Take My Hand(26)

I thought of India and Erica, their freshly washed hair and new clothes. I thought of how much they’d enjoyed listening to my records and how they’d marveled at the needle on the vinyl and the sound it made spinning in the groove.





FOURTEEN





I was listening to Booker T. and the M.G.’s’ “Behave Yourself” when Mama came into my room. I still had six more weeks before Erica was due for another shot, but each day that a woman anywhere was being injected with that drug made my head hurt. I didn’t know what to do.

Mama bounced her head, and I remembered how she used to dance. Not this kind of melancholy small movement she was doing now, but arm-swinging, hip-shaking dances. Back when I was younger, Mama danced all the time. I remember waking up at night hearing her feet moving on the floor in the den and Daddy slapping the armrest as he whistled.

I noticed a piece of white paper dangling from her hand. It had been creased into a trifold, as if it were taken from an envelope.

“Some years back, your daddy and I went to see Booker T. and the M.G.’s perform at the Coliseum in Memphis. We stayed at your aunt Ros’s house, but none of us slept. We partied and stayed up all night. The drummer’s name was Al Jackson Jr. He hung out with us that night after the concert. Ros knew them all.”

“Lord, Mama. You never told me that. Where was I?”

“You were away at vacation Bible school.”

“So y’all partied while I was getting saved.” I laughed.

I wanted my parents to dance again, to smoke reefer and curse and act like young people. Surely they had earned the carelessness of success. I wanted them to enjoy it.

Mama looked past me at the painting on my wall, a monochromatic green study of a woman walking into a fire. It was one of the few representational works I could remember Mama ever painting. I’d always been drawn to it, and when I’d found it in the back of her storage closet she had let me have it with a shrug. Now she was looking at it as if she were reassessing it, her small mouth puckered in concentration. I stared at her in admiration. I’d always viewed Mama’s beauty as so ethereal that it was the kind you didn’t pass on to children. Her face was chiseled, the skin stretched thin over sharp bones. She was wispy, ghostlike.

“What’s that paper?”

“Huh? Oh, I almost forgot. It’s for you.”

I started, realizing what it might be. I scanned the words—We invite your application for a subsidized three-bedroom apartment at Dixie Court. Pending approval. I reached out to hug her. She stepped back so quickly that I almost lost my balance.

“So what does this mean?”

“I saw those girls when you brought them home. Such sadness in their faces. They lost their mama, right?”

She’d barely acknowledged them, and I had not expected her to follow through. It was never clear how much Mama took in. The girls had been so pretty that day, but I’d imagine they still looked pitiful through the eyes of someone who hadn’t witnessed their state before the baths and clothes. I’d cut their hair as evenly as I could, but acne covered Erica’s face and India’s lips were cracked and peeling.

“How did you do this? It’s been barely a month.”

“This letter just means they’re on the priority list. They still got to be approved. I told you my friend Delia is on the board. She merely expedited the application process.”

“So I don’t need to contact a social worker?”

She shook her head.

“Oh, Mama, that’s fine! I’ve got to go tell them.” I took off my sweatpants and stepped into a skirt. Between the packed hanging clothes in my closet I managed to find a barely wrinkled shirt. It was Saturday, and I had never visited the Williamses on a weekend. I needed to look respectable but also practical enough to withstand the dirt of that hill.

“Do they have furniture and dishes and such?”

“Do they have what?”

“Things to furnish the apartment in case they get it. I can’t imagine whatever they’ve got out in that shack will be any good,” she said.

I stooped to search for my penny loafers on the floor of the closet.

“Take this.”

“What’s that?” I straightened up.

“Go over to the Goodwill and see what they got that’s nice. Don’t get anything that’s just as bad as what they have now. Look for some stuff that matches as best as you can. If you get a sofa, make sure to sit on it before you buy it.”

She opened her palm and revealed a square of folded bills.

“Mama, you don’t have to do this. I do have a job.”

“I know you do.”

“And I hadn’t planned on buying them things. Their daddy. He—”

She tucked the money into the purse hanging from my desk chair. “I understand. They got a daddy. Just figure out a way to do it without shaming him.”

“Thank you, Mama.” I tucked my shirt in.

Mama touched her hair and grimaced as if there were an unreachable pain hidden in her body. “Get Ty and some of his friends to move that furniture from Goodwill.”

With that, she was gone. I hesitated, then reached down to push my heel into my shoe. Ty. Always Ty. My parents thought he was untouchable. If I told them we’d been involved, they would probably blame me for the breakup. I folded the letter. I needed to get the paperwork completed. If the Williamses didn’t have to sleep one more night in that awful shanty, they shouldn’t. Sleeping on the floor of a new apartment was better than that sorry excuse for a house.