When it turned summer I went to my mama’s mama’s house. All that summer was a bad time and no matter how hard I try I still remember her sad.
I told Roy and Julia I had rather go to the reform school or even get on the chain gang than go stay with her. I did not know her good but she caused a knot in me just thinking about her face.
They said they sympathized but there was not a thing they could do anymore. They said they would see me on visits which we did not have because Julia got fired and they had to move away.
She sends me a letter now when you least expect it.
It makes me slow down and sad to think about my mama’s mama’s house. All the time was like a record you play on the wrong speed.
Before I left I packed all of my things that would fit in one box and willed the rest to Julia and Roy. Some of these things might come in handy I said to them.
Maybe it is wasteful to scatter your worldly goods from hither to yon but I never wanted to have more than would tie up or tape down in the box. All I really cared about accumulating was money. I saved a bundle.
My mama’s mama picked me up in her long car that was like the undertaking car only hers was cream. I told Roy and Julia one more time I did not need to go.
If we have to live together the least you could do is talk to me like you know I am in your car is what I thought to say to her. I figured she would warm up to me.
But all she asked on the way to her house was when does school start again?
Lord it just ended and I sure am looking forward to the summer at your house I said for the icebreaker.
I asked you when school starts. I do not need the commentary is what she said back to me hot.
So September. I said September.
I said my answer quick and on time like the army way. I saluted in my head.
I just kept guessing she was nervous around strangers and she would soften up. But if I knew then all I know about her now I would have jumped out of her car moving and hightailed it.
For a while I figured she might have liked the idea of having a girl around the house but when she saw my actual self and my box she changed her mind.
You cannot blame her. I am not exactly a vision. But Lord I have good intentions that count.
I decided I would make the best of the situation because you can generally adjust to somebody with money to burn. She might be a witch but she has the dough is what I decided to tell myself.
But by July I called her the damn witch to myself and all the money she had did not matter anymore. That is something when you consider how greedy I am.
The first few days at her house I mainly walked around and looked but did not touch.
God she had it all.
A colored woman just to cook and another one to make up your bed and dust the what-nots. Not dime store what-nots you could tell but costly items. Collectibles I know now to call them. Egyptian type candy jars. She could sell museum tickets I thought. All this stuff collecting dust could go to good use. She could turn a profit I thought.
Her furniture was chiseled out of wood and the chairs had curvy figures on them not just brown or worn out. The colored lady said the pieces had aged and appreciated. And she said it like it was all part hers. Ha I said to myself and looked some more.
The curtains were not sheets sewed either. You could wrap yourself up in one and stay warm.
My mama sewed sheets for my old house. I always figured that was using your head.
My room was my mama’s room she had when she was little. It had a canopy bed and a fireplace for show. My mama’s mama said she gave me that bedroom because I deserved it. It took me a while to figure out that the room was not a prize or a present for being sweet. I started to think she knew what all I would see dancing around in that fireplace and how I would need the lights on all night.
She would catch me snooping around sometimes and say to me I’ll break your little hand if you touch that vase! Not joking but serious to make me think of how a broke hand might feel.
I would go off by myself and imagine turning my buddy Starletta loose in here. She could have a rampage in one room and out the other.
Or maybe I will invite the whole family that eats off records. Nobody needs four sets of dish plates anyway. They can visit while you are at the beauty parlor I thought and I felt better to imagine it all. At least it was funny to me.
And all the time I was dying to know why she was so mean.
Some days I felt like it was a torture chamber and I counted the days until school.
I was there for a week when she said she had found something to do with me.
Finally I thought.
On the first Monday in June she woke me up with the sun and said it is time to get to work.
She has found a job for me I thought. I figured we were going out to deliver the newspapers. She would drive and I could pitch the papers out the car window. But she drove me instead to the cotton field and said to come home for lunch. Ask a nigger what to do is what she said before she drove off.
Five or six people were already chopping and they were way far down the rows and not noticing me.
I just looked.
Then the biggest lady yelled you better get on a row!
And I’ll be damned if I’ll do it I said to myself.
You better get on a row! she yelled again. The bosslady left you here to work not to stand. And I needs to make sure you do it. Now get you a hoe. When I gets to the end of mines I’ll catch you up to the rest of us.
That was the first thing I had heard reasonable so I started chopping my row.
I lived on a farm with my mama and daddy but they hired colored people to do my part of the slave labor. I was too small to work right. I used to play in the fields with Starletta and watch her mama and daddy chop but I never figured it would be me one day.
Lord how did they stand it so hot? I wondered.
The big lady helped me catch up to them and they all told me their names that sounded alike except for hers. Mavis.
All I could think to say after my name was did they know Starletta’s mama and daddy?
They go to the same church!
We started chopping again and I did not feel sick until the afternoon. I had to sit down and every time I tried to stand up I just had to sit back down.
Mavis fanned me with her apron and I felt much cooler.
Then she said what the bosslady is up to is her business but it must be a mighty bad debt you is out here working off. They is no sense in a white chile working in this heat. I can hardly stands it my own hot self.
I’ll feel better in a minute.
You sit here and rest some. And you is not wearing a hat on your head. What you think that sun won’t fry your brain? Lord chile.
The next morning I got a straw hat out of the garden shed and wore it all day. I felt cooler all over and did not get sick anymore.
While I worked I mainly counted in my head or recited the poems I knew good to myself. You can keep time with the hoe chopping around a plant. It breaks up the day that way.
I tried not to think and work at the same time because that made me slow. If I did think though I wondered about Roy and Julia and how the chickenshit worked out. Then I would need to get back on the beat of my poem.
Whenever I fell behind Mavis would catch me up. She said they were born to chop and that is how they could work so fast and steady. She would say that and laugh but it was not funny to me.
One day when I had gotten to know her pretty good she asked me why my mama’s mama sent me out to the fields and why I was not in Vacation Bible School or at least somewhere out of the sun.
I told her exactly what I was told. My mama’s mama said I was under her feet and besides that she could not bear to look at my face day in and day out. Also she said I might learn a thing or two out there.
Which I did.
I bet she never counted on me learning everything old Mavis had to teach me. The hotter the summer got, the more Mavis loved to talk. And I loved to listen.
One day she said flat out you look just like your mama. Lord chile you got that same black hair all down your back.
Did you know my mama?
Yes chile! I was raised up beside her on this farm. I knowed her good as I know my own self. I never knowed anybody sweet like your mama. Smart as a whip too!
Lord yes she said and laughed at the same time.
Did her mama make her work too?
Lord no! She won’t cut out for hot work. Her mama made the other ones work like dogs but not your mama. You don’t plan to tell the bosslady I been telling you anything do you?
Oh no I said so maybe she would tell me more.
She told me enough that summer to let me know I was not the only one who thought my mama’s mama was off the rocker.
She said the bosslady had always been peculiar but ever since my mama died she had acted touched.
I did not need to ask touched with what because I already knew.
But still it is hard to believe in your head what you feel in your heart about a person. Especially somebody you know good. I figured one day I would do some encyclopedia research and see if there is a name for what ailed my mama’s mama. But that was like trying to look up a word you don’t know how to spell. What would I look under? Meanness? Angry? Just crazy? Then I figured it was a little bit of everything. And anyway, my family never was the kind that would fit into a handy category.
By July I was like a boy. When I started out both my hands were a red blister but then I toughened up good.
I thought while I chopped from one field to the next how I could pass for colored now. Somebody riding by here in a car could not see my face and know I was white. But that is OK now I thought to myself of how it did not make much of a difference anymore.
If I just looked at my own arms and legs up to where my shorts and shirt started I said I could pass for colored now. I was tan from the sun but so dark I was just this side of colored. Under it all I was pinky white.
At the end of each day the colored workers went to their shack and I walked to my mama’s mama’s. On work days she left a plate of something for me on the stove. That might not sound social to you but it was perfect for me.
We ate right many miniature chickens or turkeys. I do not know the difference. But they were baked and not crunchy the way I most enjoy chicken. When we both ate at the same Sunday table we both picked at our little individual chickens or turkeys and did not talk. And still it was OK by me.
After supper each night it was not raining I walked up the colored path and spied on Mavis and her family.
It looked like slavery times with them all hanging out on the porch picking at each other. They fought strong as they played and laughed.
I looked regularly but they never saw me or at least they did not mention to me to stay away from their house. I wondered right much about them and the way they got along.
My mama’s mama did not pay them doodly-squat. I saw the amount she had written on the envelope she handed Mavis every Friday.
She did not pay me a cent except room and board. I kept figuring up how much I was worth by the hour.
But Mavis and her family showed up in the field every day when I was thinking of how I would save up my money and leave if I was old as them. I guess it never dawned on them just to pack up and leave.
While I was easedropping at the colored house I started a list of all that a family should have. Of course there is the mama and the daddy but if one has to be missing then it is OK if the one left can count for two. But not just anybody can count for more than his or her self.
While I watched Mavis and her family I thought I would bust open if I did not get one of them for my own self soon. Back then I had not figured out how to go about getting one but I had a feeling it could be got.
I only wanted one white and with a little more money. At least we can have running water is what I thought.
The whole time I stayed at my mama’s mama’s I thought about giving that judge a piece of my mind.
Look. You made a mess. Now clean it up and put me on the right road is what I would say to him.
One solution I figured was to sell off some household items. It is hard for somebody like myself to be surrounded by all that and not think about how much cash it could turn into. I could make a catalog of her merchandise and let folks pick them out a ashtray, some brandy snifters, or one of the many vases. Piece by piece her house would disappear and she would be unable to do a thing. But I would be on easy street.
I would keep her tied up in this particular plan.
You would think that when you get older you get weak but that was not true in her case. Meanness made her quick like a jungle animal.
I started to think she wanted me around as a substitute for my daddy. And each day I was not exactly him but just enough of his eyes or nose to tease her oh she boiled violent inside.
It must have been hard for her to keep in mind that I was a girl Ellen and not a man she wanted to be alive by her so she could kill but wanted him alive too so she could work her power on him.
And she had some power. Without saying one word she could make my bones shake and I would think of ghost houses and skeletons rattling all in the closets.
Her power was the sucking kind that takes your good sense and leaves you limp like a old zombie.
That is how I felt some days. Like a old monster zombie who was a girl a while back.
But I got my fire back in me now.
She would take all the feeling she needed from somebody and then stir it up with some money and turn the recipe back on you. The money made it sweet and without it she might have been just another mean old lady. But set up in her big house she could make the devil scared of her.
She wanted me so hard to be like him. She reminded me all the time how me and him favored and acted alike. I never told her how Mavis said I looked just like my mama. Sometimes she talked so strong to me that I had to check in the mirror to see if I had changed into him without my knowing or feeling it. Maybe her wishing so hard had made it so I thought.
I decided I would jump off the bridge if I was different from my old self.
Maybe he did rub off on me. I still wonder sometimes if I am fine myself or if I have tricked myself into believing I am who I think I am.
So many folks thinking and wanting you to be somebody else will confuse you if you are not very careful.
It gives me nerves to worry about me.
My mama’s mama would shake a little like this too. I hide my hands under my desk if it happens at school. It is not enough to notice good.
Her hands shook right much though when she told me about my daddy dying. But she managed to slap me with one.
She said your bastard of a daddy is dead and then she hit me in the face. That does not make sense but that is what she did.
I had not planned to cry over him when he died. I had practiced it all so many times that all I wondered was if he had died one of the ways I had planned. All varieties of accidents and unfortunate mishaps.
But he was somebody I knew who was dead. I felt the way you feel when they say a star or a old president is dead and you feel sorry for a flash when you remember his face and think about how you could go quick as a wink.
She was looking in my eyes for a reason to slap me again but I was determined not to give her one.
Go ahead and cry for your damn daddy she got in my face and said to me. Go ahead and cry. Just make sure you cry more than you did for your mama.
Why did she say that to me? I wondered and reached up to catch a tear I felt had just rolled over my eye ledge.
But she grabbed my shaking hand with her hand shaking and said to let that be the last tear I ever shed.
I still wonder how long she meant that rule to last.
You can bet we did not go to his funeral. I know they had one because my daddy’s brother Rudolph brought me the flag they had laid on his coffin. He got the flag because he was in the war.
I did not go to the funeral but I imagined how bad the preacher must have felt to put my daddy in the same ground with good people and babies born dead who get to be angels. And beside my mama.
They put her in a box too and him in a box oh shut the lid down hard on this one and nail it nail it with the strongest nails. Do all you can to keep it shut and him in it always. Time would make him meaner to me if he could get out and grab me again.
Go ahead and look said the magician.
I do not want to look.
It is all illusion. Look in the box and see what is there.
I do not want to see.
Go ahead said the magician. There is nothing to be afraid of. Everything has vanished! See. There is nothing in the box.
Where did it go? I need to know.
Oh I suppose they put him in the hole and everybody walked away without talking just like before and they will wish they were already home.
Rudolph came straight from the graveyard to my mama’s mama’s. She sent me to my room and told me to stay there until he left. Which I did not do but I stood in the hall and spied.
She had some secret business with him. He came to the house now and then and she always told me to leave. I knew that what I was not supposed to hear was most likely juicy so I always listened in.
What are you bringing that trash here for? she met him at the back door and asked.
He said in a hang dog way he thought Ellen should have it.
I watched her get stiff and then she spit on the flag he had folded up in a neat triangle and held to her like a present.
Then she said to him after all the money you have taken from me you have the audacity to bring that bastard’s business into my house. You should be shot.
Rudolph had the nerve I would not have and said he only took what she offered. All that was due him.
She called him a worm and a farm boy too big for his britches. And if you don’t think I can ruin you too then just hide and watch me! You just remember whose name that dead bastard’s farm is in and while you’re at it take a drive to the courthouse and check the name on your own damn deed. Then come back here and tell me who is running this show.
Rudolph stood there like the farm boy too big for his britches that his teacher had just unbuckled and dropped around his ankles so the paddle could sting and snap his behind.
Then he turned and ran out the door.
He left the flag though.
That night I woke up from my sleep because I heard something outside and I looked out my window and saw her standing by a wood fire she had made herself poking what was left of some stripes farther into the flame.
I did not go back to sleep that night because I kept thinking over and over again about the encyclopedias. Oh the froze sneeze and the poems. I wanted to rub my hands on the pages again. The flag on fire did not matter but just those encyclopedias. They might not have ever been mine but I believed that much touching and looking had made them into mine.
That is what I thought to myself while she poked her flame.
I do not know why I thought she would be happy when my daddy died. She was the kind of woman you cannot even die to suit. She would swear you did it to spite her.
We all did things against her she said. She even fired the colored household help because she swore they were an infernal conspiracy and were stealing out from her nose.
And when they were gone it was just her and me. Me to look after her not the other way around like you might expect.
That did not surprise me because I had just about given up on what you expect. I just lived to see what would happen next.
At least taking care of her took me out of the fields.
When she got sick with the flu all she wanted to do was talk. That was about all she was able to do. I called the doctor who checked her over and told me to feed her particular foods which I sent Mavis’s husband to the store after. She told the doctor to leave and never come back and on his way out the door he could unload all the silverware and jewelry he’d stole. He just chuckled like he thought she was joking with him. Ha.
Then she said I don’t need no doctor with Ellen here to nurse me.
Which I did the best way I could.
She wanted to talk mostly about my daddy and most of what she said didn’t make any sense. It was like listening to three different conversations at one time. She could ask questions and answer for all three folks.
But one day she got up on her elbows and said to me clear like she had come out of a long fever Ellen you helped him didn’t you?
Why did she say that to me I thought Lord did I do the wrong thing? But he said she would just sleep and if that didn’t make me quiet then the knife by his hand would. And yes it is easy to see him now in the fog of his not knowing she could be dead soon.
It is like when you are sick and you know all the things you ever ate or just wanted to eat are churning in you now and you will be sick to relieve yourself but the relief is a dream you let yourself believe because you know the churning is all there is to you.
Go ahead. Push it in said the magician. Push it in and turn it a few times just to see if it hurts. See? You didn’t feel a thing.
And through all the churning and spinning I saw her face. A big clown smile looking down at me while she said to me you best take better care of me than you did of your mama.