Family Tree the Novel

by Andrea N. Carr

  My sister Pam told my mother he was down there. I told Mamma he was hungry; she didn’t care. Mamma told me I had better not give him any more food.

  “Why?” I asked.

  She told me, “If you don’t want to be out there with him, don’t give him food. He chose to leave; he can’t follow the rules in this house.”

  Lady said it was because he was doing something with Pam. I loved him, and didn’t want him hungry. Why would he choose to leave? He looked funny. His eyes were red. I thought he’d been crying. Pam said he had been smoking joints.

  “Stay away from him,” she warned. I missed him hiding penny candies in his room and letting us look for them. He told me the hiding places. Some nights he would chase us through the house holding his bull horns up to his head. We would turn out the lights, and he would let us run wild while he chased us. We ran through the house screaming with excitement.

  Once my mamma whipped Brother with an extension cord because the next door neighbor told her we were screaming. She used to ask her to listen out for us if she was gone at night. Brother was in charge.

  He and Pam had argued when he was on the steps. He was angry with her, for letting him take the blame for what had happened between them. He told her she knew that he didn’t force her, but she was ashamed and did not tell the truth. I didn’t let Pam see me the next time I gave him food. Not even Lady knew I was meeting him. He would meet me after school when I was alone, waiting for Lady. The neighbor upstairs in our building had starting watching us after school, but I still waited for her. I was eating all my dinner, these days. Since I had been saving my lunch for Brother. My mamma thought her making me sit to the kitchen table until I fell asleep had worked to make me clean my plate. I liked fooling her.

  “When you coming home, Brother?”

  “I don’t know” he said, this time he was crying. He went to hug me; I would not let him.

  He said, “I’m not bad; it’s okay. Don’t believe them.” I felt he was telling me the truth and I hugged him; he needed me. I knew he loved me. he was so sad when he walked away. He was only fourteen, but a man to me.

  I felt something was terribly wrong with him. What terrible thing had happened to Brother? The police picked him up half way up the street. I saw them taking him away when Lady and I were walking home. I cried for him. He wasn’t bad. I wished I could fix everything; I could not. Lady teased me for being a cry-baby.

  Today, I would play with My Baby. When we got home, I played with My Baby upstairs at the neighbor’s house until Sister got home, we went downstairs. I liked when Sister got home; I could depend on her to be the same way every day. She was more mature than Pam in spite of being younger, Mamma would say. She could count on Sister.

  My mamma married a man named Robert. Who would marry a woman with six children? People would say, Robert did. We went to Las Vegas. We moved to Riverside. My mom and stepfather bought a house there. It was 4 bedrooms, not my mansion but much bigger than I expected. I was happy there. I was never spanked again after we moved there.

  It was there I met my first best friend, her name was Vicki. She was like Lady, without the mood swings. We lived across the street from each other and went to the same school. We got along just great. She had two brothers. Her older brother looked like an alien. He was really skinny, and had big eyes. The whole family was skinny, except for her dad. Her younger brother, Kenny was more normal looking. Vicki and her older brother Jeffrey had barrel chests and trouble breathing. This added to their alien features.

  Vicki and I met at the bus stop in front of my house. We smiled at each other, and ended up sitting together on the bus. We talked about everything under the sun. She liked my leather skirt and vest. My mother made sure we had nice clothes and a nice living room. Vicki pointed out different places of interest while we rode to school. She showed me the ‘Skate Ranch,’ where everyone skated on the weekend. We came to a stop and let more kids on. When we started to pull away, the kids started yelling Dobo, Dobo. I asked her what is Dobo?

  She said, “Look out the window.”

  There, standing on the sidewalk was a deformed man. He had an arm that looked like it was made out of rubber, like Stretch Armstrong, that doll where if you pull its arms they stretch really long and then draw back on their own, leaving them looking deformed. Someone or something messed up his arm. I was afraid of him. He also had a limp. When the kids yelled at him, he started to run after the bus with a gallop-type run. Everyone was screaming. He picked up a brick and threw it with the ‘Stretch Armstrong’ arm. He hit the bus with the brick.

  He yelled out, “Next time I’ll hit you. You wait and see; next time I’ll get you. Tomorrow your little asses are mine.”

  My eyes widened, as I stared at him from the bus window. I felt like he was looking only at me. The driver of the school bus, stopped and called the police. The rest of the way to school she told us we should not be calling him names.

  At school that day, Vicki showed me around. I had a teacher named ‘Miss Grump.’ She was hunched back and the kids were mean to her. They would take paper clips and shoot them at her back when she taught the lesson from the chalkboard. She needed Mamma in her class. I liked her hair, it reminded me of Bozo the Clown except with gray streaks; sort of a cross between Bozo and the Bride of Frankenstein.

  She introduced me to the class; all the boys looked at me gaga-eyed. I wondered if Lady would get into a fight with these boys. She had at our old school, when they chased me trying to give me a kiss. I had been terrified. But Lady did not go to this school. I was on my own for the first time. Lady was in sixth grade, my school went to fifth. I knew if she needed to get these boys, she would somehow.

  When I got home, I told my mamma about the events of the day. I wasn’t used to her being home when I got there. She didn’t work anymore. She never worked again. She thought I was making up Dobo. We laughed and I told her he was real.

  “You always have a story to tell. Maybe you’ll be a writer,” Mamma would say. No one knew I was dyslexic and hyperactive. I found that out through Malcolm and Dr. Jerry. My mother knew I was bright, but she didn’t understand my difficulty with school. She encouraged me anyway, and depended on Robert to help us with schoolwork.

  My mamma was a good homemaker; dinner was ready everyday when we got home. Our house was immaculate. You could eat off the floor, literally. She used to gather us together Saturday mornings, and make us scrub fingerprints off the walls, without removing the paint. We had to clean the bathrooms, and our bedrooms. We did the best we could although, it was never good enough. We were chastised the entire cleaning process. Perfect, always perfect. We used too much comet and removed the paint, or we didn’t use enough. Sometimes I forgot to clean the baseboards around the wall in the bathroom, so I had to clean the entire bathroom again.

  “If you had done it right the first time you wouldn’t be cleaning it again, so there is no need in you crying,” doing the best I could never mattered to Mamma.

  My sister, Pam, had moved out by now and had her own baby, Emanuel. Pam was eighteen when she was pregnant and had her daughter. Her daughter lived with us. Pam could not come back home. My mother found it difficult to forgive us, for mistakes we made. She and Mamma had been pregnant at the same time; Mamma was pregnant with Samantha, she and Robert’s first born, Philip their second.

  My mamma was angry with Pam, because she didn’t tell her she was pregnant and it was too late to do anything about it.

  Mamma told me, she could have aborted that baby herself, “You only need a catheter to dilate the mouth of the uterus.” What was that, the mouth of a uterus? I didn’t know. Mamma would have done it, even after the doctors would not, if Pam had told her - only to a point though, you can’t wait too long.

  Mamma had experience giving abortions. She used to help out with them back in the South where she was from.

  “Black people are used to surviving on less,” Mamma would say. “You do what you have to.”

>   Sister didn’t let that happen. My mother aborted Sister’s baby, and my stepfather took the little boy baby away.

  Mamma said, “I don’t know what he did with it to this day; the sacrifices I have been through for my children.” I was afraid to ask if the baby was alive or dead, and Mamma seemed like she was afraid to answer. Pam would have been in college sooner. She lied every time Mamma asked her about it. Mamma said she didn’t know until she was showing. She looked the same to me. Mamma said that the reason my favorite aunt couldn’t have children was because she tried to abort her own baby with a wire coat hanger and tore her uterus. She started hemorrhaging and had to go to the hospital. She could never have children. I didn’t want a uterus.

  I was mamma’s confidant, she told me all kinds of things I didn’t understand. I would look in the dictionary sometimes, when I knew mamma could not explain at the time she was telling me. She was either too upset or crying. I didn’t like being around my family because I felt discomfort as a result of the secrets I knew. They seemed like monsters to me. How could I know they were not? I didn’t understand the injustice put upon me by my mother. I didn’t know I was too young emotionally to handle what she had told me.

  I wasn’t supposed to understand. Dr. Jerry taught me that. Nevertheless, how could I be angry with her for needing someone to talk to? Because of her insecurities and the injustices in her life, she chose me instead of a professional. I was honored. I paid a price too big for that honor. Alienation, from everyone. I feared everything. I couldn’t trust my own judgment. Mamma taught me people had secrets and were not what they appeared to be.

  CHAPTER 13

  The next day we went to school, Dobo didn’t get us. He wasn’t even there. I was relieved. Mamma wasn’t going to let me stay home, because of Dobo anyway. You would have to be throwing up or have a fever to stay home, thank God for the discovery of viruses.

  I remember once, Lady and I having the mumps and my grandmother told mamma to rub oil from a sardine can on our cheeks for pain. She did. I don’t remember if it worked, just that it stung the kind of sting like how your cheeks stings when you eat sometimes. Like your cheek funny bone, on the brink of pain but with a funny feeling. Mamma read about viruses; she was an avid reader. Educating herself, she didn’t graduate high school because she had too many children she would say. She stressed reading, and was quite bright.

  My Baby, was still as pretty as ever. One Saturday afternoon after our chores were finished, she and I went to the backyard to play. My stepfather came and handed us a string, he brought Lady with him when he came. He gathered up June Bugs and tied our strings around each one, not damaging their wings. He let go and we guided the bugs from our ends of the strings while they flew. The bugs were beautiful with iridescent lime green stains woven into their black skins. I loved that feeling it gave me. I will never forget that day as long as I live. Our stepfather was a kind man, nice to us.

  Mamma often said, “He is good to my children.” I guess he was. He would bring us things. I never really knew how he felt about anything, except reading. My stepfather insisted we read the autobiography of Malcolm X, Roots, the dictionary, and James Baldwin.

  The only time he yelled at me was when he helped me with schoolwork. He would get frustrated. I watched Malcolm’s difficulty in school, but knew he was bright. This was familiar to me. I knew it had to be called something. It was.

  Once, my stepfather took us to buy an aquarium. I wanted a Siamese fighting fish, but Robert said I couldn’t have that one. The fish seemed to all dance for me inside the small clear plastic cups lined on a shelf in the pet store while I looked up at them. The fish were so pretty and colorful, and they killed each other Robert explained.

  “How does it have other fish?” I asked.

  “It changes, it’s colors when it is time to mate,” the man at the fish store explained.

  We came home with guppies and goldfish. When we got them home, each of us named our fish. My Baby named her fish ‘On its Back’. She was about three. At first, we thought we misunderstood what she was saying. I could always talk to My Baby so I asked her again.

  “What do you want to name it?”

  “On its Back,” Maya repeated.

  “What’s on its back?” I asked. “That’s your fish’s name?”

  Maya nodded her head, “Yes.”

  “You can’t name something On its Back.”

  “Yes!” she said, screaming in a tantrum the way three-year olds do.

  Lady said, “You know she has that imaginary friend that has a weird name too.”

  I had seen her talking to this friend before, while she sat on the couch in the den by herself, not appearing to feel odd in any way. I had laughed, explained to her that you cannot talk to a friend that is not there, you have to see them. I wished I might speak to Lady in that way, if it were possible.

  I was glad Maya was too young to ask about God then. I would not have been able to explain to her about how talking to God is possible, in spite of not seeing him. We did not go to church anyway.

  My mom had said, “I started to go to church before, but was turned off to it because of the preacher. He had tried to have sex with me.” What was wrong with men? They seemed to care only about one thing. I did not know what it was at the time she was referencing to; my mamma told me about it though. It had to do with a uterus; mamma probably read it somewhere. My poor mother, had been cursed by her beauty.

  CHAPTER 14

  I sat on Mary’s couch and fell asleep, after I had talked and Mary listened. I woke up about an hour and a half later and looked around the room. Mary was still sitting in the same place. I wondered if she had watched me while I slept, and if she had, did I look peaceful to her.

  “Hey, thanks again for picking me up. What time is it?” I asked for some more Vodka when I sat up. I had a drink and then Mary took me back. She dropped me off out in front of my mom’s house. Everyone was gone, mostly. I was glad.

  I found my son sitting on the front porch and he had said he was “all right” after I had asked and he seemed to be. He was sitting with Lady’s son while Abraham’s father stood over them watching.

  Abraham and his father, Mark, were about to leave. I was standing on the steps in front of the house. I realized this was the last place I had seen Lady alive. I hugged Abraham and told him I loved him, after I kissed Malcolm on the cheek. I was glad Abraham has his father. I had known him for years; he was always the same, except today. Lady had loved Abraham’s father and for a time, they seemed happy. Then they broke up. I wondered what Lady’s suicide had done to him; was he was rattled underneath his facade?

  I had only seen him upset once, years before. Lady and Mark were having a friend over to eat with them. The person they had coming over for dinner was bringing a date they had never met. Lady had called the guy’s date a “fucking, stupid cunt” with “shit for brains” and Lady told her to get the fuck out. His date insisted, “Egypt is not in Africa,” when we spoke of its location, she was ignorant. We were somehow on the Seven Wonders of the World. Pyramids came up as they do when you’re wondering and talking about the world. I think I had already smoked some pot. I’m sure that’s how we got to the subject of the Seven Wonders of the World.

  After the Pyramids our conversation continued, “Is the Garden of Eden’s origin in Africa?” Lady and I could tag team when we spoke of Africa. Our stepfather Robert made sure we were well versed on Africa and its history.

  Robert was a white man that should have been black; he thought he was. His father was a German and black mix and his mother French. Robert’s father was clearly defined as black by the way he looked. Robert was not. Robert identified with black people and was irritated if he was mistaken for anything else. Robert had often said when he was growing up ‘if you have any black in you at all, you’re considered black.’ That is the way he was treated and that is the way he felt.

  I did not care so much about proving her right or wrong; it became an iss
ue of color for Lady and the white dinner guest. Lady is the one who dated white men. In addition, she felt she had to stand up for blackness because her men were white. I love black men, she didn’t. She couldn’t dance either. Lady hated ignorance and so do I. Lady would do what I would only think about. Lady would go too far.

  Abraham’s father was angry with Lady after she knocked over the water cooler while their guests headed for the door. Lady hadn’t stopped herself from getting drunk and it was obvious. Lady turned her anger outward, especially if she was drinking. Mark poured the rest of Lady’s Vodka down the sink while I grabbed towels, waiting for my exit cue. Lady took the empty Vodka bottle and broke a mirror on the wall when she threw it. When Lady tried shooting a bow and arrow at Mark, and instead fell on the floor, that was my cue. Lady was provoking Mark. Lady married David Penman. He was not even close to what she needed. I believe she was settling for him instead of who she really wanted, Mark.

  David was kind but weak, and Lady took his kindness for weakness. David would often come home from work and find Lady had sold the TV, couch, or bedroom furniture. Their beautiful beachfront apartment where the ocean view could be seen from any room masked what was inside. I could hear the theme song from the Twilight Zone when I rang the doorbell. Lady and her husband slept on the bedroom floor on top of a mattress with laundry scattered everywhere. It reminded me of when I was on drugs, when simple things like laundry were so hard to do. The beat up living room couch was in front of a black and white TV that sat on top a cardboard box which came from the new color TV in Abraham’s room. David tried to replace whatever Lady sold for drugs. It obviously became more difficult.

  Abraham’s room had expensive furniture, toys, games, and things to look at inside it. It seemed as though we were in a different apartment when I looked in from the hallway outside his room. David often looked away from what Lady had done, so she did bigger and worse things. Lady would not be ignored. I asked her why she did things of such consequence she would be ashamed of later?