Born Blue (21 page)

A old man who looked like he got one of his eyes shot out come walking toward me. I hung close to the building I were at, and he went on by, stinkin' of piss and old dead stuff. Right behind him a lady in a bright red coat come along walking fast, her high heels clicking on the sidewalk all smart and snappy sounding, like this be her
special day. I wanted to follow her and see where she going so bright and fast like that, but I didn't. I kept walking the way I been walking till I come to a pay phone. I set my junk down, pulled out some quarters from my pocket, and paid the phone. I dialed Mama Linda's number—what else. I let it ring six times. I started to hang up, then I heard a voice on the line. I put the phone back to my ear.

"Hello?" I said.

"Hello?" Were a sleepy scratchy voice on the other end.

"This is—this is Jane. This be Janie. Who this?"

The voice sounded brighter. "Jane! My Jane? It's—this is your mama Linda!"

"Oh hey, Mama," I said, trying to sound like I knew she gonna be there and I didn't care much about it.

"Where are you? Are you here in Gulf Shores?"

"No, ma'am. I'm in Atlanta."

"Oh." Mama Linda said, and she sounded like she were sad, real sad.

"But I were thinkin'—I were thinkin' I could come see you. Just, you know, come see you?"

"Yeah? Well, good. Come on down. You remember where I live?"

"No, don't remember nothin' but this number. But I can take a bus, and maybe you could pick me up at the station?"

"I don't have a car anymore. You get a taxi and I'll pay
for it, okay? I'm the street just after Orange Beach Way, on the right It's a little dead-end road. I'm the only house on it."

"Yeah, okay. Well, okay—bye."

"Yeah, bye."

I hung up the phone and stared at it. I didn't move for a long time. I couldn't move for a long, long time.

THE TAXI DRIVER
passed Mama Linda's road twice before he decided the little dirt path with all the tall grass growing along it, like nobody been on it for years, had to be Mama Linda's street. He turned onto the dirt and drove slow, catching the tall beach grass in his antenna.

I stuck my hand out the window and let the grass hit my hand. Weren't but a bitty road. Mama Linda's house stood at the end. It were a wood house, beaten gray by lots of rain and wind and sand. It stood high up on stilts and had a long set of stairs leading up to the door.

I didn't wait for Mama Linda to pay the driver, 'cause Paid had put me enough money in my pack to pay for the bus and taxi rides myself. So I paid, and the taxi backed up the street and out to the main road, 'cause there weren't nowhere to turn round first.

I went slow up the steps of Mama Linda's house and
stopped when I got to the top. From up there I could see the Gulf and people on the beach and seagulls flying round over them. Their screeching noise set my teeth to hurting. I turned away from the water and knocked on the door 'cause weren't no doorbell, and I waited. I knocked again. I waited again. Nobody come to the door. I didn't know if Mama Linda tricked me on purpose or her mind were just too blown to tell me straight where she lived.

I looked in the window and saw a white room with beach-type furniture in it. The wood floor were painted a deep blue, and all the cloth on the chair cushions was blue and white. Everything were blue and white and yellow, bright yellow. t)idn't look like a room Mama Linda would have. Were too fresh-clean and cheerful, and warm looking.

I knocked again' but nobody come. I tried the door and it opened. I stepped inside and called out, "Mama Linda? It's me. It Leshaya. I mean—it Janie." I kept walking through the room calling out, moving toward the kitchen I could see at the back "Mama Linda?" I saw a room to the right, and I looked in at it. Were a bedroom, but she weren't there. "Mama? Mama Linda, it's me, Janie."

I come to a bathroom also off on the right side, then I come to the kitchen back of the main room with still another door on the right of it, but it were closed. I knocked on it. "Hey, Mama Linda? Hello?" I opened the door slow and looked in. The room were dark 'cause all
the curtains be pulled, but I could see someone were laying in the bed. "Mama Linda? It me, Janie."

A head lifted up from the pillow. "Janie? Little face? You got here so fast. I just hung up the phone with you." Her voice were sleepy-groany, like when we talked on the phone.

"No, Mama Linda, that were hours ago. It be almost five o'clock"

"Come here, let me see you. Open a curtain, will you? Let me see you."

I pulled back the curtains and saw the ocean outta every window. I went to Mama Linda's bed. She raised up her arm to touch me, and I seen all her ugly old veins.

"You sick?" I asked, even though I could see she were real side Weren't never more than skin and bones, anyway, but now she were hardly no skin, 'cause it were so thin-looking and had them veins popped out so ugly. She didn't much look like herself at all. She had just bits of hair and more veins on her head. Her neck looked too long, and her eyes looked deep and hollowed out. She blinked at me.

"You're still pretty," she said to me. "You look just like me."

I backed away from her bed. "No, I don't. What's wrong with you? You got some disease? You got that AIDS disease?"

Mama Linda sighed, and it sounded like it come from so deep inside her body, like it be her last breath.

I backed away some more.

"Yeah, baby, I got AIDS." She smiled and her lower lip cracked open in the middle and blood come out. She grabbed a tissue off her bedside table and wiped her lips.

"I cain't stay long," I said. "I just come to say hi, and then I gotta go, 'cause, see, I'm a singer. I got this song come out on the radio, and I gonna be goin' on tour with it."

Mama Linda nodded. "It's all right. I'm not going to be hanging around here much longer myself."

"Yeah. Shouldn't you be in a hospital or something?"

"No. I want to be here. This is my home. I've come back home. Do you remember this house? It was your grandparents' house, remember?"

"Don't remember no grandparents."

"Right, they both died before you were a year old." Mama Linda lay her head back on her pillow and closed her eyes like any minute she gonna fall back asleep—or fall off dead. "They left me the beach house, and my brother, Len, got the big house," she said. Her voice sounded tired of talking.

"You got a brother?"

"No, not really." She opened her eyes and looked round like she were hunting for something. "Now that Fm dying, he's sending me money, but last time I saw him was years and years ago. He lives in Italy." Mama Linda tried to laugh, and her lip cracked more and got to bleeding again. "Parents thought if I got the big house, I'd sell it for drugs. The place had been in the family since before the Civil War. Brother Len didn't even wait
for their graves to get cold. He sold it and moved to Italy." Mama Linda sounded all out of breath. She took in a couple of deep breaths, and I watched her chest rise and fall, and rise and fall, big and bony.

"Here I am, now, and I still got the beach house," she said.

"Yeah," I said, "you still got the beach house. Sold off other things, but you still got the beach house."

Mama Linda lifted her head. She dabbed at her bloody hp with her tissue. "I fixed it up myself," she said, like she didn't get my meaning. "I was always good at making a place look nice. Look around, you'll see. I could have been an interior decorator." She looked at her tissue, then looked at me. "Could you pour me some water? Here, on the table."

I looked at her bedside table with the phone and the tissues and the pitcher of water and the glass. There was bottles and bottles of pills there, too, and I didn't want to touch nothin' of it. Her AIDS germs was all over the place. She were bleeding right there in front of me. I turned and run. I run out her room and straight out the house.

I
HURRIED DOWN
the stairs so fast, my diaper bag come off my shoulder and fell down in front of me, rolling down the steps. I were kinda leaning forward, reaching for it and chasing after it, so I didn't see the old lady standing at the bottom till I almost crashed into her. She had a bag of groceries in her hands. I stopped short and said, "Oh!"

The lady smiled. She had a big nose. She said, "You're Janie, right? I'm Mrs. Trane. Your mother said you were coming. So|rry I wasn't here when you arrived. Would you take this for me?" She handed me the bag. "I've got another one in the car."

I stood with the bag in my hand and watched her limp to her car, like she got one leg way shorter than the other one.

The lady limped back toward me with her second bag of groceries and nodded for me to go on up the steps. "I'U follow," she said.

"Oh. Well, okay, I'll take this bag up, but I ain't stayin', 'cause I got to be goin'."

I climbed back up the stairs, and she come after me with her bag, making heavy clomping noises on the steps, so they creaked and groaned like they gonna bust apart. I went back to the kitchen and set the groceries on the counter.

Mama Linda called out, "Melissa? Janie came. I think I scared her off."

Mrs. Trane set her bag down and went to the doorway of Mama Linda's room. "Nonsense," she said. "Your Janie's right here." She turned to me and made a motion for me to come to her. I come to the door but I didn't look in. I looked at my shoes, old plastic things I stole from a Kmart.

"See, here she is." Then she said to me, "Your mama's so glad you've come. It's right for the two of you to patch things up now."

I looked up. I saw Mama Linda sitting up in her bed. The pitcher of water were on the floor and so were the water. Her glass lay tipped over in her lap.

The old lady limped into the room and picked up the pitcher. It were just a plastic thing, so it didn't break "Janie, get me a sponge off the sink" the lady said to me. "Let's clean this mess up for your mama."

I did it. I got her the sponge. I come into the room and handed it to Mrs. Trane. She didn't take it. She nodded and said, "Yes, that's the one to use, good for you. Don't miss the bit under the bed. I'll go get dinner
started." She headed out the room. "Linda, I hope you've got a big appetite tonight. I'm making lasagna."

I got on the floor to clean up the water. I looked up at Mama Linda. Didn't think she ever in her life had a big appetite, but I knew I were hungry. I hadn't had nothin' since the sack of doughnuts I ate that morning.

Mama Linda talked to me while I were sponging up her floor. "I didn't mean to scare you before, little face."

"Didn't scare me. I got places to go."

"I don't think so."

I stood up and squeezed the sponge into the pitcher. "I told you I be a singer now. You don't believe me, turn on your radio." I got back on the floor and wiped up under the bed, holding my breath the whole time, case they be germs so close to the bed.

"What I don't believe is if you had anywhere else to go, you'd be here."

"Well, I ain't stayin'. I were just curious about you. I'll be leavin' after dinner."

Mama Linda slumped down in the bed. "I need to rest," she said, like what I just said sucked all her energy out.

"Yeah, okay." I got up and grabbed the pitcher without thinking. I were halfway out the door when I realized I were holding something her AIDS-germy hands had touched. I dropped the pitcher on the floor.

Mrs. Trane come from the kitchen to see what the noise be.

I looked at her. "I touched the pitcher. Didn't mean to touch the pitcher."

"It's all right. You won't get AIDS touching your mama's things. I'll clean this up and you go wash your hands. I left a head of lettuce in a bowl. You can tear the lettuce for us."

I hurried off to get my hands washed. I run them under the hottest water I could get and squirted dishwashing liquid all over them. The soap made so much suds, I couldn't get it to go down the drain.

Mrs. Trane come in with the pitcher and seen what I done. "Not much experience in a kitchen, have you? Well, now you know a little dishwashing liquid goes a long way." She set the pitcher on the counter and waved her hands round in the sink, keeping the water running. Bit by bit the soap go down. She handed me a towel to dry my hands, then showed me how I were supposed to tear the lettuce.

"Yeah," I said. "I seen that done before."

"Good, I'll leave you to it, and I'll work on the lasagna. We'll be a team, okay? We'll make your mother a nice hot dinner."

I said, "I don't know why. She ain't gonna eat none of it. Don't look like she ate nothin' for years."

"Do you think we should just let her starve to death?" The old lady were cutting up a onion, and it were stinging my eyes.

I blinked and blinked and kept tearing at the lettuce.

"She's starving her own self. Why not give her a bowl of cereal, or something? It be easier, and most likely all the same to her. Won't eat that, neither."

"If you were dying, is that the way you would want to be treated? Your mother's still alive. She deserves some dignity and respect, don't you think?"

"I think she got what she deserved," I said. "She got AIDS."

TURNED OUT THE OLD LADY
could cook. Were a long, long time since I had a meal so good. We had our dinner on trays that sat on stands, and ate in Mama Linda's room. Mrs. Trane opened some of the windows, and a bit of breeze was coming through. She held a forkful of lasagna up for Mama Linda to eat, but like I said would happen, she didn't want none.

Mrs. Trane said, "You have to try the salad. Your baby made this salad all by herself. Look how pretty she cut up the tomatoes." She lifted a forkful of salad to Mama's mouth and Mama Linda took it. She chewed on it a long time, staring at me all the while she doing it.

I looked down and scooped up more lasagna. I were already on my second helping, and Mrs. Trane and Mama Linda had hardly got anywhere with their first.

I heard Mama Linda swallow, 'cause it were so loud. Then she said to Mrs. Trane, "Janie looks just like me."