by Dasha Kelly
“I suppose Carla don’t want me to know where you’s livin’?” John asked the following day, as the boy shook his hand on his porch.
“No, she doesn’t,” the boy said. “But I’ll tell you we’re still in Illinois, close enough and far enough away from Chicago and the state line. Neither one of us cared for Chicago as a place to live forever. We’re thinking about our roots now, sir. Was able to find us a nice, clean apartment, and I’m making ends meet working nearby at a butcher shop. My daddy taught me a thing or two about carving meat.”
John smiled at the boy, hearing an echo of his own appeal to Margaret’s father so many years ago. Before he sent the boy on his way, he disappeared into his bedroom and came out with a tattered envelope, thick with papers.
“A lot of people in my wife’s family done worked hard to make sure all they kin is provided for,” John said to the boy, handing him the envelope. “I don’t know ’bout yo’ people, but I never knew of such a thing. I was grateful, by God, and blessed. Tell my Bluebell I will respect her wishes and wait until summertime to talk to her. Trusting you to keep her safe ’til then, Quentin.”
John received a short letter from Carla within the week, thanking him for the insurance papers and gushing about her two favorite men. Summer came and went, and John never heard from either Carla or Quentin again. The rest of the McCalls sealed away Carla’s name, even after John’s death. It would be years before her name would be spoken again.
FOURTEEN
BALONEY
My name is Te’Pamela. I go by Pam. Welcome to the McKissick School of Torture. Your sentence is every Saturday for the rest of your life! What’s your name? What grade are you in? I’m in fifth grade. I hate social studies. I get all As in math. What’s your best subject? Are you an only child, too? I like not having brothers and sisters. Sometimes I wish there was another person for Mama to yell at. Haha! Where’s your mother? OK. This is a whole bunch of questions. Write me back!
Pam
• • •
My name is CeCe. My whole name is Crimson Celeste, but CeCe is easier. I’m in fifth grade, too. I go to Neil Armstrong Elementary. I don’t live over here. I live on Fountain Drive. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, either. I don’t think I like it much anymore. Do you like to read? That’s my best subject. Reading and English. I do OK in math. I just don’t like it very much. What’s your favorite color? Mine is yellow. When is your birthday? Mine was September 25. I’m really 11! I can’t wait to be 18. That’s when they say I can leave. Which Jackson do you like best?
CeCe
• • •
I love the Sylvers! The Jacksons are good, too. Randy is so fine! Foster Sylver is the finest! I’m not allowed to listen to world music (what Mama calls music she doesn’t like). Only clean songs. Sylvers, Osmonds, gospel, old Motown, stuff like that. Does your mother let you listen to the radio? I can’t wait to be 18 either! I’m going to college, then I’m moving to Paris. They love Black people in Paris. I heard that in a movie. I don’t mind reading. It just takes me a long time to read a whole book. I don’t always like to sit still for so long. I can sit still for a movie though! I love movies. Mama lets me watch movies on TV. On Friday nights, they play the big movies. With no cussing. I don’t know what’s so wrong with cussing. I’m not a baby! I can hear SHIT FUCK HELL DAMN. My birthday is April 11. You just had a birthday! Now that we’re friends, I can be invited to your party next year! Ha! Ha! Do you like piano?
Pam
• • •
Piano is OK. It’s hard though. I thought Ms. McKissick was going to be mean. She’s nice. I’d rather learn to paint or pottery or something. I like making things. I went to camp this summer (yuck!) and we made stuff every day. I liked that part. I liked the lake, too. I liked walking in the woods. That’s it. Everything else about camp was terrible. You’re going to college? Are you rich? Maybe I can visit your mansion one day! I don’t watch movies. I bet I’d like them. I don’t do a lot of things. I want to. I never thought about living in another country. Not even another state. I would be scared. Are you scared of anything? I hate spiders.
CeCe
• • •
I’m not scared of spiders or mice or stuff like that. Mama makes me kill the bugs that get in the apartment. She’s so big and bad but can’t step on a spider! She makes me laugh. That’s why I don’t pay her any attention, most of the time. She’s been yelling and bossing me around ever since I was a little kid. I remember when she wasn’t so big and bad. I remember when she was just bad. We had a really rough life before she got saved. We had lots of secrets and stuff. Made my stomach hurt all the time. When she started going to church, I started to feel better. She changed from being scary to being saved. Both were hard on me! Haha! But I’d choose this every time. You didn’t answer me about your mother. I hope she didn’t die. I’m sorry, if she did. Do you live with your father? You should curl your hair. We’re too big for two ponytails.
Pam
• • •
I never tried to curl my hair before. Do I look dumb? I didn’t know how to make anything else but ponytails. A lady in my building showed me how to make curlers from paper bags. It was pretty easy, but my mother said I have to leave them in overnight for the curls to stay. Funny. She hasn’t taught me many things. This therapy stuff must be working. See? She’s not dead. She’s just been acting like it on the inside. She sees a brain doctor while I’m at piano. Three more months. I didn’t know my daddy. He died in Vietnam. My mama misses him a lot. Makes her so sad she can’t get out of bed some days. It gets worse every year. I don’t remember her being like this when I was little. She used to make me laugh and give me big hugs. I like what you said about being glad things are getting better, but not forgetting that things weren’t always this way. I’m glad she’s getting help from Dr. Harper, but it’s been so hard and so unfair for such a long time. I try really hard not to be mad all the time. Yeah, secrets suck! Haha! I’ll keep your secrets safe, though. You’ll keep mine too, right? Does your school dress up for Halloween? I might be a movie star or something.
CeCe
• • •
I’m sorry about your daddy. I don’t know mine. He’s part of my mother’s “bad” years, I guess. I’m not allowed to ask about him anymore. She said I wouldn’t like him very much anyway. This might be mean, but I don’t think she knows who he is. She would tell me different things. He was a teacher, then he was a drummer, then he was dark-skinned, then he was light-skinned. There was always a new uncle coming around when I was little. Not really. She just told me to call them uncle. Another secret . . . my mother used to do drugs and stuff. It was always scary then. Strange people. Strange apartments. Strange everything. We even lived in a shelter for homeless people once. That place was so nasty. Someone who worked there said the state would make me live in foster care. My mother started to change. We went to a special house for women and their kids. She met with a therapist, too. It helped her stop doing drugs. She started going to church. Then someone got her a job at a dentist’s office. We moved away from the city all the way out to Birchwood. She always says, “You have to do different to be different.” She says smart stuff like that all time, when she’s not yelling about something. Haha! Don’t worry about your mother. She’s gonna be OK. We have costumes at school. I’m not allowed. Mama said it’s devil worship. Oh well . . . Hey, your hair looks good!
Pam
• • •
I can’t believe we have so much in common! Maybe we’re twins! Haha! I’m already sad about ending piano lessons. (Well, not piano . . . ) Mama only has two more months left of her therapy. Do you have a phone? Are you allowed to talk on the phone?
CeCe
• • •
Yes! We have a phone. I’m allowed to talk after I do my homework. Here’s my number: 683-9821. Call me on Tuesday. We have choir practice on Tuesday. She’s always in a good mood when she gets to have choir practice.
Pam
• • •
It was cool to talk to you on the phone. Your voice is deep like a grown-up! You didn’t get in trouble, did you? Sounded like your mother was mad. Are you a good singer? I sing like Whitney Houston . . . but only in the shower. Haha! What did you ask for Christmas?
CeCe
• • •
I got my Atari! A good report card spends like money! Remember that, CeCe!! Haha! I had another great idea (you know me, girlfriend)—let’s have a sleepover!!! I think Mama will say yes. Christmastime makes her loosen up. Hallelujah! I love you CeCe! I’m so glad you’re my best friend! Did you get your best gift?
Pam
• • •
I’m glad you’re my best friend too. A slumber party???!!!??? Yes, I just got my best gift.
CeCe
• • •
CeCe spent the night at Pam’s house at least once a month for the next year. On a slumber weekend before the end of the school year, CeCe and Pam admired their experimental hairdos when Pam’s mother called from the den.
“Te’Pamela,” she called, “what’s the name of that new Richard Pryor movie?”
“Umm . . . ” Pam called back, staring at the wall separating her from her mother’s voice. CeCe watched Pam drum the barrel of the curling iron, visibly straining her memory for a movie title. CeCe continued to pack up the barrettes, bobby pins, and gels.
“Bustin’ Out?” Pam said.
“Loose,” her mother yelled back through the wall. “Bustin’ Loose.” Pam and CeCe heard her mother repeat the movie title to someone on the phone. Pam said her mother had been on the phone a lot lately.
“I don’t know who Mama’s been gabbing to,” Pam said, “but they’re keeping her off my ass.”
“Maybe we should start handing out your number to strangers and install a switchboard,” CeCe whispered back, launching the two girls into a giggling fit of pantomimes and half-finished sentences.
While they clutched their stomachs, trying to steady their breath, CeCe smiled at their visual. Best friends laughing heartily after an afternoon of beautifying and girl talk, relaxed and worry-free.
Once in the family room, the girls bunkered in with chips, Kool-Aid, and pizza, less the four slices Pam’s mother always took first as the “pizza sponsor.” The girls stretched on the floor in front for TV waiting for the Friday night movie to start. A commercial interrupted their banter:
“I don’t know, Becky,” one woman said, leaning conspiratorially to her friend across a small cafe table. “Sometimes I don’t feel . . . fresh.”
“I know what you mean,” the friend said in a confident whisper. “I have those days, too. But you know what I use . . . ”
CeCe and Pam giggled.
“She just nasty,” CeCe said, angling a pizza slice into her mouth.
Pam laughed, taking a sip from her cup. “It’s not nasty,” she said to CeCe. “it’s—uh—natural.”
Pam kept her eyes on the screen and CeCe kept her eyes peeled on Pam. Both girls started to smile the longer Pam pretended to ignore CeCe’s glare.
CeCe finally shoved Pam in the shoulder, toppling her over. “Come off it!” CeCe commanded.
Pam’s mother bellowed from her bedroom. “Y’all better not be tearing up nothin’ in there.”
“No, ma’am,” Pam called back, suppressing a laugh as CeCe shoved her again.
“Give it up, I said,” CeCe said.
“OK, OK,” Pam said, rolling away from CeCe’s third shove. “Well, ever since I started my period I worry about smelling bad.”
CeCe wrinkled her nose. “You smell bad?”
“No, but I don’t want to,” Pam said. “The school nurse said our bodies have natural odors. Women have a scent that’s natural. She said it’s the fluids that, y’know, coat our—y’know, stuff.”
“Like bicycle oil?” CeCe teased.
They laughed. “I guess so,” Pam said.
“If it doesn’t smell bad,” CeCe said, “then what’s it like?”
Pam munched on her pizza while she considered. “Baloney.”
CeCe stared. “Baloney?” she said. “Like . . . baloney?”
Pam nodded, and the girls howled with laughter.
The two kept laughing and talking until the feature movie began to play. Their conversation shifted from school nurses to school rules to school dances to, of course, boys. Hours after the movie ended and the network had signed off, the girls were nudged awake and herded, half-sleeping, into Pam’s room.
The next morning, CeCe was dropped off at home while Pam and her mother went on to church. It used to be the rule for CeCe to attend with them, if she stayed the night on a Saturday instead of their usual Friday.
CeCe hadn’t been to church enough to decide whether or not she liked it. Mrs. Anderson had taken CeCe to her church once. That had been nice. It reminded her of the white clapboard churches described in The Color Purple. Going to church with Pam and her mother was different. Pam’s mother entered the massive building like a battlefield. They stopped, first, by the hallway bulletin board, where she would jot down names from the “Sick and Shut-in” list. Pam explained her mother would always say extra prayers for them, the way strangers had to have said prayers for them once upon a time.
This morning, Pam’s mother allowed additional time to detour and take CeCe home.
“She said she couldn’t stand watching you sit comatose through another service,” Pam said as they slipped on their shoes. “She said if you haven’t taken to it by now, it’s not her place to make you.”
“Oh,” CeCe replied. It was true she tended to zone out after the choir’s first selection. “Was she mad?”
“Not really,” Pam said, smoothing the edge of her blanket. “I guess she thought she was helping, since your mother doesn’t, y’know, take you to church.”
Stung, CeCe said, “My mother doesn’t take me shopping, either. Tell Gwen she can jump on that, too, if she really wants to help out.”
“Slow your roll, cowgirl,” Pam said with a warning in her voice. “You know Mama was only looking out. She’s not dissing your mother.”
CeCe let out a slow breath and mumbled an apology. She wondered when the knee-jerk protection for her mother would calm itself.
“So, now that she’s saved me from hell,” CeCe said, deliberately upbeat, “will she let us go to the movies by ourselves?”
Pam laughed. “She said she’ll think about it, which sounded like a ‘no’ to me.”
“Keep the faith, sister, keep the faith.”
FIFTEEN
HAZY
CECE COULDN'T ACCOUNT FOR THE hours between locking Doris’ old house and stepping into her apartment. She had returned to work and sat through a meeting and picked up dish detergent on the way home, but her attention had been anchored to the thick envelope of signed documents in her car.
It was 7 p.m. and her mother had showered already for bed. In spite of her own evolution over the years, CeCe’s mother still went to bed incredibly early. CeCe didn’t mind her mother’s twelve and fourteen hours of sleep now that her waking hours were spent out of bed.
CeCe rinsed suds from the pot and laid it down in the dish rack. She hung the dishrag over the edge of the sink to keep it from smelling sour, the way Aunt Rosie had shown her their first summer together. CeCe turned to lean against the sink. She still had on pantyhose and her work clothes, and her feet wanted to slide across the tile. CeCe remembered playing that game in her socks as a child. She’d slipped and banged her head against the cabinet once, frightened when she woke up minutes later on the kitchen floor. She hadn’t known how long she’d been there, sprawled like a rag doll against their sink, but CeCe had been sure her mother hadn’t noticed.
Today, CeCe wasn’t even annoyed with her mother’s worried calls. She’d planned to stay late at the office to offset her time with Doris, until her mother started calling, asking if CeCe was on her way home and asking her to please be careful. Her mother didn’t have much conve
rsation for CeCe once she arrived home, but was visibly at ease. CeCe once seethed at this latent care and concern but, in recent years, she accepted her mother’s development for what it was: too late and not about her.
When Dr. Harper recommended the social programs at the Stringer Center, CeCe had been skeptical. How could a woman afraid of talking and breathing become social, she had asked. Dr. Harper had taken great care to explain the concepts of parallel play, initially observed in toddlers, but also useful in helping his adult patients re-enter their lives.
“They don’t have to interact,” Dr. Harper had explained, “but pursuing a shared activity goal together lends a critical social context. Baby steps, if you will.”
Her mother’s first shared activity goal had been beads. Then collages. Then herb plants. Now it was crochet. With each project, CeCe would nod in appeasement as if her mother were a preschooler with fragile self-confidence.
“You’ve been the parent in this relationship since forever,” Pam reminded her when CeCe used to complain about her mother’s art classes at the Center. “Now you and your little one have entered the arts-and-crafts stage.”
For all Pam knew about little ones, CeCe would tease. Pam had been adamant since she and CeCe been children themselves about never having kids, and she managed to marry a man who didn’t want children, either. Pam lived in Seattle now, where she and her husband had moved after grad school four years ago. CeCe had only seen her friend on Christmases since. She’d been invited again and again to visit them in Seattle, but CeCe couldn’t imagine boarding a plane without being consumed with worry about her mother and grease fires. Confused bus routes. Finger picking. Backsliding.
“Look, you know I get it, but you’re being fucking ridiculous now,” Pam snapped into the phone when CeCe called to say she couldn’t travel for her friend’s twenty-fifth birthday bash. “Caring for your mother does not have to mean forfeiting your own life, CeCe. You need to call that Dr. Hampton dude and figure out a new game plan.”
