Silver Sparrow (15 page)

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’l tel Raleigh to take it off my col ar before they close the casket and put me in the ground.”

“Ma’am,” I said, “please don’t say things like that.”

My grandmother took my living hand in her dying one. “I never had no quarrel with the truth. I hope somebody says something like that at my wake.”

10

UNCLE RALEIGH

IN THE SUMMER 1978, my mother had come to a crossroads. I am neither religious nor superstitious, but there is something otherworldly about the space where two roads come together. The devil is said to set up shop there if you want to swap your soul for something more useful. If you believe that God can be bribed, it’s also the hal owed ground to make sacrifices. In the literal sense, it’s also a place to change direction, but once you’ve changed it, you’re stuck until you come to another crossroads, and who knows how long that wil be.

Although I was only nine, I was away from home two weeks that summer. My godmother, Wil ie Mae, took me to Alabama to spend some time with her family out in the country. She thought I was too much of a city girl, that I needed to spend some time barefoot. Drawing my bath each night in the footed tub, Wil ie Mae looked more capable than she did in our living room drinking gin-and-tonics with my mother. Out in the country, she drew her hair back in two plaits and tucked the ends under; she stuck her feet in her shoes bare-legged.

I was accustomed to hot, muggy summers, but the heat in Opelika was more comprehensive. August was canning season, so the women were busy washing tomatoes, peaches, and beets. Wil ie Mae was saving her money to buy two window air conditioners; in the meantime we kept cool with window-box and funeral-home fans. The front door flapped behind what seemed an endless parade of Wil ie Mae’s nieces, nephews, and cousins, who stole eggs from the icebox to see if they could actual y fry them on the blacktop road. Across the street, a lady sold Styrofoam cups of frozen Kool-Aid for a dime, but my mother had told me not to eat from strange people’s houses. I spent most of the time in the kitchen, up under Wil ie Mae, who would stumble over me from time to time. The atmosphere was thick with the sugary smel of boiling fruit. I would lick my forearm and taste salt.

At night, I shared a pul -out bed with Wil ie Mae, who dusted herself al over with talcum powder cut with cornstarch. I missed my own room, the noises of the city, and my beautiful mother. “Why didn’t she cal me today?”

Wil ie Mae arranged the sweat-damp sheet around me. “She can’t cal you every day. She loves you. I love you. Raleigh loves you. Everybody loves you. Al you have to do is go to sleep and be patient.”

I didn’t know how to respond to this, so I settled myself down onto the oversoft pil ow.

“She’s coming for you, Dana. You can take that to the bank.”

I learned things those two weeks in Alabama. I learned how to diaper a baby, how to hang clothes on the line so that the linens hide your ladythings. I learned how and when to kneel during a Catholic service and I learned that there are grown men who find little girls to be very pretty.

Wil ie Mae’s uncle, Mr. Sanders, asked me to sit on his lap after church. I refused the gum he offered, but I climbed onto his lap because I didn’t know that I could deny an adult any favor. I sat myself across his knees, but he tugged me toward him until the smal of my back was flush against his abdomen and the top of my head fit in the nook beneath his chin. He was stil wearing his green tie from mass as he bounced me on his thighs, breathing into my ear with breath that smel ed of apple cores.

Wil ie Mae walked into the bedroom wearing only her slip, stained at the waist with sweat.

“Sanders,” she said, “you put that girl down and stay the fuck away from her. Touch her again and I’l cut you, nigger. You know I wil .” She caught me under my arms and pul ed me away.

Her uncle said, “I wasn’t doing her nothing.”

“You are a nasty dog, Sanders,” Wil ie Mae said. “Get out of here.”

The uncle ambled out and Wil ie Mae hugged me hard. “You okay? You al right, Dana? What happened?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You sat up on his lap and that was al ? He didn’t touch you anywhere?”

“No,” I said.

“Lord have mercy.”

“But —”

“But what?”

“But could he touch me and I wouldn’t know it?”

Wil ie Mae hugged me again and gave a relieved little laugh. “Lord,” she said. “Stay close to me til your mama comes for you.”

“I want to go home.”

“I know you do, but you just got a few days more. Gwen has some things to take care of.”

That night, she placed a col ect cal to my mother. The very next day, I was sitting on the front porch with Wil ie Mae hul ing peas when I saw the old Lincoln coming down the road.

Wil ie Mae squinted toward the car and the dust kicked up by its wheels. “Dana, your eyes are young. Tel me who’s driving.”

“It’s the old Lincoln. That’s Uncle Raleigh.”

“Praise Jesus,” said Wil ie Mae. “Praise him.”

I wondered what my mother would say about the way I looked. I had ignored Wil ie Mae’s mother’s warning that I shouldn’t play in the sun; my complexion, already dark, deepened into something richer. With my press and curl al sweated out, I scratched my dirty scalp as Raleigh helped my mother out of the car. She was dressed in a light blue suit and a hat to match. Even her shoes were the same swimming-pool shade.

“Did you do it?” Wil ie Mae asked.

“Not yet,” Raleigh said.

“I didn’t want to do it without Dana,” my mother said.

“Do what?” I asked.

“Wil ie Mae,” my mother said, “is there someplace I can talk to Dana in private?”

Wil ie Mae looked around us at al the kids playing in the yard. She looked toward the interior of her mother’s house, which was certainly packed with women canning vegetables. “Sorry, Gwen. This place is al booked up.”

Raleigh said, “Take my keys. You two can sit in the car. Make sure you turn on the air.”

My mother took my hand and smiled. “You look like a wild animal.”

Behind me, Raleigh took my seat beside Wil ie Mae and started snapping peas. She leaned over and whispered something to him that made him smile.

RALEIGH WANTED TO MARRY my mother. That Wednesday over Tonk he put his cards on the table, in more ways than one. He said, “Gwen, you deserve something better than this. You deserve to be somebody’s only wife.”

She didn’t take him seriously at first. She said, “Pick up your hand, I can see al your cards and that takes the fun out of it.”

“I’m serious.”

She laughed. “Wel , do you have someone in mind? Do you know somebody that wants to take me away from al of this?”

“I’m serious, Gwen,” he said. “I have been thinking about this for a few years now, and I want to make a real commitment to you and to Dana.”

My mother placed her cards on the table facedown, like she thought that they could pick up their game once this awkward conversation was through. “What are you saying, Raleigh? What are you saying to me exactly?”

“I am asking you to marry me. To be my wife. Legal y. Respectful y.”

My mother got up from the table and went to the couch and sat herself on the space where the cushion was split. Raleigh fol owed her. He was so long and lanky that he moved like something engineered to bend with the breeze.

Raleigh kept talking. “We can get our own house and live like ordinary people. I am already Dana’s father on paper, so there is nothing complicated to figure out. And don’t worry about James. He’l come around. He’s got to see that it’s not fair the way that he’s been able to live for the past nine years. He’l have to see that it makes sense for you and me to be together. It wil be better for Dana. James, he’s got more already than any one person can hope for.” He took my mother’s hands and held them to his mouth. “What do you say, Gwen?”

“You haven’t said that you love me,” my mother said. “Why are you doing this? You don’t love me.”

“Yes, I do,” Raleigh said. “I love you something terrible. I love you to my bones. I love you, Gwendolyn Yarboro.”

“No, you don’t,” my mother said.

“Yes. I’ve loved you since that first day I met you hiding in your bed at that rooming house. Please, Gwen. Let’s do this.”

My mother said, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?” Raleigh said. “You don’t know if I love you or if you love me?”

“I know for sure that I don’t love you,” my mother said. “Not in that way. But I don’t know if you love me, either.”

Raleigh leaned back on the couch. “You don’t love me? Not at al ?”

“I love you some,” Gwen said. “But you are my husband’s brother. There’s a different way you love your brother-in-law.”

“You are not my brother’s wife,” said Raleigh. “He is not my brother and you are not his wife.”

“I don’t know,” Gwen said.

“You know, Gwen,” Raleigh said. “You know it.” He got up from the couch and put Louis Armstrong on the record player. “Dance with me,” he said, holding his arms out.

“This is not a movie,” my mother said, suddenly angry. “Dancing with you won’t make this right or wrong. You are asking me to give up my whole life for this.”

“I am asking you to marry me.”

“I don’t know, Raleigh,” my mother said.

FIVE DAYS LATER, she was dressed in her blue suit sitting with me in the back of the old Lincoln.

“Dana,” my mother said. “What would you say about Uncle Raleigh becoming your new daddy?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how would you feel if we went to go live with Uncle Raleigh and he would be your daddy and I would stil be your mother — I wil always be your mother, there’s no changing that ever — but it would be me, you, and Raleigh living together.”

“You can do that?”

“People can do whatever they want.”

I thought it over while scratching the mosquito bites on my legs. “What about James? I can’t have two daddies, can I?”

“James wil always be your father.”

“So what about Uncle Raleigh?”

“Okay,” my mother said. “It’s like this. When you get older, you wil say to people, ‘My real father didn’t raise me. My mother married my uncle and so I think of my uncle as my father.’ You get it?”

“No.”

“Dana,” my mother said, “let’s try this from another direction. If you could pick just one daddy, who would it be? Raleigh or James?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s up to you, Dana. Tel me what you want, because al I want is what’s best for you.”

“If we pick Raleigh to be my daddy, would James be mad at us?”

My mother said, “Yes.”

“What about Uncle Raleigh? If you say he can’t be my daddy, wil he be mad at me?”

“His feelings wil be hurt.”

“Wil he cry?”

My mother thought it over for a moment. “He might cry, but not when you are around. You won’t have to look at him crying.”

In the back of the Lincoln, I felt comfortable and cool for the first time in almost two weeks. I wished my mother and I could stay there forever, mul ing over our options, being loved by my father and Raleigh at once.

“I don’t want to hurt Uncle Raleigh’s feelings.”

“Me either, honey, but somebody’s going to get hurt in this. There’s no getting around it.” She gathered me against her even though she was so clean and pretty and I was Alabama-dirty and sorghum-sticky. “I love you, Dana,” she said. “I love you more than anyone.” She pressed her face into my filthy hair. “You are my life.”

I used to love her desperate love for me, her weighty kisses. Hers was an electric affection burning away everything it touched, leaving me only with the clean lines of a lightning rod.

“Mama,” I said.

“Yes?”

“What about James? If we go off with Raleigh, he’l just live with his wife and his other girl?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Not fair to who, baby?”

“It’s not fair that they get to just have James al by theirself.”

“No,” my mother said. “It’s not fair.”

“Why can’t they be the ones to go be with Raleigh?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” my mother said.

My mother sat beside me, leaving everything in my nine-year-old hands. I couldn’t bear the idea of Chaurisse having my father al to herself, cal ing him Daddy and living her life like she was in a Beverly Cleary book. Even then, I understood Raleigh to be a good person, an excel ent uncle, but an uncle wasn’t the same thing as a daddy. There wasn’t any such thing as a “new daddy.” You got one father in the beginning, and that was it.

Through the tinted glass of the Lincoln, the scene on the front porch looked foreboding, as though a storm had come to town like a sinister carnival. Raleigh had his camera aimed at Wil ie Mae, who laughed and tossed a handful of pea hul s at him. He pressed the shutter again and again.

(In 1988, when we buried Wil ie Mae, I wanted to put one of those pictures on her funeral program, but my mother said she wouldn’t have wanted to look so country. I have them stil , in a silver box, beside my gold earrings.)

“Wil we stil get to see Uncle Raleigh if he’s not my new daddy?”

My mother nodded. “Raleigh’s like us. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Let’s just keep it like it is,” I said. “Can we do that?”

MY MOTHER AND I got out of the car together. She held my hand as though I were a flower girl. As we approached the porch, Raleigh stood up, sending a shower of purple-tinted hul s to the floor, some landing on his just-shined shoes.

“We need to talk to you,” my mother said.

“Al right,” Raleigh said.

“In private,” my mother said.

Wil ie Mae took my arm with the same firm grip she’d used just the night before when snatching me away from her uncle. “Leave her here with me, Gwen. Don’t get her al tangled up in grown folks’ business.”

My mother let me go; my free hand fel to my side.

“There’s no privacy,” Wil ie Mae said. “Except in the car.”

Raleigh said, “I don’t want to talk in the car. I don’t want to get in that car.” He was getting antsy, shifting his weight around, causing his camera to bounce on his chest against his pretty yel ow tie.