Third Girl from the Left (28 page)

“A camera,” I said. “I like to make videos.” Not
I'm a filmmaker
, what we all said in school, what I used to always say.

“Well, why don't you take a little video of me and your mama. This is a historic occasion.” She reached out and took my mother's arm, pulling her in, and we all walked into the living room, where every piece of furniture had plastic covers. My mother and her sister sat down next to each other. “This girl ain't set foot back here in close to thirty years. We don't even know what all you all do out there in LA.”

I looked down into the monitor. My mother and aunt shrunk to the size of the small screen. “I live in New York now”—I paused—“Aunt Jolene.” The words felt fractured in my mouth. I'd never called anyone “aunt” before. Sheila was always just Sheila. “I am not nobody's auntie,” she would say. “Least of all yours. Me and your mama look like sisters?”

“Do you? All the way up there? Now ain't that something? What you do up there?” Aunt Jolene's voice sung in my ears. The camera made its small metallic breathings. No point getting all into
that
now. I said what was easiest. “I work on a TV show.”

“You do? Which one?”

“
Law and Order
.”

“Now, Otis likes that one. Me, I like the stories during the day.
All My Childrens
my favorite. You ain't never met Susan Lucci, have you?”

I smiled as I gazed at the monitor. “No. I haven't.” Through this whole chat, I'd been shooting, not trying to compose a shot or anything, just recording our talk. My mother and her sister sat with their arms around each other. My mother looked as though she wanted a cigarette, some air, to be anywhere else. She said nothing, muted by the force of her sister's voice. The camera took them both in, my mother's bright flutter and her sister's rootedness.

“I love her,” said my aunt cheerfully. “She been that Erica Kane for how long now? Long time. Don't never stop schemin' ”

“No, I guess she doesn't.”

“Well, I guess I better let you take your bag up. You'll be wanting to meet your grandmother. It's a blessing on her that you come,” she said suddenly, her face serious. “She didn't never stop missin' Angie.” She looked at my mother. “You know you were always her favorite. When you didn't come home after Daddy died . . . it liked to kill her.”

My mother's expression didn't change. “I couldn't get away,” she said levelly. “I was right in the middle of a lot of things. And Tam was real little still.”

“Still. 'Bout broke Mama's heart. I'm just telling the truth.”

My mother stood up abruptly. I was still filming. They were no longer aware of me. “Can I take Tam up to her room?” my mother said. “She's had a long flight and she wants to get settled.”

Aunt Jolene rose heavily to her feet. “Sure can.” She looked evenly at my mother. “Sometimes it sure is hard to sit and hear the truth, ain't it?”

My mother turned away from her and walked up the stairs. I swung to keep shooting, not really even thinking, the camera giving me space to hide. “Whyn't you turn that thing off, honey. Let me show you where you're gonna stay,” my aunt said from behind me. I lowered the camera wordlessly. I could feel her breathing behind me with all the angels.

I
'D NEVER BEEN IN A CITY LIKE TULSA BEFORE
. There was not much to see or think about; not the way I was used to after five years in New York. Not a lot of people walking around. It was mostly strip mall after strip mall, bright signs offering KFC and Wal-Mart and McDonald's. When you got farther out is when things changed. Then you knew you were really somewhere else. There were big industrial farms and two-lane roads with nothing on them but you for miles. It was hard to imagine that there had once been little farms, like in
The Grapes of Wrath
, because now everything was just flat and big and empty. “It was like this when I was a kid too,” said Mama, easing smoke out the windows of the car. “That's why I couldn't wait to leave.”

I got there late on a Sunday, and Mama said that my grandmother was more lucid and easier to talk to during the afternoon visiting hours. So we spent the morning driving around. I asked her to stop if I saw something interesting. We drove for a long while, neither of us saying much. We were heading back into town and to the hospital when we drove past the black granite memorial I had noticed when I arrived. I said to her, “What's that?”

“What's what?”

“What's that big black thing?

“What thing?”

“Mama, didn't you see it? That big black thing over there. That sculpture, wall, whatever it is.”

“Oh, that. That's a memorial.”

“I figured. To what?”

A drag on the cigarette. “To some old-time stuff that happened here. Lotta people got killed.”

“How?”

“Look, Tam, do you want me to stop so you can see it?” she asked impatiently. “Just ask.”

“Stop, so I can see it, please.”

By this time, we'd wheeled a few blocks past the slab, so my mother made an elaborate show of turning back and pulling into a side street so we could walk up to the sculpture. Engraved on it were the words 1921
BLACK WALL STREET MEMORIAL
, followed by a long description of the “most devastating single incident of racial violence in the 20th century.” I read, my mouth gradually dropping open. “Mama, did you
know
about this?”

“'Course I did. When I was a kid, we had this old guy at the ice cream store, was all he'd talk about.”

“Mama, this is incredible. I can't believe you never told me about this.”

“I don't see why. Ain't exactly news that white folks hate black folks.”

“Mama, this goes a little beyond the standard.”

“Not really. It all happened a hundred years ago anyway. Not much to say about it now.”

“Mama, did your parents grow up around here?”

“Mama did. Daddy didn't come until after that mess. He knew about it, though. Made him plenty nervous. Everybody knew about it around here. Just didn't talk about it too much.”

I thought for a minute. “How old is your mother?”

“Ninety-one. That's why this surgery was a big deal. Jolene said she was doin' all right 'til this happened.”

“You wouldn't know, though, of course. Not having been to see her in twenty years or so. “

“Listen, girlfriend,” she said, suddenly furious. “It ain't like you been burnin' up the phone wires calling me. Sometimes it just ain't right between a mama and her girl. We didn't have too much to say to each other once I got out to LA and then had you and everything with Sheila and all.”

“You mean like being a lesbian and all.”

“I'm not a goddamn lesbian.”

“Right.” I wasn't even going to get into that one. I busied myself getting out my camera. “You know, of course, that your own mother must have lived through this if she's ninety-one and has lived here all her life.”

Time for another cig. “I know that.”

“She never said anything to you about it?”

“No . . . no, not really.” Her voice sounded funny. She took a long drag. I grunted, having lost interest in the conversation. I was shooting the words on the memorial now. I don't like to talk when I'm shooting. My mother stood beside me, silent.

 

After lunch, we went to see my grandmother. My grandmother. It felt so odd even to think those words. After we didn't come to my grandfather's funeral, my mother still got a Christmas card every year with this kind of cheesy-looking photograph of an overweight black woman, her overweight husband, and three chubby-cheeked kids. It was just part of the holidays at our house. Until one year I turned it over and read, “Hope you're still doing A-OK in the big city. We're doing fine, Love, Louann.” “Who's Louann, Mama?” I asked.

“Oh, somebody from back when I was little. You don't know her.”

“Where's she live?”

“Back in Tulsa, where I'm from.”

I could tell by the look on her face not to ask any more questions. After another year or so, the cards stopped coming.

I felt a little ill as we rode up in the elevator to my grandmother's room. I'd even tried to fix up a little; I was wearing a skirt and shoes borrowed from Mama. I felt as if I were wearing a costume. “You look real nice, Tam” was my mother's pleased response to my outfit.

We found the correct room and went in. Aunt Jolene was there already. And there, tucked into her hospital bed, was my grandmother. She was medium-sized and medium-colored; the same tawny brown as my mother, but heavily wrinkled and with wild, curly gray hair. She had beautiful eyes and a mouth just like Mama's. Despite her age, it was lush and inviting. Her head was small against the mass of pillows behind her. I entered the room first, Mama following. When we came in, her eyes widened, and she made a sound half between a gasp and a moan. “Angie? Angie?”

“Yeah, Mama, it's me” came my mama's voice from behind me.

“Angie, you really came back?”

“Yeah, Mama, it's me.” My mother's voice was very small. Without really thinking about it, I took her hand and pulled her around in front of me, as I might have with a shy child. “Yeah, Mama, it's me.” She stepped forward tentatively. Then my grandmother extended her arms and my mother tiptoed forward to receive her benediction. They embraced for a long time, making little cluckings and murmurings, both crying. Jolene and I looked away. My chest hurt, and I scuffed my sandaled feet against the floor.

After a long time, they let go of each other, and my mother perched on the side of my grandmother's bed. Jolene's face twisted briefly with sorrow, and in that moment I felt a kinship with her: to be the one who is always a little out of focus, off center. I know what that's like. I took a step toward the bed. “Mama, this is my daughter, Tamara.” My mother introduced me, wiping tears off her face. I looked straight at my grandmother.

“Well. If it ain't Angie's baby.” Her voice was high and quavery but sure. “Come here, you. Let me see you.”

I stepped over to the bed. She took hold of my upper arm with strong fingers. “Yeah. Look at you. Ain't you something? Last time I seen you, child, you wasn't even born. To think I've lived to see Angie's baby. What a beautiful young woman you are. You something else.”

Beautiful. Colin was the only other person who'd ever said that about me. I didn't move, just looked at the woman in the bed. “Nice to meet you . . . , Grandma,” I said hesitantly.

She smiled radiantly. “Nice to meet you too . . . Tamara, right?”

“Right.” No one moved. I wished I had my camera.

 

My grandmother came home late in the afternoon three days later. I shot her homecoming. For the first time in a long time, holding the camera felt right again. So I kept doing it. She seemed smaller in the wheelchair and in the house than she had in the hospital. She looked around uneasily as Jolene wheeled her into the living room. My mother walked behind them, carefully carrying my grandmother's small overnight bag. “Wish I could go on home, Jo,” my grandmother said. “I don't want to put you out. And I miss having my own things. I want to be around my own things,” she said like a child. Then she looked straight at me, at the camera. “What you doing, child?”

“Filming your homecoming,” I said.

“Hmm. Don't know what you think you getting filming an old lady like me. Nothing special about me.”

“Oh, Grandma, I bet there is.” I'd called her Grandma again. The word felt strange in my mouth.

“Hmf,” she said.

My mother put the bag down. I turned the camera to her. “Tam, when you gonna make a real movie? Starring me!” She laughed and struck a pose from her glory days, her hands on her hips, a sweet come-hither smile. A sudden bitter vision of my thesis film passed before me. But I pushed it aside.

Aunt Jolene stood behind Grandma's chair, matronly and quiet. “Girl, you still always got to be cuttin' up, don't you,” she said.

My mother dropped her hands from her hips and said, “Well, at least I ain't dried up and half-dead and more interested in other people's business than my own, like some folks I could name.”

Aunt Jolene started to say something else, but Grandma said quietly, “Don't y'all start now. I'd like to go to my room.” Aunt Jolene gave my mother an evil look and wheeled Grandma to the back bedroom that had been made ready for her.

I turned to my mother, still shooting. The funny thing about these little digital video cameras is how quickly people relax around them. “You and Jolene don't get along too well, do you?”

“Never did. Blood she may be, but she's just the kind of person I left this town to get away from. Have you seen my cigarettes, Tam?”

“They're over there.”

“Thanks.” She lit up and sat down on the plastic-covered sofa, making a crinkling noise. “I can't believe I'm back here.” She looked out at the quiet street. “I can't believe it.” A shaft of sunlight made a glowing corona of smoke around her head. It was a great shot.

“When was the last time you were here, Mama?”

She continued to look out the window. “Mmmm. Must be . . . like Jo says, little less than thirty years. You twenty-nine now, right?”

“Right.”

“Damn. I can't believe I got a nearly thirty-year-old child.” She took another drag. “Yeah, it's toward thirty years. I wanted you to have something different. And once you were born, every spare nickel went toward keepin' your little butt in diapers. I know Mama would have liked to see you, but back then . . .” She shifted uncomfortably. “Back then we had a hard time getting along anyway. I couldn't see no way to bring you back here. Didn't have no money. Didn't feel like fighting with my mama and daddy. What was the point?”