Shifting Through Neutral

by Bridgett M. Davis

  With that, Mama rushed from the room.

  “I don’t understand why she’s doing this,” I said.

  “Me neither,” said Kimmie. “Not fully. But don’t worry, okay?”

  “Okay,” I answered, believing Kimmie could make it all work out.

  “Let’s see what’s going on,” she said, grabbing my hand, leading me downstairs.

  Mama had opened the front door, letting in the morning bird and traffic sounds. We watched as Cyril strolled up the walkway. He was wearing his lumberjack clothes—plaid shirt, jeans. He was tanned and still slender, still pretty. Kimmie ran to greet him.

  “How’s my Sweet Pea?” he said, giving her a big kiss on the cheek. Daddy always kissed me on the lips.

  There, waiting magically in the vestibule, stood some luggage and a few of Mama’s packed boxes. Cyril jogged up the front steps, across the threshold. “Let me just grab these, load up the trunk,” he said, reaching for the bags.

  Mama pointed to my little purple suitcase. “Those are your things, Rae. I found them under the bed.” She looked at me. “Already packed.”

  I didn’t know what part of this getaway plan of Mama’s was spite toward Daddy and what part was love toward me. Either way, it was too much for my nine-year-old heart to take.

  “I have to go say bye to Daddy,” I whispered.

  She lurched for my arm. “No. That is not a good idea, because he would be so upset he might do something crazy without thinking, you know?”

  It was a hot, humid morning, the sticky air clinging to my thin Mickey Mouse pajamas.

  Kimmie spoke for me. “Vy, I don’t think you should make her leave without—”

  “Hush! I know JD, okay? I know him, and I know what’s best.” She came over, grabbed my arms. “Now promise Mama you won’t wake him up. Just go in, get dressed, and come out, okay?”

  Cyril tried. “You’ve got to let the girl say good-bye to her daddy. That’s a must.”

  I glanced at Cyril, liking him a little. “I won’t take a long time, Mama. I promise.”

  “No!!” she yelled with a primal force that caused me to stumble backward. Cyril sidled over to where I stood. “Let’s just do it her way for right now, okay?” he said to me. “We don’t want her getting too worked up.”

  It was true that I didn’t want Mama running half-naked down the street, so I moved toward the front door. Then something important dawned on me, and I stopped, faced them all. “Did you pack my record player Daddy gave me?” I asked.

  “We can send for that later,” said Mama, speaking through a long sigh. “There’s no more room in the car.”

  “What about my drawing paper and crayons?” I pressed. “And my bicycle?” I didn’t bother to mention that I’d ruined my bicycle.

  “Rae, you can get those things later!” Her voice was high and sharp, and she must have thought I was crazy to want to take my things with me. In her mind, a child could start over with little or nothing. She had done just that as a young girl picked up from the orphanage, gripping one small paper bag and the hand of an unknown new mother.

  “Just run upstairs and get dressed, please,” she begged. “And no time for a full bath! Just a sponge bath in the sink!”

  I walked into the house, anger propelling me to defy Mama. I got on my hands and knees below the front windows and crawled to the den. Daddy was lying down across the sofa. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were open. I rapped on the glass French door, and he looked up. I waved good-bye, then dropped down again, crawling fast across the living room and up the stairs.

  When I returned dressed in seersucker shorts, Daddy was out on the porch, with Mama and Kimmie and Cyril each standing in the walkway.

  “So this is what you gonna do? Sneak out your own house like a burglar?” said Daddy.

  “It’s not my house,” said Mama. “Hasn’t been for years.”

  “Well, it sure as hell ain’t mine. You’d already bought the goddamned place when I met you.”

  “You know, JD, that just shows how you are. Here you had this beautiful home to live in and…you never even…” Mama paused, deciding not to go down that road. “I’m not going to put you out, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Do I sound worried?” said Daddy, pride rising along with his blood pressure.

  My parents’ marriage, begun with a pregnancy that produced a stillborn child, was itself stillborn—a union formed with expectation and promise that never delivered.

  Cyril turned to leave. “I think I’ll wait in the car.”

  “Yeah, you best be doing that,” Daddy barked at Cyril’s back. “And get your fucking car out from in front of my home!”

  Cyril stopped, turned, oh so calm. “Heyyy. No reason to get like that about it, Buddy.”

  “Just do what the fuck I said.”

  I’d never heard Daddy curse so. Cyril held up his hands, elbows jutting out, palms exposed. He glanced over at Mama. “I’ll be waiting for you girls down the street.” Then he walk-ran to his car.

  “JD, don’t make a scene,” said Mama. “The neighbors.”

  “Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you decided to stage this little getaway in goddamn broad daylight.” He crossed his arms and spread his legs apart to steady his stance. “Here you are, trying to whisk Rae Rae off like she’s one of your boxes you been packing up.”

  “It’s not like that, and you know it.”

  “What do I know? You asked me to stay, and I did. Long as you needed me to. And then when you didn’t need me no more, when you knew Kimmie would be coming, I agreed to go, didn’t I?”

  “But you didn’t leave. I’ve been waiting all summer. If you had left like you were supposed to, we wouldn’t be going through this right now.”

  “That still don’t explain why you trying to sneak off.”

  “’Cause I knew this would happen!”

  “This is low-down, that’s what this is,” said Daddy. “You gonna be so bold-faced as to steal my baby from me? What I gave up to stay, you have no idea. And now you trying to take away the only good thing I got left? Just ’cause it suits you?”

  “She was always going to live with me. That was the plan.”

  “Plans change, Vy. You know that. Besides, living with you in Detroit is one thing, and all the way down South is something else entirely.”

  Mama inched closer to Daddy. “Look, I know you waited around because I asked you to. I know that. And I’m grateful. But you’re free now, so what’s the problem? You’re free, JD! Go on and be with your woman, and let me do what I’m trying to do.”

  Daddy shook his head. “I can’t let you do this.”

  Mama dug her nails into the palms of her hands. “You just don’t want to see me happy. That’s what this is really about.”

  “You talking crazy, woman.”

  “Acting like you don’t have options!” Mama yelled. “We both know Rae is not all you got.”

  Daddy sighed. He knew otherwise. “She’s not going, Vy, so you can just get that notion out of your head right now.”

  Mama made a hollow, shrill sound. “Yes, she is. I’m her mother. She’s going. We’re going.” Mama beckoned to us, her girls. “Come on.”

  Kimmie picked up my suitcase and moved toward Mama, but Daddy held his hand out across my body, like a crossing guard on the corner at lunchtime.

  “I said my baby’s not going nowhere. Drop her bag, Kimmie.”

  Kimmie dropped the bag, and just in the way she let it plop to the ground, I knew she was on Daddy’s side.

  “Pick it back up!” yelled Mama. Kimmie picked it back up. Mama, who could go weeks sleeping on the same bedsheets, turned to Daddy, her eyes alive with mascara and ambition. “You’re not going to fuck this up for me, JD. My girls deserve to be together.”

  Daddy smirked. “They deserve a whole lotta things, but that don’t mean you been providing ’em.” Mama’s eyes lowered, her long, false lashes drooping in unison.

  It wa
s true. She’d tried to be a good mother, but there had been so much to manage: the two fathers, the depression, and the exhausting wait for Cyril to come and rescue her and her girls. Truth be told, it had all been too much. But now she was taking action to change everything. And for that she wanted full credit.

  She looked up. “I’m not going to be made to feel bad.” She glanced at Cyril’s parked Volvo at the corner, making sure it was still there. “Not about this, because this is the best thing I could do for everybody concerned. And you shouldn’t stand in Rae’s way. Not if you’re as crazy about her as you act.”

  Daddy must have quickly assessed himself, a barely-getting-by black man with a chronic condition about to lose his wife to a hazel-eyed, light-stepping college teacher with a fancy car. He looked over at me, those black eyes like little crystal balls.

  “What do you want to do, Brown Eyes?”

  I was silent.

  “Just tell me what you want to do. Daddy will understand.”

  “I want us all to be together,” I said, hopeless.

  “Listen carefully now. Do you want to go with your mama and your sister?”

  Shrug.

  “Stay here with me?”

  Nod.

  “You sure?”

  I nodded. No way could I choose anyone over Daddy. Not to his face.

  Daddy took my suitcase from Kimmie. “She done said what she wants.” He swatted at the air. “Now get the hell outta here, both of you.”

  Mama glanced again at Cyril’s parked car, turned toward me. “I know you think you want this right now, Rae. But you’re a child, and you can’t really know what’s best for you. I do.” She grabbed at my arm and pulled me to her. Daddy grabbed at my other arm.

  Kimmie screamed, “Wait a minute! This is crazy!”

  Right there, in the middle of the walkway of our house on Birchcrest Road, on that sun-piercing morning, my mother and father pulled me in different directions. Kimmie ran to get her papa, and it was his words that broke through my parents’ tug-of-war.

  “Vy, let her stay,” said Cyril, deep voice commanding respect.

  Mama loosened her grip. “I can’t just leave her here!” she gasped.

  “You’re going to have to. It’s better than this fighting.”

  “But, Cyril, I thought you of all people would want her to come,” said Mama.

  “I want what’s best for the child. Right now that seems to be keeping her where she is.”

  Mama dropped my arm, and Daddy quickly pressed me to him.

  “Is this what you really, really want?” she asked me.

  I looked into Mama’s eyes. I have lived that elongated moment over and over through the years. Which was the right direction to move my head? I nodded and altered the course of everything that followed, as they say a butterfly flaps its wings and causes a storm on the other side of the earth.

  She waited awhile before saying anything. We all waited with her. “You understand that I still have to go?”

  “Yes,” I answered. But I didn’t understand any such thing. I had no idea on that hot August morning in 1972 what it felt like to pine over a man for eighteen years and then be rescued from your deep longing at the ripe old age of thirty-six, now that he said he wanted you. Wanted you and the daughter you bore him.

  Mama moved toward me, her eyes so filled with desperation I had to look at the pavement. She gave me a quick squeeze. Then she whispered, “I tried. Remember that, okay? I tried.”

  She let me go, and I watched as Mama and Kimmie walked away, the impression of her squeeze lingering. I noticed that across the street, Mean Mr. Green was peering out at us from his picture window. At the corner where Cyril was parked, Kimmie turned and waved. “Bye, Rae Rae!” she yelled. “I love you!!”

  I tore away from Daddy’s embrace, ran down the block to Kimmie. My hands grasped at the front of her embroidered shirt.

  “I want to come with you,” I cried.

  “You’re the best little sister in the world,” she said. “But you have to stick with the choice you made.” Suddenly, she snapped her finger. “I almost forgot!” She slid her hand into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out the two one-hundred-dollar bills, easing them into my hand. Then she leaned right into my ear, touching the lobe with her lips, and whispered, “I’ll be back. Remember that. I’ll be back.”

  Mama turned to me, her hand gripping the car door handle. “You can come be with us at any time, Rae,” she offered. “Just call when you’re ready, and I’ll send for you, okay?”

  “Okay,” I whispered. I stood there in front of Cyril’s sporty red car and watched as they climbed into it, Kimmie in the front seat next to her papa, Mama in the back. As the car pulled into the street, Kimmie popped up magically through the sunroof and waved, her Indian silk shirt rippling in the wind. As I waved back, a song I’d heard recently, something about “jasmines” and a summer breeze, glided on smooth wheels through my mind.

  Dizzy with emptiness, palming the money, I walked back to the house. Daddy was waiting for me on the porch. He placed his hand across the small of my back, guided me through our front door. “I don’t trust those foreign cars for nothing,” he said, slamming the door against the day. “Ain’t worth a damn. None of ’em.”

  I believed him, and escaping many years later in my Mustang, I understood there was nothing Honda, Volkswagen, Mercedes, or Volvo could ever do for me.

  After an incredible reprieve throughout the first half of 1980, several days before my high school graduation, Daddy had a migraine attack like none before it. It stretched him out on his back for forty-eight hours straight. We weren’t prepared for this, having been lulled by his wave of good health in the prior months. By now, his endurance for excruciating pain had flagged. He tried lying dead still in the dark; I rubbed his forehead frantically. Nothing worked. Finally, in weak surrender, Daddy injected high milligrams of Demerol into his veins daily, sometimes twice a day, for over a week.

  I wasn’t alarmed. Having witnessed his self-medicating for so many years, I’d become adept at delusion, telling myself he was no different from a diabetic giving himself insulin. I was so intimate with Daddy’s symptoms that I knew he was in a perpetual cycle of experiencing, recovering from, or fighting off headaches. This latest episode didn’t alarm me, as it should have. I was desperate for Daddy to do whatever he had to do to feel better so he could make the cross-country trek with me. I believed this trip to New Mexico was going to save his life.

  More to the point, I had a high threshold for drug use. Why I’d so far escaped becoming a druggie myself is one of those flukes of life. It’s not like I hadn’t tried. My first opportunity to smoke reefer came compliments of Mount Bethel Baptist Church, the year I was fourteen. Our youth group went on a daylong retreat to a hostel in Brighton, Michigan, where we had a discussion on “what it means to be a teenager today” and cooked huge communal meals and slept in sparsely furnished rooms with thin mattresses and no hot water. Maurice Franklin brought the joint. Five of us shared it during a nature walk, passing it back and forth between us. Despite elaborate puffing, I wasn’t inhaling anything. Yet when the others talked about “feeling good, a little fuzzy man,” I pretended to feel that way too. It felt like a distinct failure on my part, that inability to get high—a deficiency of some sort. I was convinced it was a sign, an indicator of what lie ahead for me: being on the outside of what’s cool while pretending to be inside of it.

  Later that year in her parents’ garage, Lisa LaBerrie and I learned the correct way to smoke a joint; she’d gotten one from her big sister, Maria, who was a hip “nice Catholic-school girl” who hiked up her uniform to a micromini as soon as she was out of the sisters’ sight, and who knew all the intricacies of petting, having mastered sexual pleasure without going all the way. Lisa and I smoked that entire joint, and afterward we were both so high we couldn’t speak in full sentences. Terrified that her mother would discover us, we decided—because someone told Lisa your high come
s down faster if you run—to sprint through the neighborhood. We ran and ran and ran across lawns and between houses and through alleys and stayed high, our hearts beating in our throats. Finally, way past both our curfews, we slipped into her house and sprayed hairspray all over each other (to mask the marijuana smell) before parting ways. Once home, I poked my head into the den and quickly said hello to Daddy, who scrunched up his nose, asked me, “What in the world you been doing got you smelling like sweet shit?” He looked at me with suspicion when I told him it was a homemade perfume Lisa and I had created. I ducked into my room and promptly slept off my high.

  After that, Lisa and I knew better. Supplied by Maria, our joints now lasted for several days. She’d take a few languid puffs, I’d take a few, and we’d save the rest for the next time. The only thing I didn’t like about smoking pot was that it made me think a lot. One night while walking home from Lisa’s in the throes of a sweet high, I realized a sad truth, one that hit me violently but with lucidity: Mama left me to be with Cyril. No one made her do that. She didn’t have to leave me behind. She had a choice. And she chose to go.

  I didn’t smoke reefer again for a long time. Instead, I escaped into an illogical, teen fantasy played over and over in my head like a weekday rerun: I have a little daughter who goes on joyrides with me in a sporty car, and I always, always put her needs first.

  I started getting high again in the late winter of 1979, when I was sixteen and it was cool to wear Jordache jeans, drive fuel-efficient cars, and disco-dance. Using those blank prescription pads stolen from Dr. Corey’s office, I became an expert at “bustin’ scripts.” I researched the medical names—easily found knowledge in a pharmaceutical encyclopedia at the Sherwood Forest branch library—and duplicated Dr. Corey’s unintelligible scrawl. For months I traveled to different party stores around the city, never going to the same one twice, filling fake prescriptions. It was too easy. I got the basic druggie stash—uppers, downers, speed—and carried the jumble of blue, yellow, and pink pills in a leather coin purse that once belonged to Kimmie. I spent much of my senior year in fraying peace-patch jeans and a wavy altered state.