TO DO: Dance like my mother’s watching (or like I’m killing roaches)

ONCE WE GET to Ma’s house—our old . . . other house—it goes the same way every time. Maddy jumps out and runs to the door, her red beads clacking with every step, the foil on the ends glinting like each braid was a Fourth of July sparkler. I jump out behind her.

“Only ring it once,” I tell her, just because ringing anybody’s doorbell ten million times is one of Maddy’s favorite things to do. But with Ma, a person who can’t walk, it comes across as a hurry up, which is rude.

“I know, I know,” Maddy says, acting like she wasn’t about to go hammer-time on the doorbell.

“Coming!” Ma’s muffled voice comes through the wooden door. By the time she opens it, Momly has parked the car and is standing with us, still rubbing sleep off her face, dressed in scrubs and those weird Wiffle-ball shoes that look too uncomfortable to walk in. But that’s Momly.

“Praise the Lord,” Ma sings, wheeling the chair back to give us enough space to come inside. Maddy gives the first big hug. She always does, and Ma receives it as if she’d just caught a wedding bouquet.

“Maddy, my Waffle.” Big smile. “Girl, you get bigger every time I see you. And prettier.”

“But you just saw me last week.”

“Yep, and you bigger and prettier,” Ma says, beaming. It’s the same thing every week. You would think they’d switch it up, but they don’t. It’s a routine we all need, I guess. Something to remind us that even though life with Momly and Uncle Tony is good, Ma is who we are. Where we from. Blood.

Once Maddy gets done gushing, I bend down and give Ma a kiss on the cheek. Her skin is dry, rough on my lips, and I know better than to put any gloss on because that’s also “too fast for church.” She smells like flowers dipped in cake batter. And hair grease. Familiar.

“Hi, baby,” she says, taking my hand.

“Hi, Ma.” I squeeze. She squeezes back.

I wheel Ma—always wearing a colorful, patterned dress, her hair in fresh straw curls—out to the passenger side of the car. She can do it by herself, but I like to do it for her. Just used to it, I guess. Sometimes Momly tries to help, but she knows this is my thing. Take care of Maddy, then take care of Ma. I open the car door, put the brakes on the chair so it don’t roll out from under my mother as she hoists herself up and leans into the car. Then she whips what’s left of her legs in. After that, I check to make sure none of her dress is hanging out. Then I close the door and roll the wheelchair to the back of the car, where I fold it up and put it in the trunk. There’s an art to this, because if I do it wrong, and the wheels of the chair bump up against me, it’ll dirty up my dress, and then I’ll have to hear Ma’s mouth the whole way to church and back about how “cleanliness is next to godliness.” But I always do it right, because ain’t nobody got time for no lectures.

Next comes the pre-church small talk.

“So, how was the week?” Ma, who always immediately turns off the car radio (Momly only listens to talk talk talk anyway), asks Momly as we back out of the driveway. This, of course, is a real false start, a fake beginning to a conversation, only because Ma and Momly speak like six thousand times a week. But this was Ma’s way of opening up a discussion in a behind-the-back kind of way, to say whatever she wanted to say to me and Maddy. That way, it don’t seem like Momly’s a snitch. Even though I know Momly be snitching. I mean, she’s our aunt. And our adopted mother. Blabbing just comes with the territory.

“Nothing crazy to report. Maddy brought home all fours in school.” That was Momly’s lead-in this week.

“Fours, huh? Is that like an A?” Ma asked this all the time, and I couldn’t tell if she really had a hard time keeping up with the grading system of our charter school or if she was just being shady. She always called the grading system new wave, and said things like, Charter don’t mean smarter.

Ma cracked the window to let some air in. Momly’s car always smelled like a freshly scrubbed bathtub. Like . . . clean, but poisonous. Cleanliness was next to godliness, huh? So next to godliness that you might die from it. Maddy and me were used to it, but it irritated Ma every single time she was in the car.

“Yes, Ma. That’s an A, remember?” Maddy piped up from the backseat. Ma didn’t turn around. Just nodded.

“And Patty, well, she’s really doing great on the new track team. Patty, did you bring the ribbon?” I caught Momly’s eye in the rearview mirror. She knew I ain’t bring no ribbon. What I look like bringing a ribbon to church? I knew what she was doing. But if there was one thing I didn’t want to talk about this Sunday, it was running. Like I said, I’m a sore loser. And petty, too. And now, instantly annoyed.

“I forgot,” I said, flat.

“Well, let me tell you, Bev, she came in second in—”

“But what about grades? Is she gettin’ fours or fives or whatever?” My mother cut Momly off mid-brag. Ugh. If there was a second thing I didn’t want to talk about this Sunday, it was school.

“We’re getting there. She’s still getting used to it. Still adjusting.”

The “it” they were talking about was my new school. Up until this year, I was at Barnaby Elementary, then Barnaby Middle, which are both public schools in my old neighborhood. Ma thought it would be best if I “transitioned smoothly” out of living with her by keeping me at my regular school where all my friends go. Brianna, Deena, and especially my day-one, Ashley, who everybody calls Cotton. Me and Cotton been friends since kindergarten, back when Lu Richardson’s mother was our babysitter and she used to help us make up dance routines to nineties R & B. Dance routines we still know but I don’t do no more. But Cotton still does. And without me at school with her, who was gonna tape her bathroom dance-offs? Better yet, who was gonna blame her stinky farts on the boys? Who was gonna tell her that her hair is gonna be cute as soon as the curls fall? Maybe Brianna and Deena would, but that wasn’t their job. It was mine. But I couldn’t do it like I needed to because now I was in a different part of the city, somewhat settled into life with Uncle Tony and Momly, and going to this corny new school they picked—because it was a much shorter drive—over in Sunny Lancaster’s neighborhood (he’s another newbie on the track team). Which means, from Barnaby Terrace to Bougie Terrace. Well, the school was really called Chester Academy, which was a dead giveaway it was bougie. I mean, the cornballs who named the place thought it was too good to even be called a school. An academy? Whatever. Anyway, being at Chester was . . . different. Like, real different. First of all, we had to wear uniforms. Pleated skirts and stiff button-ups. And it was all girls, and let’s just say, not too many of them had real nicknames. Not too many of them had mothers that smelled like hair grease. Hair gel? Yes. But hair grease? Nah.

“Well, I suggest she get used to it soon, or there won’t be no more running,” Ma said. Momly caught my eyes again in the mirror. Winked. She knew Ma was hard on me about school, but she also knew I had to run.

As Momly pulled up in front of the church, she said what she always said every week. “Y’all say a prayer for me and your uncle.”

And my mother said what she always said in response: “Lord knows y’all need it.”

Momly and Uncle Tony never went to church, but when my mother made the arrangements for me and Maddy to live with them, it was under the condition that we wouldn’t miss a service. A whole lot of talk about grace and faith and mercy and salvation, which, to me, all just equaled shouting, clapping, and singing in a building built to be a sweatbox. A constant reminder that all that hair combing I did before coming was a waste of time, as it was a guarantee that I’d be leaving with my curls shriveled up into a frizzy lopsided cloud.

Because of my mother’s wheelchair, she had to sit in the aisle, while me and Maddy sat in a pew. And throughout the whole beginning of the service, Ma would peer down the pew to make sure we were behaving, which was hard because we always sat in the row with the stinky Thomases. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas been smelling like they just puked up mothballs for as long as I’ve known them. They always took the back pew, which is where we sat, so, yeah, most of the time I was sitting real still praying to God not to let me suffocate. Lord, please bless them with some soap. Some perfume. Anything. Make a miracle happen, or, What have I done to deserve this? Father, why hath thou forsaken me?

But there’s one part of the service where Ma always eases up on acting like a warden. And that’s when Pastor Carter starts sweating, and Sister Jefferson starts laughing. See, when the sweat and laughter comes, that basically means the spirit is in the building. And when Pastor starts banging his hand on the pulpit, and throws out one of those everybody-knows-it scriptures like, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” that’s the cue for the organ player, Dante, to get ready to play the happy music. Happy music sounds like the music they play at the beginning of baseball games, except sped up, and looped over and over and over again, until every lady in the church catches the spirit. And when you catch the spirit, that don’t mean you reach out and grab it like it’s ball or something. It’s not like that. Catching the spirit is more like the spirit catching you. And when it happens, you dance. But not like dance dance. Not like Cotton be dancing. You dance like the church is roach infested and it’s your job to step on them all. Like you trying to put a hole in the floor. Like you trying to break the heel off your white church pumps.

And Ma loves this. She always has. But now, she can’t dance. So, when she looks down the aisle during this part, it’s because she wants to see me and Maddy catch the spirit. Actually, she just wants to see us do a triple-time step. See us move our legs a million miles a minute. Maddy loves it. As soon as she hears the music, she gets to bouncing around in her seat the same way she does when I’m doing her hair. Me, well, I don’t ever really feel nothing. But I love my mother. So I give Maddy the look, and she stands up, shoulders rocking, silly smile smeared across her lips, but only for a second before she mimics the other “saints” and screws her face up like she just caught another whiff of the Thomases. Then I stand up. Ma rolls the wheelchair back so we have enough space to slide out of the pew without tripping or brushing against the wheels of her chair and dirtying up our holy dresses.

And once we’re out, oh . . . it’s party time. More like, workout time. It’s like black Riverdance, or something like that. Actually, it reminds me of some of the warm-up drills Coach makes us do at practice. High knees. Footwork. And Ma loves it. But she can’t fist-pump and yell, “Go, Maddy! Go, Patty! Go! Go! Go!” in church. Not really appropriate. But what she can do is yell, “Yes, Lawd! Yessssss! Thank ya, Lawd! Thank ya!” And that’s basically the same thing.

After service, Momly is always waiting for us, and I go through the same process—getting Ma in the car, the wheelchair in the trunk. The only difference is on the ride home, Ma’s all high off Jesus and now ready to talk about what I’m normally doing great at, even though not so great this week. Running.

“You know I pray for you. I pray God put something special in your legs, in your muscles so you can run and not grow weary,” she said, lifting a finger in the air, proud that she was able to slip a Bible verse into regular conversation, a thing she was always trying to do.

“She’s really something, Bev,” Momly adds. I hate when they try to make me feel better by talking around me, like I’m not right here.

I lost.

I lost, I lost, I lost.

I sit in the back, clenching my jaw. Maddy sits next to me, kicking the back of Momly’s seat.

“Oh, I know she is, because she’s mine.” Ma turns around and this time beams at me. “And I don’t make no junk.”