Shifting Through Neutral
Page 13
Mama looked near tears. “That’s how you talk to your own mother?”
“Look how you’re talking to me,” Kimmie whined.
“I am simply trying to tell you that you should never let a man dominate your life like this. It’s dangerous.”
“Excuse me? You should talk.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Kimmie braced herself. “You sent me away because Daddy Joe didn’t want me here. You think I don’t know that?”
Mama shook her head. “You got it all wrong. I sent you away because I wanted you to be safe. I wasn’t well enough to take care of you. And this city was too wild, Kimmie.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, why didn’t you ever tell me to come back after things calmed down? After you got better?”
“Because you always sounded so happy. I didn’t want to take you away from that.”
Kimmie flung her hair off her face, brandishing the remnants of her bruise. “Happy? Living with a whorish father and a jealous stepmother? Oh yeah, I was happy all right.”
Mama winced. “He’s still your father, and he didn’t abandon you. He took you in and cared for you. That’s more than I can say about my own father.”
Kimmie wasn’t listening. “I waited and waited for you to call and say, ‘Come home, Kimmie. I miss you.’”
“You ran away from home! To get away from me, right? So I sent you to the one person you were always begging for. Is that a crime?”
Whatever had gotten misunderstood between mother and daughter was too tied into knots to be straightened out now, tangled even more so by Kimmie’s brewing resentment.
“You want to know something, Vy? I did more wild things down there than I could ever imagine doing in Detroit. You think southern folks are backward? Don’t believe it.” She smirked. “So what did you protect me from, huh?”
Mama sighed, giving up. “What do you want from me, Kimmie?”
“I want those years back.”
Mama put her hands together, as if to pray. “So do I. But they’re gone. All we have is right now. And right now we have a problem. One your papa needs to know about.”
“Why can’t this just be between us?”
“Because it’s bigger than us.”
“See? If you really loved me, you’d try to understand from my point of view.”
“I’d never understand this, because I’m your mother. I’m not supposed to understand.”
Kimmie sighed. “A lot of good that does me.”
Mama folded her arms. “He’s so big and bad, he can hit a woman. Now let’s see if the ugly black fucker can stand up to another man.”
With that, Mama left Kimmie’s room, leaving her to roll over on her tie-dyed bedspread and punch fists into the matching pillows.
Nolan didn’t take the news too well that Kimmie’s father was en route to Detroit with plans to confront him. Kimmie tried to convince Nolan that if he just apologized to her papa, everything would be back like it was. “He’s a reasonable man,” she said. “Just say that it’ll never happen again.”
“Fuck that!” Nolan sat at the wheel of his car as Kimmie sat beside him in the bucket seat. “You think I got time to deal with some bullshit like that? It ain’t worth it.”
And with all the bravado of the cruel little man he was, Nolan told Kimmie, We better cool it for a while; I need some space, man, ya dig? Still Kimmie pleaded. “Just give me a chance to work this whole thing out.” Nah, I am not having some uppity-ass bitch think she can intimidate me, okay? I’m a man, and I’m gonna get my respect. Anyway, don’t need no girl who lets her mama all up in her business. Kimmie rambled on. “She’s not going to bother us anymore. I told her I love you!”
Nolan opened the passenger door and waited. Kimmie cried. What did I say? he barked, teeth gritted. Kimmie bargained. “You’re upset now. We’ll talk later, okay?” I’m about to get real upset if you don’t get outa my motherfuckin’ car. Kimmie reached for Nolan, who pushed her out onto the curb, where she landed on her ass; the Karmann Ghia screeched off, its door flapping wildly as Kimmie looked around frantically to see if Mean Mr. Green was watching.
For days and days on end, she locked herself in her room, while I sat cross-legged in front of her door. When she came out to use the bathroom, she stepped over me, then asked, “Anybody call?” I’d shake my head no, and she’d return without a word to her room, shutting me out. Thanks to the one 45 she played over and over on my red record player, which she’d blithely taken from Mama’s room, the on-the-nose soundtrack to Kimmie’s lovesickness escaped nonstop from under her bedroom door: Everybody plays the fool sometimes / use your heart just like a tool / listen baby it may be factual it may be cruel / but I ain’t lying / everybody plays the fool.
“Leave her be,” Daddy said to me finally. “She got a broken heart and can’t nobody mend it for her. Just leave her be.”
Reluctantly, I did leave Kimmie alone, through those hot, muggy days of August, when it rained. Steadily. Our clothes stuck to our backs, and wide-open windows brought no relief. The next-door neighbor’s grass was now knee-high. Daddy and I spent wet afternoons at Mr. Alfred’s body shop, watching him repair the front fender on Oldie, fix the muffler yet again. The weather made the inside of the garage smell more than ever like gasoline and tire rubber and Mr. Alfred’s cigars. Puddles of water formed on top of the gravel outside the garage door, little globs of green sludge floating across them while raindrops hit like Ping-Pong balls against the tin roof, accenting the men’s words as they chatted.
“So you staying put,” said Mr. Alfred.
Daddy nodded. “For now.”
“That’s the best thing. No sense shelling out money for no good reason.”
“You got that right. Seem like every month by the time I get my check, it’s owed out.”
“Well, I’m a tell you now, one ten a month was too much to be paying for a flat. Too much.”
“Good area, though.”
“Not for long. Now that all the white folks done left it.”
Daddy chuckled. “You got a point there, Alfred.”
He took center stage again in the house, making breakfast food every day for dinner, using the black-handled knives he’d had since his days of mess hall duty in the army. His home fries were the best.
I sat on a high stool in the corner, watching him slice potatoes as I listened to random, profane yells waft through the flung-open back door. I loved the way the sweet smell of laden blackberries picked by me from our yard managed to endure alongside that of the frying home fries. When Daddy chopped the fat yellow onions, he let the tears fall for a while, then wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, winked at me, grabbed another onion. Sitting there nibbling on blackberries, listening to the rain, I watched him with joy, thinking all Daddies cried when doing what they loved.
Mama was feeling good—dancing around to “Superstition,” wearing her chic wig when she had nowhere to go, chatting on the kitchen phone with Johnnie Mae. She was ecstatic that Kimmie and Nolan had broken up, and it showed in her upturned mouth, her live-and-let-live wave of hand. One evening, the aromas of the kitchen pulled Mama out of the attic and to the breakfast nook, where Daddy and I sat eating. I was so excited to have them there, my parents sitting across from each other, that I almost ran to persuade Kimmie to forget her broken heart and come join us. Would it have changed things if I had? I’ve since wondered, if we’d all sat around the table family-style, would it have fortified us from the impending doom?
“You always did know how to make some good home fries, JD,” said Mama.
“Well, you better eat ’em while they’re hot,” he said. “They taste like a bad memory once they get cold.”
They had formed an implicit truce. Mama thought Daddy was leaving soon. Then she would leave with Cyril, and the house would be rented out like all her other houses—become a home for some other hopeful family. That was her plan. She didn’t know Daddy had changed his. And Daddy wasn’t suppose
d to know about hers. He was supposed to believe all the packed boxes were just innocent offshoots of her ubiquitous spring-cleaning.
And so the three of us munched on home fries that long-ago summer evening, and they were delicious, full of pepper and salt and saturated flavor. I remember it vividly, that meal—as it was the last time I felt simple, unencumbered pleasure.
Slow down, Brown Eyes,” said Daddy, the back of his head sinking into the headrest. “You and your heavy foot. I don’t go for all that fast driving, and you know it. Leads to no good.”
I eased off the gas pedal, ever so slightly, just enough to make the green light as we crossed Davison Avenue, then accelerated a little more, imperceptibly. My hands were sweating, causing the steering wheel to slide under my grip. I kept sneaking glances over at Daddy. The skin just below his eyes had darkened. I leaned forward, tightening my wet grip on the wheel, reciting a New Age mantra in my head: Eyebrows up. Eyebrows up. Eyebrows up. I’d read it on a bumper sticker, and it made sense the way catchy phrases sometimes do, sounding all the more prophetic for its brevity, its simple directive: Think positive, don’t frown, allow good.
When we got to Dr. Corey’s office, he was waiting for us just outside the door. One look at his friend of twenty-five years bent over, struggling to walk, and Dr. Corey whisked us past the crowded waiting room. Ilene said, “Hey, Mr. Dodson. Bad one today, huh?”
Daddy sighed. “Yeah.” We each held an elbow, guiding him to the examining room. “This one’s trying to do me in.”
Dr. Corey touched Daddy’s burning forehead. “You’ve got to get to the hospital, JD. I can look at you and tell your pressure is way up, probably near three hundred. Dangerously high this time, Buddy. Too high to be playing around…”
“Just need a pain shot, that’s all,” said Daddy. “I’m trying to preserve what I got for the trip.”
“Trip?” Dr. Corey folded his arms across his chest. “Did you hear what I said? You need to be administered treatment intravenously, get that pressure down right away. I can’t do that for you here.”
“You send me to the hospital, I’m a suffer in there and you know it,” said Daddy. “They don’t give a damn about nobody in pain. Treat you like chopped-up pig’s pussy, you ask me.”
Dr. Corey chuckled softly. “Don’t worry about that,” he promised. “I’ll leave very clear instructions to make sure you get your pain medicine.”
“Hell, they not gonna listen to you.” Daddy rose a bit, turning his contorted face to his friend. “You my private doctor. In the VA, I’ll be given any doctor don’t happen to be busy. And he sure as hell ain’t gonna wanna hear about my special needs. So I’m a be a sick colored man in pain, going through withdrawal. That’s what you sending me to, Vernon, and you know it.”
Dr. Corey’s hand trembled slightly as he placed it on top of Daddy’s. “JD, listen to me. You could have a stroke at any moment…”
“That’s every day of my life.”
“Well, I’m sure as hell not going to let you have one in here!!”
“Just give me the goddamn shot!”
Dr. Corey sighed, walked over to the counter of clear-glass jars, opened one, and took out a cotton ball as he spoke. “I’m giving you just enough to ease things until we can get you to the hospital.”
“I am still in my right mind, far as I can tell,” said Daddy. “And unless I agree to go, can’t nobody make me. My baby and I got to hit the road.”
Suddenly, these plans I’d made to travel cross-country to New Mexico, try alternative-medicine treatments to cure Daddy’s hypertension—ideas grabbed from Let’s Go USA and Back to Eden—seemed silly and presumptive to me. As if I could change the course of a relentless disease by simply changing its scenery. I felt irresponsible and scared, certain now that Daddy had pushed himself too hard and all for me. I had chosen to ignore the obvious.
Dr. Corey searched Daddy’s arms for a working vein and saw all were collapsed, his skin covered in tracks—tracks that led nowhere in Daddy’s never-ending quest to ease his chronic pain. He had revealed his addiction to painkillers when I was twelve, on a frigid night as we sat watching Chico and the Man. It was deep winter, and heat blasted from the room’s radiator, making it hiss like a mean witch.
“Go over there and look under the TV for me and pull out a bag,” he’d said. “Bring it to me.”
“Under the TV?” I repeated. It made little sense to me, and this was a really funny part of the show.
“Go on. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”
I got up, walked to the TV, and got down on all fours, trying to see underneath.
“Just put your hand in there. You’ll feel it.”
I did, managing to pull out the small, crumpled paper bag. I held it out to him.
“Bring it here.”
He took the bag from my hand, pulling out a little glass bottle of liquid, a syringe, and a rubber band. “Here, help me tie this band around my arm.”
I grabbed the thick rubber with my small hands. “You want a double knot, right?” I knew how to tie this particular kind of knot because Terrance had taught me once, that summer back when my bike was still new.
“Tie it tight now. That’s it. Now tie it again, but not too tight…. Good. Okay. Thatagirl.” He dipped the syringe into the little bottle and filled it, made a fist with the hand of his tied arm, thumped his lower arm a few times with two fingers and inserted the needle, right in the crook of his arm, into the greenish, snakelike vein. I winced.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” I asked as I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to bear the sight of my father in self-inflicted pain.
“Don’t matter, ’cause I need it,” he said, pulling the needle out as a trickle of blood appeared; he opened the side table drawer, took out a bottle of alcohol and a cotton ball, cleaned the needle. With another cotton ball, he wiped the blood off his arm. Then he returned all his works to the bag. “Here, put it back now,” he whispered.
I replaced the crumbled paper bag under the TV, and Daddy and I returned to watching Chico and the Man. He was soon laughing with ease at funny Freddie Prinze. Through the years I became a believer in the power of the dark liquid in the little glass bottle. Shooting up kept Daddy going—groggy but alive—long after the pills prescribed by Dr. Corey had lost their magic.
Now his doctor examined those cross-stitched scars all over his buddy’s arms, sighed heavily, then jabbed the needle into Daddy’s neck. The violence was startling. Dr. Corey turned to me, this man who had given me my pierced ears and my first pap. “You’re his daughter, Rae,” he said. “Talk some sense into him.”
I grabbed my father’s hand. “Please. You’ve got to go,” I begged. “For me?”
Daddy looked over at me, his small black eyes beautiful wet marbles. Then he turned to his friend. “You just had to bring my baby into this, didn’t you?”
“I’ll go call an ambulance,” said Dr. Corey. He moved toward the door.
“Wait!” I said, little horses fleeing their gate in my chest. “I’ll take him myself.”
“You know Veteran’s is all the way in Ann Arbor?”
“I know where it is,” I said, still holding Daddy’s bear hand in mine.
As he led us out, Dr. Corey whispered in my ear. “Get him there fast as you can, okay? Fast as you can.”
Open this window,” Daddy barked. I fumbled for the button on the driver’s side. “Need me some air,” he said, sweat beads trickling down his hairline. “It’s so goddamn hot.”
I slowed down a bit, my road rhythm broken. “You want to lie down in the back?” I tried to keep my voice from trembling or rising.
He shook his head, eyes closed. “I wanna go home, that’s what I want.” He sighed. “I’ve lived a good life.”
“We’re getting you to the hospital!” I yelled. Then, more controlled: “This is just a setback, that’s all. You always pull through. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not the one worried,” he said, quietly.
“You know, I ain’t never been hung up on getting old. Nothing to recommend it, you ask me. All that gray hair? Ugly as hell.” He ran his free hand through his slick, black mane. “Done outlived everybody’s expectation as it is.” I looked at his smooth face, the stubble on his strong chin. Tiny flakes of silver dotted his mustache. He looked too young to die.
“Let’s not talk about this, okay?” I begged. We whizzed by the gigantic Uniroyal tire poised against the highway, Motor City beacon to visitors, landmark of comfort to me. Yes, I was going the right way.
“And if I do have a stroke, I do not wanna live through it, that’s for damn sure. Face all twisted, speech slurred, body paralyzed. That’s worse than death, you ask me. Anything happen, they try to make me linger, you honor my wishes.” The Demerol caused the words to bunch up in Daddy’s mouth, like cotton. “You a big girl now, can take care of yourself.”
“Stop it, please!” I begged, my foot pulling back off the gas pedal as I exited the freeway. Signs for the Veteran’s Administration Hospital greeted us. I followed them intently, certain now more than ever that time wasted on a wrong choice could prove fatal.
As the summer of 1972 wound down and Labor Day approached, Mama came up with the idea of a Going Away party; deciding to serve barbecued ribs, baked beans, potato salad, and cole slaw. She called Cyril to get his recipe for the rib sauce and taped the ingredients to the refrigerator door: Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, small onion, bell pepper, cloves of garlic, brown sugar, vinegar, tomato sauce.
“Come on,” Mama said, standing in the doorway of Kimmie’s room, trying to coax her away from her bed. “You know I can’t plan this party without you.”
“I don’t feel like it,” said Kimmie. “I’m sick.”
I stood beside Mama, my fingers crossed for good luck. I wanted Kimmie out of that room too.
“It’ll be fun,” she offered. “Wasn’t the last one fun?”