Shifting Through Neutral Read online

  Over those years, Mama and Daddy only talked to each other through me. There was little to talk about. Not about the housework. Miss Queenie, the day worker, cleaned our home from top to bottom and did the laundry and bought the groceries once a week. Not about the neighbors. We barely knew ours. And never about me. Never about me. Only about money, which Mama always seemed to have a drawer full of thanks to her rental properties and which Daddy never had enough of thanks to his meager disability check. “Go ask your mama to loan me forty dollars till the first,” Daddy might say one night. Up the stairs I’d go. “Tell him I need my money!” Mama might say a week later. Down the stairs I’d go. If he’d ventured out to play poker that weekend and won, he’d hand me the money he owed her. And if he hadn’t, he’d say, “Tell your mama I’ll take care of her after the first. I promise.”

  This power dance around money taught me that women control things. Men take what they can get. I was awed by Mama’s personal wealth for a long time. She wielded cash in bundles, turning presidents’ faces in the same direction as she counted out bills rapidly, before tucking the wad into a nightstand drawer. And it wasn’t just the money that kept me in respectful admiration; it was also her engaged laughter and animated tones on the telephone, showing more enthusiasm for whoever was on the other line than she’d ever exerted for her own little family. Then there was her sophisticated illness—bad nerves—that kept her shielded from too much interaction with us. Daddy fed this aura of mystery surrounding Mama by often insisting I be careful around her, not do anything that would upset her because her nerves were “delicate.” He spoke of her in revered terms too, more than once telling me what a mighty fine mama I had, how lucky we were to have her in our lives. “I don’t rightly deserve her,” he’d say. She dressed fine, had flown on airplanes, gone to college. She was sophisticated. “She had options, coulda made some different choices, and she chose us,” he pointed out to me. I felt duly appreciative.

  My parents, one striving to middle-class status, the other striving to just get by, inhabited our house accordingly. Mama believed certain behavior was way beneath certain people, and she couldn’t bear to see it: broken things “nigger rigged” rather than properly repaired (like the time Daddy used pliers to turn on and off the kitchen faucet rather than call a plumber), or meals eaten on snack trays in the living room, or cheap floral sofa covers tossed over worn-out couches. Our furniture was covered in fitted plastic. Worst of all were any telltale signs of low-class living on the outside of the house, the greatest offense being car parts strewn across a back lawn. Mama was very conscious of the responsibility of living next to white folks, even after most of those who’d been our neighbors had moved away. Daddy, on the other hand, used things until they were worn out, or “lived in,” as he called it. The stuffing was coming out of the arm of his sofa bed, he wore old shoes with the backs down, turning them into makeshift slippers, and he had an array of “do rags” for his hair, collected from frayed remnants of old silky T-shirts.

  For the chance to enter Mama’s mysterious world even just a bit, and in order to stay in good stead within Daddy’s, I acted as the go-between for my parents. I was the weight that kept both sides of the seesaw balanced. Up. Down. Neither ever considered whether I minded this role. And I never considered whether it was fair. It was just the way it was.

  Things began to change a June day in 1972 when Mama ventured out for her monthly card party. She came down the stairs that evening dressed in a sharp turquoise polyester pantsuit bought from a B. Siegel’s catalog, her purse in the crook of her arm, lips red. Only this time she didn’t wait on the porch for her ride—a mysterious-looking white Mach II Ford that usually pulled up to the curb—but rather started walking the one block to Seven Mile Road. Daddy said she must’ve been catching the Hamilton bus. Mama didn’t drive. She’d learned once but was so afraid of oncoming cars that she refused to make left turns. After a while, she tired of trying to figure out whether a destination could be gotten to with all right turns.

  She didn’t come back that entire night. And even I knew that card parties couldn’t last that long.

  “Where’s Mama?” I asked Daddy around noon the next day.

  “She probably decided to hang out with her friend Johnnie Mae,” he said, peering up the street from his perch in front of the den window. “That’s her running buddy when she chooses to run.” I’d never thought of my mother as the one escaping until Daddy and I saw her later that evening, being dropped off by her card buddy Lyla, who, it turns out, owned the mysterious Mach II. I noticed Mama had a head-held-high stride, but no packages.

  He’d come to Detroit, her former lover, after five years of nothing, and they’d spent a wistful night together. She’d kept in regular, secret contact with Kimmie over those years, and Kimmie in return had kept her abreast of his love life. He was still married, and there were other women too. But on this night, when she should have been at her card party, he made an announcement: his wife was leaving him. With this revelation, Mama started hoping. She came home the next day looking for a sign. That night, I fell off the den radiator and gave her one.

  I’d put a milk crate on top of it, then climbed onto that so I could reach the windows. I loved them because they were tall and narrow with small square panes. I was convinced they were the exact windows that existed in castles. I could, if I stood on tiptoe, peek through the triangle of colored stained glass at the top. Blue, pink, and yellow. I imagined this was how the world looked to Mama when she took one of her pills—warm and tinted. My goal was to quickly peek through the colored panes, then open the window and let in the smell of apple blossoms growing on the tree in our front yard. But the window was stuck, so I pulled on the latch with all my might until it opened suddenly, its pointy corner jabbing me in the face, right next to my eye. I stumbled and fell off the milk crate, landing on my back. I could hear the faint traces of Little Stevie’s disapproving voice drifting down from Mama’s open bedroom window. Mary wants to be a Superwooooman but is that really in her head? I cried as much out of fear as pain.

  Daddy rushed into the den, grabbed me off the floor, and examined my eye. I couldn’t stop screaming.

  “Shhhhh!!! Let me see, let me see. There’s just a little blood, Brown Eyes. It’s okay. It just scared you, that’s all. Shhhh. Now tell me what you were doing up there.”

  My screams turned to sobs as I tried to explain myself. “I. Was. Trying. To. Open. The. Window. And. Then. I. Fell.”

  “You know you shouldn’t have climbed up there like that, don’t you?”

  I nodded my head.

  “Are you all right, Rae?” Her voice came from nowhere, like the principal’s voice at school, suddenly booming across the loudspeaker, silencing all homeroom chatter. There she was in the den doorway, framed by the glass French doors, looking down at us, nightgown flowing to her ankles.

  “She’s fine,” said Daddy. “More scared than anything.” He looked over at me as if to say, “Get up, show your mother no harm can come to you when I’m nearby.” I didn’t move, as I was stunned by the fact that my parents were in the same room together.

  “You can’t put all your weight on something that’s unstable to begin with,” Mama explained to me. “Of course you fell.” For a few seconds she said nothing else. I could feel her studying me, assessing our lot. Danger, she realized, could follow you into the house. Perhaps that was the moment she decided for sure it was time to leave it.

  Finally, Mama spoke, hands on hips. “It’s high time she learned to sleep on her own back!” she hissed. Then she turned on her heels, her gown creating an arc of chiffon behind her.

  The next morning, my ninth birthday, Daddy said, “Hurry home after school, Brown Eyes. Got a surprise for you.”

  That afternoon, I ran the entire five blocks to Birchcrest. My eye barely hurt anymore. I didn’t even stop to play Scramble with penny candy on the corner alongside the other kids and Terrance Golightly, whom I adored with his lopsided Afro an
d snaggletoothed grin. Yet, as I ran up the walkway to our front porch, my heart stop-started like Oldie’s motor on a cold day. Daddy was not waiting there to greet me. Mama was.

  She stood in the doorway with her arms hugging each other. She looked young and thin, wearing deftly applied makeup and a navy sailor’s blazer with white pants. Dark, short wig. Very mod. Like she looked on the evenings she went to her card parties. Only I knew this wasn’t a card party night. It was too early in the day. And it wasn’t the weekend. When I think about it now, it’s hard to believe my mother was already thirty-six.

  “Hi, Rae,” she said.

  “Hey,” I answered, breathless.

  “Hey? Well aren’t we a grown-up something!” She laughed, as though laughter was something we always enjoyed between us.

  “Where’s Daddy?” I asked, suddenly scared.

  Mama squatted to my level, grabbed onto my shoulders, and looked me in the eye, her perfume so powerful and sweet I almost choked.

  “He’s sleep. Now listen to me.” She inched closer. “I’ve been waiting for someone, for something,” she said, her voice low, as though we were playmates sharing a secret at recess. “And now what I was waiting for is here.” She paused, her grip tight on my shoulders. “And it has changed everything. We’re going to be…we’re going to be happy.”

  “But I thought your pills made you happy,” I said, never assuming she needed people for that.

  She slowly shook her head from side to side, a triumphant smile forming at the corners of her mouth. “I don’t need those anymore,” she said. “Now we’re going to have the real kind of happiness. The kind that lasts.” She tenderly lifted my chin with her finger, tilted my head up to hers. Her touch made me dizzy. “Wouldn’t you like that, Rae?”

  I looked my mother in her hopeful eyes and nodded my head slowly. I wanted her to be happy.

  She kissed my cheek, stood, smoothed out her white linen pants. “We’re going to do things together like a family!” she promised as we walked hand in hand through the front door, past the vestibule, and into the living room. There, both standing so lovely and new in the middle of the floor, were a banana-seated bicycle and my big sister, Kimmie, come home.

  Taking Off

  When you are driving, unexpected events can happen very quickly with little time for you to react. Plan ahead.

  WHAT EVERY DRIVER MUST KNOW

  She was stunning. Seventeen and exotic, with long wavy black hair and Crayola-gold skin and funny-colored eyes that danced in their sockets.

  “Wow, Rae Rae, you’re such a big girl!” Kimmie said, her voice cool and sweet, like 7-Up over ice cream. “Just let me hug you!” She came at me, her arms flung wide. She smelled like baby powder and fresh rain and wore a crinkly peasant sundress that tied shoelace-style at each delicate shoulder. She had a nervous energy to her that must have come from years of attention getting, a wary confidence reserved for girls who are told repeatedly how pretty they are but never fully believe it.

  I was so startled by her presence that I dared not move. I thought I would worship Mama forever for this ninth-birthday present.

  “Hmmm, Hmmm, look at you,” Kimmie cooed as she held me at arm’s length, checking me out. “It’s been so long!” I couldn’t believe how tall she was, how long her hair was, how mature she looked.

  “You’re here,” I whispered. “You’re here.” Kimmie nodded, smiling. I clung to her elbows.

  Just then the toilet flushed, and I worried it might be Daddy unaware—dressed only in his silky underwear—when suddenly a tall, beige-colored man entered the living room. He had metal gray eyes, the color of Oldie, and he winked at Mama, grabbed Kimmie into his arms, and—smooooch!—loudly kissed her forehead. Kimmie giggled. Dressed in a plaid flannel shirt and blue jeans, he looked outdoors healthy, like Big John on the Beans ’N Fixin’s can.

  “Best be getting back on the road,” he said, his voice deep and scratchy. “Long drive ahead.” He looked at me. “And I’ll bet you’re what they call Rae Rae.”

  I nodded, wondering how he figured into this happiness that Mama had promised.

  “Heard a whole heap about you,” he said. “Cute as a buzzing bee, too.”

  “This is my papa,” explained Kimmie. “He drove me up here from Louisiana.”

  Even though I’d instantly decided not to like this man, I had to ask, “What’s that like?”

  “What, Chicken?”

  “Louisiana.” I said it slowly, so as not to stumble over the syllables.

  “Oh, it’s a fine place. Mighty fine. Maybe one day I’ll take you there to see it, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, envisioning a magic kingdom with a gated entrance, scripted words above the archway announcing the destination, this Papa as the gatekeeper.

  “Cyril, let me walk you out,” said Mama in a voice I hadn’t heard before. Light, girly. Straining for a second chance. “You sure you don’t need some food before you get on the road?”

  “Well, if you want to go with me to that little diner I passed up the street, I’d be much obliged,” he answered, eyes twinkling.

  Mama glanced at Kimmie, who said, “You should go on. You know how Papa hates to eat alone.”

  “But you just got here, Sweetie. I could stay—”

  “Vy, I’m not going anywhere, okay?” Kimmie smiled at me. “Don’t worry. Rae Rae and I will be right here when you get back.”

  “I cannot get used to you calling me Vy,” said Mama as she grabbed her purse. “It sounds too…grown. Cyril, what’d you do to my little girl down there?”

  Cyril chuckled. “Kept her out of trouble, like you told me to do, that’s what.”

  “Yeah, and everyone knows I’m just trouble waiting to happen,” said Kimmie, her smile tight.

  It was blasphemous to me that Kimmie called Mama by her first name. I thought everyone was in equal awe of my mother. I glanced at the den door. “Where’s Daddy?” I asked, unclear why he was not here to say happy birthday and stop Cyril from taking Mama away.

  “Shhhh! I told you before, he’s asleep,” said Mama.

  “So, how is Daddy Joe?” asked Kimmie. “Does he still make that yummy zoup soup?” She followed my glance, walked across the living room, peered into the den’s glass French doors. “Wow. He’s knocked out. Is he okay?”

  “Depends on what you mean by okay,” said Mama. She and Kimmie exchanged a quick glance, and I noticed that despite Mama’s dark-chocolate skin and Kimmie’s fair complexion, they looked almost exactly alike. Same little nose, same high cheekbones, same full mouth. Different eyes. I didn’t look like anyone. Except that Mama and I both had brown eyes.

  “I’ll be back soon,” said Mama. I wanted to announce that she was the one who slept all day, but I kept quiet.

  “Bye, Papa!” said Kimmie. “I’ll miss you…. Drive safely!”

  “You bet I will, Sweet Pea,” he said. “You be a good girl up here in Detroit.” He said it in a way I’d never heard—stressing the D. Then Mama and Cyril left, and he slammed the front door hard, the way Daddy hated for people to do.

  From that moment of that door slam there was a shift, a rush of light wind in the motionless air of our family life. And it didn’t let up all summer. This breeze rather brought with it a whirl of activity to the house—rustling the heavy curtains and our lives, disturbing the precarious balance Daddy, Mama, and I had managed to create.

  I’ve tried often to imagine what it must have been like for Kimmie to return after all those years, after Mama had sent her away against her will but after she’d been gone long enough to think of that other place as home, the place where she groped motherless through her early teens. Did she think long and hard about what to wear to see her little sister and mother for the first time in five years? I still remember that baby powder and rain smell. Did she make her papa pause at a rest stop along I-75 just south of the city, in Toledo perhaps, so she could splash water on her face, pour talcum down her chest, change clothes, dry her wet h
air? I imagine she was nervously excited standing in our crowded living room introducing her father to me with her stepfather a few paces away, watching her parents go off together, knowing they’d go to a motel, maybe even one advertising its services in Day-Glo neon on the highway she and her papa had just exited.

  Kimmie and I watched as the sporty red Volvo tore away from the curb. “Papa’s new car is the best. You wouldn’t believe how smooth it rides,” she said. “I slept all the way here once we hit Kentucky. And his sound system has like four speakers!”

  I thought about Daddy’s Olds, still gray, no longer shiny. The muffler had fallen off the week before, and he’d tied it back on with a rag. I wondered what it would be like to ride in a cool, brand-new car.

  “Come on,” she said, leading me upstairs, straight to the spare bedroom—which I now remembered had been her room—where I watched her unpack. Out from her many suitcases came mounds of stylish clothes, a cornucopia of schizophrenic seventies fashions: demure high-neck granny dresses and plunging V-neck wrapped ones; skirts in a stunning array of lengths from micromini to maxi; Indian-style suede fringed vests and crocheted ponchos; bell-bottom pants in mod designs; gauzy and tank and tube tops in frenetic colors. Hanging from belts and necklaces and bracelets were all kinds of beads and patches and feathers. Pairs and pairs of shoes—towering creations on wedged and platform heels—occupied their own luggage. I watched in awe when suddenly with a flourish Kimmie handed me a pair of purple hot pants with a matching halter top. “These are for you,” she said. “Happy birthday.”

  As I held the clothes, feeling tingly and light-headed, she said, “Try them on. I want to see how they look on you. You can model for me.” Then Kimmie pushed me, affectionately. “Go on, Rae Rae.”