Slow Way Home

by Michael Morris

  As we drove away, I watched everyone stare as if we were secret agents. “How’d you get this tree on top of the car all by yourself?”

  “Shug, when you got legs like mine, you can manage to get a man to do most anything. Besides, that little slow boy, you know the one who bags groceries, he’s always wanting to help.”

  Her burst of energy did not end in the car. She ran around the duplex tossing silver strings like confetti. Icicles draped every piece of furniture we had, even the lamp and TV. There was a childlike innocence in the way she slung the strings in the air, and soon even I was tossing them at the tree. “Rock Around the Christmas Tree” blared from the speakers, and we both laughed when Mama hung icicles on the end of her silver hair bow.

  She ripped open a new box of balls and handed me one to hang on the tree. “Hey, what about the lights?” I asked.

  “You’re always worrying about details,” Mama said. “Let’s just be free.”

  She reached inside a grocery bag and pulled out carvings for a nativity scene. “I got these down at the flea market. The man gave me these manger ornaments for only ten cents each.” She held the tip of Mary and tried to wipe away a black stain from the figurine’s face. The past that I was trying hard to forget appeared as easy as the smudge on the Virgin Mary’s face. Various colored wise men lined up on the coffee table and could have just as well been at home on the roadside stand in front of Mama Rose’s house back in Abbeville.

  Pulling ornaments out of the shopping bag, I saw a box of cards tucked in the very bottom. Mama was still dancing with icicles clinging to her miniskirt. Her smile was warm and inviting, just like the smiles of all the other mothers at school. I held up the box and approached her. “You got cards too.”

  She never looked away from the tree and laughed. “We’re gonna do it up right this year.”

  “Can I send some out?”

  “Okay, go on over there and start working on your little cards. I’m gonna have this tree so covered in icicles that you’re gonna think you’re in the North Pole.”

  Stacks of mail and icicles covered the dinette table. In my best penmanship I carefully wrote a happy note to Nana and Poppy. The beginning of the last line, “I want you to be home real fast,” was scratched out and rewritten. “We want you to be home real fast.” Whether she knew it or not, I decided that Mama needed them too, but just hadn’t figured it out yet.

  Addressing the envelope was the hard part, and in all the excitement of tree decorating I let my guard down. “What prison is Poppy and Nana in?”

  The happy music continued to fill the room, but the holiday spirit was sucked away. Mama stood with her back to me, holding an ornament. “Why?”

  Trying to ignore her, I started working on the second card, a safe card, one to my teacher, Mrs. Joplin.

  “Why, Brandon?”

  Slipping down lower in the seat, I felt my heart begin to rev up.

  “I just thought I…uhh…we…could, you know, send them a card.”

  The sound of the ornament slamming into the wall caused me to sink lower. Pieces of red glass rested on the floor like a shattered eggshell. “Nothing’s ever good enough for you. I bust my ass trying to get to the store and make this a special Christmas and you don’t appreciate it.”

  “Mama, I do.”

  “No, you don’t neither. All you want to do is sit there and think how much better life would be without me. Stuck off God knows where in some dumpy camper. They probably wouldn’t even had room for a Christmas tree.” She paced circles around the tree, snatching off icicles and ornaments. “Just forget the whole damn thing.”

  I pulled at her sleeve, but she jerked away.

  “No matter how hard I try, nothing is ever good enough for you. Working my ass off to please you, but all you want is to be with them. You hate my guts. No matter what I do that’ll never change. I’m just not gonna put up with this shit.”

  Trying to wrap my arms around her back, I yelled the words as loud as I could. “Mama, I love you. I do. Really.”

  “No, you don’t. Don’t nobody love me. You’re just like the rest. I’m better off to just leave this place and never come back.”

  Her words stung worse than the needles on the tree, and the reflex caused me to kneel and beg. The slick vinyl of her boot slipped through my hands, and the bedroom door slammed.

  The shag carpet brushed against my face. Lying on the floor, I looked down the hall and saw the gap between my Mama’s bedroom door and heard her cries. There were pieces of her behind that door that I wanted to fix, but could never reach. Instead, I tried to clean up what was right in front of me.

  Carefully, I put the pieces of the broken Christmas ball into the dustpan. The icicles were returned to their proper places on the tree. When I couldn’t reach any higher, I pulled the dinette chair over and stood on it. Eye to eye with the golden-winged angel, I wished that God would make me one too. An angel who could fly off with Jesus. Maybe that was why He had come to see me to start with.

  When Mama came out of the bedroom, her head was tucked and her makeup smeared in circles making her look like a spotted puppy. The words were slow, as if she were learning a new language. “Do you love me?”

  It was my cue, and before I knew it my arms were back wrapped around her waist. “Mama, please don’t go. I love you. Really now.”

  She halfway laughed and squeezed me extra hard. Then with the back of her hands, she smeared the makeup even worse. Sifting through the stack of eight-tracks, she stuck one into the stereo. Al Green’s voice drifted across the room and she smiled again. Words from “Let’s Stay Together” rose out from the speakers, and she waved her arms as if to welcome them in. With eyes closed, my mama mouthed the words like ointment was being applied to the scorches on her soul. Then right in the middle of the icicles that still littered the floor she reached for my hand. “It’s about time your mama teaches you how to dance.”

  Even through the black smudges, her eyes were the color of blue snow cones. They glistened in a way that drew me closer until her breath was warm against the top of my head. Her hand was sticky as she placed her fingers in mine. I stood on the tip of her boots, and she led me in circles until I laughed again. She spun us around until the Christmas tree became a blur of silvery green. We just laughed and laughed until the past had spun away for good.

  Seventeen

  The day after Christmas, Kane showed me the gift that would change everything. We stood outside the duplex next to the hot-water heater. Cold breezes clawed across our faces as Kane pulled the gold box from his coat pocket. Against the sun, the tiny diamond sparkled like a sliver of a star.

  “You think she’ll like it?” Kane asked.

  All I could do was stare. The only other time a man had given Mama a diamond ring, it turned out to be a fake. It was from Roger, the husband who worked construction and raced stock cars. After their first fight, Mama had tried to scrape it down his car window to see if it was real and ended up with buckle scrapes down her back.

  “It looks like we’re going to have a double celebration New Year’s Eve,” Kane said. “Christening the new truck Tony and me got and giving Sophie this ring. I can tell this is going to be a good one.”

  The day the new van appeared all white and shiny with black lettering that read K. T. Electronics was the same day Tony handed Kane a new work schedule. Jobs piled up and so did Kane’s hours. He would come home late and often leave before Mama had gotten up in the morning. Whenever Mama would complain, Kane would only mumble about having more bills to pay.

  New Year’s Eve was the big day, and just as Kane was moving the furniture out of the living room to make room for a dance floor, the phone rang. A man down in the rich section of town said his TV was on the blink. The man told Kane that Guy Lombardo was a tradition with his wife and that if Kane would come fix it on a holiday, there would be more work down the road.

  “But the man manages Sears,” Kane repeated to Mama. “He can give our names to
everybody that buys a TV in that place.” As Kane zipped up the navy jumper with his name stitched on the pocket, Mama stomped her foot.

  “One damn night, Kane. Just one night we need you. You know, just forget it. Go. Go on and leave us. I don’t even want to see your face.” Before Kane could take a step towards her, she ran into the bathroom and locked the door. He sighed and thumped the ring of keys on his belt, the ring holding the key to the new van. The jingle of keys faded as he made his way out the door.

  Even without Kane the usual crowd flowed into the duplex, and music began to jar the walls. Tony showed up with a bottle wrapped in a paper bag and kissed Cheyenne right on the lips. He ran his hand through his long black hair, and from the back anyone would have guessed that it belong to a witch.

  Mama weaved through the guests sipping a beer. Her hair was teased up extra high, and she wore a purple choker necklace that kept sliding down. When she found me sitting on the edge of the sofa staring at the beer bottle, she rolled her eyes. “Damn, it’s just beer. There’s hardly any alcohol in this thing.” Spinning around, she landed right up against Tony.

  “Look at you, Miss Thing.” She never pulled his hand away when he grabbed her thigh.

  Everybody laughed when Tony stuck his finger in the cake that Kane had made for the party. I watched Tony take his slice and wipe it on the face of a guy with a peace symbol hanging from his neck. In the corner, I took a plate of cake and spat on it. Smearing the spat on the cake, I walked it over to Tony. “Here, Tony. Hurry up and eat it before he gets you back.”

  “Thanks, man.” Tony took his finger and ran it through the icing. He never noticed that my shoulders rose a little higher.

  When Cheyenne brought out the long pipe that looked like a pilgrim gun, a group of people headed back to my bedroom. Cheyenne pulled her baby from the room and sat her in front of me. “Keep an eye on her, kiddo.”

  The TV showed us the ballroom of a fancy hotel in New York. Guy Lombardo kept his band in line with the small white stick. Turning to look for Mama, I remembered that she was not with the group that followed Cheyenne into my bedroom. Nor was she standing in the kitchen passing a funnel of beer. I took Cheyenne’s daughter by the hand, and we followed a trail of ashes down the hall to Mama’s bedroom. There in the darkness, I saw their silhouette framed in the glow of the hall night-light. Tony was facing us with his arms wrapped around Mama. They were kissing as big as Dallas right in front of us. Before I could cover the eyes of the baby I was supposed to protect, Tony used his foot to slam the bedroom door.

  Running to the living room, I threw a bowl of potato chips back into the bag.

  “Hey, I’m munching on these things,” a guy with kinky blond hair said.

  “Time to go,” I yelled.

  They kept laughing as I yanked bowls from the table. A stack of napkins fell to the floor as paper plates were tossed into the pantry.

  “Get out! Get out or I’ll call the cops!”

  I began shoving stomachs and arms in all sizes until their owners’ laughter rang in my ears. When I felt myself being lifted from the floor, I kicked over the lamp. The guy with kinky hair kept looking back at the group in the kitchen. His arms gripped my elbows and ankles as he held me up over his head as if I was a sacrificial joke. I spat and jerked, but that only made him spin me faster. The people standing in my kitchen began to swim around, and a burning sensation crept up my chest.

  “Put him down, asshole!” Kane’s voice clipped the laughter of our guests. The guy tossed me on the sofa and brushed hair from his eyes.

  “It’s cool. Just having a little fun.”

  Kane only glanced at me before he knocked the kink right out of the guy’s hair. The guy lay on the floor with a trickle of blood coming from his nose. The group in the kitchen moved closer to the back door when Kane slammed the ring of keys on the table. “Where the hell is Sophie?”

  “She got one of those bad headaches and had to go lay down,” I said.

  Kane’s jaw tightened, and I tried to hold his leg as he walked down the hall. “She’s sleeping. Just sleeping.”

  Before I could pull his hand away from the bedroom door, he jerked it open. Screams pierced through the walls and in an instant slit a hole right into our future.

  When it was all over, Tony ran out of the duplex with nothing more than his underwear on and blood running down his mouth. Mama sat in the bathroom crying like a kitten that was being weaned from its mother. The others had long scattered, and the stereo had already been knocked over. A crack ran down the cover that was supposed to protect the record player.

  Kane had stopped on his way out the door long enough to shake his head at me and mumble, “Sorry.” Pieces of his clothes littered the hallway like bread crumbs on a one-way journey.

  Outside, the cold air stung my bare arms enough to remind me that life was still going on. I found the gold box sitting right next to one of Kane’s shirts. The diamond ring looked less bright underneath the sparkle of the stars. Picking up the clothes, I tried to think of a plan to get him back. I’d get Mama to go over to his parents’ house and tell him she had really messed up by drinking beer. She could call him and tell him that we had his clothes. He would come back for his things. But then I remembered what he had told me about his family being rich, and no matter whether he had been talking to them or not, I knew they would welcome him back to where he belonged. Kane didn’t need his clothes, or us either for that matter. He could buy more clothes, and he already had a family.

  A smell that was stronger than the scent of spilled beer overtook me. When I looked up, Jesus stood right where Kane’s van had left tire tracks. He held up His tanned arms and the edges of His sleeves flapped until I wanted to run and hold on to Him for good. As if she had been standing on the roof, Sister Delores’s words fell down on me. “The Lord will be your mama and your daddy. He won’t leave you and He sure won’t forsake you.” A tin can rolled with the wind down the street, and when I looked back, it was over. But this time the fresh smell that comes after a hard rain lingered, and the peace that had first found me at God’s Hospital poured over me once again.

  After Kane left, Mama stayed in bed for eleven days. She’d sip the chicken soup I made straight from my thermos. Cheyenne brought over a bag of groceries, and I kept up with my schoolwork as if life was the same as usual. But it was not the same. The big boss down at Winn-Dixie got tired of Mama’s flu bug and laid her off on the eighth day. That’s the day I heard Cheyenne tell Mama that Tony said he wanted to come over.

  Backfires from a motorcycle let me know when Tony had arrived. From my bedroom I heard Mama speak broken words in that little-girl way that I thought she had forgotten. Tony kept coming over until soon Mama had learned the language all over again.

  Life in the duplex with Tony made my nerves coil up like a spring ready to pop, but seven steps across the street, life at our new neighbors’, the Pickerings, made it all smooth again. Mr. Pickering was only slightly larger than Mrs. Pickering, and both made crinkling sounds when they walked. Mr. Pickering talked about playing baseball in high school while Mrs. Pickering kept pound cake as moist as Nana’s protected underneath tinfoil. The best part of being big for their daughters, Bethany and Destiny, was softball. They could knock a softball farther than any boy I had ever known. When Mr. Pickering took us down to the recreational park to sign up for the season, the coach first protested about having girls on a team designated for boys. But then Mr. Pickering pitched Bethany a ball and the crack of her bat made it soar past the sign advertising cigarettes. “What’d you say your name was again?” the coach asked Bethany.

  After softball practice, Mrs. Pickering would pick us up and then stop by McDonald’s for french fries. When we pulled up to our duplex, a woman dressed in white boots was walking away. “You have the most company,” Mrs. Pickering said. There was an edge to her voice that caused me to pull at the loose stitch in my glove.

  “My mama sells Avon.” Mrs. Pickering smiled and nodde
d like it made all the sense in the world.

  The sweet smell of the merchandise engulfed me when I walked through the door. Mama was standing with her leg propped up on the barstool painting her toenails. “How was practice,” she asked without looking up. I slammed my glove on the coffee table. A box of sandwich bags slid to the edge.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  She motioned towards the table. “Go on and get you a drink. The money’s on the table.”

  “Maybe I don’t want a drink.”

  “Okay, then. Hey, I need you to stay in the back tonight. Tony said they’re bringing a shipment in and I don’t want you in…”

  “I’m sick and tired of this! Sick of lying about you selling that stuff.”

  “Well, I guess you hate this roof over your head and the clothes on your back too. How’s about that nice glove and that jersey I just had to pay for? You hate them too?”

  I stared at the floor until her painted toes blurred into the color of the fiery hell I thought I’d face for lying.

  “Look, I’m doing the best that I damn sure know how to do. And if you get to acting too uppity, I’ll stop you from hanging out with those fat asses. They’re probably making you think you’re some do-gooder or something.”

  “They’re nice people.”

  “Oh yeah, and I’m just a piece of trash. I forgot.” Her blue eyes were lit brighter than the Christmas lights that still hung on the front porch.

  “I didn’t even say nothing,” I said.

  “You don’t have to. Look, if you want to live with them so bad, then go for it. End up weighing three hundred pounds like them too. See if I care.”

  Tony began talking the minute he stepped through the front door. He pulled out the wacky weed from the grocery bag. “Okay, we gotta get moving here. Maurice is stopping by at eight to get everything moving. We need to call…Hey, get moving. You hearing me or not?”

  Mama waved her hands in the air in such a way that I didn’t know if she was still drying her nails or wanted Tony to hush.