Gone Crazy in Alabama

  My mother’s face turned a shade darker when Ma Charles said all of Big Ma’s names. In that moment, as I heard it myself for the first time, I knew it was partly true: My mother had left us eight years ago when my father said she had to name my baby sister Fern.

  Big Ma turned to her mother. One minute she was puffed up with anger, and now she was just hurt. “You only see someone who gave you your bloodline.” She meant us, my sisters and me. We were the bloodline. “But Ma, as sure as I’m standing here, she’s been stirring up trouble and heartache from day one and I’m tired of it.”

  Ma Charles said, “She’s a mother like you are. A mother can’t rest until she knows her child is fed, safe, and well. You can’t be mad she’s not here one minute, then mad she’s here the next.”

  Big Ma just looked at her mother, wanting something from her, and then stomped off to her room. Uncle Darnell said, “Come talk to me, sis,” and led my mother outside. And Miss Trotter said, “I tell you, I don’t miss the picture shows or television at all. Not at all.”

  That left Fern and me alone. She on her bed and me by the door. I was used to my little sister running to me. There was this saying that my Muslim classmate, Rukia Marshall, had taught me: If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must come to the mountain. As sure as Fern sat with her arms crossed, I knew she was the mountain and that it was my turn to come to her. I walked over and sat on the bed next to her. She uncrossed her arms and inched away, so I let her keep the distance.

  “I was only looking out for you,” I began.

  “Well, don’t, Delphine. I can look out for myself.” She clunked her turtle head, a hard “Surely can.” Fern was the baby I saw coming out of Cecile on the kitchen floor. She clung to me and hid behind me practically every day after that. I didn’t believe Fern could look out for herself without me but I still said, “Okay.” I had always seen myself as mighty and unmovable among my sisters. For the first time I felt so small next to my baby sister. Small like a hill. I added, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about Vonetta.”

  She snapped, “Sorry doesn’t bring Vonetta back.”

  “I know,” I said softly. “I want her back here in this house. With us.”

  “You do not.”

  “That’s not true, Fern. I miss her.”

  She turned her face to me, looking every bit like Cecile. “Pants on fire!” Even angry Fern stuck to Big Ma’s rule about never using the word liar.

  “I love Vonetta,” I said, “but I don’t always like her.”

  “You surely don’t.”

  “And neither do you.”

  She said nothing.

  “But she’s our sister, and we want her back.”

  We sat on the bed until the space between us eventually closed.

  Mississippi

  Fern and I waited scrunched up into each other in the hallway like spies. It was the first time in too long a while that Fern let me near her. We could hear Cecile and Big Ma exchanging words. I mostly heard Cecile’s voice. She wasn’t screaming and acting crazy like I feared she would. When we heard her heavy footsteps, we ran out of the hall. As soon as Cecile passed to go to the bathroom, I went in to see that Big Ma was all right.

  Big Ma was beating the yolkiness out of the few eggs our hens managed to lay. The hens hadn’t been laying the same since the tornado, but today was the first day we collected nearly a dozen. Mr. Lucas said they’d be back to themselves once the chicken run and the nesting boxes were replaced.

  I helped Big Ma make breakfast while she muttered angry words about my mother being in the house she was born in and how her own mother called Cecile “daughter” and took Cecile’s side over hers.

  I don’t know how Uncle Darnell got my mother back in the house, talking to Big Ma, and then sitting at the table, but there she was, ready to eat and unbothered by Big Ma, who was still muttering and serving.

  I brought out a pitcher of orange juice then took my place next to Fern, who sat practically under Cecile, and Cecile let her. Uncle D sat between Cecile and Ma Charles, and Ma Charles and Miss Trotter sat together and allowed no one between them at the table. Even when they fussed with each other, they fussed side by side. JimmyTrotter sat to my right, next to Mr. Lucas, who sat next to an empty seat that he patted each time Big Ma entered carrying a platter. Big Ma refused her seat next to him each time.

  Finally, Big Ma stopped muttering and spoke her mind. “I won’t sit at that table and I won’t ask the Lord to bless it. No, sir. Surely won’t.”

  “If you won’t ask the Lord to bless it, I will,” Ma Charles said. My great-grandmother, showing off for her sister and for my mother, said a short prayer for my mother for having made the journey, for Pa and Mrs. still traveling on the road, and for Vonetta—“Whatever His will, be done.” Mr. Lucas was the first to “Amen” and Big Ma gave him a mean look, but he didn’t take it back or give her a look of apology. Mr. Lucas waited for her to fill his plate.

  My mother made no expression. I knew she was hungry and intended to eat no matter who cooked the food. All the while Uncle D called her “sis” and poked her and chatted away with her. It turned out that the Black Panthers at the People’s Center had taken up a collection for Cecile to fly down here. Now she’d have to print flyers for them with her kitchen printer “from now until forever.” But she shrugged like it was nothing, and my mother didn’t like owing anyone anything.

  Since Fern had so little on her plate, Big Ma came around with the meat platter and dropped a piece of ham and a strip of bacon before her. Fern lifted her turtle head and pushed the meat to the rim of her plate.

  “Keep that up,” Big Ma threatened.

  “Fern don’t eat meat,” I told Cecile.

  “Why’s that?” Cecile asked Fern. “Your teeth hurting?”

  Fern shook her head no. Then Cecile said, “Enough people in the world trying to silence us. Girl, you better speak up.”

  Both Ma Charles and Miss Trotter liked that and took turns mimicking Cecile’s words.

  Fern gave Cecile a look I didn’t think she should give, but she did. She picked up her fork and tapped it against her plate. Tapped it in the same rhythm she would have banged her fists at her sides. Fern rested her fork and cleared her throat.

  Wilbur’s locked up in a pen.

  Bambi’s mother’s roasting

  Round and around and around

  She goes

  On whose plate

  Nobody knows.

  The people eat

  Dead bacon meat

  The people sing,

  “We offed the pig,

  We offed the pig.”

  The people eat and sing.

  She bowed her head and said, “A poem by Afua.”

  Uncle Darnell and JimmyTrotter snapped their fingers. I followed and Cecile put her fork down for a second to snap fingers on both hands. Miss Trotter banged her fork against her plate and so did Ma Charles.

  “Go on, Rickets,” Ma Charles said. “You’re nothing but bones, a big head, and big eyes, but you can sure say some words.”

  “Mighty tasty words,” Miss Trotter added. “Hungry for some barbecue.”

  “You have a conscience,” Cecile told Fern. “I don’t have much of a conscience where food is concerned, especially when I’m hungry.” She took the pieces of ham and bacon from Fern’s plate. Cecile didn’t eat pork as a rule, but gobbled the meat and looked to Uncle Darnell’s plate for more. My mother wasn’t Jewish or Muslim, like some of my friends at school, who didn’t eat pork at all. Cecile was just hungry.

  I tried not to stare at my mother but there was no corner of my eye that didn’t see her. I thought I was beginning to know my mother, but I couldn’t figure her out. I thought she would give Big Ma a crazy piece of her mind, but she let Big Ma say what she wanted to say, and she just sat there quietly, eating and looking for more food. I waited for something to happen. It was a relief that Miss Trotter was in a talkative mood.

  “She surely does favo
r them,” Miss Trotter said, studying my mother. “Favor all three.”

  “Surely does,” Ma Charles said. “And strong, too! Tell ’em how far you walked, daughter,” she said to my mother.

  “Got a lift from the airport as far as the junction.”

  “Hear that? All the way from the junction,” Ma Charles said, exaggerating her astonishment. She turned to Uncle Darnell. “What’s that, son? Five, six miles?”

  “About that,” Uncle Darnell said.

  “Strong, I tell you,” Ma Charles said. “Where your people from, daughter?”

  “That’s not your daughter!” Big Ma said.

  “Mama didn’t mean—” Mr. Lucas started. But Big Ma said, “I don’t care what she meant. I care what she says.”

  “Oh, hush,” Ma Charles said.

  If my mother was a little tickled it came out in her eyes but nowhere else on her face. She said, “Mississippi,” with a forkful of food in her mouth without spitting out a bit. She finished chewing and swallowing and said, “My mother’s people are from Mississippi. My father, St. Louis.”

  Both Ma Charles and Miss Trotter nodded, especially to the St. Louis part, like she had said, “Paris, France.”

  “She looks about Creek, like Papa’s people,” Miss Trotter said. JimmyTrotter gave me a wink. “Maybe Choctaw.”

  “She look more like my mother’s people,” Ma Charles said, which was her way of saying “plain old Negro.”

  “She ain’t nothing to us,” Big Ma said.

  Cecile gave Big Ma—who seemed to want to fight—no reaction, although she seemed amused by Ma Charles and Miss Trotter each claiming her.

  It was the first time I heard where my mother’s family had come from. My sisters and I, we weren’t just Trotters, Charleses, Gaithers, and Johnsons. We were pieces of other families we’d never know or see.

  “Strong like my people,” Ma Charles said. “Done give me these greats. All three of them.”

  And no one said anything. We were missing Vonetta.

  Big Ma said, “Strong is sticking around. Raising ’em. Loving them. Not just dropping them like an animal in the woods.”

  I waited for it to come. Waited for the dark cloud. Waited for my mother to say the kind of thing that only Cecile would say. I sat there afraid to swallow. But Cecile said nothing. Not one word.

  “You’re here, daughter,” Ma Charles told my mother. “As sure as you’re a mother I knew you’d come. I knew it.” She said to Fern, “Rickets, go get my tambourine.”

  “No shaking that tambourine at the table,” Big Ma said.

  “Go on ’n get it, Rickets. You know where I keep it. Go on.”

  Fern went flying through the house in search of Ma Charles’s tambourine.

  Ma Charles said, “My Henry and I had pigs. A pen full. Remember, son?” Mr. Lucas yessed her. “Other folks left their families or jumped out the window during hard times. We had a horse for fertilizer, pigs, chickens, a garden, and the creek overflowed with fish. We didn’t know a thing about starvation.”

  The um-hmms went around from Miss Trotter, Mr. Lucas, my uncle. Even my mother nodded.

  “Oh, yes. We had pigs a-plenty, but someone left the pen open.”

  “Ma,” Big Ma said.

  Ma Charles went on telling her tale. “All them pigs gone, and it was a hungry winter.”

  “An unkind winter, as I remember it,” Miss Trotter added.

  “Not just for every Trotter and Charles, but for everyone around here. We weren’t the only ones depending on our small living.” She said to Big Ma, “You got worse from me and then some when I finished with you. Might have been a hard winter, but what is a hog when you don’t have your child?”

  “Child, child, child,” Miss Trotter said.

  Fern returned with the tambourine.

  Gone Crazy in Alabama

  Although the house would never be the same, we made ourselves busy putting things in order. Uncle D and JimmyTrotter managed to rig up a clothesline, tying cords from the bent-but-planted pole to the remaining sturdy branch of the pecan tree. With more people under one roof, laundry day began early and clean sheets were a priority.

  Mr. Lucas found parts of the wire chicken run two miles from the house, flattened and wrapped around some trees. He planned to get another one set up once he rebuilt the chicken coop. Sixteen hens were a lot of chickens to account for. They needed constant watching, and Fern and I had nowhere to go but the back and front porches. We brought the chickens up from out of the root cellar to get fresh air and sunlight. Fern did her best to keep the fussiest hens away from the cows, Butter especially.

  Cecile stretched tall in the door frame and then stepped outside to join us on the back porch. I started to motion for Fern to be quiet. Cecile liked the quiet. It was one thing I remembered from being little and sitting with her in our house on Herkimer Street. The quiet kept her calm. She always closed the bedroom door on Vonetta and let her howl until she fell asleep. I raised my finger to my lips but there was no need to whisper “Shh.” Fern ran off after a chicken headed for Mr. Lucas’s land. Once Fern herded the lone chicken back to the flock, she stayed close to her chickens, her dog, and her cows. She’d look up to see that Cecile was there, but that was all.

  Cecile’s gaze roamed from the hanging sheets, up the broken pecan tree, to the animals, the garden, and then out beyond the pines until I was sure she was staring off into her mind. I knew better than to ruin it with chatter. As long as she let me be with her I kept the peace and quiet.

  Shortly after one o’clock Caleb started to sing his song. I didn’t have to puzzle over the meaning of the song. I got up and Fern and I ran around to the front. Cecile eventually followed.

  I couldn’t see the Wildcat but I knew it was coming. Two minutes feels like two hours when you’re waiting. The tan-and-black car made its way up the road as far as it could before reaching the trees blocking its path. The Wildcat veered off the road and onto the field, bumping along toward the house. Fern shouted, “It’s Papa!” and I felt sick all over again.

  The Wildcat was here. Pa and Mrs. were here. My heart wanted to leap toward my father but my stomach soured. It was the first time in a long while that I feared my father. I dreaded the look of pain and disappointment I’d see in his eyes. I dreaded the words he had waiting for me. Without thinking about it I stepped closer to my mother until I felt her there. She stood firm, letting me stay.

  Fern raced down to the car, and before I knew it the whole family was on the porch to greet them. I didn’t move from my mother.

  Pa got out of the car and came around and opened Mrs.’s door, giving her his hand. It seemed as if she didn’t want to, but she eventually took it, and then she pulled herself up and out of the passenger seat. When she stepped out into full daylight, shielding her eyes, I could see that we were going to have a brother or sister. Not very soon, but the baby was more than a secret. The baby was real.

  Fern threw herself over Pa. Instead of telling her she was too big for that, he held her tightly. She leaned over and kissed Mrs. and I felt Cecile’s eyes on Fern kissing Mrs.’s belly.

  “That’s for my brother,” Fern said.

  “Could be a sister,” Mrs. said.

  Fern shook her head no. “Our good luck is gone,” Fern said. “It’s a brother.”

  If it weren’t sad, it would have been funny. Mrs. hugged Fern to her belly and told her not to give up hope, and then Big Ma, Uncle Darnell, JimmyTrotter, Fern, and even Mr. Lucas surrounded them. Ma Charles and Miss Trotter stood on the front porch with Cecile and me.

  It was both a happy and sad meeting. The hugs were more about Vonetta than about being glad to be among one another. And after that began to wind down my father and my stepmother moved toward us. Cecile and me. They were only a few feet away but their walk from there to here dragged on like the way time dragged on while I waited for the Wildcat to come into view. My father saw my mother first, and he led Mrs. toward us. My mother stepped forward and gave
my father a kind of a smile but then went to shake Mrs.’s hand first.

  “Congratulations,” Cecile said to Mrs. “How are you feeling?” she asked plain and factual. Not sugary and phony.

  For the first time that I had known her, Mrs. lied. She put on a face that wasn’t her own and said, “I couldn’t feel any better.”

  Miss Trotter said, “Why pay for a picture show when you can stay home with family?” I wasn’t sure she meant that in a nice way, but Ma Charles thought it was funny and the two cackled.

  “We’d have been here sooner, but I had to stop every minute and a half to find a bathroom,” Pa said.

  Mrs. shot Pa a look and I knew all the honey and sweetness had flown out the window.

  There was nowhere to hide. I faced my father. There was no running from him so I lifted my eyes and Pa said, “Come here, baby.” He never called me “baby.” The pain I’d been feeling began to melt, although it hadn’t gone away completely. It couldn’t. Not until Vonetta was home with us. I only knew at this moment, my father forgave me for not having done what I was supposed to do: look out for my sisters.

  When Pa finally let me go, he cocked his head, looked Cecile up and down, and said, “I figured that’s where they went.”

  Mrs. said, “Where what went?”

  Pa let Mrs.’s question hang in the hot air. He looked at the pants my mother wore and shook his head. Cecile always wore men’s pants. But then it dawned on me. My father didn’t shake his head the way Big Ma did when she saw a woman wearing slacks. He shook his head because he recognized them. My mother had kept and been wearing his pants all these years. If he meant to jar my mother or make her smile, he failed. All he got was her everyday Cecile face.

  It was a good thing Mr. Lucas had added the extra room to Ma Charles’s house. Pa and Mrs. stayed on their side of the house while Cecile stayed on the other side, mostly with Uncle Darnell, who called her “sis” no matter how many times Big Ma said, “She’s not your sister.” Or Cecile was up under Ma Charles and Miss Trotter, who called her “daughter” or “dear one.” Big Ma had eye rolls and “hmp”s for that as well.