringed T-shirts shoved in garbage bags and to tell him: Go.
And just like that, my father left.
With my father gone, I picked up my mantle of responsibility. Perhaps if we’d still been in DeLisle, maintaining our family would have been a little easier, but in Gulfport, my mother couldn’t bear the burden of the entire family by herself. I was learning that. My mother gave me a house key. It was one item in a growing list of responsibilities. In addition to hanging clothes, gathering them, folding them, putting them away, vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the bathrooms, babysitting my brother and sisters during the day during the summer while my mother was at work, the key meant that during the school year I should let us in the house if we got home from school before my mother made it home from work. But even as a young teen, I was absentminded, forgetful. In the summer, I often left my key inside and turned the lock on the knob and pulled the door shut behind us, locking us out of the house. After our father left, there was no one to open the door if our mother wasn’t home. During the school year, I didn’t realize I’d left the key at school until I stood before the door with my brothers and sisters.
I patted my short pockets, Josh at my elbow, Charine on my hip.
“I forgot the key.”
“What?” Joshua said.
I fumbled around Charine’s leg, tried to make her slide down my hip to stand, but she wouldn’t.
“I’m so stupid!” I said.
I looked at Josh. He was only a few inches shorter than me, even though he was just nine. He rolled his eyes.
“I have to pee,” Nerissa said.
“Me too. I have to pee too,” said Charine.
“We going to have to go in the woods.”
“I don’t want to go in the woods,” Nerissa said.
“Me neither,” Charine said.
Joshua followed us as I grabbed Nerissa by the hand. I led them around the yard and into the woods we’d walked through with our father to get to the video store; we weren’t allowed to walk all the way to Dedeaux Road without him. Fifteen feet into the woods, next to a trail on the right, was a dense cluster of bushes. Further behind the cluster of bushes was a full-size mattress that someone had dumped, probably the previous tenants who’d lived in our house. This, I thought, would have to do.
“Come on,” I said. I led them behind the screen of bushes. Charine began to cry. She was convinced that when she pulled down her pants something would bite her. A snake, she said. Or ants.
“Ain’t no snakes,” I said, although it was summer and hot, and the underbrush could be teeming with them, reptiles cooling themselves in the hottest part of the day.
She resisted.
“You want to pee on yourself?” I threatened. Sobbing, she squatted. I felt guilty for bullying her. “That wasn’t that bad,” I said. Charine nodded and wiped the snot from her nose with her hand. Josh, who’d watched the path for us, ran past us to the mattress.
“I’m going to do a flip,” he said. He sprinted and leapt on the mattress. I expected to see him spring high into the air, soar into a flip. He bounced about a foot or so. The ground had no spring, and the mattress was a sorry trampoline. Still, he did the front flip and landed on his back. When he stood, he smiled dizzily, swaying, and began to bounce again. Nerissa skipped to join him, and Charine let my hand go and ran for the mattress as well, snakes and ants forgotten.
Even though I felt the weight of responsibility with my father gone, as my mother had felt it when hers left (except in even larger measure), I was still a kid. We were still kids, in love with the mystery and beauty of the woods, deriving a certain pleasure out of our scrappy self-imposed exile from the house. We ran wild in the hours between our dismissal from school and my mother’s return from work.
One day, while I was sitting with Charine and Nerissa and weaving flowers into rings and necklaces, Josh appeared and sat with us. He’d been off exploring.
“I found something,” he said.
“What is it?”
“A secret room,” Josh said. “I’ma show you.”
We followed him further into the woods, along the trail that curved to the right, the trail that would take us through the subdivision and to a corner store on Dedeaux Road if we followed it. We walked in single file because it was so narrow. Underbrush and weeds grew thickly off the dirt path, scratched our calves, our shins. I picked Charine up and carried her. She was four. Joshua led and Nerissa trotted on his heels, proud to be keeping up with him, even at six. Then he led us off the trail, and I hoisted Charine around to my back and bent, all of us burrowing our way through thorny, leaf-drenched bushes, stumbling through blackberry brambles as the pines shivered above our heads. Suddenly the woods opened up into a small clearing. The ground was soft and spongy below our feet, padded with layers of pine straw.
“Watch,” Josh said, and knelt. He felt in the straw along what looked like a shallow ditch, then pushed the earth. There was a scraping sound. The straw moved, and there was a black hole where the ditch had been. “Look,” he said.
We clustered behind him. I grabbed Nerissa’s hand and leaned over Josh’s narrow back before I understood what I was seeing. Someone had dug into the earth, made a cellar, and then covered it over with two-by-fours before strewing pine straw to camouflage it.
“Who made this?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Joshua said. He had friends in the neighborhood, too, Black boys and one White boy, all who, like my girlfriend, lived there with their single mothers. Maybe they made it, I thought, but it seemed too large an undertaking for skinny little kids with knees like doorknobs, shirtless boys whose ribs you could count when they rode their bikes through the streets. So much digging, I thought. And planning.
“Let’s go,” I said. I pulled Nerissa’s arm.
“You don’t want to go down in it?” Joshua asked. I could tell by the way he said it that he hadn’t gone down in it yet, and that he thought we might explore it together.
“No,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I yanked Nerissa to walk.
“Hold on,” I told Charine, and she tightened her legs around my waist, locking them at the heels. I pushed branches out of the way, began shouldering through the underbrush back to the trail. Josh stood behind us, still at the mouth of that hole.
“Come on!” I said.
He hesitated, then followed. When we reached the trail, I began trotting, Charine bouncing up and down on my back, laughing.
“Run,” I said.
We ran, stumbling on roots, plants whipping us like fishing line at the ankle. When we reached the end of the trail, we ran past the mattress, leapt over the ditch that bordered the woods and our yard, then let ourselves into the fence and the backyard, where we stopped, breathing hard. I turned on the hose and made everyone drink, and I kept us close to the yard for the rest of the day. Josh did a few desultory flips on the mattress, but he was the only one who reentered the woods before coming back out again.
That night, after my mother had fussed at me for forgetting my key again, after we’d all been bathed and ordered to bed, I lay awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling, trying to see the
dresser, our stuffed animals, my lonely fish in its small, plastic rectangular tank the size of a saucer. I wanted them to glow brightly, to pacify me and let me know I was not alone, but they stood silently in the darkness, beyond my view. I was tempted to shake Nerissa awake so she’d open her eyes because I knew they would be white in the dark and she would at least grunt at me, but I did not. Along with the responsibilities I’d resumed when my father left again, his departure renewed my sense of abandonment, worthlessness. While I lay next to my sleeping sisters, questioning my father’s love, I equated the cellar out in the woods with my deserved misery. Instead of waking Nerissa, I pictured the open mouth of that cellar off in the darkness, in the future, gaping as a grave.
The next day, I didn’t ask my friend Kelly about the cellar, or my friend Tamika, or my friend Cynthia. Instead, I stood barefoot in the empty lot next to our house, still thinking about it, while half listening to Kelly talk.
“Girl, have you heard that new song by that White rapper?”
I looked confused.
“He is so fine,” she said. I was thirteen by then, all slim lines and teeth and unruly hair that my mother had first given up on combing, and then attempted to tame with a relaxer. When Kelly said this, she smiled and her entire body shook, the woman parts of her moving like water. Kelly was fourteen. She rolled her eyes.
“Wait till you see him.”
When I saw him on television, the White rapper was all hard lines and sequins. There were other boys I saw in the neighborhood who I thought were more attractive, boys with prominent cheekbones and black hair and dark, almost black eyes. Boys who looked like my father when he was younger. But I had no boyfriends. I thought I was too skinny and ugly to get a boyfriend: I would never approach and speak to a boy I didn’t know, and most times they wouldn’t approach me either. And if they did, I didn’t feel flattered. I felt embarrassed. But Kelly had boyfriends, and so did Crissy, one of my friends from the middle school in Pass Christian. We still talked on the phone sometimes, and she told me stories.
“I almost had sex,” she said.
“Huh?”
“I did.”
“Really?”
“My boyfriend came over and my mama wasn’t home. We was in the room and we was kissing and stuff. He tried to put it in, but it wouldn’t go.”
“Oh,” I said, amazed at her brazenness.
“I guess that meant God didn’t think it was the right time,” she said.
We were thirteen, but even so I was surprised by her mention of God. My ideas about God at the time were that He’d have nothing whatsoever to do with sanctioning an unwed woman, a teenager, having sex, so I didn’t understand Crissy’s logic.
“I guess not,” I said.
We weren’t allowed to let kids into our house when our mother was at work for the day, and mostly I didn’t want to. We met our friends on the street or in the woods, and in Gulf-port, all of my friends were girls. Even though my girlfriends were dating, I didn’t want to. I was still reading books and playing with dolls in secret. I let a boy into my mother’s house once when she was at work, but I did not let him in because I thought he was attractive, or because I wanted something to happen between us; I let him and his friend in because I thought they were Joshua’s friends. It was a disaster. It was a few weeks after we’d found the cellar, and two boys we knew from the neighborhood came by. Phillip was actually Joshua’s friend, skinnier than my brother and maybe a few inches taller, and he liked to wear his hair in a lopsided Gumby cut. His friend was a boy named Thomas, who was around my age, twelve, and we didn’t know him well. He was taller than Phillip, by at least a foot, and thick. He had a wide, flat nose, and his shoulders seemed lopsided, set at an angle, like whatever aligned him was askew.
“Can we come in?” Thomas asked.
Joshua and Charine and Nerissa were in the living room, watching You Can’t Do That on Television, and I stood at the side door that opened to the carport. The day was bright and hot beyond them, the bugs loudly lamenting the heat. The house was cool, even though my mother kept the thermostat at eighty to save money on her electricity bill during the summertime. We were threatened with whipping if we changed the setting. We never did.
“I guess,” I said.
The two boys followed me into the living room. Phillip sat on the sofa next to Josh, and they began talking. I sat on the long sofa. Nerissa and Charine looked up from their playing for a moment, dolls in mid-meal on the floor, and then went back to it.
“Can I sit next to you?” Thomas asked.
“I guess,” I said.
Thomas sat next to me on the sofa.
“What y’all been doing today?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Watching TV.”
“It’s hot out there.”
“Yeah.”
Thomas scooted closer. His leg touched mine. I scooted over, further into the crack of the sofa.
“Where y’all mama?”
“Work,” I said.
Thomas edged closer so his leg was touching mine again, and I tried to scoot over, but I was jammed into the arm of the sofa. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t talking to Josh and Phillip.
“Why you keep scooting over?” Thomas asked.
I shrugged, turning a shoulder to him and leaned away from his face. Josh and Phillip, still talking and laughing, walked out the side door. It closed behind them.
“I like you,” Thomas said.
I was mute. He pressed against me, sandwiching me between him and the cushions. I half stood, and he grabbed my arm and yanked me back down to the sofa.
“You don’t like me?” he said.
I shook my head. His hand slid up my arm, to my shoulder, my neck. I jerked away from him, and he moved with me. I was helpless.
“Stop,” I said. It was a squeak.
“What? I’m not doing anything.”
“Stop touching me,” I said. I deserve this, I thought.
“Come on, girl,” he said, leaning into me again, leading with his mouth. He grabbed my arm hard. This is my fault, I thought. Charine and Nerissa were quiet.
“Stop it!” I couldn’t breathe. He was too big. Just sit there, and if you take it long enough, it’ll be over, I thought.
Charine jumped up from her squat on the floor and ran toward the sofa. She leapt into Thomas’s lap feet first and began jumping on him, stomping his crotch.
“Leave my sister alone! Leave my sister alone!” she yelled.
“Get off me,” he said, trying to push her away, sliding over enough that I was able to get up and away from him. I stood.
“Leave her alone!” Charine said, kicking. Nerissa was crying. I scooped Charine up under her armpits and swung her to my waist. She had given me my voice back.
“Get out!” I said.
“What?”
“Get out!” I said. “Or I’m going to call my mama!”
He jumped up from the sofa. I ran to the side door, Charine still on my hip, and swung the door open wide, letting in the heat of the day.
“Out!”
He walked past and out into the heat, looking down at us.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Fuck you!” I said, slamming the door, locking the dead-bolt. I was surprised I could be so angry.
Thomas hit the door, hard.
“You stupid bitch!” he said.
“I’m not a bitch!” I said. But even as I said it, I was ashamed for not fighting back earlier on the sofa. I had to be saved by a three-year-old, I thought.
“Fucking slut!” He hit the door again.
I backed away from it, Charine clinging to me. We stared at the shuddering door: Charine was alert, ready to go at him again. I’m pathetic, I thought. There was a knocking at the back door, and then Josh opened it and walked inside. I locked that one, too.
“What you locked the side door for?” Josh asked. Thomas banged again. I could hear Phillip laughing on the carport.
“Him,” I said, point
ing at the side door.
“Bitch!” Thomas hit it again. There was quiet on the other side. I put Charine down, walked to the front window, knelt, and peered through the blinds as the two boys skipped out in the sun and slowed to a walk in the middle of the street. I watched them until they disappeared around the corner of the house.
It didn’t matter if my mother was home or not. Thomas caught me out when I was hanging clothes by myself or sweeping the carport. He wouldn’t come into the yard, but he would roam the edges of the fence, the woods at the back of the house, scream, I know you hear me talking to you. You hear me talking to you. And then: I see you. When he said this, I thought he meant that he saw all the misery in me, saw that I deserved to be treated this way by a boy, any boy, all boys, everyone, and I believed him.
My mother withdrew after my father left. When she was home, she was cleaning. Or she was in the kitchen, cooking. There were no more movie marathons. We had food stamps then, books of them that I was always embarrassed to spend at the Colonial Bread store, but my mother had no compunctions about using them to keep the refrigerator stocked. Unlike my father, my mother wasn’t comfortable with physical shows of affection. She didn’t hug us or kiss us or touch us when she talked to us, like he did. Sometimes I think that my mother felt that if she relaxed even a tiny bit, the world she’d so laboriously built to sustain us would fall apart. So since she couldn’t overtly express her love for us, which was as large and fierce and elemental as the forest fires that sometimes swept through the woods behind our house, she showed us she loved us the only way she knew how beyond providing a home for us, cleaning, taking care of us, providing discipline: through food. She cooked huge pots of gumbo, beef and vegetable soup, pork chops, mashed potatoes, roasts, red beans and rice, cornbread, and desserts—pecan candy, blueberry muffins, German chocolate cakes, and yellow sheet cakes that she decorated with elaborate flowers and vines made of frosting.
