Mama, page 5
"Yes," Freda said, beginning to understand what Mildred was getting at. And although her chest was filling up with air and her training bra was rising and falling as if she had breasts, Freda was trying hard to be as strong as Mildred.
"All of y'all needs boots and new coats. I can't have y'all going to school or church looking like a bunch of vagabonds, can I?"
"No, Mama."
"Well, when I get all this stuff out the layaway, and buy a few toys, pay off these bills, we'll do good to get a chicken on Christmas, let alone a ham or turkey. Mama was just wondering if you could be a big girl and wait until after New Years, when everything'll be on sale. I can get the rest of the kids' thangs, too. I'll buy you that pink mohair sweater we saw in Arden's window. By February, I'll get you that sewing machine I heard you talking about. At least lay it away. Can you just let the other kids enjoy this Christmas? Can you do that for your mama?"
"Yes, Mama, I can wait," Freda said before she knew it.
Tears were welling up in Freda's eyes, and Mildred could feel something pulling at the center of her chest. She knew Freda didn't understand. She was still a child. Mildred's heart was signaling her to reach over and pull her oldest daughter inside her arms. But she couldn't. A plastic layer had grown over that part of Mildred's heart and it refused to let her act on impulse. She never showed too much affection because that made her feel weak. And she hated feeling weak because that made her vulnerable. Who would be there to pick up the pieces if she let herself break down? Mildred felt she had to be strong at all times and at all costs.
Freda wanted her mama to hug her, but she was afraid to make the first move. She didn't want Mildred to think she was being a baby about this whole thing. At that moment, Freda couldn't remember Mildred ever hugging her, or any of them. The two of them sat there stiffly, like starched shirts, but underneath, Mildred and Freda mourned for themselves.
Finally, Freda stood up and walked to the door. With her back to Mildred, she said, "It's okay, Mama. I can wait. I told you I was a big girl and I meant it." She closed the door softly behind her.
Five
IN THE SPRING, the weeping willow trees Mildred had planted eight years ago were almost twelve feet tall. She had planted them in anticipation of Freda's sweet sixteen party. Mildred pulled the hose from around the house and put its nose at the base of their thin trunks. Her hands were caked with rich black dirt from where she'd been hoeing and weeding the small garden in the back yard. Each year she planted two rows of corn, a few string beans, some tomatoes and yellow squash, okra and cucumbers, and mustard and collard greens. Though none of them ever did too well, Mildred liked to smell the mixture of grass and spring air, and she liked the solitude of working her own soil. She had just finished cutting down the dandelions that had grown up through the grass. They left a fresh, tart smell around the yard. Mildred loved this yard. It was big enough for the kids to play hide-n-go-seek, and in the winter she'd let the hose run in the side yard and they ice-skated there.
She heard the screen door slam on Curly's front porch.
"Hey, sis'-n-law," yelled Curly. "What you know good?"
"Nothing, girl, just trying to get this garden in some kind of order. These weeds grow like ain't no tomorrow, I'm telling you."
"Got any coffee over there? I'm all out, and Lord knows I could use a cup. The kids is at the playground and I got so much cleaning to do upstairs that I'm scared of what I might find once I start digging in them closets. A cup of coffee sure would be nice."
"Yeah, come on over, chile, I can let you have a couple of teaspoons until tomorrow, and you can have one with me. I don't have no sugar, though. You got any?"
"A drop, just a drop. These kids eat it like candy, but I'ma start hiding some just for my coffee."
Out of all of Mildred's so-called friends, the only one she truly liked and trusted was Curly. The others, like Geechie and Gingy and Sally Noble (folks always said both of her names as if they were one), were good over one or two cups of coffee, but they liked to drink, and when they did they got vulgar and loud and started talking about the first person who popped into their minds. If they got worked up real good, meaning they agreed with each other, they'd forget where they were and who they were with, and say, "Yeah, and that Mildred..." Then Mildred would cuss them out nicely, put them out of her house and tell them not to bring their poor tired asses back until they knew how to act like they had some sense, which, she said, would take about another twenty years.
Curly laughed as she sat down in Mildred's bright yellow kitchen. She had the kind of laugh that would automatically set you off to grinning right along with her, no matter what you had on your mind. Curly didn't have much to laugh about, though. Her big house looked much nicer on the outside than it did on the inside. It was full of dark, rickety furniture, which was why she kept her drapes drawn. And though Mildred loved her sister-in-law like a sister, she couldn't stand being in Curly's house for too long because it depressed her. "Why don't you open those drapes up, girl, and let some light in this place?" Mildred would ask her. And Curly would say, "For what? What's some light gon' do to these dingy walls but let all the hand marks and grease show?" Mildred saw her point.
"You heard from Crook?" Curly asked her.
"Naw, ain't heard from that sorry bastard since I had to beg him for twenty dollars for shoes for Money and Bootsey for Easter. I ain't got nothing to say to him. He ain't working yet, is he?"
"Naw, him and Ernestine still down there living with her mama like savages. It's a shame, girl. I ain't never knew what he saw in that old hussy. She past trifling, ain't she, girl? Ugly as all hell, look like something the cat done dragged in, and I betcha, Mil, if the chile had some teeth in her mouth, don't you think she'd look just like a beaver?" She giggled and Mildred stomped her foot on the linoleum, almost spitting a mouthful of hot coffee in Curly's face.
"Well, I'll tell you, Curly, the way thangs is going around here, honey, I might have to pick up my kids and get the hell on out of here. I can't keep up these house notes. They kicking my behind. And the older these kids get the more they eat and the more they want."
"Who you telling, chile? Mine's is almost a football team. I swear, you lucky, you ain't got a houseful of big-head nappy and hardheaded boys. They stay in and out of trouble. Money don't seem to give you none."
"Not yet, at least, but you know he got his daddy's blood, no offense. How's Crook's health, anyway? Is he still dranking like it's going out of style?"
"Chile, that ain't the half of it. You should've seen him and Ernestine the other night at the Shingle. They had a band. Wasn't saying nothing, but girl, they acted like pure damn fools. Him and her just sloppy, I mean pissy drunk, and you know how loud she get."
"Yeah, I know how loud she get," Mildred said, lighting a cigarette.
"They could barely hold each other up. I acted like I didn't know 'em. Fletcher threw 'em both out. And I don't care if he marry that whore, she ain't never gon' be no kin to me, and won't never step one rusty foot in my door neither. She trifling, and besides, you'll always be my sister-in-law, sis."
"He know he shouldn't be doing so much dranking. That man is about as stupid as he looks. Got about as much brains as a field mouse, and he gon' end up back in that sanitarium if he keep this up."
"Well, he ain't been back to the doctor in God knows when, but that's all right. It'll catch up to him. You mark my words. If he live to see fifty it'll be a miracle and the will of God, and I'll tell you, Mil, God'a see fit to it that Crook obeys his laws. Abusing hisself like he do ain't nowhere in the Bible, is it?"
"Honey, I wouldn't know, been so damn long since I read it."
Since Mildred and Crook had broken up, she hadn't exactly resigned herself to being a widow, so to speak, but the men in Point Haven not only bored her to death but barely had a pot of their own to piss in, and if they did, helping out a woman with five kids was not their idea of having a good time, no matter how good she could make them feel in bed.
Mildred had stopped wearing that awful platinum wig, even though she knew she looked damn good in it. Now she wore her own hair, rusty red to suit her reddish skin tone. She let Curly trim it for her every now and then because it grew so fast and got too bushy and thick. A lot of colored women envied her shoulder-length hair. They thought if your hair was long and thick and halfway straight and didn't roll up into tight black pearls at the nape of your neck, you were full of white blood, which made you lucky. In 1966 most colored women in Point Haven wanted desperately to have long straight hair instead of their own knotty mounds. To get it like that, they wore wigs or rubbed Dixie Peach or Royal Crown hair grease into their scalps and laid the straightening comb over the gas burner and whipped it through their hair until it sizzled. Sometimes Mildred didn't feel like being bothered, sitting in that chair for almost an hour just for the straightening part, and maybe another hour to get it bumper-curled. Most of the time she would roll it up with brush rollers and let it go at that. Mildred usually didn't care what people thought.
Whenever she went to the bar, somebody's husband usually offered to buy her a drink. They always had that I've-been-waiting-for-you-to-get-rid-of-that-sorry-niggah look in their eyes. But Mildred would just accept their drink offer, make small talk—usually about the condition of their wives—then turn her back to them and continue running her mouth with her female friends.
Mildred didn't believe in messing around with anybody's husband, no matter what kind of financial proposition they made. The way she figured it, when and if she ever did get herself another husband, she damn sure didn't want a soul messing with hers. She truly believed in the motto that what goes around comes around. She'd seen it come true too many times. Janey Pearl got caught in the Starlight Motel under the Bluewater Bridge, laying up with Sissie Moncrief's old man, and Sissie tried to strangle Janey Pearl with her own garter belt and stockings. Shirley Walker's husband caught her in bed with his brother. Put both of them in the hospital with a .38.
This town was entirely too small to be sneaky and slick. Be different if this was a city like Detroit. Messing around was the surest way to get yourself killed by some jealous church-going woman, especially if she was a Baptist. Them Baptists could get the spirit all right, Mildred thought, right on your ass, and the very words they chastised their children for using would sizzle off their tongues like water hitting a hot skillet.
Mildred didn't have any trouble getting the attention of most men because she was still young—a few months shy of thirty—and well equipped. Her hips didn't exactly curve out now, but when she turned to the side her behind looked like someone had drawn it on, made it a little too perfect, and it was this luscious behind that drew many a man's eye. Even though she still stuffed her bra with a pair of the girls' anklets to give her breasts more cleavage, Mildred wasn't what you'd call promiscuous. She liked to look her best and had gotten tired of sitting around the house all those months getting sucked in by soap operas. It wasn't even so much romance she was looking for as it was to have some fun, maybe roll over and feel a man's body in her bed again. These days no one was there except maybe one or two of the kids, trying to keep warm.
One night a tall, caramel-skinned man strolled through the doors of the Red Shingle. He walked right past Mildred. She could hardly swallow her drink; couldn't believe something this handsome would set foot inside the Shingle without advance notice. In all the years she'd been in here and even when she worked here, she'd never seen anybody that caused her to do a double take.
This man had deep-set eyes and thick bushy eyebrows and a smile like you saw in toothpaste commercials. His hair was charcoal mixed with gray and he was as tall as a basketball player. He had a body like a boxer and instead of walking, he strutted like his ego was sitting on his shoulders. Mildred liked his style immediately. This man had class. She could barely speak when he walked up to her and introduced himself. His name was Sonny Tyler. She told him her name, then tucked in her lip and broke out her long-forgotten-that-she-still-had "Yes, I'm alone" smile. He sat down next to her at the bar and offered to buy her a drink but all she asked for was ginger ale.
Sonny told her he was stationed at Selfridge Air Force Base in St. Clemens, which was thirty-odd miles from Point Haven. One of his old running buddies was playing at the Shingle tonight and he had come to hear him since he hadn't seen him in almost a year. "Is that so," was all Mildred could say. She was trying to sound intelligent and figuring out the best way to carry on a conversation with this man, who was causing her panties to get wet.
They talked through two shows.
"I'm divorced and got five kids. The oldest is thirteen and the baby is seven," she told him.
"You sure know how to keep yourself up," he said, smiling. Mildred was shocked that he didn't go flying to the other end of the bar where there were quite a few women with less responsibility but also less sex appeal. They were all tapping their stirrers on the rim of their glasses to the beat of the music, and watching Mildred like hawks.
Sonny asked Mildred for her phone number, which made her feel seventeen again. She loved it. A few nights later he called her. He wanted to come over to her house; wanted to meet her kids. "Not yet," she said, but she met him at a motel in Canada. She told him she didn't let just any man in her bed, didn't care how good he looked or how good he smelled. "What's that you wearing anyway, Sonny? Lord, it smells good."
"Old Spice," he'd said, caressing her in all the right places. She knew it smelled familiar because Crook had always worn it, and so did Percy. It smelled different on Sonny. Tantalizing.
After a few weeks of making excuses to the kids as to why she'd been staying out so late or not coming home until daylight, Mildred decided to tell them. Hell, she was a grown woman with needs just like any other female. What was wrong with her feeling a little pleasure?
She made Sonny whisper when she let him in. "This is a nice house," he said softly.
"Shhh," she said, and guided him to her bedroom, where she hung his clothes over the door and left it cracked. She didn't want the kids to barge in unannounced and find her in bed with a man who wasn't their father. Sonny was a much better lover than either Crook or Percy had been. He was so warm and big that Mildred woke up whistling the next morning, anxious to fix him a hot breakfast. She wanted to make him as comfortable as possible because she wanted him to come back. And keep coming back. It had been so long since she'd been kissed, especially the way Sonny did. She'd almost forgotten what else lips were good for. And what he had rekindled between her legs was another story altogether.
Sonny put on everything except his shirt and walked out into the living room when he heard the kids laughing at cartoons. When Freda first saw his hairy chest, her eyes widened like she'd seen a ghost.
"Who are you?" she asked, turning up her nose at him.
"I'm Sonny," he said smiling, all friendly-like. "I'm a friend of your mother's."
"Since when? And how come you don't have all your clothes on? You coming or going? Did you spend the night over here? With my mama, in her bed?"
"Yes, your mother is a very nice lady, and I like her a lot. I hope to get to know you and the other kids better, too."
"Hmph. I hope you ain't staying long," she said, and huffed away.
Mildred walked back into the living room, not having heard this, and slid her arms around his waist like a high schooler satisfying a crush. She called the kids to introduce him. Each of them sat down on the couch, lined up like dominoes, and when Freda crossed her arms and grunted, the rest of them imitated her. They watched her for the next move, hardly even noticing Sonny.
"Sonny is a friend of your mama's, and he's nice. I like him, and I want y'all to treat him nice. He's in the air force and he's going to be visiting us quite regularly, so y'all might as well get used to him."
"Why we gotta get used to him? He ain't coming to see us." Freda said.
"You got a quarter?" asked Money, holding out his hand.
"Boy, stop begging, what I tell you about that. And Freda, you better watch the tone of your voice, you ain't grown. I'm still the mama in this house."
"How'd you get a name like Money?" Sonny asked.
Money hunched his shoulders. He didn't know.
It was Freda who had started calling him that. It seemed that Money always begged, and nobody knew where he got the habit from. He was barely old enough to tell you his address, but he'd beg coins from anyone who came to the house or wherever Freda had dragged him. "You got a dime?" he'd ask, and if they said no, he'd say, "You got a nickel?" And if they still said no, he'd press the point. "Well, you got any money?" Freda would smack his hand and tell him he shouldn't be begging and if Mildred ever found out he was doing it, she would beat the stew out of him. He ignored her threats. "Money! Money! Money! Those the only words you know, ain't it?" Freda would say. After that, to embarrass him she started calling him Money all the time. So did everybody else.
It was commonplace in black neighborhoods to have a nickname. By the time a child was sucking his bottle or thumb, people were already staring at him like a specimen, asking, "What you gon' call him?" Then they would give the child a name that showed no consideration for his own. Baby boys got names like Lucky, BooBoo, Sugar Pie, PeeWee, and Homeless. "Don't he look just like a little fat pumpkin?" And that's what he'd be called thereafter. Little girls' names were at least softer to the ear: Peaches, Babysister, Candy, Bo-Peep, and Cookie. There was a set of twins called Heckle and Jeckle.
Money kept his hand out when he saw Mildred take the plates back in the kitchen.
"Here, I've got a quarter, for all of you," Sonny said, reaching into his pockets. Their attitudes seemed to change then, but when Freda refused hers, the girls pulled their hands back too. Not Money. He slid his quarter into his pocket and told Sonny he could give all of the coins to him and he'd see to it that his sisters got theirs later on when he knew they'd change their minds. The girls looked at him like he was a traitor, but it didn't bother Money.
