Shifting Through Neutral

by Bridgett M. Davis

  “The one and only,” he said.

  Her fingers flew to her chest. “I wish I’d known you were coming.”

  Daddy shrugged. “Didn’t set no plan to it. Got the urge, that’s all.” He put his arm around me. “I wanted you to see how my little girl has grown.”

  She looked at him with nervous eyes. “Well, come on in,” she said. “And excuse the house.”

  We followed her as Daddy kept his arm around my shoulder. “Have a seat while I get you something to drink.” She gestured to the living room. “Lemonade sound good?”

  We moved toward the rose-patterned sofa, but Daddy stopped abruptly.

  “Whose are those?” he asked, pointing to a pair of man’s work boots sitting by the closet in the doorway.

  She looked at the shoes and then looked at Daddy as she held on to the lemonade, sweat from the glasses dripping onto her hands. When he’d left that July day five years before to return home to me, she hadn’t ended their affair right away. But in time she did. Told him she couldn’t live like that anymore. And then she had lapsed, as women in love do. All those nights when Daddy claimed to be playing poker, he was here. She broke it off again, and they hadn’t seen each other in two summers. We sat in silence as I sipped my cold drink. Finally, she turned to me.

  “Would you like to meet my little girl?” she asked. “She’s in her room playing.” I set my glass down on the coffee table, looked over at Daddy. He nodded, and I followed her back to where a girl a year or so older than I was sitting on her bed.

  “Josie,” she said. “This is Rae. She’s gonna play with you for a while, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, her face a cool mask of detachment. She was playing with three Barbie dolls, each dressed for the wrong weather in winter coat, leggings, and hat. A radio sat on her dresser, playing a song I’d never heard before. The singer sounded white. I perched on the edge of the bed.

  “Leave the door open,” she said as her mother went to close it.

  “You wanna play?” she asked once we were alone.

  I shrugged. I had a couple of baby dolls at home, didn’t know exactly how to play with these hard-bodied adult ones.

  My uncertainty must have annoyed her. With her arm she swept all the Barbies off the bed. They tumbled one at a time, landing in contorted angles on the carpet. We both stared at their tossed bodies. I was nervous. Suddenly, she began to sing along to the radio. She knew all the words. And the sailor said, Brandy, you’re a fine girl, what a gooood wife you would be, but my life, my love, and my lady is the sea. I watched her carefully, noting for the first time in my life that a song could tell a real story, and through her lips I became engrossed in the tale of this sad girl Brandy who when the bars close down walks through a silent town and loves a man who’s not around.

  “I got an idea,” she said, song over. She reached into a dresser drawer, pulled out a string, and began making string designs with both hands. She showed me how to do the Cup-and-Saucer, Cat’s Cradle, Jacob’s Ladder, and finally Crow’s Feet. She was fast and smooth. It took a while for me to catch on, and in that time we eavesdropped on the adults’ conversation, hearing snatches of it, so small was their house.

  “All those years…”

  “…A man’s gotta do things a certain way…”

  “And I waited…”

  “…Just shouldn’t have gone off and done that.”

  “She needed…we needed somebody.”

  “…’Cause I’m ready now…”

  “…I can’t…”

  Silence was followed by muffled sobs and then more silence.

  “Stick your hand in here,” said Josie, who’d formed an intricate diamond pattern with the string. I pushed my fist through the center. She brought her hands together, then pulled, magically freeing my fist. “I know who you are,” she said.

  “What?” I asked, certain only that I had missed something. She didn’t answer, and in the next moment, her mother stuck her head into the room. “Your father is ready to leave now, Rae.”

  “Wait! Take our picture, Mommy!” said Josie, running to get a Polaroid Instamatic camera out of her closet.

  “Pumpkin, I don’t know if this is the—”

  “Why’d you buy it for me if you never let me use it?”

  “Okay, okay,” said her mother, cutting off the tantrum at its onset. She took the camera. “You two stand together.”

  We put our arms around each other, and she snapped. Waiting for the picture to develop was like waiting for a cake to rise while peeking through the little window of my Easy Bake Oven. I wanted to hold on to that feeling of expectation. As Josie gently peeled back the black paper, like a thin scab off an old wound, and unveiled the picture of us, she insisted upon keeping it. I was happy to ask her mother to take another one for me. Fanning my wet Polaroid, I joined Daddy at the front door.

  “Why, that’s a real nice picture,” he said, studying it for a few moments.

  “It’s for you,” I said, handing it to him. He blew on it before slipping it into his back pocket. “Well,” he said to Josie’s mother. “Well.”

  “Bye, JD,” she said. “You take care.” Then she looked at me. “Can I have a hug?”

  I nodded, and she took me into her arms and squeezed. My face fell into her big chest and sunk into its cuddly warmth. I loved it when Daddy hugged me, but his chest was different, stronger and unmoving. Mama’s was small, her grasp always urgent and tight. Josie’s mom’s was as soft as new pillows. A faint sweet smell like that of apple-flavored Now&Laters—or was it penny wine candy?—drifted down to me, and I wasn’t ready for her to let go when she did.

  Josie appeared from her room, walked over, and whispered something to Daddy before she leaned into his open arms. He hugged her with his eyes squeezed shut. Then he kissed her on the forehead.

  “Bye Bye, sweet girl,” he said as he stared into her mother’s eyes.

  And then we were gone, back in Oldie, back up Woodward Avenue, back toward the den.

  Daddy said nothing the whole ride home, not even bothering to punch on the eight-track player. Just pushed his thumb against the space between his eyes. I don’t know how much of his plight I understood. He’d done what Mama had asked, left Josie’s mom to come back home to raise me, and now that Mama was freeing him, it was too late for them. People move on. That much I understood.

  “Your head hurt?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “We’ll be home soon,” I said. “And I’ll take real good care of you.”

  Kimmie, Mama, and I went grocery shopping the morning of the party, catching the Hamilton bus on the corner. It was the first time I’d seen my mother in a supermarket, and she strolled each aisle with a hunger born of too many years spent buying things sight unseen over the phone. She filled three carts—grabbing foods that made you hum theme songs, foods that came out of cans and cartons and plastic bags like Birds Eye black-eyed peas and Shake ’n Bake chicken and French-style string beans. (Ho, Ho, Ho, Greeeeen Giant!!) She made up for lost opportunity as she ravaged the household cleanser isle, devoting one entire cart to paper items. “Papa and I always get that brand,” Kimmie said offhandedly as Mama stood transfixed before the variety of toilet paper. “It’s squeezably soft.” She tossed Kimmie’s recommendation into a cart, then moved on, stunned by the choices of two-ply paper towels. We went next to the liquor store, where Mama pointed to gleaming bottles of bourbon and rum and Scotch whiskey that stood on shelves behind the cash register. By the time we got home, it was all being delivered to our back door.

  Miss Queenie came over to clean, or “give us a day,” as Mama called it. She dipped snuff, ate lunch in the basement next to the dirty laundry, and cleaned the whole house to a sparkling Mr. Clean and Murphy Oil Soap shine. Before she left, Miss Queenie brutally combed my hair—I cried through the whole process—and put it in two ponytails with rubber bands so tight they gave me bloodshot, Chinese eyes. Mama set up a card table gotten from the garage and placed
a brand-new pack of red ACE playing cards in the center of it. I helped Kimmie create a little makeshift bar with the TV stand and a snack tray, complete with lemon juice, Coca-Cola, little stirrers, and coasters advertising Cedar Point, the very same place where I would eventually go for sex and roller coaster rides with Derek, witness him violate his car.

  “You need an ice bucket,” Kimmie told Mama. “Silver or maybe even a wooden one.”

  “I do, don’t I?” Mama looked crestfallen. “Should we run out and get one?”

  “No, that’s okay.” Kimmie patted Mama’s shoulders. “We can use a plastic bowl today. But you should get one at some point.”

  Mama pressed her lips. “There are a lot of things I need. And I’ve been doing without them for a long time.” She said it as though it had just occurred to her. And I suppose it had. Daddy, despite his chronic pain, was the one who’d always gone to Kresge’s and bought new dish towels and cereal bowls. Daddy was the one who had Elgernon from down the street clean the windows in the spring. And Daddy was the one who made sure there was plenty of soap and toilet paper in the bathrooms. But Mama was like a newly awake coma patient, acutely aware of what she’d missed in her life and wanting to catch up with Godspeed.

  I begged Daddy to come to the party. Why not? I whined. Why not?

  “I don’t have the head for that right now,” he said. While we prepared, he stayed out with Mr. Alfred doing whatever middle-aged, been-there-done-that black men did back then on a Saturday afternoon. Usually, on first-of-the-month Saturdays I went with him to the check-cashing place, to the doctor’s office, to the corner drugstore, to Mr. Alfred’s body shop. But this first-of-the-month Saturday was different. As I watched Daddy leave, I felt a pang of fear that Josie’s mom would take him back—and I secretly crossed my fingers by way of protection.

  Mama was nervous as she dressed for the party. This was her coming out, after all those years of existing in this house but not really living in it, certainly not entertaining in it. Kimmie and I helped her apply her makeup, testing lipstick and eye shadow shades on the back of our hands. I brushed her Naomi Sims wig, and Kimmie helped Mama slip it over her thin, cotton-soft hair. When Kimmie noticed the striped knit pantsuit Mama had laid out to wear, she protested.

  “People aren’t wearing things like that now that the sixties are over,” she said before going to her room and returning with a suede fringed vest and crepe palazzo pants. “This is brand-new,” she said. “Papa bought it for me.” I was surprised to see my mother and sister wore the same pant size. Then Kimmie gave Mama a pair of elaborately designed silver and turquoise hoop earrings. “I got these in New Mexico,” she said. “They go just right with the vest.”

  “Do you have anything for me?” I asked Kimmie, wanting to be part of their little clique.

  “Let me see.” Kimmie rummaged through her stuffed jewelry box, not finding the right thing. Finally, she unclasped the silver charm bracelet she was wearing, little elephants and giraffes and tigers hanging from it. “Here, put this on,” she said. “Don’t lose it. Pueblo Indians made it.”

  “I could use a little something for my nerves right now,” said Mama, who’d been trying all that time to slip a huge hoop through her pierced ear. Little pearls of sweat had formed at her temple.

  “I have a good idea,” said Kimmie, disappearing from the room.

  I helped Mama get the earring in, sitting beside her on the bed. She hugged me, and I slipped my arm around her waist. “Having fun?” she asked. I nodded. I was enjoying myself. “Good. We’re going to do more things like this too,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  Kimmie returned with a pre-party drink of dark liquid amid lemon, a red maraschino cherry on top. Mama slipped her arm from around me, reached for the glass, took a gulp.

  “How is it?” asked Kimmie.

  “Perfect,” said Mama.

  “Papa taught me how to make those. The secret is egg whites.”

  “When did he start drinking these?” Mama looked at the glass in her hand. “Gin and Rose’s lime juice used to be his drink.”

  “Marva got him into whiskey sours a while back,” said Kimmie.

  Mama sipped. Moments passed. “You two do a lot together?” she asked.

  Kimmie shrugged. “The typical things. We’d go downtown to shop. Or out to dinner. Sometimes she’d drive me to parties. Nothing major.”

  Mama nodded, and we all sat in silence as she drained her glass. We heard Daddy’s key open the door, listened as his heavy footsteps crossed the living room, as the doors to the den whined themselves close. I uncrossed my fingers. Mama stood up, moved to the vanity, and sat before the mirror. The dresser was covered with jars and tubes with women’s names on them: Estée Lauder, Helena Rubenstein, Flori Roberts, Marcella Borghese.

  “How do I look?” she asked us, her false eyelashes spread wide, exotic as little Oriental fans.

  “Like a famous person,” I said. Mama smiled at me.

  “A lot prettier than Marva with her gobs of makeup,” said Kimmie. “That’s for sure.”

  Mama’s eyes caught Kimmie’s in the mirror. “I’m not worried about her,” she said to Kimmie’s reflection. “Because no matter what, I’m your mother. She’s not.”

  The doorbell chimed, and Mama stood, smoothed out her pants, slipped her arm through Kimmie’s, and together they walked to the front door. I followed, the charms on my new bracelet jingling together like those forgotten, beat-up wind chimes hanging above the back porch.

  The party guests consisted of exactly four people. There was Romey, who had thick eyeglasses and an older, white-haired boyfriend named Ernesto; and Lyla, who wore go-go boots, a wet-look miniskirt, a blond wig, heavy white eye shadow, and a younger face than the others. Then there was Johnnie Mae. I thought she might be Little Stevie’s mom, but I couldn’t be sure. She didn’t look at all how I thought the mother of a famous singer would look. She had a deep voice along with a big chest and wore lots of diamond rings on her puffy fingers.

  Up-tempo jazz played as Mama held a Kool’s and a fresh whiskey sour in the same hand, her smooth skin crinkling a bit at the corners of her eyes from the smoke. She and her guests sat around the card table—except for Ernesto, who sat alone on the sofa, his legs crossed, a big drink in his delicate hand. Kimmie played hostess, refilling glasses, passing around a tray of pigs-in-a-blanket. I sat on the landing of the stairway, just close enough to hear and see everything. I was wearing my purple hot pants, content to be around grown-up conversation, be near Kimmie, and witness my hip mother having fun, an entire staircase away from her throne, nerves behaving.

  “Honey, you look good,” said Johnnie Mae. “Don’t Vy look good?”

  “She sure do,” said Lyla. “You just glowing, girl!”

  Mama smiled faintly. “I feel better than I have in a while.”

  Romey shuffled the deck with thick hands, his style functional and without beauty. “She’s got her girls back together again,” he said. “A mother’s coup.” He started to deal. “Must be real nice for you, Kimmie. Being back home.”

  Kimmie nodded, balancing her drink tray with one hand. She looked perfect in a crocheted miniskirt and halter top. “It is nice, Mr. Johnson,” she said, owning sophistication just in the way she set the drink at his elbow. “Thank you for asking.”

  “Well, being away from this Murder Capital sure didn’t hurt your manners, now, did it?” Romey dealt methodically as the cards landed in front of each player. “I can barely get those rug rats I teach to call me Mr. Whatchamacallit, let alone by my actual name.”

  Kimmie nodded. “Everybody’s polite in the South. Papa says it’s a good thing I left Detroit when I did, or I’d have a lot of bad habits by now.”

  “Now tell me again, just why did you leave?” asked Romey. “I forget.”

  “My mother felt it was best,” said Kimmie.

  “The city was no place for a twelve-year-old girl,” said Mama, quickly. “You all remember what it was like that
summer. Nobody was safe.”

  “But it was okay for a four-year-old?”

  Once Kimmie asked that question, the moment hung suspended, and even I knew that a line of some sort had been crossed, borrowed fringe vest or no. Kimmie’s hands flew to her mouth.

  Mama looked at her, eyes asking, Why’d you have to spoil this for me? Why?

  Kimmie tried to clean it up. “I don’t know why I said that. I mean, you know, I just…wish I could’ve stayed here with everybody, with my family.” She sighed. “That’s all I meant.”

  Mama didn’t look at her, rather scooped up her cards and neatly folded them into her hands, her silence dripping over us. She fanned the cards out in front of her, inspecting them carefully, shifted a couple around, folded them all, then fanned them out again. “You got first bid, Johnnie Mae,” she noted calmly.

  “I pass,” said Johnnie Mae, the words gushing out because she, like the rest of us, had been holding her breath. Kimmie grabbed Mama’s glass, refilled it. Johnnie Mae chattered on. “Ain’t nothing in this hand to speak of. You must’ve forgot my black ass when you dealt out the goodies, Romey.”

  “No, I didn’t forget,” said Romey. “I gave them all to myself and my partner. And do watch your mouth, Madame.” He looked over at me on the staircase. I stared back at him through the banister.

  Lyla seized the light moment to stick up for her friend. “Southern living has never hurt nobody,” she said. “I know if I could, I’d go back down home myself.”

  “Why don’t you?” said Romey, something naughty happening with his lips as he gathered the cards in front of him.

  “Why you think? I make good money at Ford’s. Just to stand around and put left doors on cars? Shoot, don’t nobody wanna pay you what you worth in the South. No unions, no overtime pay. Slave labor.”

  “You could get yourself some education,” said Romey. “That way you could at least oversee the slaves.”

  “Ha ha,” said Lyla as she grabbed another drink off Kimmie’s tray. “Very funny, Romey. Ha ha.”