Wouldn’t Change a Thing (5 page)

I see Russ and Clay's stamp of approval T-shirt on top of my clothes box. I hoist the carton in my arms as the state trooper brings the shoes and souvenirs. Three steps into my journey, the voice of pre-emphysema Clay fills my head, saying, “Don't you ask that man another damn question! You are Antoinette Maria Williamson. I raised you to hold your head high and be proud!”

I nod at the words. I hear them, want to absorb them, but the box slips from my arms and everything goes blank.

M
avis and Clayton were dead wrong for giving away my children like they did. They didn't discuss the matter with me and didn't care about my feelings, one way or the other. After one of my breaks at the Hatcher Square Mall back in the 1980s, they made the choice to separate the girls, claiming I was a bad influence on them. I didn't find out about Toni until after the deed was done. Who does that to someone? I was and still am capable of taking care of my children. I may be a resident of the Georgia Mental Hospital, but I have a right to see my children.

I know Mavis's saddity self is mad because I took my story to the
AJC
. What started out as a how-do-you-feel-about-your-treatment-here story turned into my personal rant on how family treats the mentally ill. Not that I'm mentally ill, I just get a little crossed up sometimes. The only reason I'm crossed up is the medication they give out around this place. They act like it's cotton candy at the State Fair. How is a person supposed to make rational decisions if you feel like you're floating on the moon all the time? Just call me Sally Ride and give me a white spacesuit, because some days, I don't know whether I'm coming or going. Wait, Sally's deceased. I'm sorry, Jesus, I didn't mean to mock the dead. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. Whew, Jesus just winked, nodded, and said the comment wasn't mocking Sally.

I took to hiding pills under my tongue and pretending to swallow them while the nurse is standing over me. Annalease, my roommate, taught me that trick. I slip the pills in my pocket when the nurse turns her back. My latest drug is Depakote. I know I'm in trouble when they give me a pink one, because it renders me helpless and keeps my visitors away. Abilify, Remeron, and Haldol do the same thing if I take them on schedule. I get more visitors when I take the Zyprexa. I have three people who come to see me on a regular basis: Jesus, Mahalia Jackson, and Clark Gable.

I know the doctors and nurses make fun of me all the time when I say Jesus is with me always. The first time I shared my Jesus secret with Dr. Wells, he asked, “Do you mean Hay-Suess?” I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Jesus is a celestial being; Hay-Suess is Latino.” I pointed to Jesus sitting on Annalease's bed. Dr. Wells said he understood, then upped my medicine dosage.

Don't you believe that carpenter mess. Jesus has a coat of colors, Brooks Brothers' suits, hiking gear, all kinds of clothes. Not once has he come in my room with bib overalls or paint-stained boots. He's a Renaissance man. He truly is everywhere at the same time. He comes through the window most days when he visits. Plops right down on Annalease's bed and asks me how I'm doing, if my arthritis is flaring up, how the doctors and nurses are treating me. He is my friend, indeed He is.

I fell out with Jesus when Paul left us in 1982. Felt like He ran for the hills and took His time coming back. Then I lost my teaching job. Then the house. Then the few friends I fellowshipped with from time to time. Then the children. In a span of nine months, everything secure in my life disappeared. I'm talking David Copperfield-poof.

Mahalia came to me different. She's been with me since 1980. Paul and I double-dated with Mavis and her husband, Raymond. Mavis, a nurse and my sister-in-law, and Raymond, a stern military man, always entertained at their house. Plantation is more like it. All that acreage and a big, old white antebellum house that sits off from the road, begging for a horse and buggy to pull around the circular drive.

We had gone to a concert at Georgia College to see Rufus and Chaka Khan. I was shocked Mavis came out with us, since that wasn't usually her kind of entertainment, but she sipped a Bud light and swayed her bottle to Chaka Khan like the rest of us. She didn't want to go to the Blue Note afterward, so we went back to their house. She convinced us to watch movies, and before we could protest, she played
Imitation of Life.
Paul put his arms around me and stroked my hair as we watched the movie.

Before Mahalia sang, “Trouble of the World,” she winked at me. Honey, she belted out that tune, stepped out the pulpit in that angelic black-and-white robe, ran her big hands over Annie's sparkling white spray and coffin, and came right out of the TV and sat on my left side. She told me not to tell Paul she was sitting there, said we had a few things to talk about regarding relationships. I got stiller than Lot's wife, because I didn't want to hear Mavis's mouth about medication or my hallucinations. Mahalia looked to her left and right like she was about to expose the world's biggest secret and told me to call her 'Halia. She said we had more in common than I knew. I winked back at her as assurance her secret was safe with me. I wasn't telling a soul she was with me. She still guides me through so many struggles. Turns out her marriages weren't perfect either.

Clark is a mystery. He'll come in my room, but he never talks to me. He'll stand back in the corner, coal black hair and mustache shining, and smile. That's it. I wonder who sent him and what they told him to tell me, but I can't get him to talk.

Back to my children. My girls are different as day and night. My baby girl, Antoinette, is my delicate flower. She's short with a little gumdrop nose and pretty brown skin. She puts me in the mind of those energetic waitresses who run back and forth from the kitchen getting lemon wedges and extra bread for customers. She's a peacemaker, always wanting everybody to be happy. Smart as a whip too. She cheered me up when I had my moods. I taught her how to braid hair, and when I'd fight with Paul, she'd grab my red-and-green jar of Royal Crown grease and find us a spot in front of the den TV. She'd part my hair, scratch and grease my scalp, and faster than a cat could lick his ass, my hair would be in these chunky French braids. Mavis tried to help me teach her to cook, but she was always up under me, like she was scared something would happen to me if she closed her eyes. The best she mastered was the Easy-Bake Oven. She never could get the hang of slinging cast-iron skillets and Dutch ovens.

We had Fish Fry Night every Thursday. Paul, a cabinetmaker, stopped by Macklin's Seafood on Milledgeville Highway to pick up catfish, perch, and hushpuppy mix. I kept potatoes on hand for French fries. I cleaned the fish outside at a table Paul made for me and brought it back in the kitchen to marinate for a while. While I washed and dipped that fish in my secret seasoning blend and special meal, I'd walk back and forth to the den and watch Paul, Willa, and Antoinette dancing. Paul fired up the record player and always played Antoinette and Willa's favorite song, “Sunny.” If you ask me, Bobby Hebb's version was better than Marvin Gaye's, but they wouldn't listen to me. Beats me what was so special about Marvin's rendition, but they danced like they were at a family reunion.

I don't have much to say about Willa. I told you my girls were night and day. Antoinette was day, Willa was night. She wasn't fat, wasn't skinny. I guess you could say she was attractive, if a woman like her turns you on. I'm saying woman because she was fifteen when I last saw her. She started smelling herself and sassing me when she turned fourteen. Can you believe I overheard that heifer telling Paul to keep an eye on me because she was worried about me? Told him I had been talking to myself and hearing voices. She wasn't slick. She told those lies to get Paul on her side so she could sneak out with Larry Watkins, her chemistry tutor. Paul was dumb enough to believe her and started monitoring me. He'd pop home from a cabinet job just to see how I was doing after I lost my teaching job. He wasn't slick either. I know he was doing that on his way to his other woman's house. I can't prove it, but I know it in my heart.

The last I heard, Willa was married with a daughter and living in Birmingham, Alabama. I thought about reaching out to her, but then I recalled the Roundup herbicide she put in my oatmeal and mashed potatoes, the arsenic-laced sweet tea, and the D-Con pellets she mixed with my brownies, and I decided to leave well enough alone. But she is my child, and I deserve to see her again. I've been aching for both of them lately.

The best years of my life were spent in the home-house. A woman is supposed to make her house a castle. That means keeping it together and being open to letting people stop by if they need rest or comfort. I kept the house ready for my family, but I also kept it together for Jesus. Think about how it says in the Bible, “He stands at the door and knocks.” Do you really think Jesus wants to come in a house stepping over dirty underwear, half-eaten food, or roach droppings? Let's not talk about dirty windows that haven't been scrubbed.

I tried keeping everything together before it slipped away from me. I had to leave the home-house and move into a place downtown called the Drummer's Home. It was a long waiting list to get in, but Queen Mavis waved her magic wand and I got an apartment. I kept it neat as a pin until the mall incident. I'm not blaming anyone for what happened, but the woman who told me to kill President Reagan had been after me long before the mall. She climbed in the window at night whispering to me about the deed, she came through the gas oven unit, and she followed me back and forth to school when I was teaching. I believe she is the reason I lost my job, because she reported back to Principal Jones all that was going on in my home. Who else would have told him about the D-Con pellets, the fights with Paul, and the trouble I had keeping the girls in check?

I miss my children. Sometimes, I miss Paul. I don't know how much longer I have left on this earth, but it would be nice to touch the girls, to see how they've grown up. I wonder if my granddaughter took after me or Paul. I wonder if they think of me. Annalease is like a daughter, but she can't substitute for Antoinette and Willa. I know I'll see them again. I know it in my heart.

L
amonte changed his mind. As he licks my feet like a four-course meal, I thrash about with a pillow over my head. I toss and turn, glad to be conscious after the blackout. He realizes how ridiculous it is to throw away our years together. I grab the sheets in anticipation of the make-up sex. He flicks his tongue between each toe, a slobbering, repentant fool. I love him more for his desire to make things up to me. My eyes tighten as I picture him in his red briefs with the Angelina Jolie pucker I bought for Valentine's Day. If only I had the negligee he bought me. We could start this make-up party right.

Softly, I say, “Lamonte.” I wait for him to acknowledge me. “Lamonte.”

“Whiplash, no!” a woman's voice yells.

I fling the pillow from my head and scream. A black Cocker Spaniel like Brooklyn's barks and retreats behind the woman.

“Whiplash, sit!”

The dog makes a circular motion and obeys her. Through a fog, I see Aunt Mavis. I untangle myself from the sheets.

“Aunt…Mavis? What am I doing here?”

“Calm down, Toni.”

“Don't tell me to calm down! Why am I in your house? What the hell?”

She calls for backup. “Raymond, please come help me!”

My uncle's footsteps fill the hallway. He stands in the doorway and blushes at the sight of me. He turns away and says, “May, I'll come back when she's decent.”

I look down at my pink oversized pajama set from Lamonte and cover myself again.

She clears her throat. “That was the only night set in the box. I got them from the backseat of your car. You refused to put on the T-shirt I gave you. You've been resting for the past two days and I planned to take you to Milledgeville today for more clothes.”