by Tiana Laveen
“His name is King.”
“How Black, tall and handsome is he?” Mama stared at the television as rings of smoke piled around her like halos from fallen angels. But how lovely she was, all the same.
“He’s tall. Muscular. Handsome as ten gorgeous men all put together. Black? Nope. His skin is white. Not snow white, more of a peachy tan color.”
“Peachy tan? Is he White?” Mom shot her a sideways look, then turned away before she could answer.
“Half Brazilian, half Irish.”
“Mmmph.” Mom groaned and turned away. She was quiet for a spell, then she bent forward to tap her ashes into an ashtray. “His mama named him King, huh? I like that name, actually. Different, but I like it.”
“I know. It’s a long story, but yeah, that’s his name. Well, I’ll call you later.” Suri opened her mother’s front door to leave.
Mama picked up her remote control and put the program on pause. “Come here.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Suri closed the door back and approached her mother. The two stared at each other a long while, before the older woman spoke.
“Suri, can I ask you a question?”
“Can I stop you?” Suri smiled.
“No, ya can’t, but you knew that already.” Mom took a long draw of her cigarette, then set it back down.
“How’d you get so brave, girl? You’re the exact opposite of me at your age. Probably why we’ve clashed so much over the years.” Suri’s heart began to race. Mom was sick, but not weak. She was haunted by her past, but still a fighter. “I mean, I’m not courageous, see?” The woman’s eyes glinted with a sheen of tears that she quickly blinked away. “Who taught you that, huh?” She really has no idea… “I’ve always admired that about you. I hated it, too, ’cause it made it hard to raise you sometimes; but baby, you’ve always had your own mind. Didn’t matter what others thought. You were so feisty as a child, I knew not to have anymore. One of you was enough. I couldn’t chance it.”
Suri chuckled and crossed her arms.
“I’m not always brave. I just know how to play the role. Sometimes, you got to fake it before you make it.”
“Hmmm! Words of wisdom. I can dig it. You inspire me, baby.” You inspire me more, Mom. “I could nevah just date whoever, no matter what, ya know?”
“And just why not?”
“Call it too much Black pride, whatever.” She shrugged then sucked her teeth. “I’ve had guys who weren’t Black that would ask me out all the time, when I still looked like something, Suri. Some of ’em were nice lookin’ too. Some had good jobs… shit like that. I just couldn’t do it.”
“Do you regret that now?”
“I think so… Actually, yeah, I do regret it, Suri. I don’t think the grass is greener on either side of the field, though. Men are men, no matter what color they come in. I know that now. But I also accept simple math. The more of somethin’ you have to choose from, the better your odds of finding someone right for you.” Mom hung her head and ate a forkful of her fried rice. “At first, I blamed it on a lack of attraction. I told myself, ain’t nothin’ more gorgeous than a Black man. And I still believe that Suri, but I knew I was using that as a scapegoat, too. An excuse.”
“Drink some of that tea.”
“No. Now, here I am, old as hell and single, and maybe, if I had let that Jewish boy take me out, or that sexy ass Dominican man drive me around town in his big ol’ car, I’d have somebody to love ’nd hold right now. Black men have told me I got too much attitude. Maybe I do.” She shrugged. “But, maybe, if I had been like my daughter and kept my options open, I coulda at least have had someone to break bread with, stargaze with, go to plays ’nd shit with, and to help me see that my attitude was small compared to my love.”
“Sometimes, Mom, when people tell us we have an attitude, that’s synonymous with having standards. Don’t apologize for it.”
“Yeah, you might be right.” Mom had a faraway gaze, as if she were looking past herself, past her own thoughts. “Suri, I’ve always been a girlfriend. Never a wife. I wanted to be married. I know you said that’s not so important to you, but for me it was.” Mom sniffed, her sad expression turning tight with anger. “So glad you didn’t set yourself up to end up like me. I like how you date Black men, Hispanic men, White men, any kinda man. You like ’em pretty though. Some of your exes were gorgeous. Not my taste. I like my men a bit more rugged, but you always had an eye for the most stunning man in the room. And you’d get ’em, too.” Mom smiled and wiped a tear from her eye.
In that moment, Mom looked so damn pretty… so vulnerable… so innocent.
“That’s because I just wanted to have sex with them, or get some free food from a fancy restaurant and then send them on their way. They completed a fantasy for me.”
“Girl!” Mom shook her head and laughed. “I could’ve done without those details. You out here tellin’ me you ho-in’ for a steak and some fries.” They both burst out laughing so hard it hurt.
“Look, I always keep a little ho in my back pocket just in case a man doesn’t wanna act right.” They hooted and hollered all over again. Suri took her mother’s hand, drawing serious. “Mom, you’re still alive. You’re as young as you tell yourself you are, and there are eighty-year-old women, right this second, falling in love.” The woman scoffed and rolled her eyes, then grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. “I’m serious.” She sat down on the couch beside her mother. “Love is blind to age. Who told you that it’s over? Who said you’re not allowed to fall in love just because you’re over fifty? NOBODY. That’s who. You told yourself that shit, Mama. Knock it off.”
Mom chuckled at her words, but she knew she wasn’t amused. She didn’t feel brave enough to stop playing those horrible tapes in her head.
“How do you do it, Suri? Teach me.” She stroked her daughter’s face. “I don’t mind admitting that I don’t know how to be like you. I… I don’t know what to do, to move past myself, ya know? I’m in my own way.”
“This is a generational curse. The ‘I can’t’ curse. Nobody can tell me I can’t do something ’cept God. That’s what you used to tell me, Mom, when I’d get down about myself, as a child, so I have no idea where this ‘I’m not brave’ stuff came from. I know this conversation has little to do with men and more to do with you.”
“You might be right about that. But still, you’re everything I had wished I could be when I was your age; and call me arrogant, but I obviously did a real good job with you. I’m patting myself on the back, a hundred damn times over. You went to school for a while. Didn’t finish, but I’m still glad you went. You did real good in high school. You have a job, your own place. A whole bunch of friends. You’re healthy and most days, you seem happy. What more can a mother ask for? So yeah, I’m definitely proud that I raised such a great girl to become such a wonderful woman.”
“As you should. And Mom, you’re not giving yourself enough credit. You showed me by example. I—” Her cellphone rang. “Hold on. This might be work wanting me to come in earlier or stay late again.” She rummaged through her bag, grabbed her phone and read a text message. Her chest seized, heated, churned. She briefly closed her eyes, gathered her composure, then let the phone slip back into her bag.
“Mom, I’ve been rambling. I have to go, but—”
“First, answer my question.” She took her mother’s hand and patted it. The lady wasn’t going to let her escape so easily.
“Mom, I was broken, like most women. There’s nothin’ different, magical or special about me. I have no top-secret manual or a telephone number for God. I’m not a wizard, witch doctor, or wise teacher. I’m just a Black woman in New York who likes pretty things, pretty places, pretty boys, and pretty daydreams that I hope to make into reality. One thing that isn’t pretty though is healing.” Mom nodded in agreement. She couldn’t recall the last time she and this woman had spoken this way. So candidly. It was refreshing, and yet, it hurt a little, too. “I looked at you su
ffering. How Grandmama messed your head up, tore up your self-esteem by telling you that you were never going to be anything, and you let her, by replaying those old tapes. She didn’t have the right to rent real estate in your head. It almost ruined your life, so much so that you believed her.
“You believed her by your choices: You accepted jobs that were beneath you. Mama, you have a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and instead of becoming a pharmacist or a teacher, or something like that, you are workin’ as a clerk for the county shuffling papers for social workers and Medicaid. Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s respectable work, but you could’ve gotten better than that. Do you know how many women have degrees in the STEM subjects? Not nearly enough!” Mom sipped on her tea, grimacing for it had to be hard to swallow with a sore throat. “Not because we don’t know the material, but we weren’t encouraged to know it.”
“That’s true. It just came to me naturally. I always loved math. I used to look forward to those classes.”
“Right. You chose men who weren’t good enough, too, and friends who didn’t deserve to lick your boot, let alone call you a pal. You taught me not by your words, but by your encouragement, your pain that you were cursed, and somebody had to break this shit once and for all. In this way, you showed me that you needed me to be different, Mom. So, I was!”
She could hear her mother breathing harder; her eyes looked moist and sad.
“No matter what I’ve said about you and to you, Suri, sometimes not the nicest things, I always, always, always wanted what was best for you.”
“I know you did, Mom. I’m your only child. A daughter. I’m a product of a man and a woman who made mistakes, but good choices, too. It’s not your fault when I make a blunder or practice bad judgment. I have to take responsibility for my present and future. I am an adult.” She patted her chest. “I can no longer blame a lack of this, or how my mom said that, or my dad didn’t do enough for how I maintain and run my life. Those are excuses because it’s easier to not deal than to heal.
“Healing requires hard truths. I make myself upset sometimes. I still do stupid shit. I’m going to keep on doing stupid shit because I’m human, and sometimes doing stupid shit is fun. Let’s just be real.” Mom smiled sadly and nodded. “But please believe me, Mom, I am healing each and every day. I have to, because if I don’t, I will be helping to create another generation in our family, through me, that will think it’s okay to pass trauma off as culture.”
A tear ran down Mom’s cheek. She turned away and shook her head.
“It’s not okay to abuse others with our art. That’s what this is all about. Our life is art. Our existence is art and science combined. We are a labor of love.”
“I wish Black people in this country would see our worth, baby. What you’re talking about hits on so many things.” Mom didn’t get to talk like this often. The woman was a bit guarded. She didn’t let people get close to her, sometimes not even her. Today, Mom had opened her window for her and she’d be damned if she didn’t crawl in that son of a bitch and make herself comfortable.
“That is what we do though, Mom—the Black community. We say the abuse we suffer and inflict on other people who look just like us is justified. It’s not. We say it’s a part of our culture. We’re conditioned to hate ourselves. It wasn’t just the White man, but someone who looks just like us taught us, too. Until I stopped blaming, passing the buck, and feeling sorry for myself, accepting my role in my own destruction, nothing changed. Yes, I blamed Daddy when I was younger for a lot of things that had gone wrong in my life. I blamed you, too. Some of it, I still blame y’all for, but how is that helping me right here, right now?” She shrugged. “Healing starts with honesty. Without it, nothing will change.”
“But how did you go about it realizing that? How did you make that change? Honestly, Suri, it was like one day, you were one way, hopeless and bitter in your teenage years, and then, another day, you woke up and threw away a bunch of things, then slowly replaced them with stuff you liked. You started saving up money, going on vacations, and learning new things. You weren’t the same angry person I once knew. It was like a light switch had been flicked. I didn’t realize until years later though: you were in a metamorphosis, and those changes were not just a phase. This was permanent.”
“I can’t tell you I had an epiphany necessarily, but I made a concerted choice. Enough was enough. Either I was going to shine and glow, love myself for who I am, embrace all of this melanin, or I was going to see myself as trash. When we treat each other and ourselves bad, we see us as garbage. I’m not trash, Mom, and you taught me that! I’m not an artist, but I am art. We’re rare paintings, Mom… There is no duplicate. No exact rendition. We’re one of a kind. What kind of creativity must God have to create all of these people all over the world, and none of them is a carbon copy of the other? None will have the exact same tastes, or personality? Even identical twins have differences. And we walk around here forgetting we’re royalty. It’s tragic!”
Her heart broke on her mother’s behalf. Why couldn’t she see how beautiful she was on the inside? A thought flooded her mind about something King had shared…
‘Art is not meant to be looked at. It’s meant to be felt. That’s why, when an artist falls in love, he tries to make a masterpiece out of the woman he makes love to. He wants to get inside… because inside is where the beauty lives…’
“We are all living art, Mama. Every human being in this crazy ass city is walking, breathing art! We were just talking about King, the guy I am dating who I hope to introduce you to soon. He’s pretty and rugged at the same time, but I digress. Anyway, I am attracted to men who are physical, spiritual, and emotional art, Mom. I met this man at a club. He drips art from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. He looks like a modern-day rendition of Jesus, and I see his soul! It looks like a shining diamond behind pitch black clouds! I can’t even explain it, but that’s the best I can come up with.” She patted her eyes. “He shows himself to me through his art, and he… he touches me deep inside my heart. But he is broken, like all the men I attract unfortunately; only, this one I refuse to fix. I believe he will fix himself. He has no choice.
“He is too headstrong and too determined to stay in this funk. So no, I fix no men. I can barely fix myself and it’s too time consuming and energy draining. On top of that, I’m too old for that shit, and also, he would refuse my assistance even if I offered. I just know that about him. He is a doer, a go-getter. He is jaded. He is hurt. He is brilliant. He is mysterious. Secretive. He is helpful and hurtful and hopeful, but a little bit in denial. And yes… I have gone too far and gotten myself into trouble. Because now I am falling so hard for him, there is no way possible to get back up.” Her voice trembled. How she hated it so.
“I know it… I know it.” Mom’s voice rattled as if she was feeling her emotions, too. “Being in love is a beautiful thing though, Suri. So happy for you, baby. This wisdom and wit you have always astounds me. You’re beautiful, like I’ve always told you. You dress how you want, wearing all these funky, strange outfits—sometimes a little too sexy, but you’ve got the body to pull it off. The hairstyles, beautiful makeup… just colorful. You’ve made me cry. You’ve brought me pain, but also plenty of joy. Even when I’d spank yo’ ass, I’d tell you that you were better than whatever behavior I was getting you for. You’d tell me that you were going to do it again, so I might as well spank you twice as hard to get you for the future offense, too.”
They both burst out laughing.
“Oh my God, I forgot about that! I did say that one time. I was horrible.”
“You were a strange, lovely, bad, crazy child. You bring up art, and you’re art, too. Definitely. Me and your father didn’t do much right. He sure as hell didn’t,” she sucked her teeth, “but when we made you, regardless of what anyone thought about it, you weren’t a mistake. I hated your father for the lies, but I thanked him for my baby and despite everything that happened, I know he loves you,
too.”
“But I’m just glad that I don’t define myself by who shows me love and who doesn’t. I define myself by whether I show myself love.” Mom looked away. “I’m serious. I have a mother who is art, but only sees herself as a scribble with no frame.” She leaned over and embraced the woman, feeling the connection that, at times, they’d lost along the way. “That’s why I feel free to date whoever I want, go wherever I wish, keep a stressful ass job that doesn’t pay me enough, but the benefits are so rewarding. I’m also trying to get a promotion, but that is beside the point right now. And that’s also why, when I get a disturbing text from someone I don’t even know, telling me, ‘Your boy is in jail for beating the shit out of his druggie brother. He can’t have dinner with you tonight. Peace.’ I plot in my head an excuse to miss work so I can see what the hell is going on…”
Suri frowned, then added, standing from the couch, “I have to go, Mom. We can talk more about this later.”
“In jail? Oh my God. He beat up his brother? I swear, you sure know how to pick them. Is everything gonna be all right?” Mom asked as she made her way back to the door and unlocked it.
“Honestly, Mom, I don’t know, but I imagine it will be. Artists are strange people, but I’m drawn to them, pardon the pun, and that will never stop.” She shrugged. “They’re my weakness. Some people hate the world, not because they find it despicable, but because they see so much of it in themselves…”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Luck of the Fuckin’ Irish
King’s shoulder muscles ached and a dull pain radiated through him as he sat in the small, cold cell. He’d been sitting so awkwardly up against the left corner wall, the one space where the nauseating stench of puke and piss didn’t overwhelm him. He pressed his palms against his forehead as he kept replaying ‘Last Stand,’ by Kwabs, in his mind. He recalled doing similar musical exercises during times of stress, becoming a human stereo. He’d always been told he had an excellent ear. He memorized lyrics easily, caught the nuances of melodies, and due to his environment and friends, as well as his mother’s love of music, this came to him naturally.
