Authors: Laurie Jean Cannady

Crave (36 page)

By then, I was using both of my hands to hold up the phone. It had become as heavy as an anvil with Momma's words in the
cold black plastic. “Laurie, I didn't even know why I was crying like that. I felt like I should've known, but I just didn't.”

I thought I knew, but of so many things in that moment I was unsure.

“Laurie, I was sad to see you go. I know you were mad because I was laughing, but if I would've told you I was sad and I would miss you, you wouldn't have gone. You wanted a reason to stay. I couldn't be that reason.”

“I know, Momma,” my words cracked against the phone.

“I just had to make sure you left. Now I know everything's gonna be okay.”

I cried out loud then, “But Momma, I'm scared and it's hard. I don't think I can make it. Please let me come back home.”

I was all of eighteen. I'd sexed as many men as any grown woman, and I had the mouth of a nasty sixty-year-old, but on that phone, standing on that concrete bay in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, I wanted my momma.

“Laurie, stop crying,” Momma said so quietly, so calmly I feared she was moving from the phone. “Stop crying, baby, and listen to me.”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“Whatever you put your hands on will prosper. God has promised you this and it's in your blood. Now, I want you to wipe your face.” I obeyed as I took the sleeve of my B.D.U.s and wiped it across my eyes.

“Now, take a deep breath.”

I inhaled Momma's voice, what I remembered of her smell, her brown skin, all of her into me.

“It's already written. You just gotta walk.”

I straightened up then, no longer leaning on the booth. I just had to walk because it was already written. I thought about those words as I asked Momma about Mary, Tom-Tom, Dathan, and Champ. I thought about those words as our conversation ended with “I love you and I miss you.” I thought about them as I crawled into my bunk, under the white sheets and Army green wool blanket that always made me colder than I was before I slid into bed.
I thought about walking and how hungry movement had always made me, about how difficult it was to be satisfied when constantly longing for more.

I wasn't sure of whether Momma was telling the truth. I didn't believe in the strength she professed was in me, but I believed in movement. I believed in searching for sustenance, for supply, in preparation for days when pangs of hunger controlled the next step.

With Momma's words still moving through me, I welcomed sleep, lulled by the humming halogen lights over the fireguard station. The next day would begin early, 4:00 a.m. First would be the cleaning of the barracks, followed by physical training, and then breakfast. I imagined savoring eggs, bacon, oatmeal, and Victory Punch, which oddly tasted like an orange pickle when sliding down my throat. As I thought of the feast awaiting me the next morning and the dinner comprised of roast and potatoes I'd polished off earlier that night, I felt the hunger positioned in me before I was born, small ripples in my belly, life growing there, even though I was not with child. Something was moving in me, a new hunger, my own, reminding me I'd have to keep walking for Momma, for my family, for me, no matter how hungry or full I got.

Pretty and her five.

Clockwise: Pretty, 48
;
Dathan, 30
;
Tom-Tom, 26
;
Champ, 32
;
Mary, 28
;
Laurie, 31
.

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