I Left My Back Door Open (5 page)

“It's a shame when nobody cares about you,” the driver continued. “What are we doing in this world?”

I cringed. The cabbie was pushing my fear button. Although I'd been blessed with two decent siblings and several close friends, I worried that I would end up a bag lady, a bird without any nest, like the women in Tennessee Williams's
The Glass Menagerie
.

“We have the technology to do everything but give people a smile or hug or a friend who cares,” I said calmly. “You can't manufacture love.”

My mind went back to my mother, who died of bone cancer in a nursing home. When I used to visit her, other patients begged me in the halls and doorways to come talk to them. I did my best to give them a passing greeting or a warm smile, but it was never enough. I always felt sorry for them. And I hoped I wouldn't end up like them, with nobody to come see about me.

The cabbie broke into my thoughts. “Mother Teresa says, ‘It's easier to remove the hunger for bread than the hunger for love.'”

“That's powerful,” I said.

“She says a beggar is better off in the streets of Calcutta than in New York City.”

“How so?” I mumbled, noticing that traffic had slowed to a crawl.

“Because in India the poor are needed. If you give money to a beggar you can better your chances in the next life. You can even improve your karma in this life. So, even the poorest person is part of the fabric. He feels useful and valued. But in America, the poor are looked upon with contempt and resentment. They're blamed for their predicament. In India, if you're at the bottom, it's accepted as simply your lot in life, your karma.”

“Yeah, but you're stuck. You don't pass go. You don't collect two hundred dollars. You can never buy Park Place.”

“Huh?”

“Monopoly; it's a capitalist game.”

“Oh.”

“Not to mention the flies around the lip thing that they have in India and some other poor countries,” I added. “At least we don't have
that
kind of poverty in America.”

“No.” The driver paused. “Your kind of poverty goes deeper than that.”

I glanced warily at the meter. It said $6.80; so far, so good. But now that we were downtown, things could get ugly.

“Traffic is just going to be impossible, now.” I sighed.

“Too bad they blocked off Columbus.”

“Yeah, just take Michigan Avenue. I should've ridden the El.”

“Yeah, especially on a day like today.”

“I just want you to drop me off in front of the Art Institute. I'm meeting my friend in front of the north lion. We're planning to walk to the park from there. If I'd known it was going to be this bad, I would've met her back on Wacker, in front of the Hyatt.”

“No, like you said before, if you really wanted to avoid all this madness, you should've taken the El.”

“That's true.”

“Today is my birthday,” the cabbie announced. “I have to contend with all of this traffic on my birthday.”

“Happy birthday. I just had a birthday, recently. It was on Father's Day.”

“Happy birthday to you, too.”

“Thanks,” I said and drifted back to my thoughts. Father's Day was always hard for me. My biological father died from a fall he suffered at the mill where he worked. He was only thirty years old. I was almost four and my brother was six. I don't remember much about my father except that he used to swing me in his arms and once he let me taste beer. Anyway, by the time they could find a hospital near Crackville, Alabama, that would treat a
colored
person, it was too late. My father slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness.

After the funeral, Mama packed our bags. She spat on the red Alabama clay and we boarded a Greyhound bus for Chicago. Back then, she didn't know how racist the white folks in Chicago were. She just knew that she wanted something better for her children than the back doors and “Colored” signs that the South had to offer. We had to ride Jim Crow until we crossed the Mason-Dixon line. But Mama woke my brother and me up in the middle of the night and told us, “Hallelujah, we're out of the South!” I'll never forgot Mama dragging us to the front of the bus in the wee hours of that April morning, like we were soldiers on a march.

That summer, my mother met my stepfather at the Bud Billiken Parade. The relatives we were staying with told Mama that the parade would cheer everybody up. It was to honor a black newspaperman named Bud Billiken. It was black folks' parade as much as the St. Patrick's Day Parade was for the Irish. Our relatives said it would make us feel proud to be Negroes. Black Chicagoans turned out in force. The South Side practically came to a halt. Negroes like us came all the way from the West Side just to see it

I have vague memories of a tall, maple-syrup-colored man offering to hoist me on his shoulders to get a better view of a marching band. My mother accepted the stranger's offer. And I minded my mother and thanked the nice man. I had no idea he would become my stepfather.

I just remember watching wide-eyed from atop his sturdy shoulders as colorfully attired band members shook their booties down the street.

A jolly looking woman nudged me and asked, “Baby, are you enjoying the parade?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I shouted politely, being fresh from the South.

“Being colored can be fun when ain't nobody looking, huh, baby?” The woman chuckled.

“Yes, ma'am,” I answered, somehow knowing instinctively what she meant. It's funny what you remember after thirty-six years.

My mother married my stepfather during the Christmas holidays. I was a flower girl and my brother was the ring bearer. Everybody said how lucky she was to find a hard-working man, willing to take in another man's kids. They told us to color him father. And at first, it seemed like the coloring book was gonna have a happy ending. But less than a year later, when Mama was pregnant with Alexis, my stepfather was occasionally molesting me and regularly whipping my brother for the smallest of infractions.

Mama was a “good mother,” but she was especially good at seeing no evil when it was too close to home. In those days, children didn't have a lot of power. Besides, we were brainwashed to believe that when bad things happened, it was our fault.

When bone cancer left my mother an invalid, our family hated to put her in a nursing home. We paid to have someone come in and take care of her at home as long as we could. But when her condition deteriorated, we agreed to put her in a skilled facility.

Even though Mama had lapsed into a coma and her eyes were shut, we still had hope. But looking back, I believe the nursing home staff had already given up on her. That's why nobody told me to leave that chilly November night, even though visiting hours were over. I was the last one who saw Mama alive. I stayed after the others left, partly because I was a night person and partly because I just wanted to be alone with her. Maybe I just wanted some form of closure.

Mama had always taken pride in her smooth coffee-with-cream complexion and her shapely figure. But now the flesh hung away from her frame like the drooping skin around a chicken neckbone. I kissed Mama's slack, ashy jaw and told her I loved her. I insisted that nobody could ever take her place. I touched the gold star she wore around her neck with the inscription, “Turn your scars into stars.” I opened the Bible and read the Twenty-First Psalm to her. Suddenly, I noticed that the lamp-lighted room glowed beyond its wattage power.

I should've sensed that Mama was in the process of dying, but I didn't. The mysterious light gave me hope. Still, I was weary and wanted to go home and get some rest so that I could come back refreshed. But when I got up to leave, I heard a low, faint gurgling sound. It was as though Mama's soul was crying out to me, “Don't go!”

I begged Mama to gurgle again, or to squeeze my hand, or raise a finger, if she knew I was there. But she never did anything. So, I kissed Mama's cool forehead and told her lifeless face that I'd be back tomorrow. But our tomorrow never came.

The next morning I called to check on Mama's condition. The woman who answered the phone said, “Mrs. Joseph is dead,” without much sympathy in her voice. They didn't know exactly when she died, just that she was dead by seven o'clock in the morning, when they went to check on her. That's how I found out, in a cold, impersonal way.

I will always regret that I left my mother to die alone. I could've stayed. I know that they would've let me stay all night. I could've been there with her at the very end. Nobody should have to die alone, even if they are in a coma.

“I didn't even look at my wife until my wedding day.”

“Huh?” I mumbled. The cabbie suddenly brought me back to the present reality. I glanced at the meter; it was just over eight dollars. I looked out the window. We were crawling down Michigan Avenue, just passing the
Tribune
building.

“I said I never saw my wife until my wedding day.”

“Oh. It was arranged?”

“Yeah.”

“It worked out?”

“Of course.”

“You're lucky.”

“I am not lucky. That's how it is for everybody in Pakistan.”

“There's no divorce rate?”

“It's less than five percent. I tell you why. Because people don't just think of themselves. You couldn't pay me to marry an American or European woman.”

“I thought that you were already married.”

“I am.”

“Well, you couldn't pay
me
to marry a Pakistani man.”

“What do you know about Pakistani men!” the driver shouted, swerving around a bus.

I was a little concerned for my safety, but I didn't back down.

“I know that the men have a lot more freedom than the women,” I answered firmly.

“My wife has all the freedom she could possibly want. She doesn't even have to work. I work two jobs to support my family. What could she possibly have to complain about? She can buy whatever she wants.”

“What if she gets tired of staying at home? What if she wants a career? What if she needs personal satisfaction?”

“There's no reason for her to want that. I told you I work two jobs. I can support my family.”

“Yeah, but money and control go hand in hand,” I argued. Secretly I wondered if I'd be happier myself in a more traditional role. Maybe it beat being alone. What if the cabbie's wife felt more fulfilled than I did? So what if I was an independent, successful woman? Didn't they say that success means nothing unless you have someone to share it with?

“There's no battle for control,” the cabbie insisted. “We understand each other. I'm a man and she's a woman.”

“Yeah, right. I mean, stop right here.” I'd spotted Jade's graceful, womanly figure sporting a sarong and a KLUV T-shirt heading toward the Art Institute. “There's my friend Jade!” I pointed. “Jade, hold up!” I shouted before she crossed the street. She heard me and stopped and waved.

I paid the tab and added a reasonable tip. A blast of steamy, hot air slapped me in the face as I stepped onto the warm curb.

“Find yourself a man before it's too late,” the cabbie called over his shoulder. “You don't want to end up writing letters to yourself, like that old woman in London.” He sped away.

I felt like I was in an art film. It seemed so surreal, a philosophical warning from an almost total stranger on a busy street corner. Jade's almond-shaped eyes gave me a puzzled look. I hunched my shoulders as if I hadn't a clue what the lunatic was talking about. It was too hot to go into it.

Later that evening, I was kicking it with Jade on her spacious, screened porch. I still felt stuffed and worn out from being at Taste of Chicago. It was the first time I'd seen Jade and her husband's new home. Yoshi was playing golf and their teenage sons were somewhere doing their own thing. Although I'd known that Yoshi had recently started his own software company and they'd moved to an expensive North Shore suburb, I wasn't prepared for a mansion that took up half a block.

“Girl, you all are really living large! I can't believe you have wall-to-wall mango carpeting in the master bedroom!” I exclaimed. “Which, by the way, is as big as some folks' whole apartments. In fact, you could rent your master bathroom out as a studio.”

Jade shook her head of thick, black, stylishly cut hair. “The carpeting was already in there,” she explained, scrunching her soft, wide features together like she was asking for forgiveness. “I probably wouldn't've picked it.”

“Your kitchen is da bomb!” I exclaimed. “The whole place is dope, as the kids would say. The skylights, the grounds, the marble bathroom, the gold bidets, everything is tight. How does it feel to ‘have it all' at thirty-nine?”

Jade sipped her iced latte and frowned. “This stuff has nothing to do with ‘having it all.'”

“Now, as the kids would say,
that's
wack,” I said, gazing through the screen at the manicured grounds. “Having stuff sure beats struggling. I've been there, done that and got the T-shirt,” I said, snapping my fingers.

“That makes two of us. Don't forget, I grew up in a fourth floor walk-up in New York's Chinatown. There were eight of us in a two-bedroom apartment.”

“Damn.”

“I don't want to go back to that,” Jade assured me. “But money in itself doesn't make you happy.” She hunched her shoulders. “I mean, all of this is nice, but ultimately it's just scenery.”

“Well, I'm enjoying the scenery. Come on, Jade, you can admit it. After sleeping in the bathtub, this house
has
to be a dream come true for you.”

“It wasn't that serious.” Jade smiled, borrowing a black expression. “But really, this is Yoshi's dream come true, not mine. To be honest with you, I was actually nervous about you seeing it.”

“Why? I can share the fantasy. I'm not bitter. I'm more than a few paychecks away from the streets myself.”