by Pearl Cleage
Joyce was quiet for a minute. “Then we have to figure that out, too,” she said, like she was adding unemployment to her list along with teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, crack, and AIDS. I told you Joyce was an action girl. Big sister was definitely on the move.
• 5
me and joyce walked halfway around the lake this morning. She’s so busy with Imani and the Circus, sometimes I have to drag her out to walk, but it’s worth it. She’s lost some weight already and is starting to look like her old self. We took a big stick for unruly dogs, but all the ones we saw looked at us like we were crazy and kept on minding their own business.
We did pass by a great big rottweiler that we hoped was chained and who looked to be asleep.
“You just keep on sleeping,” Joyce said under her breath like if he woke up, that was going to be his ass.
I almost had a heart attack trying not to laugh out loud. I didn’t want to disturb him and have to count on Joyce to back up those wolf tickets she’d been selling.
Eddie had come by early just as I was starting out alone and he offered to stay with Imani, who was still sleeping, so Joyce could go too. When we got back, he was sitting on the top step, holding Imani against his shoulder and patting her back gently to encourage a burp. He even had a cloth diaper over his shoulder for any mishaps.
“You’re getting good at this,” I said, suddenly wishing we could have had a kid together. Eddie had a lot of daddy stuff he’d never had a chance to give anybody.
“You’re getting good at that,” he said, indicating the sweat I’d worked up walking. He assured Joyce that Imani had eaten and he had the empty bottle to prove it, so we went in to make a quick change and reconvened in the kitchen, as usual.
Eddie had been working on the plans for renovating Mack’s house. We had finally gotten everything cleared out and cleaned up and he wanted to get started on the inside. Joyce had told him generally how she saw things and given him a copy of Ten Things Every Free Woman Should Know so he could see the kinds of activities she was planning. He came back with drawings and descriptions for a flexible space that could be modified depending on what was required.
He wanted to knock out most of the walls and add a couple of skylights in the nursery area, which could be closed off completely so activity noise wouldn’t interrupt naps or bedtime when things ran long. He suggested a new stove and refrigerator since Mack’s were pretty well shot and a garden area running across the full front of the house. Mrs. Mack had been an enthusiastic gardener and the sun in that spot guaranteed bumper crops of green beans, squash, tomatoes, and collards.
He said the whole thing could be done easily within the budget we had set since the electricity and plumbing were in pretty good shape. Joyce was really excited and we were still poring over the drawings when the mailman turned his truck up into the yard and jumped out with a special-delivery letter for Joyce. She signed for it and came back in to tear it open.
She started reading and frowned. “What the hell?”
Eddie and I looked up to see what was the matter, and Joyce sat down heavily and held the letter out to me.
“She has lost her natural mind,” Joyce said. “The woman is completely out of control.”
Eddie read over my shoulder.
Dear Mrs. Mitchell:
It is with regret that I write to let you know that your request for a change of venue for the female youth activity known as the Sewing Circus must be tabled until certain questions can be cleared up to the satisfaction of our staff as well as the consultant panel which initially reviewed your grant. Although I initially indicated to you that the grant was to support your activity and was not site-specific, grave allegations have now been made by Mrs. Geraldine Anderson, who reportedly observed some activities at a recent session that are well beyond the scope of activities funded by this department and certainly not in line with the proposal you submitted to us for funding consideration.
In order to convey to you the seriousness of our concerns, let me quote the specific charge from Mrs. Anderson’s letter to us:
“Upon arriving at the church fellowship hall, to my surprise and horror, I saw Mrs. Mitchell teaching a group of young women techniques for sexually stimulating men by using hot dogs mounted on a stick. It was as if I had stumbled upon a class for concubines! Mrs. Mitchell’s defiant refusal to explain her activities to the Good Reverend’s satisfaction has resulted in her being banned from conducting any more of these shocking sessions at the New Light Baptist Church. My husband and I both felt that it was our responsibility to alert you before any more state funds are allocated for such sinful purposes.”
I will, of course, look forward to your full and complete response to these charges at your earliest convenience.
Yours sincerely,
Talbot Ames, Deputy
Commissioner for Youth
Programs, State of Michigan
• 6
joyce spent the day on the phone to the state capitol in Lansing. The reception she was getting from people who had praised her program just a few months ago was skittish at best. The conservative Christians around here have got everybody so scared of doing anything controversial that one indignant letter from an angry voter is cause for concern. When the person is a minister’s wife and sends copies to everybody from elected officials to newspaper editors and garden club presidents, alarm bells go off and any bureaucrat worthy of the name immediately activates the time-honored process of covering his ass.
Joyce was trying to exercise some kind of damage control before the ass covering shifted into high gear. Once that happened, the possibility of getting a straight answer from anybody about anything was about as good as having a whole winter up here with no snow. In other words, not a chance.
By the end of the day, Joyce figured the only thing to do was go to Lansing in the morning and meet with whoever she could find face-to-face and tell them what really happened. She also wrote a letter refuting Gerry’s version of the events in question and printed out enough copies on her computer to personally distribute them to everybody on Gerry’s list who she could find. She figured that would take her all day and into the evening, so she’d stay overnight and come back the next morning.
I walked over to Eddie’s to tell him the plan and he told me he had taken a carpentry job in Ludington that he could finish in two days if he left early and stayed overnight, so he was leaving in the morning, too. Eddie was a careful craftsman and he had all the carpentry work he wanted. People who worked with him always recommended him to other people, so he had jobs lined up as far in advance as he wanted to take them. He hadn’t gone on an overnight job in a while and I realized I was going to miss him, even for one night.
“I’ll miss you, too,” he said, pulling me over close to him and blowing out the candles so we could leave the windows uncovered while we made love.
Eddie and I decided not to try oral sex. Both of us agreed that the taste of latex is too much to deal with. We can try it later if we want to, but right now we’re going to let it slide. I never could figure out how to hold a dental dam in front of everything that has to be covered and still have any fun. It just ain’t the same thing at all.
What I’m really liking a lot is all the touching we do. When you can’t do the stuff you’ve always done, you have to get creative, and we sure do that. Eddie knows a lot about sensual massage and he can do things by stroking my calves that most men couldn’t do with full and complete access to every orifice I’ve got.
Something else I really like is that Eddie and Joyce already loved each other unconditionally, so there wasn’t any of the weirdness that usually comes when you’re integrating somebody new into your family. We’re all so close now, it’s almost incestuous.
After we made love and he was getting ready to walk me back to Joyce’s, he put his arms around me and nuzzled against my neck.
“If anybody ever asks you,” he said, “you tell them Eddie Jefferson loves him some Ava Johnson
. You hear me, girl? Tell them I love me some Ava.”
That was the first time I spent the night.
• 7
i had never kept Imani by myself. I fed her and changed her and bathed her and burped her and she continued to be my best walking partner, but this was our first overnighter.
“So how am I doing?” I asked, wrapping her in a big towel and patting her dry after an uneventful bath. She looked at me with what I chose to interpret as approval while I put lotion on her arms and legs, cornstarch on her bottom, and wiped her newly pierced ears with alcohol.
Imani came home from her last visit to the pediatrician with tiny gold earrings. So many mothers wanted pierced ears for their girl babies, and before the doctor started doing it with a one-step gun, they’d do it themselves with a needle and thread and risk injuring or infecting the baby, who probably didn’t care about earrings one way or the other but didn’t get a vote yet.
Joyce hadn’t even thought about it, and since she was legally still a temporary mother at this point, she probably didn’t have the right to do it, but when the doctor pronounced Imani right on schedule for six weeks and asked if she wanted the baby’s ears pierced, Joyce said sure.
I wiped each little bitty earlobe front and back and gently turned the earrings so they would heal correctly. The gold shone against her rosy brown complexion. She had enough hair now so that her head was covered in soft black fuzz. She had gained weight, too, and her little spindly arms and legs had rounded out nicely.
She hadn’t done any of the terrible things they warned us she might, and Joyce immediately took that to be evidence that crack babies are being unfairly maligned and can be rescued and rehabilitated through the power of love. To me, it’s apples and oranges. A lot of crack babies are angry and unhappy and damaged and probably real hard to handle. On the other hand, real love and consistent sweetness can bring out the best in anybody no matter how knocked around you’ve been. It was kind of sad, though, to think that the only thing that can save these babies is the one thing they usually can’t get anywhere close to. When I looked at Imani, I was glad we had gotten one to higher ground anyway.
“All right, miss,” I said, kissing her stomach and breathing in that well-oiled, powdery smell that surrounds babies who are being raised right. “Time for bed.”
I gave her a bottle and watched her struggle unsuccessfully to keep her eyes open. She finished her milk, burped loudly, sighed, and slept. It was a perfect moment and I just sat there looking at her for a few minutes. Maybe it was better for her not to be able to tell me the journey she took to get here. From what I already knew, it’s a miracle she made it through at all, but she damn sure did.
Thank you, Jesus/Buddah/Mother/Father/God, whoever or whatever you are. You done good.
• 8
the sound of the car in the yard woke me. Joyce and Eddie weren’t due back until tomorrow and it was still deep night from the pitch black outside the window. I had fallen asleep with Imani in my arms at sunset without turning on any lights and the house was dark, inside and out. Nobody blew the horn, but they didn’t turn the motor off either. I went over to the window, knowing that in the dark I could see out better than they could see in, and pulled back the curtain.
There in the yard was the Good Reverend’s Cadillac. Behind the wheel was Tyrone. The passenger door opened and Frank got out, pulling his girlfriend after him.
“Stop, Frankie,” she said. “This shit ain’t funny. Let’s go!”
“Ain’t nobody home,” Frank said. “You see any light on in this muthafucka? You see any cars around? You see any, Ty?”
He gestured dramatically and Tyrone laughed.
“Naw, man. I don’t see shit.”
“Let’s go, Frankie,” she said again. “This shit ain’t funny, okay?”
“You say you wanna see where the bitch live, right? This where she live.”
My heart was beating so hard, I was afraid I’d wake Imani. What the hell were they doing here? The clock on the desk said 10:30 p.m., but they sounded like they were already pretty drunk.
“Okay, this is where she live, awright? Let’s go!”
Frank grabbed her arm. “Why don’t you go on up and say hello?” He started toward the steps, puffing her along behind him.
“I thought you said ain’t nobody home,” she said, struggling against him.
He stopped abruptly and jerked her up against his chest. He had a half-empty beer bottle in his other hand, but he had no problem pinning her thin arms behind her back.
“You callin’ me a liar?”
“Ow, Frankie! You hurtin’ me! Stop it now!”
I walked down the hall as fast as I could, laid Imani down in the center of my bed, put pillows around her so she wouldn’t fall off, and opened the closet door. I heard Eddie’s voice in my head: Would you shoot somebody over Imani?
No problem, I thought. These kids are drunk and probably been smoking crack, too. I wondered where Gerry and the Rev thought their car was. I picked up the shotgun and walked back to the window.
Frank and the girl were now locked in an embrace. She was bent backwards over the hood of the car, her legs wrapped around his waist. Over his shoulder, I could see her head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut. Frank’s pants were around his knees and he was thrusting himself into the girl harder with every stroke.
Frank had left the car door open and the inside light illuminated Tyrone’s face as he gaped at the couple through the windshield like he was enjoying an X-rated, drive-in movie.
I closed my eyes, but I could hear Frank clearly.
“Yeah, bitch, come on, bitch. You such a bad-ass, shit-talking bitch, what you got to say now?”
“Take it all, baby,” she said, panting. “This ain’t nobody pussy but your pussy. Take all of it!”
Frank slowed down and looked through the glass at Tyrone. “You want some of this, Ty?” he said.
The girl sat up. “What you talkin’ about, nigga? You can’t be givin’ me to him just like that!”
“What did you just say?” Frank said, still moving against her. “Whose pussy is it?”
She didn’t say anything and he reached up and grabbed her hair, pulled her neck back hard.
“Ow, Frankie! Stop it now!”
His voice was low, ominous. “I said, whose pussy is it, bitch?”
She struggled briefly, then surrendered. “Your pussy,” she said. “It’s your pussy.”
“Goddamn right,” he said, stepping back and pulling up his pants so suddenly she would have stumbled to the ground if he hadn’t caught her. “Now, get your ass back in that car and give my boy some of my pussy before you make me mad, you stupid bitch.” And he pushed her inside the car, slammed the door, reached down to rescue his beer, and sucked it hungrily.
He leaned down to look in the window and laughed. “You the man, Ty! Ride that bitch, brother! That’s how she like it. Up the ass and shit!”
From inside the car, there was silence. Frank stood up and tipped his head back to drain the last of the beer, but he had already finished it. I hoped he’d want another one bad enough to head for wherever it was they got it from, but I underestimated the random nature of his anger. Looking around for somebody to blame for this sudden lack of available alcohol, his eyes fell on our picture window. It must have struck him as a worthy way to vent because he hurled the empty bottle through it with enough force to spray glass halfway across the room.
I stepped back quickly to avoid the fragments and took the safety off the shotgun. I could hear the panic outside immediately.
“Shit, man,” Tyrone said. “What the fuck you doin’, man? You crazy? Get in, man! Hurry up! What if they got a alarm and shit? Come on!”
I heard the car door slam and the gravel flying as Tyrone gunned the motor and took off.
I waited to be sure they were really gone and then went back to check on Imani. She was lying there in the middle of the bed where I’d left her, awake as hell, but she wasn’
t crying. I put the safety back on, put the gun back in the closet carefully, and closed the door.
It wasn’t until I picked up Imani that I realized my hands were shaking, not with fear but with frustration. I wasn’t afraid I was going to have to shoot Frank. I was sorry I hadn’t had an excuse.
• 9
eddie got back just before noon. When I told him what happened, his face went gray. He just sat there with his arm around me and Imani, not saying anything. I could feel him breathing real slow, but his arm felt like a brick around my neck. I told him the sheriff had already come by to look at the damage. I was going to wait until Joyce got back and then go into town and formally press charges.
“You don’t have to do that,” Eddie said.
I was surprised. “Don’t you think we should?”
“I can take care of it.”
“What do you mean?” I said, but I knew exactly what he meant.
He looked at me.
“He’s a kid.” I couldn’t believe I was making a case for leniency in regard to Frank, but something in Eddie’s voice, in his face, made me know what we were talking about was a permanent solution.
Eddie shook his head. “He’s going to push it and push it until he kills somebody who isn’t even a part of the game he’s playing.”
He took a deep breath. “I have taken people out because the army told me I had to so that the country could feel safe. I’ve taken people out because some coke dealer told me to so he could feel safe. I’m not going to let some hardhead come at my family so they don’t feel safe. What kind of man would that make me?”
I had never had anybody offer to kill somebody for me and it scared me a little. It wasn’t a bad feeling; just new. All the women I know talk about how black men prey on us. Almost nobody speaks on how well they protect us from anything, including themselves. Most of us don’t have much experience with that side of their natures. Eddie sounded like how I thought black men probably used to sound talking about how to handle attacks by the Klan and other renegade white folks. Did the rules change when the predator wasn’t a group of white men with hoods, but a black kid who could have been my little brother? I wasn’t sure.
