Shifting Through Neutral Read online

  Mama studied the spread for several moments, sighed. “Someday we’ll do that,” she said.

  “Do what?” She didn’t answer at first. “Do what?” I asked again.

  She scooped up the cards, wiping out my winning hand, and began shuffling the deck. “Go places,” she said against the whir of the blue and white checkered plastic. “Travel. See things.”

  She was supposed to have traveled after high school. Her adoptive mother had left her enough money to do that—take a train ride across country perhaps or venture on a trek to the motherland like other Negroes were doing at the time. See an African country liberate itself into independence. But instead she’d enrolled in Marygrove College on Six Mile Road, taken an English course from the Creole man with the pretty-boy face. And after that, after she became his mistress, the farthest she’d gotten was Louisiana, to his hometown and then New Orleans. And so, that became her world away, with its French manners and tropical heat and spiced foods and illicit love. There lay possibilities for a life different from the one she lived in Detroit, where factory smoke drifted across the skyline and February lasted forever.

  That night as Mama and I lay side by side, I wished that soon we would all, Kimmie included, be headed off to a new place where we would see new things, far away from angry men in riot gear. It was the perfect wish for a lonely child, and I held on to it all night and then into future nights—long after I’d outgrown it.

  On the third day, Daddy returned looking tired and spent, like the looted shops along Twelfth Street—having survived an ordeal but not without cost. “You’re back?” I asked, shocked when he swung open the front door. I never expected to see him again.

  “Gotta take care of my little girl, now, don’t I?” he said, lifting my chin with his finger, looking at me for several heartbeats. In those moments he noticed what he hadn’t bothered to notice before—that my eyes had changed, had become the color of new pennies. He hugged me with relief. “Hey, Brown Eyes,” he said, chuckling. “Hey.”

  I was stunned by his hug, he who had largely ignored me before. But something in his voice, in the way he said my new nickname, teased my heart, and I felt a brand-new feeling, a painful one I couldn’t identify. Which parent to love, now that they both seemed to want me?

  Mama, it turns out, was so exhausted from caring for me alone, that she didn’t leave her bedroom for a week, and Daddy was forced out of necessity to take over. And from that point on my parents no longer pretended to be in a real marriage. While Mama slept in their bed upstairs, Daddy slept downstairs, in the little den off the living room. With me.

  On one level, I adjusted well to yet another shift in the parenting constellation, not unlike a foster child moving from hand to hand, but with a twist—each hand within the same household, part of the same family. Already I was adaptable and resilient, and I didn’t expect Daddy’s love to become the centerpiece of my existence. I had no way of knowing my eyes had changed colors. I assumed Mama would take over again when she woke up, and things would be as they had been between us during the riots. I half expected Daddy to push his car to the curb again one night and take off.

  But that never happened. Mama stayed away from us. She had no qualms about Daddy and me sleeping together. As far as she was concerned, it was the way it should be—a father caring for his daughter. Still, she was secretly furious with Daddy for at first abandoning her, and resentful that he had someone somewhere else who wanted him. The fat bitch with her little east-side shack. Meanwhile, the man Mama wanted didn’t want her. So this was her life. Living upstairs while Daddy and I lived down.

  Suddenly, this woman whom I had fallen in love with over those couple of riotous days was distant and mysterious again. I was like a jilted lover after a two-night stand: why didn’t she want to see me?

  Every morning as soon as he opened his eyes, the migraine was there, pushing against his temples, waiting for him, hinting at the pain to come. He held his head carefully, stiffly, as he watched me eat my cereal, brush my own hair. Next he sent me upstairs—“Look in on your mama”—where I bathed and dressed, then crept quietly into her bedroom and kissed her cheek. Sometimes she’d awaken, a soft sleeper, and look up into my eyes, startled for a second or two beyond recognition. “You okay, Rae?” she’d ask, her forehead wrinkled. I’d whisper yes, and she’d nod, drift back to sleep. Sometimes she didn’t wake at all, and I stole a touch, letting the back of my hand rub against her smooth face, trail off at her chin. I relished a chance to show her affection when she couldn’t reject it—delicately, surreptitiously. Always, standing guard on her nightstand were twin bottles of pills. Mama’s naughty nerves, I secretly called my mother’s affliction.

  I’d leave Mama, run to the kitchen, grab a bottle of Pepsi-Cola from the refrigerator, pop the metal cap, and carry the cold drink back to the den. There, where the headache sat perched between his eyes, Daddy would take one of many double-pack Stanbacks from his end table drawer and gently pull the little red string that released the protective plastic. Next he’d unwrap the navy blue packaging, open the neatly folded wax paper, and expertly guide the loose medicine into his mouth, head back, powder piling on top of his tongue. And then he would take his Pepsi and wash it all down, grimacing slightly from the cola’s fizz coupled with the aspirin’s bitter flavor. He’d repeat the ritual with the second packet—pouring, drinking, grimacing—then sit quietly and wait for relief to kick in. Some days it kicked in better than others.

  One day, a year or so after Daddy’s return, I entered my own room, which was more a guest room, and found Mama sleeping in my bed like Goldilocks. I tiptoed close to her, leaned into her face. She smelled so different from Daddy. Flowery sweet, yet bed sweaty. I kissed her cheek. She awakened.

  “Good morning, Rae,” she said, still groggy. “Sleep all right?” I nodded, secretly exuberant over her interest, chest thumping.

  “Good. Let’s see him try to slip out with you on his back,” she said, then turned over, done with me for the day. I was devastated by the sight of her back, and in that moment I stopped waiting for things between us to return to what they’d been like before; I decided to throw all my love Daddy’s way, stop saving some for a mother who didn’t seem to need it. I was five.

  She wanted me to be Daddy’s watchdog because she worried that he might tire of their agreement and run back to his lover. Mama, living above us, completely missed what was happening below—that Daddy was already too involved to ever abandon me. Not noticing that would cost her a lot later. Meanwhile, having transferred my loyalties whole cloth, I became wildly afraid of Daddy’s leaving after Mama said those words—“let’s see him try to slip out with you on his back”—and I began a brief but urgent habit of grabbing onto his leg whenever he tried to leave the house.

  Daddy was tickled by my leg grabbing. Evenings when his friend Mr. Alfred waited for him in the vestibule, they’d laugh together about it, unfazed by the depth of my panic. “You sho’ don’t have to worry about ‘Mama’s baby, Daddy’s maybe’ with that one,” Mr. Alfred said, chuckling.

  Daddy disentangled himself from me, laughing, shaking his head, kissing the top of mine. “Yeah, she’s a Daddy’s girl, all right.”

  In the evenings, he cooked my dinner and gave me warnings. Over pork chops and Jiffy’s cornbread one night and Polish sausages on white bread with mustard and sliced tomatoes another, he’d tell me harsh stories of his sad mother, a woman “weak for men and alcohol.” He’d tell me about a dirty, no-good stepfather who drowned Daddy’s two little brothers in a water-filled quarry, drowned them for the piddling insurance money his mother had taken out on them. And how she died from heartbreak. “Her being weak for men, that’s what did it,” Daddy explained, shaking his head. I listened carefully, learning early that weakness for men leads to death. I passed from kindergarten to first grade to second grade to third this way—learning some useful skills at school and learning life lessons at home.

  One evening, our bellies full from f
ried chicken and cream-style corn, Daddy said, “Get your sweater, Brown Eyes. We’re going for a little ride.”

  Together we climbed into the front seat of Oldie, our nickname for Daddy’s car, and we rode down to Six Mile Road, made a left turn, and headed east. On Woodward Avenue we passed the golf course with the big chain-link fence, then glided along the busy street, car windows down, a ubiquitous Ray Charles tape in the eight-track player.

  We passed buildings with huge, neon signs, the letters M-O-T-E-L flashing in hot, fluorescent colors. I hung my bare arm out the open window, the thick night air draping my skin like sheer gauze. Before long we were downtown, in the area boasting Art Deco–style structures and so different from the gutted-out landscape a few blocks east. “That there is the main public library,” said Daddy. “Prettiest place I ever been inside. Majestic. And over there is the art museum. Got a fresco by a man named Diego Rivera that’ll make your heart stop. And I believe that one there is…hell, I don’t know what that one is.” He turned the music down. “When your mama and I first got together, I wanted to move over in here, but she pitched a you-know-what, saying nobody who was worth a red cent lived downtown or on the east side. Started talking about that damn Motor Town Revue and how the musicians did all their recording and everything on the west side.” Daddy chuckled. “That woman thinks if you wanna live like the famous, all you got to do is live by ’em.”

  All I knew was that I had seen very little beyond the few blocks between home and school. These rides with Daddy taught me that there was a whole world out there I didn’t know. Blocks and blocks of it. “I want a bicycle for my birthday,” I blurted out.

  “We’ll have to see about that,” Daddy said. “Bicycles can be dangerous.” He made a turn onto a narrow street and parked in front of one of the houses. It was much smaller than ours, with light blue aluminum siding and a white door. Flowers bloomed all along the walkway and in boxes at the windows. “Ain’t that a sweet-looking place?” Daddy said, excited. He gripped the steering wheel as he peered through the windshield at the house. I nodded. It was pretty. Gingerbread style.

  He rang the doorbell, and she answered. She had long black hair curling on her shoulders and a moist, open face. We went inside, sat together in the living room, with its rose-patterned sofa and matching pillows. The thick pink shag carpet felt bouncy beneath my Pro-Keds. Our house’s decor was basic and dark, nothing like this tangle of color.

  I don’t remember much more about that visit, only that I was allowed to play with another child’s toys in the backyard: a swing set with a swirling slide, a wooden Paddle Ball, a red-and-white jump rope. I remember she and Daddy stood holding hands as they watched me play from the back porch steps.

  It was my job every night to grab a fresh Pepsi from the kitchen as Daddy repeated his Stanback ritual. Always, he saved the last swig of pop for me. He’d then lie down carefully, stretched across the den’s sofa bed, exhausted from getting through the day. On cue, I’d run to the powder room, dampen a washcloth with cool water, fold it into a rectangle, and, returning to Daddy’s side, place it across his forehead, gently applying pressure. After several minutes, once I heard light snoring sounds, I’d remove the cloth, quietly tiptoe away and into my pajamas, brush my teeth. I’d then return to the den and crawl on top of Daddy’s back.

  Some nights when I wasn’t yet sleepy, I’d sit beneath the dining room table and draw pictures of moving vehicles. I’d imagine myself in the driver’s seat of a big car or truck on a highway, zooming. Occasionally, I’d see the long legs of my mother, her feet clad in pastel nylon slippers, walking soundlessly to the kitchen; I’d keep very still as she passed back by, up the stairway, out of sight. I studied those beautiful legs and fantasized about grabbing onto one, refusing to let go. How far would she drag me?

  While I spent my nights with Daddy, I did spend some rare mornings with Mama. She would summon me to her room by calling downstairs from her private telephone line and say to Daddy when he picked up: “Tell Rae to come here for a minute.” I’d run up the stairs, my long limbs taking them two at a time, and enter as though crossing the threshold of a queen’s lair. There she’d be, on her throne, and there I’d be, so small in comparison, so grateful. She never really wanted anything, just my silent company as she held court from that giant king-sized bed, which was always covered with piles of stuff: newspaper clippings and bills and mail-order catalogs and receipts. These piles were part of her spring-cleaning ritual, which happened year-round. “I’m sorting through the clutter,” she’d explain to me. “Getting my things in order.” I never saw any progress she made, but it helped her pass the time during those empty years. I would rummage through the piles as I sat perched on the edge of her bed, looking for clues to who she was.

  Mama slept a lot. She could sleep through an entire day and then stay awake all night, prowling the upstairs like a sleepwalker. To get through those wee hours, she often played solitaire, smoking in bed with the window thrown open for relief—no matter what the season. By the time I came into the room to kiss her good-bye before school, she was just settling into slumber. I often caught her humming herself to sleep as a Little Stevie Wonder album spun on the red record player Daddy had given me for Christmas, volume down low. If she was still awake when I entered, she might point to the whirling LP and whisper, “This is his latest one. His mother gave me an advance copy.”

  I noticed that the Motown singer’s rich voice was no longer high. And he now sang of not letting sorrow hurt him, of never having a dream come true. As I remember it, like Mama’s twin bottles of pills that stood guard, Little Stevie’s songs became more and more haunting over those years—and ever more pervasive.

  Mama went few places. Her major exception was the monthly card parties she attended with a small group of friends who’d known her since those early, hopeful days with Daddy. These parties were hosted on rotation at each card member’s house, but Mama had never hosted one at our place to my knowledge. Paradoxically, it was when she left home for these parties that I got to know her better. For a solid two hours at least, before Daddy would wonder where I was, I could rummage through Mama’s room. It was something I did every month during those five years before I turned nine. I had it down to a system. I’d begin with the smaller things first—her lingerie drawers with their soft nylon panties in pastels and lacy Olga bras, and her vanity table with its cacophony of cosmetics and powders arranged atop a brass tray, coordinating hairbrush nearby. I’d reserve the majority of my limited time, however, for her closets.

  She had two of them, one on either end of the bedroom, and they were so deep they had windows that looked out onto the side of each next-door neighbor’s house. I thought of them as identical little toy houses, both Rae-sized and filled with Mama-clues. In one she kept her stacks of shoeboxes, even more shoes sloped across the wall with matching purses on the shelf above, and beside that an array of octagonal hatboxes. In the other were all her hanging clothes: the pantsuits and summer shifts and dreamy mink cape. I played dress up, of course, trying on her size-nine shoes, slipping a sequined cocktail dress over my rail-thin body. I felt my mother’s presence profoundly in those closets, as they were so intimate and filled, everything permeating with the strong flowery smell of Jungle Gardenia perfume. Just before leaving, I’d grab an armful of her hanging clothes and bring them to my nose, inhaling deeply. It wasn’t the next best thing to having Mama there—it was better. If she’d been there, I’d never have been able to get that close to her. I wouldn’t know where to enter.

  And even though Daddy was a different story, I sometimes felt so guilty about the time spent singularly indulging in Mama’s inner sanctum that afterward, I would run downstairs to the hall closet, swing open its door, and leap into the darkness, grabbing hold of Daddy’s hanging coats and pants and jackets as I tumbled atop the cushion of clothes on the closet floor—all the while filling my lungs with the faint animal scent trapped inside.

  My opportunities to forage
through Mama’s things were rare because apart from those parties she seldom left home—her social life and mail-order shopping conducted on the telephone with its long cord snaking through the hallway, following her even to the bathroom. She was devoted to catalog purchases, found solace in buying what someone else had already selected and coordinated. My mother would buy not only a dress, but the shoes and accessories a model was wearing. The whole outfit. Daddy once told me that when Mama selected new living room furniture, she bought the store’s entire floor display, right down to the vase filled with dried flowers on the coffee table. She seemed to believe this method gave her a modicum of control—as though making the right purchases could somehow stave off life’s capriciousness.

  I inherited some of that belief. Long before I began exclusively wearing hand-me-downs, I can remember once wearing a soft yellow knit ensemble Mama had mail-ordered for me. Because it was Daddy’s birthday, I wanted to look pretty for him. But the day turned ugly, as by the end of it both Mama and Daddy hovered before the Magnavox TV. At first, seeing them together excited me. But I soon saw their stricken faces. Mama moaned and Daddy kept shaking his head as the anchorman spoke of Dr. King’s assassination. “He was the same age as me,” said Daddy. “That man was the same age as me.” Watching my parents’ sadness, I regretted how brightly dressed I was. In my child’s mind, that celebratory outfit was somehow implicated in the turn of events.

  I remember too my first day of school, wearing a navy blue sailor dress, this one from the JC Penney’s Back-to-School catalog. When Daddy left me in the classroom, I cried hot tears, worried throughout story hour and snack time and what should have been nap time that he wasn’t coming back. My crisp new dress was, I was certain, a portent of bad news. By that afternoon Daddy was miraculously there—waiting to walk me home. Yet in his absence I had feverishly pulled the dress’s little white dickey from my throat, had ripped off its matching bow, scratched my thighs red from its itchy synthetic fabric.