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On vacation now & thought I'd better write before I checked my bank account, which could have an adverse effect on things. Seriously though, Kai and I are off to New York tomorrow for two weeks. I'm looking forward to spending time in New York with Kai and old friends. I am very happy and fortunate that I have this to give to my son.
The great news is, I'm off for a month! Yeah! Two weeks in New York and then when I return to Copenhagen, chill chill chill! Yeah!
Been making more copies of The Organist's Daughter and will have some in hand for New York. Feedback so far has been really positive and I am loving every minute of this process of creation. Revised the first few chapters of The Mothers of Memory and very happy with it. The spoken word album is also going very well.
The only bummer is of course losing Willie Mae. The good thing about it is that I am back in touch with her daughter India. But this is a long story. Here's a story I wrote a while ago, inspired by these two beautiful, wonderful women:
India never really felt like she was good at nothing, except maybe for double-dutch. Sure, she was getting good at cleaning shrimp and she could clean a house real good but school? It just wasn’t working out between her and books. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to get pass the bleached smell of textbook pages and stories about girls who couldn’t wait to get their periods. Especially since she done already got hers and the way she been feeling since made it hard for her to believe it had anything to do with god at all.
But double-dutch was another story. She’d get the rope from a Bell Telephone van and when she was allowed outside to play, she’d gather the girls and together, they would jump. Leeza was double-handed, although she hated to hear it but lately she was getting better and Nikki was almost as good at jumping as India was. But Nikki looked funny when she jumped—clasping her hand to her stomach like she was retarded or something. They talked often of forming a double-dutch team, just like they talked about selling lemonade during the summer and forming a girls’ dancing group (inspired by Fame) but between school and chores, they never did seem to get the time to do any of these things.
But India didn’t think that it mattered in the larger scale of things as long as she didn’t get pregnant and remembered to wash her glass eye out regularly. Things were looking kinda’ good lately anyway--her curl activator kept her short curls shiny and soft and lately, Mama was home and making it felt with her impromptu shopping sprees to Kings Highway Shopping Mall and home cooked meals. Nothing beat Mama’s collard greens and smoked neck bones, and as the smell of salty, green earth made its way throughout the apartment, India couldn’t help but do the Smurf. It didn’t even matter that Jessie and Angela were breaking up for the millionth time on All My Children.
Deniece Williams’ Silly came on the radio, and although it was a ballad that could really get you to crying and all, it didn’t keep India from looking at herself in the large floor-to-ceiling mirror and practicing doing the Smurf so that she’d know how to do it real good the next time the girls came around. She could move her shoulders to the beat of just about any song now, and soon it would be one more thing she could do well.
Today the house was as peaceful as it tended to be after all the snotty-nosed kids Momma babysat left for the day. It was Easter Sunday anyway, so the kids wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. Momma was trying to do something different than working at the Bar so she started baby-sitting. What Momma really wanted to do was become a nurse, and everyday, between working part-time at the bar and babysitting babies, Momma’d make Leeza quiz her from this book so she could get into some nursing program. Leeza was good at that stuff—she’d do anything for India’s mother including brushing her wigs out, rubbing her bunioned feet or large, smooth back.
It was now just India and Momma, without even big old Glenn who got himself locked up at Riker’s Island (the stupid dumb ass that he is) for breaking and entering their neighbor’s apartment (he climbed through the front terrace, with the whole Ocean Avenue as witness). But India didn’t really miss him—it meant that she got the whole room to herself, and although young she already understood the chaotic energy emitted by men.
Despite the noise of the television, momma’s clanking and what not in the kitchen and the radio blaring, there was bullet-proof quiet that wrapped itself around the house. India felt, as she often did when her mother was around, that anything outside of these walls, even the Ocean Avenue traffic right outside their thick, red- draped windows, did not count. So it didn’t matter if Momma played Luther extra loud, just as long as there were no strange men India had to call uncle or bars her mother had tend to every night. Lately, with glittery bandanas, silky body stockings and burgundy colored lips and nails, Momma managed to retain a freshness about her that the young girl appreciated.
Even Leeza, who came downstairs from her sixth floor apartment every day, was but a minor intrusion. Besides, her presence provided somewhat of an audience to the goings-on behind Apt. 101’s door, a witness to the changes that seemed to be taking place. So that in the days to come when Momma returned to the world of the evening, India could beseech her friend Leeza over salty Slim Jims or duck sauce soaked egg rolls, to retell the stories over and over again in only a way that only Leeza could tell it—gilded heavily from her own deprivation. Leeza’s retelling would remind her that those periods of her mother’s presence were not a dream.
But today, India does not have to depend on her friends’ memories for she is in the midst of a present that she could scarcely believe. Her mother is taking her to church. It is Easter Sunday. It had happened before, but not as recent so that the preteen girl could remember much. Although she did remember Momma greasing up her hair and the way her hair sizzled as Momma ran a black-from-burn straightening comb through. India curled her top lip as she remembered the smell of burnt hair that wafted throughout the kitchen.
India remembers the day her Momma declared the shifting of things. Momma woke up around 4 in the afternoon (early for her after a late shift at the bar). Instead of passing India completely straight as the young girl sat before the floor model television (with her umpteenth bowl of sugary cereal between her legs) on her way to the kitchen for a beer, or worse still, remaining in bed and calling loudly for the child to bring her one, her mother took a seat on the plastic covered red-velvet furniture with the dark wood trimming that bore holes through the protective covering. Her legs, thick and smooth, naturally sat apart form the other and she placed her swollen hands in that space right before her crotch. Her posture was relaxed and she looked at her daughter, so much like herself. They were both big-boned women, strong-backed and strong-hipped with a dark deep brown-black complexion that was blessed with tinges of Southern ancestry. India fidgeted under her mother’s stare, so unaccustomed was she to it. She also became painfully conscious of the scantiness of her lace-trimmed nightgown that hung seductively on her overly ripe body. With her mother’s stare, the nightgown seemed to transform itself from a harmless thing to something that felt as if it were literally on fire. India made a note to herself to never wear it again.
Lately her body sprouted breasts that burst forth from a painful lump, her buttocks seemed tucked tighter, heavier and higher above her thighs. Dresses and skirts now hiked up more in the back than in the front and tube tops stretched much too tight against her breasts. It was as if her body had possession of some secret intelligence it failed to share with her, but that others, especially men, understood far better than she.
Her mother sighed and pursed her lips. Her daughter pretended to stare at the television, one eye sealed shut with a layer of cold. She knew her daughter blamed her for the eye, but was in too much fear to put air to the words. It was an accident, that night, that fire. Her mother sighed again and this time India couldn’t help but look in her direction, turning her whole head in that exaggerated movement that always betrayed her glass eye. Once, India caught Leeza imitating the movement and somehow knew that it was not borne out of disrespect, but in some strange way, awe. For some reason she knew that the young Leeza was desperate for some sign of specialness, whether it be braces, glasses or in India’s case, a glass eye. Besides, most of the time Leeza was the only thing she had so slapping her silly, which was her first impulse, was actually out of the question, although had she resorted to that, Leeza probably would have forgiven her, so desperate was she for friendship.
Her mother had a stocking cap over her almost bald head which reminded India of her own shower-capped one. She had worn the plastic shower cap overnight and could feel the hot damp that it sealed under, promising soft and supple curls.
I know things crazy round here but they gonna change. From now on they ain’t gonna be no more bars around here. I know I haven’t been perfect India, but they a lot of things I can’t explain to you now but, I’m back in the church, sort of parable son, well I guess in this case daughter kinda thing and I’ll be different. But you’ll see.
Her mother lifted herself from the couch, the plastic sucking in the air that her weight had displaced. India fixed her one eye on the television screen not quite understanding the concept of her mother being different and a fear gripped her that she did not know then was born out of a feeling that her mother’s promise held too much to bear under the strain of reality. But she couldn’t articulate this all just then and slurped the super sweet milk that allowing the cereal to soak in just long enough had produced.
So now they were on their way to church in her mother’s black Lincoln Continental which unbeknownst to her would be repossessed in a few days. It indeed was a special day for although her mother owned this car for about a year, India had only ridden in it twice. Every day after school she’d speed down the school’s steps half-expecting her mother to surprise her and pick her up. But it just never happened. Instead, when she let herself into the apartment, she’d find her mother fast asleep the same place she had left her that very morning—on the couch.
Leeza sat in the back, her skinny underdeveloped body ridiculously small on the pleather backseat. She fiddled with window buttons and halfway to the church complained of being carsick. India’s mother laughed, Chile it’s a damn shame I can tell you ain’t used to be being in no car. But you my girl Leeza, you’ll always be my girl and India could see that stupid big-toothed smile that threatens to make her mad but instead just makes her sad cause she just knows Leeza ain’t got nobody but her and she ain’t got nobody but Leeza. Leeza showed up that morning with a dress two-sizes too small and patent leather mary-janes that obviously squeezed her toes.
Lord Jesus girl your mama done dressed you up like a Haitian and didn’t even stop to peel that layer of dirt around your neck. There was something about Leeza that made both India and her mother’s heart melt, something about her that made them not get mad at her for hanging around all the time, or for coming by uninvited. There was something about Leeza that made them cherish what they—mother and daughter had between them, made them realize how special the love was. And like they were taught, they shared this love with Leeza as long as she went by the house rules like every one else: Every one worked. Whether it was sweeping the terrace or taking Prince the Chihuahua out for a walk, or washing the dishes or putting the laundry in—once you helped out you were in. India disappeared in her big closet and found a plaid skirt, a pair of stockings and shirt that if knotted on the side, didn’t fit the flat-chested Leeza too loose. Leeza found India’s old training bra and asked to wear it which made India look at her as if she done lost her mind but she lent it to her anyway. Leeza stuffed it with toilet paper and asked India’s mother if she could wear a pair of her pumps? Now how you gonna fit them tiny feets in my big old shoes? Leeza said that toilet paper could work there too and India and her mother just shook their heads and laughed, India’s mother showing all her gold teeth in the front that spelled Queen. You wear your own shoes, girl. Trust me, it’ll be not too long til you be wearing shoes like these.
But Leeza, too ashamed to wear her Buster Brown shoes from two years before, borrowed a pair of India’s with a low heel and rounded front that India bought from Value City on Flatbush Avenue but they ended up hurting India’s bunions too much. No way around the fact that Leeza look crazy but it’s church we going to, not some damn fashion show, right? India’s mother assured them and then added right before scooping a heepful of soggy scrambled eggs into her mouth, India you getting real good at these eggs! Now go fetch me my wig, brush it out and that half-smoked Marlboro in the ashtray wouldn’t hurt either. Then to ensure little Leeza didn’t feel left out, ordered, go sweep that terrace and I’ll give you fifty cents. With a broom that was bigger than she was. Fifty cents can go a long way in her world: she could buy five Slim Jims or twenty Now & Laters and suck on them until her mouth turns the color of sour apple or watermelon or she could buy a slice of pizza or a Sicilian with its thick layer of cheese and sprinkle as much garlic as she wants cause she don’t have to share it with nobody or she could buy an egg roll and smear it with duck sauce and this time she’ll remember to eat it slow chew twenty times like India showed her and make it last longer. She could buy her egg roll on Newkirk and look down at the train tracks all day without any one ever coming to look for her. Nobody ever did.
But now they are in the car, India in the front, her whole body pressed against the door, her face leaning against the open window wondering what this church going to be like? Are they going to get fried chicken and collard greens after? Macaroni pie? Sweet potato pie? And if so, just how long was the pastor going to make them pay for it by listening to his sermon? She suddenly felt a drip on her neck and knew it was the curl activator. She reached for her little macramé purse and pulled out a baby blue washcloth. She wiped the edges where her hair grew from her scalp all around. You still biting those nails? Her mother looked at her as much as she could while driving. They drove down building-lined streets with children playing outside on the sidewalks. It was times like this that India missed the South, when she missed the open air, the space to play and the easy, slow, no lets not hurry up attitude. She saw the children riding their bikes up and down in front of their buildings, and shut her eye really hard trying to imagine the whole block in wide, open green. Her mother reached for her hand, no mens want a girl with nails like that. Her mother frowned and placed her daughter’s hand gently back on the car seat. We gonna get you some of that bitter stuff to put on it. That way it’ll taste bad and you won’t be gnawing at it. India tried not to show her gloat, but she couldn’t help it. She was happy Leeza was there. See Leeza, her gaze in the rearview mirror that Leeza constantly awaited, told her, see my momma loves me.
After driving through parts of Brooklyn the two girls just did not know, but knew instinctively was far from home, her mother pulled the Continental up to a curb in front of a large patch of almost waist-high grass with a backdrop of abandoned buildings. She automatically closed all the windows and then picked through her hair with a black plastic pic that had a clenched fist on the end and was made in China. How your momma look? Leeza stuck her head between the two front seats, you look beautiful she answered. Shut up, she ain’t your mother, India declared not for the first time. Leeza stared at India’s mother with wide eyes and prayed she’d look like her one day: plump in the right places, smooth skin the color of uninterrupted Blackness, nostrils that had a sexy flare to it. India’s momma was everything little Leeza aspired to be. Even India, whose eye was forever besmirched by that bitterness that seems to bubble up between mother and daughter—that feeling that daughters get when they not only realize the fallibility of their mothers, but their stupidity—not even that feeling could take away from the fact that yes, her mother was beautiful and secretly, the young girl was grateful that her body was budding in the same direction as hers.
Let’s go girls. After service I got a big surprise for the two of you. That announcement filled both girls’ hearts with an anticipation that threatened to choke them if they did not contain it. They hurriedly left the car and followed her into an already filled church that smelled of baby oil and wet skin, as two wooden ceiling fans coughed up movements above and older women, veiled and varied, fanned themselves with programs from the evening before. A young thin man, who seemed deceptively asexual to India’s mother, led them towards the front. Irritated babies cried, children snickered below the bare cross of the resurrected Christ. Leeza, a Catholic, vowed to herself that she would go up and receive the sacrament although she had not yet received her first communion and India, once in the company of strangers, brought her fingers to her teeth and began to chew, peeling the skin, careful not to peel too much where it could hurt, and found to her happiness that between the last nail biting session and now, new soft pliable skin had grown, the kind you could bite off and chew and chew. But her mother, planted between the two girls lest there should be any foul play between them, slapped her hand away and scowled in disapproval. But before India could offer any protest such as rolling her eyes (unbeknownst to her mother of course who would not think twice about slapping her all the way into next month) the Reverend arrived.
Even twelve-year-old India could see the appeal of the reverend. Fast ass Leeeza could too—they both looked at each other and smiled knowingly, casting their eyes again upon the Reverend. He looked like a cross between Billy D. Williams and Smokey Robinson. Either way, the Reverend was fine and he had no trouble commanding attention from the mostly female congregation and when it came time for collection, they opened their purses as willingly as they would their hearts, if only he would just ask them.
But his eyes said he knew all this and conveyed a message of strength and pity. He told them during the service, I don’t need to preach to you but on one thing only and that’s to say you not doing your job. You need to bring me the men. Bring me your sons, your uncles, your brothers, your nephews, your fathers, your husbands. How can we build a church with no men? And the congregation seemed to be momentarily lifted from its daze by the truth of what they felt he had said and they clucked their teeth and shook their heads. He not only fine, they thought, he smart too.
By the end of the service, three hours later when the two girls wanted to walk around the church, India’s mother let them as she sat there, seemingly in deep thought. The Reverend was surrounded by a group of women, representative of all age groups. The few other men that was there cleaned up, shifted about, some not sure what to do but not wanting to seem to leave too early especially after the service on male responsibility.
Finally the crowd thinned and the Reverend looked over to India’s mother and smiled a smile that the two girls just knew was special. He walked over to her, no longer as Reverend but as a man and clasped both her hands in his.
Sister Heather it sure is good to see you here. India’s mother blushed that matte-burgundy that dark women such as herself get, and her eyes fell to the floor. There were still some hangers-on milling about the storefront church that made Heather nervous—she didn’t want anyone getting no ideas now, you know? But the Reverend seemed preoccupied with other things, such as getting out of that church and he took off his white and black robe and collar, rolled it around his arm and asked, well we going or not woman? In the friendliest tone and the girls, now pressed up against the back bench giggled at the unlikely sight of Heather engaged in some age-old dance that even they knew existed.
So happy were the girls they didn’t care about the looks of envy from the yellow skinned adolescent who had long ago lassoed images of the Reverend into her dreams or the brown skinned nurse who couldn’t help but look unhappy because it was the expression her face felt most at ease in.
They loaded up in the car but this time it was the Reverend who sat behind the wheel and her mother in the passenger seat. Both girls sat in the back. They were so excited to be in the presence of a real grown up love, they unsuspectingly held hands.
The reverend stretched the seatbelt across his chest and suggested they do the same. Okay pretty ladies? Now ain’t I just about the luckiest man, blessed man right now? In a car with some beautiful ladies. Now what you girls say to Coney Island, frog legs and the Cyclone? And India sat back, Leeza’s hand still in hers, her good eye fixed ahead, for now it all just did not matter. Not the past of broken bottles and a vomiting mother she has to look after or math tests or books whose words remain unclear with textbook smells of rotten and stale knowledge. Not while Leeza’s parents just never seemed to be around and let her run around like crazy. No. Because today, she had Coney Island and more than that she had her Momma happy with a nice enough man taking over for a change. And it ain’t like her mother needs it neither, but is sure was nice. And most of all, she had Leeza, whose skinny hand pressing India’s hand back reminds her that she’s not dreaming that this happiness is real and that there are witnesses. Witnesses to this day where the road seems destined to one thing and that is change. And when you not good at much, well, then change could only be a good thing.
The great news is, I'm off for a month! Yeah! Two weeks in New York and then when I return to Copenhagen, chill chill chill! Yeah!
Been making more copies of The Organist's Daughter and will have some in hand for New York. Feedback so far has been really positive and I am loving every minute of this process of creation. Revised the first few chapters of The Mothers of Memory and very happy with it. The spoken word album is also going very well.
The only bummer is of course losing Willie Mae. The good thing about it is that I am back in touch with her daughter India. But this is a long story. Here's a story I wrote a while ago, inspired by these two beautiful, wonderful women:
India never really felt like she was good at nothing, except maybe for double-dutch. Sure, she was getting good at cleaning shrimp and she could clean a house real good but school? It just wasn’t working out between her and books. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to get pass the bleached smell of textbook pages and stories about girls who couldn’t wait to get their periods. Especially since she done already got hers and the way she been feeling since made it hard for her to believe it had anything to do with god at all.
But double-dutch was another story. She’d get the rope from a Bell Telephone van and when she was allowed outside to play, she’d gather the girls and together, they would jump. Leeza was double-handed, although she hated to hear it but lately she was getting better and Nikki was almost as good at jumping as India was. But Nikki looked funny when she jumped—clasping her hand to her stomach like she was retarded or something. They talked often of forming a double-dutch team, just like they talked about selling lemonade during the summer and forming a girls’ dancing group (inspired by Fame) but between school and chores, they never did seem to get the time to do any of these things.
But India didn’t think that it mattered in the larger scale of things as long as she didn’t get pregnant and remembered to wash her glass eye out regularly. Things were looking kinda’ good lately anyway--her curl activator kept her short curls shiny and soft and lately, Mama was home and making it felt with her impromptu shopping sprees to Kings Highway Shopping Mall and home cooked meals. Nothing beat Mama’s collard greens and smoked neck bones, and as the smell of salty, green earth made its way throughout the apartment, India couldn’t help but do the Smurf. It didn’t even matter that Jessie and Angela were breaking up for the millionth time on All My Children.
Deniece Williams’ Silly came on the radio, and although it was a ballad that could really get you to crying and all, it didn’t keep India from looking at herself in the large floor-to-ceiling mirror and practicing doing the Smurf so that she’d know how to do it real good the next time the girls came around. She could move her shoulders to the beat of just about any song now, and soon it would be one more thing she could do well.
Today the house was as peaceful as it tended to be after all the snotty-nosed kids Momma babysat left for the day. It was Easter Sunday anyway, so the kids wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. Momma was trying to do something different than working at the Bar so she started baby-sitting. What Momma really wanted to do was become a nurse, and everyday, between working part-time at the bar and babysitting babies, Momma’d make Leeza quiz her from this book so she could get into some nursing program. Leeza was good at that stuff—she’d do anything for India’s mother including brushing her wigs out, rubbing her bunioned feet or large, smooth back.
It was now just India and Momma, without even big old Glenn who got himself locked up at Riker’s Island (the stupid dumb ass that he is) for breaking and entering their neighbor’s apartment (he climbed through the front terrace, with the whole Ocean Avenue as witness). But India didn’t really miss him—it meant that she got the whole room to herself, and although young she already understood the chaotic energy emitted by men.
Despite the noise of the television, momma’s clanking and what not in the kitchen and the radio blaring, there was bullet-proof quiet that wrapped itself around the house. India felt, as she often did when her mother was around, that anything outside of these walls, even the Ocean Avenue traffic right outside their thick, red- draped windows, did not count. So it didn’t matter if Momma played Luther extra loud, just as long as there were no strange men India had to call uncle or bars her mother had tend to every night. Lately, with glittery bandanas, silky body stockings and burgundy colored lips and nails, Momma managed to retain a freshness about her that the young girl appreciated.
Even Leeza, who came downstairs from her sixth floor apartment every day, was but a minor intrusion. Besides, her presence provided somewhat of an audience to the goings-on behind Apt. 101’s door, a witness to the changes that seemed to be taking place. So that in the days to come when Momma returned to the world of the evening, India could beseech her friend Leeza over salty Slim Jims or duck sauce soaked egg rolls, to retell the stories over and over again in only a way that only Leeza could tell it—gilded heavily from her own deprivation. Leeza’s retelling would remind her that those periods of her mother’s presence were not a dream.
But today, India does not have to depend on her friends’ memories for she is in the midst of a present that she could scarcely believe. Her mother is taking her to church. It is Easter Sunday. It had happened before, but not as recent so that the preteen girl could remember much. Although she did remember Momma greasing up her hair and the way her hair sizzled as Momma ran a black-from-burn straightening comb through. India curled her top lip as she remembered the smell of burnt hair that wafted throughout the kitchen.
India remembers the day her Momma declared the shifting of things. Momma woke up around 4 in the afternoon (early for her after a late shift at the bar). Instead of passing India completely straight as the young girl sat before the floor model television (with her umpteenth bowl of sugary cereal between her legs) on her way to the kitchen for a beer, or worse still, remaining in bed and calling loudly for the child to bring her one, her mother took a seat on the plastic covered red-velvet furniture with the dark wood trimming that bore holes through the protective covering. Her legs, thick and smooth, naturally sat apart form the other and she placed her swollen hands in that space right before her crotch. Her posture was relaxed and she looked at her daughter, so much like herself. They were both big-boned women, strong-backed and strong-hipped with a dark deep brown-black complexion that was blessed with tinges of Southern ancestry. India fidgeted under her mother’s stare, so unaccustomed was she to it. She also became painfully conscious of the scantiness of her lace-trimmed nightgown that hung seductively on her overly ripe body. With her mother’s stare, the nightgown seemed to transform itself from a harmless thing to something that felt as if it were literally on fire. India made a note to herself to never wear it again.
Lately her body sprouted breasts that burst forth from a painful lump, her buttocks seemed tucked tighter, heavier and higher above her thighs. Dresses and skirts now hiked up more in the back than in the front and tube tops stretched much too tight against her breasts. It was as if her body had possession of some secret intelligence it failed to share with her, but that others, especially men, understood far better than she.
Her mother sighed and pursed her lips. Her daughter pretended to stare at the television, one eye sealed shut with a layer of cold. She knew her daughter blamed her for the eye, but was in too much fear to put air to the words. It was an accident, that night, that fire. Her mother sighed again and this time India couldn’t help but look in her direction, turning her whole head in that exaggerated movement that always betrayed her glass eye. Once, India caught Leeza imitating the movement and somehow knew that it was not borne out of disrespect, but in some strange way, awe. For some reason she knew that the young Leeza was desperate for some sign of specialness, whether it be braces, glasses or in India’s case, a glass eye. Besides, most of the time Leeza was the only thing she had so slapping her silly, which was her first impulse, was actually out of the question, although had she resorted to that, Leeza probably would have forgiven her, so desperate was she for friendship.
Her mother had a stocking cap over her almost bald head which reminded India of her own shower-capped one. She had worn the plastic shower cap overnight and could feel the hot damp that it sealed under, promising soft and supple curls.
I know things crazy round here but they gonna change. From now on they ain’t gonna be no more bars around here. I know I haven’t been perfect India, but they a lot of things I can’t explain to you now but, I’m back in the church, sort of parable son, well I guess in this case daughter kinda thing and I’ll be different. But you’ll see.
Her mother lifted herself from the couch, the plastic sucking in the air that her weight had displaced. India fixed her one eye on the television screen not quite understanding the concept of her mother being different and a fear gripped her that she did not know then was born out of a feeling that her mother’s promise held too much to bear under the strain of reality. But she couldn’t articulate this all just then and slurped the super sweet milk that allowing the cereal to soak in just long enough had produced.
So now they were on their way to church in her mother’s black Lincoln Continental which unbeknownst to her would be repossessed in a few days. It indeed was a special day for although her mother owned this car for about a year, India had only ridden in it twice. Every day after school she’d speed down the school’s steps half-expecting her mother to surprise her and pick her up. But it just never happened. Instead, when she let herself into the apartment, she’d find her mother fast asleep the same place she had left her that very morning—on the couch.
Leeza sat in the back, her skinny underdeveloped body ridiculously small on the pleather backseat. She fiddled with window buttons and halfway to the church complained of being carsick. India’s mother laughed, Chile it’s a damn shame I can tell you ain’t used to be being in no car. But you my girl Leeza, you’ll always be my girl and India could see that stupid big-toothed smile that threatens to make her mad but instead just makes her sad cause she just knows Leeza ain’t got nobody but her and she ain’t got nobody but Leeza. Leeza showed up that morning with a dress two-sizes too small and patent leather mary-janes that obviously squeezed her toes.
Lord Jesus girl your mama done dressed you up like a Haitian and didn’t even stop to peel that layer of dirt around your neck. There was something about Leeza that made both India and her mother’s heart melt, something about her that made them not get mad at her for hanging around all the time, or for coming by uninvited. There was something about Leeza that made them cherish what they—mother and daughter had between them, made them realize how special the love was. And like they were taught, they shared this love with Leeza as long as she went by the house rules like every one else: Every one worked. Whether it was sweeping the terrace or taking Prince the Chihuahua out for a walk, or washing the dishes or putting the laundry in—once you helped out you were in. India disappeared in her big closet and found a plaid skirt, a pair of stockings and shirt that if knotted on the side, didn’t fit the flat-chested Leeza too loose. Leeza found India’s old training bra and asked to wear it which made India look at her as if she done lost her mind but she lent it to her anyway. Leeza stuffed it with toilet paper and asked India’s mother if she could wear a pair of her pumps? Now how you gonna fit them tiny feets in my big old shoes? Leeza said that toilet paper could work there too and India and her mother just shook their heads and laughed, India’s mother showing all her gold teeth in the front that spelled Queen. You wear your own shoes, girl. Trust me, it’ll be not too long til you be wearing shoes like these.
But Leeza, too ashamed to wear her Buster Brown shoes from two years before, borrowed a pair of India’s with a low heel and rounded front that India bought from Value City on Flatbush Avenue but they ended up hurting India’s bunions too much. No way around the fact that Leeza look crazy but it’s church we going to, not some damn fashion show, right? India’s mother assured them and then added right before scooping a heepful of soggy scrambled eggs into her mouth, India you getting real good at these eggs! Now go fetch me my wig, brush it out and that half-smoked Marlboro in the ashtray wouldn’t hurt either. Then to ensure little Leeza didn’t feel left out, ordered, go sweep that terrace and I’ll give you fifty cents. With a broom that was bigger than she was. Fifty cents can go a long way in her world: she could buy five Slim Jims or twenty Now & Laters and suck on them until her mouth turns the color of sour apple or watermelon or she could buy a slice of pizza or a Sicilian with its thick layer of cheese and sprinkle as much garlic as she wants cause she don’t have to share it with nobody or she could buy an egg roll and smear it with duck sauce and this time she’ll remember to eat it slow chew twenty times like India showed her and make it last longer. She could buy her egg roll on Newkirk and look down at the train tracks all day without any one ever coming to look for her. Nobody ever did.
But now they are in the car, India in the front, her whole body pressed against the door, her face leaning against the open window wondering what this church going to be like? Are they going to get fried chicken and collard greens after? Macaroni pie? Sweet potato pie? And if so, just how long was the pastor going to make them pay for it by listening to his sermon? She suddenly felt a drip on her neck and knew it was the curl activator. She reached for her little macramé purse and pulled out a baby blue washcloth. She wiped the edges where her hair grew from her scalp all around. You still biting those nails? Her mother looked at her as much as she could while driving. They drove down building-lined streets with children playing outside on the sidewalks. It was times like this that India missed the South, when she missed the open air, the space to play and the easy, slow, no lets not hurry up attitude. She saw the children riding their bikes up and down in front of their buildings, and shut her eye really hard trying to imagine the whole block in wide, open green. Her mother reached for her hand, no mens want a girl with nails like that. Her mother frowned and placed her daughter’s hand gently back on the car seat. We gonna get you some of that bitter stuff to put on it. That way it’ll taste bad and you won’t be gnawing at it. India tried not to show her gloat, but she couldn’t help it. She was happy Leeza was there. See Leeza, her gaze in the rearview mirror that Leeza constantly awaited, told her, see my momma loves me.
After driving through parts of Brooklyn the two girls just did not know, but knew instinctively was far from home, her mother pulled the Continental up to a curb in front of a large patch of almost waist-high grass with a backdrop of abandoned buildings. She automatically closed all the windows and then picked through her hair with a black plastic pic that had a clenched fist on the end and was made in China. How your momma look? Leeza stuck her head between the two front seats, you look beautiful she answered. Shut up, she ain’t your mother, India declared not for the first time. Leeza stared at India’s mother with wide eyes and prayed she’d look like her one day: plump in the right places, smooth skin the color of uninterrupted Blackness, nostrils that had a sexy flare to it. India’s momma was everything little Leeza aspired to be. Even India, whose eye was forever besmirched by that bitterness that seems to bubble up between mother and daughter—that feeling that daughters get when they not only realize the fallibility of their mothers, but their stupidity—not even that feeling could take away from the fact that yes, her mother was beautiful and secretly, the young girl was grateful that her body was budding in the same direction as hers.
Let’s go girls. After service I got a big surprise for the two of you. That announcement filled both girls’ hearts with an anticipation that threatened to choke them if they did not contain it. They hurriedly left the car and followed her into an already filled church that smelled of baby oil and wet skin, as two wooden ceiling fans coughed up movements above and older women, veiled and varied, fanned themselves with programs from the evening before. A young thin man, who seemed deceptively asexual to India’s mother, led them towards the front. Irritated babies cried, children snickered below the bare cross of the resurrected Christ. Leeza, a Catholic, vowed to herself that she would go up and receive the sacrament although she had not yet received her first communion and India, once in the company of strangers, brought her fingers to her teeth and began to chew, peeling the skin, careful not to peel too much where it could hurt, and found to her happiness that between the last nail biting session and now, new soft pliable skin had grown, the kind you could bite off and chew and chew. But her mother, planted between the two girls lest there should be any foul play between them, slapped her hand away and scowled in disapproval. But before India could offer any protest such as rolling her eyes (unbeknownst to her mother of course who would not think twice about slapping her all the way into next month) the Reverend arrived.
Even twelve-year-old India could see the appeal of the reverend. Fast ass Leeeza could too—they both looked at each other and smiled knowingly, casting their eyes again upon the Reverend. He looked like a cross between Billy D. Williams and Smokey Robinson. Either way, the Reverend was fine and he had no trouble commanding attention from the mostly female congregation and when it came time for collection, they opened their purses as willingly as they would their hearts, if only he would just ask them.
But his eyes said he knew all this and conveyed a message of strength and pity. He told them during the service, I don’t need to preach to you but on one thing only and that’s to say you not doing your job. You need to bring me the men. Bring me your sons, your uncles, your brothers, your nephews, your fathers, your husbands. How can we build a church with no men? And the congregation seemed to be momentarily lifted from its daze by the truth of what they felt he had said and they clucked their teeth and shook their heads. He not only fine, they thought, he smart too.
By the end of the service, three hours later when the two girls wanted to walk around the church, India’s mother let them as she sat there, seemingly in deep thought. The Reverend was surrounded by a group of women, representative of all age groups. The few other men that was there cleaned up, shifted about, some not sure what to do but not wanting to seem to leave too early especially after the service on male responsibility.
Finally the crowd thinned and the Reverend looked over to India’s mother and smiled a smile that the two girls just knew was special. He walked over to her, no longer as Reverend but as a man and clasped both her hands in his.
Sister Heather it sure is good to see you here. India’s mother blushed that matte-burgundy that dark women such as herself get, and her eyes fell to the floor. There were still some hangers-on milling about the storefront church that made Heather nervous—she didn’t want anyone getting no ideas now, you know? But the Reverend seemed preoccupied with other things, such as getting out of that church and he took off his white and black robe and collar, rolled it around his arm and asked, well we going or not woman? In the friendliest tone and the girls, now pressed up against the back bench giggled at the unlikely sight of Heather engaged in some age-old dance that even they knew existed.
So happy were the girls they didn’t care about the looks of envy from the yellow skinned adolescent who had long ago lassoed images of the Reverend into her dreams or the brown skinned nurse who couldn’t help but look unhappy because it was the expression her face felt most at ease in.
They loaded up in the car but this time it was the Reverend who sat behind the wheel and her mother in the passenger seat. Both girls sat in the back. They were so excited to be in the presence of a real grown up love, they unsuspectingly held hands.
The reverend stretched the seatbelt across his chest and suggested they do the same. Okay pretty ladies? Now ain’t I just about the luckiest man, blessed man right now? In a car with some beautiful ladies. Now what you girls say to Coney Island, frog legs and the Cyclone? And India sat back, Leeza’s hand still in hers, her good eye fixed ahead, for now it all just did not matter. Not the past of broken bottles and a vomiting mother she has to look after or math tests or books whose words remain unclear with textbook smells of rotten and stale knowledge. Not while Leeza’s parents just never seemed to be around and let her run around like crazy. No. Because today, she had Coney Island and more than that she had her Momma happy with a nice enough man taking over for a change. And it ain’t like her mother needs it neither, but is sure was nice. And most of all, she had Leeza, whose skinny hand pressing India’s hand back reminds her that she’s not dreaming that this happiness is real and that there are witnesses. Witnesses to this day where the road seems destined to one thing and that is change. And when you not good at much, well, then change could only be a good thing.
