BUTTERFLY KISSES
PART
1. THE END
CHAPTER
1
“Don't
mess with this jar here, Diane.” Mama said, pointing to an
uncovered Mason jar filled with some kind of mysterious concoction.
“Why
not, Ma? What you got in there?” I asked.
“This
is potash.” she said. I looked at the dull, white solution with
more than a passing curiosity. I had learned, however, not to mess
with things that my mama said were dangerous. She made her own potash
– a mixture of water, Draino, and some other mysterious solutions.
I don't know why she made up such potions, except that maybe it was
her way of feeling protected.
“Potash
is lye, and it will burn the skin right off you. So be careful,
especially when you're over here.” She kept the lye under the sink
in full view, at the ready.
Our
kitchen was huge. It was about the size of two large living rooms.
And the place where everyone hung out. We ate meals there, played
penny poker on holidays with guests and family, solved the worlds
problems, and it was where I did my homework. About this time, we
were still dirt poor. We had an ice box instead of a refrigerator
which we didn't get until sometime in the early sixties. Strangely
enough, even though I knew it wasn't normal not to have some very
basic necessities, especially when living in New York City, I wasn't
bothered by it most of the time.
For
heat we had two potbelly stoves, one in the kitchen and the other in
the front room. In the winter we heated up hot water bottles to put
in bed and keep warm. When money was tight, instead of burning coal,
we foraged for pieces of wood over by the East River. Times were
hard, and I knew that most people didn't live as we did. However, we
were poor and it was what we could afford. The only thing that really
bothered me was having to put your coat on to go to the bathroom in
winter. You could feel the wind blowing in through cracks in the
wall. We bathed in a huge galvanized tin tub then since it was too
frigid to even think about getting in the bathtub. You could sit down
in it, but you couldn't stretch out your legs. My best friend, Wanda,
was arguing with her mom while getting out of one of those tubs,
parked in front of the stove for added warmth. She burned her behind
and permanently branded herself by backing up into that stove. We
laughed about it for a long time and dubbed her “potbelly butt.”
The only time I ever saw my mother even come close to doing anything
with that caustic solution was one night when Miss Rose busted up in
our house with the police.
We
lived in that sagging tenement on Madison Avenue between one hundred
thirty first and one hundred thirty second streets. This was back in
the mid fifties when you could pay a cop to go to someone's house
with you, and they would come along, adding some semblance of
authority to your presence. There were only two apartments per floor,
and it was a shotgun railroad flat running the length of the
building. My room was off from the front room which meant you had to
go through the kitchen, living room and a smaller bedroom before you
reached my room. Theoretically, you could have come down a long
hallway alcove before entering the apartment and then come through
the front room. We had two entrances, but the front room was my
mother's bedroom. So guests didn't use that door, even though Miss
Rose wasn't a guest. She was my daddy's wife.
I
was asleep at the time, and she woke me up. The first thing I noticed
about her was her strong, overpowering perfume. To this day I still
can't stand Channel. Then it was her huge breasts that looked like
bullet cones in her silk blouse. The policeman stood to the right,
behind her, not saying anything.
“Where's
your daddy?” she demanded. I was still half asleep, and sat up,
confused by her being there in my bedroom. I just hunched my
shoulders indicating that I had no idea. I knew who she was from
being in court with her. She had sued my mother claiming I was not
her husband's child. She said my father couldn't have children since
she'd never been pregnant, and they'd been married for over ten
years. She wanted all the child support money returned.
We
all had to take blood tests and physicals only to prove that Ms. Rose
was barren, and it was she who couldn't have any kids. And yes, I was
my daddy's child. I never thought I'd have to see her again, but here
she was in my bedroom.
“When's
the last time you saw him?” she inquired. Now I was becoming
frightened. I didn't understand why she was in my bedroom and why she
was quizzing me about my daddy. After all, I hadn't seen him since
Christmas which was about the only time I ever saw him unless I ran
into him while he was visiting Mother Dear, his mother, who lived
upstairs in the apartment above us.
Then
I saw my mother, and in her hand was that glass jar of potash. I
couldn't take my eyes off it.
“Get
in the closet, Diane.” my mother said with so much calm about her
that it frightened me more. I could see the anger in her eyes, but
she didn't want me to be scared. I scrambled up from my bed and ran
to the double doors of the built-in wooden closet and climbed up
inside. The bottom of the closet contained two pull-out drawers for
keeping your shoes hidden away. I heard the metal latch click. Mama
had locked me inside. It was dark and scary in there. Cocooned, I sat
motionless with my knees drawn up and listened.
I
could hear them arguing. Mama was telling her to get out. Then she
told the policeman that she had an order of protection against Miss
Rose coming to her house. She told him she should take down his badge
number so she could report him to the court. I imagined her just
waving that court paper at him and couldn't help but smile.
“Oh
no, Ma'am! That's not necessary. We're leaving right now.” he
responded with more deference than any white man in authority usually
offered. I heard him whispering to Miss Rose that they needed to get
out of here.
“But
I'm not finished!” Rose shouted with more than a hint of
exasperation in her tone.
“Well,
we are now! Let's go!” Then I heard their steps fade as they moved
from room to room toward the kitchen door. Not long after, mama came
and opened the closet door releasing me. I hugged her tightly, and
she carried me back to bed. She covered me up to my chin with the
blanket and sat down heavily as if the weight of the world had just
been lifted off her shoulders. She brushed my forehead with the palm
of her hand and started humming a spiritual.
“Mama,
would you have really thrown that lye on Miss Rose?”
“If
I had to, I would have.” she said calmly. I looked up at the
cracked ceiling, followed the zigzag lines going nowhere in
particular, lost veins without a heart to regulate their concrete
flow.
“Even
if it meant that you could go to jail?”
“Yes,
Diane, even if it meant going to jail. I would do anything to protect
you.” That's just what I needed to hear. I kissed her and turned
over and shut out the world. She would always protect me.
Now
I don't want you thinking my mama was a loose woman who made a habit
of sleeping with married men. Oh no! You see, I was a revenge baby. I
know things weren't supposed to work out the way they did, but fate
plays cruel tricks on players in the wicked game of life. Up until
just before I was born Ms. Rose and my mama were the best of friends.
You
see, mama had a man friend by the name of Green. He made his living
hustling numbers and taking book. So people could bet the numbers or
the horses with him. He did quite well actually. He was also a lady's
man. Ms. Rose had met my mama playing cards. That's how mama made her
living. She was a card shark. She went to all-night and weekend card
games and played poker, pitapat, and tonk. Now my mama didn't believe
in the long arm of chance. So a little slight of hand every now and
then worked out just fine for her. Even though Ms. Rose was her
friend, mama didn't see any wrong in taking all her money whenever
she had to.
But
it just so happened that one day near the end of winter, in the early
part of 1950, mama was walking down Seventh Avenue near 125th
Street. Well, who do you think she saw coming out of the Theresa
Hotel arm-in-arm? Green and Ms. Rose. Now Green had his own
motivation for doing what he did. He was mad at mama. You see mama
had previously been pregnant with his child. During the delivery,
everything that could go wrong did. When the doctors asked Green who
should they save, mama or the baby, his reply was, “Save the baby!
I can get another woman.” Unfortunately for him, mama heard it. The
baby died during the delivery, and mama told the doctors to tie her
tubes. She said she didn't want another baby. The doctor thought she
was too young to make such a drastic decision, so they twisted her
tubes instead. She said if Green ever had a baby, it wouldn't be by
her. So he was a man desperately in search of a woman to bare him a
child. On the other hand, Ms. Rose thought if she had a baby, she
could keep my daddy on lock-down. Neither of them expected to get
busted by my mama. She told Ms. Rose that since she had sex with her
man, she was going to have sex with hers. Ms. Rose said it wasn't
right because she and daddy were married. But mama didn't care. She
went home, threw Green's clothes out the door and began to plan her
revenge. Of course, she never planned on getting pregnant.
CHAPTER
2
My
mama was different. She wasn't your
typical June Cleaver, Betty Crocker, apple pie and all smiles kind of
mother. Not at all. She was more of an all night, card shark, number
running, knife carrying, in your face, butt stomping, round-the-way
mamma to me. As I got a little older, some of her ways began to
bother me. And I was appalled. My first cognitive memory was one of
wondering how in the world did I end up with these people. They were
my parents, but I felt that someone, somewhere, had made a terrible
mistake.
Don't
get me wrong. They weren't wild and crazy or anything. They just
didn't fit into the All-American picket fence scenario that I had
invented for myself. At the age of three, I had learned to read. At
the time we lived in the basement back room of a brownstone on one
hundred twenty second street between Seventh and Lenox Avenues. Mama
used to go play cards on the weekends, which was how she had met
Daddy and Miss Rose. In fact, she and Miss Rose had been the best of
friends, that is until she caught Miss Rose coming out of the Theresa
Hotel with Green, who was Mama's boyfriend at the time. Mama told Miss Rose she was going to get even,
but ended up leaving evidence of the rift in their friendship that
would live on after they both were long gone. That evidence was me.
I
was a teenager before I really accepted that there had not been a mix
up at the hospital, and I was her child. I was with my neighborhood
friends. We were on our way down to the Ruppert Brewery down on Third
Avenue in the nineties. When the weather was nice in the spring and
summer, we'd go steal bottles of beer off the trucks that were
loading for deliveries. Then we'd head back uptown and sit in the
park over on Lexington and one twenty eighth street and drink it
while we smoked a little weed.
I
remember passing a store that had a mirrored panel as part of its
facade. This was back in the pre-riot days when stores didn't have
gates to protect their goods. All they had to do was lock their
doors. Anyway, I looked in this mirror and almost jumped out of my
skin. I saw my mother! I was already a bit tipsy at the
time, since we'd chugged a couple of bottles of Thunderbird before
making our trek. Those were the days when teenagers didn't have MTV
and rappers to tell you that you should be in a club popping bottles
for a hundred dollars or more. A sixty cent bottle of the old T Bird
did us quite nicely.
What's
the name? Thunderbird!
What's
the price? Thirty twice!
When
I saw the almost perfect resemblance to my mother in my face, it frightened me. If she knew I was out
in the streets drinking and stealing, she'd give me the whipping of a
lifetime. It wasn't the drinking she'd mind, it was the drinking in
the street that would upset her. I could always drink at home, so it
was no big deal. I only ever abused alcohol because my friends did.
Like I told you before, she wasn't your typical mother. At home I’d
drink scotch and milk with a teaspoon of sugar or some Manischewitz
wine that Mother Dear, favored on holidays and weekends. During the
week, Mother Dear drank Ballentine Ale. She didn't live with us
though, she lived on the floor above us and had two apartments. One
she paid rent for, and another which was rent free because she was
also the building's super. Since I could have a drink anytime I
wanted one, I rarely drank at home at all.
They
say a mother's love is absolute and unconditional. It reaches beyond
the normal parameters of logic and common sense. My best friend told
me that the thing she remembered most about what my mother had said
to her was that, “A mother will pick maggots out of your ass with a
knitting needle when no one else will.” This was my mom's homespun
logical advice as to why my best friend, Daryl should make an effort
to reconcile her differences with her mother whom she had not spoken
to in ten years. Although her relationship with her mom may not have
become the best, she took Mae's advice.
Born in Charleston,
South Carolina in 1915 or 1917, she wasn't sure, Lillie Mae
McGlocklin was the youngest of six children. The courthouse burned
down before records were kept in more secure places, so she never was
able to say for sure. The dates were to the best of her brother,
Artis Lee's recollection based on the age he knew himself to be.
She was delivered into
this world with a cowl over her face. This is what they called the
placenta. For many backwoods southerners this meant that she would
grow to be clairvoyant, and that she was. Her own mother died while
she was still a baby, so she had no memory of her. Her parents were
Geechies, more commonly known today as the Gullah. They are the
descendants of escaped slaves who originally settled in the small
islands of the Carolina and Georgia Pines. They spoke a patois that
was a mixture of English, French, Dutch, Scottish and a variety of
African languages. Her family left Charleston soon after her mother's
death and she grew up in Fitzgerald, Georgia.
“I went to work when I
was six years old. I liked this boy named RC. My brother told me that
if I wanted to see him, I had to get a job. So that's what I did.”
Unbelievable, huh? I
find it hard to fathom myself. But I do have to remember that her
oldest brother, Ed was only a teenager himself. I don't even think he
imagined that she would. But Lillie Mae was a woman of determination,
even as a child.
I sat at the kitchen
table doing my homework, listening to her tell me her story.
“I got me a job
cleaning house for Miss Mary. She wasn't but sixteen herself. She had
gotten pregnant and married and didn't know how to keep house. I was
so little, I had to stand on top of two Coca Cola crates to wash the
dishes.”
“Didn't you resent
her?” I asked.
I had trouble
reconciling the fact that class and race distinctions were a fact of
life, even when I was young.
“No, baby. Miss Mary
was practically a sister-in-law.” she said.
“How's that?” I
asked, not quite understanding.
“Well, Diane, Miss
Mary was hot in the butt. She had a hankering for Artis Lee. Of
course he knew better than mess with a white woman. But she was
persistent. She wanted Artis Lee, and she was going to have him.”
She had my attention
now. I had dropped my pencil and was hanging on to her every word.
Mae never stopped cutting up the potatoes for the potato salad. She
got up from the table and went to the stove to get the hard boiled
eggs. She placed them in a bowl of cold water before sitting back
down to resume her story.
“Don't stop doing your
school work. You can still listen.”
“Yes, ma'am.” I
answered reluctantly picking up my pencil and continuing with my
math.
“She wore him down and
blackmailed him. Her daddy was the sheriff. She said if Artis Lee
didn't have sex with her, she'd tell her daddy he raped her.”
My eyes bulged from the
sockets when I heard this. Even though I was only a fourth grader, I
knew that could be deadly. Even then, in the late fifties, raping a
white woman in the south could get you lynched.
“So what happened,
Ma?”
“The worst thing
imaginable. She got pregnant.” she answered as she added the
mayonnaise and sweet pickles relish to the salad.
“Did he get lynched?”
I asked. Having never met my uncle, I thought this might be what had
happened to him.
“No, he didn't. He
worked for the colored folks' undertaker, and they were Masons. They
smuggled him out of town in a hearse. He went to Butler and never
returned.”
Mama got up and got the
eggs, shelled them, and mashed them up to go in the salad. I watched
her and wanted to to know what happened next.
“Miss Mary was sent to
her aunt's house in Alabama. When she came back months later, there
was no baby and it was never spoken of again. Within a year, she got
married and soon had a baby. That's when I went to work for her.”
“How did she treat
you, Ma? Like a servant?”
I was anxious to place
blame on this woman for causing a disruption to my extended family,
and for working my mother, a baby so hard.
“No, she didn't. She
treated me like a member of her family.” I didn't believe her. I
thought she was being naive. But years later, as a freshman in
college, I returned to Fitzgerald with her and met Miss Mary. The
warmth between the two of them was genuine. There really wasn't much
difference in their ages. They were like two teen sisters who hadn't
seen each other in ages and were trying to catch up on old times. I
couldn't believe it.
Miss Mary was quite the
hell raiser. She'd go off visiting friends and drink moonshine and
once even crashed the car on the way home. Once she got drunk and
asked mama to drive her home. Mama said she could barely reach the
gas pedal, but she had seen Miss Mary drive, so she figured she'd
give it a try. It didn't look that hard. She got stopped by the local
sheriff because she was driving so slow. He was a big, barrel bellied
white man with thin lips and a southern drawl so thick you could
slice it with a knife.
“Hey there, girlie!
Where you think you goin' there?” he asked, peering in the window
at Mama.
“I'm just headin'
home, sir.”Mama replied.
“Well, you too young
ta drive, girlie.” he said, now spying Miss Mary slouched in the
back seat, dead to the world with traces of vomit on the front of her
dress.
“Miss Mary got sick,
sir. She too sick to drive. We gotta get home before her husband gets
back so I can pick up her son from her Mama's and fix his dinner.
He'll be mad if his dinner ain't done. I can drive this car except my
feet ain't long enough to really press too far on the pedal. I only
know how to drive it in the first gear too. I don't wanna mess up the
engine. Sheriff Bailey says he don't wanna be having to fix Miss
Mary's car no more, sir.”
He looked at Mama, then
at Miss Mary. He knew she was drunk. Still resting his left hand on
the door, he took his hat off and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“She married to the
sheriff?”
"No sir, he's her daddy." He thought for a moment, then decided to escort mama out of his jurisdiction. She followed him to the county line and drove the rest of the way home.
How
you deal with and face death and illness shows both you and the world
who you truly are. I'm not talking about your sickness and demise,
because you can hide your feelings from those around you. I'm talking
about the creeping decay of the people you love. Some folks run and
hide, close their eyes and refuse to acknowledge it, while others
find the strength to embrace it as a part of life itself. Those are
the strong ones. Every one of us at some point will be challenged. No
one is spared in the end.
When
you live with someone, you often don't notice the subtle changes that
signal their demise. The signs can be right there in front of you,
but the familiarity of daily cohabitation can leave you clueless. I
first noticed that my mother was dying when I saw a photograph. It
was innocent enough. A friend had taken a picture of her when they
were out shopping. When I saw it, I knew. If death had walked up and
slapped me, it could not have been clearer. It was like staring at a
skeleton with skin draped over it while still bearing the pointed
resemblance of someone you know.
She
had always been short at five foot two, with dark skin the color of
silky milk chocolate. Hereditary Graves disease ran throughout her
family marking everyone with large, prominent eyes that reminded you
of a doe caught in the headlights. Thick in the hips and calves, yet
thin in the waist, she moved with a light, perky step like a dancer
looking for a melody to trip the light fantastic. To me she was
simply beautiful. By the time I was in my teens, she resembled Oprah
– not the new and improved Oprah, but the “I've just lost weight,
still pleasingly plump, got some junk in my trunk” Oprah. But it
didn't change the fact that when I saw that picture, I couldn't deny
that the end was near.
Then
one day she asked me what I wanted her to cook. She hadn't done any
cooking at all for the past year. I had faithfully cooked dinner
every evening while leaving the chore of breakfast and lunch to her
home attendant. She even offered to make my favorite desert,
blackberry cobbler. Intuitively I knew it would be the last meal
she'd ever cook for me, so I told her, “No.” as if I could stave
off death by simply refusing a sweet, buttery treat. I wanted so much
to light up a joint and slip into the haze of careless fantasy, but I
had given up the “get high” for the “get real”, and had been
drug free for over a year. So I lied quietly in bed staring at the
pea green wall of my room and eventually closed my eyes and shut out
the truth.
At
the time we lived in what by New York City standards was a sprawling
six room apartment in Washington Heights. About the only thing wrong
with it was the ever growing amount of drug dealing going on in the
neighborhood. I had moved back home to care for my mom several years
earlier, even though at the time her need for me to be there was
mostly in her head. She had convinced me to move back from Washington
DC by saying she was sick and needed me to care for her. Since I had
also still maintained an apartment in the Bronx, I agreed. I could
still have my privacy and space while caring for her. Little did I
know that Mae had gone to my landlord and given up my apartment. She
had carefully maneuvered things so that my only option would be to
move back home with her.
Imagine
moving away from a place where you could really see yourself
establishing a new life for yourself and upon returning to care for
your sick and ailing mother, you find that not only is she not home
ailing, but she's out playing bingo! Worse still, the apartment you
thought you had isn't yours anymore. Top that off with the fact that
she's given away your furniture to her friends! I'm telling you this
so you can understand why in some cases I took my mother's complaints
of sickness with a grain of salt. Almost every day for the next five
or six years she played bingo – sometimes twice a day.
I'm
not angry that she manipulated me into returning to New York. I
realize she felt it was just too far away for her to see me as often
as she wanted. Besides, the hundred dollars a month I was sending her
didn't allow her to play bingo as often as she wanted. After I moved
home again. I paid the rent and she only had to buy food and pay
utilities. Keep in mind that she was living on a disability allotment
and social securuty.
I
awakened later that evening as she pushed open the door.
“I
didn't mean to wake you. I just wanted to look around and see
everything one last time.”
“What
are you talking about?” I asked, sleep still clouding my thoughts.
“I'm
going to the hospital, and I won't be coming back again.” she
answered.
“Oh,
Mae, you are such a drama queen!”
My
mind refused to believe what she was saying. I was in awe of the fact
that she had gotten dressed and was going out on her own. She hadn't
been out of bed except to wash herself in over six months. There was
even a Porto-potty next to her bed. I usually bathed her in the
mornings and evenings unless she was feeling strong enough to do it
herself. Before I could answer, she closed the door and left. She had
called a cab, and it was waiting downstairs to whisk her off to St.
Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital on the West side of Harlem near Columbia
University.
It
was a cold and blustery evening in mid March with gray clouds hanging
low in the sky. I thought for sure she'd be back later that night
after they ran some tests. But she didn't return, not that night or
the next. I began to panic. After work on the third evening I went to
check on her.
“What
took you so long?” she asked.
I
hung my head in self pity that mirrored her disappointment. I knew I
should have went with her, but it took me so much by surprise when
she left that I couldn't mentally engage my body to move and do what
I should have done.
“I
thought you'd be back.” I answered, looking around the room at the
faded yellow paint in the hospital room. The other bed was empty, and
I was glad that there was no one else around to witness my shame. We
talked until visiting hours were over. I still could not bring myself
to believe that she actually might die. Several days later they moved
her to the Cardiac Care Unit. She seemed to be getting better, so I
began to relax.
One
evening while I was there, I got the opportunity to speak with her
doctor as he did his rounds. I waited until he and the interns were
through with their examination and spoke to him in the hallway.
“Is
my mother dying?” I asked, desperately seeking to assuage my
growing fears.
“She's
actually getting better, but she thinks she is.” he replied. “We're
trying to rid her of the edema that was serious when she was
admitted. As soon as we do that, she can go home. What we've noticed,
though, is when you're here, all of her vitals are good. If you can
be here with her for most of the day, it would speed her recovery.”
“That's
fine.” I said. “If you could write me a letter stating that, I'll
be able to take off from work.” About a half hour later one of the
interns returned with the note I had requested.
I
was working as a copier repair technician and had been doing so for
about seven or eight years by then. I had started out just working
part time installing copiers and giving demonstration presentations.
I gradually learned to repair them just from following the directions
in the repair manuals, and within six months was hired full time. My
supervisors gave me no problems at all, and even paid me while I took
the time off.
Within
a month's time Mae was getting better, so much so that they moved her
to the ambulatory section of the Cardiac Care Unit. A couple of days
later I returned to work. That lasted all of one day. That afternoon
a frantic intern paged me. This was before the booming cell phone
phenomenon. I called the number and was put through to her assigned
intern.
“Hello,
Diane? This is Dr. Solomon.”
“Yes,
this is Diane. Is something wrong? Is my mother okay?” I could hear
my heart pounding in my chest.
“It's
your mother! You're aware that we moved her to the Ambulatory Care
Unit. Well, she's yelling at us. She says she's dying and we have no
right to move her.” Not only could I detect her youthful
inexperience, but I could also feel her sheer frustration in not
being able to convince a patient that she was actually getting
better.
“I'll
be there as soon as I get off from work, Doctor. Thank you for
calling. I'm sorry if she caused you any anxiety.” The truth was I
really didn't care about any grief my mom was causing them. She could
be a bug up the butt of gnat. I knew that. However, she was still my
mother, and I loved her.
That night after work, I visited with mama. She told me how proud she was of me. It's the first time she'd ever heaped praise on me in abundance. I swelled with the feelings of joy and recognition for doing what was right by her. I had spent almost six weeks straight by her side in the hospital. I did everything from emptying her bedpan to bathing her and reading her the newspaper. It was a good time for both of us.
We reviewed our relationship and settled our differences. Nothing was off limits. I even told her I thought Mother Dear had poisoned her husband, Pop Lewis. He was a six foot tall mulatto who thought he was better than everyone around him, as if being lighter skinned than everyone in his world afforded him privileges that his darker brethren didn't have. Living with such a slanted view of his place in society had taken its toll on him. He was a drunk.
One of those times when he was consumed by alcohol and self hatred he tried to molest me. I told Mother Dear. By the next week Pop Lewis was dead. She never said anything to my mother about the incident, which is why I think she poisoned him, but he was just as dead and permanently removed from our lives. I asked her about it one time. She gave me a sideways stare and began humming a spiritual. That was all Mother Dear would give me. I was surrounded by strong, powerful women in my youth. Society might not have recognized their power, but I surely did.
Mama also told me she'd only live another week. That night her lungs collapsed after I left. A week later, on the fifth of May, she died. She left me with so much of her spirit and fight in me that sometimes I almost see the world as if I'm looking through her eyes.