My Mother the Cheerleader (10 page)

W
hen I walked back into the kitchen, a small trail of smoke leaked out the top of the oven. It wasn't the first time I'd let my mind wander and burned the supper. I rushed over, grabbed two oven mitts, took out the pot of fiery rice and cheese, and laid it on the stove. The bread crumbs on the top were burned, but the rest was salvageable. Looking out the window, I saw my mother slumped over in the love seat rocker. She typically slept in a fairly dignified, upright position, like a lady of leisure taking an afternoon nap. Now she looked more like a drunk who had passed out.
She was in no condition to trot off to Commander's Palace or anywhere else, for that matter.

I ran out the back door and tried to shake her awake.

“Mama!” I hissed at her. “Mama—
wake up
!”

But she wouldn't stir. I felt her hot breath on me as I pushed my body against her shoulder in an attempt to hoist her back to a normal sitting position. Unfortunately, her body tilted over in the other direction until she tipped over and hung off the side of the rocker like the old Howdy Doody puppet I kept on top of my dresser. I ran around and pushed her back the other way, managing to balance her in something resembling a sitting position.

“Mama…please wake up!” I pleaded.

I ran back inside and retrieved a glass of ice water, reasoning that if I could get her to take a drink, it might revive her. I wasn't sure how I would get the water down her throat. So first I fished a piece of ice out of the glass and ran it across her forehead. She jerked and twisted her neck and made a small grunt in reaction to the cold, but her eyes
remained closed. I raised the glass to her lips and tilted her head back.

“Here, Mama. Drink.”

I attempted to slowly pour some water into her mouth. As soon as the water hit her throat, she coughed so violently that her right arm jerked in a spasm, knocking the glass from my hand. It shattered on the ground beneath my feet. Her coughing escalated until she started gagging. Her throat emitted a horrible, bubbled wheeze. Then it happened—she vomited all over the place, covering herself in yellow bile flecked with half-chewed pieces of mint leaves.

I grabbed her as she heaved again, hoping to direct the vomit onto the ground, but I wound up covered myself, all down the front of my clothes. This was not the first time I'd seen my mother sick from drinking, but it was the first time I had been caught in the line of fire. The violence of the vomiting shook her awake a little. She tried to steady herself on the love seat. I'm sure the motion of the rocker wasn't helping right then. She heaved and
vomited a third time and was at least able to direct it away from herself and me and into the flower bed beside the rocker. When she was finished, she gasped for breath.

“Louise…goddamn…” she rasped.

She heaved again, but nothing came up this time, just a gurgling sound and then a dry rasping gasp. Her face was as red as a firecracker, and her eyes looked like they might pop out of her head.

“Water…” she said.

I ran back inside to get another glass, and I discovered Morgan standing in the kitchen. I froze when I saw him. He looked me up and down.

“Is everything all right?” he asked.

Here I was, covered in my mother's vomit, in the midst of trying to revive her so she could go on a date with him—a Communist who might be a full-blown spy or a least an agitator. Nothing was all right.

“No,” I replied, running past him.

“My God, what happened?”

I ignored the question and ran back outside
with the glass of water. Morgan followed. Again I attempted to feed my mother a drink of water. Morgan rushed over and helped prop her up. He steadied her while I poured a small amount of water into her mouth. She gagged a bit but was able to swallow it. She took another sip and her breathing calmed. Her eyes finally began to focus. She recoiled when she saw that Morgan was holding her.

“Get your damn hands off me!” She twisted away from him and even managed to stand up.

“Hey, it's okay,” he said.

“No! It's not okay!” my mother snapped back.

“Just relax,” he said, genuinely surprised.

“Mama, he was only helping.”

“Shut up, Louise!”

“But Mama…”

“I said shut up. And get upstairs!”

“Pauline,” Morgan tried to reason, “aren't you being a little—”

“Get upstairs, Louise! Now!”

Overwhelmed by shame, hurt, and my pure helplessness in the situation, I burst out crying. I
couldn't speak. Like my mother's jagged demeanor, my tears came out raw and ugly.

“You heard me,” she rasped. “Git!”

I blubbered for another moment and ran inside the house and up to my room.

W
hen I got to my room, I threw myself on my bed, sobbing in big hearty gusts. I could hear their voices carrying up from the backyard. I remember thinking that for the first time in my life, I didn't want to spy. I didn't want to hear anything that my mother might say, because I knew it wasn't going to be pretty. But I couldn't move; something compelled me to listen, like when people rush over to see a house burn down or watch bloody victims pulled from a train wreck.

“Are you a Jew?” my mother said, slurring.

“Excuse me?”

“I don't want to be deceived anymore.”

“I haven't deceived you.”

“Are you a Jew?”

“I don't practice any religion.”

“I haven't choked down a Communion wafer in ten years, but that don't mean I'm not half Catholic.”

“What difference does—?”

“ARE YOU A JEW?”

“I was born Jewish,” he said. “Does that matter?”

“Does that matter?” my mother gasped. “Of course it matters.”

“What's gotten into you?”

“What are you doing here?” she countered.

“I don't understand what you mean.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I needed a room.”

“In New Orleans. What are you doing in New Orleans?”

“I came down to see my brother.”

“You're lying!”

“I'm not lying.”

“Then what were you doing at the school this morning?”

“Were you there?” he asked.

“Yes. I was there,” she said. “And I saw you.”

“Are you one of the Cheerleaders?”

“I've got nothing to hide.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then what were you doing at the school?”

“I wanted to see it with my own eyes. I didn't quite believe it.”

“Believe what?”

“Everything,” he said.

“You're one of the Northern Jews who're stirring up the niggers and making all this trouble.”

“I wasn't making any trouble.”

“You're some kind of organizer.”

“That's not true.”

“You're lying again.”

“No, I'm not. But I'm certainly not against what's happening.”

“So you just went over there to look around, like a tourist waltzing down Bourbon Street.”

“I went over there to get a look at what real courage looks like. It's not every day you get to see that.”

“Real courage.”

“That little Negro girl has got more courage than anyone I've ever seen. And I felt like I needed to find a little courage to face my brother.”

“You mean to tell me that's the only reason you were there?”

“Yes. Why were
you
there?”

“What do you mean, why was I there? This is my neighborhood. I belong there.”

“No one belongs taunting an innocent child.”

“Innocent,”
my mother scoffed.

“She's only six years old.”

“She's part of the whole conspiracy.”

“What conspiracy?

“The niggers and the Jews trying to take control.”

“Take control of what?”

“Everything.”

“She just wants a better education. Doesn't everyone deserve an education?”

“Nigger-loving propaganda.”

“It's not propaganda.”

“Why do you care so much about the niggers?”

“I try to care about everybody.”

“Isn't that just dandy. You know what I think?”

“No.”

“I think everybody should just mind themselves.”

“What kind of harm would it do if that little girl went to school in the same building with your little girl?”

“I don't want to get into a political conversation.”

“But it's not political to you, is it? It's personal, right?”

“Damn straight it's personal,” she snapped back. “We oughta be able to decide what kind of school we want for our own children. The government's
got no right coming in here and telling us how to live our lives.”

“Don't you think Negro parents feel the same way?”

“I don't give a goddamn what the hell Negro parents think. Of course they want what we've got. White people build up everything, and then Negroes just come along and think they can take it and dirty it up. We've got a right to control our own neighborhood.”

“It's their neighborhood too.”

“It's not their neighborhood. White people built this city when most of them were swinging from trees in Africa. I know how they live. They drink like fish and breed like monkeys in the jungle. And they're violent like angry cats.”

“You don't really believe what you're saying.”

“Damn right I do. I've seen them up close. Human life just doesn't mean as much to the niggers. Most of them are barely human.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I'm ashamed of nothing.”

“Do you want your daughter growing up thinking like that?”

“Keep her out of this.”

“You're responsible for raising that child. Lord knows what kind of hateful ideas you're putting in her head.”

“Don't talk to me about responsibility!” My mother's voice cracked. The entire conversation she had been slurring and angry, but managed to keep her voice somewhat level. Now her voice became more and more strained, rising in pitch like a boiling tea kettle. “I've done right by that child,” she continued. “No one's gonna tell me I haven't, goddamn it. I've done more right than any woman would've in my situation. I've given that girl a proper home. I've fed her. I've clothed her. I've raised her up from a baby. Changed diapers. Taught her to talk. Oh, and the money I've spent. New shoes! Haircuts! Clothes! Notebooks! Pencils! Lunch boxes! Glasses! Presents at Christmas! You
name it. Goddamn it! I did it! Do you hear? I did it!”

“Isn't that what a mother's supposed to do for her daughter?” Morgan asked.

My mother's response shook me more than I ever thought a simple sentence of the English language could.

“I am not her mother.”

Those five little words hit my brain like a bucket of freezing-cold water, sending a chill through my entire body. My mind raced back over my previous thirteen years, and snippets of memory rose up and hit me in the face, a thousand little moments that made me know instantly that what she said was absolutely true.

“What do you mean?” Morgan asked.

“I mean what I said,” my mother responded, her voice softening but cracking under the weight of a small sob. “I'm not her mother.”

“I don't understand.”

She paused to catch her breath. The anger
drained from her voice like the confession had blown it out of her. “She's my sister's child.”

“Your sister,” he said.

“They ran off together, she and Duane, just a few months after we hit Baton Rouge. They were wild, both of them. Born wild. She came back a few months later all knocked up. He stayed in Kansas City or wherever he was and let her have the baby alone. Just a couple of days after she gave birth, she took off again and left the baby behind. Didn't even give her a name. I had to register the birth down at the city hall, and I just put myself down as her mother. I knew they wouldn't be back.”

“How did you know?”

“They were junkies. Morphine. He got her started on the stuff, but then she took to it like a bird to flying. They moved around a lot. St. Louis, then Detroit, then Louisville. I think he left her in Cleveland. I heard from her once, maybe twice a year, usually scratching around for money. But of course I never had any. Then about five years ago I
got a call from the Cleveland coroner's office. She overdosed. I think she had been selling herself to keep her habit going. I didn't claim the body. I don't even know where they buried her or if they even bothered to do it at all.”

“And Louise doesn't know anything?” he asked quietly.

“What would be the point?” She sighed.

S
o there it was. My mother was not a Cheerleader. My mother was a whore and a junkie. And now she was dead. And what did that make me? Did I inherit a heart that would allow me to abandon my own baby? I wasn't anyone's baby. I wasn't anyone's little girl. I was just a burden. I'd always felt like a stranger with my mother. Always. And now I knew why.

As shaken and upset as I was by my mother's revelation, the news of my true identity had actually made me stop crying. In the silence I noticed an unfamiliar noise coming from below. It took me a
moment to fully comprehend that it was the sound of my mother crying. Over the years I'd seen my mother yell, scream, howl, and pout, but never really cry. In difficult situations she typically got angry but never weepy. The alien sound of her crying was surprisingly high-pitched and fragile, like the tears had opened up a crack inside her and let a little girl come out.

I willed myself to stand up and peek out of the corner of my window. When I looked into the backyard, I saw Morgan holding my mother in a tight embrace. Her shoulders rose and fell under the cadence of her sobs. They stood together for at least two minutes, with Morgan gently rubbing his hands against her upper back and shoulders. He softly whispered, “It's okay, it's okay,” over and over until her crying subsided. Finally, she pulled away from him. The crying had made red bags well up under her eyes, and her mascara ran in gray lines down her cheeks. Her hair seemed to be hanging off to the left side of her head like a fallen cake. And her clothes were rumpled, creased, and splattered with her own
bile. But the emotional outburst seemed to sober her up quick. Her voice returned to something resembling normal, and she suddenly snapped into tight focus.

“You've got to leave,” she said.

“Why?”

“People know you're here.”

“So?”

“It could be real trouble for both of us. I can't take any more trouble in my life than I've already got.”

He stared at her.

“You're kidding, right?”

“No. This neighborhood's like an angry hornet's nest right now. You've really got to go tonight and lay low,” she said.

“You mean it, don't you?”

“I'm sorry.”

He nodded.

“There's an inn on St. Claude. The Merri-weather. I'll call over—”

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “I'll find a place.”

Morgan moved to her, held her shoulders, and planted a kiss on her forehead. It was a tender, fatherly kiss, like he was trying to make her feel better about something. Then he turned and walked back into the house. My mother collapsed onto the love seat rocker, buried her face in her hands, and cried again.

I heard Morgan trudge upstairs and close the door to his room. That's when it started to rain. My mother sat in the downpour for a couple of minutes, letting it soak her completely. Finally she retreated inside and up to her room. When I heard the sound of her drawing a bath, I made my decision.