Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing Part 12

I was busy packing when the phone rang. The connection had that long-distance crackle to it. I knew immediately it was Mame Anderson from London with bad news.

"Phimie, I'm sorry, but your mother died about an hour ago."

My eyes filled with tears as I realized what I had gained and lost in the span of a day. I was once again officially an orphan, but now I had a brother and a solid link to my past. I took a minute to allow my grief and disappointment to make room for grat.i.tude, then told Mame I would be arriving in the morning to help with the funeral arrangements.

I walked over to the mirror and once again placed my head between the suspended photos of my parents. "Take care of her, Daddy," I requested, wiping away my tears. I smiled at my reflection, intuitively knowing the search for my mother had just begun.

FROM These Same Long Bones.

BY GWENDOLYN M. PARKER.

As if he'd been shaken, Sirus McDougald abruptly opened his eyes. There was a merciful moment of forgetfulness. The sheet was tangled about his long legs. He lay for a second at the center of a haze, moist and open from sleep, his limbs relaxed and peaceful, the recollection of a smile still puddled at the corner of his full lips. It was near dawn, and Sirus had been dreaming. He had dreamed that nothing would ever awaken him again. He had dreamed that he could stop life at his bedroom door. He had dreamed that he could force time to retrace its steps. But even as he turned to avoid it, the sun stole into his room, creeping into his sleep.

Sirus rubbed a broad hand across his face and looked drowsily around him. The dust in a beam of light that streamed through the blinds sparkled like fireflies near his slippers. Next to his head, on the small folding table he used as his nightstand, the light caressed the items he had laid out the night before: a small tortoisesh.e.l.l comb, his pocket watch, his mother-of-pearl studs edged in gold, the loose pieces of paper on which he'd absently scribbled as he spoke to the reporter from the local paper. The light seemed to halt on the words on the top sheet of paper-"Brown, brown, 5'3, reading." What could the reporter he'd spoken to yesterday possibly print that would be news?

At once, Sirus's lingering ease was gone. His eyes widened, his chest swelled with air, and his mouth opened, gaping. He seized the piece of paper from the table, crumpled it, and stuffed it into his mouth.

A moan escaped. His daughter, his precious girl, his only child, was dead. Of what importance was the color of her hair and eyes, her height or favorite hobby, when even the paper boy knew more than that: Knew that she liked to sit in the narrow tunnel made by the honeysuckles between their house and the Senates', knew how she banged out of the house with her skates already on, how she stopped on the gra.s.s at the edge of the walk to tighten them, knew the way she posed to wave good-bye, one hand on her hip, the other straight in the air, an elongated little teapot.

No, there was no news to convey, talking to the reporter was just a formality, one among dozens that were expected of him. So he rented all ten of Jason's cars for the funeral and he called people personally with the news, and he readied his house as if for a party. These were the things that were done, and he did each of them, when it was time, in turn. He knew that his neighbors and friends were similarly busy: the women baking pies and hams and fretting over who might not know and still need to be told; the men collecting money, arranging for their own transportation and clean black suits; even the children, bent over bas.e.m.e.nt tables, cutting construction paper to serve as backings for paper flowers and poems.

Sirus forced his legs stiffly to the edge of the bed. Get up, he said to himself, spitting the paper onto the floor.

Outside, cars slowly traveled past his house. Some carried strangers: a Northerner in search of a relative's home, vacationers from farther inland heading for the coast, a delivery truck with vats of sweet cola syrup. But most carried Sirus's friends and acquaintances, unable to resist taking an extra turn past his house in an attempt to catch a glimpse of him or to see the large black and purple wreath hung on the door.

How was he holding up? Why was his wife, Aileen, sleeping over at her mother's house? Had they, following the country way, covered the mirrors with black paper? Like Sirus, the people who had settled this part of town-the colored section, which b.u.t.ted up against the white part of town and then turned back on itself-were primarily the descendants and relatives of farmers. As they'd spread throughout the city, one brother and then one cousin following the next, they'd left the country but brought their country ways: an unflagging belief in cause and effect-after all, hadn't they always reaped what they sowed-leavened by a large measure of fatalism bred by bugs, fire, and a too hot sun, and bound together by clannishness based on proximity, shared cheekbones, and common values. For these farmers and their progeny, holding the line against the sorrow of history, there was absolute virtue in hard work, an education was a lifeline, and life was an inevitable mystery. These things were givens, like the choice of good land, from which everything else that was good would proceed. And to these descendants of farmers, death itself was both sower and reaper, an unreasoning though sometimes benevolent messenger from G.o.d.

Sirus himself was born on a farm that produced three hundred baskets of tobacco a season, in a town called Carr, in the upper coastal plain of North Carolina. It was a typical pocket of life in the South, crammed with contradictions and ellipses of time. There were the Cherokee and the Tuscarora, who had lived on the land for always; the slave and the free Africans who'd settled beside them; and the Scottish farmers, who had worked beside the others. Sirus's parents, like those of his neighbors, were descended from these Africans, Cherokee, Tuscarora, and Scots, and these people, when they were not farmers, were blacksmiths, barbers, cabinetmakers, grocers, and traders. They built everything they would have one day from these skills. And Sirus absorbed in his greens and hog crackling and corn bread the peculiar mixture of building and dreaming that was the heritage of these people. Now, in the wake of death, he was as much a part of this town of some five thousand colored people as the red dirt that ringed the manicured lawns, or the North Carolina light that was at once bright and hazy, or the ash, willow, cedar, and pecan that were native to the land.

Sirus stood now, some thirty-five years past his birth, in the late summer of 1947, in this town of Durham, North Carolina, which bustled with progress, in a house on Fayetville Street that was one of dozens he'd built, wishing he were the one who was dead. From his bathroom, the sun streaming in the window, Sirus could still hear the cars as they slowed to pa.s.s his house. He stood his shaving brush on its base, bristles up, to dry, and carefully shook the last drops of water from his razor. He looked at his face, now clean-shaven, in the mirror.

There was still the familiar broad chin, the wide cheekbones, the long thick nose, the thick black hair that formed a sharp contrast to his unbearably light, almost pearl-toned skin. The cold water had restored some color to his face; his gray eyes were smooth and clear. He marveled at his own composure. How could his features reveal so little while he felt as if every aspect of him, every thought and desire, every feeling and habit, was hurtling inside him at such speed and with such force that he could be an atom exploding, shattering into oblivion?

From the moment he had learned of Mattie's death, from each second that moved forward, he was dragged backward, caught in a great rush of time away from the present, away from the husband he'd been, the prosperous businessman the town had grown to rely on, the solid friend that so many came to for advice. And in his place loomed the specter of another Sirus, a youth, a boy he believed was long gone, a boy who was all quiet and softness. This boy, his eyes permanently wide, followed after him in his own house, relentlessly padded after him in his own shoes.

There had been nothing authoritative about Sirus as a child. He had been thin and too pale, his elbows always at the wrong angles, his energy too volatile, kinetic, as likely to lead him in one direction as another. But as the years went by his skin had gained a translucence and his energy had cohered, coalesced, so that it no longer erupted jerkily in his limbs but rode high in his chest, girded by his thickening muscles. As a man, he was loose-gaited, solid but warm. If he wanted to command attention, he had only to stand, releasing heat into the air like fire.

He dropped his gaze from the mirror to the basin and watched the spot where the water continued to run. A small green stain glinted at the bottom of the bowl. On any other day it was just green, a color, but today it summoned half a dozen memories: the color of new tobacco in the fields, the color of his mother's eyes when she stood in the light on their porch, the transparent color of an old penny, or the color, in spring, of all the land of his youth. The color, this green, came rushing up at him with its freshness and longing, setting off an embedded charge. Sirus doubled over, an intense wave of pain and nausea gripping his gut. He grabbed the sink, shaking.

Tears welled up and just as quickly receded. With careful steps he returned to the bedroom, took a clean shirt from his wardrobe, and slid his arms into the cool, crisp cotton. Then, slowly, he walked to the window. The starch in his collar was exactly as he'd requested, but now it felt like a gag. He watched the cars continue in an endless procession out on the street, until a black limousine appeared. It was Etta Baldridge's car, turning onto Fayetville from Dupree, already bearing down the road with that ominous cadence reminiscent of halting steps stumbling toward death. If its headlights had been on, it would have looked as if it were already part of the funeral procession.

As the car crept down the street, Sirus could easily imagine Etta's voice and her short, sharp fingers tapping on the back of the front seat right below her driver's neck. "Albert, Albert, slower," she'd be saying. From where Sirus stood at the window he could imagine Etta's head, peeping forward from the relative darkness of the back of the car, her mouth moving animatedly, her face nearly pressed against the window. "Albert." Etta had been the first person to call on him when he had moved into this house. "I'm Etta Baldridge. Welcome to Fayetville," she'd said, pressing her face against the inside screen at the front door, an unofficial welcoming committee. Etta was always one to be pressing.

He thought he heard his housekeeper's key in the lock downstairs. Thank G.o.d, he thought. Mrs. Johnson could talk with Etta if she insisted on stopping. He reached for his pants from his wardrobe and his suspenders from the back of the cane-bottomed chair by the window. He knew that if he went out to the porch, Etta would ask Albert to stop altogether, would wave her arms and hands frenetically until he came out to the car. Once he was there, she would clasp him with those same grasping hands, her eyes sweeping greedily over him, hunting for a stain on his shirt, a cut from shaving, some food left on his lips, some sign of his grief-anything she could carry away with her to the bank or the insurance office or the beauty parlor where she would find an ear in which to deposit her find. If Etta saw him at this moment she might also be able to spy the child who was hiding in his face. He reached for his suit jacket, feeling a wave of relief as the car pa.s.sed.

Downstairs, Mrs. Johnson was at the back door, pushing it open with her hip as she always did. She held her key in one hand and, in the other, the bag with her change of clothes, her morning paper, and a pair of flat shoes. She was a st.u.r.dy, compact woman, with blunt fingers and short, thick legs, and when she hung up the light raincoat she wore, regardless of the weather, her roundly muscled forearms showed. Her face was diamond-shaped, a dark brown flecked through with magenta, crowned by a wide forehead and dominated by closely placed, expressive eyes. She had worked for Mr. Mac, as she called him, for over fifteen years, beginning when he first came to Durham from Washington after college, continuing through his marriage to Aileen Bryant twelve years ago, through Mattie's birth, and on up to the present day.

She tugged at the chain to the overhead light and lit the oven and the burner under the kettle in rapid succession. On any other morning, she would also have turned on the radio standing on the counter next to the sink, softly tuning in to The Sunny Days of Glory Hour, which was broadcast from eight till ten. This morning, however, as she had yesterday and the day before, she went about her work as quietly as she could. She gently closed the catch on the cabinet where the coffee was stored, took her flat shoes from the bag without rustling the paper, and turned off the heat under the kettle as soon as it began to whistle. She thought of Mr. Mac upstairs, still asleep, she hoped.

If asked, she always described Mr. Mac as a firm but fair man to work for, though in the privacy of her home or among close friends she usually elaborated on his kindness with great pa.s.sion. To her, this tragedy, which was the precise word she used to describe Mattie's death, was not only G.o.d's will but also the work of the devil, the latter having cruelly shut out the light in Mattie's eyes, the former having blissfully caused them to reopen in the temple of His everlasting love. As she construed it, Mattie's death was also a test of a special and particular nature.

Mrs. Johnson had been the one to find Mattie lying on the ground in the backyard (a fall from her slide, the doctor later confirmed), her neck at an impossible angle. As soon as the housekeeper recovered her senses, her first thought had been, oh, my Lord, how will Mr. Mac survive? Mattie was his treasure, his precious girl. They blurred together in each other's company, he and Mattie, an edging of the hardness that was him into the softness that was her, until the exact point at which one finished and the other began was obscured, as if they actually shared one body and one heart. Mrs. Johnson could not begin to imagine how he would survive this loss. Certainly Mr. Mac would need help-everyone did in such circ.u.mstances, and Mr. Mac would be no exception-but she was hard pressed to say where it would come from. He seemed to value her opinion, but that was not the kind of holding up he would need. There was his friend Jason, but she had never known Mr. Mac to rely on him in that way. The logical place to look would be to his wife, of course, but Mrs. McDougald's own collapse had been immediate and complete. Yes, Mrs. Johnson concluded, this was going to be a trial, a difficult one, and she would do what she could to support him. After all, hadn't Mr. Mac helped her with her Cora's tuition? And with extra money for shoes and pants for the two boys those three years in a row when they both kept growing?

"Good morning, Mrs. Johnson," Sirus said, appearing suddenly in the kitchen. He was completely dressed; he looked severe in his black suit, his light skin made all the paler by the contrast.

"Good morning, Mr. Mac," she answered. "You're up early. I'd hoped you'd be sleeping at least another hour." She ran her gaze over him methodically, as if weeding a garden, looking first at his eyes, then at the lines around them, then at the slope of his shoulders inside his suit.

"I didn't sleep well," he began. "Why don't you bring the coffee to the front room so we can talk for a minute." He waited for her nod before he left the room. Mrs. Johnson shortly followed with his coffee, careful to use his favorite cup and saucer. He definitely hadn't slept well, she decided, looking again at the shadows under his eyes and the pinched set of his shoulders.

"I think we have enough food now," he said as soon as she sat down. He sipped some of his coffee, holding it in his mouth until it cooled, and let her know it was how he liked it. "Every lady from the church will bring something," he continued, "and I don't want it to appear as if we're not grateful." He fastened his eyes on an old photograph of his father, which sat on the table beside her.

Mrs. Johnson continued to watch him carefully, encouraging him to go on.

"It's okay if you go ahead and fry up those last two chickens in the freezer, but after that I think we have more than enough."

Mrs. Johnson still said nothing. Of course there was too much food. There were three hams and two turkeys and pots and pots of collards and turnips and cabbage, not to mention rolls and pies and cold salads. On occasions like this there was always too much food. But no matter how much there was, it always got eaten. They both knew this.

"It's not as though any of these people will make their only meal here," he added.

"No, Mr. Mac, I don't expect they will," Mrs. Johnson said. "But it's always been the way to have more than enough, as long as a body can see their way clear to that."

Sirus pointed at her with his cup. "Just because I can afford it is no reason to waste both food and money," he said sharply. The coffee in his cup splashed up on one side.

"No, I didn't say there was," Mrs. Johnson said evenly. She sought his eyes, but they remained resolutely fixed on the point to the left of her. "I merely said it's usually the way, that's all. The food will keep, at any rate, and not go to waste; you can rely on me for that."

"Then you'll just cook what I said," Sirus said quietly, and drained the last of his coffee. He reached into his pocket for his watch, and Mrs. Johnson took his pointed hint, picked up his coffee cup along with hers, and left the room.

As soon as she was gone Sirus realized that he'd sounded foolish. He never talked to Mrs. Johnson this way. Yet the thought of all that food ama.s.sing in the kitchen nauseated him. It also made him think of another wake, at another time, at the home of a carpenter he'd known a long time ago in Wilson County, a man who had lost his wife and two of his three children in a fire.

The fire that killed them had erupted suddenly, its origin a mystery. The flames were already extinguished by the time the carpenter returned from a night of hunting with his youngest boy. He and the boy sat in his shed as smoke hung in the air, the same shed in which, in happier times, the man had often boasted he could make or repair anything made from wood: a wagon wheel, a table, a sideboard-anything that a use was known for. Now, ringed by the neighbors who had battled the blaze, he sat quietly. A thick layer of soot was everywhere: on the tools and chips and wood shavings that lay all around, on his clothing, on those of his neighbors. He sat precisely on the edge of the chair someone had dragged to the center of the shed. His arm was loosely draped around the shoulders of his son. Later, at the wake, with the food spread from one end of a table to the other, he'd held his son in the same slack manner, his eyes fixed on the three coffins that crowded the front of his house, taking up the s.p.a.ce where a worn sofa and two chairs normally stood.

It was only later that it happened, what people referred to as "the change." First he kept his son home from school; then, when he allowed him to go out, he tightly b.u.t.toned the boy's shirtcuffs and layered both a vest and a sweater underneath his overalls, even in the summer. And later, or so Sirus heard his parents whispering, he rubbed the boy every night with a mixture of tar and pitch. It was so strange, so secretive, these private protections, but no one intervened. Nor did anyone step forward when it ended, finally, with the slaughter and ritualized eating of his animals. It was a story that even the busiest seemed loath to tell: how he had begun with his goat, gone on to the spindly-legged mule that drew the cart in which he delivered his work, and then to their dog, a mutt, with one brown ear and one yellow. It was rumored to have taken him weeks to finish this grisly task, and no one said a word to him about what he had done. Later, when the spring came, the carpenter and his boy simply moved away.

It was the carpenter and his son Sirus had been picturing when he spoke to Mrs. Johnson about the food. He thought about the boy chafing and sweating under the vests and the sweaters, about his mumbled excuses when he tried to explain his absence from school, and about what the boy's skin must have looked like after being covered with that stinging tar and pitch. Most of all, though, he thought about those beasts, their large, surprised eyes blinking shut against the spurting blood, their flesh cracking and smoking. Sirus never saw the flames that licked the animals clean; he only heard of their agony. But now he saw the animals multiplied, walking into the flames, two by two. And those images became mixed with others-of food piled high, stacked like a funeral pyre; of people eating so much that their bellies became distended; of a ladder made of food on which Mattie disappeared into heaven. Sirus was sure that he had to draw the line somewhere, anywhere, as a cordon of order and reason. Death and even his young self might stalk him, but he was resolved that he would not go the way of the carpenter, would not find himself, in the middle of the night, clinging to another body, his hands raw and stained, rubbing and covering and praying, and killing and consuming, doing anything at all that was necessary to keep from facing the truth, that he had lost the thing on earth he loved best.

A few blocks away, Etta Baldridge was back at her home, leaning against a pillow she'd bought on her last trip to New York. "I've got a stomach like a cast-iron skillet," she said to her best friend, Ophelia Macon. The remark concluded the conversation about food and digestion and bowels that Mrs. Macon had begun some five minutes earlier. The women left a respectful pause before launching into the subject they had gathered to discuss.

"I've never felt such a sorrow," Mrs. Baldridge began, interrupting the sound of her own breathing. "Never," she added dramatically.

Mrs. Macon nodded.

"Now I can't say how I would feel if it were my own Lily, but you know what I mean. n.o.body outside 435 Fayetville loved that child more than me."

Ophelia Macon added a high sound of her own breathing, whistling up her nose.

"Wasn't I her G.o.dmother? Didn't I go to every birthday, every church play, every little thing they had at school?"

Mrs. Macon again showed agreement, lifting her chest so that her whole upper body shuddered. The two women sat at opposite ends of the beige and blue couch Mrs. Baldridge had had recovered only a month before. They sat in almost identical poses: their hands folded in their laps, large upper torsos perched precariously atop narrowly proportioned waists, hips, and legs, lips momentarily pursed against the torrent of words each always carried in her mouth. Mrs. Baldridge sat to the right, near the entrance to her dining room, her feet flat and even on the floor. Mrs. Macon sat to the left, near the archway to the front hall, her legs crossed at the ankles. On the low mahogany table in front of them sat two gla.s.ses of iced tea, with a sprig of fresh mint in each. The two women had had their hair dyed the day before, Mrs. Macon's a dark red, Mrs. Baldridge's a paler red, like new mahogany finished with clear resin.

"Have you seen them? Do you know how they're holding up?" Mrs. Macon asked, leaning in Mrs. Baldridge's direction.

"I've given them privacy, of course," Etta answered, thinking of her calls to Sirus, how he had ignored her hints for an invitation to come over. "I called, but there'll be time enough for them to lean on their friends. In the meantime I've been praying to the Lord to fill my bosom with comfort."

Mrs. Macon looked as if she too had been filling her bosom.

Mrs. Baldridge continued, "There're the days right through now, of course. Holding up Aileen. Being a post for Sirus so he can carry out his duties. But what grieves me to think about is later."

Mrs. Macon bowed her head.

"Remember Fran Farmer, her poor daughter, lost to TB?"

Mrs. Macon looked up, her eyes wide. "Oh, yes. Poor Fran Farmer."

"And remember how we took turns sitting with her? I mean her with no family, and only here in Durham five years."

"Oh, yes, she had no one."

"And we all kept coming, till a week after the funeral I think it was, and then someone said, 'Maybe we shouldn't intrude.' Why, I think it was Evelyn Knight who said it first."

"Was it Evelyn? Oh, mercy."

"I believe it was. I can't think who else would say something like that, can you?"

"No, I'm sure you're right. I'm sure it was Evelyn."

"Yes, I know it was. But we have to share the blame, too. Didn't we take what she was saying to heart? I mean, she put it so well. 'Who really knows her?' she said. And she had a point. She kept to herself pretty much all those years."

"But all and still," Mrs. Macon interjected.

"Yes, that's just what I was saying," continued Etta Baldridge, "but all and still. We should have kept going but we didn't, and who's to say if we had, why, that poor Fran might not have gone and followed her baby."

The women gasped simultaneously, as if the horror of Fran Farmer, found lying with her head resting-"like on a pillow," the preacher said-on the door of her stove, had suddenly pressed itself, for an instant, against them, and then, as quickly, had retreated, leaving them just that one image and a story to tell.

"You don't think?" Mrs. Macon began after a respectful silence.

"No, no, don't even mention such a thing."

But for a few long minutes both women imagined the worst. For Mrs. Macon it was one sorrowful scene after another: the wailing sound of the ambulance from Lincoln Hospital, ladies at the church wailing and fainting, the large, beautiful house on Fayetville once again draped in black and empty. For Mrs. Baldridge the images were much more far-ranging. She saw herself and her daughter Lily not exactly ostracized, but no longer occupying a place of importance. No more parties for Lily with the daughters of the other leading colored families of Durham: the McDougalds, the Gants, the Wilsons, the Gerards. She imagined a pall settling over the families, over all their hard work and their dreams of "progress for the race," until the whole fragile structure wilted and lay dead. She imagined an edgy despair spreading through the town, so that when someone fell on hard times people turned away instead of coming by with a pot of greens or a pile of carefully folded clothes. No one lending money to anyone anymore. No eligible young men, with the right education and the right family connections, coming by for Lily when the time was right. In Mrs. Baldridge's mind, Sirus was the knotted thread that bound them together. As you ringed salt around a stain or st.i.tched a wound with pig gut, you relied on Sirus to be the stanch, to keep the tear from spreading. Driving past his house today, Etta had asked Albert to slow down so that she could concentrate on this. She had seen it clearly, how he had to hold together, not just avoiding the way of Fran Farmer, but going beyond, going from bad to good. Sirus had to redeem this tragedy; that was how she saw it. He had to swallow it whole like a bitter root, not alone, but with the a.s.sistance of his friends and neighbors. And after the sweating from the poison was over and the shaking stilled, he had to rise up and be new. Mrs. Baldridge was as sure of this as she had been that her husband would die before fifty, and he'd died abruptly, as she had predicted, just two years before.

"Sirus will be strong," she said. "And with his strength Aileen will find her own. We just have to help him know his own resilience."

Mrs. Macon showed her agreement, staring at Mrs. Baldridge.

"I think we should arrive early. Not at the same time, of course, but within the half hour."

Mrs. Macon took a large swallow of her iced tea. "Are you going to read a prayer?" she asked.

"Well, nothing planned." Mrs. Baldridge let her shoulders fall against the back of the couch. "Of course I'll bring my Bible, and some subject may present itself."

"There are so many pa.s.sages that bring comfort," Mrs. Macon observed.

In response, Mrs. Baldridge suddenly bellowed, "'And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see G.o.d.'"

"Oh, my goodness, yes. Amen," Mrs. Macon replied.

"'I will lay me down and take my rest,'" continued Mrs. Baldridge.

"Blessed be the Lord," echoed Mrs. Macon.

"'The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?'"

"Praise the Lord."

"'Weeping may endure for a night,'" Mrs. Baldridge nearly yelled, lifting her hands from her lap, palms lifted. "'But joy cometh in the morning.'" She dropped her hands back into her lap with a loud clap.

"Joy, oh, joy, oh, joy," Mrs. Macon said softly, clasping her hands.

"Yes, joy," Mrs. Baldridge concluded, staring ahead as if the word were printed in the air.

Upstairs, in her room, Lily heard the word joy erupt like a dissonant chord. Oh, G.o.d, what was her mother bellowing about now? She sat at her desk and looked at the words she had written so far: Mattie was my friend so dear

Her face so full of grace

And now that she has left us here

No one can take her place.