by Tayari Jones
“Does she know that you know?”
Raleigh shook his head. “It would just upset her. So let’s just keep this whole conversation between us.”
Then he smiled at me with something that I recognized as longing. I felt the rush of it. I breathed in panting breaths.
“Miss Bunny loves you,” Raleigh says. “She doesn’t know it yet, but she does.”
MISS BUNNY HAD been in the hospital for almost two weeks, but she wanted to come home to die. Home was the crooked-frame house in which she had raised her two boys and Laverne, too. The house was gray with a concrete porch. A vine grew up from a trel is on the north end. Raleigh pointed at it. “If it was later in the year, you wouldn’t believe the roses. That’s one thing that I remember from when Miss Bunny brought me home.
Red roses with yel ow insides.”
“Is James already here?” I asked.
“He’s been here two days. We’ve both been sitting with her, but James wanted me to go and get you and bring you here. We wanted you to see her while she is stil herself.”
I sat in the car and waited for Raleigh to open my door, then exited like my father had taught me, right foot flat on the ground and left hand extended to al ow the driver to help me. I hoped that he was watching from the window.
“Careful,” Raleigh said. “Watch out for the ditch.”
The ditch, running where I would have expected curb, was half-ful of brown water. I made a face.
“You are not a country girl, that’s for sure,” Raleigh said.
I didn’t realize my father had come onto the porch until he spoke. “It’s not the country. It’s a smal town.” He held his arms out to me.
I ran into my father’s hug with a little too much speed maybe, because he staggered back two steps. Since we were now the same height, he spoke directly into my ear.
“Oh, Dana,” he said. “I am so gl-glad you made it.”
I have since read in self-help books that people who are not accustomed to affection don’t know how to receive it. I know for a fact that this is a myth. My father held me in his arms on my grandmother’s front porch in ful view of the world, and I enjoyed it. You don’t need a dress rehearsal to know how to lay your head on your father’s shoulder, to inhale his tobacco scent. It takes no practice to know how to be someone’s daughter.
Raleigh said, “How is she?”
“No change,” James said. “We’ve been talking most of the morning.”
“Did you tel her?” Raleigh said, quietly. James nodded.
“Does she want to meet me?” My voice was whispery, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “What did you tel her about me?”
“I told her that you are my daughter. I told her how smart you are.”
“What did you tel her about my mama?”
“We didn’t talk so much about Gwen,” James said.
I didn’t feel right. “Didn’t she want to know where I came from?”
Raleigh said, “Dana, lower your voice. Miss Bunny is sick. She doesn’t need to hear al this fighting. She’s in a bad way. Just let her go in peace.”
“Raleigh,” I said, shrugging off his touch. He pul ed back and for a moment I regretted hurting him. “I am not fighting with anyone. I am just trying to find out what al James told Miss Bunny. I want to know what he told her about my mama.”
James said, “I t-t-told her about you. You are her kin and I want her to lay eyes on you before she goes.”
“But what about my mama?” I said. “She’s important, too.” Raleigh seemed on the verge of tears. “Please stop fighting. Let’s just go inside.”
“You didn’t make my mother out to be a whore, did you?” I asked.
“No,” Raleigh said. “James wouldn’t say anything like that to Miss Bunny. Tel her, Jimmy. Tel her what you said.”
“I told her your mother was dead,” James said. “I told her you were raised by your grandmother.”
“Did you at least tel her you loved my mother? That it wasn’t just a quick thing?”
James nodded. “I told her that I love you, Dana. She knows if I love you, then your mama must be special.”
I shook my head. That wasn’t how it worked.
“Dana,” Raleigh said, “don’t waste Miss Bunny’s time. She doesn’t have much left.”
My father took my hand and escorted me into Miss Bunny’s bedroom, which was separated from the living room by a sheer curtain. Although I had been told how sick Miss Bunny was, I stil expected her to be plump and lemon-scented like a second-grade teacher. I had no idea of what dying real y looked like. The only people I had ever seen with serious il nesses were on hospital dramas, like Trapper John, M.D. Television patients wore lipstick and crisp cotton gowns. When they final y passed away, they were polite enough to close their eyes.
Miss Bunny was sixty-five years old, which seemed old to me at the time, but now that my own mother is nearing fifty, I understand how young my grandmother was when years of hard work, starchy foods, and bad genes caught up with her. She looked ancient, as old as anyone I had ever seen on television or in real life. Her skin was thick and stippled like the peel of an orange and her eyes were murky. The saddest thing was her hair.
Someone, probably Laverne, had arranged it in a dozen pin curls, as though she were preparing to go to a party later that evening.
“Mama,” said James, squeezing my hand. “This is my daughter, Dana Lynn.”
“Come closer,” Miss Bunny said with a voice that was strong and almost man-deep. “Come here, child.” To James she said, “You and Raleigh go on to the Burger Inn or something. Go on. Don’t worry. I’m not going to go to glory before you get back.” She laughed, but no one else did. “Truly.
You two get out of here. You wanted me to meet my granddaughter. How am I supposed to get to know her with you two breathing down my neck?”
Raleigh poked his head in between the pale curtains that served as Miss Bunny’s bedroom door. “Jimmy?”
I could see how they must have been as children. Raleigh looking to James, not Miss Bunny, for direction. James looked into his mother’s face.
“W-w-what d-d-do you need to talk to her about? Why c-c-can’t we just visit together?” He went to the window and swiveled the wand to open the blinds.
“James, I want to talk to her about woman things. Now shoo, boy.”
James backed toward the curtained doorway, as if he didn’t want to turn his back on us. He bumped into Raleigh, and Miss Bunny laughed again. It wasn’t a robust sort of laugh; she was too weak for al of that. But stil , I knew that she found the situation amusing. She continued with the breathy laugh until James and Raleigh had left in the Lincoln.
When they were gone, the house was empty-feeling and more quiet than I was used to. Miss Bunny let her head fal back onto the eyelet pil ow slip. She just lay there breathing for a while, and I didn’t bother her.
“My left leg is gone,” she said to me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“They said taking the leg would save me. It wasn’t a beautiful leg, but it was mine, and I had never figured on not lying whole in my casket. Life is ful of things you never figured on.”
I didn’t say anything back. I knew I was a surprise to Miss Bunny, but nothing was a surprise to me.
“If I could get out of bed, I would hug your neck,” she said.
“I never turned anybody away from my door. Your daddy knows that. I took in Raleigh, and later Laverne. I have never turned anybody away. Never sent nobody back.” She shut up and worked on her breathing some more. “I love you,” she said to me, just as she had said to Raleigh so many years ago. I know that it was supposed to make me feel warm and welcome, but instead I wondered if she saw me the way she saw Raleigh — as an unfortunate bastard, unloved and pissy.
“Don’t look at me like I am an orphan. My mother’s not dead,” I blurted. “She’s a nurse and she takes good care of me. I was taking the AP exam in biology when Raleigh pul ed me out o
f school to come up here. That test cost fifty dol ars, and my mother paid for it.”
“She takes good care of my James, too, I imagine.” Miss Bunny sighed.
“She does,” I said. “Her name is Gwendolyn Yarboro.”
“And your name is?”
“Dana,” I said.
“I know that. But what’s your ful name?”
“Dana Lynn Yarboro.”
Miss Bunny touched her hand to her forehead. “Did James sign your birth certificate?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “But Raleigh did.”
She shook her head. “Those boys. Brothers; I don’t care what nobody says. If they are in it, they are in it together. Are you an only child, baby?”
I said careful y to Miss Bunny, “How could I be an only child?”
Her face shifted, and she touched the space on the bed where her leg would have been. “I didn’t mean anything by that. Lord. This is a mess. You ever seen Chaurisse?”
I shrugged. “Not real y.”
“She’s a nice girl,” Miss Bunny said. “I’m real proud of her. This is going to kil her. Her mama, too. But Laverne, she’s from this town. She grew up hard; she’l bounce back. But Chaurisse was born and raised in Atlanta. She don’t know nothing about suffering. This is going to tear her apart.”
“That’s not my fault,” I said.
Miss Bunny patted the space on the bed again. “Sit down.”
I moved to the place on the bed, crackling the plastic mattress cover. I didn’t face my grandmother, keeping my eyes on the gauzy curtains of the doorway. She laid a hand on my back.
“You remind me of Laverne. When I first met her, she was about your age. Mad at the whole world, and with pretty good reason. Her quarrel was with her mother. Yours is with James, and you have a right to it. I’m not trying to take nothing away from you. You have a tough shel on you.
Chaurisse, she doesn’t have none of that.”
“I don’t feel sorry for her.”
Miss Bunny said, “Dana, I wish James had seen fit to tel me about you earlier. I wish he had brought your mama up here today.”
“She always wanted to meet you,” I said.
Miss Bunny reclined in the hospital bed. “I real y can’t see a good way out of this.”
We sat there a while longer, not saying anything to each other. I worked on my breathing, although the room smel ed of camphor and just slightly of urine. Beside the bed was a bouquet of red roses that didn’t give any scent at al .
“Take something of mine,” Miss Bunny said. “Take anything you want out of this room.”
I walked myself around the smal bedroom. There wasn’t much to choose from. On the dresser, where perfume bottles and figurines should have been, rested amber prescription bottles, a stack of rubber gloves, and a box of syringes. The only ornament was a porcelain ring holder in the shape of two fingers, displaying what looked like a man’s wedding band. On the night table was a wooden jewelry box. Music tinkled out as I opened it. The only thing inside was a star-shaped brooch of faceted aquamarines.
“This?” I asked.
“Why did you pick that?”
I shrugged. “I just like it. It’s pretty.” I didn’t know enough family history to know what mattered and what didn’t. I chose the brooch the way I would choose something in a store.
“Good enough,” she said. “I told Raleigh I wanted to wear that pin to my funeral.”
I dropped it back into the music box. She had spoken the word funeral with a burst of air, like she had to force the word out. I twisted toward her, but she had turned her face toward the wal . “I can pick something else. Did somebody special give it to you?”
“No. I bought it with my own money. Years ago, when I was stil interested in looking pretty. A couple of the stones have fel out, but it’s stil a nice piece.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’l tel Raleigh to take it off my col ar before they close the casket and put me in the ground.”
“Ma’am,” I said, “please don’t say things like that.”
My grandmother took my living hand in her dying one. “I never had no quarrel with the truth. I hope somebody says something like that at my wake.”
10
UNCLE RALEIGH
IN THE SUMMER 1978, my mother had come to a crossroads. I am neither religious nor superstitious, but there is something otherworldly about the space where two roads come together. The devil is said to set up shop there if you want to swap your soul for something more useful. If you believe that God can be bribed, it’s also the hal owed ground to make sacrifices. In the literal sense, it’s also a place to change direction, but once you’ve changed it, you’re stuck until you come to another crossroads, and who knows how long that wil be.
Although I was only nine, I was away from home two weeks that summer. My godmother, Wil ie Mae, took me to Alabama to spend some time with her family out in the country. She thought I was too much of a city girl, that I needed to spend some time barefoot. Drawing my bath each night in the footed tub, Wil ie Mae looked more capable than she did in our living room drinking gin-and-tonics with my mother. Out in the country, she drew her hair back in two plaits and tucked the ends under; she stuck her feet in her shoes bare-legged.
I was accustomed to hot, muggy summers, but the heat in Opelika was more comprehensive. August was canning season, so the women were busy washing tomatoes, peaches, and beets. Wil ie Mae was saving her money to buy two window air conditioners; in the meantime we kept cool with window-box and funeral-home fans. The front door flapped behind what seemed an endless parade of Wil ie Mae’s nieces, nephews, and cousins, who stole eggs from the icebox to see if they could actual y fry them on the blacktop road. Across the street, a lady sold Styrofoam cups of frozen Kool-Aid for a dime, but my mother had told me not to eat from strange people’s houses. I spent most of the time in the kitchen, up under Wil ie Mae, who would stumble over me from time to time. The atmosphere was thick with the sugary smel of boiling fruit. I would lick my forearm and taste salt.
At night, I shared a pul -out bed with Wil ie Mae, who dusted herself al over with talcum powder cut with cornstarch. I missed my own room, the noises of the city, and my beautiful mother. “Why didn’t she cal me today?”
Wil ie Mae arranged the sweat-damp sheet around me. “She can’t cal you every day. She loves you. I love you. Raleigh loves you. Everybody loves you. Al you have to do is go to sleep and be patient.”
I didn’t know how to respond to this, so I settled myself down onto the oversoft pil ow.
“She’s coming for you, Dana. You can take that to the bank.”
I learned things those two weeks in Alabama. I learned how to diaper a baby, how to hang clothes on the line so that the linens hide your ladythings. I learned how and when to kneel during a Catholic service and I learned that there are grown men who find little girls to be very pretty.
Wil ie Mae’s uncle, Mr. Sanders, asked me to sit on his lap after church. I refused the gum he offered, but I climbed onto his lap because I didn’t know that I could deny an adult any favor. I sat myself across his knees, but he tugged me toward him until the smal of my back was flush against his abdomen and the top of my head fit in the nook beneath his chin. He was stil wearing his green tie from mass as he bounced me on his thighs, breathing into my ear with breath that smel ed of apple cores.
Wil ie Mae walked into the bedroom wearing only her slip, stained at the waist with sweat.
“Sanders,” she said, “you put that girl down and stay the fuck away from her. Touch her again and I’l cut you, nigger. You know I wil .” She caught me under my arms and pul ed me away.
Her uncle said, “I wasn’t doing her nothing.”
“You are a nasty dog, Sanders,” Wil ie Mae said. “Get out of here.”
The uncle ambled out and Wil ie Mae hugged me hard. “You okay? You al right, Dana? What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“You sat up on his la
p and that was al ? He didn’t touch you anywhere?”
“No,” I said.
“Lord have mercy.”
“But —”
“But what?”
“But could he touch me and I wouldn’t know it?”
Wil ie Mae hugged me again and gave a relieved little laugh. “Lord,” she said. “Stay close to me til your mama comes for you.”
“I want to go home.”
“I know you do, but you just got a few days more. Gwen has some things to take care of.”
That night, she placed a col ect cal to my mother. The very next day, I was sitting on the front porch with Wil ie Mae hul ing peas when I saw the old Lincoln coming down the road.
Wil ie Mae squinted toward the car and the dust kicked up by its wheels. “Dana, your eyes are young. Tel me who’s driving.”
“It’s the old Lincoln. That’s Uncle Raleigh.”
“Praise Jesus,” said Wil ie Mae. “Praise him.”
I wondered what my mother would say about the way I looked. I had ignored Wil ie Mae’s mother’s warning that I shouldn’t play in the sun; my complexion, already dark, deepened into something richer. With my press and curl al sweated out, I scratched my dirty scalp as Raleigh helped my mother out of the car. She was dressed in a light blue suit and a hat to match. Even her shoes were the same swimming-pool shade.
“Did you do it?” Wil ie Mae asked.
“Not yet,” Raleigh said.
“I didn’t want to do it without Dana,” my mother said.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Wil ie Mae,” my mother said, “is there someplace I can talk to Dana in private?”
Wil ie Mae looked around us at al the kids playing in the yard. She looked toward the interior of her mother’s house, which was certainly packed with women canning vegetables. “Sorry, Gwen. This place is al booked up.”
Raleigh said, “Take my keys. You two can sit in the car. Make sure you turn on the air.”
My mother took my hand and smiled. “You look like a wild animal.”
Behind me, Raleigh took my seat beside Wil ie Mae and started snapping peas. She leaned over and whispered something to him that made him smile.
