He’s fussing about the auburn color of her hair (“It was black when I married you!”), the crimson-colored polish, dark lipsticks, and the white pants she likes to wear on the weekends when the weather is warm, the ones that draw men’s eyes to her hips and hefty behind.
“White pants,” Solomon screams, “should only be worn by whores and women without children or a husband!”
“Are you calling me a whore, Solomon?”
“If the shoe fits—”
“Drop dead!” Daisy screams, and Solomon rushes to hush her. He doesn’t like scenes, hates for the children to hear them arguing, and worse even, the neighbors. Solomon casts a hesitant glance toward the doorway and then as an afterthought kicks the door shut.
“I’m leaving you, Solomon—I can’t take it anymore!”
Daisy is crying now, and Donovan can hear the dresser drawers opening and closing and the metal hangers clanging together as she rips her clothes from the closet.
“N-No, Daisy, p-p-p-p-please.”
“Uh-huh, Solomon, I’ve had enough.”
“Daisy, I just want you to stay home and behave like a wife and m-m-m-mother.”
Donovan hears his father’s stuttering, shaky voice, and he rolls his eyes.
“I—I—I l-love you, Daisy.”
“Listen to him blubbering, blubbering and stuttering like a goddamn baby,” Donovan speaks to the door. His hands are on his hips, pinching the skin there, pinching it hard so he can have an excuse for the tears that are welling up in his eyes. Elaine has moved in beside him, careful not to touch him, trying her best to imitate his stance.
“If she wants to go, I say let her go. She’s always whining about leaving, so leave already. We don’t need her. I know I don’t.” Donovan bobs his head a few times and folds his arms across his chest. “Just go so we can finally have some peace and some goddamn quiet around here,” he whispers, and quickly wipes away the tears that are moving down his cheeks.
Elaine folds her arms and bobs her head too.
“You love me? Then why can’t you trust me, Solomon? You follow me to the store; you follow me to work. You show up at the bingo hall—”
“I—I come to m-m-m-meet you because it’s late.”
“When did you become this . . . this . . . thing?”
“D-Daisy—”
“You know what the worst of it is, Solomon? Half of what you do is not even you—it’s your mother!”
“N-No I—”
“You know what, Solomon? You’re worse than a mama’s boy—”
“D-Daisy, please!”
“You’re a grammy’s boy, and that’s so much more despicable!”
“N-No, p-p-please—”
“You listen in on my phone calls, open my mail, call my girlfriends up and ask them if we went where I said we were going. I’ve had enough.”
“I—I’m s-s-s-s-s-sorry.”
“Yes, you are, Solomon.”
The door flies open, and Daisy almost walks over Donovan and Elaine.
“Go to your room,” Solomon flings over his shoulder as he hurries behind his wife.
Donovan does not obey; instead he follows his parents down the hall and to the living room where the pink suitcase still sits, packed from the last time she threatened to leave. That was yesterday.
Donovan looks down at his sister. “I hope she takes you with her. You’ll just grow up, make trouble, and leave too,” he says before he snatches Elaine’s little hand and drags her off to their bedroom.
“D-Daisy, be r-r-rrrrrreasonable,” Solomon says, and grabs her by her elbow.
“Off!” Daisy screams, and jerks away from his grasp.
There is no departing door slam or indecent last word, not even goodbye, just the sound of her blue open-toed clogs clunking off down the hallway.
After Daisy left, she came back, stayed a year, and then packed Elaine up and moved out for good.
* * *
It was summertime, and Donovan would always remember that day: the fire hydrants open and spraying, flooding the streets, black children dancing, skipping, and screaming their way through the water, the trees heavy with green leaves and the sky a calm teal, the sun a large yellow moon at the center of all of that jubilance, and him, sitting beside his father in that white, two-door, old Cadillac with the bucket seats and sunroof, the one Daisy had seen and wanted and got, just because she asked.
The one Solomon had had her name inscribed across the hood, her name with a long-stemmed rose that began at D and ended at Y. Her name that he had taken a steel wool pad to after she’d packed up and left for good, but who knows what the man had used for the rose, because the wool didn’t even bruise it.
Donovan wanted to tell his father to turn the air-conditioning on; the seats were covered in plastic, and Donovan’s T-shirt was soaked through with sweat, and his arms and bare legs were baked red by the sun.
Solomon didn’t seem to notice the heat or the sun as he sped along with one arm hanging out the window, his fingers thumping the side of the car, right hand lightly gripping the steering wheel, his eyes wet as Al Green crooned “Let’s Stay Together” from the eight-track player.
Donovan folded his arms across his chest and turned his head away in disgust. They would have to move in with Solomon’s mother, Solomon confided in him. “It’s best. Now that your mother is gone, you need some type of female handling.”
Donovan had just stared blankly at him. All his friends were here, his school was just two blocks away, and he didn’t need no damn female handling—he was practically a man!
“Oh,” Donovan said.
There wasn’t much to take, just a few bags of clothes, a clock Solomon had wanted to keep, their wedding pictures—Daisy had said she couldn’t care less about those. She would need all the furniture, though.
“All of it, Solomon. You’re moving back in with your mother—she don’t have room for it. I’m starting all over again, and there’s Elaine to think about.”
Solomon gave in. Solomon always gave in.
* * *
Edna Evans-Barrows had been lovingly referred to as Grammy since she was a child because of her wise eyes and old soul. Grammy was a tall broad woman with a sweet smile and razor-sharp tongue.
She was born and raised in Michigan, had lived in downtown Detroit for most of her life until her stepbrother Manny was killed by some jealous woman and then the riots came and everything familiar to her was either dead or burned down to the ground.
She’d met her husband, Homer Barrows, there. She’d liked the gray-green of his eyes and the way he pulled back his hand and kicked out his leg after tossing lucky sevens in the dice games he frequented behind the O Bar.
She was sixteen and Homer was twenty and not the least bit interested in marriage, but when Manny found out what they’d done in the back of his Pontiac, he hung Homer by one foot over the railing of Belle Isle Bridge and threatened to drop him if he didn’t do the right thing by Edna.
Manny said Homer had spoiled his sister. He screamed it over and over again: “You have deflowered my little Grammy!”
Homer had begged for his life, praying out loud and trying hard not piss all over himself. But there was a split second when he stopped and almost cracked a smile.
He twisted his head upward to look Manny Evans in the eye. He wanted to say, Negro, please! Your sister has had more dick than a little bit!
But he didn’t. The look said it all, and Manny uncurled one long finger from around Homer’s ankle and Homer commenced to begging for his life again.
He and Grammy were pronounced husband and wife.
By the time Manny was dead, Homer and Grammy had relocated to New York, had had three babies, and she was heavy with the fourth. He could have walked out on her then with the threat of Manny buried and decaying in a Detroit graveyard. He could have just strolled west instead of coming home from work, but Grammy had a lot of her brother’s ways in her, and had awakened him on more than one occasion with
a straight razor pressed against his throat or the .45 she kept hidden from him pushed up between his legs, and those deadly threats reminded him that home was where the heart was and had better damn well remain.
Solomon was just three months old when Homer’s courage overwhelmed him and he stood, belched, adjusted his pants about his waist, and walked away from them forever.
He died two months later, dropped dead on top of the woman he’d left Grammy for. The coroner told Grammy he was smiling when they picked him up. Grammy hadn’t even shed a tear. There were no funeral arrangements made, just Grammy and her children milling outside the crematorium as Homer’s body was burned to cinders.
She took him (what was left of him) back home to Detroit, where she dropped him, urn and all, over the side of the Belle Isle Bridge.
Grammy’s daughters, all six of them, knew the truth. They’d witnessed it. The brawling fights that left their father beaten and bruised. The late-night visits from the police, the lies Homer told about his injuries.
“Had a little too much to drink and fell down the stairs, officers.” “Walked right into that door and screamed holy hell, sir.”
Grammy just sitting there, looking as cool as ever, even offering the policemen cookies and coffee, pound cake and tea.
They knew the truth, and when Homer walked away from them, they didn’t blame him one bit but would hate him forever for leaving them behind.
There were hard times after Homer left. Hard times for the girls, but not for Solomon.
Grammy raised him on lies and nursery rhymes, filling his head with memories that belonged to some other mother, some other dead man’s wife, because the stories that Grammy shared about Homer had to have been taken straight from the Reader’s Digest periodical she subscribed to. None of what she told him about their twenty years of marriage was true.
Grammy took on two jobs to keep the bills paid, food in the refrigerator, and Solomon content. While the girls pushed cardboard into the bottom of their worn-out shoes and used rags between their legs when Grammy said there was no money for Kotex, Solomon was the only one who had two pairs of shoes and a pair of galoshes. He got a new winter coat every year and a new spring jacket every other year. No, Grammy couldn’t spare the Vaseline—Solomon had a skin condition that required that she never run out, so the girls would have to use bacon grease for their skin.
He was sickly as a child, suffering all year long with ear infections and an on-again off-again stuttering problem, anemic and weak in the eyes, wearing bifocals by the age of five.
Grammy had nursed him straight through until he was four years old.
“With all that mother’s milk, you’d think he would have been as strong as an ox,” someone had ventured.
She would have nursed him long after that for all anyone knew, but a family member visiting from Michigan had witnessed in horror Solomon traipsing over to his mother, hopping up into her lap, and shoving his hand down the neck of her blouse in search of her tit.
The relative had blinked wildly and swallowed her words along with the hot tea she was sipping until the tea was gone and all that was left were the words. She narrowed her eyes and rested a light hand on Grammy’s knee, leaned in, and remarked in a hushed tone, “Some people might see that as unnatural, Edna.”
Solomon slept alongside his mother until he was eight years old. Spooning himself into her back at night, breathing in the talcum powder scent of her skin, and moaning whenever her body eased away from him.
When he was thirteen and his limbs began to lengthen, the baby fat dropping away from his cheeks and middle section, his voice straining and cracking beneath the weight of his approaching manhood, Grammy had walked in on him unannounced and caught him touching himself, a dog-eared Cosmopolitan magazine thrown on the bed.
Grammy stood in shock for a moment, unable to close her mouth or even lift her hands to cover her eyes.
Solomon let out a groan of embarrassment and quickly tried to stuff his stiff member back into his underwear.
The seconds she stood there staring, mouth agape and hands fluttering about her waist and then finally resting on her arms, felt like hours until finally, she turned and walked out of the room.
They never spoke on the matter, and Grammy never walked in on Solomon again.
Grammy had to be mother and father to the boy, taking time off work to sit in the stands during Little League and later football. She lovingly rested ice packs on his knees when he went out for track and massaged his back when he strained his muscles from lifting the weights he’d begged her to buy him for Christmas.
When the girls started coming around, calling on the phone, leaving silly little love notes covered with hearts and kisses in her mailbox, Grammy just smiled.
She was sure it would be years before he left her, not like Homer and her daughters, in a hurry to get away from her. Grammy was sure that Solomon would be with her for a long, long time—and maybe even forever.
Daisy Watkins. Brown-skinned, skirt-too-short, perfume-too-loud Daisy. Grammy didn’t like her from the beginning. She didn’t appreciate her gap-toothed smile and freckled skin. “She must have some white in her,” Grammy said after their first meeting.
“Great-grandmother, I think,” Solomon had replied, and Grammy could have sworn he swooned when he said it.
Solomon always running up her phone bill and spending all his time up in Harlem. Harlem! Chasing behind that girl and spending his money on cards and flowers and movies.
“Niggers uptown ain’t been civilized since the Harlem Renaissance ended,” Grammy said.
Solomon just nodded his head and laughed.
“What you got on you, boy?” Grammy asked, catching him by the arm and sniffing at his neck.
“Cologne, Grammy—dang!” Solomon bellowed, and tried to pull away from her, and that’s when she saw the hickey.
“What the hell is that?” she asked, gripping him tighter and pulling him closer.
“What?”
“Don’t what me, boy!” Grammy yelled, and then pushed her index finger into the side of his neck. “This here bite mark, that’s what.”
Solomon cringed. “Ahh, that ain’t nothing,” he said, and blushed.
Grammy stepped back and folded her hands across her chest. “Ain’t she got no upbringing? No class?”
Solomon just dropped his eyes.
“A real woman, a woman with class, wouldn’t do such a thing. What’s she trying to do, mark you so everybody will know you hers?”
Solomon said nothing.
“Animals do that, not people,” Grammy said, and with that stormed out of the room.
It scared her, this woman having so much of a hold on her one and only son. The boy didn’t even walk anymore; he just floated. And every other sentence that came out of his mouth included her name. “Today Daisy and I—” “Did you know that Daisy—?” “I think that Daisy thought the same thing—”
It just made her sick. “Don’t your mind run on anything other than Daisy?” Grammy spat.
Not only was his mind running on Daisy, but his heart was wrapped all around her too.
“Marry who?” Grammy had scoffed and then laughed when Solomon sat down at the kitchen table and nervously told her of his plans. “She pregnant?” She gave the pork loin a nasty jab with the knife she was holding.
“No ma’am.” Solomon was blushing.
“Then what you need to marry her for? You’re too young, and you sure enough can’t support a family working part-time at the post office.”
Solomon swallowed hard before lifting his head, pushing out his chest, and raising his voice some: “Got notice today that I’m full-time, with a route and everything.”
Grammy jabbed the meat again. “Really?”
“Yes,” Solomon said, and his voice quaked. Grammy was handling the news all too calmly.
“And you sure she ain’t pregnant?”
“No ma’am. I mean—yes ma’am, I’m sure.”
�
�You been there, then?” Grammy said, and turned to face Solomon.
“What—? I mean, excuse me?” Solomon grimaced and his face went flat. Was his mother asking him what he thought she was asking?
“There,” she said again, and pointed the sharp tip of the blade at his crotch. “Down between her legs. Sex. You sleep with her yet?”
Solomon twisted in his chair, started to say something, but his mouth just clamped up tight.
“You gotta be the first and only one there, you know, ’cause if you the second, third, or tenth, she always going to have something to compare you to. And when things ain’t going right—and believe me, in marriage things don’t always go right—she gonna think about that one she had, the one that might still be willing to be with her.”
All the emotions that were streaking across Solomon’s face melded together in surprise and then just slid off.
Satisfied that she was gaining some headway with Solomon, making the boy think some about his decision, she smiled and turned back to the meat.
“Just so you know, it’s best if you the first ’cause if you ain’t, you already starting out on the wrong foot. Full-time work or no full-time work. A woman that’s been touched by more than one man can be a heap of trouble, and I ain’t even going to get into them nasty sex diseases . . .”
Her words went through Solomon and settled in a place that had been warm for Daisy from the first day he laid eyes on her.
And even after she gave herself to him he knew by the easy way he slid into her, the comfortable cozy feeling of her pink insides, the way she pulled him deeper and how she knew just how to touch him and where, that she had had someone else. Well, so had he.
But now Grammy made him wonder how many.
He’d had at least ten women, but that was okay for a man. That’s what men did—that’s what was expected of them, wasn’t it?
Now those thoughts, those questions Grammy had just raised, were slowly turning that warm place cold.
“I ain’t never had no other man ’sides your daddy. Not ever.” Grammy went on and on, and by the time she was done, that warm place was a block of ice.
Loving Donovan Page 7
