Mama (34 page)

She backed out of the driveway and shifted to drive. Three or four cars were coming straight at her, honking their horns. Mildred did not realize she was going the wrong way on the one-way street. She did not turn around. The other cars moved out of her way.

She drove, not knowing where she was going, and ended up on Dove Road. When she got to Fortieth Street, Mildred automatically made a left. It was pitch black. She gripped the steering wheel so hard it hurt her hands. She pressed down hard on the accelerator and the car jutted forward so fast that Mildred was thrown back in her seat. There was a loud pop and the car spun into a snowbank piled in front of a herd of naked trees. Her head snapped forward and bammed against the windshield. It didn't break and she wasn't bleeding. She grabbed the dashboard and fell back against the cold vinyl seat. When Mildred realized she wasn't dead, her body went limp and her hands fell in her lap. She sat there motionless for a few minutes and listened to the wind. To her left it was dark. To her right even darker. The skeletons of the trees in front looked like they were moving toward the car. Mildred still did not move.

Finally, she looked up toward the sky and there was one star in the middle of all that black. One star. Cold tears fell out the corners of her eyes and down onto her coat collar.

Then Mildred got mad.

"All right, you motherfucker. If you up there, I hope the hell you can hear me. I wanna know what the hell you trying to prove? First you take my husband, then my kids, and now my daddy and Curly. Why not me? Curly ain't never done nothing to nobody. I'm the one who wrote all them goddamn checks and lied to the IRS and the welfare people and told my daughter to lie about her baby's daddy. Why not me?"

Mildred waited for the silence to answer.

"Curly been praying for your help for years, and what the fuck did you do to her? Make her have a goddamn stroke and paralyzed her. Why? Why can't you do something right for a change? I thought you was supposed to be so big and bad, could do anything anytime anywhere. Are you there or am I just wasting my damn time?"

She looked around but saw nothing except snow.

"Look, it's a lot of thangs I could've done differently, I know that. And I ain't never asked you for much. And I don't know if this whole thang about life is supposed to be some kind of damn test to see how much I can take, how much any of us can take, but I've had it. This shit ain't funny no more."

Mildred let out a long sigh.

"I betcha this is some kind of game, ain't it? But I'm gon' tell you something, buddy. I'm gon' make it past the finish line."

She opened the car door and got out. It was cold as hell out here all of a sudden. She looked down at the right rear tire and it was flat. Damn. She didn't know how to fix a flat tire. Mildred turned three hundred and sixty degrees and saw nothing. Why had she come all the way out here in the first place? Damn. Why hadn't she put her snow boots on when she left? Jasper's house was damn near a half mile down the road. Mildred knew she'd catch pneumonia if she tried to walk down there in these house shoes.

She looked at the tire and trudged around to the back of the car to the trunk. There was a jack, one of those cross-shaped metal things, and a tire. She pulled them out and dragged them around to the side of the car. Mildred tried to remember all the times she'd seen somebody change a flat tire. She slid the jack under the rim of the bumper until she felt the inside of it click. She pumped the handle up and down and the car rose up out of the snow.

Mildred began to smile.

Next she took the cross and tried to fit it on one of those little screws on the tire, but she couldn't see. She fumbled for a few minutes until she found the right-size hole, pushed it down hard on the nut, and turned the cross until the nut popped off. It landed on top of a crust of snow. Hell, this wasn't as hard as she thought it was. She removed three more nuts, pulled the tire off, and slid the other one on. Then she did everything in reverse. By the time she put the worn tire and tools back into the trunk, Mildred felt like she could probably fly if she flapped her arms fast enough.

She turned the key and the engine purred as if it had just been waiting for her to start it up. She pressed down on the accelerator but the front of the car was still stuck in the snowbank. Mildred got out and saw that the bumper had snow packed under it. She tried to push the car, but it wouldn't budge.

"All right, if you up there, I'm gon' ask you to help me one last time, and I swear I'll do everythang else myself."

She took her gloves out of her pockets and put them on. Then she took a deep breath and dug her heels into the snow. She lost her balance but instead of falling backward, Mildred fell against the hood of the car. It carried her with it as it rolled out of the snowbank.

Twenty-four

F
REDA THOUGHT
she heard the doorbell but wasn't sure. She forced herself up from the wet couch. Her jeans were soaked. The room was a mess. A cart full of dirty laundry sat in the middle of the room. Somebody had died. Granddaddy Buster. Now the doorbell rang continuously. She got up and opened the door. Her head was killing her. Somehow, Freda found herself at the bottom of the stairwell and opened the gate. The mailman handed her an envelope too large to fit into the mailbox. She opened it. One of her articles had been accepted.

She must have floated back upstairs because she had no idea how she was now standing in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at some old woman who looked like she hadn't combed her hair or bathed for months. She was so tired, she had to support herself on the sink.

Okay, Freda. This is it, she said to herself. You've been drunk for three or four days now—shit, you've been drunk for a year. Missed your own granddaddy's funeral. You're gonna have to make up your mind what you're gonna do. You call yourself a writer, but what you really are is a fucking ugly drunk. You better start making some decisions, and fast.

Her hands trembled. Her teeth chattered. She hugged herself and stared at her reflection. It was Mildred's face looking out from the mirror.

"What I need to do is stop feeling so damn sorry for myself," she said out loud. She started to run some bath water when she noticed the cut on her hand. She forced herself to remember. Yesterday. The last of her depression-glass goblets had slid from her hand into the sink and she had tried to catch it. The cut ran from the M in her palm like a long piece of brown thread. Isn't that something, she thought, how fast the body heals itself.

By the time she got out of the bathtub, Freda felt refreshed. Clear-headed. She was the one who had complicated everything, she thought. For some reason, now, everything seemed so damn simple. It dawned on her that she had a whole lot of things to be grateful for. She had just sold an article to a magazine. Had a file cabinet full of ideas for more. Her family was crazy, but she loved them. And she had Freda. She bent down to dry her feet and stood up to wrap the towel around her. She looked into the mirror and smiled.

She turned off the bathroom light, walked into the living room, picked up the telephone book, and flipped to the A's. She dialed the number of Alcoholics Anonymous, and this time she didn't hang up.

Twenty-five

"H
I, SWEETHEART
," Mildred said in a singsong voice when she answered the phone. She felt light inside, and for the first time in a long time, she could think straight. She didn't care why or what for or how come. She only knew that for the past ten years she'd felt like she'd been buried alive and had finally dug her way back up to the surface—to topsoil—and right this minute if you had given her a shove, Mildred knew she could dig her way out of any hole, no matter how deep it was.

"Mama, you sure sound good," Freda said.

"You do too. What's up?"

"Nothing, what you doing?"

"Cooking some pinto beans. Where the hell are you? Is those cars I hear in the background?"

"Yep, I'm in a phone booth."

"Well, speak up, I can't hardly hear you."

"Let me walk up the street to a quieter one, and I'll call you back in a few minutes."

Mildred hung up. Why was Freda calling from a phone booth, anyway? she wondered. She had to step over several boxes to get to the kitchen. She was just about finished with her packing. All she had left were dishes and her garden tools in the basement. She was pouring yellow corn bread batter into a baking pan when the doorbell rang. She slid the pan in the oven, wiped her hands on a dishtowel, and went to see who it was.

Mildred's heart stopped when she saw her daughter.

"Freda?"

"It's me, Mama. Open this door. It's cold as hell out here."

Mildred's mouth was wide open and her eyes were dilated.

"I know I must be dreaming, ain't I? You can't be standing here in front of me, now can you?" Mildred pinched herself, then Freda.

"Ouch! I wanted to surprise you."

"Well, this is a helluva surprise, all right. You gon' give me a damn heart attack is what you gon' do."

"What's with all these boxes?"

"I'm moving." There wasn't a trace of remorse in Mildred's voice.

"Moving? When? Where? Back to California? Why didn't you tell somebody?"

"Yeah, moving. Hell no, I ain't going back to no dead-ass California. I'm moving into one of them townhouses in two weeks. You know my daddy always looked after me. He left me enough change to get me back on my feet."

"When did you decide all this, Mama?"

"When they foreclosed on this house, that's when."

"Well, you don't sound too depressed about it."

"I ain't depressed. Ain't gon' get depressed, neither. All it is is a damn, house. Brick and wood and plaster. You know how many years I done spent worrying about some damn houses that ain't never gave a damn about me? Anyway, take off your coat. What you dranking?"

"I stopped drinking."

Mildred turned her head to stare into her daughter's eyes to see if she was lying, but Freda's eyes were clear with the truth.

"Did I just hear you say you stopped drinking?"

"You heard me right. And I feel good, too."

"I wish I had your strength, girl. I've been thanking I should stop too."

"You don't have to say that just 'cause I did, Mama."

"I ain't lying."

"What made
you
want to stop?"

"Well, it's a whole lot of thangs. Nothing I feel like going into right now. What you doing here?"

"I got a surprise for you."

"Open your coat. You pregnant, ain't you?"

"No, Mama. I'm not pregnant."

"Then, what, what, what?"

She grabbed Freda's left hand. There was no ring on it. Mildred looked both disappointed and relieved. "You better not go and get married without my knowing about it. I wanna be in the front row. What is it, then?"

"Here," Freda said, handing her an envelope.

Mildred opened it up and counted five hundred-dollar bills. Then she gave the envelope back to Freda.

"What's wrong, Mama?"

"What's this for?"

"Remember when I told you I had applied to all these different places for grants so I could take some time off to write more?"

"Yeah," Mildred said, still pushing the envelope toward Freda, who in turn kept stepping back.

"Well, I got one, for two thousand bucks!"

"But why you giving
me
all this money?"

"Mama, a long time ago I made you a promise. Remember? I promised to send you on a trip and buy you a house one day. Don't you remember?"

"I thank so. Girl, you done done so many thangs for me already. You need to start trying to please yourself instead of me and everybody else."

"Mama, obviously I can't buy you a house, but take it, please, this means a lot to me. Use it for a vacation."

"I told you a million times I don't need to see no tropical islands. All I want to do is get to the Ebony Fashion Fair if it ain't already sold out."

"I've got two tickets for you."

Mildred's eyes lit up.

"Two tickets! You do? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! How? And when?"

"I called up and charged them a long time ago. It's all you've been talking about for the longest/You're almost in the front row."

"Get out of here, Freda!"

"You and a guest."

"Don't tell me you don't want to go with me? How long you staying? I know you wanna go, don't you?"

"I don't go for that kind of thing, Mama. Take somebody else."

"Then, here, take this back. I'm gon' be fine, chile."

"Look, Mama. Can I make you one more promise? For some reason, since I stopped drinking, when I say I'm gon' do something, I like to do it. Take this money and I promise not to make any more promises like this ever again, deal?"

Mildred blushed. She looked over at her couch. "I could stand to get that thang reupholstered. And I need to get this partial plate repaired. It cracked." She sat the envelope down on an end table.

"You know something, Freda? Seem to me like all these years I been telling y'all kids what's the right thang to do and how y'all can get over in this world, and I swear, y'all done it all by yourselves. Shit. My period done dried up, did I tell you that? For the longest I worried about going through the change of life. Then I realized I already been through it! I said, good goddamn riddens when it didn't come. I done bled enough to start a blood river, and now, honey, I feel so free. But I'm still y'all mama, and y'all still my kids."

"So, Mama, you sure you don't feel bad about losing the house?"

"Freda, don't ask me no more stupid-ass questions, please. Do I look depressed?"

"No."

"You want to hear some of my good news?"

"What?"

"I'm going back to school."

"School? For real?"

"Yep, Community college. They got this new program for middle-aged folks to get them working again. I'm gon' open up my own day-care center. You know how many women have to work these days? Somebody with some sense need to watch those kids. Why not me? I know I gotta get my license, but that ain't gon' be no problem. All I gotta do is take one step at a time."