A bleak hospital is all hospitals. On the elevator up, I think about how I hate hospitals. The odor of the helpless, hopeless. The doctor is this pretty Indian lady. She tells me how my mom almost died.
I lean over Mom. She grabs my hand.
“I’m sorry, Ma,” I keep saying. A million lights and indicators around her like NASA. I think about my brother, about me, and about her. About the last time she was healthy.
“Where were you?” she asks.
“A little bit of everywhere.” She rubs my hand.
I stay with her, by her side, all day, all night. I dab her lips with the sponge-tipped water tube when her mouth gets dry. I want to make her happy.
I ask, “Were you ever happy? Like really happy?”
“Yes.”
She closes her eyes and grins.
“It was when my mother played Fats Domino records and closed her eyes when she danced … when every black girl wanted to look like Dorothy Dandridge and sing like Sarah Vaughan … when black girls were bronze, honey, tan, sepia, and black was the color of tar babies … when the Roxy was popping and all the brothers wore conks … Philly had the baddest jitterbugs and Detroit had the meanest gangs … when the blues was country and rock ’n’ roll was city and they both was good for dancing … when my mother gave rent parties long after the rent was paid … when Easter meant new clothes and Cuban-heeled shoes and nobody seemed to mind that Jesus and the Easter bunny were white … when everybody went to church on Sunday no matter what happened Saturday night and Monday mornings belonged to the Man … when everybody knew they were colored and nobody wanted to be white—just don’t call them black … when Mama rolled her hair up in paper curlers and everyone just knew she went to the beauty parlor … when nighttime was for lovers, and alleys and stoops were lovers’ lane for a minute … when all old folks were grandma and grandpa and all children should stay out of grown folks’ business … when I was everybody’s child and had fifteen play aunts and uncles … It was when funeral homes gave out fans and drugstores gave out calendars and the corner store had a credit list just for Mama … when reading one book made you a bookworm and going to college made you damn near a genius … when certain things were said in front of white folks and white folks said everything … when we knew they weren’t right but we didn’t know nothing about our rights … when the weather was on our side and God only had one name … when prayers were answered and miracles were the order of the day … when children called grown folks “Miss Sarah” and “Brother James” and grown folks called children “sweetheart” and “honey” … when Mama used to wear circle skirts and scream when the wind blew her skirt up … when Daddy would slick his hair with Dixie Peach and then refuse to go out in the rain … when nobody touched the TV except for Daddy and nobody sat on the living room furniture except for company … when Grandma refused to wear her teeth and nobody complained … when everyone always had something to do and didn’t mind doing it … when was it when everything was in place, or so it seemed? It was when little girls dreamt about growing up, and when was it that I grew up? When Mama talked about being respectable and Daddy talked about getting some … when home meant the projects, and when was it that the projects meant the ghetto? It was … a long time ago … when love was life and living was loving and everybody belonged to somebody.”
I’m hugging on her, praying she can be happy again.
I think Uzi, my dad, and me are the reason she’s in the hospital now. We did this to her, to us.
“What about school?”
Shrug. I tell her the truth.
“I dropped out.”
She tells me about how important school is. How she had to fight for it. How it was for her, in Brooklyn, coming up.
“It’s the only thing they can’t take away from you,” she says, “your education. Your passport for the future.”
I tell her I would go back to school but Fels won’t take me back.
“If I find a place—a school that will take you—will you go?” she asks.
I nod, anything for her.