Let your phone ring and ring. Too late for you to be out unless you had a special occasion. And you always let me know well ahead of time when something special coming up. I tried calling a half-hour later and again twenty minutes after that. By then nearly nine, close to your bedtime. I was getting really worried now. Couldn't figure where you might be. Nine-fifteen and still no answer, no clue what was going on.
Called Sis. Called Aunt Chloe. Nobody knew where you were. Chloe said she'd talked with you earlier, just like every other morning. Sis said you called her at work after she got back from lunch. Both of them said you sounded fine. Chloe said you'd probably fallen asleep in your recliner and left the phone in the bedroom or bathroom and your hearing's to the point you can be wide awake but if the TV's on and the phone's not beside you or the ringer's not turned to high, she said sometimes she has to ring and hang up, ring and hang up two, three times before she catches you.
Chloe promised to keep calling every few minutes till she reached you. Said, They have a prayer meeting Thursdays in your mother's building and she's been saying she wants to go and I bet she's there, honey. She's all right, honey. Don't worry yourself, okay. We're old and fuddle-headed now, but we're tough old birds. Your mother's fine. I'll tell her to call you soon's I get through to her. Your mom's okay, baby. God keeps an eye on us.
You know Aunt Chloe. She's your sister. Five hundred miles away and I could hear her squeezing her large self through the telephone line, see her pillow arms reaching for the weight before it comes down on me.
Why would you want to hear any of this. You know what happened. Where you were. You know how it all turned out.
You don't need to listen to my conversation with Sis. Dialing her back after we'd been disconnected. The first time in my life I think my sister ever phoned me later than ten o'clock at night. First time a lightning bolt ever disconnected us. Ever disconnected me from anybody ever.
Did you see Eva Wallace first, Mom, coming through your door, or was it the busybody super you've never liked since you moved in. Something about the way she speaks to her granddaughter, you said. Little girl's around the building all day because her mother's either in the street or the slam and the father takes the child so rarely he might as well live in Timbuktu so you know the super doesn't have it easy and on a couple of occasions you've offered to keep the granddaughter when the super needs both hands and her mind free for an hour. You don't hold the way she busies up in everybody's business or the fact the child has to look out for herself too many hours in the day against the super, and you're sure she loves her granddaughter, you said, but the short way she talks sometimes to a child that young just not right.
Who'd you see first pushing open your door. Eva said you didn't show up after you said you'd stop by for her. She waited a while, she said, then phoned you and got no answer and then a friend called her and they got to running their mouths and Eva said she didn't think again about you not showing up when you were supposed to until she hung up the phone. And not right away then. Said as soon as she missed you, soon as she remembered you-all had planned on attending the Thursday prayer meeting together, she got scared. She knows how dependable you are. Even though it was late, close to your bedtime, she called you anyway and let the phone ring and ring. Way after nine by then. Pulled her coat on over her housedress, scooted down the hall, and knocked on your door cause where else you going to be. No answer so she hustled back to her place and phoned downstairs for the super and they both pounded on your door till the super said, We better have a look just in case, and unlocked your apartment. Stood there staring after she turned the key, trying to see through the door, then slid it open a little and both of them, Eva said, tiptoeing in like a couple of fools after all that pounding and hollering in the hall. Said she never thought about it at the time but later, after everything over and she drops down on her couch to have that cigarette she knew she shouldn't have with her lungs rotten as they are and hadn't smoked one for more than a year but sneaks the Camel she'd been saving out its hiding place in a baggie in the freezer and sinks back in the cushions and lights up, real tired, real shook up and teary, she said, but couldn't help smiling at herself when she remembered all that hollering and pounding and then tipping in like a thief.
It might have happened that way. Being right or wrong about what happened is less important sometimes than finding a good way to tell it. What's anybody want to hear anyway. Not the truth people want. No-no-no. People want the best-told story, the lie that entertains and turns them on. No question about it, is there. What people want. What gets people's attention. What sells soap. Why else do the biggest, most barefaced liars rule the world.
Hard to be a mother, isn't it, Mom. I can't pretend to be yours, not even a couple minutes' worth before I go to pieces. I try to imagine a cradle with you lying inside, cute, miniature bedding tucked around the tiny doll of you. I can almost picture you asleep in it, snuggled up, your eyes shut, maybe your thumb in your mouth, but then you cry out in the night, you need me to stop whatever I'm doing and rush in and scoop you up and press you to my bosom, lullaby you back to sleep. I couldn't manage it. Not the easy duty I'm imagining, let alone you bucking and wheezing and snot, piss, vomit, shit, blood, you hot and throbbing with fever, steaming in my hands like the heart ripped fresh from some poor soul's chest.
Too much weight. Too much discrepancy in size. As big a boy as I've grown to be, I can't lift you.
Will you forgive me if I cheat, Mom. Dark-suited, strong men in somber ties and white shirts will lug you out of the church, down the stone steps, launch your gleaming barge into the black river of the Cadillac's bay. My brothers won't miss me not handling my share of the weight. How much weight could there be. Tiny, scooped-out you. The tinny, fake wood shell. The entire affair's symbolic. Heavy with meaning, not weight. You know. Like metaphors. Like words interchanged as if they have no weight or too much weight, as if words are never required to bear more than they can stand. As if words, when we're finished mucking with them, go back to just being words.
The word trouble. The word sorrow. The word by-and-by.
I was wrong and you were right, as usual, Mom. So smile. Certain situations, yours for instance, being a mother, suffering what mothers suffer, why would anyone want to laugh at that. Who could stand in your shoes a heartbeat— shoes, shoes, everybody got to have shoes—bear your burdens one instant and think it's funny. Who ever said it's OK to lie and kill as long as it makes a good story.
Smile. Admit you knew from the start it would come to this. Me trembling, needing your strength. It has, Mom, so please, please, a little-bitty grin of satisfaction. They say curiosity kills the cat and satisfaction brings it back. Smiling. Smile, Mom. Come back. You know I've always hated spinach but please spoonfeed me a canful so those Popeye muscles pop in my arms. I meant shapeshifter, not weightlifter. I meant the point of this round, spinning-top earth must rest somewhere, on something or someone. I meant you are my sunshine. My only sunshine.
The problem never was the word weightlifter, was it. If you'd been insulted by my choice of metaphor, you would have let me know, not by silence but by nailing me with a quick, funny, signifying dig, and then you would have smiled or laughed and we'd have gone on to the next thing. What must have bothered you, stunned you, was what I said into the phone before I began reading. Said this is about a man scared he won't survive his mother's passing.
That's what upset you, wasn't it. Saying goodbye to you. Practicing for your death in a story. Trying on for size a world without you. Ignoring, like I did when I was a boy, your size. Saying aloud terrible words with no power over us as long as we don't speak them.
So when you heard me let the cat out the bag, you were shocked, weren't you. Speechless. Smileless. What could you say. The damage had been done. I heard it in your first words after you got back your voice. And me knowing your lifelong, deathly fear of cats. Like the big, furry orange torn you told me about, how it curled up on the porch just outs
ide your door, trapping you a whole August afternoon inside the hotbox shanty in Washington, D.C., when I lived in your belly.
Why would I write a story that risks your life. Puts our business in the street. I'm the oldest child, supposed to be the man of the family now. No wonder you cried, Oh Father. Oh Son. Oh Holy Ghost. Why hast thou forsaken me. I know you didn't cry that. You aren't Miss Oprah. But I sure did mess up, didn't I. Didn't I, Mom. Up to my old tricks. Crawling up inside you. My weight twisting you all out of shape.
I asked you once about the red sailor cap hanging on the wall inside your front door. Knew it was my brother's cap on the nail, but why that particular hat, I asked, and not another of his countless fly sombreros on display. Rob, Rob, man of many lids. For twenty years in the old house, now in your apartment, the hat a shrine no one allowed to touch. You never said it, but everybody understood the red hat your good-luck charm, your mojo for making sure Rob would get out the slam one day and come bopping through the door, pluck the hat from the wall, and pull it down over his bean head. Do you remember me asking why the sailor cap. You probably guessed I was fishing. Really didn't matter which cap, did it. Point was you chose the red one and why must always be your secret. You could have made up a nice story to explain why the red sailor cap wound up on the nail and I would have listened as I always listened, all ears, but you knew part of me would be trying to peek through the words at your secret. Always a chance you might slip up and reveal too much. So the hat story and plenty others never told. The old folks had taught you that telling another person your secret wish strips it of its power, a wish's small, small chance, as long as it isn't spoken, to influence what might happen next in the world. You'd never tell anyone the words sheltered in the shadow of your heart. Still, I asked about the red sailor cap because I needed to understand your faith, your weightlifting power, how you can believe a hat, any fucking kind of hat, could bring my baby brother home safe and sound from prison. I needed to spy and pry. Wiretap the telephone in your bosom. Hear the words you would never say to another soul, not even on pain of death.
How would such unsaid words sound, what would they look like on a page. And if you had uttered them, surrendered your stake in them, forfeited their meager, silent claim to work miracles, would it have been worth the risk, even worth the loss, to finally hear the world around you cracking, collapsing, changing as you spoke your little secret tale.
Would you have risen an inch or two from this cold ground. Would you have breathed easier after releasing the heaviness of silent words hoarded so unbearably, unspeakably long. Let go, Mom. Shed the weight just once.
Not possible for you, I know. It would be cheating, I know. The man of unbending faith did not say to the hooded inquisitors piling a crushing load of stones on his chest, More light. More light. No. I'm getting my quotes mixed up again. Just at the point the monks thought they'd broken his will, just as spiraling fractures started splintering his bones, he cried, More bricks. More bricks.
I was scared, Mom. Scared every cotton-picking day of my life I'd lose you. The fear a singsong taunt like tinnitis ringing in my ear. No wonder I'm a little crazy. But don't get me wrong. Not your fault. I don't blame you for my morbid fears, my unhappiness. It's just that I should have confessed sooner, long, long ago, the size of my fear of losing you. I wish you'd heard me say the words. How fear made me keep my distance, hide how much I depended on your smile. The sunshine of your smiling laughter that could also send me silently screaming out the room in stories I never told you because you'd taught me as you'd been taught, not to say anything aloud I didn't want to come true. Nor say out loud the things I wished to come true. Doesn't leave a hell of a lot to say, does it. No wonder I'm tongue-tied, scared shitless.
But would it be worth the risk, worth failing, if I could find words to tell our story and also keep us covered inside it, work us invisibly into the fret, the warp and woof of the story's design, safe there, connected there as words in perfect poems, the silver apples of the moon, golden apples of the sun, blue guitars. The two of us like those rhyming pairs never and forever, heart and part, in the doo-wop songs I harmonized with the fellas in the alley around the corner from Henderson's barbershop up on Frankstown Avenue, first me, then lost brother Sonny and his crew, then baby brother Rob and his cut-buddy hoodlums rapping, and now somebody else brown and young and wild and pretty so the song lasts forever and never ever ends even though the voices change back there in the alley where you can hear bones rattling in the men's fists, fever in the funkhouse looking for a five, and hear wine bottles exploding and the rusty shopping cart squeaking over the cobblestones of some boy ferrying an old lady's penny-ante groceries home for a nickel once, then a dime, a quarter, four quarters now.
Would it be worth the risk, worth failing.
Shouldn't I try even if I know the strength's not in me. No, you say. Yes. Hold on, let go. Do I hear you saying, Everything's gonna be all right. Saying, Do what you got to do, baby, smiling as I twist my fingers into the brass handle. As I lift.
Hunters
Kap-plow. Crack. Boom. Pow-pow ... Boom. Boom. Boom. We got 'em. We got 'em. They's down. Both of 'em. Dumb niggers running like they could outrun bullets.
Damn. They sure a mess laying there, ain't they. Got 'em both good.
Lookit the ass on this one. Looks like a woman's ass.
This one's got a big fat nigger butt on him too, and long nappy hair like a girl.
Oh, shit, man. This ass too fine for a man. Shit. I think we shot us a woman. And goddamn. She's still groaning and gurgling. Shit.
Groaning. You sure it's a bitch. Kick 'er over and see.
Don't need to turn her over. Female, all right. And she ain't dead yet.
Well, what you waiting for, boy. Flip the bitch. Yank down them drawers. Cop us some pussy while the ho's still warm.
Man, she's fucked up. Groaning.
What's wrong with you, fool. Why you standing there staring and looking dumb. She be gone in a minute. C'mon. Turn the bitch over. Uh-uh. Get the other damned sneaker. Now pull, boy, pull. Pull them jeans clean off.
Owhee. Lookee what we gots here. Some sure-nuff chocolate roundeye. Yessiree. Woolly wench, ain't she. But she's fine, all right. Long, skinny legs. Owwhee. There you go standing looking dumb again. Guess you don't mind cold poontang. Like mine hot. G'wan now. Move out the way now, boy. You riding sloppy seconds on this one.
And that's how the story starts of what white boys did to my baby. To the only woman I've ever truly loved. Now you'd think from what you've read so far, I'd be mad at them, the white guys. The hunters who came upon us innocently macking in a meadow and shots rang out and we took off running like startled deer for the trees. Weird thing is, though, I'm madder at her than at them. She swears none of them raped her. None even tried. Says nobody ever got rough with her. Which means, as I see it, nobody's fault but hers for giving the booty up. Why should I be mad at white guys. Every time she got down with one of them she was doing what she chose to do. In a way. Or so she says.
Maybe we better go back before the beginning. Back before the nasty scene above that always makes me unhappy, makes me, if truth be told, cry. Back before the woodland slaughter. Before the barking rifles and slobbering Deliverance goons.
She was born Jill Jones. As if her name her fate, Jill curtsied and churched and niced her way into the light-skin Jack and Jill social set. A prize Jill in spite of a little extra dark in her velvet skin. No, my Jill's not light and bright nor possesses blow hair, you know, as in blowing in the wind in the back seat of a sky-blue drop-top Chevy blow-blown-blowing past, chicks stuffed in the back seat, laughing, squealing, waving bye-bye all pearly teeth, tans with blue eyes to match the car's color, their blond manes whipped by the wind on their way to the beach. Not Jill. The beach presented problems for my girl's grade of hair. It would sneak home before Jill did if she dunked her sweet cinnamon-doughnut body in the sea. Thus colorful scarves, various experimental cuts, wigs, chemical aids, pray
ers, and cute hats. Owwhee. Her pale girlfriends shouted once when oh my god Jill's hair, drenched in a sudden shower, became a nappy storm all over her head. Jill confided to me that she'd wished for a nest of coiling, hissing vipers atop her skull, wished she could flash Medusa's glare, turn to stone the silly, wide-eyed looks, the innocent, knife-edged questions, nervous titters, the pity and stage-whispered asides: Did you see Jill. Wow. What happened to her hair. Talk about a bad hair day. Wow. Are you okay, Jill.
Our hair's better than theirs, Jill once asserted, with what I hoped was conviction. In fact it's finer, more delicate hair than theirs, a fact scientifically confirmed, she declared. Finer follicles. More flexible. Hollow or curved or something, she said, combing her hair out, the first of many hours preparing it for work the next week. The reason why, she said, I couldn't sleep over at her place Sunday night. I hate doing it, I look a wreck, Jill said. Why would I want you here the whole time gawking, spying. Hours to twist it. See you next weekend, okay. And oh how I yearned to grab a big handful of her bushy cotton candy, the soft shield she'd raised between us. More hair than I would have ever guessed she owned. A beautiful morphing mystery and I wanted my nose in it. My fingers and toes. Would drink it. Or wade in it. Baby, ohhh, baby. So beautiful. Brown and comely. Ethiop's star-dusted daughter. Hair the mysterious and fine-stranded texture of ancient perfumed Arabian nights. Let me touch it. Wash it. Towel it dry. Kiss it. Let me lie on its fluffy pillow. Slobber in it while we sleep. I should have begged for a fistful, for one long, lithesome reed of it. She could have easily spared either. As easily as she could have said yes, of course, spend the night. Pounds of fine-spun Egyptian cotton crowning her regal forehead. Framing her dark eyes, her African lips and nose and cheekbones rendered Somali style, full, delicate, chiseled.
In a story I read recently, author had to be a sister cause the hair business runs all through the piece as it often does in sisters' stories, good hair, bad hair, poster girl hair, heads destined never to grace nobody's billboard. Lord, girl. What's happened to your hair. Nappy. Kinky. Turbanize it. Bald it. Dread it. Braid. Twist. Cornrow. Afreakanize. Turn the tables. Make them eat their labels. I was intrigued by a scene in the story in which the main character allows her wayward white husband to play with her hair, indulging him with this usually forbidden pleasure because it's the first night of a weekend they've stolen away from their beige children, beige lives, attempting to repair a deep rent in the marriage cloth, the wife going to the max, letting his white hands muck about in the hair his people had set afire and left burning on her skull for centuries, fire and smoke, skanky, nasty ruins smoldering sometimes when she'd rake her fingers through its thickness, the ash, the grease, the evil words and acid rain would sear her flesh, paint black moons under her nails, recall the burning, smelly curling iron, branding iron, her body still chained, writhing, dancing in the kindling naps, the dry straw pyre heaped at her feet she's trying to stomp out, combing, straightening, fighting back the flames consuming her. Black sheep, black sheep, have you any wool. Yes sir, yes sir. I'm the Queen of Sheba holding a whole hot head full. Girl what happened to your hair. What you do to yourself, girl. In the story the sister knows better but lies with her head in her husband's lap anyway, dreaming of a different life she knows won't happen, even as she settles her cheek against his thigh, even as she submits to his curious, loving strokes and rubs and fingerings and quiet awe and perhaps even rapture like a blond, glassy-eyed, tummyful Gerber baby-food baby sucking its thumb, she knows they've lost their chance and this last desperate forty-eight hours or so won't alter a thousand years of failing, failing, but she allows him to play on anyway in her soft acres of hair, her woolly mammoth bush, girl, untouched, natural like Allah or Buddha borned her with, girl, ain't nothing but a party up there and I'd prove it to Jill if she'd let me dig in, spelunk, deep-sea dive, strum the thinner, rounder, hollower, whatever strands like a lute and chant their praises.
God's Gym Page 2
