Mama (7 page)

One night a tall, caramel-skinned man strolled through the doors of the Red Shingle. He walked right past Mildred. She could hardly swallow her drink; couldn't believe something this handsome would set foot inside the Shingle without advance notice. In all the years she'd been in here and even when she worked here, she'd never seen anybody that caused her to do a double take.

This man had deep-set eyes and thick bushy eyebrows and a smile like you saw in toothpaste commercials. His hair was charcoal mixed with gray and he was as tall as a basketball player. He had a body like a boxer and instead of walking, he strutted like his ego was sitting on his shoulders. Mildred liked his style immediately. This man had class. She could barely speak when he walked up to her and introduced himself. His name was Sonny Tyler. She told him her name, then tucked in her lip and broke out her long-forgotten-that-she-still-had "Yes, I'm alone" smile. He sat down next to her at the bar and offered to buy her a drink but all she asked for was ginger ale.

Sonny told her he was stationed at Selfridge Air Force Base in St. Clemens, which was thirty-odd miles from Point Haven. One of his old running buddies was playing at the Shingle tonight and he had come to hear him since he hadn't seen him in almost a year. "Is that so," was all Mildred could say. She was trying to sound intelligent and figuring out the best way to carry on a conversation with this man, who was causing her panties to get wet.

They talked through two shows.

"I'm divorced and got five kids. The oldest is thirteen and the baby is seven," she told him.

"You sure know how to keep yourself up," he said, smiling. Mildred was shocked that he didn't go flying to the other end of the bar where there were quite a few women with less responsibility but also less sex appeal. They were all tapping their stirrers on the rim of their glasses to the beat of the music, and watching Mildred like hawks.

Sonny asked Mildred for her phone number, which made her feel seventeen again. She loved it. A few nights later he called her. He wanted to come over to her house; wanted to meet her kids. "Not yet," she said, but she met him at a motel in Canada. She told him she didn't let just any man in her bed, didn't care how good he looked or how good he smelled. "What's that you wearing anyway, Sonny? Lord, it smells good."

"Old Spice," he'd said, caressing her in all the right places. She knew it smelled familiar because Crook had always worn it, and so did Percy. It smelled different on Sonny. Tantalizing.

After a few weeks of making excuses to the kids as to why she'd been staying out so late or not coming home until daylight, Mildred decided to tell them. Hell, she was a grown woman with needs just like any other female. What was wrong with her feeling a little pleasure?

She made Sonny whisper when she let him in. "This is a nice house," he said softly.

"Shhh," she said, and guided him to her bedroom, where she hung his clothes over the door and left it cracked. She didn't want the kids to barge in unannounced and find her in bed with a man who wasn't their father. Sonny was a much better lover than either Crook or Percy had been. He was so warm and big that Mildred woke up whistling the next morning, anxious to fix him a hot breakfast. She wanted to make him as comfortable as possible because she wanted him to come back. And keep coming back. It had been so long since she'd been kissed, especially the way Sonny did. She'd almost forgotten what else lips were good for. And what he had rekindled between her legs was another story altogether.

Sonny put on everything except his shirt and walked out into the living room when he heard the kids laughing at cartoons. When Freda first saw his hairy chest, her eyes widened like she'd seen a ghost.

"Who are you?" she asked, turning up her nose at him.

"I'm Sonny," he said smiling, all friendly-like. "I'm a friend of your mother's."

"Since when? And how come you don't have all your clothes on? You coming or going? Did you spend the night over here? With my mama, in
her
bed?"

"Yes, your mother is a very nice lady, and I like her a lot. I hope to get to know you and the other kids better, too."

"Hmph. I hope you ain't staying long," she said, and huffed away.

Mildred walked back into the living room, not having heard this, and slid her arms around his waist like a high schooler satisfying a crush. She called the kids to introduce him. Each of them sat down on the couch, lined up like dominoes, and when Freda crossed her arms and grunted, the rest of them imitated her. They watched her for the next move, hardly even noticing Sonny.

"Sonny is a friend of your mama's, and he's nice. I like him, and I want y'all to treat him nice. He's in the air force and he's going to be visiting us quite regularly, so y'all might as well get used to him."

"Why we gotta get used to him? He ain't coming to see us." Freda said.

"You got a quarter?" asked Money, holding out his hand.

"Boy, stop begging, what I tell you about that. And Freda, you better watch the tone of your voice, you ain't grown. I'm still the mama in this house."

"How'd you get a name like Money?" Sonny asked.

Money hunched his shoulders. He didn't know.

It was Freda who had started calling him that. It seemed that Money always begged, and nobody knew where he got the habit from. He was barely old enough to tell you his address, but he'd beg coins from anyone who came to the house or wherever Freda had dragged him. "You got a dime?" he'd ask, and if they said no, he'd say, "You got a nickel?" And if they still said no, he'd press the point. "Well, you got
any
money?" Freda would smack his hand and tell him he shouldn't be begging and if Mildred ever found out he was doing it, she would beat the stew out of him. He ignored her threats. "Money! Money! Money! Those the only words you know, ain't it?" Freda would say. After that, to embarrass him she started calling him Money all the time. So did everybody else.

It was commonplace in black neighborhoods to have a nickname. By the time a child was sucking his bottle or thumb, people were already staring at him like a specimen, asking, "What you gon' call him?" Then they would give the child a name that showed no consideration for his own. Baby boys got names like Lucky, BooBoo, Sugar Pie, PeeWee, and Homeless. "Don't he look just like a little fat pumpkin?" And that's what he'd be called thereafter. Little girls' names were at least softer to the ear: Peaches, Babysister, Candy, Bo-Peep, and Cookie. There was a set of twins called Heckle and Jeckle.

Money kept his hand out when he saw Mildred take the plates back in the kitchen.

"Here, I've got a quarter, for all of you," Sonny said, reaching into his pockets. Their attitudes seemed to change then, but when Freda refused hers, the girls pulled their hands back too. Not Money. He slid his quarter into his pocket and told Sonny he could give all of the coins to him and he'd see to it that his sisters got theirs later on when he knew they'd change their minds. The girls looked at him like he was a traitor, but it didn't bother Money.

Sonny kept coming for a few months and Mildred was glowing, always humming some song. Then he found out he was getting sent to Okinawa. He told Mildred it was a strong possibility that he might not see her for at least a year. And if he was ordered to fight in Vietnam, he might not ever see her again. Before he'd met her, he'd asked to be transferred to Texas, which is where he'd be stationed if he made it back to the States. Mildred didn't whine or cry. She just thanked Sonny for the best four months she'd had since her divorce, especially since he'd gotten her juices back in circulation. It wasn't like she was madly in love with him. Hell, Mildred said to herself, wasn't no use crying over spilt milk.

Percy hadn't exactly given up on her, even though he'd married a shy woman who knew a good thing when she saw one. Percy was the kind of man who would try to enter a jalopy in a stock car race and wouldn't be able to figure out why he didn't qualify, and if by chance they did let him in, he'd be at a total loss as to why he didn't win. The only thing he was good at figuring out was his long-overdue and stored-up passion for Mildred. Dreaming about her was enough for Percy. His wife suspected it, though she never said anything to him so long as he paid the bills.

Percy had told Mildred time and time again that if she ever needed anything, anything at all, to drop her pride and call him first. She decided to keep him on the back burner in case of a real emergency. After all, he
was
married, and she didn't want his wife knocking on her door in the middle of the night ready to blow her brains out. So Mildred left Percy just where he was: on simmer. Besides, he was too nice, she thought, and not once had Mildred ever seen him lose his temper. She wondered if he had one.

Mildred applied for another job. This time at Prest-o-Lite, though they weren't hiring. Those welfare checks were barely making the house note, let alone everything else. She wanted to work, not sit around the house all day trying to drum up things to keep her busy. She was getting fidgety and the least little thing that didn't go right got on her nerves. She was sick of standing and waiting in line for the flour and cheese and margarine and Spam they gave her at the welfare office.

She sat at the kitchen table and started going through a stack of envelopes that she had already shuffled and reshuffled in order of importance over the past few weeks. It didn't make a difference. Most of them were going to have to go unpaid. Bills. The coal bill. The gas bill. The light bill. The water bill. The garbage man. The insurance man. The washer and dryer bill. The house note. Groceries. Lunch money. Special field trip money. Gym suit money. School books. Notebook paper. Tennis shoes. Sunday shoes. The dentist. Popsicles.

Everything was piling up and it was as if Mildred were caught in a snow storm and was constantly shoveling the sidewalk. It kept snowing over where she had just shoveled. In spite of the welfare checks and the occasional day work she managed to get on the side, Mildred was getting deeper and deeper in debt. Everything kept getting more expensive and her kids were growing entirely too fast.

It cost so much to keep up a three-bedroom house like this, and trying to raise five kids, she thought. Hell, twenty years is a long-ass time to be paying for anything. What will I do with all this room when the kids is grown? Which won't be long. Sit in here by myself and run from room to room? Maybe I'll have some grandbabies. But the thought of being a grandmother was unfathomable to her. She decided not to think so far ahead. Shit. Right now what she needed was some money. A decent job. Maybe even a sugar daddy, which Mildred was seriously considering about now.

"Mama, can I make some cocoa?" asked Bootsey, walking into the kitchen. She was starting to look like a miniature Mildred. Everybody had been telling Bootsey this, but Bootsey didn't see it.

"I don't care what you make, girl," Mildred said.

"Here's the mail," Bootsey said, handing it to her.

Interruptions. Always interruptions. Mama this. Mama that. Mama Mama Mama Mama. Can I have this? Can I have that? Yes. No. Maybe. I need this. I need that. Not now. Mama, please? Why not? Because. Because why? Because I said so. Because because. Her kids were everywhere she turned and everywhere she looked. A hand. A mouth open. Asking asking asking. Do something. Anything. Gimme gimme gimme. And always the very things she didn't have, except her love, which they never once asked her for.

Mildred went through the envelopes quickly, tossing aside the ones she didn't want to look at, and then she came across a letter from her oldest brother, Leon. He lived in Phoenix. What would he be writing me for? she wondered.

She opened the letter and read it. She was surprised to discover that he was well informed about her financial situation and she wondered who had filled him in. It had to be one of her sisters, most likely old fat-ass Georgia or motor-mouth Lula. Mildred let the thought pass when she got to the part where he suggested she consider selling the house and moving out to Phoenix. He said there were better job opportunities out there for colored people, the weather was hot and dry all year long, which meant hardly any mosquitoes, the kids might meet some civilized children instead of those hoodlums running loose in Point Haven, and, above all else, Mildred might meet a stable and loveable serviceman with a pension and she might even consider getting her high school diploma.

She folded the letter and put it back in the envelope, letting her fingers crease it over and over again. She could hear the furnace clicking on. Heat, Mildred thought. Wouldn't need no furnace in Arizona. She walked over and flicked off the switch. She had never really thought of leaving Point Haven before. All her people were here. But she wasn't afraid of taking chances. Always knew something had to happen to make things better. Was this it? She looked down at her puffy hands and saw how years of bleach and ammonia and detergent had made her skin like spiderwebs.

Ain't nothing gon' ever change unless I make it change, she thought. And I need a change, that's for damn sure. Shit, I'm tired of playing catch-up. Working and scrimping and scraping, to get where? Nowhere. Not even past the starting line. She went to the sink and turned on the faucet though there were no dirty dishes in the basin. She poured almost two cups of Tide in the water and let the suds ooze through her fingers. She stood in front of the window and let her hands soak until they felt like liquid silk. Then she pushed the starched curtains aside to unblock the view. Her view. Of Herman and Beulah Dell's ugly brown house. The grass in the side yard was growing too fast. And before spring this house would have to be painted again. The Mercury was starting to fall apart too. Mildred dried her hands on the curtains and picked up the letter again. Then she found Leon's phone number in the junk drawer and picked up the telephone.

Six

M
ILDRED'S BROTHER
had told her just what she would have to do before she could pack up and head for the desert. He instructed her on how to go about selling the house so she could make some money. At least a few thousand dollars. Her eyes lit up at the mere thought of having that much money in her possession. She had no idea how much she'd paid in interest and principal. Had never kept track. But since more white folks had started moving into the neighborhood, the house must have appreciated; the boundaries had started changing so that now the portion of Twenty-fifth Street where she lived was considered Mid Town instead of South Park.