Slow Way Home

by Michael Morris

  When the door hinge squeaked as she pulled the handle, my heart raced again. Before she had completely disappeared into the hallway, I did it. I called out as loud as I would have if I hadn’t been used to nightmares. “I want to talk to that judge.”

  “Now don’t you worry about…”

  “I mean it. I want to talk to him. Remember Nairobi told me I could if I wanted to.”

  Nana slid into the bed. Her stomach was soft and warm against the small of my back. “Shh, now,” she whispered. The thick arm draped against me and in her clutch I knew there was nothing that the judge from my nightmare, the one with the long white beard and fangs, could do to take me away.

  But the judge I faced in real life had no facial hair at all. His white hair was streaked with tints of leftover nicotine. The hair was just long enough that it twirled up at the base of his neck. His gold-wire glasses and easy smile made me wonder if he had ever played Santa Claus down at the mall in Raleigh. My grip on the leather chair loosened.

  Rows of wide books lined the shelf behind his desk. The walls in his office were tall and paintings of the beach hung next to me. Mama had always said she wanted to live at the beach. She had always claimed the setting sun helped settle her nerves. Thinking that any minute she might bust into the judge’s office and provide a rerun of the act at school, I gripped the chair again. But there was no screaming inside the room, just the steady tick of a brass clock and the ruffle of papers as the judge flipped through my case. Just when I started to lean forward and see if my name was stamped on the side of the file, Nairobi rubbed my shoulders. She winked and nodded enough so that her big silver earrings danced. Her chair was so close to mine that at first I thought they were connected like a pair of Siamese twins I had seen in the encyclopedia.

  A skinny man with long sideburns glanced at me over black glasses. He halfway smiled and continued scribbling on a pad. Mama’s lawyer. Nairobi had prepped me on who I would find inside the judge’s chambers. She had told me to be myself and that everything would work out fine.

  “Brandon, I want us to get to know each other a little better. You know, chew the fat as they say,” the judge said. “Now this is Mr. Jeffords. He’s working with your mother just like Nairobi is working with your grandparents.”

  Mr. Jeffords smiled bigger this time, and the woman sitting in front of the little typewriter started pecking away.

  The judge rubbed his hands and looked up at the ceiling. “So tell me, how’s school going?”

  “Fine.” My comment echoed against the high ceiling, and the woman clicked at the little typewriter.

  “I see you make excellent grades.” The judge flipped the file open and glanced at the pages. “They tell me you’re a smart one.”

  The clicking of the typing filled my ear. Bouncing off the ceiling, it sounded like clicks from a gun. “Good grades are very important. But what about downtime, are you able to have fun as well?”

  “Yes, sir. I play with Mac and Mary Madonna a lot. Poppy put up a tire swing for me. Sometimes we play inside the old car Poppy uses for parts when the tractor gets messed up.” I moved to the edge of the chair, hoping to see the notes the judge was making. The vision of my permanent record sprawled open on the guidance counselor’s desk came to mind.

  “Mac and Mary Madonna are Brandon’s cousins. They live next door,” Nairobi said.

  “I see. Well, tell me about your friends. Do you have friends visit you at your grandparents’?”

  I wanted to explain that we lived away from the city, but decided against that for fear that the judge would think that we were backwoods. “Sometimes. My friend Poco comes by.”

  The judge rubbed his chin the way I used to picture Santa doing whenever he made out his naughty-and-nice list. “Poco? Does he go to your school?”

  “No, sir. I see him down by the Farmers Market. He lives with his granddaddy. They farm too so…”

  “What sort of things do you like to do with your grandparents? You know, special things on the weekend or after school?”

  The ticking from the clock sounded louder. “Uhh…I go fishing with Poppy. He picks me up from school sometime.” More notes were scribbled in my file. “But only once in a while. Nana picks me up after school. We go by the Dairy Queen and have milkshakes. So…”

  “I understand your mother came by the school recently.” The judge quickly looked up, and I gripped the edge of the chair until the grooved wood began to feel like it was apart of me. “How did you feel about seeing her?”

  “I don’t know. She just showed up is all.”

  “What did you do when you lived with your mother? I mean after school and on the weekends?”

  The scent of Mama’s freshly washed hair swept over me, and I turned to see if she had walked into the room. The woman at the little typewriter smiled and glanced back down at the machine.

  “We’d go places. To the flea market and stuff.”

  “Do you miss not having her around?”

  The words caused me to flinch. Now I could not only smell Mama, but I could see her too. See her running her fingers through my hair the way she used to do. She smelled fresh and clean. She was renewed. I slipped down in the chair and stared at the letters on the big gray books lining the bookshelf until they blurred into Technicolor red. The judge faded, and suddenly the row of books behind him became a movie screen to my mind. I watched the clip of Mama and me acting the fool one Saturday at the flea market. Just the two of us. She put on an old blue hat with a flower on it and pursed her lips until I bent over laughing. Her teeth were pure white and the hat sky blue. Colors so real and bright that I wanted to reach out and touch her. “Every month we’d go to the flea market. I found a table for us one time. Mama talked the man into giving her that old hat to go with it. It had a yellow flower on the side.” The movie played on in silence. Mama was laughing and laughing until she could barely walk and had to lean against me. I could feel the bony spot on her hip as I tried to support her. My eyes burned, and a cloud of tears cut the image.

  Nairobi offered a tissue and touched my back. I stiffened at the touch and wiped away the past. I never looked up as the judge continued getting to know me better.

  “Do you ever think about living with your mother again?”

  The clock ticked, and Mama’s lawyer cleared his throat. As if that were my cue, I shrugged my shoulders.

  The judge’s tone began to drip with sympathy. Without looking up at him, I knew he was giving me that pitiful sideways smile. I could read his tone as easy as he read all those thick books lining his wall. Each word he uttered became softer until finally the Santa Claus disguise had peeled away. “What do you picture when you think of living with your mother?”

  “A two-story house.” I looked up and held the judge’s stare. “A place where Nana and Poppy can live with us too.”

  Six

  Seeing Nana and Poppy dressed in their good clothes sitting on the porch at three o’clock in the afternoon, I knew something was wrong. It was the first day that Nana had failed to meet me at the driveway. The sight of them motionless in the green metal chairs caused me to panic. The roar of the school bus and its fading laughter moved down the highway, and for a second I thought of chasing behind it. All I could think about was Paula Simpson telling everybody at school how she found her granddaddy cold as ice, slumped over in a porch swing, dead from a heart attack. My steps moved faster until the tips of my toes were the only part that brushed against the gravel patches in the driveway. Sweat wove a path down the back of my hair until it tickled. By the time I reached the tire swing, I was running wide open.

  Nana was the first to move. She got up and brushed her church dress as if invisible lint had collected on it. “Well, now. I didn’t realize it was time for you to be home already. Let me go fix your Pepsi.”

  Poppy continued to gaze at the field spotted orange with pumpkins. “School good today?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I kicked a rock against the porc
h step hoping the constant thud would irritate him enough to turn towards me. He just sat there massaging the pointy part of his chin the way he did whenever he learned the price of hogs had dropped.

  The screen door screeched, and Nana came out carrying the Pepsi bottle in one hand and a glass full of ice in the other. She carefully poured the drink and, when she noticed me studying her, tried to smile.

  Fuzz from the soft drink engulfed me, and suddenly it sounded as loud as fireworks. My heart slowed and began to accept what my mind had already figured out. The silence, the glances towards the field, the pained expressions whispered the details to me. Nana and Poppy might have been alive, but I was gone.

  As Poppy rocked in the swivel chair, a steady creak was in concert with his motion.

  Nana brushed the dress again. “Well, we heard from that judge today.”

  I followed Poppy’s gaze out towards the pumpkins that we would cut and take to market next week. The perfectly lined rows finally blurred into a flame of burnt orange.

  “He thinks it’s best if you stay with your mama for the time being. Naturally we’ll keep seeing you along and along. They’re going to take it slow. Some visits with your mama to start with and…well, let’s just see.”

  Leaning against the porch rail, my eyes burned with tears, but they would never know it. I sipped the Pepsi and wiped away the fuzz from my lip like I didn’t have a care in the world. But as strong as I wanted to be, my eyes would not allow me to look at them. I heard the boards pop and knew somebody had gotten up.

  Nana’s hand brushed across my head. The smell of her Sunday perfume rolled over me. She took a breath as if she wanted to say more, but stopped. I wanted her to pull me up by my hair like a kitten and hold me in her lap. To whisper reassurances that things would be all right.

  Poppy cleared his voice. “Son, we’re sorry. Just plain sorry.”

  When his voice cracked, I jumped from the porch and ran towards the tire swing. I swung away from their stares. Tears escaped, and I knocked them away with a swipe of the wrist. Then I jumped down and ran to the old Chevrolet. Watching from the porch, they stared as if I was some wild child who had escaped from a traveling circus. I jerked the steering wheel extra hard and tried to laugh like I was really having a good time. Imitating squealing tires, I screamed and pulled at the gearshift. The way I bounced up and down proved I was a carefree. It was only after they had entered the house that I let myself breathe again. Sliding down into the torn car seat, I looked into the rusted spots on the ceiling light and tasted the salt of tears.

  The woman from the child-services agency sat in Nana and Poppy’s living room with her knees locked together and a clipboard resting on her lap. The red lips were pursed so tight I thought that maybe she had eaten a sandwich filled with Crazy Glue.

  “Now let’s see…Brandon…,” the woman flipped through the pages on her clipboard. “Yes, Brandon. Now for the first few visits you will meet your mother in a public location. Grandmother, you can help select a place if you’d like,” the woman glanced over her glasses. The string of crystal beads that was attached to her glasses jingled with the slightest movement of the head.

  “When will this all take place?” Nana asked.

  With one hand the woman checked off a box and held up the other. “Grandmother, one thing at a time. We’re just on item two right now.”

  Before she left, the government woman decided that Dairy Queen would be the best place to meet. I wondered why the woman never checked to see if my mama could meet at Dairy Queen and how she knew what time would work best for Mama. Watching the woman drive away in her square blue car with the government tag, I decided that maybe she was one of those people with ESP. The kind I saw on TV who could tell pregnant women whether they would have a boy or a girl. I wondered if she could see into my future just as easy.

  “Hey, baby,” Mama said when she handed me the package wrapped in paper covered with multicolored balloons. She lightly hugged me the way I had hugged Poppy’s cousins at the Willard family reunion last year. The scent of fresh soap lingered on her skin, and her hair was as neatly teased as if Aunt Loraine had coached her on how to fix up.

  Her eyes swam around as we sat at the usual red plastic table and drank milkshakes. No matter how fast my mama’s eyes fluttered, they never landed on Nana. The blue dots darted back and forth from me, to the government lady, and to the white board that advertised a two-for-one special on chili dogs.

  Mama spoke real fast and talked mostly about the beauty shop her new boyfriend, Walter, had promised. The government lady nodded and smiled as if to assure me life would be better than ever.

  I smiled back and played that she was the proper mother that we both wanted her to be, a mother full of honor and forgiveness. Hoping against hope that what Brother Bailey had said last Sunday was really true. That you never run out of forgiveness. But later I wondered if Brother Bailey had really ever known my mama.

  It was Halloween on our third visit and I was dressed in overalls, with one of Poppy’s red handkerchiefs dangling from the pocket. My hair was slicked back, and black dots covered my cheeks.

  The government lady pursed her lips and glanced again at her watch. “Oh, good night, I hope she didn’t have an accident.” Nana just sighed and brushed away salt from the table.

  For this visit Mama was thirty minutes late. And the last time she was twenty minutes late. By that visit her hair was back to the flat look that I remembered.

  The roar of the car with the blue door made us all turn towards the parking lot. A piercing screech from the opened door warned that Mama would be joining us at any moment.

  “Sorry I’m late. I had to run Walter up to the store for a refill of his medicine. In case of an emergency like that, I knew you’d understand and everything.” Mama nodded at the government lady, but the woman continued to look at her watch.

  When Mama wrapped her arms around my shoulders, the sugared-mint scent of Jack Daniels and Listerine drifted past. She sat on her fingertips and tried to smile real big. “Hey, handsome,” she said with a wink. Black makeup clumped together in little balls that hung around the edge of her eyes. “You still doing good in school and everything?”

  Stop it, I wanted to yell. Stop trying to act like you’re some Carol Brady, some perfect mother, because you’re not. “Yes, ma’am. I got a B on my math test.”

  Nana lightly patted the table. “Math is the only lesson he has trouble with. New math, they call it. It just might as well be Greek to me. I was always the world’s worst…”

  “What are you doing dressed like Howdy Doody or something?” Mama laughed and threw her head back. A black hole filled the side of her mouth where a healthy tooth once lived.

  I looked up at the government lady for guidance, but she only made a notation on the clipboard.

  “It’s Halloween,” Nana yelled. Red welts appeared on her neck, and she tried to stand but was pinned in by the edge of the table.

  “Halloween…you ever heard of it? He’s just being a boy.”

  For the first time in weeks, the blue eyes fell directly on Nana. “Well, excuse the hell outta me for not carving a pumpkin. But why should I even bother because I know you already took care of it for me.”

  Nana regained control by patting her hair bun. “Well, I’m sure you’d manage to mess that up just like you do everything else.”

  Mama stumbled as she tried to stand, and the chewed-up fingernail was now pointed straight at Nana. “Old lady, I’ve sat here listening to your bullshit until I’m just about to throw up.”

  The government lady clutched the clipboard and leaned away from the table. “Miss Willard, contain yourself. You’re going to force me to notify the judge.”

  The words calmed Mama faster than any pill I had ever seen her take. “I’m sorry. I just got all…”

  Her words faded as a car with music booming from an open window passed on the highway. The government lady made another notation and sighed.

  �
�Miss Willard…”

  “It’s just all the stress with Walter and everything…You know, just one slipup and you’d think the whole world was ending or something.” Mama looked at the government lady and smiled. “The only reason I forgot is because I spent all morning filling out papers for that beauty school. You wouldn’t believe all the stuff they want to know.”

  Listening to the government lady reprimand Mama like she was her third-grade teacher, I looked at Nana. With her fist propped against her chin, she gazed towards the highway. The government lady’s words seemed to float past her the same way they did me. They began to sound like garbled words from the radio ads that blared at us from the windows of passing cars. Watching the cars and trucks, I wondered what the passengers thought of us. A casual glance and anybody with good sense would have thought we were having a family reunion. An old-fashioned family get-together filled with ice cream and good memories.

  Later that evening the cocktail of whiskey and mouthwash wouldn’t leave me alone. Mama’s lingering scent kept my insides crunched up like the broken peanut hulls that littered the floor of the Farmers Market.

  When I passed on joining Mary Madonna and Mac for trick-or-treating, Poppy and Nana knew I was sick for sure.

  Pieces of the dining-room light stretched underneath the bedroom door as if they were bony claws pulling me out of bed. For a moment Poppy’s words tricked me into thinking they might be coming from a detective show playing on the TV.

  “I knew we should’ve done something before now. We’ve just been wasting time with all this notion of hope.”

  “She sat right there in front of that government lady high as a kite. And that lady just putting on like it was nothing out of the ordinary,” Nana said.