I used to think nothing could make him really mad. He seemed to take every insult Mama threw his way. She complained he didn’t put up enough of a fuss when his boss made him work harder and cover more territory.
“You sure you got a spine in there, Horace?” she would taunt him.
The most he would do is shake his head and saunter off, but I could see there was no way I was going to talk him out of this. My only hope was that after all was said and done, my aunt and uncle wouldn’t want me. If I were them, I wouldn’t want me, I thought. I don’t even want me now, and probably Daddy didn’t, either, and was just using everything as an excuse to pawn me off. Part of me was sick over it, and part of me was understanding.
Aunt Mae Louise and Uncle Buster Howard, who was a civil engineer, whatever that meant, had recently bought a nice home in Stone Mountain, a suburb community of Atlanta. It had two stories, a front yard and a backyard, an attached garage, and enough land between it and the houses beside it so that you couldn’t reach out the window and steal bread off someone else’s dinner table like you could in the rundown tenement we occupied in downtown Atlanta.
In other words, they had a home that would nourish a rose, even a weed. It was in a safe neighborhood. There were no gangs, and drugs if they came had to come subtly, through back doors, and not be sold in kiosks in the street outside your front door like they did where we lived. I could attend a better school, and, most importantly, Daddy emphasized, help my aunt and uncle with their two children, Jake, age five, and Barbara Ann, age eight.
Daddy, who had been a salesman of some sort or another most of his adult life, put all his skill and logic into his selling of me. There was just no other way to view it. He was there to convince my aunt and my uncle they should take me in, just like they would take in a new vacuum cleaner.
I really hated the idea of living in Stone Mountain, away from my friends and stuck with my snobby relatives, especially my mother’s older sister, who was fond of lecturing her about how an African-American woman and man today could make themselves successful if they just had a mind to and had real ambition. Everything they had was real; everything we had was just a temporary fix.
“You know that most of the time my work takes me on the road, Mae,” Daddy continued, directing his plea mainly at her. “These days I have to expand my territory to make expenses. She’d be left alone for longer and longer periods of time. It won’t be long before the authorities come and take her off.”
We were all in the living room of their Stone Mountain home. It was in a housing development that was at least eighty-five percent black. After they had bought the home, Mama told Aunt Mae she just traded one ghetto for another, but even I had to admit that was just envy talking. This was no ghetto. Close your eyes and then open them when no one was in the street in front of his or her house and you would think you were in the finest suburbs, built for middle- and upper-class white people.
“That’s why Charlene went bad,” Aunt Mae Louise piped up, those black green eyes of hers narrow, dark, and angry. To me she always looked like an alley cat poised to pounce. “She needed looking after, Horace. Charlene was never one to be on her own. My folks only had to leave her in the house by herself an hour for her to do something to add gray hairs to their heads. You should have known that from the day you met her,” she told him. “I don’t know why you went ahead and married her. Men sure don’t think with their heads when they see a pretty thing. I won’t deny she was always pretty, but I’ll never claim she was anything but selfish and spoiled.”
Aunt Mae Louise wasn’t ever going to take her sister’s side just because she was her sister, I thought. She probably never had, even when they were growing up.
She glared my way.
“You take after your mama too much in that regard, Phoebe. It’s sad to have to say it, but she was a very bad influence on you. Lucky for the rest of us that she had only one child.”
I knew Mama had almost had another but miscarried in the sixth month, probably because of the alcohol and cigarettes and her wild ways.
Even so, and even though I knew she had run off with a small-time con man named Sammy Bitters, I didn’t like Aunt Mae dissin‘ her. I knew it was the same as criticizing me because, as she just said, in Aunt Mae Louise’s eyes Mama and I were cut from the same cloth. She never hid the fact that she had doubts my father was my father, too. I knew it was like someone sticking a pin in his chest whenever she implied or even came out and as much as said it. Daddy was just too easygoing to ever show anger or pain, especially in front of her. Maybe he was just a pincushion after all. Mama got so she thought so. No wonder he didn’t want her coming home now. Nothing would confirm that as much as placing me with my aunt and uncle. There was a finality to it, just like a period at the end of a long sentence. This is it; this is the way it will be, and that’s that.
Everyone was quiet in the room because the heaviness of the conclusion hung in the air like stale cigarette smoke. They all wished I had never been born, and now there wasn’t much choice about what to do.
“Of course,” Daddy said softly, “I’d give you money every week for her room and board and whatnot.”
He gave me a quick glance of deepest despair.
“We don’t need you to pay for her food, Horace, but she will need decent clothes, shoes, and a little spending money,” she said.
My uncle didn’t look happy about it, but it was clear they were going to take me in. I felt my heart sink. I wanted to do something to stop it, but I was afraid Daddy might just give up on me and call some child protection agency or the court and say he gave up. Mama had left him. His work was getting harder and I was in too much trouble lately, trouble that deepened the lines in his face. He was tottering on the heels of his shoes.
“But first, I want some understandings set down right now, while your father is sitting here, Phoebe,” Aunt Mae Louise began.
She stood up to continue, suddenly very full of herself. She was only about five feet two and weighed maybe one hundred and five. It gave her self-confidence to stand when she wanted to be firm and authoritative, I’m sure. Sitting, she looked like a little girl with those thin arms and tiny shoulders.
Unlike Mama, Aunt Mae Louise kept her hair straight and wore almost no makeup except some lipstick occasionally. Mama was five feet five, with a full figure. I had heard men say she radiated sex like a hunk of uranium or something. She could have a man eating out of her hand by just turning her shoulders, swinging her hips, and batting her eyelashes. Even though she drank too much and smoked too much and did drugs occasionally, she was obsessive about her teeth.
“Your smile is your billboard when it comes to men,” she would tell me. “Make sure you take good care of your teeth, Phoebe.”
As long as I could remember, Mama was giving me advice about men. She always made it sound like a war, like we had to prepare to do battle to defend our treasure. That was literally what she called our sexuality, our treasure.
“We don’t need no dragon guardin‘ the door, but don’t let ’em in unless there’s more in it for you than some cheap thrill, girl. Otherwise, you’ll end up bein‘ some sorry tramp like what hangs out at the club. I don’t have no money to give you, just good advice, so you’d better take it and stuff it in your heart,” Mama told me. It was usually after she had drunk too much and was feeling sorry for herself that she gave me these lectures. To me it seemed as if her sexuality had become more of a burden than an advantage.
Although she wasn’t exactly a prude, Aunt Mae Louise was a great deal more self-conscious of her sexuality. Uncle Buster was a good-looking man, firmly built at six feet one. He had played football in college, but was never a hell-raiser. His father was a Baptist minister, and whenever Uncle Buster was around Mama, he always looked at her and treated her as if she was a saleslady for Satan. Mama told me that was because Uncle Buster wanted her so much he had to make her seem terrible. I knew she loved to tease him, which was something that made
Aunt Mae Louise irate at every family gathering, not that we had all that many besides an occasional Christmas dinner, something we hadn’t done for two years.
It was no surprise to anyone, least of all to me, that for me family was as fictional a concept as Oz. The lines between us, the linkage was so thin and fragile, I never felt anything special about it. My relationships with my cousins, my aunt, and my uncle weren’t any warmer or tighter than the relationships I had with ordinary friends.
“First,” Aunt Mae Louise said, “I want you coming straight home from school every day. You go right to the guest room, where you’ll be, and you finish your homework,” she said, turning and twisting like a traffic cop so she could point at each area of the house she made reference to. “Then, you come out and help me set the table for dinner. On weekends, we shake down the house. We vacuum every rug, polish furniture, and do the windows. On Sundays after church, we’ll do all the ironing needs to be done.
“Uncle Buster and I play Bingo every Wednesday night at the church. We usually have a neighbor, Dorothy Wilson, baby-sit, but now that you’re living here, you’ll do it. That doesn’t mean you can invite anyone to the house when we’re gone. We’ll tell you exactly how we want you and the children to behave, and you’ll be responsible for them getting to bed on time, after they clean up and put away any of their toys, of course.
“Don’t you think of accepting any invitations from anyone you meet until either Uncle Buster or I find out everything we need to know about the person. We see how young people today slip through the cracks because parents don’t take enough interest in who their friends are and what they do,” she said.
You’re not my parents, I wanted to say, but kept my lips firmly glued shut.
Uncle Buster, still looking quite glum, nodded after every point she made as if he was in church listening to his father deliver a sermon. Any minute I expected him to let out with a “Hallelujah.”
“Of course, it goes without saying that we won’t tolerate any smoking or drinking, and if you do any drug, we’ll turn you in to the police ourselves, won’t we, Buster?”
“Without batting an eyelash,” he confirmed, his eyes fixed on me like two laser beams that could burn through my face.
“Now, neither Jake nor Barbara Ann ever use any profanity, and I don’t want to hear them start suddenly after you move in, Phoebe.”
I sat there staring ahead.
“Well?” she asked.
I looked at her with a “Well, what?” expression.
“You understand and agree to everything I’ve said?”
I glanced at Daddy. He looked like he was ready to break into tears any moment, but I could see the fear in his face, too, fear I would say something nasty and end it all. His eyes were full of pleading.
“I understand,” I said.
“Good.” She turned to Daddy. “All right, Horace. We’ll give it a try, but if she gives us any problem and doesn’t listen…”
“Oh, she won’t give you any problems,” Daddy said quickly. “She’s a good girl. She’s just in with too many bad kids, and she doesn’t have me around enough. I appreciate this, Mae. I know she’ll do well in a home where there is love, responsibility, and supervision.”
Aunt Mae Louise grunted skeptically and looked very self-important. I hated to see Daddy grovel like that, but I was afraid to raise my voice. I just continued to stare at nothing, like someone who could meditate herself right out of hell.
“When you bringing her things?” Buster asked. I saw that he kept his eyes on me instead of Daddy whenever he spoke about me.
“I thought tomorrow, Buster, if that’s all right with you.”
“It doesn’t matter when she starts, Horace. It’s how she behaves afterward,” Uncle Buster said.
“Oh, right. Of course,” Daddy said. “She knows that.”
“The room’s all ready. I always keep it clean and prepared for guests,” Aunt Mae Louise said. “I’ll just move some of my things out of the closet tonight so she has all the room she needs.”
“What about the school?” Daddy asked.
“I’ll get her registered and all,” Aunt Mae Louise said. “I’ve already spoken to the principal, Mr. Wallop, about her, and he explained what has to be done. You sign a paper saying you give us temporary guardianship. We go to all the parent-teacher meetings so they know us well at the school. There was even talk about Buster being on the board,” she said proudly.
“Maybe someday,” he said, “but I’m a little too busy at the moment to give it the time it requires.”
“There’s a good lesson for you,” Aunt Mae Louise told me. “Never take on any responsibility you can’t give one hundred percent to.”
I looked at her as if she was totally crazy. What did she think I was going to do, run for student government president?
“Then it’s settled,” Uncle Buster said. “How is your business going?” he asked Daddy, anxious to get off the topic of me.
They started to talk about the economy. Aunt Mae Louise brought me to the guest room and explained how she wanted things kept.
“You make sure you make the bed before you leave for school every morning, Phoebe. Fix it just like this, with the pillows fluffed and the comforter neatly folded. I don’t want people coming to my home and seeing an unmade bed. And no clothes lying about on the floor or over chairs. Everything gets hung up properly. Nothing looks messier than discarded garments. I used to fight with your mother all the time about that. She was just too lazy and didn’t care what people did or didn’t see.”
“I can keep the door closed,” I said, “can’t I?”
“It doesn’t matter if a door is closed and everything behind it is a mess. It’s still a mess. Now you be sure you don’t drop any makeup or such on this rug. It’s practically new,” she pointed out.
“You’ll be sharing a bathroom with Jake and Barbara Ann, of course. They know how to clean up after themselves. They even wash out the tub after they bathe. Jake does the best he can, and I come in after him and finish, but he’s gotten into the good habits.”
“I’m not a dirty person, Aunt Mae,” I said.
“I never said you were. I’m just telling you how things are here in our home and how I want them to remain. I feel sorry for your daddy. I felt sorry for him two minutes after he said ‘I do’ to my sister. If you care about him, you’ll be a good girl now. In a way,” she said, “it might be the best thing that happened to the both of you, your mother running off like that. The Lord works in mysterious ways, and sometimes, something that seems bad really is good. You go to church with your daddy much?” she asked.
“Never,” I said dryly.
She pulled up her shoulders.
“Well, we’ll see about changing that.”
I was going to protest, but Daddy came out and stood in the hallway with Uncle Buster, so I took a deep breath and looked away.
“Now, we’ll talk to Jake and Barbara Ann,” Aunt Mae Louise declared. “I asked them both to wait in Barbara Ann’s room,” she said, and led me two doors down the hallway.
Jake was sitting at a desk working on a puzzle. Dressed in a white shirt and a pair of black pants with his hair neatly trimmed and brushed, he looked older than five. Of course, he knew me well enough, but I also knew that both he and his sister had been warned about me often.
Barbara Ann was sitting and reading a book. They both looked up quickly when we entered.
“Children,” Aunt Mae Louise said, “your cousin Phoebe is going to stay with us for a while.”
Jake’s eyebrows lifted.
“Where’s she going to sleep?” Barbara Ann asked, probably afraid she would have to share her own room.
“She’ll be in the guest room,” Aunt Mae Louise told her, and she looked relieved. “Everyone is to behave and help everyone else. Everyone is to respect everyone else’s property,” she continued as if we were in a camp and not a home. “The same rules apply when it comes to watching televisio
n and to cleaning up after ourselves.”
“Is she going to our school, too?” Barbara Ann asked. She was tall for her age and, unfortunately for her, looked more like her father than her mother. Her features weren’t as dainty as her mother’s, and she had big shoulders and plump cheeks. She looked a good twenty or so pounds overweight.
“Of course she is.”
That seemed to interest her more.
“You can sit with me on the school bus,” she said as if she was granting me a wonderful opportunity. “I’ll save you a seat if I’m on first after school, and you can save it for me if you’re first.”
Great, a school bus, I thought, with a load of screaming children. That was just what I needed every morning.
“When is she coming to live here?” Jake asked.
It felt funny standing there and hearing everyone talk about me as if I wasn’t there.
“Tomorrow. And that’s that,” Aunt Mae Louise said. “Get ready for bed, Jake. Barbara Ann, I want to see what you did for homework tonight.”
We walked out and joined Daddy and Uncle Buster in the kitchen.
“You want something, tea or coffee, Horace?” Aunt Mae Louise offered.
“No, thank you, Mae. We’d better get back and start organizing.”
“Good idea,” she said. She turned to me. “You help your father now,” she ordered. “This is not easy for him, and he’s a good man just trying to do the best he can with his terrible burdens.”
I flinched at being called a burden, but then I thought, what else am I really?
Daddy and I walked to the front door. Uncle Buster shook his hand, and we started out. As we walked down the sidewalk to the driveway, I gazed back and saw both Jake and Barbara Ann peering out the bedroom window, looking like two children kept prisoners in some high tower. That’s how I’ll feel for sure, I thought.
The night sky was so overcast I felt like I was moving through a tunnel, even with the streetlights in front of the other homes.
“This will be only for a little while,” Daddy said after we got into the car.