Shifting Through Neutral

by Bridgett M. Davis

  When it was apparent that Mama planned to sleep her way through until it all went away, Daddy took action. He called Johnnie Mae, and she and Lyla and Romey soon arrived at our door. They marched right into Mama’s room and propped her up against the pillows. Johnnie Mae threw off the blanket and threw open the windows, while Lyla rubbed Mama’s cheeks, and Romey made that all-important call on her behalf, using his best teacher’s diction to talk to the funeral home director.

  And then they talked to Mama about the business of putting Kimmie into the ground. They threw questions at her nonstop. Will it be at a church? Which one? You need me to go with you to pick out the casket? Has anybody called the insurance company? Who can write the obituary? And do you have a nice picture of her? Start thinking about the service, Vy Honey. I know a woman who can sing. And Kimmie’s clothes, do you have any with you? ’Cause if not, I can take you shopping. We need a reliable printer too, need to get the order in for the programs, can’t wait too long. Same thing with the flowers. Who’s gonna perform the eulogy, Honey? Now, come on, pick a day. I suggest Saturday. One week is long enough for a soul to wait to be buried. That only gives us three days. No time. I assume she’ll go to Woodlawn Cemetery, right? Since it’s so close by. And do you want a family hour the night before? We need somebody to cook. Can’t JD’s sister take care of all that? Ain’t that why she’s here?

  Out of nowhere, Cyril appeared in the doorway. Filling it with his height and hazel-eyed glare. “I’m much obliged to all of you for helping Vy through this,” he said. “But I’ve got it from here.”

  Romey, Lyla, and Johnnie Mae rose, respectful, and filed out of Mama’s room. Cyril went to her, leaned over, and said, “Let’s get this behind us.” Mama looked into Cyril’s face and was surprised that she still loved him. She swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  Death’s pedestrian details reveal what your position is in the family constellation. As soon as Cyril stepped in, things fell into an orderly place. Of course he’d be the one to handle the details, not Mama. He was the one who knew Kimmie best. He lived with her those final five years as she evolved into the seventeen-year-old etched across our memories, the one that would be forever young and rebellious. To Mama, it was the way it should be—a father caring for his daughter.

  Watching Cyril, you could understand why he never left his wife all those years, even when Mama beckoned with his only child. He stayed married because he was ultimately a loyal man. And protective. Just to watch how he handled the funeral director was proof of that. “Don’t you try to tell me what my daughter might need,” he snapped at the man when he, businessman that he was, tried to suggest a pair of “resting slippers” with a matching shroud. And when Mama said she didn’t want to see Nolan’s black ass at the service, Cyril said, “That’s the last boy she cared something mighty about. No matter what we think of him, he ought to be there if he chooses.”

  We had no family church to fall back on, and so Cyril chose Gesu Catholic Church on Six Mile Road, because he was Catholic. We learned that Kimmie had enjoyed lighting candles in one little church near their house in Louisiana. He added personal touches to the service, with a poem by Khalil Gibran that he found in her wallet and a recording of “Bridge over Troubled Waters,” a song that reminded him of her. But it was hard without the cocoon of familiarity that other high school car deaths guarantee—no spontaneous shrines created by bereaved classmates, no long-faced teachers pointing out all her promise, no neighbors telling cute stories of watching her grow up. Kimmie had died between homes—rudderless and disconnected, just what she had been racing not to be.

  Mama stayed in her bed as I sat guard at her side. But as the funeral drew nearer, I noticed a strange thing occurring. That message to me that I was all she had faded with each encroaching hour, like a fugue, and I wasn’t sure that she’d ever spoken those words. She turned her back to the wall, as if done with me. On the morning of the service she said not a word, her face a stone. It was a necessary step, given what she had in mind. Unknowing, I stayed near, silently screaming at her to notice me.

  What got me away from Mama’s side was Aunt Essie’s suggestion that Daddy take me shopping for something new to wear to Kimmie’s funeral. “Need to get her out the house for a spell,” I heard her tell Daddy. We drove downtown to Hudson’s Department Store, where the Thanksgiving Day parade we never attended was held. I was anxious for two reasons: I knew nothing about shopping for clothes outside of a catalog, and I knew all too well the importance of dressing right for the occasion.

  Inside the store, with its perfect mannequins and bright lights and racks of clothes and white salesladies, I saw Daddy as others might—his wide, lumbering frame and frayed leather belt, his shirt growing perspiration stains like spilled motor oil under the armpits, stark against his milk chocolate skin. I rushed to make my selections quickly, raking through the clothes racks. A saleslady approached us.

  “We have some nice summer dresses on sale over against that wall,” she said, pointing behind us.

  “We not looking for summer dresses on sale,” said Daddy, in a talking-to-white-folks voice. “It’s fall now.”

  “Well.” She pursed her lips. “If I can help you with anything,” she said, dashing off.

  After walking around the girl’s department a couple times, I chose a pretty polka-dot navy blue pleated skirt with a matching jacket. The jacket had a white, wide collar, and when I tried it on it made me think of Lois Lane, reporter. Kimmie would be impressed, I thought. We took it over to the saleslady.

  “You’re a lucky little girl to have your father buy you such a nice, expensive outfit,” she said.

  Daddy grabbed my hand inside his own and said, “She has a lot of nice, expensive outfits.”

  Our saleslady looked over her eyeglasses and asked, “Will you be putting this on your Hudson’s charge card?”

  “Nope. I got the money right here,” said Daddy. “Cash and carry.”

  She rang up the sale in silence as Daddy handed over one of those one-hundred-dollar bills.

  As we were leaving, Daddy pointed to a pair of off-white shoes with black polka dots. They reminded me of a Dr. Seuss book about a leopard with multicolored spots. “You want those?” he asked.

  “Can I get them?” JC Penney’s catalog never had anything like these shoes, with their black bow and wedged heel.

  “Go find that lady, tell her we want to buy these right here,” he said, settling into one of the seats in the children’s shoe department. The chair was too small for him, and he looked stuffed into it. I found the saleslady, she helped me try on a pair, Daddy pulled out his wad of cash, paid, and within minutes we were walking out of the store—Daddy holding one moss-green Hudson’s bag while I held the other. This shopping spree inside a store was the last one I would experience for many years.

  On the Day, Aunt Essie took care of everyone, helping me dress in my new suit, tying Daddy’s one tie into a knot at his throat, and putting Mama’s dress over her head, zipping it in the back. It was the first time Aunt Essie ever pressed my hair, a ritual that I endured every week for years, until the day I shunned her hot comb for an alluring Afro. She sat me in front of her and coated my hair with Du Charm, then took the metal comb that had been heating in its own little hollow oven and straightened my hair, one section at a time. From there, she slipped smooth blue-handled hot curlers into the little oven and curled my hair, click-clicking her way through the job with precision and rhythm. That smell of hair frying has always reminded me of death.

  I was afraid to enter the church. I’d never been in one before. I stood at its threshold shivering, until Daddy prodded me along, whispering in my ear that it was okay. I remember how cavernous and ornate it was and looking nothing like the other important structures I’d been inside—the bank or the main library or the City-County Building. I assumed it was a place reserved for funerals.

  When Daddy led me to the casket, my hand in his, I looked down at Kimmie, at the wavy
hair flowing onto her shoulders, and I studied her smooth, Crayola-gold skin, her painted lips. I realized she was pretty despite her funny-colored, dancing eyes, not because of them. She was wearing her long, midnight blue dress that I so loved. Mama had let me select it. Her casket was draped in a spray of flowers, a little sash across it that read, “REST IN PEACE. YOUR LOVING FAMILY,” and I wondered about that, about how peaceful a rest death could be. I would have stood there just staring at her for a long time if Daddy hadn’t gently pulled me along. “Will we get to see her one more time?” I asked him when we were already at our seats. He didn’t answer me, just looked down into my eyes, turned, and led me back to her.

  “You can kiss her good-bye if you want,” he said. I leaned in, kissed Kimmie’s cheek. It was cold. And hard. I didn’t trust my own lips, and so I touched her face with my finger, but it was still cold and hard. I jerked my hand away. Daddy grabbed it and led me back to my seat. We passed by everyone, including Nolan, his Afro a helmet, and Rhonda with her cupped hands full of tears, and Terrance Golightly, who boldly waved when our eyes met.

  Cyril walked slowly to the front of the church and stood before us, his black suit transforming him from a confident lumberjack to a bereaved father. “I look out at all of you who didn’t know my daughter,” he said. “Maybe you knew her mother, maybe you remember her from her early days in De-troit, but you didn’t know Kimmie like I knew her. And that hurts me deeply, to think you will stand up and file out of here and not really know who she was. So I’m going to tell you a few things that mattered to her, just a few things.” He paused. “She liked that smell of sugarcane burning. And she loved the Mississippi River, everything about it. That and the big plantation houses. She just thought they were beautiful. ‘Let’s go riding by, Papa,’ she’d say. ‘I’ll show you my favorite.’ I can’t tell you how tickled she was just to do that. And when we went fishing, it was nothing for her to catch a big one and throw it back in, laughing when the fish slapped against the water, tickled at how happy it was to be free.” He shook his head. “And oh boy, that laugh. Like spring water trickling down a brook. That was some laugh.” He paused. “I think I can say without a doubt that my Sweet Pea liked it down South. And neither one of us was sure what would happen when she showed up.” He smiled at a spot above all our heads. “The way she said, ‘My papa,’ it was like a prayer to my ears. ‘My papa.’ I guess that’s the thing I’m going to miss most of all.” He stood there for a few moments looking out at something only he could see. Finally, he shrugged, as if to say: What’s the use? You could never know her as I did, so what’s the use? Then Cyril left the sanctuary, slowly walking back to his seat, sound of his cowboy boots bouncing off the vaulted ceiling.

  I sat stiffly through it all, unable to stop shivering. Daddy put his suit jacket around me. Mama’s bruised face remained hidden by a black veil, and a fringed shawl hung from her limp shoulders. Aunt Essie sat gripping a handkerchief, the tops of her support hose peeking out from the rise in her black Sunday-go-to-meeting dress. My polka-dot shoes made me dizzy, and I closed my eyes. Throughout the rest of the service, I could think about one thing and one thing only: the stillness of all that beauty.

  I found her sitting on her bed, still dressed in her black suit and black veil, which now hung like a bride’s after the kiss, away from her face. She was staring at the record player, the album from days before nestled atop it. Wanting to show an understanding of what meant a lot to her, I carefully placed the needle onto the vinyl, at the front edge of the record. But just as the needle found its groove, Mama rose and snatched the record player’s arm, the needle making an awful, screechy sound as it flew across the LP, scratching it mercilessly. Mama lifted the album and held it to her chest, rocking herself back and forth, back and forth. All at once, she moved to the open window, and with her good arm she hurled the circle of vinyl into the air, where it furled across the sky, a black Frisbee.

  I have often asked myself just what it was my mother loved so about Stevie Wonder’s music. I have tossed around many theories—that he was the perfect son she lost, that he stood for what could be full of life and visionary within a blinded, dying city, that knowing his mother lived nearby made her feel more connected to him. Maybe Cyril took her to a very early concert where Little Stevie sang and played his harmonica, and his distinctive voice forever connected her to a period of joy in her life. Perhaps it was some combination of all these things. And then again maybe it was as simple as this: my mother loved the feeling Stevie Wonder’s voice gave her, that feeling of beauty washing over her like a baptismal spray.

  She returned to the bed and lowered her head into her hands. Her body convulsed, her back so fragile and bent that I couldn’t see the stream of tears escaping through her fingers. I had not seen my mother cry since Dr. King’s assassination, but I suddenly knew that she could not be what I needed. I knew that Mama wasn’t like Aunt Essie. She wasn’t strong as an ox.

  She lay in bed after the funeral and thought about the people who would miss her. Cyril. He’d miss her, with his sloppy kisses and yummy loving, his fierce, strange loyalty. But he’d be able to live without her, just as he had all those years he refused to leave his wife. And JD? Nostalgia might make him feel sad for a little while, but he still had Rae. And what about me? She knew my attachment to Daddy would sustain me. She concluded that she was effectively alone in the world—no parents, no siblings worth knowing, just her own slender life and tiny, failed family. Death would be an exciting option in comparison—riskier and somehow more full. She thought of it as a place where all the others had gathered: her own flighty mother, her elusive father, her stillborn son, and now Kimmie. That configuration of family sounded so much more alluring. She started plotting that night and every free moment after—between the sad stares, the words of condolence, the interminable food, and Aunt Essie’s ever-presence.

  Two days later, an ambulance rushed Mama to the hospital. No one would tell me anything, not even Daddy, who simply said the funeral had “been too much on your mama.” Once the ambulance left, Aunt Essie took a plastic bag into the bathroom and one-by-one threw away all the pill bottles she found in the medicine cabinet. But I knew that wasn’t where Mama kept her cache. Her Valiums were tucked neatly in a Kleenex she kept folded in the side zipper of her pocketbook. I expected her to die in that emergency vehicle as medical technicians hovered, bruising her chest in efforts to bring her heart back. Today, all these years later, I still expect to get a call from Cyril, telling me of the accidentally lethal combination of whiskey sours and barbiturates found in her system. But because of how Mama attacked her beloved Stevie Wonder LP on that soft September day of Kimmie’s funeral, I’ll know it was no accident.

  The very night after she came home from the hospital, Mama left with Cyril. She gave me a one-arm embrace as she guided my cheek into her belly, pressing her fingertips into my back. Her eyes were dry. “Are you coming back?” I asked.

  “Not right away,” she admitted.

  My heart a laden water balloon, I begged. “Don’t go. It’s dangerous out there, on the road.”

  She took my little chin into her hand, tilted it back. “We’re flying, Rae. Flying is safe.”

  I nodded my understanding, balloon punctured, vision so watery she seemed to float.

  “Someday soon, you’ll come spend some time with me in Louisiana, okay?”

  “Okay.” I forced the tears to stay put, refusing to blink.

  She opened her purse, handed me a handkerchief. “Here,” she said. “Hold on to this for me.”

  I took the handkerchief from her, brought it to my nose. It was white with a lacy macramé trim in a soft color others called ecru. It smelled exactly like Mama, like her perfume and menthol cigarettes, and I knew I was going to save it—but not sleep with it under my pillow every night like a lovesick girl, because as she left, a kind of resolve began taking shape inside of me. A protective layer grew over my heart that night, sheer as a membrane, and I will
ed it to quickly form its own crust and harden—become my personal shield against sudden good-byes.

  In the days that followed, Aunt Essie prepared balanced meals: breakfasts with bacon and eggs and biscuits, hot lunches of soup and sandwiches, and dinners with root vegetables and tender meats. These meals we ate together at the breakfast nook, woven place mats underneath our food. It was what I’d always longed for—all of us together at the table, having a meal. Only it wasn’t the right us.

  Aunt Essie also managed to get Daddy and me to sleep upstairs, in Mama’s bedroom. She made her case to him as she stormed through the den, pushing past his protests, removing old newspapers and wiping down the TV. “It just don’t seem right to me is all, you living in this tiny room like a hard-luck drunk,” she said. “This is your house. You got four bedrooms upstairs. How come you can’t use none of ’em?”

  He resisted at first but actually seemed relieved to have a woman boss him around, take care of household things. He didn’t really care where he slept, he said, as long as his baby was beside him.

  I wished I felt the same way. Mama’s bed was so much bigger, so much firmer, and less lumpy than our den sofa bed. And yet I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the largeness of the room, nor the vast space that existed on one side of me—the side where Daddy wasn’t. It brought draftiness, and it reminded me of who was missing. Still I didn’t think he’d ever kick me out of it.

  That night, like so many others before it, I knelt beside Daddy and lay a compress across his forehead, gently applying pressure. I rubbed the back of my hand across his closed eyelids. He rolled over on his stomach. His breaths became steady. But as I began to climb into bed beside him he sat up.

  “You’ll do better now sleeping in your own bed,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Time to.”

  “Because Aunt Essie said so? What business is it of hers?”