An American Marriage(19)

What’s next is complicated, so let me back up.

Since you’ve been away, my mother and I have been spending more time together. At first, it was just so I wouldn’t be alone in the house, but now we visit like girlfriends, talking and drinking wine. Sometimes she even sleeps over. One night, she told me how she and her family came to live in Atlanta. It was a long story, and I was tired, but every time I drifted asleep she tapped me awake.

The story starts when my mother was a baby in a pram. Nana had taken her grocery shopping, which was always stressful because my grandparents had a lot of needs and not a lot of money. Sometimes they took credit at the general store and that hurt my grandmother’s dignity, and you know how debt can spiral out of control. While Nana was in the store trying to calculate the least amount of food she could buy to take care of the whole family, they crossed the path of a white woman and her child. (My mother talks bad about these white people and she talks about them in detail, as if she could actually remember them. She says that they were trashy, smelled of camphor, and the little girl didn’t even have shoes.)

But anyway, the little girl pointed at my mother and said, “Look, Mommy! A baby maid!” And for my grandmother, this was the last straw. By the end of the month the family packed up and moved to Atlanta, living with my grandfather’s brother until my granddaddy found a job. But the whole point is that in that instant in that store, my mama was a baby maid, and this is what made my grandparents move, just that inevitability.

Kind of remember that, okay? It’s important.

I never told you this, but about a year ago I had an incident. Not a breakdown, just an incident. I didn’t tell you because you have enough to think about. Don’t get mad about that. I’m okay.

Andre and I were walking nearby to Peeples Street because we had installed my show at the Hammonds House—these dolls are very ornate, almost baroque, lots of raw silk and tulle. The process was grueling because the topsy-turvy dolls were displayed on movable platforms that I built myself. Andre helped me, but it was hard work and I was about cross-eyed by the time we got it all set up. So the main thing is that I was exhausted.

We were on Abernathy on our way to buy fish sandwiches from the Muslims, which is another factor. I was hungry.

Near an intersection, we passed a little boy walking with his mother. He was teensy and adorable. Kids that size always get my attention. If things were different, maybe we would have a boy that age. His mother looked young, maybe twenty-one, but you could tell she was conscientious, just from the way she held his hand and chatted with him while they walked. Clear as water, I could imagine myself in her position, feeling his sweet little hand, answering his bright-eyed questions. When they got closer, he smiled—those little straight teeth—and I felt a jolt of recognition. That little boy looked like you. A voice in my head that was not my own said, A baby prisoner. I clamped my hands over my mouth and looked to Andre who seemed confused. “Did you see him? Was it Roy?” Dre said, “What?” I feel embarrassed even writing this. But I’m trying to explain what happened. Next thing I knew I was on my knees on the sidewalk in front of a water hydrant, embracing it like a small stout child.

Andre knelt beside me and we probably looked like we were having some sort of domestic dispute. He peeled my hands off the hydrant, one finger at a time. Somehow we made it to the fish place. He called Gloria, then he grabbed me by the shoulders. “You cannot let this destroy you,” he said. Finally Gloria showed up and gave me one of those “nerve pills” that all mothers stash in their pocketbooks. Long story short: I slept it off, whatever possessed me. I recovered and went to my opening at the Hammonds House the next day. I can’t really explain it, but the idea got inside me like a hookworm.

So I dolled it. I stripped the doll out of the john-johns and used waxed cotton to make a diminutive pair of prison blues. Dressing the doll in these clothes was just as difficult, but it felt more purposeful. In the baby clothes, it was only a toy. In the new way, it was art. That’s the doll that won the contest. I hate that you had to hear it from your mother and not from me.

When I was interviewed on stage, I didn’t tell them about you. They asked about the inspiration and I talked about my mother being a baby maid and I spoke about Angela Davis and the prison-industrial complex. What is happening with you is so personal that I didn’t want to see it in the newspaper. I know you will understand what I mean.

Yours,

Celestial

Dear Georgia,

A few months ago, you said you were dream-adjacent, but it looks like you have been living your real dream behind my back. The shop, that was my idea, but your fantasy involved galleries, museums, and white-glove installations. Don’t treat me like someone who doesn’t know you.

I understand what you’re saying and I understand what you’re not saying. Are you ashamed of me? You are, aren’t you? You can’t go to the National Portrait Museum and tell them that your husband is in prison. You could, actually, but you won’t. I empathize — it’s a lot to get used to. Before, we were living that Huxtable life. But now where are we? I know where you are and I know where I am, but where are WE?

Send me a picture of the doll. Maybe I’ll like it better when I can actually see what it looks like, but I must tell you that I don’t care much for the concept. And even if what you said in the article is true, about how you “want to raise consciousness about mass incarceration”—let’s say this wasn’t bullshit—please explain to me what a baby doll is going to do to help anybody in here. Yesterday, a dude died because nobody would give him his insulin. I hate to break it to you, but no amount of poupées is going to bring him back.