The Future Has a Past (15 page)

“Now, let me tell you, when Vinnie drove up to Betha’s house and looked through that screen as she took Ms. Foster onto the porch, she saw that nice stuffed chair all torn and broken down. Betha and her boyfriend sat on it and had a fight on it, with it, all around it and all over it. If you tried to sit in it, it tilted backward almost to the floor. Now the old mother is back on her wooden chair with one backboard to lean on. Vinnie dragged herself home to cry cause there was no more money to spend on another chair that might end up the same way. She cried and she did some hard thinkin.

“Round that time, too, I had prayed and been talkin to God and bought them lottery tickets and one day . . . I WON! Fifty thousand dollars! Dollars! Lord, have mercy, Yes!”

Later, Josephine just put both her hands on her hips and said, “All she did was win back most of what she has already spent on them tickets! That money be gone soon too, back on some more tickets.”

All Wynona’s lonely years came down to nothing. First, Wynona told Vinnie about her winnings. Vinnie just sat down and looked stunned. Somebody won! She leaned back in her thinking chair by the window and just looked at Wynona’s sparkling eyes. She shook her head, over and over again. “Wynona! You can do so much! Some of all them things you been dreamin about! Get you your own house. Buy you a car. Buy you some decent clothes. A good stove. A good refrigerator. A . . . Girl, you don’t need to never, ever worry again! You free!!”

Wynona just laughed and cried at the same time. Grinned and pressed that ticket that lay in her brassiere against her breast and lonely heart. “Oh! You know you been my best friend. I don’t know what I would do sometime without knowin you are over here and close. I be so lonely sometime. I don’t talk much about it, but I miss my family and people I know love me bein around me. I’m gonna go see my family! Get me some of that ole-fashion family love.” Her face shone with her love. “Then I want me a house and a car. I’m gonna pay all my bills up and take me a trip to see my sisters and go to my mama’s grave and put a tombstone and a BIG load of flowers on it, plant em! . . . and my daddy, too. I’m gonna help you too, Vinnie, cause you been nice to me. You are my friend. And I’m gonna get me a refrigerator and get you one just like it. But I’m sure gonna hate to move away from you. I’m gonna try to move out there in that nice area where Fred lives. It’s a nice clean place where ain’t nobody cussin they mama out; leastways not how you can hear em.”

“I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna,” was Wynona’s song and she sang it, hummed it, tapped it out with her feet when she was trying to stand still. She was happy.

Josephine mumbled to Vinnie and any other person she talked to about Wynona, “She need to try to get her a man and throw that dog and all them dirty pets away!” But she made a mistake when she told Vinnie, “I been seeing a big ole bird flying around here! I’m gonna get my gun and kill it! It’s too big to be flying over my house! Vinnie told her, “I see you with a gun pointin at my eagle and I will report you to somebody who will do something about it! And if I don’t see you with a gun and something happens to my eagle, I will still report you. That eagle isn’t botherin you! You leave that bird alone!”

Well, that’s the way neighbors are sometime.

Vinnie can sure tell you this because she was looking out for Wynona.

“In the end, Wynona didn’t have to buy no tickets to see her children or her sisters or any other distant relative she knew she had or didn’t know she had, cause it wasn’t but a week or so before every one of them was at her little rented house, crowding them weak walls out. She couldn’t tell how word got around so fast, she had only told her children and her sisters. But word sure did fly. Just like that eagle, chile.

“Wynona’s grown kids came home for the first time in two years or longer, huggin and kissin her and puttin in their bids. Beggin for just a ‘little’ help. Only one, a son, didn’t ask. He seemed to just be happy for his mother. Then her two sisters were there, don’t know how many years since she had seen them. They were huggin and kissin her, talkin bout their dead mother and what she would want Wynona to do for the ‘family’ and asking her for just a ‘little’ help. Her husband had been dead more than ten years, but his mother and brothers and sisters, nephews, nieces and somebody’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren and all the way to cousins and near cousins, aunts and uncles were there. All of them! So glad to see a woman who had been there in that house so many years . . . alone. Without them.

“Wynona put them up in motels and hotels, and she had to pay! because they were her ‘guests’ and they couldn’t afford it. So she paid. And paid. And paid. Well, they all had to eat, didn’t they? They even said, ‘First vacation I ever had, so I ain’t cookin, honey!’ I think Wynona was just overwhelmed and confused by all that attention and her mind wasn’t workin any too properly.

“Yes, she sure did pay and pay. And gave, and loaned, and gave, and loaned. Each fond, loving relative left as they got ‘some’ of what they wanted. But it was never enough. I heard one as they left carryin their little torn-up luggage say to the other relative, ‘Wynona is a stingy bitch and she ain’t gonna know what to do with all that money noway! Prob’ly gonna end up givin it away to some fool she got hid somewhere! Never did see no man round here and I know she got one!’ Then their voices faded away as they stumbled down the street with their bags and full bellies and the fresh extra cash Wynona had given them.

“Of course her grown children fought their relatives for the money. Not for Wynona, but for themselves. All but the same one, the son who had never asked for much and didn’t have much. He didn’t come home often because he thought he had nothing to bring. He didn’t know his love would have been enough. He kept tryin to talk to her alone. ‘Ma, let’s go look at houses for you.’ Or ‘Ma, put some money away. Hide it.’ But the other relatives who happened to hear him thought he had some hidden motive and kept comin between them. Then her other children began to lie on him and his ‘secret plans.’ Wynona was speechless. And gettin broke. Fifty thousand dollars is NOT that much money when you have twenty-five thousand relatives askin for some.

“Wynona came to my house wakin me up several mornins. I was always dead tired of always workin and still bein always broke. But she is my friend and needed to talk. She was a nervous wreck from her relatives and Betha screamin across the street. She couldn’t half sleep because someone was always tappin her shoulder while she was tryin to sleep so they could whisper to her, alone, together.

“I was still half asleep, but I told her, ‘Don’t forget what you have been through. Seem to me you the only one who can really love you and see to your future. So you got to have sense enough to watch your money. So do it. Don’t ask me, don’t ask nobody. Don’t you know what you need? What you want? You have been tellin me for twenty years! Now, do it. Think. That sure is what I been doin lately. I been lookin at your life and my own life. And my children. Think.’ ”

That is what Vinnie was doing: thinking. Just things running across her mind. Money. Finally Fred . . . and love. “Ain’t no money in my life and there ain’t no love in it either. I’m all the time worryin about money and bills and children. Grown children. My house is goin down. I’m goin down. I’m gettin old and there ain’t no romance in my life. But I ain’t old! I’m tired of supportin kids that don’t never ask me how I’m doin. Don’t ask me do I need anything. They never say, ‘Mama, let one of them jobs go and just rest a little more. Do somethin for yourself.’ ”

Still, Vinnie went out and bought the money orders for some new cymbals for Richard’s drums; “I believe I can get this great job, Ma. I just need these new cymbals to make sure of it! I’ve got to be able to live, Ma.”

She sent money for Delores to get a new cashmere sweater set. “I just have to have them, Ma, because I belong to this sorority and all the girls have one or even three sets. So there. See, I am not asking for two or three sets, just one set. I am the last girl to ever get anything, blah, blah, blah. I need a new coat, too. Coats are beige this year, Ma. I’ll be the last one for that too, I guess. I will just have to go round in last year’s black coat. I don’t know how I can live on what you send me. It’s very hard, Ma.”

Vinnie sent the hard-earned money orders to Richard and Delores, but this time she wrote a little extra on her letter to each of them. Said, “You need to think about getting a job of your own for all these little extras you can’t live without, because it’s me that can hardly live.” She was thinking hard now, about her own life.

In the meantime, one day when it was raining Betha sat her mother out on that screen porch on that rickety, one-board-back chair, just cursing her all the while. She gave the old mother a blackened banana and a dirty rinsed-out glass of water, just cussin all the while.

Wynona can sure tell you this.

“Now Betha was a big ole, strong woman. Husky like a man. And though everybody wanted to tell her off about the way she treated her mother, everybody was scared of her. But on this morning, letters to her children in her hand, Vinnie hesitated by her little car, then took a deep breath and walked across the street to Betha’s house. Well, it was Ms. Foster’s house because it was her check that paid the rent, but wasn’t nobody gonna argue with Betha bout that.

“Vinnie stood outside speaking to Ms. Foster through the screen when Betha came out, smiling at Vinnie. Vinnie took another deep breath and asked her, said, ‘Betha? How come you talk to your mother like you do?’ Betha tilted her head as the smile became dimmer. Vinnie kept talkin to her, ‘This is your mother. No matter what she might have done, she don’t deserve to be all them names you call her. And she don’t deserve to hear all those terrible, dirty words you say.’

“Betha stepped up to the screen door and opened it. Smile all gone now. Said, ‘Ain’t no G.D. nobody gonna tell me how to talk to my own mama! Not you, not nobody!’

“Every neighbor who was awake, their shades flew up with them lookin out, cause, you see, Betha’s voice really carried.

“Vinnie didn’t step back, just kept talkin, gently. ‘Betha, your mother gave birth to you or you wouldn’t be here. She loved you enough to raise you. Feed you. She bought and changed your diapers and clothes. Musta kept you from harm’s way because here you are just as strong as you can be.’

“Betha raised her arm and opened the mouth that was in the middle of her terrible, angry-mad face.

“Vinnie raised her little hand up to stop her. Betha stopped! And Vinnie kept talkin, ‘It hurts me, it hurts everybody, to hear you talk to her like you do, so I know it hurts your mother. And she is a old lady . . . so there is nothing she can do to you about it. That’s why I thought I might mention it to you, what you are doin to your own mother.’

“Lord! As Betha stepped down the short steps toward Vinnie, she shouted, ‘Ain’t nothin you can do bout it either, woman! So you best get on out my yard and MY bizness! This is MY mother! This is MY bizness!’

“Vinnie stood still a moment, then nodded as she turned to leave, saying, ‘You’re right. I just thought I had to say somethin and remind you she is your mother and we don’t get but one. And yours ain’t got long to be here on this earth. She is already sick and you are hurryin her on away from here. And when she is gone, God bless her, you are goin to miss her and wish for a chance to say somethin nice to her. And show her your love. Cause you do love her, you know. You have just done forgot.’

“Betha opened her mouth again, but nothin came out.

“Vinnie started walkin back across the street. I know she wanted to run, but she didn’t speed up either. I would have flown, me. But Vinnie just went to her car, got in and drove on off to her daily slavery for her kids.”

But, Vinnie was thinking. “I am a mother. Suppose, one day, I have to depend on my own children? I don’t have no reason or proof to think I wouldn’t be treated the same way Mrs. Foster is because I might be a burden and a bother to them. My life would be in their hands because I might be helpless to help my own self!”

She thought about Fred . . . because she didn’t have any real life, even now, when her life was supposed to be in her own hands. She jumped in her little car, tossing the two envelopes containing the money orders onto the empty seat next to her, and passed on by the mailbox without looking at it. “I want to think about this some more.” And she thought some more about Fred, too.

As it happened Fred showed a house or two that day to a newlywed couple and he was thinking about Vinnie also. About her gentleness and those round muscles in the calves of her legs. Her smile, her low laughter. Her lovin ways. He had heard about Vinnie and Betha and was frightened for, but proud of, Vinnie. That was the day he called the telephone company to arrange for a telephone for Vinnie in his name. “I will pay for the phone and pay her to make a few follow-up real estate calls for me from her house. That way I can keep up with her at the same time I’ll pay her so she can quit one of those part-time jobs . . . and rest some.” That is what he did.

Josephine, looking through her window at Fred coming and going a bit from Vinnie’s house, said, “What is he doing always over there at her house? He is up to no good. But he won’t get nothing because she don’t have nothing.”

Wynona was glad to see Fred around Vinnie a bit. “He a nice man and she needs one.”

In the other meantime, Wynona was going around in circles. Distraught and confused. Her good son had had to leave to get back to his job so she had no true support she was kin to and could count on any longer. All the others still in her house just wanted her money.

“What am I gonna do?” she asked Vinnie.

“Tell em you’re broke!” answered Vinnie.

“They won’t blive me!”

Vinnie looked at Wynona like she was crazy and asked, “Who cares what they believe? It’s your bizness.”

Wynona’s sisters each left with a couple of thousand dollars. “For Mama’s sake,” they said through their smiles. Her two other children left with five thousand dollars each. “For our future.” But they complained she could have done more; “I need . . . I need . . . I need.”