Like Sisters on the Homefront

by Rita Williams-Garcia

  All she could say was “I’m sorry” when Gayle informed her she was the mother. She fled, spreading her niceness elsewhere. Gayle turned to the clouds.

  4

  FLOWERED ONES. GREEN ONES. Paisley ones. Brown ones. A cello case. A birdcage. A footlocker. There. A plaid Woolworth suitcase and two A & P shopping bags joined by one of Junie’s socks.

  Ignoring what could only be looks of pity, Gayle stepped forward to gather her bags. She snickered, seeing those pitying glances dissolve to blindness as she struggled to the lounge area with her son, the shopping bags, and the suitcase. “All I need is to grow another hand,” she muttered. She dropped down in the nearest cushioned lounge seat and tapped her foot, waiting to be claimed by people she didn’t know.

  Twenty minutes passed without anyone giving her and her child a thoughtful glance.

  Maybe Uncle Luther forgot. Just as well. Then what? If they don’t show in another fifteen minutes, call Mama collect, get her credit card number, jump back on a plane.

  All Gayle knew about Mama’s people was that Mama had left them and never looked back. Gayle assumed the parting had been mutual since no one from Columbus, Georgia, had ever come to New York to visit. Instead, an envelope bearing a Georgia postmark arrived every year without Christmas seals. The card always contained Bible scripture and, at the bottom, PASTOR LUTHER GATES AND FAMILY in boxy black lettering. There was no handwritten note that said “yawl come down.” Might as well have been funeral cards.

  Gayle wrapped “bankie” around José and rested her face next to his, which made her appear to be in hiding. She was. She rocked back and forth, praying Mama’s family wouldn’t show up. It was just after six. By nine or ten o’clock a cop would discover them sleeping in the airport and order them on the next plane to New York. José squirmed in her tight embrace and cried out from hunger and restlessness. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, as she reached in her shoulder bag for his bottle. “We’ll be back home soon.” José only cared about being fed.

  “There she is! There she is!” A woman’s voice carried across the terminal and brought Gayle out of hiding.

  A big old skyscraping woman, a big-boned girl in kneesocks, and a tower of a man wearing a black suit and a joyless face came marching toward her.

  That’s them, Gayle thought. All giants like Mama. Junie s’posed to be filled out but he ain’t exactly living right. Dog. Look at them. Aiming for the ceiling. They so big. Wonder what happened to me?

  “Hello, Cousin Gayle,” spilled the big-boned girl, her face swollen with gladness.

  The man, Uncle Luther, didn’t speak at first. He bent down, picked up the shopping bags and suitcase, then stated as though it caused him immense pain, “I’m your Uncle Luther. This is my wife, Virginia, our daughter, Constance.”

  She heard him perfectly, for his meaning rose above his creeping bellow. The skyscraping woman wasn’t her aunt. The big-boned girl wasn’t her cousin. They were his family. His.

  So, the homies weren’t really down, she noted, rising from the lounge seat. Just as well, she told herself. The last thing she wanted was a bunch of strangers smothering her with hugs. What she couldn’t forgive was their indifference toward José. No one tried to pinch his fat legs or twirl his curly hair. That was also just as well because she planned to snatch her baby back if they poured it on too thick and sugary.

  With José close to her heart, Gayle followed the Gateses out to the parking lot, where the Georgia sun greeted her in all its abundance. Gayle gazed down to avoid the glare. The Gateses cast huge shadows on the gray asphalt. As if he felt her studying his shadow, Uncle Luther said, “It’s a shame Ruth Bell spent money she didn’t have sending you by airplane.”

  “No one asked her to.” It slid out naturally. One of Mama’s don’ts. Realizing the slip didn’t stop her from jumping all in it. “I’d rather gone by train or bus or not at all. Nothing ’gainst yawl. I just as soon be home.”

  The aunt and the cousin, who held hands, gave each other a squeeze and a look of disbelief while they waited for something to happen.

  Uncle Luther made a low, clicking sound like he was trying to lock his tongue deep in his throat. He swung around and dropped the bags.

  “What did you say?” His nostrils flared, jaws tightened, the bellow now a roar. “What did you say?”

  Too late to stop now, she decided. Besides, the sun was already beating her down. “I said—”

  Uncle Luther’s wife quickly stepped in, grabbing her niece by the arm. “Miss Gayle has had a long trip with no decent food, toting that baby a thousand miles. At least wait until she’s home, settled, and fed before starting in.” It was amazing. The woman’s voice played. The angry man groaned, picked up the bags, and continued.

  Constance offered Gayle a sympathetic look to soften her up. Her sympathies fell flat against the surface of pure insolence and went sliding down fast. Constance dragged on behind her parents, hurt that her cousin refused her coded friendliness.

  Gayle shot her a side glance and kept on walking.

  How can I smile at you? Smiling means we know the same things, and you don’t even know what I’m feeling. Cootie still sore from the abortion. Ears still ringing from the plane ride. Back fit to split wide open from playing the mule, but I’m s’posed to be grinning at you. . . . Ya big-boned-granny-stitched-up-white-sweater-pink-kneesock-wearing reject.

  They settled into the car. Gayle stared out of the window to avoid the back of her uncle’s head or her cousin’s simple face.

  Why couldn’t they live in Atlanta, a city thumping and jumping? All them space-age buildings with glass elevators, statues, and malls. Manhattan probably didn’t look this good.

  The highway turned into a road that took them farther away from the city down into places buses didn’t want to go. Miles of oak and pine lined both sides of the road, which was occasionally illuminated by DEER CROSSING signs and hunting regulations. Now, that’s what they need in South Jamaica, Gayle mused. Bright yellow signs that screamed PLEASE DON’T SHOOT THE PEOPLE.

  Coweta. Muscogee. Chattahoochee. Dog. They live in boonie country. Deep in the Georgia woods. Probably got a shack with an outhouse and a barn with chickens running around the front yard. I can see myself now, trooping ten miles to the well to fill the family water bucket. Shoulda conned my way back on the plane when I had the chance. No wonder Mama never found her way back home.

  Gayle shivered. She could feel her cousin’s stare. It was like the girl wanted to sniff her. Gayle closed her eyes and held José tighter.

  Mama, wherever you are, I want you to hear what I’m thinking: You ain’t won yet. No way am I staying with these dead people down in the boonies.

  After a half hour of no music, Uncle Luther making that throat-locking sound, feeling that big-boned cousin girl sniffing her out, and José’s diaper full of doody, Uncle Luther’s wife announced, “We’re home.”

  Gayle opened her eyes. “Whoa,” she moaned as they passed through a wooden gate. “Yawl live here?”

  No one replied.

  The house was old. Not old and falling apart, but grand and white with tall windows framed by black shutters, and white beams supporting its two-story porch. Like she was teaching ancient history, Uncle Luther’s wife said that the house was modeled after some Italian architecture in the 1830s, then supplied particulars about the porches and windows and the gate they had passed through.

  Gayle got out of the car with her baby.

  They got land. Lots of it. Their own land like they know God personally—no wonder that man roars like some kinda king. Got the nerve to have trees upon trees with red-yellow peaches on ’em, other trees with huge white flowers—and they black. Black like my butt, living like this. Just look. Girls at home would die if they knew. And— Oh my God! Stones and crosses way over there. Dead people planted in the yard like rutabagas. Don’t they have cemeteries in Georgia? They s’posed to! One good rain you got stiffs coming out the ground.

  Constance
noticed Gayle looking east toward the graveyard and offered to take her there. Acquaint her with the names of family members long gone.

  “Not in this lifetime,” Gayle cried, hurrying behind her aunt’s flagging pleats.

  A woman in a nurse’s uniform greeted them at the door. She took Aunt Virginia by the hand and led her into another room. Uncle Luther left the bags in the parlor and retreated into a room that opened with two doors.

  Constance picked up the bags. “I’ll show you your room. Be careful with the baby coming up the stairs.”

  “Don’t worry,” Gayle said cupping José’s head with her hand. “I got it.”

  “Him,” Constance said. “You said ‘it.’ It’s a him.”

  “That’s what I said,” Gayle fired back.

  “No, Cousin Gayle,” the girl insisted. “You called the baby ‘it.’ It’s a him. Just a small point of grammar.”

  Gayle stopped right there. “Yo look, girlie. See this diaper full of doo-doo? I’ve been changing ones like it since day one. So don’t be telling me about him and it. School’s out. Okay?”

  Now how do you like that? Got the nerve to be hurt when she the one started it.

  Gayle followed her cousin upstairs. Look at how she dresses. Kneesocks on a big girl like that. And that hairstyle. Straight out of Mommy-Made-Me magazine. And what kinda shoes are those?

  They entered a room where faded lilacs bloomed on the walls. Two long windows ushered in streams of sunlight. A mahogany crib stood next to an oversized mahogany bed. The dresser was nice, though Gayle didn’t make too big a deal. People get excited when they think they’ve done something for you. Then they don’t let you forget it.

  “Hope you like the crib,” Constance gushed like the grinning dummy Gayle knew she was. “It’s the family crib, you know. I cleaned it since I was the last to have it.”

  “A new crib woulda been nice.”

  “But, Cousin, everybody used this crib. Auntie Ruth Bell, Daddy, me, Grandpa, Great-grandpa. It’s about one hundred and twenty years old.”

  “Looks it,” Gayle snapped. “Guess it’ll do.”

  Constance chose to ignore Gayle’s remark. “Thought you’d like the quilt. Aunt Ruth Bell helped stitch it when she was a girl, but it’s Great-grandmama’s design.”

  “My mama don’t go by no Ruth Bell. She goes by Ruby. And as for this quilt . . . what yawl got against buying a brand-new one?”

  Gayle turned up her nose at all those patches. Why couldn’t they get a nice Disney quilt with Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck? Look at this old thing. All brown, beige, green, and ugly. Looks like something Mama made. No color.

  Gayle unharnessed José, who kicked her for the sheer joy of being freed. Constance stood by with an eager expression, wanting to help, but Gayle moved too fast. Besides, Constance looked like she didn’t know the first thing about changing diapers.

  “That’s your name? Constance?” Gayle asked. “They don’t call you that all day long, do they? Con-stan-suh. Hurts my throat.”

  Had she been true, homegirl would have said, “Like Gayle’s so hot.” Instead she sang cheerfully, “Everyone calls me Cookie,” which was why Gayle couldn’t like her.

  “Big girl like you. How old you?”

  “Sixteen,” Cookie said, gazing at the baby. “He’s just adorable.”

  “A real pain sometimes.”

  “Look at all of that curly hair. He should have been a girl.”

  “Don’t think I didn’t try for a girl,” Gayle said with pride. “His wife had the girl and I had Stinkbutt. Ain’t you stinky, baby?”

  “His wife? Whose wife? The baby’s father? He was married?”

  “Yeah. So?” Gayle just knew it. Cookie was poised to correct the words out her mouth.

  “Cousin Gayle, you’re only fourteen. I thought some boy did this to you.”

  “Did what to me? What are you talking about?” Gayle asked calmly.

  “Didn’t he force you or trick you?” Cookie asked.

  Gayle laughed so hard she had to swallow. “Cookie, how old are you again?”

  Cookie said sixteen.

  Gayle just shook her head and picked up the baby. Not only was Cookie big-boned like Mama and dressed for a schoolyard beating, but she was family and a reject. The girls at home would just die. The abortion, the plane ride, and now Cookie.

  5

  “DADDY NEEDS HIS PEACE AND QUIET,” Cookie said, leading Gayle and José down the winding steps. She pointed to the closed double doors. “That’s his sanctuary. Where he goes to reflect on his sermons.”

  Not fooled for a minute, Gayle coughed up a muffled laugh. The only thing Uncle Luther was reflecting on was the total sum Gayle and her baby were costing him in money and embarrassment.

  José clung to his mother, gumming her neck. “Stop!” Gayle scolded, though he continued. “I hate it when he does that.”

  She took in the whole downstairs, which included a parlor, Uncle Luther’s study, the kitchen, and an enclosed dining room, which Cookie said was used for entertaining only. Cookie pointed and noted like a wind-up tour guide: “See this clock, Cousin Gayle? You would be interested to know . . .” What Gayle knew was that this was hardly a place to feel at home in. It was a place with history mounted on the walls and furniture not meant to be disturbed by actual use.

  “Yawl got too much house,” Gayle complained. “How many people live here anyway?”

  “Just us. Mommy. Daddy. Me. Great. Just us.”

  “Great. Who that?”

  “Great-grandmama. You’ll meet her when we bring up her supper.”

  “She don’t come down to eat?”

  “Oh, no,” Cookie said, amazed that Gayle didn’t know better. “Great stays in bed. She’s going to her reward soon.”

  “Reward?”

  “Great’s ready to die,” Cookie announced cheerfully. “Definitely before summer’s out.”

  “What? Well why ain’t she in the hospital where she belong?”

  Gayle’s outburst left Cookie momentarily bewildered until she recalled her daddy saying most New Yorkers didn’t know old age. They died horrible young deaths that would forever lock them out of paradise. Why anyone—meaning Aunt Ruth Bell—would want to live and die in New York was beyond his understanding.

  They went into the kitchen, which Gayle found spacious and ridiculously well stocked like something straight out of Mama’s Better Homes and Gardens magazines, with copper pots and utensils hanging from above, a butcher-block-topped island sitting in the midst of black and white tiles, real brick walls, and varnished wood cabinets. Mama would go crazy in a big old kitchen like this instead of that turn-stove-turn-sink-turn-fridge back home. Mama was a cooking fool.

  “Come and see the pantry,” Cookie said, opening a door within the kitchen. Gayle cradled her baby protectively and poked her head in. The pantry back home was a closet, and she wasn’t letting that cousin girl push her into no dark closet. Cookie just didn’t strike Gayle as being all there. She was too quick to be hurt or happy about nothing.

  Gayle stepped inside. Two washing machines stood side by side. A huge freezer, which Cookie hefted open, was filled with meat in leg, rack, and shoulder portions—not no $3.99 fool-sized cuts wrapped in cellophane and Styrofoam. The pantry shelves were lined with mason jars and canned goods, and a whole shelf was dedicated to seasonings packed in pint-sized tin boxes. Twenty-pound sacks of rice, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, flour, sugar, salt, and charcoal stood along the wall like squat, fat men.

  No wonder these people bigger than Jack’s giant. They probably load one whole sack of sweet potatoes on they plates for supper.

  “This was Aunt Ruth Bell’s favorite place,” Cookie said. “I know she told you how she liked to hide in the pantry and concoct all kinds of wildness.”

  Gayle snorted. Whatever interest she had had in the pantry ended right there. “Listen. Just ’cause you and yo mama hold hands don’t mean me and Mama act like that, so don’t go making pictures of
me and Mama baking cobblers on Sunday.”

  Cookie led Gayle and José back to the kitchen where they could sit and talk. Aunt Virginia came into the kitchen after seeing the nurse to her car. She asked her niece how she liked her room, though it wasn’t a sincere inquiry. Before Gayle could flit her eyelids and complain about that tacky old lilac wallpaper, the hundred-year-old furniture, the drab baby quilt, and the absence of a television set in her room, her aunt said, “It was your mama’s room when she was coming up. Ruth Bell and I have been best friends since Sunday school. Couldn’t pry us apart. We were like sisters. Many a day was spent in that room plotting and carrying on.”

  Gayle gave her aunt a washed-down version of the looks she had been giving Cookie. “Sorry, Miss Aunt Virginia, I can’t picture that. You and Mama.”

  “Auntie,” the woman said, trying it out herself. “Auntie will do. Now, how’s your mother, sweetie? Is she all right?”

  “I guess.”

  “And Junior? Ruthie used to send me all of Junior’s pictures and newspaper clippings, though legs like those don’t belong in basketball shorts. Ruthie was so proud of him.”

  Gayle smirked. Let Miss Auntie fill in the blanks. Served Mama right for playing up Junie and not having nothing nice to say about Gayle. If Miss Auntie could see Junie all thin and glassy-eyed on the sofa she’d know what kinda mama Mama was and what kinda son Junie was.

  “And how are you, sweetie?” Miss Auntie whispered as if she didn’t want Cookie to hear—which was stupid because Cookie was sitting right there with ears the size of Dumbo’s. “Do you need anything, sweetie?”

  Gayle repressed a smirk, thinking, Miss Auntie, you ain’t slick and I ain’t stupid. You just wanna know about the abortion. Do I need anything? How about a one-way bus ticket to South Jamaica, New York.

  To her aunt, she crooked her neck girl-like and said, “I needs a stroller to get around. But I’m okay. Nothing hurts.”

  “You’ll find a few things in your top drawer just in case,” Miss Auntie said tenderly, setting aside Gayle’s saucy looks, her teeth sucking, her transparent, muffled laughs.