Mama's Girl

by Daybreak Jones

  I want to ask, “Who?” so bad, but I don’t. “Did she say why?”

  “Because she doesn’t love me, and she wants to abort the baby.”

  “And how do you feel?”

  “All messed up, because I am relieved and hurt. I couldn’t suggest an abortion to her because she was always talking about how much she loved me. But now she’s saying she never really loved me, and she’s going to Princeton.”

  “Did she ask you for any money for the abortion?”

  “No. Her mother called and asked to speak to my mother, and they talked it out.”

  “You still love her?”

  “May, I don’t know how I feel.”

  * * *

  Wednesday morning, I am the only girl in computer lab, no Michelle. At lunch, Samuel sends me pictures of his ding-a-ling. I get kind of tingly looking at them. I wonder if he sends his wife these kinds of pictures and if she gets tingly looking at them.

  Samuel sends me a text: No more quickies.

  What is a quickie?

  Fast sex.

  Oh, okay.

  He sends video of his ding-a-ling. He is jacking off, and I watch as he goes to climax. He squirts all over himself, dang. I wish I was there. I am feeling way past tingly. I need to see my man.

  I keep looking at the ding-a-ling pictures all through my next class. I make myself put the phone in my locker.

  * * *

  After dinner, Samuel sends me a text, asking: Can you get out?

  How the hell does he think I can get out?

  No.

  Why?

  Because it’s a school night.

  I am taking your bus route tomorrow, fuck rehearsal.

  Okay.

  He sends another jacking-off video. I go to sleep watching the videos.

  * * *

  Thursday morning, still no Michelle in computer lab. If she were my friend, I would be worried. Between classes, I go Carlos’s locker. He is stuffing in his book bag.

  “Hey, any news on Michelle?”

  “Yep. She transferred to Princeton’s prep school in New Jersey.”

  “What?”

  “Yep, her mom told my mama last night. They are driving her up there right now.”

  I lower my voice and ask, “What about the abortion?”

  “I guess she had it. My mama thinks it’s done.”

  “Dang, I don’t think a long car ride would be recommended after that type of procedure.”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care, May. You know I took the pizza parlor job, right? And she be working the hell out of me every day after school. It is just her husband, her, her son, and me. I didn’t tell them Walter went to jail, but they never asked about him, so I guess they know. But, I am making a ton of money. Last night I made sixty dollars.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. The place is crowded every night. You should come on down.”

  “No, I’m good. Wow, Michelle just left, huh?”

  “Yep, and the baby is gone.”

  * * *

  Thursday after school, Samuel is the bus driver, and he did what my mama warned him against. He veered off the bus route to his brother’s apartment.

  It is just me and him like before, and he kisses me like before, and he holds me like before, but it isn’t like before. I barely shiver from the inside out. He seems just as satisfied though, but I’m not.

  “Are you okay, babe?” he asks with his head on the pillow with me.

  I look at him, and I am not thrilled.

  His phone rings, and he jumps out of bed to take the call. I dress while he talks. I can hear a woman’s voice. And he’s lying about where he is. I am guessing it is his wife.

  On Friday, he doesn’t call me and I don’t call him. I delete all the pictures and videos of his ding-a-ling from my phone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Saturday, at Mooky’s funeral, everybody is sad not for him, but for his mama. None of the people in attendance have really viewed his body. Everyone walks up the middle aisle, quickly peeps into the gray casket at Mooky in his purple suit lying on sky blue pillows, and then they proceed to Ms. Holden.

  She said that the purple suit was his favorite, but it is still a painful fashion sight on those sky blue pillows. If I were sitting next to Edith or Carlos, that color catastrophe would be discussed, at a funeral or not. Sitting next to Ms. Holden, I notice that people are here to pay their respects to the mama, not the dead son, and I think that’s sad.

  Every life deserves some type of recognition when it’s over. The least folks could do is stop at his casket. I don’t think a quick pass by is right. Mooky lived a life, and his life was worth a pause at his remains.

  The saxophone is the only instrument playing, and the choir is softly humming. I recognize the melody, but the name of the song will not come to mind. Ms. Holden is humming the melody with the choir. The saxophone player stands, walks past the drummer, and faces us in the front row. The notes are soothing. I hope Ms. Holden finds comfort in the music.

  Last night she called Carlos, Edith, and me and requested that the three of us ride in the family limo with her. “The only real family I had up here was that boy, and now he’s gone. I need you kids tomorrow. I need y’all close to me.” We all agreed. How could we not?

  This is the third time I have sat in the front row at Miles Temple CME Church, and neither time has it felt like an honor. I remember Grandma telling me the front row was for church leaders and visiting dignitaries. The only dignitary in the row today is Ms. Holden. She is special to everybody in the neighborhood. She has closed her eyes and is slowing rocking to the music of the saxophone player. He is soothing her.

  Papa used to say, “That Ms. Holden will give anybody in need the shirt off her back,” and he wasn’t exaggerating. Ms. Holden is known to give people the food off of her stove. I have seen her taking breakfast and dinner to sick people on the block. She is always helping older people get to the store, and she goes over to help young mothers when they come home from the hospital.

  While Mama was doing my hair this morning, she told me that Ms. Holden was a midwife down South, but once she came up here, she got a job as an inspector with the city’s health department and retired from that. Ms. Holden and my grandma were friends. She has been over a couple times since my grandparents died, usually around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Mama is respectful toward her but not friendly. She calls her “an old busybody” and says she’s nosey, but when Mama had walking pneumonia, it was Ms. Holden who came down the block with teas, herbs, moldy bread, oranges, and garlic that got her better.

  I don’t think either Mama or me has been in Miles Temple since my grandma’s funeral. This was her church, and we went with her. She sat five pews back on the corner. I can’t recall her missing a Sunday. I truly feel sad for Ms. Holden’s loss, but I am happy to be in Grandma’s church again. Maybe I’ll start attending service once in a while. I haven’t worn my Sunday dresses in a long time.

  Dressing up for church was fun. Mama, Grandma, and me would get really sharp. Grandma would remind me that going to church wasn’t about the dressing up: “We are going to praise Him and let Him know we love Him, and to be dutiful in this Christian life.” I went to dress up, and I think Mama went for the same reason as me. Papa would whistle at us as we left him sitting on the back steps or at the kitchen table with his coffee and toasted onion roll.

  Today, Edith is the one who is sharp. I have to hand it to her. She looks regal in her black dress, pearls, stockings, and heels, but she always wears the right thing at the right time. I have on a black dress but no pearls, and I am wearing flats. My hair is curled with a hanging twist, but Edith’s short-cut waves with longer curls on the top is classier. She looks grown.

  Carlos has on a black suit with a white shirt and a yellow tie. Ms. Carol must have matched up the outfit for him because Carlos would not have worn a tie. She’s clean too, sitting behind us in a two-piece black suit with a lace charcoal gray blo
use.

  Sitting next to Ms. Holden, I can tell she is overtaken by her grief, and she is hurting. She hasn’t stopped wiping away tears since we sat down. I have been holding her hand and nodding my head with her. The only thing I can think to say is, “He loved you, Ms. Holden. He really did.”

  “I know, child,” is her answer, but her eyes remain tearful despite the saxophone player’s soothing. I guess nothing short of Mooky getting up out of that casket would really ease her pain.

  “You kids got to get out of this city, go away to school, get your degrees, and then come back if you want. Staying here ain’t good for y’all. The streets will pull you down. Y’all promise me y’all gonna go away to school. Promise me right now.”

  She is looking down the pew at each of us. I see that her mascara has run and made dark lines on her fudge-colored cheeks. The crying and tears have turned her eyes into peppermint, and the pink stripes are taking over the white. I want to tell her to wipe her nose, but I don’t want to embarrass her.

  We are all high-school seniors, and I think the only person who has concrete plans of going away to school is Carlos, but we each answer, “Yes, ma’am, I am going away. I promise.”

  She looks each of us in the face and says, “I’m holding you to it. Carlos, Edith, and May, each of you have sat in the house of God and made a promise to go away to school. And y’all better keep it, and get out of this neighborhood before the streets do to you what they did to my Mooky. Don’t think it can’t happen to y’all, because it can. He wasn’t the best boy, but he wasn’t the worst. A little bad turned a lot bad out there on those streets. He wasn’t an angel. Lord, I know that, but he was mine. Mine. My baby is gone. Mine. My baby boy, my only child, is gone.”

  She’s talking loud now, almost screaming, and I don’t know what to do to calm her down.

  “Why, Lord, why? He woulda changed, he really woulda changed, Lord. He was tryin’, Lord. You coulda given him mo’ time, Lord. You coulda!”

  She is no longer looking at us or holding my hand. She is hugging herself and rocking back and forth. The saxophone gets louder. Ms. Carol comes to her and wraps her arms around her. I move down the pew allowing her to sit next to Ms. Holden. Looking at both of them, I can tell Ms. Carol’s hug is one of restraint more than comfort. Ms. Holden wants to stand and scream out.

  “His daddy died the same way, Lord. Shot down by the police. You coulda spared the son, Lord. You coulda spared my son, Lord!”

  Ms. Holden breaks free of Ms. Carol’s hugs and reaches her arms to the heavens. She hangs her head and wails a sorrowful moan that rips through me, and, now, I am crying.

  I’m thinking about the big boy Mooky: the one who buried my dead hamster in the backyard and had church service for her; the one who taught Carlos how to ride a bike; the one who beat up the boy who popped my training bra strap at the park. Mooky was the big boy on the block who looked out for us little kids.

  That Mooky is dead too. I had forgotten that Mooky until his mama’s cry shook him loose in my mind. Mooky was more to me than the addict thug he had become. I stand with his mama and cry.

  The melody is from the song “Jesus Be a Fence Around Me.” The choir is singing it now. I walk to the casket and look at Mooky. I see the boy he was. I see his mama’s son. And, yes, he will be missed. I too start to sing the song: “‘This is my prayer I pray each and every day. That you will guide my footsteps lest I stumble and stray.’”

  The church is vibrating with the chorus. The choir and the people in the pews are loudly singing the song. “Yes, Lord!” reverberates off the walls and ceiling.

  Suddenly I feel off-balance, not centered. I move away from the casket before I topple it over. I want to sit down, but I don’t think I can take a sure step backward or forward. A coldness is around me. I wrap my arms around myself from the chill. My teeth are chattering.

  “Yes, Lord!” I sing with everyone else in the church.

  I turn around to look for my mama, and I spot her and Uncle Doug about eight pews back, but in the fifth row, sitting on the corner, it looks like . . .

  “‘Jesus, I want you to protect me as I travel along the way.’” The choir, the people, and I sound like one voice.

  “‘Yes, Lord, I know you can, yes, Lord,’” the one voice of the church screams.

  I blink my eyes closed and hold them closed. Who I thought I saw couldn’t be.

  When I open them, she’s still there nodding her head to the time of the music. She is wearing her yellow and gold Sunday hat with her Saint’s Day white dress on. She smiles at me.

  “Yes, Lord!” shakes the pews. The drums, the drums, the one voice and the drums are all I hear.

  When I look again to my mama, she’s looking at her too. My mama stands and stretches her arm high. “Yes, Lord!” she screams within the one voice.

  I feel light in the head and feet. I feel my feet stomping the floor. The voice of the church and the beat of the drums are moving all through me. “Yes, Lord!” is my scream. My feet are moving, but not by my command. None of these steps I know.

  My grandma is beside me. My mama comes down to us, and we three are together. My mama is holding me tight, but my arms are raised high.

  “Don’t leave us!” Mama screams but Grandma rises above us, above the choir, and her arms reach to Ms. Holden, who doesn’t seem to see her, and then she’s gone. I can barely breathe, and I’ve gone from cold to hot. I am so hot now that sweat has drenched me. My feet are still dancing.

  Mama is dancing with me. Her hands are on my shoulders and mine are on hers, our feet stomping to the beat of the drums. Every bang, every boom, is a step. I look up, and I see wooden rafters are bending. I want to float high. I want to go with Grandma. I’m jumping now, jumping as high as I can but I can’t stay up. I can’t fly. The floor becomes the ceiling, and I am rolling on it to my mama’s feet. I grab her legs and cry out for my grandma.

  * * *

  I come to in the pastor’s office. Carlos and I were brought here when we were kids because both of us had taken money out of the collection plates on Youth Day. We were passing the plates among the congregation, and when the time came to dump the plates into the larger basket, he kept a little, and I kept a little. The funny part was he was on one side of the church and I was on the other. We didn’t influence each other, but we committed the same act. The grownups didn’t find the act funny. We were both spanked right here in the pastor’s office by Grandma.

  “May, you were Holy Ghost filled!”

  It’s Edith fanning me. I am stretched on the pastor’s marshmallow white leather couch.

  “The whole church was in the spirit. Even your mama got happy. People who have never felt the spirit got filled today. Reverend is still bringing in new sheep to his flock. Six people joined. That has never happened at a funeral I went to before.”

  I sit up a little and brush at my skirt. “The funeral is still going on? How long have I been in here?”

  A heavy throat clearing is heard. “I don’t know if you will call it a funeral anymore. It’s church going on down there.” It’s a man’s voice.

  I sit all the way up, and standing in the doorway is the saxophone player.

  “I am glad to see you are okay. I was worried about you, gorgeous. Seldom do I play churches, so you kind of shocked me passing out like that from the music.”

  Edith blows a long breath and smacks her gloss-covered lips. She stops fanning me and turns her attention to the saxophone player in the doorway. “It wasn’t the music. It was the Holy Ghost. The music called the Spirit, and once He came people got happy,” Edith answers as if she is talking to an ignorant heathen.

  “Okay,” he agrees with a shrug of his broad shoulders. To me, he says, “But how are you doing, gorgeous?”

  He says “gorgeous” like it’s my name and I am titillated by the sound of it. He has a gray and black ponytail that hangs over his left shoulder, and the end is tied with blue beads. He has light brown walnut-colored eyes
and a long, narrow nose and thin lips. If not for his skin matching his eyes, his face would look like a white man’s. He has what Mama calls European features.

  “My name is May. May Diane Joyce.”

  “Please to meet you, May. But you are gorgeous. The finest woman I seen in seven years.”

  Why would a man with European features find my full lips and broad nose gorgeous? Mama says Mississippi is all over my face despite my complexion.

  “May ain’t a woman. She’s seventeen and still in high school. You better leave. This is a church.”

  He adjusts the shoulder strap of the black case on his shoulder and says, “I am leaving. I just stopped by to check on her.” He steps into the office and hands me his card. “Give me a call this evening. I would like to invite you to a show at my club.”

  “Your club?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I own the Jazzy Blues.”

  “On Halsted? My mama goes to that club.”

  “Good, bring her too. I would love to see the woman who created such beauty. See you tonight,” he says with a nod. He turns and leaves.

  “That man was trying to get with you in a church,” Edith says sitting next to me on the couch. She is looking at his card with interest and touches it. “It’s printed on silk or something. ‘Nelson Brown, Proprietor.’ Do you think he really owns it? Anita Baker sang there. So did Sade, and Patti Austin. All the jazz singers go to that club.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I love jazz.”

  “You want to go with me if Mama takes me?”

  “Girl, I do. But, that man tried to get with you in church. He’s got the devil in him. I can’t go.”

  “Correction: he did get with me in church, and, girl, did you see that he was bowlegged?”

  “No. I saw that he is old as black pepper, and he was wearing a wedding band. That’s what I saw.”

  “He’s not that old. I doubt that he’s forty, but he sure can play that saxophone. I read that musicians and artists are sensual lovers because they are so in touch with their creative selves.”

  “May! He had on a wedding ring, and you are in church. You were just filled with the Holy Spirit.” She puts her hands together in prayer and says, “Lord, she don’t know what she’s saying. Please don’t smite her.”