Authors: Laurie Jean Cannady
The ride to the new house was quiet. I didn't want to think too much, so I focused on the unpacking that had to be done before we retreated for the night. Momma pulled in front of a red brick house that looked institutional, with basement-sized windows, so close to the roof they appeared to be in the attic. I wondered what light would populate our new home with such narrow and high openings.
From the windows down to the grassy yard sat brick, solid and strong, in stark contrast to the white siding of Academy Park. The house sat directly on the corner of Wall Street and Hansen Avenue, roads that were paved and looked as if they led somewhere important, to places where people didn't have roaches, where Mommas didn't work all of the time, and kids didn't clean kitchens and babysit. The yard wrapped around the house and had the deepest, greenest grass I'd ever seen. Through the green expanse ran a narrow concrete sidewalk right up to the front porch.
While the house looked like a tightly sealed breadbox from the outside, it tripled in size once we walked through the front door. The living room alone was the size of the kitchen and front room in Academy Park, and there was a small sky on the floor in the form of a thick blue carpet. The walls were a sharp white and light streamed through the high windows, cascading off of the walls in glowing brilliance. I wanted to place my head on the carpet and see if it felt as soft as clouds.
The next room was the den. Without doors, it was merely a walkway through to the bedrooms and kitchen, but Momma said, “Laurie and Mary, this is going to be your room.” I wondered how our bedroom could be in the center of the house, with no doors to close others out, no barriers keeping Mr. Todd away from us. Even as anxiety invaded my thoughts, I grew excited at the prospect of having a room where my brothers' sweaty feet couldn't pollute the
air and Mary's and my dolls could sit without fear of Dathan and Tom-Tom coloring their faces with markers. “Laurie and Mary's bedroom,” that sounded good to me, even if it wasn't a bedroom at all.
Momma, alongside Mr. Todd, led us into the next room and said, “Here's the dining area.” I didn't even know what a dining area was, but I was mesmerized by the small chandelier-esque fixture hanging from the ceiling. It was just a block of a room, with another narrow window close to the ceiling. It had linoleum floors that were lighter and shinier than our floors in Academy Park.
Next, Momma showed us the two bedrooms and the bathroom. There wasn't much to see there, just squares with the same high and narrow windows. She then led us to the kitchen. That is where I became as committed to Momma and Mr. Todd's marriage as they were to each other. Histories of disappointment diminished and, in spite of my knowing, I believed this time, this man would be different.
The kitchen was long, wide, and the floor had brown linoleum with patterns of diamonds populating its surface. There was a counter that went from one side of the kitchen to the other and the biggest window in the house sat right over the kitchen sink. And there wasn't just one kitchen sink, as there had been in Academy Park, which meant we had to wash dishes and dry them as soon as we finished. Our new house had two sinks with stainless steel tubs, where clean dishes could sit inconspicuously and dry themselves. They were the types of sinks I'd seen on dishwashing liquid commercials, the types of sinks that belonged in the white people's homes Momma sometimes cleaned. I felt a morsel of pride in knowing Momma would be cleaning stainless steel double sinks that now belonged to her, to us.
While the window, floor, and sinks were awe-inspiring, the refrigerator enchanted me most. It was a Sedona brown and so tall it seemed to be touching the ceiling. Unlike our short white refrigerator in Academy Park, I barely heard the motor, cycling while I stood next to it. What fascinated me most about that brown bulk was the freezer, which sat on the bottom, opening to a space
so large I couldn't imagine having enough food to fill it. Looking in that empty space, I felt a void, a worry about what happens to things that can't be filled. We had been starved so long, famine felt full. But staring at that bare refrigerator, I remembered the cramps, the rumblings, the hunger.
Still, I blocked those doubts. I had that refrigerator. I had those sinks. My new house had high windows, thick blue carpet, and diamonds on the kitchen floor. They were, on that day, mine. Whether I wanted him or not, I had a father too, so maybe this time we'd have enough of everything we needed. Maybe we'd be able to desire things we'd been prudent enough not to want before.
For a year, we were a family and the hard worries about Mr. Todd became soft in my mind. It was a year that held birthdays where each child actually received gifts and not faux surprises of gloves and umbrellas. A year where Christmas came with our first artificial tree that stood taller than each of us, even Champ, who at twelve was nearing six feet. Our tree looked as if it had given birth to toys we'd only seen in commercials, like bottle-drinking and peeing dolls, Tonka trucks, easy-bake ovens, and ten-speed bikes. That year, all five of us received bikes we could ride up and down Wall Street without fear of cars whizzing off of interstates or rocky gravel disrupting smooth revolutions of bike tires. For one year, the dips, the rocks, the doubts became blurred like the lines of trees on roads whenever I hopped on my ten-speed and let the wind, the road ride me. Committed, I barely steered, barely put effort into my peddling. Until one ride, when I committed too much and found myself chin first, knees second, in tears, kissing the ground. As I nursed my wound, I wondered why I had let go and how long the scars would remain.
That one year of peace could have been forever, could have sustained us all, but that year began to crumble with one day. Ours started with me in the living room, messing around with Momma's brand new record player. I was so intrigued by that little contraption and set out to understand how a small needle touching vinyl could
produce Tina Turner's voice singing “What's Love Got to Do With It,” and Michael Jackson's high tenor on “We Are the World.” Since those were the only two records Momma owned, I listened to them repeatedly, waiting for the true magic of the thing to reveal itself.
I lay on the carpet, feet perched on the blue suede couch Momma and Mr. Todd had leased soon after we moved to Wall Street, and let the music sink into me. I marveled at how something so smooth could come from vinyl, metal, screws, and a needle. I rested my hands on my full belly, rested my mind on the peace in that moment. Whenever I was completely satisfied, and when nothing hurt, I could see and hear things I couldn't when my stomach was growling or when I was in pain. I felt every note of Tina Turner's question. I felt years of her and my disappointment in the line, “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” I heard the tears she must have cried in order to own the sorrow of that song. I knew them all too well, but on that day, those tears were as far from me as the circumstances that had created them.
That night, as Momma cooked dinner, a delectable pot roast with clouds of mashed potatoes wrought with speckles of unmelted butter, a loud yelp emanated from the bathroom. Mr. Todd's scream cut through the walls as either the word “Lord” or “Lois” reached my ears. Momma scurried into the bathroom. I heard a gasp and then whispering. No matter how close I got to the bathroom door, I couldn't hear what they were saying. As Momma exited the bathroom, I heard, “You need to go to the hospital for that.”
About an hour later, Mr. Todd emerged with a grimace on his face. He spoke little during dinner and barely looked up from his plate. Momma fed us quickly and then ordered us to our rooms. As I lay in the softness of my bed, next to Mary's warmth, I wondered what “that” was and how it would affect our family. Maybe he was dying like Uncle Junie had. Or maybe he had gotten sick like I did and had contracted pneumonia. I couldn't imagine what sickness could permeate the muscles that pressed out of every part of his body; even so, I prayed his illness wouldn't cause us to leave our
new home, and I prayed it wouldn't make all of the food in the refrigerator disappear with him, and I prayed I'd always be able to recline on that plush blue carpet, with legs hiked on the softest sofa ever created, listening to Tina Turner's lament, while trying to find answers to her and my many questions.
A couple of days later, I overheard Momma talking to our next-door neighbor, Miss Minnie, about the “that” which had silenced Mr. Todd. Miss Minnie was in the kitchen while Momma washed dishes. She was a large woman and at least thirty years Momma's senior. She sat in one of the dining room chairs, as parts of her body, too large for the seat, spilled over the sides and the back. Miss Minnie often spent time at our home, advising Momma on how she should be running her and our lives. Always in other people's business, she was the one who told Momma I needed a bra because my little nubs poked through my shirt whenever I made dirt cakes with my back-door neighbor, Thomasina. She actually brought me my first training bra, a yellow band of material that stretched tightly across my chest with the words “Human Beans” etched on the front, next to two dancing kidney beans. The material restricted my skin and made me feel as if I were being punished for living too free of a life in my body.
There was also my fifth grade picture day, when Momma had promised she would straighten my hair so I'd look pretty for my pictures, and I had bragged to Jackie Brown, my forever rival and the only gay boy in the fifth grade, that my pictures were going to look way better than his. Every day, Jackie said, “Your Momma's not going to straighten your hair. Y'all too poor to have a straightening comb,” and I would strike back with “Shut up, girl,” or “Y'all too poor to have a house.” I couldn't wait until I bopped into school on picture day with my reddish brown hair against the back of my neck, flipped into feathers that I could shake toward Jackie. The day before Momma was to straighten my hair, she had lent the straightening comb to Miss Minnie. When she got it back, the teeth
in the comb weren't visible. It was as if the entire comb had been dipped in a vat of black wax that had made the former comb one block of metal. Momma stood in front of the stove, heating the comb, trying to get the gunk of Miss Minnie's hair out of the teeth.
“I don't know, Laurie,” she said. “This is dried up dirt, grease, muck, and whatever else was in Miss Minnie's head. I don't know if I'm going to be able to straighten your hair tonight.”
All I could see was Jackie laughing at me the next day, dancing around, singing, “I told you y'all was too poor.”
“But Momma,” I whined, “Can't you just clean it. Tomorrow's picture day.”
Momma soaked the straightening comb in a sink filled with hot water and soap for ten minutes. As she pulled it out of the water and inspected it against the light, I could see that the greasy sludge was still trapped between the teeth. I cried tears reserved for ten-year-olds whose lives are officially over. Momma took small rags, slips of paper, tips of scissors, and attempted to push the grime out of the teeth of the comb. When she ran the paper through one of the teeth, a long line of oiliness spread across the paper's whiteness.
“I can't do this, Laurie. I'm not going to put this on your hair.” I didn't know what I could say that would make Momma change her mind. I didn't care if the sludge got into my hair. I didn't care if I lost every strand of my hair the day after picture day, but on that night, I needed Momma to straighten my hair so I could shake my hair like the white girls in my classroom.
I pleaded, but Momma shook her head no, which caused me to get ornery. “Why do I have to suffer because Miss Minnie has nasty hair?” Momma looked directly into my face and placed her hands on her hips. Her lips were drawn in tightly and her chest poked out like she had transformed from sympathetic mother to enforcer. She didn't have to say another word. I knew the answer to my pleas. So I silently cried as Momma created four ponytails facing the outer regions of my head. I loudly cried when Jackie pointed at me the next day and called my ponytails doo-doo balls in front of the whole class, the teacher, and the photographer. And,
I sat in my picture with tear-stained eyes, a red nose, and a muted line across my face as I cursed Miss Minnie, her nasty hair, and her training-bra-giving self.
Despite the disdain I felt for Miss Minnie, on that day, as she sat in the kitchen with Momma, I appreciated her for talking to Momma about Mr. Todd and whatever ailment had caused him to yelp two nights before.
“You know, he was bleeding,” Momma said.
“Where?” The air escaping Miss Minnie's mouth sounded more like an exhalation than a question.
“Down there.” Momma's voice grew deeper. “And from his nose.”
I didn't know exactly what “down there” meant, but I knew people's noses normally bled when they were punched in them or they blew too hard. Maybe Mr. Todd's illness wasn't as bad as I'd originally imagined.
“From the nose,” Miss Minnie said and let out small “hmpf” at the end of her sentence. They both paused and I imagined Miss Minnie inspecting the words in her mind before she released them from her mouth. “You know,” she paused again. “He could be on that stuff.”
“Huh,” Momma said. “Nah,” and she let out a laugh that was not truly her own, one that fell flat out of her mouth, instead of bouncing as Momma's laughs usually did. I didn't know what the bleeding meant, and I didn't know what “the stuff” was, but I knew from Momma's nonlaugh something was soon going to be wrong.
After Momma's conversation with Miss Minnie, I noticed Mr. Todd leaving earlier and coming home later, especially on Friday nights. I'd hear him shuffling into the living room, past Mary's and my den-bedroom to a waiting Momma. As soon as their bedroom door closed, the arguing began. Momma asked, “Where have you been and why are you coming in here so late?”