Mama, page 2
Mildred curled up into a tight knot and tried to find a spot that would shelter her from Crook. She hoped he would fall asleep, but he reached over and turned on the TV. Mildred crept out the end of the bed and put on a slip.
"Where you going?" he asked.
"To the bathroom," she said. She closed the door behind her and headed straight for the kitchen, tiptoed around the broken glass, and opened the oven. She yanked the black skillet out and slung the grease into the sink. Crook heard her and came into the dining room to see what she was doing. Before he knew what was happening, Mildred raised the heavy pan into the air and charged into him, hitting him on the forehead with a loud throng. Blood ran down over his eye and he grabbed her and pushed her back into the bedroom. The kids heard them bumping into the wall for what seemed like forever and then they heard nothing at all.
Freda hushed the girls and made them huddle under a flimsy flannel blanket on the bottom bunk bed. "Shut up, before they hear us and we'll be next," she whispered loudly. She tried to comfort the two youngest, Angel and Doll, by wrapping them inside her skinny arms, but it was no use. They couldn't stop crying. Since Freda was the oldest, she felt it was her place to act like an adult, but soon she started to cry too. None of them understood any of this, but when they heard the mattress squeaking, they knew what was happening.
Money ran from his room into Freda's. They all sat on the cold metal edge of the bed where the mattress didn't touch, sniffling, listening. They waited patiently, hoping that after five or ten minutes all they would hear would be Crook's snoring. They prayed that they could all finally go to sleep. But just when they had settled into the rhythm of silence—the humming of the refrigerator, the cars passing on Twenty-fourth Street, Prince yawning on the back porch—their parents' moans and groans would erupt again and poison the peace.
When Money couldn't stand it any more, he tiptoed back to his room. He flipped over his mattress, because the fighting always made him lose control of his bladder. He would say his prayers extra hard and swear that when he got older and got married he would never beat his wife, he wouldn't care what she did. He would leave first.
The girls slid into their respective bunks and lay there, not moving to scratch or even twitch. They tried to inch into their separate dreams but the sound of creaking grew louder and louder, then faster and faster.
"Why they try to kill each other, then do the nasty?" Bootsey asked Freda.
"Mama don't like doing it," Freda explained. "She only doing it so Daddy won't hit her no more."
"Sound like she like it to me. It's taking forever," said Bootsey. Angel and Doll didn't know what they were talking about.
"Just go to sleep," Freda said. And pretty soon the noises stopped and their eyelids drooped and they fell asleep.
The kids were already on the sun porch watching Saturday morning cartoons when Mildred emerged from the bedroom. She had a diaper tied around her head and a new layer of pan-cake makeup on to camouflage the swelling. The kids didn't say anything about the purple patch of skin beneath her eye or her swollen lip. They just stared at her like she was a stranger they were trying to identify.
"What y'all looking at?" she said. "Y'all some of the nosiest kids I've ever seen in my life. Look at this house!" she snapped, trying to divert their attention. "It's a mess. Your daddy was drunk last night. Now I want y'all to brush your teeth and wash those dingy faces 'cause I ain't raising no heathens around here. Freda, make these kids some oatmeal. And I want this house spotless before you sit back down to watch a "Bugs Bunny" or a "Roadrunner," and don't ask me no questions about them dishes. Just pick 'em up and throw that mess away. Cheap dishes anyway. Weren't worth a pot to piss in. Next time I'm buying plastic."
The kids were used to Mildred giving them orders, didn't know any other way of being told what to do, thought everybody's mama talked like theirs. And although they huffed and puffed under their breath and stomped their feet in defiance and made faces at her when her back was turned, they were careful not to get caught. "And I want y'all to get out of this house today. Go on outside somewhere and play. My nerves ain't this"—she snapped her fingers—"long today. And Freda, before you do anything, fix your mama a cup of coffee, girl. Two sugars instead of one, and lots of Pet milk."
Freda had already put water on for the coffee because she knew Mildred was mad. She had picked up the broken dishes, too. She didn't like seeing her mama all patched up like this. As a matter of fact, Freda hoped that by her thirteenth birthday her daddy would be dead or divorced. She had started to hate him, couldn't understand why Mildred didn't just leave him. Then they all could go on welfare like everybody else seemed to be doing in Point Haven. She didn't dare suggest this to her mama. Freda knew Mildred hated advice, so she did what her mama wasn't used to doing: kept her mouth shut.
When Crook finally got up, he smiled at the kids like nothing had happened. And like always on a Saturday morning after a rough night at the Shingle, he had somewhere important he had to go. When Mildred heard the Mercury's engine purring, she felt relieved because she knew she wouldn't have to see him again until late that night when he would most likely be drunk and asking where his dinner was, or tomorrow, when he'd be so hung over that he would walk straight to the bedroom and pass out.
Mildred counted her change and managed to muster up a few dollars. She decided to send the kids to the movies. Told them to sit through the feature twice, which was fine with them.
When they had finally skipped out the door and the house was as clean as an army barracks, Mildred had limped to the back porch and scrounged up the ax.
Her coffee was cold now, so she added some hot water to it and walked slowly into the living room. The house shoe helped cushion her foot against the hard floor, but it still hurt. She collapsed on the orange couch. Good, she thought. No Crook, no kids, and no dog. Mildred looked around the room, scanning its beige walls and the shiny floors she had waxed on her knees yesterday. The windows sparkled because she had cleaned the insides with vinegar and water. She had paid old ugly Deadman five dollars to clean the outsides. The house smelled and looked clean, just the way she liked it.
Her eyes claimed everything she saw. This is my house, she thought. I've worked too damn hard for you to be hurting me all these years. And me, like a damn fool, taking it. Like I'm your property. Like you own me or something. I pay all the bills around here, even this house note. I'm the one who scrubbed white folks' floors in St. Clemens and Huronville and way up there on Strawberry Lane to buy it.
Mildred sank back deeper into the couch and propped her good foot on top of the cocktail table. She tucked her lip in and took the diaper off her head. Then she ran her fingers over her thick braids. She began unbraiding them, though she had no intention of doing anything to her hair once it hung loose.
She looked out the window at the weeping willow trees. She remembered when she planted them. And who had had the garden limed? she thought. Paved the driveway and planted all those flowers, frozen under the dirt right now? Me. Who'd cooked hamburgers at Big Boy's and slung coconut cream pies to uppity white folks I couldn't stand to look in the eye 'cause they was sitting at the counter and I was standing behind it? Smothered in grease and smoke and couldn't even catch my breath long enough to go to the bathroom. And who was the one got corns and bunions from carrying plates of ribs and fried chicken back and forth at the Shingle when I was five months pregnant, while you hung off the back of a city garbage truck half drunk, waving at people like you were the president or the head of some parade?
She put her foot back on the floor and lit another cigarette.
Never even made up a decent excuse about what you did with your money. I know about Ernestine. I ain't no fool. Just been waiting for the right time. Me and the kids sitting in here with the lights and gas cut off and you give me two dollars. Say, "Here, buy some pork-n-beans and vanilla wafers for the kids, and if it's some change left get yourself a beer." A beer. Just what I needed, sitting in a cold-ass house in the dark.
Mildred's eyes scanned the faces of her five kids, framed in gold and black around the room.
And you got the nerve to brag about how pretty, how healthy and how smart your kids are. Don't they have your color. Your high cheekbones. Your smile. These ain't your damn kids. They mine. Maybe they got your blood, but they mine.
Mildred had had Freda when she was seventeen, and the other kids had fallen out every nine or ten months after that, with the exception of one year between Freda and Money. Crook had told her he didn't want any more kids until he got on his feet. Freda was almost three months old when Mildred realized she was pregnant again. She was too scared to tell Crook, so she asked her sister-in-law what she should do. Curly Mae told her to take three five-milligram quinine tablets. When that didn't work, she told her to drink some citrate of magnesia and take a dry mustard bath. A week later she went to the bathroom feeling like she was going to have a bowel movement and had a miscarriage.
Motherhood meant everything to Mildred. When she was first carrying Freda, she didn't believe her stomach would actually grow, but when she felt it stretch like the skin of a drum and it swelled up like a small brown moon, she'd never been so happy. She felt there was more than just a cord connecting her to this boy or girl that was moving inside her belly. There was some special juice and only she could supply it. And sometimes when she turned over at night she could feel the baby turn inside her too, and she knew this was magic.
The morning Freda came, Crook was in a motel room on the North End with Ernestine. Curly Mae drove her to the hospital. From that point on, Mildred watched her first baby grow like a long sunrise. She was so proud of Freda that she let her body blow up and flatten for the next fifty-five months. It made her feel like she had actually done something meaningful with her life, having these babies did. And when she pulled the brush back and up through their thick clods of nappy hair, she smiled because it was her own hair she was brushing. These kids were her future. They made her feel important and gave her a feeling of place, of movement, a sense of having come from somewhere. Having babies was routine to a lot of women, but for Mildred it was unique every time; she didn't have a single regret about having had five kids—except one, and that was who had fathered them.
Mildred lay down when she felt the heaviness of the pill beginning to work. Bells were ringing in her ears, and it made her think of Christmas, which was only two months away. For the past nine Christmases Mildred had had to hustle to buy Chatty Cathy dolls, Roll-a-Strollers, ice skates, racing car sets, sleds, and bicycles. Crook had helped her sneak them through the side door at midnight. She didn't know how she would manage this year.
She shook her head. Should've never let you come back after you got out the sanitarium, she thought. Should've let you have old sorry, ancient Ernestine, 'cause y'all deserved each other. But I felt bad for you 'cause I thought tuberculosis was gon' kill you. Guess alcohol must be the cure for what you got. You promised me, promised me, that when you got back on your feet you would take care of me and the kids like a husband is supposed to do. Told me I wouldn't have to worry no more about everything or work so damn hard. Well, look at me. My nerves is about to pop. Red veins in my eyes like freeways. My head always throbbing and my skin look like it been embalmed. I'm twenty-seven years old, and I'm sick and tired of this shit. And I don't care if I gotta turn tricks or work ten jobs—you getting out of here this time for good.
Mildred tried to grit her teeth, but the pill wouldn't let her. She wanted to scream, but the pill wouldn't let her. She felt like crying too, but the pill wouldn't let her. All it would let her do was sleep.
Two
"KILL HIM," slurred Curly Mae, as she fell back in the recliner on Mildred's sunporch. The sun was piercing through the Venetian blinds, leaving yellow stripes across Curly's light brown legs. "As the World Turns" was on television, but neither of them was paying much attention to it. Liquor always made Curly talk crazy.
"And if he put his hands on you again, the sucker deserve it. I don't care if he is my brother, what give him the right to disfigure you?" She gulped down the rest of her drink and carefully set the plastic glass on the floor. It tipped over. "A skunk is a skunk," Curly said. She lifted her arm up as if it weighed a hundred pounds and plopped it in her lap.
Mildred was snapping string beans a few feet away from her. They were landing all over the floor instead of in the bowl. She was drunk too.
"I don't want to kill him, Curly, damn. I just don't want him jumping on me when he get back. It's been two days and I ain't heard nothing from him. I know where he is."
"He down there with that heffa, ain't he?"
"Yeah, I guess so. More power to him," said Mildred.
"Yeah, well, let me put it to you this way. You need something to protect yourself with. A gun'11 scare a niggah."
"They scare me, too. You know that, girl."
"Now you tell me, what make more sense? To be waiting in here scared with these kids, or be holding something to get his ass on out of here? Remember the last time you called the police? How long it take 'em to get here? Forty-five minutes, and you know it take ten minutes from uptown. You could'a been dead. As long as one niggah is trying to kill another, white folks could care less."
"You right, chile, you right."
Mildred pushed the plastic bowl aside with her foot and went to get the rest of the Old Crow. When she came back, Curly was struggling to get out of the chair.
"Milly," she said, "I'll tell you what. I let you hold my gun till you get him out of here. Can you lend me twenty dollars?"
"Twenty dollars? That's my gas bill money. Till when, Curly?"
"Till Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon at the latest."
"Okay. But who's gon' show me how to use the gun?"
"I would, but I got so much to do over in that house today, and Lord knows some of this liquor gotta wear off first."
There was a knock at the door. It was Deadman. He often helped Mildred around the house. Of all Lucretia Bennett's dumb and ugly sons, Deadman was the ugliest and dumbest. He was in his early twenties and had the reading level of a fifth grader. But he was reliable and he was as nice as nice could be, so whenever he stopped by Mildred felt obligated to keep him busy, even if she didn't have anything for him to do. Trying to find things that needed to be fixed wasn't hard, because Crook had never fixed much of anything. After Deadman did whatever Mildred had asked him to, the next problem was getting him to go home.
Mildred opened the door.
"Hey, good-lookin'," she said. Deadman smiled, showing off his tiny yellow teeth. His head was shaped like a big almond from one angle and a small watermelon from another. Deadman knew he was ugly, and for that he was sort of cute. He kind of grew on Mildred and the kids. He had a contagious sense of humor. He'd have her and the kids on the floor in stitches when he'd tell them all the goings on in the neighborhood. He knew who was screwing who, who'd just been put out, who'd gotten her behind kicked, whose lights and gas were turned off, and whose car had been repossessed. He was more like a reporter than a gossiper, because he wasn't malicious. He also knew how to hustle and always had a few dollars in his pockets. Lots of times he lent Mildred money when she was short.
"I was going out to the butcher's and wanted to know if you needed something. Mama say they got a sale on neck bones and pork chops today."
"Why, thank you, Deadman, but I just lent Curly my last. We got enough meat around here to last us for a while, though. Tell me something, you know how to shoot a gun?"
"Yeah, everybody know how to shoot a gun. Pull the damn trigger." He started laughing, and his eyes darted past Mildred. He was looking for Freda. He had a silent crush on her, but he'd never let Mildred know it or else she would've probably changed her mind about him. He always bought Freda potato chips, fruit punch, chewing gum—small things he could give her without seeming obvious. As a matter of fact, that's what brought him over to their house so often. He would rake leaves when there were only a few on the ground. He'd clean out the stoker when it didn't need it; clean Mildred's storm windows, paint the bricks around the base of the house and along the driveway, and do anything else he could find.
"Can you show me how?" Mildred asked.
"Yeah, you got it here?"
"I'll send it over by one of the kids," Curly said, brushing past him. "I'll stick it in my old blue purse."
Mildred slipped her the twenty and Curly inched down the steps and pranced across the street to her house. A few minutes later, her oldest son returned with the purse. After Deadman showed Mildred how to use it, she hid it between her box spring and mattress.
Mildred knew how to pretend, and that's exactly what she'd been doing since Crook had come home from the hospital. Pretended she didn't know he was still messing around with Ernestine. Pretended not to know that Ernestine's oldest daughter looked just like Crook. She didn't know what he saw in that evil, bug-eyed drunk. Ernestine had never liked Mildred either, from the time they were kids. Mildred was not only better-looking, to put it mildly, but was much smarter and never had trouble attracting boys. Mildred always thought that just because she was poor didn't mean she had to look it.
Ernestine never smiled at anyone because her two front teeth had been knocked out by some man years ago. People said it was Crook who did it, but no one really knew. One thing Mildred did know was that even though Ernestine had had Crook's baby, he had married her, not Ernestine. At the time, she felt like the best woman had won. Hell, any woman can have a baby, Mildred thought, but can't every woman get the man.
When Crook still hadn't come home by evening, Mildred decided she couldn't wait another minute. She put her clothes on, left the kids watching "Million Dollar Movie," and walked down to Ernestine's house. She saw the Mercury parked in the alley. Mildred was furious, not because he had run to Ernestine, but because he wasn't man enough to face her. She contemplated picking up the brick she saw lying next to the car and breaking all the windows. Then she remembered that she was the one who had bought this car. She thought she might throw it through Ernestine's window but finally decided against that, too. Instead, she walked back home in the snow and packed everything Crook owned in cardboard boxes and trash bags. Then she called a cab and rode back to Ernestine's house and plopped them into a huge snowbank.
