Mama's Girl

by Daybreak Jones

  I can’t tell if she is joking or serious. She keeps her hands joined in prayer and mumbles something I can’t make out. Would the Lord smite me for what I said? Could He? And what exactly is smiting? Something did just have me dancing around like a chicken and hallucinating. It’s time to go. I need to ask Mama if I saw what I thought I saw, and I need to ask her about going to the nightclub because I definitely want to go.

  “See, that’s why you should go to the nightclub, to stop me from doing something that will get me in trouble with the Lord.”

  She stops praying, and her eyes are back on the card. It’s apparent that Edith wants to go to the club. She just needs a reason.

  “I heard on the radio that Wynton Marsalis has been playing there all week. Hearing him play would be something,” she says.

  “I’ll have my mama call your mama.”

  “My mama is too busy to care what I do. You know what? Come on by and get me if you all go. I do want to go, and I will be doing my Christian duty by keeping you away from that sinful man.”

  “Good. Let’s get out of here and go find my mama.” I stand with her assistance.

  “May?” It’s Uncle Doug in the doorway. “Your mama is in the car. Are you ready, darlin’?”

  “Yep, I’m all better.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mama is playing asleep in the front seat of Uncle Doug’s black Buick Roadmaster. She does this when she doesn’t want to talk about something, but we’re talking about this.

  “Did you see her, Mama?”

  She moans a phony sleepy response.

  “Mama!” I say louder to the back of her head.

  “What?” she snaps back.

  “Did you see her?”

  “See who?”

  “Don’t play with me, Mama. You saw her didn’t you?”

  She breathes a long breath, says nothing, and still nothing. “We will talk about it at home, you and me.”

  And I can tell she is finished with it for now.

  “Mama, you and Uncle Doug and me and Edith got invited to a jazz show tonight. And guess where it’s at?”

  “Who invited us to a show?”

  “The owner of the club, a man named Nelson Brown.”

  “Yeah, I saw him eyeing you while he was supposed to be playing for the Lord. That man has been a dog all his life. And married to a good woman, an accountant. They been together for years, got kids and grandkids, but he still sniffing around young girls. So, he’s trying to hit on my baby huh? I bet he called you ‘gorgeous’ and said you was the most beautiful woman he’d seen in ten years. Didn’t he?”

  Now how does she know that? “He said seven years.”

  Both of them start laughing in the front seat.

  “You know what, baby? We going. I would pay good money to see his face when he finds out I’m your mama.”

  I have to ask her this question: “Did you and him go out?”

  “Oh, hell no. That horn-playing man is too cheap, and he thinks he’s fine. The bowlegged joker thinks women are supposed to do for him.” She turns in her seat to face me. “But he is a very rich man, May. Much wealthier than your little bus driver friend. He has recorded albums, and he has another jazz club in Los Angeles. He drives a Bentley and lives downtown, a block away from the mayor.”

  Uncle Doug grunts, “Money ain’t everything, Gloria.” He turns the corner deep and shifts us in our seats to the right. “That man is only ten years or so younger than me, and he married.” He exhales a grunt.

  Mama turns back around and faces him. “There is a big difference in their ages, that’s true. Let me see, you’re what, twenty-three years older than me?” She places her hand on his thigh. “And, if I’m not mistaken, when you met me you had a wife, and you kept her for a number of years after you knew me, and we turned out just fine. Now, didn’t we?”

  Dang, she put him on the spot with that one, but Uncle Doug knows getting into my mama’s business is risky. He blows a breath and rolls his window down a little, letting in the brisk afternoon air.

  “Yeah, that’s true. We turnin’ out pretty good, but you didn’t have me for an uncle. If I woulda been around, I woulda run a man old as me away from you, run him clean off of the block.”

  Mama smiles big, showing most of her teeth. “Well, it’s a good thing you wasn’t around because I like how we turned out.” She leans over and kisses him on the cheek.

  “But him and her ain’t me and you, sugar. Times is different now. He is too old for her. We were the end of a time. Young women nowadays ain’t got to be bothered with no old buzzards helpin’ them to get by. Most of them makin’ more money than men anyway, gettin’ they college degrees and everythin’. How we lived ain’t how she got to leave. She smart. She gonna go to college.” He is talking to Mama, but he is looking at me in the rearview mirror, smiling and nodding his head.

  “Relax about this, Douglas. I know what’s best for my child.”

  He groans gruffly and moans. “You ain’t hearin’ me on this, woman. You always want things to go yo’ way but, like they say, it takes a village to raise a child. You got to listen to other people sometimes. And I’m right about this. He too old for her. We should be runnin’ that man away from her, not encouragin’ them to be together.”

  Mama’s thin lips have tightened, and all playfulness is gone from her face. “Are you telling me how to raise my daughter, one who is already raised? And I hope you don’t think you know what’s best for my child.”

  “Gloria, I got an opinion, and it’s my duty as a man to say somethin’ about a child bein’ raised wrong. And she ain’t grown yet.”

  “She’s the same age I was when you met me.”

  “But you had a child, and you was way more womanly than that girl.”

  “Womanly?”

  “Womanly, worldly, whatever, you was mo’ grown up than May is now. You know that.”

  The play has returned to Mama’s face. “What are you saying, Doug? That I worked my womanly ways on you?”

  “Stop that now. We talkin’ serious, and you ain’t gonna get me off the subject.”

  “Oh, stop all that fussing, Doug, and come on over here. This worldly woman has got something for you.”

  Mama tries to move in for another kiss, but he hits the brakes hard, almost making Mama and me pop up off our seats.

  “Damn, that pigeon almost flew right into the windshield,” he says.

  Mama and I are both looking out the windows for a bird. There is none in sight.

  “Pigeon my ass,” is my mama’s reply.

  Uncle Doug starts laughing.

  When I get home, I go straight to my room and reach under the bed. That’s where Mama keeps Grandma’s quilts and comforters. I pull out the big clear plastic square with the biggest quilt in it. I unzip the square and yank the quilt from it. This was the last one she made. I wrap myself in it and fall across the bed. I am asleep before I can kick off my other shoe.

  We are back at the church, Mama, Grandma, and me. We three are sitting alone on the front pew looking at the empty pulpit.

  “He won’t be with you long,” is said but none of us is speaking,

  “Enjoy this time, daughter. He has a good heart. Don’t let the lost tear you down. God’s will will be done. Hard times are ahead for you and the child. I have stayed with you both past my time, trying to make sure you could stand, but you are past being a sapling. You have to weather the winds of life. Your roots are deep, and all storms pass.

  “This place, this church, is your home as much as it is mine. Bring the child here more, and, daughter, Jesus loves you. Seek Him during and after the storms.”

  I wake to the ringing of my smart phone alarm. I had set it for three hours because I didn’t want to sleep through the night and not go to the Jazzy Blues. When I turn to toss the quilt back, I see Mama sleeping next me.

  She doesn’t look like my grandma. Papa said we look like his mama, especially me. I move closer and share the pillow wit
h her.

  Her eyebrows are thin—mine are thick—and her eyelashes are sparse. A person could sweep with mine. Every night she rolls and ties her hair no matter how tired or drunk she is. Most nights mine is all over my head, but luckily she just pressed it, so it won’t be that tangled. I’m not tender-headed anyway, but she is. I remember her eyes watering under Grandma’s comb.

  She blows a long breath, moans, and blinks open her eyes. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I answer.

  “You dreamed about her didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, we were all in the church.”

  “Who do you think the ‘he’ is?”

  “I think it’s Uncle Doug.”

  “Me too.”

  “Is he going to die or move out?”

  “I think it’s more serious than him moving out.”

  “Are you going to say anything to him?”

  “What can I say? I am going to take her advice and enjoy every day with him that I can.”

  “It seems like we should tell him something, a warning, or something?”

  “What would you warn him against? Walking outside, driving? No, it’s best for him if we say nothing.”

  “Did you see her earlier, at the church?”

  “You know I did. I have felt her all along, just like you, and now she is gone.”

  “With Papa.”

  “I hope so. What happens after people die is a mystery to me.”

  “Are you going to start going to church?”

  “We will see. And your Uncle Doug was right. Nelson is too old for you. And he was right about you. You got a lot more going for you than dating older men. You can stand on your own ten toes, and I can’t wait to see you do it, baby. No dating Nelson Brown for you, understand? Your grandmother wouldn’t like it.”

  And I do. My mama thinks I can make it in the world without doing what she did. I like that, a lot. “Yes, Mama, I do understand.” And understanding has me feeling a little grown and special to her.

  When I call Edith to tell her we are not going, I can hear in her voice that she has been crying. I put the phone on speaker because my toenail is caught on my grandma’s quilt, and I need my hands to free it without tearing my toenail or the quilt.

  “Oh, that’s okay, May. I don’t think I could have made it anyway.”

  I am tired, but something is wrong with Edith, so I ask, “You want to come over? Maybe watch some TV, and have a sleepover downstairs like we used to?”

  I can hear the sadness all in her voice. “I should come over. You know, Mooky was living here with my mama, him and Blake. She smokes crack with them. She smokes crack all day and all night, but I still try to look out for her because sometimes she’s just not right in the head. That stuff messes with her thinking.”

  “Dang.” I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I think she needs a little bit more from me than “dang.” “Come on over, Edith. Spend the night.”

  “I will be there in a couple of minutes.”

  When I look to the door, my mama is standing there looking at me. “You don’t know do you?”

  “Mmph?”

  “About Mooky and Edith?”

  “Know what, Mama?”

  “He raped her?”

  No. I would have known that. I free my toenail and look at my mama. How would she know something like that happened to my friend and I didn’t? “What?” I ask.

  “Last summer, your uncle Doug and I drove by her wandering naked in the street. She was so confused. She fought him, but Doug got her in the car, and we drove her to the hospital. She kept screaming Mooky’s name and screaming for her mother. After they got her settled at the hospital, we drove back to her house.

  “When I got to her mother’s house to tell her what happened, she was sitting up in the front room with Mooky and Blake smoking crack. She didn’t try to hide it. I told her we took Edith to the hospital because she was raped, and that woman told me Edith was putting on and wasn’t nothing really wrong with her.

  “I went back to the hospital, and I asked Edith did she want to move in with us. She said no. I left her a couple hundred dollars to stay in a hotel for a couple of days, but I don’t know what she did.”

  My mama lowers her head, turns from me, and walks away.

  * * *

  I hear Edith and my mama in the living room. They are sitting on the couch. My mama has her arms around Edith, and they are both crying.

  “She is so sick, Ms. Joyce. I pray for her all the time, but all she cares about is crack. Pastor came over and laid hands on her, but two days later she was back to smoking that stuff. I have to keep my money on me because she will take any- and everything I have, and she lets anybody in our house. Anybody. I’m scared for her. That’s way I don’t leave, but I can’t stay much longer. It’s her or me, and I don’t want to sacrifice myself for her. I don’t.”

  Edith cries some more, and I walk back to my bedroom. Edith spent the night but with Mama, not me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Early Sunday morning, standing at the kitchen sink picking greens, I don’t feel all that special. Really, the special feeling left after I mopped the bathroom floors, and took out the garbage. I saw Carlos walking back from the store with a dozen eggs. Instead of going home with the eggs, he brought them over to my house to cook while we talked.

  He loves sunny-side up runny fried eggs and toast. He likes to sop up the yoke with toast, and that is what he is doing while I am picking the greens.

  “So what did Walter’s mama say?” I ask.

  “She said the lawyer wanted five grand, but he couldn’t promise anything more than a public defender, so she is going with a public defender. She said the whole robbery attempt is on tape, and that Walter is screwed. Those were her exact words: ‘Walter is screwed.’”

  “Dang, are you going to see him?”

  “I’ma try to go tomorrow after school.”

  “Cool, I will go with you.”

  “We talked to the Ohio State people.”

  “And?”

  “My mama said everything is settled. Nothing was affected. I will be balling at Ohio State this fall.”

  “You go, boy!” I scream, and I am truly happy for him. I must be because I start crying when I am happy, and I feel the tears.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “Because I love you, stupid. And I want things to work out for you, and it looks like they are.”

  I see all his teeth because of his big smile.

  * * *

  On Monday after school, my mama will not let me go visit Walter. She says visiting men in jail shouldn’t be part of my life experience.

  “An acceptance of men who go to jail will lower your standards in men. If you start visiting jailbirds now, you will be visiting them for the rest of your life. You don’t want the negative jail atmosphere in your psyche.”

  I thought she was kidding, but I have been standing in her bedroom begging her for thirty minutes. I now see that she is serious, but I’m not really that upset about not going see Walter. I just didn’t want to leave Carlos hanging.

  Walter is nice and all, but him being gone is not a problem. He was starting to be a real pest. Besides, I used his getting locked up in a lie. I told Samuel he was my high school boyfriend, and that he didn’t have to worry about me dating him anymore. That pleased Samuel.

  I leave Mama in her room painting her toenails, and I walk to the kitchen to tell Carlos he’s going to have to go by himself. In the kitchen, Carlos is sitting at the table on his phone.

  “Are you sure? Okay, thanks for the information.” He clicks off and looks up at me and says, “You have to be twenty-one to visit or be with an adult, and you have to be on a list. Just his mama and the lawyer are on his list right now. We can’t go.”

  I sit at the table with him. “Mama wasn’t going to let me go anyway. She says visiting people in jail will affect my character.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I can’t go.”
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  “I need to get home. See ya later.” He hoists his book bag from the floor to his shoulder and exits without buttoning up his coat and with his hat in his hand. For some reason, my mind goes to Mooky while watching the door close. Dang, he’s dead. And Walter is in jail.

  I go to take a shower before work, and I get a little sick. I am throwing up when my mama comes bursting into the bathroom. She tells me, “Pregnancy is contagious. It spreads faster than the flu,” and she slams the door without saying another word.

  That kind of freaks me out, and it makes me think about my pills. I haven’t taken one in a couple of days. I peep out of the bathroom door before I exit. My mama really spooked me. In my room, I pull the pills free. I haven’t taken one in four days, dang. So, I take three.

  Edith is outside waiting so we can walk to work together. She still hasn’t told me about Mooky raping her, and I haven’t asked.

  “Hey, girl, how was school?” I ask pulling my phone out to call Samuel.

  “School was cool, but your mama and the guidance counselor are adding confusion to a simple situation. I was going to graduate and go to work, but both them are trying to convince me to go to college and become an RN as opposed to a CNA. But neither of them have to live with my mother. Today, the counselor gave me some options about living on campus right here in the city. It seems having good grades gives me choices.”

  I stop walking and dialing Samuel’s number, and I just look at my friend. “Wow, you just said a mouthful. Good grades got you choices. I need to get my butt in to see my guidance counselor and see my choices too.”

  Calling Samuel doesn’t seem that important. I put the phone back into my pocket. When we talk on the phone now, he begs for sex more than Walter ever did.

  The phone is vibrating in my coat pocket. Of course, it is a text from Samuel. He is asking me to ditch school tomorrow. I ignore it. No way I’m ditching school. I have to get in to see my guidance counselor. He sends another text.

  I love you.

  I don’t love him. He’s cool and fine, but I am thinking that there are way more cool and fine dudes out there for me to meet. Being in love is an end to all, and I am not ready to end anything. I am just getting started.