A Knock at Midnight(8)
On these weekends, I would go to church with Daddy Sudie, who, in the few hours of the day he wasn’t fishing, loved to sit at his black desk and highlight verses in his Bible. And I needed it. To have your family crumble before your eyes under the weight of addiction—it can shake a person, especially a teenager. Granny went to the same church, and it felt good to stand shoulder to shoulder and pray with both sides of my family. Being in church, surrounded by the swaying and singing choir, listening to the sonorous voice of the preacher rise and fall from the pulpit, feeling those wooden floors shake with the gospel under my feet—even now the memories bring me a sense of healing and solace.
On Sunday afternoons, Mama Lena and Daddy Sudie’s house filled with all five of my dad’s brothers and his sister, countless cousins, and their kids. One by one family members would pull up the quarter-mile concrete driveway Daddy Sudie had laid himself, pile out of the cars, and make their way through the kitchen to admire the cornucopia of dishes that would soon grace the Sunday dinner table, a tradition so strong it was almost a religion unto itself. By two o’clock, the lowing of the dairy cows on the property beyond Mama Lena’s back fence would be drowned out by the laughter of at least twenty-five people, all family.
Mama Lena’s soul food was healing and made with love. She’d call everyone on Saturday night to make sure they all had a dish coming that they wanted to eat. Meatloaf, mac and cheese, cabbage, candied yams, jugs of sweet tea—the house would be full of the aroma of soulful cooking and the resounding laughter of my dad’s brothers. My great-grandmother, still vivacious at eighty-four, would be holding court from her seat on the end of the couch, catching up one family member after another on the latest family drama. Uncle Gerald would have his clippers out, cutting a couple of my boy cousins’ hair just outside the bathroom. Aunt Felicia was the only girl and like a big sister to me—I hung on her every word. By early evening, we’d be spent with laughter, our paper plates scattered around the living room, bellies full and minds brimming with old family stories and new family secrets.
One Saturday evening I followed my grandpa to the pond, jabbering away. I was his namesake—our shared middle name is just the initial “K,” signifying our bond to each other—and in early photos I’m constantly by his side, grinning proudly as he holds up his latest prize catch.
“Daddy Sudie,” I said as we picked our way down the path, my grandpa carrying both our poles and the bait I refused to touch, “I made straight A’s on my report card and on two tests last week. My teacher said my book report was the best she’d read in a while. So I was thinking, maybe you could give me some kind of special award. I mean, my friend Kelly gets five dollars for every A. And I got all A’s! What are you gonna give me?”
Daddy Sudie listened patiently. While I passionately justified my case, he baited my hook for me as he always did, so I wouldn’t have to get my hands dirty. When I’d run out of arguments for my cause, he handed me the pole and looked me dead in the eye.
“I’m not giving you anything,” he said.
I kept my eyes on the worm dangling from the hook, a sight I usually carefully avoided. My grandparents hardly ever told me no, and my feelings were crushed though I tried not to show it. When Daddy Sudie spoke again his tone was firm, but kind.
“I’m not going to reward you for doing what you are supposed to do, Big Girl. You are smart. Straight A’s—that’s what you’re supposed to do.” That was a lesson in responsibility I would carry for years to come.
During these weekends in Campbell, I got to spend a lot more time with my dad, since he still lived at home with his parents, which was wonderful. In his late twenties by now, my dad was as central a figure as ever to us. His Michael Jackson curl had given way to a neat fade, but he was still baby-faced and always poised to envelop his daughters in a proud hug that could cure any blues. In every way, he groomed me for success: counting my “ums” during practice presentations until they were vanquished from my vocabulary, urging me to smile during phone calls to project confidence over the line, practicing firm handshakes with eye contact. He fawned over all of my accomplishments while, in his calm, quiet way, insisting on more and better.
But my father also suffered from addiction. Once, when we still lived in Fulbright—I must have been about eight—I remember standing in the doorway of his darkened room in Campbell while Mama Lena called to him. “I’m taking the girls back to their mama,” she said. “Get up, now. Say goodbye.” But my dad didn’t even stir. “High as hell,” Mama Lena muttered, and went to shake him, push at his arm, tried everything to rouse her son from his bed. It was the middle of the afternoon, but she couldn’t get him to budge, not even when she raised her voice. Finally, she rolled him over and took a wad of cash out of his pocket. “Here, Brittany,” she said. “Take this. He’d have given it to you if he wasn’t knocked out.”
Like Bogata, Campbell was a white town, but much smaller, with only about five hundred people. Most of my dad’s friends were white, and they partied hard—LSD, alcohol, and powder cocaine. They weren’t the addicts who graced the covers of Time and Newsweek—all Black, all from the so-called inner city—but even in the eighties, country white kids were rampant drug abusers. And though, predictably, none of my dad’s white friends ended up in jail for drugs, they paid the price of addiction in other ways. Around the time Mama went to rehab, one of my dad’s best friends went fishing and drowned in a stoned, drunken stupor. A few weeks later, another overdosed on cocaine. Another had a bad trip that led to a psychotic break. Still another committed suicide.