When All Hell Breaks Loose (21 page)

“No. That’s actually a tradition that was popularized through slavery, so no, we’re not jumping the broom at the wedding, but we will use the broom as a symbol of shared responsibilities,” I say arrogantly. “This priestess will take us through a ritual that brings us closer to nature and our true selves.”

“The birds and the bees, huh?” He’s still got the grin on his face. “So you’ll have the different spirit gods to see you through. That’s good if you worship more than one god,” he says and places a forkful of eggs in his mouth. He’s trying to be funny.

“No, actually only one God will see us through,” I snap.

“What God?”

Now I know he’s challenging me. “Well”—I lean back in my chair—“not the God that separates my people and has them running around here thinking Baptists are better than Methodists, or that only committed church members go to heaven.
Or
that you have to die to get to heaven.” I got that from Jamal. I never look up at Ulan until I finish saying what I want to say. “Actually, it’s the same God who watches over pastors that claim to preach the word in clubs and hotel rooms in spite of their own shortcomings.” When I do eventually look at him, I have a cheese-eating grin on my face and he’s no longer smiling. Shreese starts shaking her head as if I’ve just bought a first-class ticket to hell.

“Well … God is a good God,” Ulan responds loudly. “And there is a heaven as real as the very chair you sit in. Its streets are paved
with gold and the angels sing sweet songs all day.” He’s speaking in his preacher’s voice. Word-singing again, like he does at church. Shreese has her eyes closed and her hand raised at the table. “Thank you Jesus!” She says joyously.

Louise and Pops have stopped eating. Pops still looks blunted as he smiles and looks at the pastor, shaking his head in agreement like he’s listening, but Louise looks like she’s in a courtroom observing a circus act. She looks totally stunned as she stares at Shreese.

Pastor Dixon is still on a roll. “Heaven! Is a good place!” he yells.

Pops is startled, but he continues to smile. I sit and look at Ulan and my sister like they have lost their minds. Ulan gets up from the table and wipes his mouth. “Mrs. Alston, I enjoyed the meal. Mr. Alston, I appreciate your hospitality, and Greg, man, I hope you have a successful engagement and wedding.”

He reaches out to shake my hand, but I refuse it. Shreese jumps up behind him without saying a word. Louise smiles and gets up from the table also. She walks them to the door, being as hospitable as she can. When she returns, I’m finishing up my eggs and bacon.

“Do you want some more breakfast, Greg?” Louise is looking at me as if nothing has happened. I stare back at her, and hesitate to mention what just happened at the table between me and Ulan. I’m mad that Ulan Dixon tried to show me up in front of my family, and I want to talk about it.

“No, I need to get back to my place and clean up.” I get up from the table and take my plate to the sink.

“Well, son, keep your head up. That minister didn’t mean any harm,” Pops says. “He’s just doing what he’s been led to do as a Christian man.”

I don’t say anything. I look at Louise and she looks like she could argue that point, but she doesn’t say anything either. I wish she would! I pat Pops on the back and tell them both I will see them later.

On the way to my place, I think about the past two days’ events. It’s enough to make a brother like me want to drive to Mexico and not return. Life should not have to be this complicated for anyone. Especially me.

C
hristmas is the worst time of year for a man. We hate to even think about it. We’re expected to go buy trees, put up lights, put together bikes, warm up the car, barbecue the meat, bring in the firewood, and on top of all that, purchase an expensive gift for the woman we love. That puts me between two rocks and a hard place with the women in my life. I love Adrian, so she gets a gift right off the bat. I love Louise because she’s my mother, but I’m not feeling like buying a big gift yet for her, and Shreese and I are still going head to head about her dating Pastor Dixon, so she ain’t getting a damn thing. I know Christmas is supposed to be celebrated in the spirit of giving because Jesus is the reason, but I have to keep it real. Shreese has gone over the deep end and all I think about is how disappointed she has made me.

Now that she’s gotten her hair cut and started wearing fancy pants suits, she has gotten besides herself. She and Pastor Dixon have been strutting around town claiming to bring the word of God to the masses. They even have a small thirty-minute segment on the public access channel, called
Praise with the People
. Pops told me she came by
last month selling prayer cloths for twenty bucks apiece. I’m glad I wasn’t there. I would have taken it and wiped her face while yelling in her ears, “WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!!” She’s even gone so far as to leave five- to ten-minute prayers on my answering machine at home and my voice mail at work. It’s a bit much when your own sister, who’s never dated a man in her life, ends up with a no-good pastor who just so happens to have a shitload of charisma.

But Adrian and I have been getting along fine. She introduced me to the maid of honor, who just so happened to be Carla Perrone, the longtime best friend of my fiancée and the woman whose name I saw on the piece of paper three weeks ago. I never mentioned that to Adrian. I figured she would tell me later. She said Carla just moved here from Washington, D.C., for a job relocation, and just in time for the wedding.

Carla is Greek-Italian. She actually looks like a light-skinned black woman, except her nose and thick eyebrows are clearly Mediterranean. She’s a buyer for a small furniture gallery that just opened up a store in Dallas. I like her. She’s the coolest woman I’ve ever met. She wears her hair cut above her shoulders and it’s real curly. Like a young Rita Moreno. The only drawbacks I see in Carla are that she smokes Black and Milds and she wears these straight-leg pants suits that make her look hard in the figure area. She doesn’t wear makeup, either. A definite plus from me. She’s smart like Adrian and they have a lot of the same mannerisms. Carla laughs like Adrian and they both have this left-hand movement they do when they are heavily involved in conversation.

Anyway, I think this woman is cool and a welcome change from the soulful lip-smacking sisters at the hair salon. I think Tim could really dig her, because she seems like his type. Or Eric, since he likes exotic-looking women. Carla is about as exotic as they get in Dallas. Most of the women you meet here are either black, white, or black and white. Since I only date black women, it’s no big deal for me, but Tim and Eric are always searching for women who look like they were zapped down to Earth from the planet Beautiful or something.

I remember Eric brought this gorgeous woman over one night. I won’t mention what race she was because I don’t want to embarrass
her or disrespect her culture. Her name was Sameelah. This woman was beautiful! I’m talking about so beautiful and fine that you knew no matter where you went with her, niggas were going to be player-hating. When I first saw her, all I wanted to do was clock Eric upside his head and steal her. You know, pull one of those South Dallas moves on ’im and trick him for his woman. I felt that way until she sat next to me for a while. This woman had an odor on her that would make a horse want to swat her with its tail. She was funky! Not musty-funky, but from-another-country funky. To this day, I can’t describe it, but it took me two weeks and thirty incense sticks just to air my apartment out. Eric said he never noticed her odor. Bullshit! You could smell this woman a mile and two houses away. I guess that’s the price you pay for a woman like that. A woman from the planet Beautiful or something! She ended up leaving Eric for someone of her own ethnicity, which was good because after a while, Phil started making smart remarks about her body odor. Eric wasn’t too upset about her leaving although he did mope around for two days.

So maybe I will try to hook Carla and Eric up. I don’t see nothing wrong with it, and who could it hurt?

Louise called me this morning. She’s coming over to wrap gifts she bought for Pops and Shreese. She said she wrapped mine last night and put it under the tree. She should be over any minute now. I still haven’t washed my dishes from three days ago. I hope she doesn’t say anything. Actually, I hope she does because it will show that she cares. Every now and then, she acts like my mother, and it makes me feel important. I like having her around, but I still feel uncomfortable showing it. As I take the wrapping tape out of one of the boxes in my hall closet, the doorbell rings.

When I open the door, Louise is standing there with two large shopping sacks.

“Go to my car and get those boxes for me, Greg.” She’s out of breath. I slide on my running shoes and go retrieve the boxes. When I come back, she’s standing in my kitchen running water over my dishes and placing them in the dishwasher.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Well, it looks like you think you don’t have to, either. These dishes look three days old.”

How’d she know that? See, mothers know everything. Louise has her moments when she is the exact kind of mother I know I missed having all those years.

Once she gets the dishes loaded and turns on the dishwasher, she joins me in the living room.

“Well now”—she looks around—“you have it nice and cozy in here with the fireplace going.”

“Yeah, it’s supposed to get down to the forties tonight.”

She looks at me and smiles. This is our first opportunity to spend time alone since she’s been here. “Do you want some tea or coffee?” I ask.

“What kind of tea do you have?” she asks in her raspy voice.

“You have a choice between cinnamon apple spice tea and spearmint tea.”

“I’ll have some spearmint tea, then.”

I get up and go put some hot water on the stove.

“Where’s Adrian?”

“Gone with one of her friends to order furniture for the house.”

“Why didn’t you go? It’s your house, too.”

I laugh a little. “Because I will be paying for the house, so the least I can do is let her decorate it.”

“Boy, you don’t mean that. You should hang out with Adrian in all environments. You may learn something new about her.”

“We do go to different functions together when we can. Besides, decorating is not my thing.”

“You sound like your daddy.” She laughs. “He didn’t do any decorating or coordinating for the house on Rivermoon. I chose the house, he signed the papers. I found the carpet, he had it installed. I bought curtains and furniture, and he picked the kind of toilet paper we would use.” She laughs again. “Adolphus just made sure everything was there and in place when I brought you and Shreese to your new home.”

I stand in the kitchen silently listening to her weave stories I never heard before. Louise is having a moment and I don’t want to disturb
her. “And the first time he had to mow the yard, I thought I was going to die laughing. Child, your father and his brother Bennie had went out and bought this modern gas lawn mower. Back then, a gas mower was a luxury for black folks. Your daddy thought he had moved up in the world buying that thing. I guess they thought they were going to have the whole yard finished in an hour. So, they wait until the heat of the day is at its peak and get out there and start mowing.”

She’s laughing and this time, I laugh with her.

She continues. “Bennie fell out first. I guess that heat got to him because he hit the ground like I don’t know what! Choppy ’nem from across the street came over and helped carry him in. I stayed inside trying to get him to come to, while your father went out to finish. About ten minutes later, Choppy was at the door again with Adolphus across his shoulders!”

“Who is Choppy?” I ask.

“Oh, he was Ms. Thompson’s boy from across the street. I can’t believe you don’t remember big Choppy. He was a big boy for his age. He was twelve or thirteen and stood all of six feet. He was slow in the head and Ms. Thompson kept him at home all day. He died of a brain tumor not long after you started school, but that summer before, you two used to play together.”

“I don’t remember him at all,” I say solemnly as I cut some lemon slices and put them in the mugs. “You know Ms. Thompson died about five years ago.”

“Yeah, your daddy sent me one of the programs. She was a good woman. She kept you and Shreese a lot when we would go to late-night gigs.”

“I remember some of those overnight trips.” I make the tea and sweeten it with honey. I take the mugs of tea into the living room and set them on the coffee table.

“So, what did you buy Pops and Shreese?”

“Oh, nothing. Just some things I think they would enjoy for a long time.” She sips her tea. “Gregory Alston! This is the best tea I’ve had in a long time. Tastes like the tea Bennie used to make for me when I would go sing.”

“He taught me what I know.” I smile. I’m enjoying being with my mother. It’s hard referring to her as my mother, but now it feels appropriate.

“Your Uncle Bennie is something else. I don’t think I ever saw him and Adolphus fight or argue or nothing.”

“They’re still the same.”

“Adolphus told me that Aretha is expecting another baby. Did Bennie Junior ever settle down?”

I think about B.J. and the last conversation we had. “He’s trying,” I say in his defense.

“I sure hope so. Bennie Junior was always a floating child to me. He never stayed anywhere long and was hardheaded. Mm-mn, that boy was hardheaded. You and him couldn’t stay away from trouble when you were together.

“I know.” I laugh.

“I’ll never forget when he made you stand in the toilet. You were about three and he had to have been five. We were visiting for the summer and Linda and I had come in from shopping. There you were, standing in the toilet, crying your heart out. When I asked you what you were doing you said Bennie Junior told you that if you stood in the toilet and counted to three hundred, Santa Claus would come to your house early.” She breaks out in her hoarse laughter.

I smile, vaguely remembering the incident.