Crave (8 page)

Granddaddy Frank and Grandma Mary exited the door as Momma parked. I beamed as they opened the car door, as their outstretched hands welcomed us. Grandma Mary was a small woman, with skin as rich as coffee. She wore curls that hugged her head tightly and thin-rimmed glasses that sat snuggly on the balls of her cheeks. I stood eye to eye with her as she embraced me. Her tears ran down my cheeks. She wore a dress that hugged her waist and swung side to side as she walked. The smell of biscuits wafted through the open door of the house. I wrapped my arms around her, pressed my cheek against her face, and inhaled her aroma and warmth.

Granddaddy Frank was a tall man, with eyes the color of water over moss. His hair was a red clay hue. It looked as if it would run down his cheek with each drip of sweat. He had a smile that stretched across his mouth. I strained my neck to look up at him. With one fell swoop, he lifted me over his head, looked right into my eyes and said, “That's Carl's girl, all right.” In that moment, I felt as full as if I had bitten into the best part of me and found it to be as juicy as a navel orange.

Once we entered the house, I scanned the living room, searching for Carl. No face resembled the father I had constructed in my mind. A small commotion was brewing in the living room where my new cousins and uncle sat. They all wore the same smiles as Granddaddy Frank, large and long across the face. There was Uncle Frank's daughter, Tiffany. She was about two years younger than me. She didn't wear the same hunger I wore, sitting under her daddy's arm. Then there was Bay-Bay, a tall boy of thirteen and Ronnie, the oldest of Uncle Frank's children. He and my brothers immediately became engrossed in a handshake that sent them laughing to the floor.

Uncle Frank loudly greeted us. He offered each of us a hand and got up to hug Momma tightly. I loved his laugh, which sounded to me like a daddy's laugh, one that started at the toes and burned in the belly. Grandma Mary and Granddaddy Frank began pulling small wooden chairs that looked as if they'd been cut from the
wood of trees in their backyard. As Momma took a seat, Bay-Bay and Tiffany called me, Champ, Dathan, Mary, and Tom-Tom to the back room. The back room was the only other room in the house, and there were no light fixtures on the ceilings in either. Both rooms were lit by a small lamp Bay-Bay carried from the front of the house to the back. Once we settled into the room, Bay-Bay lit a candle and our shadows bounced off of the walls. In one corner, a small bed sat with a quilt sprawled across it. Next to the door was a vanity that held Grandma Mary's toiletries.

Against the wall sat a chest of drawers covered in black and white pictures. I wanted to go through them and find the father that had only existed in my dreams, but I feared that would be too much, too fast. Bay-Bay and Ronnie decided we should play Duck-Duck-Goose, so I sat next to my new cousin and waited for the other one to tap me or one of my siblings on the head. We pursued each other mercilessly, sometimes not even waiting to be tapped before we shot from our seats and began chasing. In less than an hour, we'd tired ourselves and sprawled our bodies across the floor, touching heads, our feet facing the walls, making our own Carter star. It felt so right there, amongst family members that looked like the other half of me. I now knew where my light eyes came from and that my skin was redder than my siblings, not because I was the milkman's baby as Champ had often claimed, but because I was Carl's baby and I had proof in my cousins' faces.

It wasn't lost on me that I was in the same dimly lit room where my father had slept. I may have even been in the exact spot where he had lain when he was twelve years old. I wanted to pull Grandma Mary to the side and ask where my daddy was. I wanted the answers that my dreams could never offer, but I was afraid she'd order me away because I was prying, afraid she would see through my ruse and realize I was on a mission to place my real father in my reality. As hopeful as I was about my happy ending, I had a feeling they were protecting him from something. I just couldn't bring myself to believe that something was me.

I watched and I waited until I had the perfect opportunity to pounce. We'd just finished a round of penny pitching when Grandma Mary walked in the room with an apron filled with biscuits. She held them close to her stomach, the warmth of her tucked in each mound. The biscuits were smaller than Momma's and varied in shape, but there was no mistaking the soft aroma that tickled my nose. She went to each child in the room and waited while he or she picked the perfect biscuit for him or her. Then, she came to me. Maybe I was drunk from the smell of biscuits, or the heat radiating from the small balls had given me a sense of security I hadn't felt before. I didn't know how or why, but I knew it was time to ask for what was rightfully mine.

“Grandma Mary, can I call you that?” I asked even though I'd always called her that in my mind.

“You can call me that or just Grandma, baby.”

“I like that, Grandma,” I said, quickly trying out the word in my mouth. I then picked the smallest biscuit left in her apron, hoping she'd notice I wasn't greedy, that I only wanted a little bit. Then I asked, quickly before my mind altered my words, “Where is my father?”

Her lips tightened. She blinked, a long blink, not long enough to be considered a roll, but longer than any blink should ever be. Whatever courage I'd had disappeared. While the others positioned themselves for the next game, I stood in front of her, waiting for her smile to curl into a frown. But, that moment did not come. She just looked into my eyes as I held, tightly, the biscuit I had chosen. I felt the heat moving from inside of the bread into my palms. I dared not bite into the dough. She hadn't given permission.

Grandma Mary stared at me through melancholy eyes. She patted my shoulder, shook her head from side to side and punctuated each pat with an “Um, um, um.” I could tell she felt for me, felt my longing for my father, but I also felt a wall immediately erected, which guarded her from my needing. She took my hand into hers, the same hand that held the biscuit, and walked me over to the dresser that was covered in pictures. I expected her to pick
one of the larger frames filled with smiling people, but she opened the top drawer, pushed aside a pile of underwear, and pulled out a picture as small as a stamp. She held it to her chest and looked down with a hunger I was familiar with. She then looked at me, her eyes softening under the deep grooves of her skin.

“You ever seen your daddy before?” she asked.

I shook my head no.

“You wanna see him?” I nodded, forcing myself not to grab the picture from her. With one hand gingerly placed on the other, she held the picture in front of me. I wanted to hold it close to my face, and stare eye to eye with my father, just as I had when I searched for him in the mirror. Instead, I held her hands in mine and looked down at the man staring back at me.

He was darker than I had imagined. His shoulders were slightly slumped and his chest looked as if it were caving in. I could see the thin outline of his arms under his green and orange striped shirt. His hairline was faint enough to be considered nonexistent. His eyes were dark like a melted Hershey bar and surrounded by a reddish tint that made him look as if sleep had eluded him for years. His nose resembled my own, starting as a narrow line between his eyes, but opening to an anchor that sat heavily in the middle of his face. His lips were smooth and one shade darker than the rest of him. They weren't curled into a smile or turned into a frown. They were muted, a straight line that went from one side of his face to the other. I tried to read his eyes, tried to find something in them that showed they'd never held the emptiness Momma said she had seen when he'd beat her, when he used food money for beer, but there was nothing there for me.

Grandma Mary looked at me as I studied the picture. I wanted to ask if I could keep it, so I could remember him, but when I saw tears in her eyes, I knew that wasn't the right thing to ask. Without her saying, I could tell that was the only piece of him she had left.

“Where is he?” I asked. “Don't you know where he is?” She offered a smile and patted me on the head.

“I don't know, baby. I haven't seen him in a while.”

“But where was he last? Is he still in Virginia?”

A look of apprehension shot across her face.

“No, I think he's in Maryland. Probably in Baltimore,” she said.

“Why is he there? Is he ever coming back? Does he have a phone number?” I couldn't stop the barrage of questions.

“I don't know, baby. Don't you want to eat your biscuit and go and play with the other kids?” she asked, gently ushering me toward the crowd.

I did not want to play or talk with the other kids. I did not want to eat my biscuit. I wanted to know where my father was. This I wanted to scream, but I couldn't say what I felt. By the silent sadness that turned the edges of her eyes down, I knew she had given all she could. A glimpse, a nibble of him would have to be enough.

“Go on and play, Laurie,” she said. “Your cousins are going to miss you when you're gone.” With a slight pop on my backside, she sent me over to the other kids in the room. I placed my biscuit on the dresser and began playing as hard as I could. I screamed with all of my might when we were in hot pursuit of one another and I laughed hardest, longest, and loudest, when I had to pee in a stew pot because I was afraid of going to the outhouse. I was in constant motion because I feared quiet.

We romped around the room late into the night. Just as I began to think we'd be making a pallet on the floor, Grandma Mary came into the room. “Come on y'all. Your momma's ready to go,” she sang. We replied with groans and protests, but I feared going more than anyone could understand. We gathered in the living room and said our goodbyes. Tiffany and I hugged, promising we'd play together again. Bay-Bay, Ronnie, and my brothers finished the handshake they'd started earlier in the night. I hugged Granddaddy Frank and thanked him for having us. Grandma Mary emerged from the back room with my biscuit in hand.

“Laurie, you forgot your biscuit. You should take it with you. You might get hungry on the ride home,” she said as she wrapped it in a paper bag.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said as I moved toward her. She still smelled like biscuits, but that warmth I inhaled earlier had become cool between us. We were suffering the same pain, mourning the same absence, so I hugged her anyway.

“Bye, Grandma Mary and Granddaddy Frank. I can't wait to see y'all again,” I said.

“Oh, we'll see each other soon,” she said. “I'm going to make sure of it.”

I did not see her again until I was thirty years old. Even then we wore the same pain despite the living that hung between those years.

On the ride home, all of the other kids immediately fell asleep. As Momma drove the hour-long ride, I'm certain she thought I was asleep too. But, I was awake and my mind was going places it had never been before. The biscuit wedged in between my leg and the door remained warm, Grandma Mary's heat radiating from it. Eating it now wasn't an option. As long as I had it, I had proof I had a grandma and a granddaddy who loved me. If I had them, then I also had a daddy.

But now, I had a face, one that didn't fit into the dream world where my daddy had recently lived. The man in that picture, he was not there, nor was he anywhere. Probably Baltimore. Probably not. For all those nights I'd hung on the phone waiting for the ringing to stop or for the busy signal to cease its incessant beep, they knew as much as I knew. Or did they know more? I couldn't be certain.

I couldn't trust anyone anymore, but what I could trust were my dreams, the realities born, raised, and matured in my mind, so I made a decision. My daddy would remain there, where he was safe, where I had control. And this other man, this missing ingredient, he would remain nowhere.

UNNECESSARY ADDITIVES
UNNECESSARY ADDITIVES

Black Oak
Black Oak

My first memories of Pee Wee don't include his age or information about how he met Momma. I just remember he was tall. With dark skin and coarse, black hair that made his face coppery by comparison, he seemed nice, doling out candies and calling me Minnie Mouse as he patted my puffy ponytails. I never had the illusion that Pee Wee was my daddy. I knew my brothers and I belonged only to Momma, but from a distance, I watched the way he walked, with his back upright and tall, like an ironing board. I watched the way he ate, with a ferocity that made food disappear. And, I watched the way he touched Momma, sometimes softly palming the small of her back or holding her hand when they walked together. I loved him for the way he loved her even though he could never be my daddy.

One of the things I appreciated most about Pee Wee was the disappearance of hunger when he was around. I remember him and Momma tromping into the house, grocery bags under each arm. He wore a smile that meant there was a Hershey bar hidden in the bottom of the bag just for me. I'd watch, expectantly, as he and Momma unpacked food and loaded cupboards until they looked as if they would burst from fullness. Then I'd receive my treat, a blob of chocolaty sweetness I swished back and forth from cheek to teeth to tongue until my mouth became a chocolate cavern.

Pee Wee babysat us when Momma went to work. Most days consisted of a visit to “Tom and Jerry” land, a lunch comprised of a thick slab of bologna, a square chunk of cheese, two slices of bread, and a glass of juice, which left us with red mustaches on our faces that we licked like cherry lollipops well into the day. Then we'd play together, outside or in the house; it didn't matter as long as we were running, jumping, and screaming. We weren't lucky enough to have our own bikes, so we hopped on our neighbors', Ryan and Tyler's, which were bikes pieced together out of parts from the junkyard.

My brothers and I often got into little skirmishes when we played with Ryan and Tyler, the Wozniak boys. The Wozniak boys were rough. They ran up and down Victory Boulevard, shirtless, and wearing shorts that formerly were pants. Their skin was so white I could see veins running along their chests and up their necks. And their necks were a dingy gray, with dirt that sometimes resembled paint splotches. Their teeth were a yellowish brown, as if the boys had been sipping coffee, even though they were only eight and ten.

What intrigued me about them was they were white, but they were as poor as we were, maybe poorer, and they looked nothing like the well-dressed kids I adored on
Eight Is Enough
. I remember Ryan and Tyler scrounging in our backyard, combing through trashcans for treasures Momma may have unknowingly discarded. It wasn't unusual to see Ryan wearing the same holey, butter-cookie shoes Momma had thrown out because they were too mangled for Champ to wear.

When I was four, Champ sold me to Ryan for a raw, peeled potato. All I had to do was let him grind on me for ten seconds, and Champ would split the booty with me. The potato was brown and tattooed in lines of dirt from Ryan's hands. Tyler stood partially hidden, snickering against the side of the house. I didn't think it was a good trade, the potato for myself, but Champ and I were hungry and dinnertime seemed years away. Even with all of the dirt covering the potato's flesh, it looked tasty. And I'd never eaten a potato like an apple before, so I imagined the juicy crunch would be foreign, refreshing, and worth what I was giving.

So, I let Ryan do the nasty to me while we leaned against the side of the house. His hands were placed on both sides of my head, as he stared straight at the wall. His breath smelled musty as it ricocheted from the siding to my nose. His lips twisted into a grimace as he thrust his pelvis into my stomach, without any specific rhythm or purpose. It was just pulsing, pushing for the sake of itself. I looked past Ryan, past Champ, and past the potato to the interstate that ran in front of my house. I saw the cars whizzing by to worlds I
often imagined. I then looked at the big black oak hovering over me, and wondered what it felt like never to be wanting, to be so big, so grand, so free, waving in the wind.

Champ counted, “One, two, three . . . ,” slowly and melodically. After he reached ten, Ryan pushed off of me and ran away with
our
dirty potato. Champ tried to chase him, but Ryan was too fast. After making his way to his bike, which squeaked as he mounted it, Ryan quickly took off. Champ then ran back to me out of breath.

“Man, you should have held him,” he said.

“I know,” I squeaked. “Next time, I will.”

“Don't worry. I'm going to catch him and beat him up,” he replied.

Champ then grabbed a hold of my arm and we walked hand-in-hand back to the front of our house. Later that day, all had been forgiven. We picked right back up with Ryan and Tyler where we had left our friendship, running, playing, and laughing.

One sunny afternoon, I'd been playing hopscotch by myself while Champ, Dathan, Ryan, and Tyler were wrestling, imitating NWA wrestlers. Champ was Dusty Rhodes and Ryan was Ric Flair. Dathan and Tyler were the managers, the fans, and the referees. In the middle of one of their toughest matches, where Champ had Ryan in a headlock and Tyler was positioning himself for a sneak attack on Dathan, Pee Wee came barreling down the stairs and stood tall in the middle of the doorway. Normally, his voice wafted down the stairs. I couldn't imagine what he wanted one of us to do that he couldn't have done for himself when he'd gotten up, but I was ready to comply, hoping there'd be a chocolaty treat at the end of his request.

“Laurie,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

“I need you to come upstairs for me right quick.”

“You need Dathan and Champ, too?” I asked.

“No, just you,” and he quickly went back up the stairs, taking two steps at a time.

When I entered the living room, with only a loveseat, television, and my little sister's crib, I expected to see him sitting there
with his long legs hanging over the side. I was startled to find he was behind me, closing and locking the door.

Pee Wee walked over to the chair. His feet, dragging along the floor, sounded like the swish of the broom. He sat on the loveseat and told me to go into Momma's room and get her brush. I quickly moved, skipping into the room, hoping he'd reward me with a glass of juice afterward. I was already planning to rub my liquidy treat into Champ and Dathan's faces as one skip after another carried me into Momma's room.

I looked for the brush on the dresser, but it wasn't there. Then, I went over to the nightstand because I thought that it had fallen on the side of the bed, but it wasn't there either. Then, I remembered I was watching Momma brush her hair in the bathroom before she'd gone to work that day, so I turned and bolted for the door, but there Pee Wee stood between me and the open space in the living room. For some reason, he was bigger than I remembered, as if he'd grown ten feet from the time I left him in the living room to that moment when he was standing between me and the door. His face was different too, darker, and his eyebrows were so close they could have been kissing. I stopped, mid-sprint and said, “Excuse me, Pee Wee. I think the brush is in the bathroom.” He didn't move.

“Excuse me, Mr. Pee Wee,” I said again and attempted to step around him. I flinched, as he sharply dropped to his knees.

“Laurie, are you scared of me?” he asked. Normally, I would have said “no,” because Momma would have been there to save me if Pee Wee or anybody tried to hurt me, but this time, I wasn't sure of what to say. I'd always been able to joke with him and he often laughed whenever I said something Momma considered grown, but this wasn't Pee Wee kneeling in front of me. This was a dark cloud of a man that could hurt me because Momma was at work and Champ and Dathan were outside. Since I was on my own, I replied with a nod of my head.

“Do you think that I'd ever hurt you?” A sharp smile appeared on his face, but his eyebrows were still crowded at his forehead.

I nodded again. The smile then faded.

“You're right,” he said. “I would. Do you love your momma and your brothers and sister?” he asked.

I nodded again.

“Then you better do exactly what I say and if you tell anybody, I'm gonna kill them all and then I'm gonna kill you. You understand, Laurie?”

I did understand. I'd never known of anybody being killed before. Other than Uncle Junie dying of Leukemia in 1980, I'd never seen a dead body. I didn't know Uncle Junie was dead until at his funeral I yelled for him to get up and stop acting like he was asleep and Momma slapped me hard across the side of my face. Only then had I seen what death looked like, drenched in pain and sadness. As I stared at my uncle in that casket, I was glad I had never told what Pee Wee was doing.

“Laurie,” he said, “I want you to lay on this bed and be quiet. Don't say nothing and don't you cry. Just lay here and I'm going to lay on top of you. You hear me?” I nodded again.

I was actually relieved all I had to do was let Pee Wee “do-the-nasty” to me like Ryan had. With Ryan, I'd never gotten the satisfaction of sinking my teeth into the dirty flesh of the potato, but at least I'd have my family if I let Pee Wee do what he wanted. So, he grabbed me by my wrist and led me to the bed. I wasn't even afraid, even though I didn't have Champ to count down from ten for me.

“Lay down,” he said as I plopped my torso onto the bed and turned my head toward the open window.

“Open your legs.”

I moved my right leg sharply to the edge of the bed as if I were opening a pair of scissors.

“Move your hands off your chest.”

I quickly pulled them close to my sides and grabbed my shorts. Pee Wee then grabbed my shorts and underwear in one fist and pulled them down to my ankles. The heat contained in the fabric radiated across my skin. I was confused; “doing the nasty” had never required the removal of clothing, especially underwear. I
didn't know what Pee Wee was planning on doing, but I wanted so badly to tell him he was doing it wrong.

The house went silent and I could only hear the hum of the refrigerator cycling on and off in the kitchen. Pee Wee then laid his body on top of mine. The heat of his skin made me feel sticky. If I turned my left foot inward, I could feel the joint clinking in his right knee. He was still for a moment and then began deeply inhaling and exhaling as his stomach muscles pressed into my chest. He moved his hand down and began rubbing on something; I was almost certain it was his penis or “dookey” as Champ and I often called it. I smelled the lotion Momma always rubbed on us after we took a bath and wondered why he was rubbing it
there
. Momma had always told me and Champ never to put anything on our private areas because it could make my “biscuit” and Champ's “dookey” sick. I began to wonder why she'd never told Pee Wee that.

Pee Wee then touched me and my body went into a spasm. No matter how many times I'd “done the nasty” with Ryan and Tyler, no one had ever touched that part of me. Pee Wee's fingers felt like ice and I became happy my shorts and underwear were around my ankles because my feet were cold. Then, I felt something hot, even harder than his fingers pressing against me, my private spot, my space. His stomach muscles contracted. With a grunt from his chest he forced pressure into me. My legs attempted to snap shut, but met the resistance of his outer thighs.

His rhythm made my body flinch. With each down beat, each pull, I knew the stinging, burning, pressure that would follow. Unlike Ryan, Pee Wee seemed to have a purpose for his pulsing, his pushing and each thrust cut a piece of me out of me. I wanted to scream, to release the pressure and the heat from between my legs into a howl, but I couldn't; my family's life depended on me doing exactly what he told me to do. So, I bit hard the inside of my lip and tasted blood running through me.

I turned my head to the window, then back toward Pee Wee. All I could see was his neck and the dark lines that ran across it. Then I looked down at my belly, my once round belly I had relished
on nights when Momma cooked biscuits from scratch and navy beans. I found it to be flat, empty.

My fingers stiffly clenched my sides, grabbing onto skin with each thrust and releasing with each retraction. Then, I lifted my head from the bed, wanting to see what was causing so much pain—hoping I could find a remedy if I could see what the problem was. Then I saw him, disappearing into me. I'd only seen a penis when Momma made Champ, Dathan, and me take baths together in order to conserve water, but I'd never seen anything as dark and ugly as what was going in and out of me. I worried it would turn the bottom half of me black and everybody would know how bad of a girl I was.

I was too afraid to cry tears, so I cried in my mind. I went back to a time when my cousin Tedren had taken me to a mall and decided to go up the escalators instead of the stairs. Somehow, I separated from her, but I saw myself as I stood, afraid of the moving stairs while she waited for me at the top. I, at the bottom, was too afraid to take that first step. I remember her looking down at me, clapping her hands, telling me it was safe. But all I could see were those silver, moving stairs swallowing me whole. So, I stood there and cried out with every ounce of fire I had until she came back down, picked me up, and took me safely up the stairs. Those tears stained my cheeks long after we left the mall, so I had no doubt there were enough to spare for the tears I could not cry while Pee Wee was on top of me.

Pee Wee's rhythm began to quicken and his breathing turned from intermittent grunts to long huffs every few seconds. Soon after, I went numb, unable to feel my hands, my feet, and anything in between. Suddenly, he lay completely limp on me and the feeling slowly returned to my body. I felt his sweat, his heat, latent against the inside of my thigh. He rolled off of me like a leech swollen with blood and lay flat on his back. Pee Wee then turned his eyes to me and looked right into mine. “Don't forget what I told you,” he said, “If you don't want your Momma dead, then you better not tell anybody.”