Almost Crimson

by Dasha Kelly

  “Sister, what you are and what you can become are two different stories.”

  TWELVE

  UNZIP

  CECE DIDN'T TALK MUCH ABOUT camp. Ms. Petrie’s polite inquiries withered along their ride from the yellow bus’s drop-off to CeCe’s apartment. Her mother had been home for a week and looked forward to seeing her, according to Ms. Petrie, the newest social worker.

  CeCe insisted Ms. Petrie didn’t need to walk her in. CeCe hefted her duffel bag from the trunk and waddled through the lobby and onto the courtyard, and then wedged her swollen duffel bag through their apartment door.

  Her mother sat at the kitchen table. There was her coffee mug. There was her sweater. There was her quiet. CeCe turned to lock the door behind her. The metal click of the deadbolt shot through their silence, its authority usually clanging against every surface. This time, CeCe only heard a dull thud beneath the rattle and pulse in her head.

  Her emancipation from Camp Onondaga was a bittersweet celebration, as CeCe began to inventory all that awaited her at home. CeCe thought of her mother, swallowed by their bed. She thought of milk spoiling in the fridge. Envelopes overflowing in their mail slot. The apartment manager would fuss again about the mailbox. He would also wonder about the rent. When her mother had stopped getting out of bed last year, the apartment manager had showed CeCe which envelope to open and have her mother scribble across the back. When CeCe started returning the endorsed check, the manager deducted their rent and returned the remaining cash.

  When CeCe turned away from the locked door, she was surprised to see her mother standing at the kitchen table, not sitting, making eye contact with her. Her mother even wore the outline of a smile. CeCe eyed her mother as she maneuvered around the coffee table to drop her duffel bag. She walked across the room to hug her mother and then open the refrigerator door.

  CeCe spent the first few days home assessing bills and the cupboards, washing and hanging laundry, making daily trips to the library. Her mother didn’t ask many questions about camp, just kept her eyes on CeCe with that ill-fitting grin.

  At the end of the week, before grabbing her tote bag and heading out to catch the bus for her library retreat, the phone rang. The rare clamor filled their small apartment, making them jump. CeCe lifted the receiver. It was Ms. Petrie. CeCe wished she were at the bus stop already.

  “I wanted to make sure you and your mom were all set for tomorrow,” Ms. Petrie said.

  “Tomorrow?”

  Ms. Petrie sighed into the phone and chirped, “So glad I called.”

  CeCe listened as the social worker described the therapy series her mother had been committed to attending for the next six months. She would need to catch the bus to a counselor whose office was across town.

  “He’s really one of the best to deal with her type of, um, issues,” Ms. Petrie said. “Are you excited about your part?”

  “What part?”

  “I know you’ve been a big girl for a long time but, legally, we can’t have you stay at the apartment alone for more than thirty minutes,” Mrs. Petrie said. “So, instead of making you sit in the waiting room of the therapist’s office, we were able to get you free piano lessons at a studio down the hall.”

  CeCe knew she was supposed to return Ms. Petrie’s excitement, but there were too many other, darker emotions waiting in queue. CeCe felt the sludge filling her skull. She wanted this woman’s voice out of her ear.

  “What if I don’t go?” CeCe asked.

  “I’m sorry; you have to go. Otherwise, I could get in big trouble with my supervisor,” she said, “and your mother could get arrested for endangerment.”

  CeCe was quiet. Her neck grew hot as she gripped the receiver. She wrote down the address and called the transit office for the bus routes. She heard her mother in the bedroom, adjusting herself on the mattress, and felt a headache pressing against her ears and the backs of her eyeballs. CeCe slammed the front door when she left.

  “Let’s go, Mama,” CeCe said, standing in the doorway of their bedroom. Her mother had been moving in circles, smoothing the blanket, slipping on her shoes, straightening the stacks of papers on the dresser. “We can’t miss the Kennedy bus.”

  Two bus transfers and an hour later, they arrived at a strip mall in the Birchdale neighborhood, a small enclave on the far-east end of the city. The property was modern and clean, with a video store, dry cleaners, and other small businesses. Between the insurance office and the shoe store, a nondescript glass door led to an upstairs maze of boxy, wood-paneled office spaces. A directory sign pointed to the music school at one end of the hallway and Dr. Carroll Harper at the other.

  CeCe’s piano lesson started thirty minutes later than her mother’s session, though they would finish at the same time. CeCe walked with her mother to the doctor’s office. A scent of spiced apples greeted them inside. The waiting area was small. There were four cushioned banquet chairs and another closed door with a wooden sign hung from a thick, orange ribbon: “In session. Please have a seat.”

  CeCe and her mother took a seat on each wall. Her mother closed her eyes. CeCe examined the room. In the center of the space, a coffee table had magazines and a bowl filled with large wooden balls and spirals. A small bookshelf, painted orange, offered playing cards, an incomplete set of encyclopedia books, and a basket of toddler’s toys. Eight black-and-white photographs of trees and forest glens dotted the room, each image held in place with cream-and-orange matting. CeCe recognized these pictures were the only items in Dr. Harper’s waiting room that had not come from a thrift store.

  A chime sounded on the other side of the closed door, followed by rustling, movement, and a murmur of voices coming closer to the door. CeCe looked to her mother. Her eyes were still closed, but CeCe saw her mother force a nervous swallow. The office door pushed open, releasing a heavy woman with long red hair, her face ashen and blotched from crying. CeCe looked down as she passed.

  “You must be Carla,” croaked a man’s voice. CeCe looked up again to see a short round man standing in the doorway. He was bald on top with a ring of white hair around his head and a full beard. CeCe half expected her mother’s new psychologist to appear in a white lab coat and, perhaps, a bow tie. Instead, he wore jeans, Docksides and a button-down striped oxford. He reminded CeCe of a science teacher.

  “And you must be Crimson—wait—CeCe, is it?”

  CeCe nodded as Dr. Harper came closer to shake her hand and then her mother’s. Dr. Harper gestured for her mother to follow him and moved aside for her passing.

  “I promise to take excellent care of her,” he said to CeCe before pulling his office door closed.

  CeCe poked through the magazines, but there were only news, camping, and home decor. She took out her library book to read. After a few minutes, CeCe realized there wasn’t a clock anywhere. She knew she wasn’t allowed to interrupt Dr. Harper, but didn’t want to be late for her piano lesson. Begrudgingly, CeCe gathered her book and her tote bag and left the office for Claire McKissick’s School of Music.

  CeCe pushed open the door at the opposite end of the hallway and found a similar setup as Dr. Harper’s office, with a second door separating the “waiting” from the “working.” CeCe took a seat in the plastic molded chairs. Instead of pastoral photography, these walls were covered in autographed photos of an elegant woman posing with an assortment of people. Famous musicians, CeCe presumed. Claire McKissick, she was certain.

  She could hear muted instructions behind the closed door and someone mashing the keys. CeCe pulled out her book again, blocking out the wailing piano noise. Tuning out the world was one of CeCe’s favorite perks of reading. A half hour had passed before she knew it and the door flew open. A large black woman came charging out, in mid-bellow.

  “ . . . And the next time we come here and you don’t know those keys, that’s yo’ ass. You hear me? I’m not payin’ all this money for you to come here and piss around with this woman’s time! How many times . . . ”

  She
was like a passing storm, not even noticing CeCe sitting there. The target of her rant came coasting behind. She was a thin, dark-complexioned girl with tight bangs and a ponytail on top of her head. The girl mm-hmmed and uh-huhed as she trailed the barking woman, but made a mocking cross-eyed face as she passed by CeCe. CeCe clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from squealing. Finally. She was not alone in the world of misfit mothers.

  Every week, the girl and her mother left Claire McKissick’s School of Music this way. CeCe would constrict the giggle squirming in her chest as soon as the rehearsal room door flew open and the mother’s voice would invade the waiting area. CeCe kept her head in her book, waiting for the precise half-second when the girl would unzip her blank expression to flash a bucky beaver face or another cross-eyed smile. CeCe would squeeze shut her eyes to keep from exploding with laughter.

  The girls’ Saturday antics carried them through the start of a new school year, frozen dinner trays for Thanksgiving, and an early winter snow. On a particularly cold morning, the girl did not make a face. She followed her bellowing mother, as usual, but stopped to face CeCe before pulling up the hood on her coat.

  “You dropped your magazine,” the girl said, with a bit more volume than the small room required. Puzzled, CeCe followed the girl’s gaze down to the Right On! magazine dropped on the floor. CeCe looked down at the magazine and then up, into the mouth of the girl’s mother. She had turned back to make sure none of her fussing, neck swiveling, or ultimatums were being missed.

  CeCe looked back to the girl. “Thank you,” she said, also with a stage voice.

  As the girl and her mother’s voice retreated down the hall, CeCe held the magazine in her lap. Randy, Jermaine, and Janet Jackson looked back at her. Handwritten on little Janet’s forehead read, “Open to page 16.” CeCe did and found a folded sheet of lined paper. CeCe opened it and felt everything inside her breathe.

  THIRTEEN

  FLAGPOLE

  WHEN HER FIRST YEAR OF college ended, Carla continued her discussions with Sandra about street soldiers and sideways politics with letters throughout the summer. By the Fourth of July, the two were trading letters weekly, Sandra with reports of her clandestine adventure in Chicago and Carla with quotes and historical misinformation she’d researched in the library.

  When Uncle John delivered Carla to Greyhound for her return to campus in the fall, he pulled her suitcase from the truck bed and walked it into the depot. Hugging his niece, he wished her luck and told her again how proud he was of her.

  “Don’t you go scarin’ them professors with all your revolution talk,” Uncle John teased as Carla stood with her bag.

  “I have more reason to be afraid of them and what they’re trying not to teach me,” Carla said, quite seriously, reaching up on her tiptoes to kiss her uncle on the cheek. He shook his head and chuckled, heading back to his truck.

  Carla launched her sophomore year with a new confidence and more fervor than her freshman year. She greeted dormmates, joined study groups right away, even spread out a blanket on the mall some afternoons to read. Sandra wasn’t on campus for the first two weeks. Her parents had discovered her summer had been spent campaigning and protesting in Chicago, and not attending a leadership camp in Milwaukee, as she’d led them to believe. They were undecided about allowing her to return to college until the last minute.

  Carla was leaving the library with one of her study groups one afternoon when someone called her name from across the mall. She turned toward the voice and squinted at two figures near the flagpole. The woman’s outline resembled Sandra’s but was missing her roommate’s signature bouffant. Moving towards one another, Carla could tell the second figure belonged to a man and the first, indeed, belonged to her roommate, with some sort of hat on her head.

  As they closed the yardage between them, Carla could see it was the young man who wore the hat. He was compact and strong looking, like the cousin who might always be asked to help move wood and boxes, or the handy church member who was good at repairs. His skin was the color of molasses, and his face was stern. His eyes were dark and potent, like pot liquor.

  “You’ll see. She’s solid,” Sandy was saying, somewhat winded. The two friends embraced and pulled apart to regard one another: Carla’s new rebellious slacks and Sandra's new afro.

  “I think I love it,” Carla said.

  “Just wait ’til I get my hands on that head of yours,” Sandra said.

  Although Carla giggled with her friend, all of the nerves and pores and follicles and cells in her body were drawn to the man standing to the side of them.

  “Carla, this is Q,” Sandra said. “He worked Chicago this summer, too. Powerful, conscious brother. I wanted him to meet you before he had to go back to Detroit.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Carla said. Extending her hand, she made sure her grip was confident and firm, the way Aunt Margaret had taught her.

  A handshake tells a man whether he’s meeting a damsel or a dame.

  “Q,” Sandra continued, “Carla is the brains behind all that material we used in the rally speeches.”

  Q accepted her handshake, casting down his black milk eyes to look at their clasped hands. He looked up at Carla again with a slight glimmer.

  He must like dames.

  “Thank you,” Q said, releasing her hand. “You helped us make a powerful impact this summer.”

  A whip of electricity sailed between them, and Carla saw her roommate pinch a thin, knowing smile.

  “If you can stand to be stuck in the heartland for a few more hours,” Sandra said to Q, moving between them to link all of their elbows, “I say we go grab some burgers and tell Carla all about Chicago.”

  Carla’s heart jumped.

  Q’s face remained stern, except for his eyes. Dark and intense, Carla felt the full wattage of his gaze ratchet between each and every one of her nerve endings. She wasn’t sure what happened beneath that waving flag, but Carla felt the first stitch begin to unravel inside her.

  Carla’s Greyhound trips home went from weekly to monthly in that second year and, by the summer, she was gone. She’d told Uncle John about a summer internship she’d won and that she’d be staying on campus over the summer. John was wary but still proud of her.

  “You gots to give yourself a rest from all your studies, don’tcha?” he’d asked.

  “Not to get where I’m going, Uncle John,” Carla told him. “Plus, I have to work twice as hard as these white people to get there.”

  These white people. That was the last conversation John had with his niece in person. She wrote a few letters from campus over the summer and fall, and then postcards came with no return address. The postcards and scant letters were filled with updates on marches, uprising, community service projects, and “we.” He drove up to the college when the trees were bare to learn Carla had not returned to campus for her third year. John gave mumbled reports of her whereabouts at the family gatherings, but everyone stopped asking when they saw how much it was hurting him to talk about it.

  After a year, when Carla would have been loading into his blue pickup for her senior year at MacMurray, a young man appeared on Uncle John’s porch. He referred to himself as Carla’s husband. He had extended his hand to John, like a new man, and John stared at him. How could this boy travel all this way, to his home, and not have Carla with him? What kind of man asks for a woman’s hand in marriage after the ceremony? Without his bride?

  The boy tried to explain Carla’s instructions, that she didn’t want to return to Decatur until she could explain it all; that she was afraid Uncle John and the rest of the family wouldn’t understand; that there was still so much work to be done.

  “What kind of work is more important than lettin’ her family lay eyes on her after all this time?” John asked, his hands balled into fists. He wanted to snatch this boy by the collar, pull him close, let him smell the terror and venom on his breath, but the boy was only doing his niece’s bidding. John knew this, remembered his own
helpless surrender of loving Margaret.

  As the boy spoke, in his book-polished tongue, John flashed to how his feet had trembled inside his church shoes on the Tuesday he went to meet Margaret’s parents. John had prayed he didn’t reek of the ranch where he worked dehorning bulls or that he didn’t leak all of his Arkansas onto their polished floors. Margaret’s parents had lace doilies on the couch and opera music playing on a record player. John had been alone, too. Margaret had wanted her father to see John as a man, brave enough to face them on his own. She’d always believed in the core of him.

  Carla must believe in this boy, John thought. He fought himself to listen to the boy, describing their work in the struggle and the life they wanted to build together. They would return to college after a year, they boy had said. They would also have a big church wedding then. Right now, they were in love; they were living in accordance to God; and they were committed to making a better world for blacks.

  John didn’t want to like this boy. Not one bit. But he did. He knew his Bluebell did, too.

  “When is she coming home . . . to visit?” John asked, choking down the last part.

  “We’re planning to come home this summer,” the boy had said. “Coming here and visiting my family in Detroit.”

  “Detroit?”

  “Yessir,” the boy said. “My parents have a small sundry shop. Pop is a deacon at the church. We know you all have worried, but I wanted to meet you and assure you face to face—man to man—that I am doing right by your niece and doing my very best to look after her.”

  John felt his temples and nostrils flare, but the boy did not flinch. He stood planted in his dress shoes and black slacks and thick Afro, waiting for John’s worst. John took a deep breath and invited the boy inside. Through the evening, they talked about Motown, baseball, four-barrel carburetors, the Book of Revelation, and the man being the head of his home. They shared a few glasses of whiskey and a plate of fish. John insisted the boy wait until the morning to drive on.