Mama Day

by Naylor, Gloria;

  West is the last direction and Miranda feels as if she’s not gonna make it. As she passes her trailer, her body cries out for her to go inside and rest—no sleep last night, covering a good part of the island today—but once she sits back down, she won’t be able to get up again for a long, long time. Which is worse, the dull stabbing pain from her spine to leg muscles or the grinding sound that the bones give out with each step she takes? She puts her mind at the end of her journey, tasting the hot vegetable soup, smelling the liniment for her thighs and legs, feeling the soft flannel they’ll be wrapped in and the mattress on the old mahogany bed she’s gonna fall into. Yes, fall straight in and sleep away the coming sunrise and the one after that. Keeping her mind there gets her through the few chores left around her trailer.

  She ain’t fool enough to think that she could outrun Cicero and get him into her sack, but the day that she couldn’t outsmart a rooster was the day for her to give it all up. And she weren’t about to leave him and that other rooster there together. Cicero would mount that coop fence in no time without the proper watching. She throws down just one or two crumbs for the outside chickens, so they’d have something to squabble over as she gets one of her wire cages from inside the coop fence. Y’all will catch it now, she tells the ones inside the fence, ’cause Abigail will be feeding you—the party’s over. Taking the cage to the side of her trailer and spreading a thick layer of crumbs in the bottom, she stands back and lets ’em peck and shuffle each other to get inside. Cicero, being younger and stronger, makes it past the hens, even past Clarissa, who’s the weakest but the smartest. Imagine, Clarissa survived that hurricane—look like her and that hen is gonna live forever. With Cicero busy defending the opening to the cage from the other chickens, she snaps the door shut. He starts setting up an awful racket, banging against the wires, and when he’s gotten himself into a frenzy, she opens the door for him to run right into her sack.

  It’s only a matter of getting to the other place with the sack held off some to avoid his beak and spurs. That little ache in her left arm is nothing compared to the ones in her legs. And she pushes herself a little, ’cause the thunder’s starting up good and she sees the rain ain’t far off. She frees him inside the garden and he’s right indignant about it all. Go on now, she tells him, have yourself a holiday among all these ruined vegetables by yourself.

  Miranda climbs the verandah steps and enters the front door of the other place. She closes it securely behind her. The lightning is flashing in the clouds. She’s asleep when the clouds get lower and the lightning nears the earth. It dances around that silver trailer, but it hits mostly along the edge of the forests, scarring a pine or two. It hits the bridge, though, taking out the new tarred boards and a day’s worth of work. It hits Ruby’s twice, and the second time the house explodes.

  It was like coming out of a deep sleep that had lasted for three days. Remembering myself ever leaving that bed or talking to anyone held the texture of a dream. And still you were pressing me for answers to some of the things that had happened. I didn’t know why Mama Day had cut off all my hair and then secluded herself out at the other place. Until I could talk to her, I’d take it in stride. When we got back to New York, I’d have the ends trimmed evenly and get it marcelled in body waves—a sort of 1920s style that you saw in old photographs of those swanky women when Harlem was in its heyday. And that would mean all new clothes, of course, which I expected you to shell out for. I couldn’t get you to smile with me. I was so glad that the sun was finally out to stay and I could see my surroundings in its true colors: yellows, blues, greens, and browns. My head felt free and light, but to listen to you, there was a hidden agenda brewing between Grandma and Mama Day. My God, these were the women who raised me—I would trust them with my life, and so whatever Mama Day had done, it was for a good reason. But you refused to share my optimism—why was I still so weak? Well, I couldn’t expect anything else since I hadn’t been up in a long time. A little sunlight and short walks around the house would straighten me out. And you were worrying me more than those red welts on my body.

  You were edgy and short-tempered in a way I hadn’t known before. Finishing the bridge. Finishing the bridge. A constant obsession when you left in the morning, came back for lunch, and returned again in the evening. No one was working fast enough, no one was working long enough. Between that and your eternal hovering over me, I was ready to pull out what little hair I had left. You were working yourself into a terrible state—and for what? The bridge was going to take only a few more days, and I was coming along fine—really. I didn’t dare tell you anything else. But if you hadn’t come up with that crazy scheme about rowing a leaky boat across The Sound, I might have told you about those hallucinations when I looked in the mirror.

  Par for the course. That’s how I figured it when the lightning storm cracked and singed five feet of the new planking on the bridge. A day’s work gone, then half a day to take it up, another day to put it back down, so we were guaranteed to stay here an extra thirty-six hours. Thirty-six hours. And I had just as many reasons to leave as soon as I could—each of them with your name on it. The needless complications were driving me up a wall. When you have a job to do, you do it. You don’t stand around, discoursing on the obvious. The lightning destroyed the new planking—period. But, oh, no, there was something strange about this lightning. It struck twice in the same place. Theoretically, it is possible, but not probable, for lightning to strike twice in exactly the same place. The first exchange of electrical charges between the ground and the clouds, which in a sense is a strike, causes the negative-charge center up in the clouds to short-circuit and nullify itself. So it would take another exchange of negative electrons from higher in that same cloud to the same positively charged spot on the earth to have lightning strike twice. That’s rare. Unless, of course, in a scientific experiment someone purposely electrifies the ground with materials that hold both negative and positive charges to increase the potential of having a target hit. No one was running around with that kind of knowledge in Willow Springs, and it was highly improbable that it would happen naturally. Others were there, thinking it unnatural as well, but for very different reasons. This was a deliberate and definite sign, since it had happened to Miss Ruby’s house. It seemed that she’d had a host of sins, going back several years, so the destruction of everything she owned and the burns on her body was her getting her due. And the time that was wasted, examining those planks to determine if they had been struck twice also. I dreaded to think that if they found such evidence, they’d stop working altogether—it being a sign to them that the bridge should stay like it was.

  I was deciding I didn’t even need the whole thing finished. Just let it get rebuilt far enough toward the other half for me to take a running jump over the gap, and I could make it back to the real world and charter a boat, or demand that the Coast Guard come over and get us. What happened later that afternoon, I would call providence. A rowboat washed up on the shore among all the loose planking and debris. Sections of fishing boats and even parts of the former boathouse had been washing up for days, but this one was practically intact. The rear seat had been ripped out and the stem was split in places, but the bottom was in fair shape, the oarlocks loose but workable. I could buy spare oars, wood putty, and waterproofing in the general store. Of course, they all thought I was crazy. Why take a chance in a boat like that when in no time at all the bridge was gonna be rebuilt? Yes, I thought, no time at all.

  It started with my thinking that the crack had just distorted the bedroom mirror. Over the years it had spread from the far corner where the vase chipped it up toward the middle. I had been meaning to replace Grandma’s mirror, since it was my temper that did it. I decided I’d get a whole new bedroom set, but from my own money, not yours. A temp job for a few months should pay for it, and I’d just have it shipped down here without asking her, because she’d say no, if she knew. I had only wanted to fix myself up a bit; a little powder and blush to c
over the paleness, since you were both worried about me, each in your own way. You were just pointblank ridiculous with a thousand questions, while she sang spirituals all morning. When Grandma started going to the Cross and waiting by the Jordan and then on to six choruses of “No Ways Tired,” I didn’t care how much she came out to the front porch and smiled at me. She was deeply troubled—justified or not—about something. I was thankful that those awful welts weren’t on my face and could be covered up with a caftan; a touch of make-up would take care of the rest until I was truly better. And I was beginning to feel stronger, my vision was clear, so the welts must be an allergic reaction to the virus that had been in me.

  I put a dab of powdered rouge on the brush, and when I stroked upward on my cheekbone my flesh gummed on the brush bristles and got pushed up like molten caramel. I brought the brush back down and the image frowning at me had a gouged cheek with the extra flesh pushed up and dangling under the right ear. I moved over; the image moved and remained the same. Bringing my fingers up to my cheek, I felt it intact and curved while the fingers in the mirror were probing a gross disfigurement. Had that crack splintered the mercury in the back of the mirror? Ignoring that side of my face, I dabbed more powder on the brush, stroked even firmer on the left side—and gouged a deeper hole. The flesh from both cheeks was now hanging in strings under my ears, and moving my head caused them to wiggle like hooked worms. I stepped away from the mirrored image with my hands on my cheeks. There was nothing wrong with my face. But I couldn’t stand to see myself clutching that stringy flesh in front of me.

  The mirror over the bathroom sink showed me the exact same thing. I turned my back and leaned against the sink. My fingers moving up and down my face—the face I knew I had. All right, so I was hallucinating. Now, what to do about it? Nothing. Just wait for it to go away. It’s just another side effect of the virus. But it was getting harder to put everything on the flu. Grandma was in the kitchen and I just had to ask her, trying to keep my voice as even as possible. Is there anything wrong with my face? I panicked for that instant when she tilted her head and frowned at me. And if she hadn’t spoken up, I might have fallen apart. Well, honey, you ain’t got your make-up on right. You gotta blend them two red lines into your cheeks better. She frowned even deeper when I laughed—a bit too shrill. Cocoa, is there something the matter with you? No, nothing at all. I was just trying a new technique, I said. I guess it didn’t work, huh? Well, don’t depend on me, she answered. I ain’t up on them new styles.

  I didn’t want to look at myself again, so I bent low under the bathroom mirror to wash the blush off my face. I dried it without looking as well. But feeling it fresh and whole, I thought I’d chance one more glance. I couldn’t help myself—I screamed. My eyes, lips, chin, forehead, and ears had been smeared everywhere, mashed in and wrinkled, with some gouged places still holding the imprints from my fingers and the terrycloth. Of course, she came running, and my second instinct would have been to lie. But she got into the bathroom too quickly, and when I told her what was happening, she took me in her arms and soothed me, told me what I needed desperately to hear—it was all in my mind. And it wasn’t until much later, after she’d made me lie down and I heard those spirituals again, that I remembered that not once had she expressed surprise.

  Grandma covered all the mirrors in the house. It was both comfortable and discomforting to see them that way. At least I could move around without fear. But why wasn’t I hallucinating now about my hands or legs or stomach? It was the same vision that took them in as well as the image in the mirror. I couldn’t remember, and I wasn’t going to test whether the rest of my body had also been distorted in those mirrors. I would just sit on the porch where it was warm and pleasant to watch an incredibly lovely sunset. Hours after the incident, it didn’t seem as horrible anymore. And one day it would give us all something to laugh about. You were certainly a comical sight, coming up the road in those whitewash-speckled overalls that now had streaks of tar on the knees and cuffs. Where was the man who even insisted on dry cleaning his jeans?

  When you greeted me with the news that you were going to repair some leaky-ass boat and row across The Sound, I stopped thinking about a way to explain the incident with the mirrors and concerned myself with a closer reflection of true danger—the earnestness on your face. George, you didn’t even swim. Not that swimming would have helped once you got caught in one of those undertows. There was a notorious undercurrent in the middle of The Sound known as the Devil’s Shoestring, and it had drowned experienced fishermen. Didn’t they tell him that at the bridge?

  I pretended to listen to you carefully laying out your plans while I was forming a strategy of my own. Being stuck with a stubborn man, I had learned not to waste time with reasonable arguments when your mind was made up about something. You would agree with everything I said, especially now since you thought I wasn’t well, and then go out and do exactly what you wanted to anyway. But I was so very fortunate that you’d also had experience with a stubborn woman. The tone of voice I used was the one that normally came after your flattery, sarcasm, or raging—depending upon how badly you wanted something—had all been to no avail. You called it my go-drop-dead tone. I called it end-of-discussion. But I had to jump straight into it: There is nothing wrong with me that can’t wait a few more days. Now, you can row over to the other shore if you’d like and bring back all the chartered boats you want. But when I pack my bags and leave this house, I’m going across that bridge. It was then time for me to lean back in a posture that, like my voice, was devoid of all expression save finality. For your lips to get pressed into that tight line as I was thrown a stony glare. And then for you to stomp past me and slam whatever door was available. This time it happened to be Grandma’s screen door—and it was a sweet sound.

  The oilcloth Miranda tacked up under the hole in the roof collected a pool of water before it broke loose. Half done is always worse than undone, she thinks, looking at the rusty stain spreading down the bedroom wall. But she had just been too tired to be stretching up and nailing a heavy tarpaulin in that cramped corner of the attic. She’d have to do it the right way now, although all that sunshine makes it sorta like locking the barn after the cows are gone. She’s of a mind to just leave it be. When the roofers came from beyond the bridge, she’d just get ’em to paint the bedroom as well. All these rooms could use a fresh coat of paint and a nice varnish on these oak floors. It was really a lovely old house with the walnut moldings and engraved wainscoting, them high arched ceilings and bay windows. And there were good times in this house, and it’s the good times she’s gotta call up, or there weren’t no reason to come here. All that Baby Girl is was made by the people who walked these oak floors, sat and dreamed out on that balcony. It couldna all been like her and Abigail’s life, growing up with a mother who died trying to find peace. She musta been so out of her head that she thought The Sound was the bottom of that well. She woulda still ended it all with water, ’cause if Daddy hadn’t nailed that well shut they woulda eventually found her at the bottom of it. But the way it was, she wasn’t to be found at all—until Grace brought her back with Ophelia. Unyielding, unforgiving Grace. That beautiful baby girl to live for, and she chose to wither away in hate.

  Miranda stops herself. No, these ain’t the memories she needs. Think of others. But, Lord, it’s so hard ’cause she was so young when Peace died. She calls up one springtime when her head didn’t reach the top step of the verandah. Was Abigail born then? Miranda can’t see her sister, but she is being lifted up into a soft bosom that holds the fragrance of lemon verbena to be brought upstairs into this very room. And there is laughter—a lighter and a deeper laughter. She can’t see her daddy either, but he musta been there ’cause she feels the rush of air as she’s taken and lifted high, high, up toward the ceiling to see—what? Why, a butterfly. A blue and silver butterfly. Make the baby one, John-Paul, and we’ll hang it around her neck. Was that really said by her mother, or did she just wish it? The
re was so little that was ever sane coming from her mouth to hold on to.

  Thinking about the ceilings is what finally leads her toward the attic—another storm and the water might cave ’em in. She climbs the suspension ladder with the proper equipment this time, a thick rubber matting and a bag of ten-penny nails. It’s hardly more than a crawl space up there, but being short she can stoop over and make her way through. Her back scrapes along the damp and moldy rafters, but it’s either that or make her way On them rain-soaked boards on her hands and knees, and if the splinters didn’t get her, the rheumatism surely would. The wet dust has an awful smell, a cross between dried phlegm and sour dirt. Thank goodness there was nothing up here for her to step over. All their trunks and old junk boxes were always kept out in the shed.

  There’s a memory of being in there with Abigail, peering through the slitted window down into the front garden. But that’s a memory she don’t want to have. It meant that they were hiding from something—voices, most likely, and voices that held no joy. None of her personal memories that would include Abigail held much joy. No wonder she avoids this place like the plague. No, think of other things. But there’s nothing to call up in this space—they wouldna brought her up here as a baby. She’s pushing and nailing the matting up into a small corner when she spies the ledger. Black leather binding, long and narrow, bent almost in two from being jammed into the point of the roof. That had to be hidden there on purpose. Miranda tries to wedge it out and the cover practically falls apart in her hands. The pages are swollen and discolored from years of dampness. She couldn’t read it in this light anyway, even if the ink wasn’t all run together. Finishing up what she has to do, she takes the book with her, holding it to her chest with one hand and climbing down the ladder with the other. She knows, in the way that she knows things, that her daddy hid it there. But why not just burn it?