Nowhere Is a Place (3 page)

Sherry just sighs and says, What you banging the phone around like that for?

Static, I say. And then, So how you?

Okay, she say, and then ask about the weather, but I know something wrong or really right, you just never know with Sherry ’cause she always been odd.

She the strangest one of my three children. She also the middle of the three, so I guess that explains it. I don’t read much, but I listen to the radio, watch plenty of television, and the people say that the middle children got a hard road to walk, not the first, not the last, falling between—not the eldest and not the baby—second in line. Always floundering, one talk-show host say. Always searching, another say.

Always asking, I say.

Why this and why that?

I answer as many questions as I can. Sometimes I say, I just don’t know. Other times, I wave my hand and tell her to hush up her mouth. My ears hurting from you asking so many questions and my throat parched from trying to answer them all. So hush!

She ask a lot of questions, but don’t answer too many.

I still don’t know all of what happened to her in Chicago. Edison tell me some, say he messed up big-time, say he want her back, ask, Is she there?

I told him no, ain’t heard a peep since the beginning of the month. You know how it is with us, I tell him, Sherry’s calls come on the first, right along with my pension check and Kmart credit card bill. What you do to her anyway?

He never did say, and then the first of the month rolled around and Sherry called and said, Here’s my new telephone number.

I wrote it down and said, Sure is a lot of numbers. Where you at?

She say, Mexico, now take down my new address, you gonna need an airmail stamp if you want to write me.

I hadn’t been writing her, but I take it down so’s I have it when I want to send her birthday and Christmas cards.

Mexico?

She says, Yes, for a while.

I say, Edison calls, he say he messed up, want you back, still love you. He sounds sorry to me, what he do?

Sherry say, He dead to me, next subject please.

I didn’t ask no more.

Madeline my eldest girl. She married with three of her own children. She tall, brown, smart, marry a man half her height and twice her weight. Kids are squat and yellow like their daddy, look to me like I got three butternut squashes for grandchildren. But they okay. I love ’em. They part of me.

My boy, Ethan, we call him Sonny Boy ’cause he named after his daddy, my husband. He in and out of the house. Sometime in school, sometime working, sometime in love, sometime not, all the time wanna be onstage, he think he gonna be a star—he got another name we call him, “Mr. Hollywood”—he ain’t got but a lick of talent and think his good looks gonna carry him far.

Maybe they will. I see loads of pretty people on television ain’t got no talent.

Now my Sherry, she looks the most like me. We ’bout the same height, wide in the hips, big legs, big breasts, long hair, peanut-skin brown. She all of what I was when I was her age, ’cept she single, childless, and still trying to find her place in the world.

She been to Africa six or seven times, spent a month in India, been to all of the islands, South America, Central America, Greenland, and a bunch of other places that I can’t recall the names of—and she still feel “displaced” is word she use.

I say, Don’t the home you were born in feel like home?

No.

Her answer is short, sharp. I wince and turn my head away. My feelings don’t usually get hurt so easily, but I feel a knife in my heart.

I wait for her to change her answer, to ’splain herself. Five years pass, and I’m still waiting.

Whatever, I think—it’s her fault she feels displaced, don’t you know. She done lived in twenty different cities since she was nineteen.

Now she living in Mexico of all places. Cleaning toilets and making beds in some dive she stumbled on some years ago.

What you go to all the universities for if all you wanted to do was be a chambermaid?

She say, It’s honest work.

I say, It don’t make no kind of sense!

I’m still searching.

What you looking for? I ask.

She say, Myself.

I say, Yourself? There you is right there, I say, and poke her with my finger. I see you; feel you too, don’t you?

She say, Not like that. She say, I’m looking for my purpose. Why it is God put me here. You know?

No, I don’t.

* * *

Sherry got respect for me, but not much love. Been like that for years now. Can’t quite remember when the hugs stopped, when the Saturday-morning snuggle sessions ended, or whose birthday cake I was making when I offered her the bowl to lick and she turned the offer down flat.

Can’t remember the year, but I know she was young, scrawny, and loved hamburgers and hot dogs and fried pork rinds more than it seemed she loved me.

She ain’t never come right out and said she hated me or disliked me, but I saw it in her eyes, heard it in her voice, felt it all over the house after she moved out and only came back to visit.

I ain’t done nothing to her I ain’t done to the other two. But you would think I was the worst mother in the world, when all I did was try to be the best mother I knew how.

So imagine my surprise when she called me up from Mexico and asked, The Lessing family reunion going on this year, right?

Yeah.

Where?

Sandersville, Georgia.

You going?

Wasn’t planning to, why?

I wanna go.

Really? That’s a surprise.

I wanna drive.

To Georgia? Long trip.

I want you to ride with me.

Really, me and you? Like I said, long trip.

Will you?

She my child, and even though she hate me, I love her and so I say, Sure, sounds like fun, why not.

Sherry say she coming in four days and then arrive in three.

She pull up in her shiny brand-new car. I mean, SUV—she been correcting me all the time about that. It’s nice. Classy is what come to mind. Sonny Boy beg and plead to drive it, Madeline can’t understand how Sherry can afford it.

Sherry ain’t held down a job for more than six months her entire life, she say. Always in school, taking a class for this, taking a course in that. How cleaning toilets and making beds pay for something like that?

Madeline pouts and then folds her thick arms across her big tits and sticks her lip out like she four years old again.

I say, What you care for? You paying the note? You got two cars, a house, three kids, a dog, a cat, and a parakeet. More than Sherry got.

Parakeet died last year, she say.

Whatever, I say, and wave her away. Next day, Madeline pulls into my driveway in
her
brand-new SUV.

It’s bigger than Sherry’s, got a third row and got a sunroof. Sits so high up on its wheels, Madeline’s husband Aaron got to help me in.

Now we can all ride together, Madeline say, and my eyes roll over to Sherry who smile and say real calm-like, No we can’t.

Madeline’s face go red and she look at me and then back at Sherry and say, Why not?

Sherry cock her head and look Madeline dead in the eye and say, You can take your truck if you want to, but I ain’t riding with you and neither is Dumpling.

Madeline ain’t never been a fighter and so she just fix her mouth the way she do when things don’t go her way and grab hold of the flabby skin of her husband’s arm.

Aaron say it would be better to fly, the kids would get too restless on a long ride like that, and Madeline agree. Like that something new.

* * *

Sonny Boy don’t look like he gonna make it. Something about auditions—but I think it sound more like “money.” Madeline warn me not to pay for his ticket, he already owe everybody too much money as it is, she say. I nod and pretend to agree like I’m my own daughter’s child, and call the airline soon as she back that SUV out of the driveway.

I would do the same for her.

* * *

We head out Monday morning. Six a.m. I can’t tell if Sherry excited or not, her face always wear the same expression.

Me, I’m bubbling inside about seeing family. I ain’t been back to Sandersville since I left it. Not even when my sister Lovey call and say she was moving back. And that’s been a good twenty years now.

Sherry eases her SUV onto Interstate 40 and then into the left lane, and we begin to fly.

I say it’s gonna be nice to be ’round my people when we ain’t weeping over somebody that’s lying dead in a coffin.

Sherry nods her head yes, and I see a smile tickling the corners of her mouth. ‘

I lean back in that butter-soft leather seat and watch the city streak by outside my window until it’s just black highway and the hum of the engine. My eyes flutter and close and I’m dreaming of trees: sweet gum, white oak, sycamore. Flowers follow: lady slipper, May apple, bloodroot, and Cherokee rose.

I see the young me, before I hated the color blue, and the pain in my knees slip away, the gray in my hair disappear. Water come from the spring and not bottles, vegetables grow in rows and don’t come in cans. Oil lamps and quilts. Loons sing us to bed at night and roosters wake us in the morning. Peaches, pecans, and guinea fruits that it seemed God put there for just us alone.

Romping, running. High, bright sun. No cares, no worries. Youth.

* * *

I hear Sherry’s voice slip into my dreams. Dumpling? she says real soft. I feel her hand shake my shoulder. I uh-huh her but don’t open my eyes.

Are we there yet? I kid, and try to recapture my dream.

She laugh a little and cut off the air-conditioning. The windows come down and she hit a button on the radio and all of a sudden there’s the sound of cymbals and bells and a woman moaning.

Why she crying? I ask.

Sherry say, It’s called chanting.

Whatever, I say.

Like I said, she is the strange one.

* * *

We been on the road three hours now. My mouth dry, bladder full, belly burning empty.

Nothing but fast-food places. Sherry’s face twist up at the signs: fried chicken, hamburgers, pizza.

She say, I need some salad. Something fresh.

I look up and see Wendy’s zip by. Salads, I say, and point to the sign that’s already a blur.

Next one, she mumbles. But I see her eyes searching for something else, and I know that I won’t be having a double cheeseburger with extra onions no time soon.

We pull into the Razzle Dazzle Diner. Diner food fine with me. I can have a cheeseburger. Better for me, I say. Steak fries good at diners, I tell her, and pull my wet wipes from my bag and start cleaning my hands.

Sherry watches me and says, How many times you gonna do that?

I say, As much as I need to, and pull another sheet out. Don’t worry about me, go on ahead an’ order your omelette.

Frittata, she corrects me.

All the same to me.

Now to the young, bored-looking waitress: Frittata. Spinach, please.

Uh-huh.

You just use the egg whites, right? she grills the waitress. Do you cook it on a separate skillet from the meat? she asks.

The waitress smirks and then walks away to find out. I see the cook stick his head out from behind the swinging door to get a look at what he’s dealing with. He sees Sherry’s pierced nose, pierced eyebrow, hair braided, tattoo on her left arm, T-shirt that says:
Love Animals, Don’t Eat Them
—and knows exactly what he’s dealing with. He makes a face and says something to the waitress. She come back and say, Yes, we use a different pan for the meat.

Liar, I think. But I wants my cheeseburger.

Sun starting to slip, sky going red and then a blue-gray by the time I finish my iced tea and Sherry her water with lime.

I guess we can do another two hours, she say, then we’ll find someplace to sleep.

I say, Okay, and pull out another three wipes to clean my hands.

* * *

On the road again we don’t talk about much. We ain’t never really had much to say to each other, but decent music playing: Barry White singing, got me all warm inside and swooning.

Sherry know all the words to the old songs, we sing along, croaking like frogs but giving it our all as if we sound like angels.

* * *

Two hours later, one stop for gas, a bottle of water for her and a Pepsi for me, and she turn and look at me and say, I think I want to write a book.

Glad to hear it, I think. Anything better than cleaning toilets.

Really? I say out loud, but think, This something else she gonna start and not finish. ’Bout what? I ask, and then, Don’t look at me, look at the road.