Color Me Butterfly, page 16
“Can you do my chores for me today?”
“Okay,” Lydia agreed. She went into the closet to get the vacuum cleaner and began vacuuming the floor, but Eileen motioned for her to stop.
“No, don’t vacuum,” Eileen said, holding up her hand.
Lydia turned off the vacuum and walked over to the window and pulled down the shades, shielding the room from the faint glare outside. As much as she sometimes despised her sister, it was times like this—when she looked so weak and tiny—she felt sorry for her.
Mattie’s adrenaline was elevated.
It took some willpower to stop her from going up to Roy Jr.’s school. She thought better of it; he’d have enough trouble answering to her.
After he didn’t come straight home from school, Mattie fetched her jacket and was just about to get her pocketbook when she heard his voice. She grabbed the bag with the drugs and hurried downstairs. “Boy, where have you been?”
“I was at the playground.”
“I suppose you forgot to take this with you.” Mattie took the small bag out of the pocket of her housedress and flung it on the table.
Roy Jr. froze.
“Where did you get this? Are you on drugs, boy?”
Roy Jr. was too afraid to look at his mother. “No, I ain’t on drugs,” he said in a low voice.
“Then why’d you bring this in my house?”
“Junior Youngston gave it to me.”
Mattie could sense the panic in his eyes. “You mean Gladys’s boy?”
He nodded.
“Why did he give it to you? I told y’all I don’t want y’all hangin’ around those boys.”
“I ain’t been hangin’ around him. He just gave it to me and told me to get rid of it. He wants me to sell it for him.”
“You mean to tell me you’ve been sellin’ drugs outta my house?”
“No. I told him that I didn’t want to do it,” he said too quickly.
Mattie stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at her son. “Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m gonna make sure you don’t do it anymore. We’re gonna take these drugs back to him and I’m gonna talk to Gladys about it. You come on with me,” she said, reaching for her pocketbook.
“Ma, we can’t do that,” Roy Jr. complained.
“We’re gonna see what we can’t do all right. Now I ain’t gonna tell you but one more time to get your behind out that door.”
Roy Jr.’s legs felt like lead as they walked the eight blocks to the Youngstons’ house. Along the way, he weighed his options: What his mother would do to him versus what Junior Youngston would do to him. A whooping from his mother seemed like a cakewalk compared to the whooping that Junior could lay on him.
When they arrived at the Youngstons’, Mattie knocked on the door with a force that would get a deaf man’s attention.
A young boy opened the door.
“Is Gladys home?” Mattie asked.
From the looks of them, the boy could tell this visit wasn’t a social one. He left the door open and didn’t offer to have them come inside. Mattie didn’t budge.
“Well, looka’ here,” Gladys said when she came to the door. “How you doin’, Mattie? I haven’t seen you in a long while.” Gladys was a small, frail-looking woman, not much taller than her youngest boy. She had skin the color of coffee and cream, and her face was so hard and tight you could see the crevices for each of the eleven children she raised. Her salt and pepper hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she walked like she had purpose—and could set you straight in a minute.
“I’m fine, Gladys. I came to talk to you about somethin’.”
“Well, come on in, then.” Gladys moved to the side, making way for them.
“I’m sure you know my eldest boy here,” Mattie said, getting right to it. Roy Jr. stood looking at the floor, like it held more truth than what his mother was about to say.
“Boy, you look a spittin’ image to your father,” Gladys said, smiling at him as though he were a long-lost relative and they were getting reacquainted at a family reunion.
Roy Jr.’s eyes left the floor long enough to acknowledge her.
“I came to talk to you about this.” Mattie pulled the small bag from her pocketbook. She handed the bag to Gladys. “I believe my son got it from Junior.”
Gladys took the bag and inspected it.
“Now, Gladys, you’ve known my family for a long time. Roy and your husband used to run these streets together, and you know how hard it is to raise children on your own,” Mattie said. “I have enough to worry about, and the one thing I don’t allow in my house or around my boys is drugs. As a mother, I’m sure you understand where I’m comin’ from.” Mattie’s eyes never left Gladys’s.
“You say Junior gave this to you,” Gladys said, dangling the bag toward Roy Jr.
Mattie shoved him. “Speak up, boy!”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
Gladys walked over to the stairwell and hollered up the steps. “Junior, you come on down here right now!”
Junior plummeted down the steps. He grimaced when he saw Roy Jr. and Mattie standing in their living room.
“I know you know Roy Jr., right?” Gladys said.
“Yeah, I know him,” Junior said tightly.
“Now, Mattie tells me that you gave this hea’ to Roy Jr. Is that true?” Gladys spread her hand open, revealing the small bag in her palm.
Junior looked down at his mother’s hand and then up at Roy Jr.
Roy Jr. felt queasy, refusing to return Junior’s gaze.
Gladys raised her voice. “I said, is it true?”
“Yeah, I gave it to him,” Junior answered, his words dragging.
“Didn’t I tell you that I didn’t want you messin’ round with those drugs no mo’? You gonna end up right back in that place. I thought you done learned your lesson.”
Mattie kept watching Roy Jr. She could see that he was intimidated by Junior.
“Do you have any more of this stuff in my house?” Gladys asked Junior.
“No.”
“Don’t you lie to me, boy!” Gladys said. “Now I’ma ask you one more time, and I expect you to tell me the truth.”
Junior considered his mother’s words. “I have a few more in my room,” he finally admitted.
“You go on upstairs and bring them all to me now!” Gladys said.
Junior came back down the stairs. This time he moved more like a camel whose hump was displaced. He handed four more of the same bags to his mother.
“I swear you ain’t gonna learn yet. I’ma tell you what I’m gonna do with this.” Gladys gathered the small bags in her hand. “I’ma flush every bit of it down the toilet. And if I catch any more in my house, I’ma keep on flushing. You hear me?”
“Yeah,” Junior said, barely audible.
“And I want you to stay away from Roy Jr., too.”
Junior didn’t answer his mother.
More concerned about having to face Junior at school the next day, Roy Jr. half listened to the talk that he got from his mother and John.
“You just go the other way when you see that Junior at school,” Mattie said, as if sensing his fear. “You don’t need to be afraid of him. He’s just a punk. I can tell that he barks louder than he bites. You stand up to him if he comes at you.”
Roy Jr. nodded slightly. It wasn’t only Junior he was concerned about. It was the whole Youngston bunch and all of their gang and drug-toting friends.
“Now you come on downstairs and eat something,” Mattie said.
Mattie called the other children down, too, and they all sat around the table for dinner. They could have heard a pin drop it was so quiet.
Without warning, their meal was interrupted by a loud thump and the crash of breaking glass. John and Mattie hurried into the living room. A large bat with dark scribbling on it rested on the floor. It read: You’re dead.
Mattie’s skin crawled. “That little punk,” she blurted. “He’s got some nerve throwin’ a bat through my window.”
“Ma, see. I told you we shouldn’t have gone around there. Now look what happened.” Roy Jr. shuddered, lumbering into the room.
“What do you mean we shouldn’t have gone round there? What was I supposed to do, let you sell those drugs for him?”
“You should’ve let me handle it by myself.”
“How’re you gonna handle it by yourself? You barely looked at the boy when we went around there,” Mattie said.
“But going around there only made it worse!”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna call the police and file a report,” Mattie said between set teeth.
Two hours later, the police stood in their living room.
“Unless you saw the person that threw the bat through your window, there’s really nothing we can do. If they assault you or your home again, you can call us and we’ll launch an investigation.”
Mattie grimaced. “So what you’re tellin’ me is that my son’s gonna have to get killed before y’all are gonna do something about this. Is that what you’re tellin’ me, officer?”
“We’re sorry, ma’am, but we’ve got no proof that Junior Youngston was the one that assaulted your home. We can’t go around arresting people based on hearsay.”
Mattie looked at him sharply. “Fine, then. I guess I’m gonna have to take matters into my own hands.”
“Ma’am, you don’t want to do something that’s going to make it worse off for your family. We know Junior Youngston very well. Sooner or later, he’s going to end up right back where he belongs. Just keep your family away from him.”
“How am I supposed to keep my family away from him when two of my children go to the same school as him? What am I supposed to do, take them out of school?”
“That’s not what we’re suggesting. Maybe you can go up to the school and inform the principal about what’s going on.”
Mattie thought about what the officer said. “Well, all right, then. Maybe that’s all I can do for now.” She took the card the officer handed to her.
The next morning, Mattie marched right up to Roy Jr.’s school and told the principal everything.
“We’ve been trying to get Junior and his gang out of the school,” the principal said. “He’s already on academic probation, and he’s a convicted juvenile, so I can assure you, he isn’t going to do anything on school property. He knows we’re watching him.”
Mattie felt a small surge of relief before she thanked the principal and left. She thought long and hard all day about what needed to be done. By the time she finished cleaning Mrs. Levitsky’s home, she had made up her mind. The only thing to put a stop to it was to confront Junior.
This time when Mattie and Roy Jr. went around to the Youngstons’ house, Gladys wasn’t home. Roy Jr. stood next to his mother, the sweat pouring from his forehead.
“What do you want?” Junior said when he opened the door. Three of his menacing friends stood behind him.
“I want you to leave my family alone!” Mattie said.
“I’ll leave your family alone when your son pays me back for the drugs he took from me.”
“He didn’t take any drugs from you! We gave them back to you and your mother.”
“Well, you know what happened to them, don’t you? She flushed them down the toilet, and now he owes me for them.”
“He doesn’t owe you nothin’! We returned the stuff to you, and you need to take it up with your mother.”
“My mother didn’t know nothin’ ’bout no drugs till you came struttin’ round here.”
“And I’m gonna keep on struttin’ round here until you leave my son alone.”
Junior gave Mattie a vicious look. “Well, we’ll see about that.”
“Are you threatenin’ me?” Mattie shot back, the adrenaline percolating inside of her like boiled-over coffee.
“I ain’t threatenin’ nobody. I only make promises that I keep.” Mattie saw the muscles in Junior’s jaw tighten. She tried to match his stance but was distracted by the way he peered at her son.
“All right,” Mattie finally conceded. “I’ll pay you for your petty drugs, but not because I believe you deserve it. I’m payin’ you for the sake of my son. And after today, I want you to stay away from him and my family. We don’t want nothin’ to do with your kind.”
“How you know if I want your money now? Maybe I just want to take it back in my own way.” Junior eased a switchblade out of his pocket.
At that moment, Mattie realized what her family was up against. Don’t let them take your strength. Fight back, the voice inside of her cautioned. She gave Junior an uncompromising look. “I’m gonna offer to pay you one more time. Now do you want the money or not?”
“Give me sixty dolla’s,” Junior finally said.
“Sixty dollars?” Mattie blurted. “Those drugs ain’t worth sixty dollars.”
“It’s five dolla’s for the bag he had, plus five dolla’s for the four other bags my mother flushed.”
“That’s still only twenty-five,” Mattie said.
“And it’s another twenty-five plus interest for savin’ your son’s life.”
Mattie could feel her heartbeat racing. Her veiled eyes never left Junior’s as she pulled her pocketbook from her shoulder and reached inside to take out the sixty dollars that she’d earned that day for cleaning Mrs. Levitsky’s home. “Here, take it!” She thrust the money at him. “I don’t want to see or hear that you were anywhere near my family. And if you so much as lay one finger on my son, I’m gonna see to it that you spend the rest of your life in hell!”
A few weeks later, the principal called Mattie. “The police picked Junior up this morning for a probation violation. I wanted to thank you for taking the time to come up to the school and inform us about what he’d done to your family. It’s parents like you that make it possible for us to get thugs like Junior off the streets.”
Mattie smiled when she hung up the phone. Her son was safe, and Junior Youngston was where he belonged.
But nothing could ease the disappointment and anger that Mattie felt a short time later. News that her sixteen-year-old daughter had just had a miscarriage hit her like a ton of bricks.
Mattie and John stood up and watched Eileen walk out into the hospital’s waiting area after the doctors had released her. Mattie looked at her daughter with anguish and disappointment all mixed up inside her. She was too weary to be angry, too tired to preach.
It had been one hell of a winter.
27
Mattie stood at the sink in her housecoat and slippers, cleaning collard greens. The midmorning sun glared through the kitchen window, lighting up her face like honeydew. The last few years had been heavy on her. After the Youngstons incident, and Roy Jr. had gotten a taste of earning some fast money, he decided to try and become another Junior. That choice had landed him in jail overnight and later brought him into court. The judge reduced the charges to a misdemeanor after Mattie showed up and pleaded with the judge. Later, Anthony’s grades at Southwalk started to slip after he took off his bifocals and discovered girls. Then, Eileen got pregnant again soon after her high school graduation, but fortunately she and Derrick decided to marry and they moved into a small apartment. On top of it all, Mattie had been back and forth at the hospital with Lydia, who had begun having problems after she got her period. And then they found out that Lydia wouldn’t be able to bear any children at all. And finally, Mattie felt helpless as she watched Angie’s behavior turn from odd to very strange. She was deeply concerned. She took Angie to many doctors searching for an answer, but the things they told her just didn’t add up.
Aside from all the family crises, it was mornings like this, with the smells rising from the stove and Shirley Ceasar’s sultry voice simmering in the air, that Mattie felt at peace—a kind of peace that helped her put all of her troubles on hold. She thought about John, who had been her rock, the last ounce of strength when she had no strength to give. He’d been with her through it all, oftentimes carrying the weight when she was too overwhelmed, or sad, or just plain tired.
John had gotten into the habit of handing over his paycheck to Mattie and saying: “Get the kids their school clothes,” or “Here’s a little something to put down on a new living room set,” or “Here’s this month’s rent or money to buy food.” His contribution to the family was significant, and Mattie loved him and often wondered what her life would be like without him.
A sudden ringing of the phone interrupted Mattie’s thoughts. Eileen was on the other end.
“Ma, guess what?”
“What?” Mattie asked, hoping it wasn’t yet another emergency.
“I’m at the hospital. We’re about to have the baby.”
Mattie darted over to the large calendar that she kept on the refrigerator. She searched for Eileen’s due date, which she’d circled. “Ain’t you about two or three weeks early?” she asked.
“Yes, but my water broke this morning, and I’ve been in labor for a few hours now.”
“All right, then,” Mattie said, drying her hands. “I’m gonna get John to bring me to the hospital. I should be there soon.”
“Okay, Ma.”
Mattie quickly turned off the knobs on the stove and rushed upstairs. She couldn’t wait to tell John the news.
“Hi, Ma,” Eileen said, looking young and frightened.
“How are you feeling?” Mattie asked.
Eileen patted the large mound protruding from her middle. “I’m fine, I guess. It’s very painful sometimes.”
Mattie smiled. “I know it’s painful. But that’s what having a baby is all about.”
Eileen gave her a weak smile.
Mattie, John, and Derrick stayed in the room with Eileen until it was time for her to be rolled into the delivery room.
“We’ll be right out here,” Mattie called after her. “Derrick, you let us know as soon as the baby gets here.”
Derrick nodded and walked behind Eileen’s rolling bed, looking a bit lost in it all.
Less than an hour later, Derrick emerged. “It’s a boy!” he said with excitement.
“A boy?” Mattie repeated. “You mean I have a grandson?”
