Everyday People (20 page)

“Let's wait a little while on that,” she'd say, “okay?”

Or “I know.”

Or “You don't quit, I'll tell you that.”

Or just “Good night, Chris.”

He needed her. Not me, she thought, just someone.

Maybe he'd let it slide and not call tonight. It was a wish, and immediately she took it back. Sometimes she really feared she was heartless, that she didn't like people in general, even herself. Sometimes she thought she was crazy. She knew it wasn't true, it was just her life being so out of control.

Upstairs, she locked the door behind her. The apartment was quiet and gray with the lights off. Her mother was supposed to be home.

She'd left a message on the machine. “Sorry, baby. We've got someone coming in on the Lifeflight so I'm going to have to stay late. Save the fish for tomorrow, okay?”

“Right,” Vanessa said, then stood there looking at the cupboard, thinking there was never anything good to eat. Nothing in the fridge either. Soup, there was always soup. She hated cooking for herself. She imagined Miss Fisk eating silently in her tidy kitchen, reusing her teabag from lunch, washing and drying the dishes as soon as she finished. Then what?

She nuked Rashaan's turkey and vegetables, opened a new jar of the plums he loved. She'd make something for herself later. Or not. All of a sudden she wasn't hungry.

She brought her books in and buckled Rashaan into his high chair, stirred the turkey and tested it with her pinkie. Rashaan rubbed his bib over his face. When he wouldn't quit she had to hold it down to feed him, and still it was a mess. “So much for studying,” she said.

Outside, the sun was going down, and she heard the chimes of Tony's truck, the programmed, mechanical music drifting up from the street. It seemed too cold, the season over, but Tony liked to surprise them; once he even came the day of the Super Bowl, wearing a Steeler jersey and handing out free Clark bars. She'd been hearing his bells her entire life. “Candyman!” they used to shout, and run for their mothers, begging change. Now she didn't even go to the window, just listened to him cruise down the block, the rubber-coated spoon poised for Rashaan to open his lips.

Cleaning up, she wondered why she was so tired today. It was Miss Fisk mentioning her father again, that was all. Everything else had gone well. Work was work. Rashaan had been good. The haddock she didn't really care about;
her mother always had to work late. It was an emergency room, there were going to be emergencies.

When Miss Fisk said he'd come from Virginia, that his father was a dentist, Vanessa almost wanted to believe it. She was ready to hear anything, everything about him. She knew so little that every scrap was precious. She stitched the smallest offhand remarks of her mother's into a man, and still he was nothing like the Marine smiling down from the picture, young and handsome, almost dead already. Every time Miss Fisk said “your father,” Vanessa's heart jumped as if she might hear a deep secret. Miss Fisk could have told her anything—that he drank, that he danced beautifully, that he carried her on his shoulders to church—and Vanessa would have no way of checking it, would have to add it to her stash of clues on faith, at her own risk.

Why didn't her mother want to talk about him? Would she be like this with Chris when Rashaan needed to know everything?

No. She hoped not. She didn't blame her mother for her father not being there, at least she didn't think so. She'd always felt it was someone's fault, and whose could it be—the government's? His own? Her mother had nothing to do with it. You couldn't stop a man from doing something stupid, Chris had taught her that much.

Suddenly she was afraid that this was exactly what her mother worried about, and that she had
let
her worry about it, let it hurt her all these years. She had to tell her mother she understood, maybe then it would be easier to talk about him.

She opened her notebook and wrote the date, cracked and flattened the beat-up paperback she was reading against the table. Professor Shelby was taking them way back, back to Africa and tribal life and the Door of No Return, making them remember the complex and delicate cultures American slavery told them to forget. It wasn't all gone, he lectured them; it was too strong to rub out. Every generation had its griots, every set of young people dug deeper, exposed the hidden connections between African messenger dances and slave chants bearing coded news, the long line of signing and signifying running down through Jack Johnson and Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway and Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, into Satchel Paige and John Lee Hooker and Chester Himes and Leroi Jones and James Brown, into Charles Mingus and Muhammed Ali and Bob Marley and Nikki Giovanni and Gil Scott-Heron and Ishmael Reed, into George Clinton and Lucille Clifton and Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy and Shaquille O'Neal, and all the way up to the present. “Turn on your radio,” he said, “and you will hear the voices of Africa.”

The quiz tomorrow was on that legacy and the ways people kept it alive, from the Middle Passage on. Professor Shelby would give them five names from their reading and they would have to say how the five fit into the tradition. Vanessa had gotten a sixty on her first quiz, so she needed a hundred, and as she read down the page, she stopped each time a new name appeared and added it to the long column in her notebook, glancing into the living room to make sure Rashaan was okay.

She'd only finished three pages when the phone rang. Chris, she thought, and cursed herself for not leaving the machine on. She let it ring four times before picking up.

“We're done here,” her mother said. “I should be home in ten minutes. Did you get something?”

“Just for Rashaan,” she admitted.

“I'll pick something up, how would that be?”

“Fine.”

“Is everything all right?”

“I'm just tired,” she lied, and then when she'd hung up, she really was exhausted. In the other room, Rashaan was slapping the glass of the TV set, and she went in and held him on the couch until she felt better.

Did she really want Chris to call? No, she didn't think so. It was everything—work and school and Miss Fisk. Her father. The usual stuff.

She had reading to do, and she got up and brought the book back to the couch, then sat there with Rashaan on her lap and skimmed the pages. Countee Cullen, Jayne Cortez, Haki Madhubuti. There was only so much she could remember, so she retrieved her notebook from the table and started marking down names.

Her mother brought home Arby's, a Beef 'n' Cheddar and a Big Beef. She gave Vanessa her choice.

“I don't care.”

“Just choose one,” her mother said, impatient with her. “It's not a big deal.” She sighed as if apologizing. “I got those spicy fries you like.”

“Thanks.” Vanessa took the Big Beef and unwrapped
it at the table, squeezed on some Horsey Sauce. Her mother sat down and ate beside her, quiet.

“Work that bad?”

Her mother just nodded, chewing. She put her sandwich down and rubbed her forehead with her fingertips, her eyes closed. “The Lifeflight was this little girl, couldn't have been older than Rashaan.”

“She all right?”

“She'll live. There were six people in the van, and she was the only one. The rest of them …” She shook her head. “I don't know. It's been a bad week. I keep thinking it's going to get better.”

“I know,” Vanessa said.

“How about you, are you all right?”

“I'm just worried about Miss Fisk.” She told her about the detergent in the fridge and what she'd said about her father.

“I don't know who she's thinking of,” her mother said. Vanessa waited for her to go on, but she took a bite of fries and wiped her fingers with a paper napkin and looked off across the living room.

“Where was Daddy's father from?”

“Youngstown, you know that. Otherwise she's fine though? She understands what you're saying to her?”

“She seems to. It's only when she starts telling stories.”

“She's old,” her mother said, and shrugged, as if that explained it, and again Vanessa felt the conversation straying, sensed her mother's reluctance like an invisible fence, an unspoken disagreement between them.

“What was Mr. Fisk like?”

“Oh God.” Her mother laughed and had to cover her mouth with a hand. “Short! He was shorter than she is now and he always wore a blue suit, didn't matter what time of year it was. They had a Lincoln the exact same color, he ordered it special. You'd see him riding her around Sunday, both of them dressed to meet Jesus.” She shook her head. “Must be twenty years now.”

The number stopped her, faded away to nothing between them. Longer than your father. Neither of them had to say it.

“Do you still miss Daddy?” Vanessa asked.

Her mother looked up from her sandwich and fixed her grimly, as if giving Vanessa a chance to take it back.

“You've been thinking about him. I thought you've been quiet lately. That's usually what it is.”

“Not usually,” Vanessa said. “Just lately. I don't know why.”

“I know why. It's Chris.”

“Not all of it. I was thinking earlier I wanted to tell you I don't blame you. For him not being around.”

“That's generous of you,” her mother joked.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do, and thank you. That's not what all this is about, is it?”

“Yes,” Vanessa said, unsure now.

“Nessie.” She looked at her flatly, that worn-out, sick-of-working-double-shifts look full of her mother's truth. “I wish he were around too, but you know what? After twenty years, I'm not holding my breath. It's me and you and
Shaanie, and I think we're doing pretty well for ourselves.” She put down her Arby's like it disgusted her. “I'm sorry, but I can't work any harder than I already am.”

“I know,” Vanessa said, “I didn't mean that,” but it was too late to apologize. Her mother was up, shoving her crumpled foil in the garbage.

“Yes, I miss him. Of course I miss him.” She stopped, her head turned to one side, hands out in front of her as if to calm someone else down. She came over and stood behind Vanessa, her strong fingers squeezing her shoulders, and kissed the top of her head. “I'm glad you miss him too. I don't mean to get upset. Let me go take a shower and relax for a minute, then I'll watch Rashaan so you can do your homework.”

Vanessa wanted to say she didn't have to, but she knew not to argue at this point, to just let her go. In a minute the water came on, the door of the shower rolled shut with a thump. Rashaan gnawed on his fries. She picked at her sandwich, then threw it away too (the Horsey Sauce was too strong, oddly metallic). She stood at the sink looking at the tap, and a strange urge took her—to turn it on so her mother's water would be freezing. Not just once, but jamming the gearshift of the tap back and forth so the pipes shook with each blast, her mother blinded by her shampoo, swearing and shouting for her to stop, banging the walls of the stall.

She didn't, but the idea was there, and it worried her. Why was she so angry? It was like Rashaan and his tantrums, blown over in a minute, but when he was swinging his little fists at her, his hate was pure and she was someone alien.

She wasn't the one being childish, she thought. All she'd done was ask a question.

Her mother was extra nice the rest of the night, getting Rashaan into his jammies and reading him his story. Vanessa could hear her from the living room. “Are
you
my mother?” It was a favorite of Rashaan's, a lost baby bird going to all the other animals of the barnyard—the goose, the horse, the pig. “No,
I
am not your mother,” her mother said, doing the cow in a goofy cartoon voice, and Vanessa thought that, yes, that refusal to answer was her mother exactly. Why had she thought she would change?

It was too late to make up tonight, and they stayed out of each other's way. Vanessa didn't get to bed till eleven, the page crowded with names. In the morning, her mother made eggs—a peace offering—and waited while she dropped Rashaan off with Miss Fisk to give her a ride to work.

“How's she doing today?”

“Seems all right,” Vanessa said.

“Sometimes they get tired toward the end of the day. Just like us.”

Like last night, Vanessa wanted to shift the topic back to her father, but rode along, nodding, watching the park go by, the sunken busway sliding alongside them like an empty river, its concrete walls dark with yesterday's rain. She knew her mother thought she was thinking of Chris, that every time they crossed the busway, every time she even took a bus she pictured him and Bean that night. How could she tell her she didn't? Yes, it came to her sometimes—rain and the barrels with their orange flashers set up to make lanes on the busway, the two of them with their backpacks
full of spraycans, laughing, the red-faced paramedic cutting Chris's Steeler jacket off with special scissors—but she could get rid of it, sometimes by just shaking her head or thinking of a song.

Was that how it was with her father? She wondered when she could ask again. Not for a while.

“I'll be home the regular time tonight,” her mother promised, letting her off. It was another gift, and Vanessa didn't question it, just thanked her for the ride and went in to face the breakfast rush.

Work didn't let her remember anything, though she fought to keep the names straight in her head. Haki Madubaruti. No, that wasn't it. There were too many poets. She wished she'd made a crib sheet she could check between orders, a notecard to stick in her pocket, cup in her palm like the prices when she first started. As she hustled for a missing ketchup, a handful of jam packets, a large milk, another knife, all the reading she'd done vanished, evaporated like water flicked on a hot grill, and by the time she peeled her uniform off and hauled her jeans on, she couldn't remember why she was taking the class in the first place.