Mama (28 page)

"How
you
feeling this morning, Milly?"

"Fine, and yourself, Jimmy?" she asked, without stopping or looking up. Mildred didn't want to look at him. Didn't need to. She felt fine now and would be for months.

She was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping VO'd coffee and whistling, when Angel walked in.

"What you so happy about, Mama?"

"That's none of your business. A woman got a right to feel good every once in a while, don't she?"

"Yes, and it sure is nice to see you so up in spirits."

"Ah, baby," Mildred said, snapping her fingers and shaking her hips as if she were dancing to music only she could hear. "If only you knew the half of it."

"We set the date, Mama."

"You did? Oh! You did!"

"April third."

"That's five long-ass months from now! I hate long engagements."

"Long engagements! Mama, do you have any idea how much a wedding costs?"

"Naw, how much?"

"Five or six thousand. And you remember what happened at Doll's, don't you? All those last-minute expenses. I want mine all planned out and paid for in advance."

"Well, I can understand that."

"Mama, it's customary for the bride's parents to pay for the wedding, you know. I know you can't afford that much, but can you help us a little?"

"How much help?"

"Like a thousand dollars?"

That didn't sound impossible. "Yeah, I guess I can help you. I'm your mama, ain't I?"

Mildred's mind was already clicking like a stopwatch. How in the hell was she going to come up with a thousand extra dollars in five short months? She had already taken out a second mortgage on the house, and the note was two months behind as it was. But she hadn't bothered to tell anybody this time. As a matter of fact, Mildred had started to keep a lot of secrets lately. Her period came irregularly and she was getting hot and cold chills all the time, but she didn't want her kids feeling sorry for her. Hell, she could come up with the cash. All she needed was a little time.

Mildred did not appreciate Acquilla dying a month before Angel's wedding, especially since she hadn't come up with her part of the money yet. Her daddy had asked if Mildred could come back just to help him get things back in order. Said he couldn't depend on his other kids. Mildred thought about it and thought about it. He was her daddy, but this time around, somebody else was going to have to carry the weight. Her sister, Georgia, lived right down the street.

She did not go to Acquilla's funeral. Mildred was glad she was dead. It was a terrible thing to say, but it was the truth. About a week later, Bootsey called Mildred to tell her things had gone haywire around Buster's house.

"Mama, Aunt Georgia done went through every closet in the house, staking her claims on all Grandma Acquilla's thangs. You wouldn't believe all the stuff Grandma had packed in the attic and in all those closets. Boxes and boxes of sheets, pillowcases, curtains, canned goods—you name it. Granddaddy said she was saving all this stuff in case we had another depression."

"Has Georgia helped clean up around there?" Mildred asked.

"Nope. I've been branging him food and washing all those dirty clothes, but the house is a mess. The kitchen got pots and pans and roasters with old food stuck inside, and Mama, some of it is so moldy, I can't touch it. Dirt is everywhere and them windows, they so dusty, you can't even see out of 'em."

At first Mildred felt guilty for not having gone, but then she got pissed off. Why should she have to get on a plane and fly all that way when all those relatives were right there? The lazy no-good bastards, she thought. She picked up the phone to call Georgia but decided to wait a few more days. She wanted to see just how slick Georgia thought she was.

Georgia was six years older than Mildred, and they had never been close. Georgia had always been jealous of her, because Mildred got all the attention. Mildred never could stand her. True, Georgia had had a mastectomy, and didn't have any breasts. True, her second husband had left her for the hundredth time. And true, her four kids didn't provide much comfort. Her oldest son, the smartest of them, had run away to join the air force, married a white girl, and was living somewhere in California. Georgia's oldest daughter, who was the same age as Freda, was an alcoholic, lived in the projects with three babies by three different men, and had never worked a day in her life. The other one, who was Bootsey's age, had been the homecoming queen, and had married someone else's husband. Georgia's youngest son was in love with his first cousin from Arizona, Leon's oldest daughter. But despite all Georgia's misery, Mildred could never bring herself to feel sorry for her sister.

Georgia had turned her soul over to God. Claimed she was saved. She'd told everyone about the spiritual awakening she had had driving down the street one night, on her way up to see some man. (That much everybody knew was a lie. Didn't nobody want her.) Anyway, she had stopped at the light on Twenty-fourth and Oak, and when she pressed down on the gas pedal, the car wouldn't move. The motor was still running and she got scared. Then she noticed there wasn't a car in sight besides hers. Out of nowhere, Georgia said, her dead husband told her to turn that car back around and go home, and she did. When she turned onto her street, her house was on fire. But Mildred didn't believe that shit. She knew Georgia was broke and had probably set the fire herself to get the insurance money.

And now, Mildred figured, since her husband and all her kids had abandoned her, Georgia was trying to mooch off Buster. After all, he did have his pension and that big old house to himself now, and Acquilla's insurance money was bound to be coming soon. So when Bootsey told Mildred that Georgia was selling that little shack she had lived in for twenty-seven years and was moving in with Buster, Mildred hit the ceiling and grabbed the phone.

"Who the hell do you thank you're trying to fool, Georgia?"

"Mildred, please watch your mouth, the Lord—"

"Lord my ass. Look, whore, you can cut out this saintimonious act with me. God took your titties, didn't he? Took your sorry husband and gave you them pitiful-ass excuses you call kids, too. I'm your sister, been knowing you all your damn life, and I want to know who do you thank you are, going down to Daddy's, taking all of Acquilla's stuff without so much as lifting a holy goddamn finger to clean up some of that mess? Now, if you thank you gon' bring your no-tittied fat black roly-poly ass down there and move in with him 'cause you ain't got no money or nobody, you're wrong, sister. If I have to come back there and put padlocks on the doors myself, you ain't using my daddy."

"Lord forgive you, Mildred, you don't know what you're talking about."

"Shut
up!
If you thank you're moving in with my daddy so you can spend up all his money, you're a goddamn lie. If you were going down there with good intentions, that would be an altogether different story. I could see it. But you going down there for your own selfish-ass reasons, and the whole thang stanks. Now what does your Bible say about that, huh?"

"Mildred, he's my daddy too. Jesus—"

Mildred slammed the phone down in Georgia's most religious ear.

When Money first got back in town from the state penitentiary, he only saw two people: Candy—the girl whose picture he'd been making love to for the past year and nine months—and the dope man. Shit, he'd been locked up for two whole years, away from the two things he like best: pussy and heroin. But not in that order. He figured he would get himself a nice buzz before he started getting down to business. He had to think of a plan, a way to get his feet back on the ground. But he needed to stretch out, kick back, and enjoy himself a few days first.

Bootsey didn't even know Money was out until she saw him standing out in front of the Shingle with their cousin BooBoo and some other guys she didn't recognize. She was on her way home from K-Mart. She honked the horn and pulled up into the parking lot. Money recognized her Cadillac, and walked over and leaned against the window.

"When you get back, Money?" Bootsey asked.

"A few days ago. I've been tied up, looking for a job, you know. I was coming by tomorrow."

She could tell he was high. "Sure, you could've called somebody. Damn."

"I know, I know." Money looked down at her big stomach.

"You pregnant again?"

"Eight months."

"You talked to Mama and them?"

"Yeah, you know Angel's getting married in a few weeks, don't you?"

"Yeah, but I ain't going. She never wrote me one single letter. You going?"

"I can't get on no plane in my condition. I'm too close to my due date. Why don't you at least call Mama?"

"She didn't bother coming to see me the last time she was here, why should I?"

"'Cause she's your mama, Money, that's why. You pissed her off. She went all out of her way to get you away from here, so you could clean up your act, and what did you do? Went all the way out there to California and then came running back here. And just like everybody thought, you went straight to prison."

"Don't remind me. I know where I've been."

"You know, if you don't stay out of trouble, you ain't gon' be able to get no job nowhere, especially with a prison record. Then where you gon' be, and what you thank you gon' do?"

"I can always work construction. Most of those dudes got records worse than mine. Some of 'em are murderers and real felons. I ain't done nothing but petty larceny."

"Money, who wants to work at a job just 'cause it's the only thang available?"

"You mean to tell me that you graduated from high school just so you could work at Ford's?"

"That's different, Money!"

"How?"

"'Cause it's easy work. And I'm not gon' be doing it for the rest of my life. I'm gon' open up my own business."

"Yeah, right," he said, holding up a finger to BooBoo, indicating that he would be ready in a minute.

"I am. I'm gon' open a bridal shop on the North End."

"More power to you," Money said, standing up.

"Look, why don't you come over for dinner tomorrow or something. And we can really sit down and talk, then. I gotta go to the bathroom something terrible."

"I can't make it tomorrow."

"Next week, then?"

"Yeah, all right. Tell Dave and the kids I said hello. I'll see you next week."

Money's hand brushed the top of the trunk as Bootsey sped off.

Seventeen

T
HERE'S ONLY
so much juice you can squeeze out of a lemon, and all Mildred's lemons had dried up. She had thought of everything she could pawn to help with Angel's wedding, but even if she pawned one of the televisions or the record player or her old silverware, or Big Jim's engagement ring, it wouldn't come close to a thousand dollars.

Mildred felt bad. So bad that she stayed drunk so she wouldn't have to think about how she was going to tell Angel. There wasn't a soul Mildred could borrow from, not even Big Jim, who had come to her mind first, but she had treated him so badly, she balked at the thought. And her daddy ... she couldn't ask him. Not after she'd accused Georgia of trying to use him for his money. And her other kids, none of them had any extra. She couldn't think of walking into a bank, with no job and her credit being so bad. The house was on the verge of foreclosure. She'd been toying with the idea of selling it, thinking she would probably be ahead about ten thousand, but she couldn't do that in a week.

And that son of hers. Calling her collect every other day for the past two weeks. Trying to get her to send him a ticket. When was that boy going to stand up on his own two feet? Got on her nerves, just listening to him.

"Ma," Money had said, "I want to come to Angel's wedding, but I ain't got no money. You know how hard it is to find a job in this town?"

"Have you looked?"

"'Course I've looked. I don't expect nobody to take care of me. I thought I could get on with Uncle Zeke's construction company, but he say he been laying people off left and right."

"You should'a kept your ass right out here in LA and you wouldn't be in this situation. But I don't want to pour salt on an open wound, so let me shut up."

"What's this guy like that Angel's marrying?"

Mildred bit her lip. She forgot Money and Freda still didn't know. Nobody had had the heart to tell them yet. All Doll had wanted to know was if he had any brothers. Bootsey was thrilled about the whole idea of it. "Ooooh weeee!" she'd said. "So now •We know who's coming to dinner!"

"He's nice. His name is Ethan."

"What kind of work does he do?"

"He's in dental school at UCLA."

"I knew he had to have some money."

"Yeah, and he's white, too."

"He's what did you say? White?"

"You heard me."

"You gotta be kidding, Mama."

"Naw, and don't give me no long-ass speeches about the shit. I don't want to hear it. He's a good person, and he loves the hell out of Angel. I wouldn't care what color he was, so long as he make her happy."

"This really takes the cake. A whitey? Do you realize what she's about to do? She's a traitor. If it weren't for whiteys do you think I'd have gone to prison, among other things?"

"Don't try to hand me that bullshit. The white man didn't tell you to get hooked on no damn heroin, did he? He didn't make you rob no Howard Johnson's, did he? Naw. That's your own stupidity, and the white man damn sure ain't responsible for that."

"I knew you were gon' say that. You know what? I wouldn't come to Angel's wedding if you sent me a ticket right now. And you know something else? This whole family is fucked up."

"Yeah, well you in the starring role, that's for—" and there was a click. Fuck the little retard, Mildred thought. One day, that boy gon' realize he got to grow up and face everythang head on. Just like the rest of us.

A few days before the wedding, Freda showed up, claiming she was going to use this time as a long-overdue and much-needed vacation. The Courvoisier and tequila had made her blow up to a size twelve, when all these years she'd been a firm eight. Her face was puffy, her cheeks round and fat, and she even had a gut, something no one had ever envisioned her having.