Finding My Thunder (21 page)

Finding My Thunder 31

After
Derrick pulled away I stood there…Danny was just blocks away…blocks away from
me now…but miles apart, already an ocean between us. I was just a part of a
girl.... Those others, shallow or deep, no matter, they knew what they were. Maybe
not who. But they knew what.

Color
was not my issue with Danny. It was my issue with myself. With my history, my
roots in creation, with what I’d been told about myself by the folks I was
supposed to trust with those things.

Danny
had asked me how my family set up so he could know me…but he couldn’t know me
cause I didn’t know myself. This is why people could hurt me, not because of Danny
Boyd, Danny
Italiano
, but because I didn’t stand on
anything, for anything, I couldn’t, I was a shadow, I was nothing, too much,
not enough. I couldn’t fight because I didn’t know!

I
felt all of my focus and all of my rage pull together and land in one place. Naomi
Blue. I ran for her house. She had to be home. After all this time, my whole
life in fact, after all of it I couldn’t wait another minute, second, I had to
know once and for all I had to.

I
ran there. I ran, down what used to be my street, tore past what used to be my
house, where my mother used to live, then what used to be my yard, over the
Canna
bed to the fence in back, through the gate where my
dog used to bark and snap, across the porch where Danny used to wait for me, but
it was all gone, moved inside me, all of them coming together, all of them
closing in.

Naomi
sat at the kitchen table with Debra. They were eating some of the cake…sixteen
years…of silence and lies. I had to catch my breath and they were alarmed,
standing, hands on me, what happened? Are you hurt?

“Who,”
I breathed, I panted, “who is my father? Who is my father? Who is he?”

The
cymbals had crashed and they stepped back and Debra lowered to her seat her
eyes big on Naomi. “Should I go?” she said.

“No,”
said Naomi, glad to have something she could speak to besides my question. That
I knew.

“
Well
sit down,” she said to me, reason in her voice like
always.

“Answer
me,” I said loud.

Debra
said, “Hey now,” and Naomi held out her hand like a stop sign.

“Sit
down,” she said again.

“If
you don’t answer me…I am going to break…apart.”

“I
will answer. I will. Just sit down, baby. It’s a long answer.”

So
I let her pull the chair for me and I dropped.

She
sat quick. She leaned toward me. “Lonnie is your father, Hilly.”

I
slapped the table and I couldn’t feel my hand. “No. The truth. The truth that
everyone knows, that everyone says in Snyder and at school…. The truth!”

Naomi
has pulled back but she keeps her eyes on me. “Lonnie Grunier. He is your
father.”

“Eugene
Blue is my father.”

She
shook her head. “He is not.”

“How
do you know that? You’ve lied to me for so long.”

She
licked her lips. “It’s the blood. That’s…how they tell. You cannot match Eugene’s
blood-type.”

She
was trying to explain it, the science, but I talked over her, “You’re lying. Are
we blood? You and me? Why wouldn’t you tell me that? You let me think I had no
one. Why are you lying to me?” I slapped the table over and over. I couldn’t
seem to stop, and I cried and my face was twisted up.

“Listen
to me Hilly, listen to me. You have always had me. Always. I am telling you the
truth. I am telling you what I know. Lonnie Grunier is your father. I wish I
could help you…I wish I could say it’s not so.”

“I
am black…inside. I feel it. You can’t not let me know…you can’t. I’m like Danny.
We’ve always known…he has. We’re alike…we’re the same…he’s my love. And…he’s my
love. He protects me…you protect me…but you’re killing me. Don’t you see it? You’re
killing me.”

I
had pushed my chair back at an odd angle and I was sobbing now, feeling myself
melting down. She grabbed at my hands. “
Shh
. Shhh. I
will tell you. I was going to tell you but I promised your grandmother…I
promised.”

“Is
Eugene Blue my father?” I asked one more time, gasping and breaking against
her.

“No.
Not father.”

I
shook my head. I looked at Debra. “I did not know,” she said.

“Your
Great Grandmother…the day we got word her daughter had died…we went to Memphis
just her and me. She couldn’t tell the mister, he had washed his hands of her. But
we went there in the worst part of that city in a place so foul…and there was
Leonard
Shote’s
sister, drunk and a broken woman…a
junkie…so high and so low…so angry we were not the pusher man but two ‘goddamn
mission women,’ as she put it.

“We
had not realized
Renata’s
mother lived with a Negro
man. Not a good man though. But had the white grandfather known that…there
would be nothing we could do for these children she had left. Leonard’s
children is what the sister said.

“And
in that one filthy room,
Renata
, just a toddler,
dirty…” Naomi looked off, tears streaming and she wiped at them then looking
away she said, “and in the corner there…,” a sob, but she pulled it in and I
saw her holding her shoulders straight, “…a cardboard box for bathroom
tissue…why I remember…a little baby black and skinny,” she was laughing and
crying now. “No diaper…no clothes. And
Renata
she
comes in between us there and points and says, ‘Baby,’ and she is sucking on a
bottle and it just has this milky water in it…this water with some
Karo
syrup, and she puts it in this baby’s mouth and he
sucks a few times and she pulls it from him and sucks on it herself. And then
back to him. And we realize…she is caring for this baby and she is not yet two
years old. And your granny picks her up and….”

“Well…I
lift him…I lift him, this sour smelling string bean and there is so much angry
life in him he almost wiggles out of my hands and I say, ‘Lord Jesus.’”

Now
she looks at me, light in her face, “And that was him. My Eugene.”

Finding My Thunder 32

Naomi
and me sat in the living room for the rest of the evening, me curled next to
her limp but oddly peaceful. Our sides were touching, sometimes her arm came
around me until the arthritis.

Around
us were the picture boxes and the album of Eugene growing up. How many times
I’d looked at these, but not like now.

He
was my uncle. He was my blood. If he had lived…no, I couldn’t think of it. She
already did…Naomi. I couldn’t add my grief.

No
matter who the father, Leonard
Shote
, my black no
account grandfather, or some other, no matter who, Eugene’s mother Lottie was
my grandmother. She never married anyone far as we knew, and not Leonard for
sure.

The
room I had grown up in
in
Mama’s house had been
Lottie’s room. She had run away young, she had got on drugs sometime and turned
to a low-down life.

Naomi
said there were only two happy things ever went on in Great Grandma Susan’s big
house…
Renata
when she was a child…and later…me. I
didn’t have much confidence that now it had come to Lonnie him and his new
family could lift the curse of sadness there.

So,
when Lottie died, Susan had conspired with Naomi to rescue Lottie’s children. Without
telling her husband Clyde, Susan journeyed to Memphis with Naomi. Susan rescued
Renata
cause she showed white.

But
Renata’s
brother Eugene, the baby in the box who
lived on random sucks of
Karo
, that one so dark so
long and angry…Naomi took. She brought him home to her husband William.
 

William
knew the truth about the babies, but far as Clyde knew there was no Leonard
Shote
, no consorting with Negroes no way, and there was
just
Renata
. He could not, could not ever know about Eugene
and all that would bring up. Eugene and
Renata’s
lives depended on their silence.

Together
they created a bulwark of secrecy and behind that wall those children grew. And
I did, too.

We
turned on the fan and it blew on us, and we sat in the dip of that old brown
couch and we let ourselves exist and we breathed.

I
understood. And a huge part of myself solidified.

Inside
my mind the curtain was torn in two, just like in the bible story of the Temple,
the curtain that hid the presence of God, ripped away and God got out of that
special room, that box where the Jews had held him, God was too big to stay in
there and that was like me, the truth, the truth was free in me and there was
no telling where it would go.

And
what I knew first off…there was more. Oh there was more. Secrecy was the way.

Mama
and Eugene were told they were siblings. But Lonnie never knew. He would not
have tolerated such…but in himself…it was there. He was so broken apart from
his inner voice…as I had been until today.

No,
Lonnie did not listen. But Mama…in the end…and maybe most her life…it was all
she could hear.

Finding My Thunder 33

That
last night, knowing how it would be for Danny…maybe out with friends, I didn’t
know but he’d had a life as varied as a wealthy man’s wardrobe and he could put
it on, any part of it, any time and it would cover him.

But
now it was morning. I needed to pull myself out of this bed, this womb of
one-hundred-percent pink cotton.

But
I laid there and fought the panic. He was leaving…harsh…a quick jab of despair,
my eyes glued shut, my throat dry and sore and this heaviness…. Danny was
leaving today.

Can
you comfort yourself? I imagined Naomi saying to me as I’d heard her say to
others growing up…others in beds hurting. She would say, what do you know that
is good and true. Well, at least Danny would still be on this continent for a
while. I knew that.

I
was near him, had grown up this way, on his street, now living on the alley
that ran behind his house too, connected by this brick river. Years in his shadow,
never turning my head but knowing he was there, feeling his light and the ache
it brought me, but still I knew he was alright. And now, stronger than ever…the
way I could dwell in his margins.

He
had a one thirty flight out of Memphis, hangar B to Los Angeles. I had to get
there to Memphis somehow, all sixty five miles away. I had to pony up and be
brave.

Hitchhiking
was the best way I could think of and I wished I had those free-spirited girls
with me that I’d had Danny pick up on the way to the boy’s farm. But I just had
me and a heart ready to burst with desperate love. I hoped this trip would use
some of it up cause I was so overfilled with no way to let it out. For him.

I
put on jeans and a t-shirt and packed my bag, then scribbled a note for Naomi
that I was going to go sign up for school and walk around since this was my
last day of freedom, and I had some things to do like go to the J. C. Penny’s
catalogue store that was stuck in back of the auto body shop and write down the
numbers on some new school clothes so she could work on helping me buy those
things…and I was never in a million years going to really let her do this. I
had all my clothes and Mama’s to make over some, and I didn’t wear but half a
dozen things, so no. She had done enough for me. But in the note I did say I
would go there right after I registered.

Painting
the Temple earned me some freedom. And the events of last night garnered some
sympathy. She would want to give me time to take care of my responsibilities
and think.

She
was pulled…like my Sooner with those pups. Naomi had folks she looked in on
every day. She was retired from the hospital but that just led to more time at
her Temple work. She would never retire from serving her Lord, not ever. Sick
folks in Snyder depended on her to see they hadn’t died in their beds. And
there was usually something of a dramatic nature, sometimes life and death,
going on with the community. She was gone most days, some evenings too what
with prayer meeting and bible study and clothes gathering and food distributing
and driving others like a taxi to various appointments at doctors and lawyers
and social service agencies and to visit loved ones and even to the jail. There
was mission work and sewing and the endless cooking the ladies did for the many
meals they gathered round and gave away. She had her tiny pension and she had
the stipend they paid her to shepherd and she got more gifts from her flock
than you could believe, six ears of corn, a bag of greens, a chicken leg and
thigh fried crisp, biscuits. She loved to tell me how rich she was…rich in
folks and love, for the Lord had promised houses and lands and Snyder Town was
her kingdom.

So
hopefully she’d let me drop out of her mind some. I drew a smiley face on the
bottom of the note just to let her know I wasn’t going off to kill myself or
something.

I
headed out. I had some money for the bus home and maybe extra I hoped. Birthday
money and Temple painting money.

I
kept to the alley to leave town by. I walked along behind his house and it
wounded me in the stomach to see it, to know it was his place, it held the
hours of his history, it held his people and they hurt too, like I did. They
wept some inside like me.

A
man and his wife took me as far as Hillsboro. I told them I had a flight to
catch in Memphis. I was going off to college, I said. They lectured me some
about hitchhiking and the state of young people in general, and I was the age
of their granddaughter so that’s why they stopped. I thanked them in Hillsboro
and they were upset I would travel on and they could not take me as they lived
in Hillsboro, but I assured them I would be alright, and I almost had to run
off while they were still talking and worrying and they did not leave but
watched me beg for my next ride at the gas station and I did catch a ride with
a Mexican family who had been working the vegetable fields in Florida and were
visiting family outside of Memphis. They did not speak great English, but my
one year of Spanish did help the littlest bit, so I sat in the back with two
little kids and some luggage and the wind beat my hair so I braided it and wore
my bandana and they took me all the way to the airport. I thanked them so much
and tried to give them five dollars for gas and the children or something, but
they wouldn’t take it so I said good-bye and hurried into the terminal.

It
was big. And I went right to a desk because neither of the drivers I’d picked
had gone very fast, so it was close to one, it was twelve forty three. I found
the terminal and I felt like I walked the giant leg of that place and I got to
B and went almost all the way back to the place where regular people had to
stop. I could see a crowd there, but no military in that group. But what I did
see was her golden head of hair and Lauren’s dark one. And I went behind a
large tiled post and my heart was thumping and my chest was squeezing. I felt
exhausted and filthy and ashamed to be there. And I dug quickly in my bag for
the letter I’d written to him and I held it in my hand and stared at it. I had pushed
myself to get this far and I was just going to give God the credit for getting
me here. Maybe he did it to finally pulverize me down to nothing, but I was
here. Tahlila was just another barrier. But one that Danny had taken very
seriously. I made up my mind. Really…I already had.

I
couldn’t say how, but I knew he approached and I moved around the post and
looked back from the direction I’d come from. And he was walking in the broad
hallway. He wore jeans and a denim button down shirt,
untucked
.
His boots. His hair buzzed off. His brow, his eyes more than ever…his lips red.
Shaven clean.

She
and Lauren ran to him squealing. He had not come with them. He looked surprised
and he smiled but I felt it in my heart he was thrown. But not as thrown as he
soon would be. I waited while it settled some, and he talked polite. She went
to him and hugged him. His arm came to her back and he hugged her, but not like
a lover, not like he hugged me, with his body, with his face, with his legs,
with his self.

So
I waited, and I heard the announcement. Others were dispersing, going deeper
down the corridor where only the passengers were allowed. He was wrapping it
up, but they followed, they laughed, but he seemed nervous. They didn’t know
how he felt. They didn’t know how they were barging through his final moments
to be a civilian. But I knew.

I
gripped the letter, gripped it with both hands, and as he moved and they moved
with him, closer, I stepped out from behind the post. And his head turned and
he saw me first. He stopped then. I saw his lips form my name, but no sound,
and they were still talking. He moved toward me, and me toward him, not
running, just walking. I dropped my bag, I heard it hit, but I went to him, my
arms open until they were around his waist and he grabbed on to me and I
pressed my face, my body against him, as hard as I could, he held me so tight,
I held him so tight. It grew quiet around us, just the people passing, the
announcement again, he needed to board. I looked up, and he was right there,
and his eyes now. “Every day…every minute….” I said.

“Hilly,”
he said, and such a look…I would see it…ponder it…but for now, the lines in his
lips, the beard in his skin like pepper, my hand on his face, and a kiss
against my lips, but it’s too much and it ends and we’re just close, and it’s
in his breaths and mine, the weight of everything.

“Go,”
I say. And I shove the envelope into his hand. And he has grabbed my arms and
he rips himself away and our arms are extended as he creates reluctant distance
and our fingers are the last thing and he keeps pulling, and I stand…and he
looks back…he looks back…he looks back…and I stand, staring, until he looks
back once more…and he’s gone.

I
am only looking after him, just two eyes looking, no body, no feet, no dropped
bag, no airport, no stunned bitches who have huffed off and left the stench of
their perfume to my left, nothing but him…nothing but this love.