BUTTERFLY KISSES - Part 1

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 125^th 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.