Shifting Through Neutral

by Bridgett M. Davis

  Johnnie Mae laughed. “Your highfalutin ass got enough education for all of us, Romey.”

  Mama studied her hand intently. “I’m going to say…a four special.”

  Romey nodded his approval. “Education is not that hard to come by, you know. At Wayne County Community College, you can get a degree in two years.” He swished the ice in his glass with his finger, licked it. “In between shifts at the plant, of course.”

  “I hated school when it was free,” said Lyla. “Guess what I think about paying for it.” She shook her head. “Shoot, I gotta say a five, Vy. You leave me no choice.”

  “What are you coming in?” asked Mama.

  “Heck if I know.”

  “Well, you made that bid without consulting your partner, so don’t look here for no damn help,” said Johnnie Mae.

  “Hey! No talking across the board,” said Romey. “And not that anyone seems to care, but I pass also.” He looked over his glasses at Lyla. “What will be trumps?”

  “Hearts. Uptown.”

  “That figures,” said Johnnie Mae, who gulped down the last of her bourbon, held it up for Kimmie. “Wet this again for me, will you, Honey Bun?”

  “I’d like to go back to school one day, finish my degree,” said Mama, shifting a few cards around in her hand. “I was very good in my English lit courses.”

  “Yeah, and a certain Creole member of the esteemed faculty at Marygrove apparently thought you were good too,” said Romey. “Very good.”

  Mama glared at him. He winked at her as he flipped over several cards he’d set aside during his deal. “The gods have shown kindly on you,” he said, sliding the pile over to Lyla.

  “Ooh, now that’s what I call a kitty!” said Lyla, who grabbed at the sea of red cards.

  Johnnie Mae shook her head. “What they gotta get to set us? Three books? Shit, hope you got a whole lotta hearts in your hand, Lyla, cause I—”

  “Johnnie Mae, you really have to stop all that yapping,” said Romey. “The idea is for your opponents to not know what’s in your hand. Get it?”

  “Negro, please. I was playing bid whist before your fairy ass was swishing around town. And for all you know, I could be bluffing.”

  “Watch your mouth!” said Mama. This time, she was the one who cut her eyes over at me. I held her gaze, brazen behind my banister.

  “No respect for minors,” said Romey.

  “It ain’t minors I was talking to,” said Johnnie Mae. “Far as I’m concerned, minors ought to be in the bed by now.” I rolled my eyes. Kimmie handed Johnnie Mae a fresh drink. “And hell, what’s wrong with calling a spade a spade?”

  “See what a couple trips to Hollywood have done?” said Romey. “Made you overt. Discretion is the first sign of valor, Madame.”

  “Oh, hell, you and your big-ass words.” Johnnie Mae studied her hand. “Nothing wrong with Hollywood. Prettiest place I done ever seen. Got palm trees on the freeway! And the sun shines every day. You hear me? Every day!”

  “I don’t want to be any place where it never snows,” said Romey. “Shoveling snow builds character.”

  Johnnie Mae sucked her teeth. “Well, I don’t like snow.” She pushed a fist into her side, elbow jutting out. “And if Motown can move to California, I know I can damn well go there.”

  “You mean it’s true?” said Mama. “Motown’s leaving?”

  “Damn near done left.” Johnnie Mae shook her head. “Everybody knows that, Honey.”

  “I thought it was a rumor.” Mama looked wounded. “But why?”

  “Because they’ll do anything to keep Stevie happy, and he made it clear he did not want to live here no more,” said Johnnie Mae.

  Mama nodded. “Well, I guess I do understand that. This is a place to leave.”

  “All due respect, Madame, but I heard a slightly different story,” said Romey. “Berry Gordy himself, if rumor serves me correctly, had to hightail it out the back door because the mob pushed its way through the front one.” He leaned back, satisfied. “That proves that fame and fortune corrupt.”

  “How would you know anything about fame and fortune?” asked Johnnie Mae.

  Everyone laughed at this, even Ernesto-on-the-Couch, and Mama, whom I’d never seen laugh out loud before. Her teeth were small, white, glistening. Johnnie Mae was so tickled she clutched her chest.

  “I won’t dignify that low blow with a response because I like Little Stevie’s music too much,” said Romey. He looked over his glasses at Lyla. “It’s on you, I believe.”

  “He ain’t Little Stevie no more, Baby,” said Lyla as she tossed out an ace of hearts. “He’s a man now.”

  They played for hours, the music of jazz horns and pianos on the hi-fi accentuated by the staccato sound of cards slammed down on the table, like percussive exclamation points.

  At one point, when Romey and Mama were apparently losing miserably, he turned toward Kimmie, who was rifling through records piled on the console, and leaned in her direction. “Bet you miss your dad already.”

  Mama looked at Romey, but he ignored her.

  “It’s okay. I’ll be seeing him soon,” said Kimmie.

  “Is that right?” said Romey, peering over the top of his glasses at Kimmie.

  “Yeah, we’re going there just as soon as…”

  “Rae!” said Mama, startling me off my spot on the stairway. “Be a good girl and go in the kitchen and put some more ice in that bowl, will you?”

  I did, but first I stood quietly by the dining room entrance, where they couldn’t see me, and eavesdropped—a little pitcher with big ears.

  “Kimmie, it’s better not to say anything in front of her. I told you how she is about her daddy.”

  “Sorry,” I heard Kimmie say. “I forgot.”

  “And how is JD these days?” Romey again. “Have you got him locked up in the attic tonight?”

  “He’s in the den,” said Mama.

  “Well, aren’t you going to ask him to come out and say hello to your guests? I like Daddy Joe.”

  “I’m warning you, Romey!” said Mama, her voice low, but not that low. “Keep your big mouth shut, you hear me?”

  “You need to be watching the board,” said Lyla. “Y’all don’t have a single book yet.”

  I listened to the sound of ice tinkling against glass as I stood there, letting the plastic bowl grow colder in my hands. I looked down into the frozen cubes and saw the situation clearly. I told myself to start packing right away, so I’d be ready when Daddy decided it was time for us to go.

  Just as I stepped back in the room with the ice, Johnnie Mae yelled, “Well, I’ll be damned! Lyla Honey, we done run a Boston on these knuckleheads!”

  “We? I’m the one had all the trumps!”

  “Excuse me, but I do believe both my ace and king of clubs turned two of those books!”

  Lyla giggled. “You right, Johnnie Mae, you right.” She held her palm out. “Give me five! We whooped their butts!!”

  Lyla and Johnnie Mae slapped each other’s hand, and this ended the card playing. They pushed the table to the side; Romey took a seat on the sofa next to Ernesto, and the others sat in the dark green, high-back chairs. Except Mama. She lounged across the carpet like a teenage girl would do, legs crossed at her ankles, back against the wall, whiskey sour at her side. Kimmie handled the music.

  “Don’t you have anything here that’s newer than 1967?” she asked Mama.

  “Ain’t nothing been made worth listening to since then,” said Johnnie Mae. “’Cept for Stevie’s music.”

  Kimmie sighed and settled on a few hit Motown tunes—by the Supremes, Four Tops, Miracles—piling the 45s on top of one another and holding them in place with the arm of the record player. When she finally succumbed and played “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours,” Johnnie Mae said, “Good choice!” as Mama jumped up to dance in the middle of the living room, drink in her hand.

  “Ooh, Vy, I didn’t know you could dance like that,” squealed Lyla. “You do th
at camel walk, girl!”

  She did it perfectly, moving across the floor like a swan cum robot. She snapped her fingers as she danced, and Romey called out, “Well, all right! Well, all right, now!” On cue, Kimmie jumped up and joined Mama, imitating her camel walk in a funny way that made her look like an ostrich. They danced together, snapping their fingers in unison.

  Later, the night winding down, Romey eyed me on the landing of the stairway and beckoned me to come to him. I did. He grabbed my hand. His was hairy. “How old are you now?” I told him. “And how’s school?” I mumbled an okay. “And so when do you plan to stop sleeping with your daddy?” He laughed, in a throaty kind of mean grown-up way. Kimmie laughed too, which hurt. I shrugged my shoulders. They all made me sick. “On my next birthday,” I whispered.

  “Negro, leave that chile alone,” said Johnnie Mae, her rings bouncing light off her glass of liquor. “What she do in her own house is none of your never-mind.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” said Lyla.

  “I’m just asking. Nothing wrong with that,” said Romey. He looked over at Mama. “Right?”

  “You don’t know how to keep your damn mouth shut, do you?” said Mama as she looked over at me. I looked down.

  “Romey, you ought to quit,” said Ernesto, soft-like, yet fatherly.

  I wanted to get away from all of them, but I was trapped. My sister saved me.

  “I’m going to bed now,” said Kimmie. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Okay.” Mama stretched out her arms to her. “Come give me a big, big hug.” She squeezed her hard, closing her eyes; then she opened them abruptly, releasing Kimmie. “Time for you to go to bed too,” she said to me, for the first time in my life. “Come here.”

  Kimmie said good-bye to Mama’s friends, climbed the stairs to her bedroom. I went to receive my mother’s embrace, tight and brief as ever, then walked across the room and entered the den. I was certain I heard Romey’s loud snickers trailing behind me, and someone saying “Shhhh,” but I ignored them. I drifted off to sleep thinking about the part of my mother I’d met tonight—the part that drank whiskey sours and did the camel walk and liked college English. I dreamed she and Kimmie left me behind, pushing the white Mach II to the curb, the engine silent. Later that night, I awakened to the feeling of eyes upon me. Crowded around the French doors, peeping in through the glass, were Romey, Mr. Ernesto, Lyla, Johnnie Mae, and Mama. Staring at me as Daddy’s heavy breathing caused my little body to rise and fall, rise and fall.

  I never got to see Daddy’s back again after he walked through the hospital’s emergency room doors, days before he died. I couldn’t turn him over in his bed when I came to visit him; certainly couldn’t after he took his last breath, life drained from his hefty frame. All I could do was remember, remember the comfort gotten from the smooth, enduring flesh beneath me when I was a little girl and slept peacefully each night in the small curve of that back, a shoulder blade my pillow.

  When the doorbell chimes rang—dinggg, donggg, dinggg—the deep serious sound of them startled me.

  “I’ll get it,” said Kimmie. “Don’t smudge your nails!” she yelled over her shoulder as the chimes rang again. Dinggg, donggg, dinggg. She’d just given me a manicure with her new chalky yellow nail polish. I ran behind Kimmie, feeling the chimes’ vibrations under my feet as I leaped from the bottom landing of the staircase, fingers spread out to dry.

  “Heyyyy!!!!” said Kimmie to the girl standing there. “Come on in.”

  She had short, brick-red hair with black parts peeking through. Her eyes looked out from heavy eyeliner and frosty blue eye shadow. She wore a hot pink tube top with tie-dyed jeans and white clogs. I’d never seen clogs, and I instantly loved them. She was holding a bottle of Faygo grape pop.

  “God, you look the same!!!!” said Kimmie.

  “You the one, girl! You the one!!! Still got that long pretty hair!”

  “Your hair is too sharp. I love the color!!”

  “You do? I’m always experimenting with it, drives my mom crazy.”

  “This is Rhonda,” said Kimmie. She threw an arm toward me. “And you remember my little sister, Rae Rae.”

  She put her hand to her mouth, then let it drop. “Wow, that’s Rae Rae?” She smiled. “You don’t remember me, but I remember you. You were a baby last time I saw you!”

  “Really?” I never thought of myself as having been a baby—especially since there were no baby pictures of me anywhere.

  “Yeah, for real! You were so small, and Kimmie used to pick you up, carry you everywhere, like you were her own little doll. I remember that.”

  Hearing that made me realize my life went back farther than I had imagined.

  “Rhonda and I were best friends in elementary school,” Kimmie explained. “Right up until I left.”

  “Sure were. Remember sixth-grade graduation?” said Rhonda.

  “Do I? You wore this lemon yellow ensemble with a cool Nehru collar…”

  “You had one on too, remember? I think yours was light blue.”

  “Yeah, yours was sharp, but mine was mail-order brocade,” said Kimmie. “Looked like I stole somebody’s draperies!” They both laughed. “God, we thought we were so grown up!”

  “So much was going on…remember how crazy the ceremony was?”

  “Oh, man, Matthew Conyers running across the stage!” screamed Kimmie. Both she and Rhonda balled their fists, raised their arms in the air, and yelled, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Find out what it means to me! R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Take care of TCB! Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me!”

  “Hey, you girls keep it down in there,” said Daddy, his voice coming at us from behind the open den doors. “Or take it outside.”

  “Sorry!” Kimmie called out before beckoning to her friend. “Let’s go out back,” she whispered.

  They headed toward the back door, and then Kimmie stopped, looked at me. “Come on, Rae Rae. You can join us.”

  “Just a minute,” I said, ducking into the den. “Daddy, how’s your head?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  He had turned on the TV and was watching an episode of The Mod Squad with the sound low. He yawned, long and wide. “I’m fine. You go on, have yourself some fun with your sister.”

  “Are you sure?” Shadows hung under his eyes.

  “What’d I say, Brown Eyes?” He shooed me with his hand. “Go on now.”

  I nodded with gratitude, pecked him on the forehead, never saw him flinch in pain as I ran and joined them on the back porch, catching Rhonda in mid-sentence.

  “…I mean that was just a wild summer.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Kimmie.

  “The riots and all…”

  “Spook getting shot…”

  “Candy Thompson gettting pregnant.”

  “Stinker OD’ing in his mother’s basement.”

  “And you running away.” Rhonda said it so matter-of-factly, yet the pause that followed was overbearing. What did my sister run away from? I wondered.

  Kimmie shrugged. “Well, you made sure that didn’t work out.”

  “You never did understand that I had to tell,” said Rhonda.

  “No, I didn’t understand, because I was your best friend, and I asked you not to.”

  “I was scared for you. I mean, if something had happen—”

  “I told you I’d call you when I got where I was going, so you didn’t need to worry.”

  Rhonda shook her head. “Girl, please! We were like twelve years old! Your mother called the police. They were talking about sending out a search party and everything.”

  Kimmie shrugged. “You did what you felt you had to do. And I got to go live with my father anyway.” She smirked. “All’s well that ends well.”

  Rhonda took in Kimmie’s words along with a swig of her Faygo pop. “So the man in that room in there is your…?”

  “Stepfather.”

  “Oh. I never knew that.” She seemed embarrassed for not knowing. “When you l
eft, I didn’t know where you’d gone. I mean, you didn’t say good-bye or anything. You didn’t write.”

  “I was mad at you.”

  “You shoulda thanked me.”

  “Yeah? Thanks,” said Kimmie. “Friend.”

  Rhonda wore her hurt like a heavy backpack as she stood. “I gotta go,” she said quietly.

  Kimmie reached for Rhonda’s hand, pulled her back down onto the porch steps. “You want a cigarette?” She eased two Virginia Slims out of her breast pocket, offered them to Rhonda.

  Both were solemn as Rhonda took one, leaned in as Kimmie produced matches. They each puffed, exhaled slowly in unison before Rhonda spoke.

  “How come you never came back?”

  “Because you get somewhere and that’s your life. And before you know it, years go by.”

  “So why now?”

  “Everybody thought it would be a good time for me to come. So here I am.”

  “Wow. Heavy.”

  Kimmie blew a series of smoke rings. “Actually, it was now or never. Next year I’m going to be too busy finishing high school and getting the hell out of Louisiana.”

  “You going to college?”

  Kimmie nodded. “Definitely. I’m not sure where yet, but it’ll be somewhere different. I’m thinking about Albuquerque.”

  “Where’s that?” asked Rhonda.

  “New Mexico.”

  “Don’t you have to speak Spanish there?”

  “No, silly rabbit. It’s part of the United States. They speak English. And there’s a lot of Indians living on reservations. I visited there once when my papa took us all on a cross-country trip.”

  “In a car?” I asked.

  “That’s the only way to go,” said Kimmie. “The desert is a little boring because it’s endless, but it’s a great trip. Rocky Mountains, Grand Canyon. I can’t even begin to describe how beautiful it all is.”

  “I’m going to drive cross-country when I grow up,” I said.

  “Maybe you don’t have to wait that long,” offered Kimmie.

  “Far as I’m going is Mercy College,” said Rhonda. “Right on Livernois and Six Mile. Study nursing. At least that’s my plan right now. My dad’s a foreman at Chrysler, and he says they’re hiring. Training ladies to be crane operators!”