Something Street

I.

What is greatness? Funny dad sweaters, a sentimental nose, adorable crunkles in the corners of one’s eyes. Hilarious tales of the old country, Somethingville, North Carolina, when men were men, women women, etc.—long-shouldered negresses being a special commodity, like lucky dice or a prize-winning calf. Fifty-four years ago, directly after our nuptials, Craw Daddy looked me dead in the eye and said, It’s all mapped out, Parthenia, one foot after the other. Are you in or you out? Cause there ain’t doing both.

We were honeymooning in a stately brick in the Irish part of Yonkers, and I was feeling too beautiful for my own good. Uppity, my mam would’ve said. Course I let him have his feet, one after the other. Up one street and down another. Upon one threshold and across another. Turn the other cheek, Mam advised me in a daydream. The women in those doors are not queens. They have nothing on you. They ain’t even yellow.

II.

Our marriage in 1956—with the understanding that some things get better and some worse but bottom line you ultimately float somewhere near the surface. Yes to the women fans, yes to the terribly late forays, yes to the pee smell of breath. Yes as long as he comes home by dawn and doesn’t wake the children, yes yes. You float and float with affirmatives; you may not be kicking but you will be gulping.

III.

Greatness is a cherished chestnut, humbly weaving its way out the comedian’s mouth: Did I ever tell you about the time Mama Love whupped my PARDON MY FRENCH? We’re in the auditorium of Ogden Hall, filled to capacity with hundreds here to see his Farewell Tour. The last time he will take us down Something Street.

And the comedian my husband glistens in the spotlight. Moments before he took the stage, a lackluster girl student applied a hint of Ambi lightening cream under his eyes and over his cheeks, to promote his already fulsome visage—Eboni, her name tag reads. The boy student next to her has a tag that merely says, HELLO MY NAME IS; both are otherwise nondescript save for the matching varsity scarves (neatly knotted) and Greek badges pinned on their breasts (gold, pearls and black enamel for Alpha Delta Pi). There is no hint of lotion on their volcanic-ash arms, and both heads are bone-withered with neglect. The eyes belonging to this girl and boy seem overcast. One would think they had somewhere else to be.

But I know this type well. In all probability Eboni and HELLO MY NAME IS are kissing the ground Craw Daddy walks upon, grateful to have been granted the chance to tend to the comedian my husband during his annual visit to Hampton University (nee Institute, why in heavens did they change that glorious old name?). Before the performance HELLO MY NAME IS hauled a folding table center stage while Eboni poured a glass of water or gin into a tumbler. When Craw Daddy walked on and greeted the crowd, they stood back and looked up into the rafters, as if checking for dust mites in the beams of light. Likely their minds were like: His air, Lord, how blessed we are to breathe in his air!

It’s a natural cycle; I know my head once worked that way.

The comedian my husband begins his set; the students are standing near me in the curtains, grimacing and scratching their coffee-colored necks with their hands. They notice the pram I’m rocking, perhaps they up here wondering whether the baby will be a potential disturbance? The girl and boy edge closer to me, sharpening their eyes in that sickening way the Sable-Tea Club ladies used to do (how I loved and dreaded their homilies on The Progressive Colored Doyenne!) and I can almost hear the prayer bursting forth from their reverent mouths: Let the Good Lord do His work to preserve the peace so that The Almighty Comedian may once again entertain us and lift us and teach us, etc. etc.

I’ve heard that prayer before.

Eboni hisses at the boy, Where her chair at, Paul? You expecting her to stand the whole damn night? Paul scuttles away quietly, further back stage. Eboni’s grimace does not leave her face. Your husband didn’t mention his lady was gonna be here tonight, she said. Ain’t that the shit?

IV.

The floors of the ancient stage rattle as the comedian my husband wanders up and down in the ancient spotlight, beginning his stories. The audience hovers—I can tell there is nary a whiff of the Complaints anywhere at all. In this moment, nothing is lost. He is bright, he is shining. His teeth bare white into every soul in the house. Mama Love, she made me who I am today. Y’all tell me if you heard this one before.

V.

In all other moments, we’ve lost damn near everything.

VI.

Back in the day, the Sable-Tea Club ladies loved showing their Mahogany Maidens (yes, that was the word they used for us) the right way to act: how to set a table, to use silverware, to answer a telephone; they were against elbows, against overly-wide mouths and hands that did not obey; they absolutely loathed wagging tongues. We sat at on a slipcovered couch in the home of a full-bodied New Rochelle matron, sipping sorrel tea, dreaming of biscuits and Shirley Temples, reciting the first few syllables of Lysistrata, stretching our pinkies in the air just like white girls, nodding tastefully to Perry Como and Nat King Cole—maybe someone would mention Dr. King, and like magic, the reverent swaying of heads and chests would commence. Our voices were orderly. Did you know that at those marches, the wind can go and make one’s hair most unflattering? Did you know you could wear out a good pair of nylons just by standing and holding a sign? We were all for racial progress and whatnot, but honestly: none of us Mahogany Maidens actually wanted to use a public water fountain, colored or white.

VII.

Who didn’t think that being a part of the Sable-Tea Club Ladies wasn’t greatness itself? After a customary lecture (perhaps on the place of classical Latin in the contemporary domicile), we made our way to the luncheon spread on a huge oak table covered in lemon wax and doilies. Meats, gelatin molds, cold European soups that tasted like resurrected earth. Watercress sandwiches, a charger of raspberry thumbprints. The Sable-Tea Club ladies thanked that very special matron for her hospitality, then made us hold hands for the Lord’s Prayer. She whispered that if we messed up any of the words, we’d get our black behinds beat big time.

VIII.

Your husband is a hell of a man, Eboni says to me. Paul brings the folding chair toward us and gently opens it. Your husband is a great man, Eboni repeats. All side-eye. Her voice is a stone of worship, and I shiver. What did you say your name was, I ask stupidly. A momentary blip. Everything is over her face.

IX.

Greatness is the complete absorption of all surrounding good.

X.

Tell me if I’m repeating myself. The comedian my husband actually stole this line from another funnyman, Canny Blackbottom at the Richmond Hippodrome 1963. Craw Daddy heard it, clapped his hands and announced: That gold’s mine. He was fifth on the lineup after Canny, his belly hollowed out by the Hippodrome’s hot-sauce chicken wings and rigorous barbecue pork. When it was his turn, Craw Daddy was hissed to shame. He looked back and saw Canny watermelon-grinning in the wings. My husband the comedian straightened his tie, tightened his belt. You chitlin-circuit nigger, what the hell you got that I ain’t? My husband the comedian whispered the line a thousand times in case he might mispronounce it. Tell me if I’m repeating myself. Canny rose a fuss, but Craw Daddy ignored him. He made that line his own. He considered it merely borrowing.

XI.

His career took off—money blew up like the Fourth of July. The 60s, 70s, 80s were a filament of cars, boats, houses, massive vacations. One time we took a riverboat down the Egyptian Nile, another we saw wild elephants tango-dance outside our hotel window in Nairobi. Occasionally there were diamonds and Russell Stover chocolate hearts and American Beauties in a Waterford vase —I didn’t mind them at all. I remembered his words. At the start of the Complaints, people predicted his career would take a beating. Luckily the only aftershock I can recall was the loss of hearth home dignity courage and imagination. And it is scientifically proven you can rise back to the surface without any of those trappings.

XII.

Paul grumbles something into Eboni’s ear then takes off again, slue-footed as a Norfolk penguin. She is left to rummage through a patent leather purse draped across her chest, its strap hooking itself onto the varsity badge. I had not seen the purse earlier, and, for reasons I cannot ascertain in the moment, I smile. Sunday school, Easter parade, cotillion drag. Warmth fills my body. I want to share that warmth. I myself was Delta Sigma Theta through and through: don’t ask me bout my hair and I won’t tell (inside joke); I want to inquire about her days here at Hampton, to say something innocuous about how sororities must have changed since my time—but just as quick she snaps shut the purse and stares straight ahead. There is a key in her hands. It is pulled through her index and middle fingers, and it is something like a gun. That baby your grandkid, she asks. When I nod, she hoists the gun up to her lips.

XIII.

Why you crying? What have I done to make you sad? Parthenia. Baby Girl. We’ve lived all over this great green country!

This is what he told me after the Beverly Hills house was auctioned.

No sense in crying, Parthenia. What matters most is the home in our heart.

This was said as a comfort. After the fourth Complaint, we had to give up Boca Raton and Savannah too, plus my Van Cleef and all the damn Christofle.

XIV.

Historically he has always been a taker and a giver. Craw Daddy gave my parents just enough to ease their arms from around my shoulders. He took me when I wasn’t looking. He gave a nearly sober speech at our wedding banquet, the one where some of the Sable-Tea Club ladies came to pay respects, handing over lavender sachets with ten-dollar bills sewn inside. He gave them his hand. Yes I do swear to honor and obey this high society gal (the Sable-Tea ladies may have detected a bit of sass in that vow), Yes I am forever grateful she deigned look upon my face. Craw Daddy rose from the ashes of poverty to claim me: I, who under normal circumstances would not have set foot on Something Street to save my life. What is greatness if not that?

XV.

Outside, our driver waits for us in the parking lot off Shore Drive. His name is Clarence, a name the comedian my husband finds perfect in its oldfashioned darkyness (Craw Daddy’s actual words were, At least he ain’t got one of these fake African bullshit monikers though I’ve always dreamt of asking him what sort of name he considers Marquita—an appellation his mother—on her deathbed—forced upon our firstborn). Clarence the driver is likely on his cell phone, calling home, finding out supper; he couldn’t be bothered with the Farewell Tour. He couldn’t be bothered with the famed Ogden Hall of Hampton University (nee Institute) although he might pause and gaze balefully in our direction and think of millions of dollars lining his imaginary mattress, dollars he might could’ve had if he’d played his cards right (wasn’t his cousin doing standup at the Newport News Laugheteria? Next month Las Vegas?)—Clarence might see in his mind’s eye the way Craw Daddy strides up to the edge of the stage and begins his stories; he might see me propping myself in the curtains (the folding chair was too hard), the pram rocking under my hand, the grandson left to us by my third-born daughter as a wanton gift; he might not give a good goddamn. He might feel sorry for not acting the man earlier, when I was in his car.

Clarence will whip out a cigarette or joint, open his phone, scour personal ads, think up lottery numbers.

What’s the baby’s name, the girl Eboni asks me. Somehow I have learned that that she is a grown woman, all of thirty years old, and that the boy is her husband. Her exact words were: I should thank you for thinking me younger, but I’ll just chalk it up to you being blind as a bat, Mrs. Craw Daddy. Why do you got your grandbaby here?

XVI.

The boy comes up from behind suddenly with a large swivel desk chair which Eboni guides me into. My body is nearly too large for this seat but I do not say anything; I have grown old as gracefully as necessary. I hold out my hand to the boy but he does not take it—manners clearly elude this specimen. Never mind him, Eboni says. Why don’t you sit, Mrs. Craw Daddy? Sitting will make it easier.

She undoes the scarf around her neck. The area there is black as a banana peel: a hickey, a testament to youthful love. I have no idea where that key has got to.

XVII.

Moses, I wanted to call him, the day I opened the front door of our present rental apartment in Aberdeen Gardens and found a baby swaddled in a basket—though the name our third-born daughter had given him in the attached note was different. Something in between Africa and Europe, a name meant to sound unique but that actually had the ring of homemade commons to it. [..] will save you, the note read, Treat him better than you did your own girls.

XVIII.

Times past, Ogden Hall has been host to some of the finest black entertainers of the country; it is a killer diamond that’s lived through the weight of history, out in 1955 but didn’t actually finish my degree until I returned in 1974. Bit of a wait in the middle there, what with kids, house, houses, Craw Daddy’s fame. The Complaints. Each time I was a student here, I was not a troublemaker. I did not wear an Afro nor did I burn my cotillion gowns. Ogden Hall counts itself lucky to invite the comedian my husband back every few years and have him actually come. They were saddened by the idea of a Farewell Tour but nonetheless welcomed him with outstretched arms. They have no idea we’ve lost everything, that the comedian my husband accepts every invite happily, including the retirement homes and dinner theaters. The Complaints are to blame, but what’s a woman to do?

XIX.

Once upon a time there was dark-as-night wide-hipped sassy-lipped Mama Love and her famous flat iron. She was my mama, and she raised us all on Something Street. Craw Daddy walks the stage as he narrates, gesticulating wildly, waving that flat iron in faces, sticking his hand round the waists of barrel-bodied women, pointing make-believe shotguns at no-count lotharios, rubbing sleep from the eyes of drunks. Something Street is alive. Somehow Mama Love’s flatiron—which had started out that day straightening his sister Flayla’s nappy head—wants, in the end, to smack some sense into Craw (her only boy-child who’d innocently asked the meaning of the word dyke.) Loads of laughter. Before the first blow can be administered, the flatiron mysteriously takes wing and sails into the sky, never to be seen again. All the while Flayla’s eyes screw themselves deeper into her undone head. Whatever could that child be guilty of? Just then Butchy Barbara looms her head over the windowsill and smirks. Wanna kiss, baby? We ain’t got nothing to lose! Where in tarnation did she come from? The crowd just about dies.

XX.

In my second year as a coed at Hampton Institute, the great Mahalia Jackson took this same stage. She sang only one song. But all around her: the hush of greatness, of legacy. Thoughts buzzing in grateful heads: How did we get here? How shall we remain? Are we witnessing the Negro’s progress and legacy? All manner of monumental thoughts. I was already attached to Craw Daddy. I put my hands over my ears.

XXI.

Ya’ll want to hear bout Mama Love and her twelve disobedient children and her ne’er-do-well mate, Drunky Poppy? Or do y’all want to hear about Mama Love and her thieving neighbor, Miss Hattie-No-Goody, who had a habit of tasting Mama’s pies on the sill? Tell me, y’all, if you heard those ones before!

The comedian my husband holds up his hand: OK, OK, let’s be serious for a moment. Without Mama Love and the kind of upbringing she instilled in me, I would not be standing before you today. Can I get an AMEN? I, a Godfearing man with a heart of pure gold and a lovely bride of fifty-four years—Hey Parthenia, whyn’t you come out and meet my new friends? Praise God, but shouldn’t we all have been raised by a woman like Mama Love?

(A side whisper: That is, if we remember to put the cast-iron pan inside our britches for protection seeing how Mama Love could swat you for days, and the lack of that pan meant certain death of the booty so can I get an AMEN?)

The audience falls out their seats, bits and pieces of their limbs shattering on the tile floor. They don’t wait for me to come out; I become an afterthought before I can even be. In 1956, the song Mahalia Jackson performed was “Move On Up a Little Higher.” She walked past me as the applause enveloped her, slow and belligerent like an autumn cocoon. She did not lift her eyes.

XXII.

First intermission: I leave the sleeping baby in the back and wander the aisles. The audience aren’t finished slapping their knees, wiping away mirthful tears, coughing into wadded-up tissues. They slowly re-form themselves as the lights go up, turning toward one another and repeating the best bits. Hey, you seen Craw Daddy’s show in Atlanta? He had us rolling in the aisles with Mama Love and the wheelbarrow. Shit, yeah, Craw Daddy brung down the house there! Mama Love make me want to pee my drawers! Every. Damn. Time.

In the midst of this, someone dares mention the Complaints—a woman, of course. Eyebrows are raised. Faces turned toward her with scorn. Why you have to go and mention that, Gladys? Why even bring that shit up? Let the man have one night free and clear, now is not the time for that shit.

The woman Gladys says something along the lines of Well if it was my man out there doing that, and they shut her down instantly. Close your got-damn trap, Gladys. You bought a ticket same as us. He is our man, he will always be our man.

XXIII.

Back on stage, the comedian my husband is suddenly standing next to me, gulping down the glass of gin or water. Eboni stands in his shadow with his seersucker jacket over her left arm. With her right, she reaches down and scratches the back of her knee. I see that. I see her glance at her shoes, then straighten her jumper, then reach back down to that tender spot. She doesn’t see me seeing her. But I do. The back of the knee can be the most telltale part of the body. There is the banana black of her neck but that means nothing to the soft mattress of her knee. I am frustrated to be completely out of tears.

XXIV.

Girl, go get my wife something cold to drink, you see she about to faint, ain’t you? Go to the fridge in my dressing room, hear? It’s some refreshments there.

To me he winks. Child’s an idjit, Parthenia. He waits a few heartbeats. Let me go find her and make sure she don’t get the order wrong. I’m so sorry about before, Parthenia, you know it’s not in me to hit a woman. Not even you. I have no idea what got into me back there in the car but I swear if I hurt you I got no reason to stand like a man. Forgive me?

I nod. He does not have a dressing room. There is no fridge.

You, you, you, you, you.

XXV.

Ten minutes pass. The pair returns without my drink. Out of ancient habit I kiss Craw’s cheek.

He hangs his big head into the pram. Be careful, little buddy, he says to the baby; then tells me he has to sail off to hair and make-up; he swears he needs more lightening cream. More Old Spice aftershave. Looks to Eboni and nods. I have seen many fans, many autograph-seekers, many groupies, if you will. I know the silence that overtakes them in the presence of greatness. She and him leave once more, and perhaps fifteen new minutes go by; when the comedian my husband returns—alone—his face is pure ravishment. Red pimples under graham cracker skin, the shine of battered delight. I know that look. A bargain is a bargain. But I know that look. Little Buddy, he whispers into the pram, This one day gonna be you. And I’m a lead the way.

XXVI.

All her life, our third-born had been the sweetest of the three, hanging onto her father’s every word, attaching herself to his leg as he walked, baking him cakes even when it wasn’t his birthday. When she became a teenager, however, she took a different route. I would come home from a day of shopping and find Craw and Joanna at each other’s throats; or else, late at night, we would find Joanna and her friends keying the cars in one of the driveways. The patio tables of every house were shattered with bottles of Ole Grandad and Lancers wine. Swear words galore. Drugs, powders, hypothermic needles, spoons. The comedian my husband said the girl was out her damn mind. His exact words. One time in Atlanta Joanna yelled up the stairs, You want to screw Rochelle? Well, get this, old man: you ain’t her type! Her exact words.

Craw Daddy ran down and grabbed Joanna by the scruff. Everything about you abominates me to no end! You faster than a junkyard dog! Out here doing these drugs and out here to ruin my reputation. You and that slut Rochelle! What you thinking, girl?

(Rochelle, Joanna’s best friend in Atlanta. A year younger in high school, pretty as a nectarine. Why in heavens would my daughter say such a thing? When things blew over, I told the girls I would take them shopping at Lenox Square, but Rochelle’s parents would later tell me I was not appropriate.)

She mines and not yours, Joanne answered, to which she saw the back of Craw’s hand. I did not like that one bit. I told my husband the comedian that he needed to stop hitting our third-born, that she was our flesh and bones, and after he landed another swop, he did.

(The Complaints were just a trickle on the horizon, nothing to get worked up about. Nevertheless I was left wondering: How does he know Rochelle is a slut?)

XXVII.

During second intermission, Craw Daddy disappears into the aisles to sign early autographs. The baby wakes, and I bend to lift him into my arms. He is not our first grandparent rodeo, this boy. Marquita, our firstborn, has a brood of boys almost large enough to fill the front row center. Several years ago, her (Howard University—sigh) husband literally whisked her off her Spelman feet and landed her not a mile from our alma mater in bare toes and bulging belly.

Now there are six grands that direction—oh, what the Sable-Tea Club ladies would have said! Back in the day, two was their perfect number. Two became the new one (one being a slavery number, as my mam used to observe); some years later, when my girls were grown, three became the new two. And shortly after that, five became the new three. Five is comfort, ambition, confidence. I believe that even my mam would not have frowned upon five. But six? Six is a descent back toward field days, God help us!

No matter. I loved those babies like I love myself until Marquita one day up and said: He’s not allowed here anymore, Mom. I want different for my boys.

My mam no longer walks the earth. She’s buried in Wartburg Cemetery, Mount Vernon, New York, right next to Daddy, who was lifted into his casket wearing his Pullman’s uniform, God bless him.

Our second-born, Winifred, thought at first that the Complaints were a “racialist” attack of some sort. She wondered whether white comedians suffered the same sorts of condemnation. Winifred held her father’s arm as we walked up and down the courthouse steps. After we lost the Atlanta house to a “fire” in 2000 (the police said they thought it was arson but had nothing real to go on) Winifred took a moment for herself, a timeout, she called it. She has not spoken to her father since.

I want to say Her loss in the way my husband says Her loss when he references Winifred—but the words stick in my throat. She and I began communicating on the q.t. A shopping mall here, a Baskin-Robbins there. Craw knew nothing. Winifred and I met at Buckroe Beach; she brought her three girls, whom I immediately doted upon with ice cream sandwiches and neon fizzle pop. Children can be such gems, I said. They are always the apple of their grandparents’ eyes. Winifred wasn’t having any of it. Mother, she said (in her usual two-pronged manner), It’s only a matter of time. You’re better than this.

The sun was magnificently high and away on that gray sand afternoon. I’m better than what, Winifred? Don’t you know that it was I that got you here? Made you into a lady you are sitting before your little darlings?

Oh, Mother. We love you. But this is not you.

I finished my ice cream sandwich and tried to give my second-born the death stare. I couldn’t, of course. I don’t have some things within me. Besides, a cadre of white people wandered past, all of them licking ice cream cones and admiring the glistening waters; it wouldn’t do to show my colors in front of them. Old habits, I suppose. Winifred, I said, I’ve always tried to do my best. I don’t abandon ship. I stand tall. I stand fast.

Oh Mother. No one is talking about a ship. It’s the women he’s had, some against their will. And you standing behind him.

Naturally I stand behind him. He is our rock.

Oh Mother. When will the world ever see your true face?

Hurtful words. Of course, home training has taught me to shield the world from my raging emotions, the overflowing cup of my indignations. Since that afternoon—two years ago now—I’ve sent Winifred weekly letters, but have yet to find an answer in my box. I sign my letters with, Warmly, or All My love, or Sincerely Yours, Mother Best.

This babe I currently swaddle, I have no idea when or where he was born, who the father. His tiny brown face is shaped like a heart, and his fingers are worse than vise grips. When she was not even out of elementary school, Joanna once told her father, I don’t care what anybody say. You are my daddy and you are not bad.

Time for you to make amends seeing as you didn’t hear me the first time. Such harsh words. They were written in the note pinned to the car seat, the one she parked on our front step in Aberdeen Gardens—complete with baby—five days ago. There was also a small Polaroid of Rochelle, whose face was against the camera. Rochelle has been put away. I don’t know if for good.

Craw, I asked. Whatever does this mean?

XXVIII.

In 1956 my beloved father took us into our parlor and loomed as the comedian my future husband sipped an Italian coffee—Mam had spent time on the Continent and was eager to show it. Now you listen, my father began. Parthenia, she is not like any regular gal off the street. She is a lady. She’s had training. Me, I’m more like you—wrong side of the tracks and whatnot. Don’t know which fork to use and whatnot. That is not Parthenia. Her mater and I done all we could to create her into a picture of feminine charms. And I command you to treat her as such. Am I making myself clear, son?

His broad brown hands, caked in oil; and when he spoke, he stooped. This was the voice he’d used with the young men at Union Station, the ones who needed the most Pullman training, the best guidance, my father misquoting Du Bois with nothing but love: Work is the knob to uplift the people! What I would give to hear that voice again. He would know what to do about the Complaints. He would know what to do with my soul.

XXIX.

Craw’s proposal under the Emancipation Oak was quick, mostly painless. There was hardly any blood. I hitched down my dress, thought about my Aunt Leah who’d married her first cousin despite her people’s objections and then went around quoting Paul Dunbar: “This is the debt I pay, just for one riotous day.” During Literary Hour in the New Rochelle parlor, we Mahogany Maidens found that line hilarious.

XXX.

Craw and I had no major discussions, no mapping out of the future, no tender treading of intimate territories. When we came home from the Justice of the Peace, Mam served dandelion wine in tumblers bearing little umbrellas. Daddy made a show of wanting me to finish up school, but Mam said it was plenty of young colored ladies that started their families and went back later. In fact, she was even thinking of doing the same! (The liar!)

XXXI.

Craw Daddy is back on stage, and next to me, Eboni’s lips shine full blown in the darkness of the curtains, like freshly baked crescents rolls. Those lips have just been loved. Was it in her will or against it? She avoids my eyes and I’m understanding suddenly that I cannot possibly know the meaning of devotion and perhaps never could.

XXXII.

Where were you all this time, I ask her. Have you been following the comedian my husband for an autograph? She looks away. Then says to me, I always pictured you different. Maybe it’s the black eye.

XXXIII.

Did I ever tell you about the time Drunky Poppy nearly mowed our small house into the ground?

Yes. The audience has heard Drunky Poppy many times before, even on televised appearances: Johnny Carson, the Flip Wilson Show. Dinah Shore had so many tears in her eyes from laughing it was rumored she passed gas on the set.

The crowd closes its eyes and envisions a raggedy, brown-skinned hunchback driving his summer tractor down the middle of Something Street. Forget the tobacco field, where his helpmeet and progeny stand under an unforgiving sun, covered in morning sweat. Mama Love and her twelve children will wait on that tractor unto eternity.

Tonight is a variant of the story: it so happens that Drunky Poppy woke up later than usual, and in an effort to avoid being castigated by Mr. Woodwardward (proprietor of the tobacco farm) jumps out the house without his spectacles. Mayhem ensues. He jumpstarts the tractor and makes a series of wrong turns, first passing the moonshine shack out back the farmhouse where he and his lady friend, a.k.a., Roomy Rhonda, secretly rendezvous. Laughter. He passes women hanging laundry, rustling children, and tending garden rows—don’t even get him started on the various names of the garden tools (he will not bring himself to say hoe, that is a part of the contemporary vernacular he despises and claims will drag us colored folk straight to hell). Another moonshine shack nearby, then another. At the beginning of Something Street, Drunky Poppy nearly plows his tractor over some little old ladies. They are on their way to the Church of the Wooden Hand.

(Craw’s actual mother had once tried to join the order of the White Ladies
of Africa before they closed their door on her face.)

Drunky Poppy nearly flattens a group of deserving orphans playing stickball and, after that, practically kills the baker carrying the preacher’s daughter’s wedding cake—imagine the pandemonium!—before he careens into A. A.’s General Supply—the entire storefront has been crashed inward, there is clearly no saving anything, from the soda cracker barrels to the ladies’ hysteria drops. Sorry bout that, Drunky Poppy calls out from the light fixture, which has crowned (but miraculously not hurt) him, but mah oman done axed me to drive her car to church n pick huh up after preacher done got done. By now everyone in the audience can smell the booze on the comedian’s lips, feel it erupt from his pores like so many miniature volcanoes. I, on the other hand, can feel Mama Love’s legs as she kicks away the biting flies in the tobacco field.

Oh yeah? This response comes from African Andy, the “blue-black” shop owner, who, from underneath a broken barrel of self-rising (!) flour, shouts, Man, you gone pay wid yo life!—(the audience goes wild!)—and furthermore, you ain’t driving no car! Your mama so dumb, Drunky Poppy, she done sold her car for gasoline! Drunky Poppy puts the tractor in reverse before the good shopkeeper can collar him, then incredibly makes it to the church (pummeling over prize roses)—now there is the gang of deserving orphans in tow, all of whom vow to avenge themselves on the “absinthetic ass.” They catch up to him, but not before Drunky Poppy runs over a fire hydrant—which spurts upwards like Niagara Falls—and washes just about everyone clear into the doors of the church (this part of the tale does take a while to wade through, no pun intended; it has never been my favorite, it defies every law of physics) and the water carries the man and his tractor right up to the pulpit, where a shocked (and portly) Pastor Breadlove falls into the arms of the choir women, one of whom is Miss Poosy, reformed lady-o-the-night (the audience screams). This literal turn of events horrifies the preacher’s daughter, Velvet—the poor girl falls into the arms of her own betrothed, Stanley Morehousehead (in reality, Craw Daddy has hated every HBCU except Hampton)—and together the lovebirds are caught up in the raging waters; their choir gowns hook in the large left front wheel, forcing the pair to be dragged alongside the tractor as it heads up the aisle. Velvet must hold fast to the scraps that are her only covering; of course, Stanley Morehousehead is too stupid to try and rip his gown from his body and
shield her.

(The audience roll from their seats into the aisles; it is too much, too much indeed!)

Velvet grabs her fiancé and together the (still unwed) couple allow themselves to be pulled along like a dog on a leash, her good cream-clotted skin turning red with humiliation, his dusky hue growing nightier by the minute. They flow out the church all the way to Buck River. There, the bridegroom catches hold of a tree (a weeping willow, of course) and frees himself from the flood, from Velvet. My mother always warned me about girls like you, he cries. Velvet is last seen washing along Buck River’s tides toward the tobacco field, where the workers have long since elected to carry out their day.

(The audience is an utter paroxysm. Heads go rolling off the slippery slopes of shoulders, brassieres snap open, revealing breasts as deflated as summer pies. Pure unadulterated laughter. Madness, even. No one is remotely thinking about The Complaints.)

XXXIV.

You know what he likes to do, don’t you, the girl whispers. He’s been doing it all week. I thoguht right up to now I liked it.

The look on her face. There were the regular places for the eyes, nose and mouth, and yet they been washed away, as in one of those old spiritualist photographs of the nineteenth century. Later in court I would learn that he was only tryna show her a new way to please her husband. Men can be fickle, Craw Daddy had assured her. With me what you see is what you get, baby.

XXXV.

I’d been having thoughts.

XXXVI.

More thoughts, new thoughts. Just this morning over breakfast I looked into the baby’s eyes and then went over to Craw in the living room, fast asleep. We can’t keep him, I say. We have no right. He is not yours. He is not mine.

Craw Daddy laughed in my face. I’ve always wanted a son, he said. What’s wrong with that? Hell with Joanna and that other girl. They both gone crazy, you ask me.

They’re not girls, I say. They haven’t been girls for a long time.

Last I checked that Rochelle was nothing but a slut! Craw is silent after admitting this. I don’t understand.

XXXVII.

We can’t keep this baby, I said again to Craw Daddy on the drive over here. Clarence the driver in the front seat. Craw raised his eyebrows. I put my
hand on his shoulder. We just can’t. We have no right.

My husband the comedian craned his neck toward our driver up front. You hear that, Clarence? You hear this fool woman? Thinking I’m not good enough to raise my own so-called flesh and blood?

Clarence remained driving. It was a light rain in the trees, a balminess settling over the windshield like a bassinet cover.

We have to do the right thing, I said. Remembering the sound of the word so-called.

A deal is a deal, he answered.

What if this baby is no deal, I asked. I was not even sure what I was meaning. Silence. I don’t know if he waited one or two minutes before slapping me. I do know the car swerved, that Clarence opened his door, jumped out, pulled Craw behind him. We just need some fresh air, Clarence said, wiping his forehead with an old-fashioned handkerchief. He looked into my eyes and turned away. I had no idea men still carried those sorts of things.

XXXVIII.

Eboni says, You tell your husband when the show’s done my husband’ll be out back. We want to show him what he means to us.

XXXIX.

The baby shifts in the pram, even tries to claw its way up to the hood. I quickly push it down, ignoring its cries, and head toward the stage door in back. I make noise as I clatter us out onto the neat cobbles of the pedestrian path just steps away from the river. The baby becomes more and more unruly, shirking at my touch. Can infants do such things, I wonder? I push that pram along from the cobbles to the rocky breaker blocking the rushing water; as I do, I long to pick up one of the cigarette butts at my feet. If I were a different kind of grandmother-type, I might stow this baby in a pie safe and run off looking for a tobacco field of my own.

XL.

And here’s Clarence clomping toward me, sans driving cap, his shirt partially undone, faux-tortoiseshell buttons; likely he’ll think I’m mad at him from before—nobody likes a lady with a black eye. My mouth feels dry and my throat aches. You want me to push that for you, Ma’am? He asks, huffing beside me. Clarence had looked much slimmer from the back seat. Now I take in his large stomach, his saggy legs. I shake my head, unable to move my lips. He does not hear me choke for breath.

Don’t do anything rash, Ma’am. You see, I could hear you all the way from the car. Come away from that river. I wouldn’t want you to do anything rash.

XLI.

As early as 1962, Time Magazine described my husband, Crawley Stevenson, as “The Only Wonder of the World That Will Make You Double Over . . . in Fits of Laughter!” In 1963, the Amsterdam News wrote, “The Negro Genius That Will Bring White Folks To Their Knees!” In 1967, the Buffalo Challenger: “Craw Stevenson Is More Than Meets the Eye!” The “reporters” of the September 1968 Hampton Cotillion Broadside called him “Our Favorite Mystery Date” and dared any woman on the planet to go up to my face and ask me what was my secret.

XLII.

Los Angeles 2010. The Complaints did indeed vex me, but I raised my right hand to God and swore that the testimony I was about to give was the whole truth. For the courtroom I chose the Halston halter-neck Craw had bought in Beverly Hills just the month before; he’d told me he liked nothing better than seeing a strong black woman in a great dress turn all evil whites on their heads.

Complaint 1, August 1965: Craw was with me in Las Vegas, the Sands. We slept together in the same room. Craw went out briefly for smokes. How could he have done anything like that woman said he did—and in such a short time? Complaint 2, June 1979: Craw literally had to beat the fans off him—men and women alike—as he mounted that Little Rock stage. They wouldn’t stop. Far as I’m concerned, you reap just what you sow. Complaint 3, April 1980: She stalked me, called the house more than once, even breathed heavy into the phone with her accusations. Craw had to put an end to those shenanigans. End of story. Complaint 4 (date unknown): Politically incorrect, yes, but it’s the truth: she was not his type. Nothing could’ve happened. She was not even remotely yellow. Complaint 5 (date unknown): Can you blame him for placing five thousand dollars in an envelope and slipping it to the Atlanta concierge? How could he have known that cameras had been trained upon him? People will do anything to blackmail a good black man for a little extra cash. Complaint 6 (date unknown): Can he help it if he is so famous, so beloved? Complaint 7, November 1977: Things were rough, plus the girls all grown and hating me for no good reason. I spent time tending to my parents’ home in Mount Vernon, and when I got back to Pensacola, Winifred is up here telling me about the two heifers that had moved in the moment I left, playing house in my kitchen, using my utensils, cooking his food. Marquita claimed she saw them suck his privates! And I slapped her—He is still your father, I said, come hell or high water. Joanna over in the corner: At least if we was in high water we could drown (to which I slapped her as well). Complaint 8, December 1977: This tramp in question was the daughter of someone at Links—do you know Links? They sent me a letter. Please don’t bother to ask, Mrs. Stevenson. We are a family-oriented organization, we only want credits to our race. Complaints 9 and 10, both in December 1991: No comment, on advice of counsel. Complaint 11, somewhere June or July 1999. We all grew back together, branches on the proverbial family tree. Except without the branches. Never again answered the phone at night, never spoke to reporters. Never again raised my hand in protest, never again found anything missing from my kitchen.

XLIII.

Clarence is steering the pram by my side. Smart Van Heusen shirt with hideous Haband trousers. I think he could be in love with men. Why, I want to ask him. Why?

XLIV.

That is not the question, however. I ask Clarence if he could keep the baby overnight at his house, possibly longer, definitely longer, maybe forever? He looks at me crazy. What you mean, Mrs. Craw Daddy, he asks. I repeat myself: take the boy home. Your wife will know what to do. He can’t belong to us anymore. He never has.

Heavens, I ain’t married, Mrs. Craw Daddy! I couldn’t take no child, it’s just
me and my cousin Junius.

I think for a moment. Mr. Clarence, I say. I’m not opposed to two men raising the tyke. I’ve never been opposed. Please excuse my husband the comedian for anything he might’ve said in the past that would indicate we are narrow-minded, Mr. Clarence. All God’s children are free to love—

What you talking about, Mrs. Craw Daddy?

Just know that I want you and your cousin Junius to take this child. His mother has run out of steam. And Craw and I are a jeopardy.

This ain’t right, Mrs. Daddy.

I bow my head: this will take longer than expected. And so—with the memory of those long ago Sable-Tea matrons that tried so very hard to instill in us a greater sense of truth, justice, and liberty for all—I begin.

Explaining to Clarence that the comedian my husband will likely go to prison for some time—we no longer live in an age of plentiful femaletampering—and that that incarceration will happen sooner rather than later. As for moi: I intend to go back to Mount Vernon and beg my dead mam’s forgiveness; Carpe noctum; you are our only hope. I have no friends, no family other than my daughters and their young. But Marquita can barely handle the boys she has bred. And Winifred won’t speak to me in a deeply known way. My youngest is likely gone forever, I say. Addled in some drug rehab or hospital for broken heads, or perhaps huddled under a bridge, exquisitely diaphanous—I have no clue. She is gone. This is my debt, I tell him. One riotous day.

Clarence shakes his head. Ma’am. Please calm yourself. I can call the cops. You must please take the child, Mr. Clarence. Police are not a necessary
ingredient here.

Please, ma’am. You are not yourself!

Around us, the rush of river surf hits the small cliffs of the path. God is somewhere, folded arms across His chest, angry toe tapping the tops of the clouds. I tell Clarence about Eboni. I tell him about the others. When he winces and touches my shoulder, I recoil: I tell him I belong in neither heaven nor hell, just in Mount Vernon, New York, where my elders lie. I am no one’s forgiveness. Perhaps I’ll buy a house in New Rochelle. Perhaps I’ll run into someone I once knew and sit on another slipcovered couch and whisper the Lord’s Prayer. I never did learn those words correctly, just faked my way through everything and did not once get my black butt beat.

Clarence listens. Just let me call home, he eventually says.

XLV.

Do hours go by? I have no phone, no communication other than the moon that has been steadily grazing my shoulders and telling me to jump. I’m resting on a rock, like the girl on the can of White Rock soda. Baby finally asleep. If I don’t learn to miss him I will hate myself forever.

Just then it’s Clarence again, now with a man by his side. A man who, after brief introductions, grips my own elbow, all courtly. The Mahogany Maidens would have been all aswoon! They would have asked him to hold their every part. Are you Clarence’s cousin, I ask. The man laughs. If that’s who you want me to be, he says back.

Minutes later the men lead me to the car, the baby still fresh in their arms. Where is the pram, I wonder but do not ask aloud.

But then we do not go to the car. Instead, the men nod and then guide me fast toward Ogden Hall, eventually lighting at the bottom of a foothill leading up to the stage entrance. There is litter strewn everywhere, Coke bottles and crepe garlands and crumpled looseleaf paper. The stage door cracks open and a seam of light scissors the dark—it is then we see the outlines of two men fighting on the ground. One is pummeling the other, who is screaming, gibberish pleas. I have no desire to listen. The door closes part way and I can make out the further outline of a knife, a key, a finger, a fist. Perhaps I smell blood from where I am standing. You stay here where you safe, Junius says, lowering me by the arms onto a grassy tuffet. I turn my head away, ignore the screeching, the laughter of young people, the old man on the ground, sunken like a Norfolk naval ship, the crush of young leaves all around—You damn repeated yourself one time too many, you black bastard!—and I turn away, casting my eyes over treetops, toward the place I imagine the Emancipation Oak stands. I don’t blame you for wanting to cut all ties, I tell it. But please look out for this baby. He has to matter.

Clarence and Junius scramble up the small hill to the fight but make no move, however, to break things up. They hold the infant between them as if it were a tiny gate to somewhere they’d never before considered.

When, all those years ago, Mahalia Jackson walked up the aisle toward the door, I reached out to touch her sleeve. Of course, I didn’t get it; the wind of her walk sailed through me, like Velvet’s wedding veil before it hit the river. I knew enough not to beg Miss Jackson for another hymn, as the others in the auditorium were doing, stomping their feet under their seats. I knew enough, had understood briefly the importance of listening the first time. How had I lost that gift? We cannot exist by remaining greedy.

Eboni is stamping down the hill, backlit by moonlight. Her fists are tight by her side—she seems all greatness in her youthful march, her hair gone wild and free as it flutters in gangly strips atop her head—I want to find out if that is true. Are you great? Have you always been great? Hoisting myself from the grass, I stand and wave. Her silhouette inches closer to mine. My arms open, I start to cry. This girl is going to meet me for the first time, even if she doesn’t yet know it.

 

This story was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by the editors of Story. Photo courtesy of qasic; view more of his work on Flickr