Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (29 page)

Looking up at her, Teensy said, “Any baggage you have,
Bébé,
ceased to be only yours the minute that sperm hit that egg.”

Vivi turned away from Teensy so that she could see the water as it spurted out, in a small arc, from the breast of the mermaid statue.

“Don’t you miss her?” Teensy asked.

“I miss Sidda horribly. I think about her all the time.”

“Then why in the world don’t you call her, talk to her, listen to her? Try to answer her questions.”

“I don’t have any Goddamn answers,” Vivi said.

“Forget answers, then. Just tell her what happened. Try to mend this thing.”

Teensy stared into her glass, took out a piece of ice, and plopped it in her mouth.

“Don’t chew on that, Teensy, you’ll ruin your teeth,” Vivi said.

“I have been chewing on ice for sixty-six years, and I still have every single one of my own teeth,” Teensy said, “which is more than I can say for some people.”

With that, Teensy bit down on the ice and glared at Vivi.

“What?” Vivi said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“If you don’t tell Sidda about the hospital that nobody called a hospital, then I will,” Teensy said. “It’s not pretty to lose your mother, at any age.”

Vivi studied Teensy to see if she was serious. “That was not the only time I left my children.”

“I know,” Teensy said gently.

Vivi closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at Teensy. “Okay, it’s in your hands. Do whatever you think is right.”

“I have no idea what I think is right,
Ma Petite Chou,
” Teensy said. “I simply know that for me to do nothing would be a sin.”

“Let’s not get too Sarah Bernhardt about it,” Vivi said, and reached out her hand to Teensy.

“No,” Teensy agreed, “let’s not.”

Affecting a mongrel European accent, Vivi swung back around to Teensy and asked, “How much do I owe you for today’s session, Dr. Freud?”

“The name is Pootwell,” Teensy replied, “Dr. Pooty Pootwell.”

When Chick stepped onto the patio with a platter of filet mignons, and wearing an apron emblazoned with a crayfish that read, “Suck de heads!” he found the two women in each other’s arms, laughing and crying at the same time. He was unfazed. He had found them this way eighty-four thousand times before.

24

T
he address on the envelope was barely legible, but Sidda recognized the hand immediately. It was the almost-hieroglyphic handwriting of Willetta Lloyd, the black woman who had worked for Sidda’s family for as long as she could remember. The envelope was so thin that the handwriting within was visible.

The letter read:

December 1, 1957

Dear Miss Vivi Walker,

Why sittin down I think of you and decide to write and thank you for the cashmere coat you done give me. It pretty and warm. I done let it out in the sleeve and hem and now it fit me fine. Chaney and me is fine and send you our good wish and prayers and hope all is fine with you and your family.

Love,
Mrs. Willetta T. Lloyd

How different this letter was from the others Sidda had found tucked in the scrapbook. Written on cheap, lined
paper, the page was ragged at the top, where it had been torn from a tablet.

God knows Willetta deserved whatever nice things my mother gave her, Sidda thought. My mother’s life, my own life, would not have been possible without Willetta. What we owe her is so complex I’ll never figure it out.

Sidda contemplated the date the letter was written. What had prompted her mother to give Willetta a cashmere coat? She wondered if the long, soft, cream-colored coat she remembered Willetta wearing for years was indeed the one referred to in the thank-you note. Letter in hand, Sidda walked into the kitchen. Leaning against the counter, wondering if she should make a bite to eat, she half expected to smell that peculiarly Willetta scent: part Ajax, part Lipton tea. She thought of the tall, stately black woman who had fed her, dressed her, handwashed her “delicates,” played with her, sung to her, and listened to her with tenderness. She thought of the letters that still arrived from Willetta in that scrawling hand. She thought of how, each time they spoke on the phone, Willetta would say, “Oh, we misses you ever day here at Pecan Grove.” She remembered Willetta’s six-foot frame, her slightly Indian face, and she ached for this woman who had been a mother to her.

Willetta had begun baby-sitting for the Walker children when Sidda was three years old, then became their full-time maid a few years after that. “Maid,” however, does not describe what Willetta was to Sidda. Forced by circumstance to spend more time caring for the Walker children than her own, Willetta loved Sidda in spite of the slave wages she was paid for her days, and often her nights. Living just down the lane from the Walker home, in a shotgun house with her husband, Chaney, and her own two daughters, Willetta had given Sidda an acceptance and affection that were miraculous, given the relationship she had to Sidda’s parents.

Of the countless cruelties of racism, Sidda thought, one is
the unspoken rule that white children, once we reach a certain age, are supposed to renounce the passionate love we feel for the black women who raised us. We’re supposed to replace it with a sentimental, patronizing affection. We’re supposed to let the thinly veiled jealousy of our own mothers obscure what we feel for the women they hired as maids.

Something about the cashmere coat disturbed Sidda. Once, years ago, Sidda had dreamed of seeing her mother standing in a doorway. In the dream, when Vivi unbuttoned the coat, she had been naked underneath, with gashes all over her body, as though she had fallen on a bed of knives.

Sidda stood in the kitchen of the cabin and recalled the kinds of meals Willetta used to cook for them: stewed okra and tomatoes over rice, pork chops smothered in onions, hot biscuits dripping with butter and honey. She was suddenly seized with longing for a Willetta meal. Something with tons of fat and cholesterol, something to see her through.

Instead, Sidda grabbed an apple out of the wooden bowl on the counter. Then she stepped out on the deck into the warmth of a Pacific Northwest summer morning. She looked out at the tall fir trees that surrounded the cabin. She bit down into the apple. I know nothing, she thought. She looked around at the tall fir trees that surrounded the cabin. I know nothing but the smell of the sun hitting those countless needles from these old evergreens.

25

The next day Vivi went wild cleaning out her closets. She made a thermos of coffee, went back in her dressing room, and started pulling clothes off their hangers. She set out a box for Willetta, a box for the Garnet Parish women’s shelter, and a box for a sassy twenty-something girl who lifted weights at the club with Vivi. That little girl would adore the outrageous things that wouldn’t fit Willetta and would seem too frivolous for the women’s shelter.

Once she finished with her closets, Vivi climbed to the attic and started going through boxes and boxes of clothes that went as far back as the fifties. When she got to a box marked
CHARTREUSE MOIRÉ MATERNITY JACKET
, she had to stop and mix a drink.

Carrying the box to the kitchen with her, Vivi put “Judy Garland Live at the Palladium” on the CD player. She mixed a drink, lit a cigarette, and opened the box to examine the jacket.

It was one of the numbers she’d designed for herself when she was pregnant with Baylor, her last child. Cut like a painter’s smock from a gorgeous piece of fabric, with oversized rhinestone buttons. She’d worn it with matching earrings, black cigarette pants, and a kicky little gold velvet beret.

She could only stand to look at the jacket for so long.

Walking into the den with her drink, Vivi lay down on the window seat and stared out at the bayou.

It isn’t easy to lose a mother.

She propped a pillow under her knees and closed her eyes. That maternity jacket brought it all back.

Vivi, 1957

I could not take it any longer.

Seventeen straight days of rain in Central Louisiana. November. Damp to the bone cold. A week before Thanksgiving, when the in-laws would come and scrape me to the bone. Four babies who hardly stopped crying long enough to eat and shit. Four of them. It would have been five if my twin baby boy had not died. I adored them, but I was sick to death of them. Beautiful children can also be cannibals. I longed for someone to swoop down and take them off my hands long enough for me to think one single thought without an interruption.

Sidda, four years old, was still coughing from bronchitis, and asking so many questions I wanted to slap her because I did not have the time to talk, because there was Baylor three months old, who still was not sleeping through the night. And Little Shep, three, who scooted around so fast I couldn’t keep track of him. He toddled faster than grown-ups walk, could make it out the front door and out onto the driveway before I could wipe myself. Lulu Walker, two, who ate
constantly.
Always starving. If I heard her say, “Mama, I hungry,” one more time, I would kill her.

Shep was out at the duck camp all the time, with no Goddamn telephone.

If I asked the father of my children when he’d be back, all he said was, “I’ll
be
back when I
get
back.”

I couldn’t even make myself talk to the Ya-Yas about how sick I was of my four little monsters. I did not want even my best friends to know how fed up I was. I tried once to explain to Caro.

“Tell Shep you want more time away,” she said.

That wasn’t it. I could have a baby-sitter any time I wanted out. But it wasn’t enough. It still left me the responsible one.

For a while, I had Melinda, this big black baby nurse that the kids called Lindo. She came home from the hospital with me for every one of my babies. My children had gotten used to her.

So had I.

Melinda stayed for three months to nurse Baylor and then she left me. She had to. She had another baby to take care of.

I begged her to stay. I stood in the kitchen and said, “I need you, Melinda. Can’t you just tell Mrs. Quinn to find another nurse? She can get somebody else.”

“I can’t be doing that,” she said. “I done nurse two Miz Quinn’s babies and she be countin on me. Already got my room fixed up. Miz Quinn fix me up a nice room.”

“You mean I don’t?” I said. “I know it’s tiny—I’m sorry—I know it’s not a real bedroom. But it’s all we have in this place. I’ll order a new bed if you want, get new curtains, you just tell me what you want. I had no idea you didn’t like your room here. Is it the bed? I mean, I know it’s not a great bed.”

She just stood there in her big brown body, with that starched white uniform so clean and white you could smell the Clorox rising up off it.

“It ain’t that, Miz Vivi,” she said. “I got me another
baby coming I got to look after. I can’t be staying here. Done been here three months with this new baby, Baylor, just like I done with all your other babies.”

The monsters were all asleep for once. It was quiet. I could hear that low hum of the refrigerator. I did not want to beg a colored person to help me, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“Melinda,” I said. “I am begging you. Please don’t leave me. I cannot take care of these four babies by myself. Please, please do not leave me. I will pay you anything you want. I will make Mr. Shep get you your own car. How about that?”

I thought for a minute I had convinced her, thought for a minute she would stay. After all I had done for her and her family, I thought she might at least stay and help me.

“Miz Vivi,” she said, “they you chilren and you gonna have to tend them one of these days.”

I put my head in my hands and leaned down on the kitchen counter. That entire house smelled like baby formula. Baby formula was all I had smelled for the past four years. Baby formula, baby poo-poo, and baby throw-up.

Melinda took out three bottles from the icebox.

“Use the little saucepan to heat them,” I said, “and go ahead and give Sidda a bottle. I know she’s not supposed to have one, but she’s quieter if she gets one with the others when they wake from their naps.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Melinda said.

My heart started skipping and I could feel the fist in my stomach. My skin itched all over. It was red from scratching. I had told myself that I would be ready for it. Ready for Melinda to leave me with all four monsters. I handled two kids, didn’t I? I handled three, didn’t I, with another on the way? I handled it, didn’t I?

“Miz Vivi, you be wanting me to warm you something up? You need to have you a bite.”

“No, thank you, Melinda,” I said. “Maybe I’ll have something later. I’ll just have a Coke now.”

“You done had you enough Coca-Colas,” she said. “You need you some food.”

I pulled the aluminum icetray out of the freezer and ran water over it. Took out one of my squatty crystal glasses and filled it with Coke. Coke was my friend. It settled my stomach; it was the one thing that always stayed down no matter how upset my stomach was. I drank so many Cokes I had to hide the bottles from Shep and Mother. I didn’t want to hear their comments.

It was almost twilight and still raining hard when I put the kids in the car and drove Melinda home. I pulled up in front of her house, and left the car running. Two long-legged boys ran out to greet Melinda. They must’ve been eight or nine years old. I had no idea she had children that young. They could have been grandchildren, for all I knew. You could never tell with colored people.

“Melinda,” I said, “won’t you please change your mind? You could visit with your family and I could come back and get you later on tonight.”

“No, Miz Vivi,” she said. “I can’t go be letting people down. I got my
work
to be thinking of. What if I let
you
down when you be bout to birth a new baby?”

I could not believe what I was hearing. I looked at that colored woman and I wanted to slap her. “All right, Melinda,” I said. “I understand. God forbid I should interfere with your
career.
”

I handed Melinda my last ten for a tip, and she climbed out, holding a folded newspaper over her head so she wouldn’t get soaked.

“M’dea! Oh, M’dea!” the little colored boys called out, hugging her, reaching to help her with her suitcase.

That’s when Sidda realized Melinda was leaving, and started to bawl. “Don’t go, Lindo!” she whined, and tried to climb out of the car.

You would have thought someone was torturing the child. You would have thought
I
was leaving, not some colored nurse.

“Shhh, Dahlin,” I told Sidda, “stay in the car. It’s raining. Mama’s going to buy you some new cutout dolls.”

But Sidda scrambled out of the backseat, and the next thing I knew she and Little Shep were both following Melinda out into the pouring rain.

Oh, my God, there was not one, but two filthy yard dogs standing on the edge of Melinda’s porch. All I needed was for one of my babies to get bit by some rabies-infected colored dog. All I needed was for them to get even sicker with that damn bronchitis.

“Get back in this car!” I hollered. “Yall get back here this instant!”

When Baylor, the baby, who was lying on the front seat next to me, heard me holler, he started howling. Just after Melinda had finally gotten him quiet on the way out here. Only Lulu was behaving, sitting in the back sucking down her third bottle since she’d woken up.

“Stay right where you are, Tallulah,” I told her. “Don’t you move a muscle.”

Then I climbed out of the car, and stepped down right into a puddle. There was not one Goddamn sidewalk out here in Samtown, and there I was wearing my good brown suede flats.

A bunch of coloreds were up on Melinda’s porch all
dressed up like for a party. “Whoa, Melinda!” they called out, hooting and whistling. “Get yourself in here, girl! We been waitin on you, Honey! We got fried chicken just jumping off the plate waiting for yo mouth!”

“Oooh, chile,” Melinda said, and headed toward the porch, my two oldest children tagging right along behind her. “I done got me a welcome-home party!”

You could tell from the tone of her voice that she had forgotten all about me and my children. Like we did not exist.

“Melinda,” I said, my hair dripping wet, “would you be so kind as to help me get my little children back into the car and out of this pouring rain?”

“Oh, yas’m,” she said, and handed one of the colored boys her purse. “Yall go on up and wait on the porch,” she told them. “M’dea be right behind you.”

It has always amazed me the way colored people call their mothers “M’dea.” Short for “Mother Dear.” I don’t know where they get it.

Melinda scooped both Sidda and Little Shep into her arms, and brought them back to my car. Those two kids would not stop screaming. God, I was sick of their screaming.

“Yall be good chilren for you mama, now,” Melinda told them. Then she wiped the mud off her dress, where their feet touched her outfit.

“Thank you, Miz Vivi,” she said, and slammed my car door.

Just slammed the door to my car and walked up to her house where all the lights were blazing and her family and friends were waiting to throw her a party.

I got back in my car with my screaming children and my ruined shoes. I knew it didn’t make a grain of sense, but my feelings were hurt. If Melinda was going
to walk off and abandon me like that, then the least she could have done was to invite us in for a minute.

“Mama, where we going?” Sidda asked from the backseat.

“Mama, we get hamboigas!” Little Shep said. I do not know where he got it, but the child said “hamboigas” like he grew up in Brooklyn or something.

I lit a cigarette. “I don’t know where we’re going yet. Just sit there and be still.”

Both Sidda and Little Shep still had bronchitis. They coughed so hard their whole bodies shook, coughs so deep I couldn’t bear the sound. I couldn’t bear the look in their eyes when they coughed up mucus and almost choked on it.

“Spit it out!” I had to tell them. “Don’t swallow it, Baby Dahlins, it’ll make you sicker.”

But they didn’t understand. They got that bronchial thing from Shep. I had never seen anyone cough that hard. Nobody ever did that kind of thing on my side of the family. I had listened to their coughs for weeks on end. Thank God for the cough syrup Dr. Poché had prescribed. It stopped the coughing and made them sleepy.

The thing about Melinda was she knew just when to take Baylor. She knew just when he was about to drive me right over the edge. She would step into my bedroom, where he was crying, just when I was about to slap him. She would reach down and take him out of my arms, like she was a fat black angel sent to me to stop me from harming my baby. She did that with all my babies. Sometimes I wondered how she knew. Wondered if something in her huge body vibrated so she picked it up like a radio station when I was
this
close to slapping my babies just to get them to shut up.

I did not like to spank. It was not something I wanted to do. It just happened, before I knew it. I couldn’t talk about it. Oh, Caro would joke in those days about driving off and forgetting one of her boys at a gas station and not remembering him until the next day, but she was kidding. I could not tell my friends about the things I did to my children when they pushed me too far.

If things got too bad, Mother would send Ginger over, and sometimes Ginger’s granddaughter, Mary Lee, but she was just a girl herself. It wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough. If Delia were still alive, she would see to it that I never had to call for help.

When I finally got the kids home and in bed that night, I was so exhausted I was shaking. The son of a bitch, Shep. How could he have left me when he
knew
it was Melinda’s last day?

I could not sleep. I was too keyed up. I could feel the inside of my body vibrating. I could feel twelve million nerve endings. Necie’s kids had the measles, Caro was on a new kick of going to bed early. So I called Teensy, but she and Chick had already gone out.

“Where did they go?” I asked Shirley, who was baby-sitting.

“To Mr. Chastain’s dining room,” she said.

I rang the restaurant and had them page Teensy.

“I need adults,” I told her.

“I’m flattered you think we qualify,
cher.
We haven’t ordered yet. Shall I get you some gumbo to start with?”

“Whatever,” I said. “I’m not very hungry.”

I hadn’t had an appetite since Baylor was born. My stomach wouldn’t settle down enough; eating was a chore.

I could have called Mother to baby-sit, but I didn’t want to see that constipated look of blame on her face when she asked me why I couldn’t just cook supper at home. So I called Willetta Lloyd, whose husband, Chaney, worked for Shep and his father on Pecan Grove, where we’d be moving when our new house was built and we got out of that rat-trap rental house we were in back then. Willetta cleaned at Dr. Daigre’s house at the time, but she baby-sat for me, what with the Daigre kids being almost grown.