Mama Day

by Naylor, Gloria;

  “No.”

  “Yeah. Never made it over to New York, but Detroit, Baltimore, Kansas City—Rainbow Dan with the dancing hands. Dan not being my real name, mind you. But I could do with my hands what some folks couldn’t do with their feet. Still can—with a bit of inspiration in me. You drink, city boy?”

  “No, I—”

  “Just as well, living over there with them Day women. But I do brew a bit—it’s another one of my sidelines. That and my hives. I keep myself busy here.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “Yeah, come on over to the south woods where I make camp. We’ll play us a little cards.”

  “Oh, we’re not playing in your home?”

  “Naw, I stay away from there.” He rinsed off his toothbrush before wrapping his washcloth tightly around it. The battered felt hat with the red feathers was placed firmly on his head after he had rearranged his necklace of bones. Eyes are a funny thing: they squint up exactly the same when we’re ready to laugh or cry. “’Cause if I was in it,” he said—and now I knew he was going to smile—“there wouldn’t be nobody out here to miss it.”

  It was well into late morning by the time you returned up the road with a bunch of wilted daisies in your hand. I’d been sitting on the porch railing for over two hours and my immense relief at seeing that silly bouncing stride of yours told me how panicky I had been. Obviously, I hadn’t really convinced myself when I convinced Grandma not to worry about your absence at breakfast. He’s a grown man and where can he possibly get lost in Willow Springs? She quickly brought up the cypress swamp and the patches of quicksand in the east woods. But he’s also a cautious man, and his first time out he’d stay on the main roads. And no, I wouldn’t go out hunting you down. When you were ready, you’d come back.

  Under the pretext of wanting some sun, I spent the morning outside wondering about where you were, finally getting angry at myself for not going along with you. But you had gotten up so early—I wished I could remember how early—I knew my brain hadn’t cleared. And hadn’t you woken me up to talk about—it couldn’t be—a tree growing in the bed? That made absolutely no sense and neither did your drowning in the cypress swamp. Hadn’t I dreamed it, though? No, I had dreamed that you were swimming in The Sound. It all came back then and it was very disturbing. I was standing over here calling to you—I was in some kind of trouble—but you were swimming in the other direction. The louder I called from here, the faster you tried to reach my voice on the opposite side. You were starting to falter, and if I kept it up you would drown out there, so I clamped my mouth shut with my voice pushing inside my chest until it felt I would explode. And there I was, trying to hold my screams inside of me, hoping you could make it back to shore, to wake up in a cold sweat and find myself alone in that bed. There was the weirdest sensation that everything about you had been a dream. It was only a fleeting second, but it was still long enough to start my heart pounding.

  So where in the hell were you? I was out there for an hour when Junior Lee drove by, calling out his window, “Legggs, legggs,” with that stupid grin on his face. I started to wave him down and ask if he’d seen you down by the junction, but I wasn’t desperate enough at that time to try getting any sense out of him. At the end of another hour I would have tackled Junior Lee or any village idiot to get some information. And as it crawled on into the third hour and you came bouncing up the road, I knew we were going to have our first fight on southern soil. You knew it too, which explained the flowers.

  “I bet you were wondering where I was.”

  “I bet I didn’t give a damn.”

  “Well, you lose.” You tried to kiss me and I jerked my head away.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “You see, that’s what you said this morning. And now you’re angry because I went out to walk my frustration off.”

  “Why don’t you stop lying, George.”

  “I’m not. I woke you up for a little attention and—”

  “You woke me up to talk some nonsense about a tree growing in the bedroom.”

  “It was a redwood—right there beside you.”

  “Ohhh, light dawns. Well, I could have saved you all that frustration if you had mentioned something a bit smaller in scale, like a—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “You’d deserve it if I did.”

  “I see you were a lot more worried than I thought. I’m sorry.”

  “I told you, I wasn’t worried.”

  “You’ve been sitting out here a long time.”

  “How would you know?”

  “The marks on the back of your thighs.”

  “I had my legs up on the railing to get a tan. And I want you to know that while you were gallivanting all over the place, a lot of people were passing by and admiring what you’d left here at home.”

  “Like who?”

  “Junior Lee, for one.”

  I didn’t mind your laughing, but it didn’t have to go on so long. “For a minute I thought you were trying to make me jealous. And sometimes when you were down here alone, I did wonder. But not anymore.”

  “Junior Lee isn’t the only man in Willow Springs.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve been talking to the others down at the barbershop.”

  “Well, at least that explains where you were.”

  “And it also explains why you were hanging over this railing waiting for me so desperately.”

  “I told you—”

  “I found out there are a lot of Saints fans in this town.”

  “Who are the Saints?”

  “Anyway, did you know that Dr. Buzzard’s real name is Rainbow Simpson?”

  It was amazing how much you had managed to find out about people I thought I had known all my life. But then I had never spent any time among the men in the barbershop. It was a place to be passed if I was going to the general store or on my way to having my own hair done. Any news about their lives came to me secondhand or even thirdhand, filtered through their daughters or wives, sometimes bits and pieces from Grandma and Mama Day. No, I didn’t know that Parris had gotten his name from fighting in France during World War II with the Ninety-second Infantry Division, that Winky Browne had batted against Satchel Paige in the bush leagues, or that Dr. Buzzard was once married to a dancer on the vaudeville circuit. You never pried, so they must have volunteered the information—some of it showing off for you, a lot of it simply because they knew you’d be interested. And you had been, enough to spend an entire morning with them. How much could I kick? It was your vacation too, and you were always most at ease with a group of men. You were one of the few men I knew who had absolutely no female friends or business associates. It wasn’t difficult to figure out why, but it suddenly struck me that the three of us here were the only women in your life. Still, did you have to get bored with our company so soon?

  I thought it was hysterical that you’d been suckered into a poker game with Dr. Buzzard. Since they only played for nickels and dimes, the most you were going to lose was six or seven dollars. At tops, you’d be out ten if he could also talk you into buying one of his “gambling hands,” but that wasn’t your speed. You’d been with the man all morning and couldn’t figure out what he did for a living. I told you to go ask Grandma. After all, he was one of their close family friends. She almost fell over in the dishpan when you brought up the “professional rivalry” between him and Mama Day. Her advice, after much hemming and hawing, was for you to go get it straight from the horse’s mouth. I didn’t want to follow you to her trailer because I’d be blamed for putting you up to it.

  It turned out I was still blamed when she came blazing over later that day. What did she want from me, anyway? I couldn’t tell you where to walk and who to talk to. They didn’t know how stubborn you were. The kiss of death was for me to tell you not to do something. You were going to come to your own conclusions about what you saw and heard in Willow Springs. But she was furious that he’d mentioned her in the same breath with h
imself. She wasn’t in Buzzard’s line of business at all. Buzzard was a con artist, bootlegger. Buzzard was a shiftless, no-good, slew-footed, twisted-mouthed, slimy-backed … Oh, the adjectives went on and on. I was sure she’d have enough of them to last until he came by the house that Friday night. That is, if I didn’t see him first to ward him off.

  It ain’t been long since Miranda got home and the sun is already riding the top of the pine trees. The peaches Ruby brought her last night is sitting in the middle of the floor, but she weren’t about to start cutting ’em up before she got herself a cup of tea and a long hot bath. And she knows her hens is almost fit to be tied, the morning passing without them getting fresh feed and water, but there weren’t no phone where she was so Abigail or Baby Girl coulda come over and taken care of it for her. No, weren’t nothing where she was but a house full of—she didn’t know what kind of people, letting that baby suffer that way. Someone addle-brained as Reema shouldna had child the first, and for that child to go on and have children was a sin before God. Leave ’em where they are if you can’t take care of ’em. If you ain’t got sense enough to marry nothing but a pitiful specimen of a man like Reema’s oldest gal, Carmen Rae, did. Taking the money her mama ekes out from pressing hair, and instead of buying milk and diapers she puts gas in his car. Giving him six babies to keep raggedy and underfed down there in that shack. Wading in filth up to their ankles. Soap and water wouldn’t put nobody out of more than fifty cents—nobody. And push come to shove, you could get away with just the water. Try as she might, she couldn’t understand these women who balked at killing a baby before it got here and then living so they’re sure to kill it after.

  She almost started not to go. It was way late and she’d had a full day, finally settling down into a good sleep when Carmen Rae came banging on her door. Could she give her a little medicine to work the worms out her baby? He was fretting something awful and going into fits. Miranda guessed that all them children coulda used a good worming with a dose of warm castor oil and jimson. But when Carmen Rae told her that he was running a fever and his eyes were bloodshot, she knew it couldn’t wait till morning. Sounded like that baby had the croup, and Lord knows how long it been going on.

  It’s just what she expected: the flushed face, his little chest heaving as the air whistles through his clogged throat. Every now and then he goes into a spasm of coughing that almost makes him strangle on his own spit. And when he is able to catch his breath again, he starts to whimper since he can’t work up a good cry.

  Miranda throws out the pot of onion water Carmen Rae had been trying to make him sip, hoping he would pass the worms. She has to clench her hands to keep from shaking Carmen Rae when she tells her she’s been using that onion water for three days—the woman wasn’t really after hurting her own baby, she just didn’t understand. Carmen Rae is told to pick him up and pet him while Miranda scours the kitchen down. No, she’d do it herself because the baby was used to his mama. She scrapes off the caked grease from inside the pots, and while boiling them down in two changes of water, she scalds the countertops before opening her canvas pouch and laying her dried herbs out on them. She don’t use much: all together it’s only a teaspoon of senna pods, coltsfoot, horehound, white cherry bark, and black cohosh set to steep into the third change of water. She weighs them out by touch—some the roots, some the leaves, some the whole plant.

  She’s gonna need that charcoal brazier for the rest they gotta do. He’s gotta have special vapors to breathe in to help him on his way. Is there a spare room in the house away from the other children? Carmen Rae shows her the pantry, and after Miranda cleans out the cobwebs and dusts down the empty shelves, she makes up a pallet for the baby and sets another pot boiling in there on the hot charcoals. Putting in another bit of horehound leaves, she takes the baby from Carmen Rae, getting a feel of his weight before she measures out the Indian tobacco for the makeshift steamer in the pantry. She’s undecided about the amount—this is powerful stuff. The baby’s misery calls for more, his body weight for less. She’ll just have to sit up in there with him herself to see how it goes.

  Hour by hour, the baby cradled in her arms, she gets him to sip a tablespoon of the mixture from the kitchen stove as she watches his fretful sleep through the steamy air in the pantry. At least he’s sleeping now; his breathing’s still rattled but even. He cries only when she wakes him to sip the mixture and each hour he gets louder. Good—if they’re lucky, he’ll be screaming at the top of his lungs by morning. Between being sent out to bring in more charcoal and water, Carmen Rae gets read the riot act: A sow takes better care of her young. And don’t be sitting there whining about a no-good daddy—if he ain’t never here, it means he ain’t stopped you from cleaning this house. And he ain’t the cause of you stuffing this child with white bread and sugar lard to keep him quiet while you’re watching them soap operas. That’s right, cry, you oughta cry. And while you at it, use them tears to water the truck garden you’re gonna start growing with a dollar’s worth of seeds and a little work. Chickens will eat anything you won’t eat—even their own mess—and give you eggs for breakfast to boot. God don’t like ugly, but He must have found something worth saving in her ’cause the child was gonna make it.

  And he’s a pretty thing, Miranda thinks, pulling her shoes off in her trailer. Skin like a blackbird’s wings, and when his throat would let him squall he almost broke her eardrums—that showed spunk. He was angry as all get-out for that inconvenience and didn’t mind letting the world know it. Reminded her a bit of Baby Girl when her body said she was too puny to live. She’d have to go back over there again tonight, so she’d better get herself a nap—she wasn’t gonna trust nobody with that Indian tobacco. But Carmen Rae could make it through the day with them simple instructions she left her: Just keep him warm and start building back up his strength with a lot of fruit juices and some oatmeal broth. Ain’t gotta be no fancy fruits, there’s wild grapevines and cherry trees in that ravine below the house, and this time of year peaches and plums is to be had for the asking. Still, she’d have to bring over some seeds and a couple of setting hens to start her out in getting them children on a proper diet. That is, if my hens are even talking to me. She laughs. I done kept ’em hungry all morning. Now, who do I feed first, me or them?

  She’s outside running water into their trough when she spies George crossing the road. Could be Abigail done sent him over to look for her. When you get to be their age and nobody answers the phone, it pays to worry. She likes the way that boy walks, kinda free and bouncy. And he holds his head up high. A man should have starch in him, especially a colored man. There’s too much out there to mow him down permanent if he ain’t got the where-with-all to spring back. But he done made out real well—his own business and all. She didn’t rightly understand what he did, all that talk last night about keeping peas on a knife with honey, but it was bringing in enough for him and Baby Girl to be planning on buying a bigger house for the family they was finally gonna start. He kinda hesitates when the chickens outside the coop start flocking around his feet.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Miranda calls. “Them miserable beggars think you’re there to feed ’em. Just come on in here, but make sure you close the gate.”

  He don’t seem any more comfortable inside the fence, tiptoeing around the pullets who’re scrambling over each other to get to their mash. And George looks about to break and run when her old brown rooster lets out a mighty crow, flying up in the air, a flurry of feathers and spurs, ’cause he’s being pushed away from the choicest spot.

  Miranda lays back her head and laughs. “Come on, they ain’t gonna hurt you.”

  “You sure have a lot of them,” George says, braving the distance between the fence and her.

  “And you’re used to seeing a lot of them. But in your neck of the woods they’re all wrapped up neat under cellophane.”

  “I think I like them better that way.”

  “Well, you best never watch me wring one of
their necks. It’ll probably turn you into one of them vegetarians.”

  “So you eat most of these?”

  “Them in here. Them out there is something else again. Abigail send you looking for me?”

  “No, I just wanted to come over and say hello.”

  “That’s right nice of you. I figured she was wondering ’cause she couldn’t get me on the phone this morning, I was out nursing a sick baby.”

  “Oh, I knew you were a midwife. So you nurse, too?”

  “When need be.”

  “That’s really wonderful—natural remedies are really in now. We have centers opening up all over the place in New York.”

  “Well, they always been ‘in’ down here. When doctors is scarce, folks ain’t got much else.”

  George’s face lights up. “That explains his name. I—”

  “Whose name?”

  “Dr. Buzzard’s. I ran into him down by the barbershop.”

  “You walked all the way to the bridge junction?”

  “That was nothing—I like to walk. You know, he’s a pretty interesting man.”

  “He can be. And if you caught him before eight o’clock, he wasn’t drunk.”

  “Oh, it was well before eight. And he invited me to play poker with him.”

  “Make sure you don’t lose too much.”

  “I’m hoping not to lose at all.”

  Miranda smiles to herself as she turns the water spigot off.

  “But at first I couldn’t figure out what he did for a living until you just—”

  “He don’t do crow’s squat for a living. So you ain’t gotta worry about that.”