Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing Part 60

James looks wonderful in his denim s.h.i.+rt. His mother's almond-shaped eyes and my checkbones and chin combine to give his face a regal, dancing quality. But at that moment, the planes of his handsome face contorted in laughter, he has become a fine and heartbreaking mirror in which I can see all the gray hair that I no longer camouflage with black dye. I see the paunch and the wrinkles that lost me my job. I see the gla.s.sy eyes of a drinker whose wife considers him as good as dead. I see me, and realize that this dinner is a success because I feel overwhelmingly happy at the sight of all those flaws I haven't patched up. I feel like dancing.

And in my laughter, through the tears that I know are there, I try to imagine Dennis, a grown boy called Nissy, and Jackie, the unnamed costar in this family drama, dancing down Exceptional Boulevard. But here I am now in the middle of The Front Row, lifting my young almond-eyed son and pulling my youthful wife onto the table, breathing in the scenty hint of illacs, dancing a group solo to the strains of arch violins in the restaurant pavilion, then falling, to the floor, like a heavy brocade curtain, yes, indeed, falling.

Love.

BY BERTICE BERRY.

The sweet sounds of Maxwell played softly. I walked in the room and wanted to cry. I was tired, both physically and spiritually. Success is draining. Most folks looking at it from the outside can only see what they call glamour.

I made my way over to the CD player and pushed the volume b.u.t.ton to the max. I don't drink, so I needed more Maxwell. The soulful sounds dulled the pain, at least for the moment.

I imagined myself in the younger man's audience, and noticed that even in my imagination, I was the oldest person in the room. For years my biological clock had been ticking, but because of my success and the use of new technology, it had been digital, so I couldn't hear it. But now, it was flas.h.i.+ng midnight.

I watched the imaginary "other women" in my fantasy as they strolled about in antic.i.p.ation that Maxwell would notice them. "Desperation is the world's worst perfume," I thought to myself. Maxwell entered the audience, and walked over to me. "Just a while longer baby," he sang for me alone. He moved in close enough to cause the other imaginary folks to disappear, and just as his wild mane of hair brushed across my eyelashes, the telephone rang.

"Peace," I said, not meaning it.

"Hey baby. What's that loud noise I hear? Are you having a party or something?" My mother's voice was as familiar to me as my own. I could read her like a book. I could tell that things were not good, because of the effort she was putting forth at sounding happy. "Hey Mom what's wrong?"

"What makes you think something's wrong? Maybe I'm just calling to say hi, or that I love you. Did you ever think of that?", she demanded.

"You're right, Mom," I offered. I knew better, but I dared not show it. My mother had a way of making me feel guilty for the things that happened to her as a child. She was even better with events after my birth.

To make matters worse, or better, depending on which side she stood on at that moment, my mother and I had what some might call a psychic bond. I could tell when things were going wrong with her, and she with me. The only difference was in how we received the message. For me it was just a feelling. Something like a shadow would cover my mood whenever my mother experienced pain or sadness. My mother received her intuitions in a much more dramatic fas.h.i.+on; the big toe on her left foot would throb. I don't know if she ever had these feelings for my other six brothers and sisters, and I never bothered to ask. I was too afraid she would share the graphic details of all the places on her body that ached or throbbed when one of her children was in need.

"Well, I might as well tell you, cause I know you, you'll find out sooner or later. Can't keep anything from you. I never have been able to from the time you could talk, and probably before that as far as I know. G.o.d only knows what you were thinking before you could talk. Cause you know you were born with a veil, a head full of hair and a couple of teeth . . ." My mother talked on and I allowed it. As she chattered away, I reduced the volume of my now dissipated imaginary boyfriend.

"What happened to the music?" My mother asked. "That was starting to sound good. Sort of like a young Al Green. Lord, me and your Aunt T, bless her soul, used to love some Al Green." My mind flashed back to the two of them at Aunt T's dinning room table. They would get as drunk as the proverbial skunk, and Al Green's voice would croon as loud as my music had earlier.

"Sing it to me Al, yes, yes, yes, yes. G.o.d knows that man knows how to make me feel." Aunt T and mom would listen to the same song over and over. "Love and Happiness" was their song.

"Make you wanna do right, make you wanna do wrong. G.o.d knows you know all bout that, girl," Aunt T would say. My cousin and I would laugh, not understanding the pain that sat around that table.

After years of my own struggles and loneliness I had learned a few things. "You there?" I heard my mother ask. "Lord chile, I hate these new phones. Don't ever work right. I told you I should have kept my phone with the rotary. Those were some good phones. But no, you want to bring me into the future. What for? Wasn't nothing wrong with my phone. I had that phone for bout twenty-five years. This new thing aint even a year old, and it already don't work. You there? h.e.l.lo?" "I'm here Mommy," I told her. "I was just listening."

"No you wasn't," she informed me. "You were daydreaming again, weren't you? Lord chile, you got some kind of imagination. I used to get all kinds of calls from your teachers. 'She won't pay attention, she has an over active imagination.' If it wasn't one thing, it was something else."

I'd heard all of this before, but if I said that, my mother would hang up.

But not before telling me that I was sa.s.sing her, and that I thought I was too important to talk to my mother. And after all she had done for me and the other ungratefuls, as she often referred to us.

"Mom, I was daydreaming," I relinquished. "I just thinking about you and Aunt T. You two sure did love Al Green. You used to play the same songs over and over again." My mother laughed the way she always did right before she corrected me about something I thought I was sure of.

"We didn't love Al Green. True, we liked his voice, but it wasn't the man we played over and over again, it was what he was talking about. That man was a little too far on the funny side for me. But he could sing. Yes he could. I don't know what he's up to now. Every other day, he done found G.o.d, like G.o.d was lost or something. Anyway, I'm glad you think of Aunt T from time to time. That means you need some love in your life. Your Aunt T was the most loving woman G.o.d ever made, not counting me of course." She laughed her, now-you-know-I'm-lying laugh. "Aunt T could smile at vinegar and turn it into syrup. Never said a mean thing about n.o.body. If you cut her that woman would bleed love."

My mother got quiet and I knew that she was crying silently. Aunt T had done just that. Her husband of thirty years had been cheating on her from the moment they first married. One day when Aunt T got up the nerve to ask him about it, he turned crazy, as my mother called it. Uncle Charlie went into the kitchen, right past that dining room table where she and my mother had listened to AL Green, got the largest butcher knife he could find and stabbed her twenty-two times. Throughout her attack, Aunt T told Uncle Charlie that she still loved him, and there wasn't nothing that he could do about it. I try not to think of Aunt T.

"You keep on thinking about her," my mother said, confirming the connection between us. "She sure did love you, too. Besides," my mother said, sniffing, "When you think of her, you keeping her alive. She comes to you cause you need love. And before you try to get all intelligent on me, you need to go on and admit that I'm telling you the truth."

She was telling the truth, but I had no intention of admitting it.

By now, though, you know I didn't need to.

My mother dropped the subject just as easily as she had picked it up.

"Well," she said after what was for her a lengthy pause, "I should probably be asking you what's wrong. But that's not why I called. When you want to talk, you call me on your dime."

Her last comment was as absurd as most of the things that seemed to flow from her mouth. I had been paying most of my mother's bills for most of my adult life. My dime was her dime. But it never really needed to be said. I paid her bills along with my own, as if they were bills I had made. My mother was even more conscientious of my money than I was. If ever there were a need for more than the usual bills and the monthly amount that was deposited into her account, she would call. She never asked for money; she would simply talk in her, I-need-money-but-I'm-not-going-to-say-so tone.

"Life can be cruel. You know I don't like to bother you. G.o.d knows you got enough on your hands. Even without children, I know you got a lot on you." Whenever she did this, I wanted to use the line she had used on my siblings and me years before: "Signifying is worse than stealing, Mommy." I could hear myself say, but I never did. If I had, she would not be trying to have a conversation with me today. It was fine for me to think mad thoughts, but better not to say them.

"Well, as I was saying before you got me off on Aunt T, and Al Green, I called about your sister." I never had to ask which one. I had four sisters, one had pa.s.sed, two were referred to by name, and the fourth was always called "your sister."

"What has Ophelia done now, Mommy?" I asked, waiting to hear about another crazy boyfriend, or some kind of money-making scheme she was trying to pull my mother into. "Well, you know she has always been a little on the selfish side."

When it came to Ophelia, my mother was the queen of understatement. Saying that Ophelia was a little selfish would be like saying Hitler was a little mean. Ophelia thought only of herself. She was the mother of three children, and they existed only for her pleasure.

As soon as I thought of the children, I knew why my mother was calling.

"No Mom, don't tell me. She's pregnant again?" I asked expecting the worse.

"Alright, then I won't tell you," My mother said right before she hung up.

I called back immediately, knowing that I had better. Once when my mother did this, and I hadn't returned the call quickly, I was talked about for weeks. I knew this because my relatives all called to tell me how horrible I had been to my mother.

"Mom, what is she going to do?" I asked as if there hadn't been a break in the conversation.

"Well," my mother said slowly, "you know your sister. She gonna do what pleases her. Most likely that will be to have the baby. I don't know for sure, but I don't think that girl would ever think about having no abortion. I know you way more liberal than that, but well, you got your own life."

I had never discussed my false pregnancy with my mother. It happened during my marriage that lasted two years and too long. My now ex-husband decided that we didn't need children, because I was not ready for them. I agreed with him, but it was not until after we were divorced that I was glad that I had.

After the decision was made for me to have an abortion, we went to the doctor's office. Although my tests were all positive, nothing appeared on ultrasound, so I was told to come back in a month. When I did, I was informed that I had had a false pregnancy. My husband accused me of being so emotional, that I had caused a positive test.

I never told my mother, because she felt the same crazy dedication to my ex as she did for my sister.

Now, for the first time, I realized that she knew what I had been through.

"Well baby", she said, "life is funny, what's taken away from us, is always given back."

Now I knew that she was talking about me and not my sister.

"What you saying, Mom?" I braced myself for the response.

What followed was a long statement that was disguised as a question.

"You think you can take your sister's children for a while? 'Cause if you don't, child protective services are gong to take them away. And you know that no matter how hard it was on me when you were coming up, ain't none of y'all got taken or sent away from me.

So I know you gonna do the right thing 'cause it's in you to do. Plus, if you been seeing Aunt T, well then you need love, and I know for a fact that the best way to get love is to give it."

I knew that there was no way out. My mother was right and I was too tired to object. The fact of the matter was I could use the distraction. My career as a media consultant was going very well. I owned my own company, and had enough smarter-than-me types to keep things running while I took care of whatever had to be done.

"When do I need to come, Mom?" I heard myself ask.

"How soon can you get here?"

The fifteen hour drive from Chicago to Norfolk Virginia did nothing to prepare me for the mess that would become my new life.

My sister's pregnancy had been kept from me long enough for her to give birth to a bright-eyed baby girl. She'd named her Nia, which means "purpose." I didn't know if my sister knew that when she chose the name, but someone, somewhere was watching out for this child, this purpose.

I spent exactly twenty-four hours in the state of Virginia. I would have left sooner, but I had to wait for family court to open. I had already talked to my friend Bernita, a lawyer and a real sister.

"It's fine for you to play Mary Poppins for a while, but don't be stupid," she told me. "Get legal custody of them brats so you can get them on your insurance and into good schools." I didn't know until later how necessary this advice would be.

When I first laid eyes on the four children, I realized how long it had been since I had last seen them. Robert, the oldest, was now eight. The last time I'd seen him was when he was four and raising everything but heaven. The twins were now five and the newborn really was one. All I could think of was the infamous b.u.t.terfly McQueen line, "I don't know nothing 'bout birthing no babies" and I didn't. They piled into my beautiful Mercedes and it was no longer the thing of pride it had once been. It was now a kidmobile. I strapped the infant into the car seat a friend had given me, only to find out after I returned it that I had her in the car backward.

Our first night back in Chicago is what days of therapy are for. I don't know how the children survived. I bundled Nia in an electric blanket hoping to keep her warm. When she ran a fever, I called another friend, who is a doctor, and asked for help. "Calm down and take her out of the blanket," she told me when I described the child's condition. "You are baking the child."

When I put Robert in the whirlpool tub, hoping to entertain him with the jets, I was the one in for the show. He opened all of my bath salts and gels, poured them into the water, and created a upstairs full of bubbles.

The twins were no less amusing. Sometime between getting Nia back to a normal tempurature and cleaning up Robert's mess, I got a call from the doorman who said that the children I had dragged in earlier were now going up and down the elevator without a st.i.tch of clothing on. He informed me of this in his "you know we Black folks gotta stick together" tone. I thanked him for the lookout, found the boys and called the one woman that I swore I would not ask for advice: my mother.

"Hey, girl," she said, laughing. "Woooeee. You should be having a good time by now. The kids all in bed?" Since I was sure she could hear the screaming in the background, but this was her idea of torture.

"No, Mom. They are not in bed. They are right here making a mess of my once beautiful home." I don't know when I started to cry, but I could hear my mother saying something she must have heard in an old movie.

"Now, there, there," she said, trying to hold back the laughter.

"Mom, why are you laughing?" I was close to hysteria, which only made my mother laugh harder.

"Well, honey," she said in a tone that actually dripped with the stuff, "I'm laughing 'cause you getting a taste of what I went through, and what your sister has had to go through."

"Mom, with all due respect to you and my sister, I don't remember asking for children. I don't remember laying down to make any, and I don't remember anybody asking me what I wanted to do about my sister's mess. This thing was just handed to me. And it was you who did the handing."

My mother paused long enough for me to realize that I had gone too far. But she didn't say so.

"This is a hard thing that you have to do. But you are not alone. And I wasn't the one who handed this to you."

Now it was my turn to sit silently. The silence didn't last long. "Girl, this is from G.o.d. You've been chosen to bring up them kids. They are special. Just like you."

My mother hung up the phone and I never got the chance to ask her what she meant. She died that night in her sleep.

I didn't fully comprehend the things my mother said or did until after her pa.s.sing. "You never miss the water 'til the well runs dry" was one of her favorite sayings. It's a hard thing to realize that after you lose it. It was not until I became a mother that I realized how much I needed her.

There's nothing like a black funeral. You see people that you haven't seen in years. The funeral always becomes more like a reunion of the living. My mother's funeral was packed to capacity. I learned afterward that there were people in the streets. This was no small thing for Ezion Mt. Carmel Baptist Church. It held five thousand people comfortably, so there had to be at least seven thousand crammed inside. I had no idea of my mother's popularity, or of her importance to the community.

She had fed, housed, and clothed half the neighborhood at some time or another. Now I could see where my money had been going. Folks told stories of her generosity and of her ability to see to their needs long before she even asked.

"Lord, your mother was a good woman. She knew more things than them psychic folks claimed to know," one woman told me through her tears.

"She came to me and said, 'Etta, that boy of yours is in big trouble, you get him out of town and he will get right, but he needs to get away from here fast.' Now, I kinda knew what she was talking about, cause my boy was always into something, but I didn't want to let on to n.o.body that I did. I told your mamma that I ain't have no way to get my boy nowhere, and she said that she had already took care of that. She handed me a ticket and some money and told me to see him to the bus station right away.

It was a good thing, too, cause that boy had got mixed up in some drug-dealing stuff. He wasn't selling, but his boys were and it turned out that they stole somebody's money. They all end up dead, but my boy is up North working and going to school at night. She saw all that in a dream. Believe me when I tell you this, there's lot's of folks 'round here who can see, 'cause that's the kind of place that this is, but most of them won't tell you nothing without charging you and they surely wouldn't be giving you nothing to get to your good fortune. Yes Lord, your mamma was a good woman, but you know that. I just wanted to let you know what she meant to me."

She hugged me and walked of smiling like she knew something that I wasn't privy to.

For days, I got letters and visitors telling of my mother's exploits. While it told me more of the woman she was, it didn't console me. I wanted my mother back. She had left me with a task that seemed to grow with her absence.

My sister didn't bother to come to the funeral. We didn't even know where she was. She just called to say that she wanted to make sure that we knew that mom's ring was supposed to go to her. "Would you like to talk to your children?" I asked her.

"No, I have to go," she said. "They'll be alright with you. Mom said so."

Then she was gone.

The children never saw there mother again, and I only saw her to identify her body. But that's a story for another time.

I'm just telling you this right now to let you know that my mother surely did know what she was talking about.

I needed love. But it didn't come in the form of a man, at least not at first. Love for me came from the children I now call my tribe. Before them I had had no idea that love was something you show. I thought it was something that I could get. With them I learned that when you give it, you see it. It's not a feeling at all. My feelings had only led me down the road of loneliness.

I've learned something else, too. That by connecting with the thing you were made for, you open yourself to the gifts of the universe. Why am I telling you this? I think you already know.

FROM Breathing Room.

BY PATRICIA ELAM.

The cafe on Connecticut Avenue has dark walls covered with paintings by local artists. The metal tables and matching chairs have a quaint European look. Norma loves the way the windows are positioned so that sunlight has no choice but to lurch through them. The smell of ground coffee beans seems to leak from the wallpaper. Norma breathes it in like fresh air.

There are several customers eating, conversing, and reading the Sunday newspapers, more than Norma antic.i.p.ated would be here this early. Some are part of a couple or a group, others are alone. A black woman with sagging cheeks and bosom sits on a stool by the window, reading the Bible. Norma watches as steam spirals up from the woman's mug and contemplates how striking a photograph the scene would make. I'm seeing a man and he's white. No. I'm seeing somebody and he happens to be white. She might shoot the photo standing behind and to the right, capturing the black woman unaware, with the light from the window nuzzled against the woman's face. If the woman was someplace more accessible, it would be a perfect shot for her zoom lens. She loves the intimacy a zoom provides. From quite a distance away, she can zero in without having to ask permission, without the subject posing and erasing the truth of the moment.

Norma has been standing near the doorway, where the chime sounds every time someone enters. She decides to hang her coat and uses the pay phone to leave Woody a message at his office. Several weeks ago, she impulsively looked up his home phone number and was both mesmerized and repelled at seeing it there. A reminder of his other life that she's not a part of. When his voice mail picks up now, she says, "It's Norma calling on Sunday. I know you're not there, just wanted to listen to your voice even if it's only a recording. Miss you." She knows he checks his messages on the weekends, antic.i.p.ating hearing from her.

Norma selects a table against the wall to wait for Moxie. She sits and absently tucks her turtleneck into the waist of her pants. Looking up, she sees Moxie maneuvering toward the table. Her locks are wrapped with African fabric, and her cheeks appear rouged by the cold. Moxie s.h.i.+vers when she takes the seat across from Norma. "It's really chilly out there. Been here long?"

"Not long. A few minutes. It's more than chilly out," Norma says.

"Sorry I'm late. Fussing with Zadi." Moxie removes her coat and scarf and drapes them over the back of her chair.