Mama (20 page)

"Wake his ass up. And them clothes better all be ironed. I told you before I got back I wanted everythang in this house cleaned and pressed."

"They almost finished. God. What you want me to do, go wake Money up or keep on ironing?" Bootsey had her hands on her hips, a smirk on her face, and all of her weight on one leg. Mildred got on her nerves. Always ordering her around like she was her slave or something. Ever since Freda left, seemed like Mildred just picked and picked at her. And if Bootsey could have hauled off and smacked her and gotten away with it, Mildred's face would've been purple by now. But she couldn't, and the closest she could get was aggravating the hell out of her. Bootsey was glad Freda was gone, because it made her the oldest. She had tried to fill Freda's shoes by bossing the other two girls around in Mildred's absence, but most of the time they just ended up arguing or shoving each other. Bootsey was sick and tired of all of them, and was even more tired of listening to Mildred bragging about Freda day in and day out. That's all she talked about. Freda this and Freda that. But Freda wasn't all that hot. She had knock knees and a wide face and a lead lip, and only had one boyfriend the whole time she was in high school and he dropped her for a college girl. Just 'cause she done moved to California, Bootsey thought, she thank she Miss It.

"Bootsey, don't stand there all day lolly-gagging, girl, 'cause I'm tired and ain't in the mood to be tested."

Bootsey marched up the steps, stomping her feet and mumbling something under her breath.

"Mama said wake up, Money." He was a mess. Still had his clothes on and wasn't even in his own bed. Sometimes when he came home at daybreak, he'd fall asleep downstairs in the middle of the living room floor. Now he was in Angel's twin bed. He was always so high these days that half the time he didn't know where he was when he woke up. He lifted his head slowly and rolled over.

"You better get your ass up before Mama come up here and see you like this."

"I'm coming," he said, dragging himself out of bed. He walked into the bathroom and threw some cold water on his face. He looked like he'd been beaten up and he felt even worse.

Mildred was on the phone when he came downstairs.

"I want to know how much it cost to rent a U-Haul one way to Los Angeles." She was waiting for the answer when she noticed him in the doorway. She shook her head back and forth, as if to say, "pitiful."

"I said one way. Oh." Then Mildred hung up the phone.

"Boy, if you know how you look."

"How you doing, Ma?"

"Better than you are, that's for damn sure."

"What's with the U-Haul."

"We moving to California."

"What?" he asked.

"Not me," said Bootsey, walking into the room with a pillowcase in her hands. "I'm not going noplace."

"What do you mean you ain't going? You go where I tell you to go," Mildred said.

"I'm getting married."

"You getting what?"

"You heard me, I said I'm getting married."

Money flopped down on the couch. He knew this was going to be yet another episode in their long-running drama. He was fed up with all of them and their little troubles. He was the one who was going through real changes, but nobody wanted to hear his problems. They didn't want to know that he was sick inside, that he couldn't get a grasp on himself, and the sad part was, he didn't know why. The only time he found relief was when he pushed that needle into his veins. Usually it made the turmoil and confusion stop scrambling around in his head. But sometimes it did just the opposite. Made him think too much about everything. And to put his thoughts in reverse, he got higher and higher. He kept hoping he would reach a plateau where everything would become transparent. Just clear up.

Angel put her magazine down so she could hear this too.

Mildred was eyeing Bootsey. "You pregnant?"

"No, I am not pregnant. I love David and he loves me."

"Love? You ain't but seventeen years old. What the hell do you think you know about love? You done got your first piece of ass and it done got so good that you thank it's love. You just like the rest of them Peacocks. Your brains is all in your behind."

"We ain't done nothing like that." Bootsey lied with a straight face. But the truth was David had given her everything she hadn't gotten from Mildred or Crook. He was affectionate, kind, gentle, and spoiled her rotten. Anything Bootsey wanted, he gave it to her. All she had to do was sort of bat her eyes at him and give him one of Mildred's most cogent smiles, and he was hooked. Bootsey was his Barbie doll.

David had let Mildred know his feelings about Bootsey from the start. He knew he was too old for the girl, but he promised Mildred he wouldn't do anything to hurt her daughter. "Yeah, you better not," she'd warned him. "And don't send her home pregnant, either, or I'll blow your brains out."

Mildred sat looking deeply into Bootsey's big black eyes. It wouldn't make any sense to drag her all the way out there with them. Bootsey would only make her miserable anyway. Be one less mouth to feed, Mildred thought.

"Marry him, I don't care. We'll leave you in this dead-ass town to wither away like everybody else. Just when did you plan on doing all this marrying, anyway?"

"After graduation. We haven't set the date yet. We wanted to tell you first. See what you thought."

"Well, it ain't like he no hoodlum, and I wouldn't have to be worrying about you. You got my blessings one way or the other. But we'll be out of here in the next six to nine months, so if you expect me to be there, you better do it before then."

During the next few months Money developed a special passion for equipment. He had burglarized somebody's house up on Strawberry Lane and had over three thousand dollars' worth of power tools in the trunk of his Nova when he was pulled over for a smoking muffler. They threw him in jail and Mildred bailed him out. She told him that if he didn't get his shit together by the time she was ready to go, she would leave his ass standing in the middle of Twenty-fourth Street.

Money promised her he would try to stay out of trouble. He even began going to one of those new rehabilitation programs they had started. But this didn't do him much good, because the methadone was about a mile short of soothing him, and that poppy had already grabbed hold of him like a steel glove. It was squeezing Money's will so tight that he began to think the only place he would ever find complete solace would be inside death's arms.

Angel and Doll were upstairs asleep one night when he quietly opened their door and unplugged the color TV. Angel opened her eyes—she had always been a light sleeper—but she didn't say a word. She just watched. Money inched the TV through the doorway and tiptoed downstairs. Angel eased out of bed, stood at the top of the steps, and heard drawers and cupboards opening and closing. She knew what he was looking for. Mildred's silverware. The set she'd gotten as a wedding gift when she had married Rufus. She had never even used them because they had never had an occasion special enough. Money found the case under the china closet and was putting it into a pillowcase when Angel came downstairs. He didn't know she was watching him and she startled him.

"You low-life, stupid junkie. Put the fucking TV back where you found it, and I'd appreciate it if you would put Mama's silverware back, too. I mean it, Money. Right now!" It hurt Angel to see her brother stoop this low. She had busted him once before, when they had lived on Thirtieth Street. He had pawned the diamond wedding ring that Billy had given Mildred, and for three days Mildred couldn't figure out where she'd put it. "You took it, didn't you?" Angel had said. "You can't lie, Money. I'll tell you one thing. You got twenty-four hours to get it back in this house." Money was so high when she confronted him that he fessed up. He begged her not to tell. But this time, he was pushing his luck.

"I wasn't
stealing
it, Angel. I was just borrowing it until tomorrow. Mama won't even miss it. I'm gon' return it."

"Put it back, now, goddammit, or I'll go upstairs and wake her up. So help me God," she said, pointing to the stairs.

"All right, all right, all right!" Money was flustered. "But what am I gon' do?" He sounded so pitiful and helpless, as if he didn't have a solitary friend in the world, and he looked at Angel as if she were his only salvation.

"Suffer. Like the rest of us," was all she said. Angel waited until he had put everything back, then she went back to bed. Money went into the downstairs bathroom and closed the door.

Angel couldn't sleep. Almost an hour had passed and the sun was coming up. She got up and went back downstairs to see what Money was doing. She didn't see him, but she hadn't heard him leave, either. The bathroom door was closed. She knocked but got no response. She knocked again. "Money, you in there?" She tried to turn the handle but it was locked. When she still didn't get a response, she walked outside in her bare feet to go around to the bathroom window. The frost on the grass was so cold she had to hop up and down. The window was too high, so she went back inside and got a pair of Mildred's old shoes from the closet and took a kitchen chair back out with her. She pushed it up against the house. When Angel peeked through the foggy window, she saw Money lying on the floor, unconscious. A needle lay on the linoleum and blood was dripping out of his arm. She pushed the window up and slid through it, then grabbed Money and shook him ferociously. At first Angel thought he was dead, but she was relieved when she felt bis pulse. She threw handfuls of cold water on his face and screamed out for someone to help. Money still hadn't opened his eyes. Angel unlocked the door and opened it. "Mama! Doll! Bootsey! Somebody call an ambulance. It's Money!" Everybody rushed downstairs to see what was going on. Mildred called the hospital.

Before the day was over, Money was back home, acting like it had been no big deal. And before the week was over, he was back in jail. He had stolen another color TV, but this time from Howard Johnson's. There was a real question as to whether or not he'd go to the state penitentiary since he'd already been convicted of two felonies, and if the court deemed Money a habitual criminal, they could give him life. For some reason, they set his bail at only $375. Mildred went ahead and forfeited the rent and phone bill money to get him out. If she could just get the boy out to California, she thought, maybe he'd have a chance.

"I'm warning you," she said, as she drove him home. "This is the last damn dime I'm spending to get your retarded ass out of jail. I don't care about your sick-ass drug habit. You can shoot all the dope in the world but if you behind bars when we get ready to leave, you'll rot in there. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Money nodded his head.

By the end of August, Mildred still hadn't figured out a way to come up with enough money to cover all her expenses. Time was running out on her. She had already told half the town she was leaving before Labor Day. Then she came up with an alternative plan. She pawned her silverware, both wedding rings, and the record player, and sold the washer and dryer (they did not belong to her) and the stove and refrigerator, which still only added up to $409.

Mildred always could lie with a straight face, and that's exactly what she did when she told the U-Haul people that she was only going as far as Detroit.

To her surprise, Money kept his word. He made it through the treatment program at the methadone clinic, and when Mildred told him that all of them couldn't possibly fit in the U-Haul, he even managed to get his 1960 Chevy in running condition. Angel and Doll would ride with him. In spite of the fact that Mildred had shot Deadman all those years ago, she and his mama, Minnie, were still friends, and Minnie's oldest son, Porky, offered to help Mildred drive the U-Haul if she promised to send him back on the bus. (He was afraid to fly.) "A deal," she had said. Mildred knew Porky didn't have anything else to do and he had never been farther than Toledo.

Curly and Buster were about the only two people Mildred knew she would miss. But Curly was happy because it meant she would finally have somebody else to visit instead of her dull relatives in Alabama. And Buster, who had retired and now spent most of his idle time in the summer cultivating his crop—moonshine and potato wine and corn liquor—was glad to see his favorite daughter finally get a real chance to live. Nothing special could happen to Mildred in Point Haven, and Lord knows she needed a husband. Miss Acquilla didn't care one way or the other. She just sat on their front porch, spitting out snuff, rocking in her favorite chair, and listening to the Detroit Tigers losing on her transistor radio.

Bootsey decided to get married on Labor Day.

"I'm sorry," Mildred told her. "You had all winter and spring to do it. I told you when we was leaving, didn't I?"

"It's okay. His mama and daddy will be there," Bootsey said. Mildred told her she would be happy to come back to help celebrate their first anniversary or first child, whichever came first. The truth was, Mildred couldn't stand the thought of sitting in a church full of flowers—which always reminded of her funerals—and watching another one of her babies get away. She wanted Bootsey to feel like she was losing a mother instead of gaining a husband. And that's exactly how Bootsey felt when they backed out of the driveway.

It took them four days to get to Los Angeles. Between keeping herself and Porky supplied with liquor, feeding the kids, and putting gas in the truck and Money's gas-guzzling, oil-burning Chevy, Mildred's cash got so low she was surprised they made it.

Freda met them at her front door. She had moved into a larger apartment, and, to Mildred's disappointment, this building didn't have a swimming pool.

"Girl, I hope you got some money in this house, 'cause we broke. I had to spend every dime I had on gas and food, and I need a drank." This was the first thing Mildred said to her daughter. But Freda didn't care, she was just happy to see everybody. It felt weird, though, knowing that Bootsey was married and staying back home.

Mildred never was big on living in cramped quarters. Even as a child, when she had had to share a bed with her two sisters, she sometimes took a pile of old clothes and slept on the floor just to have some room to herself. And Freda's little one-bedroom apartment wasn't much different. Six people were living in this place. And Mildred was too broke to send Porky back to Point Haven.