If she had done some drinking with a girlfriend, she would dance and laugh, calling to me to join her while she fixed dinner; if I didn't come or if I made a reluctant face, she would pounce on me and accuse me of being strange, which she blamed on my daddy and his side of the family.
"Never seen a name fit better than the name I gave you, girl," she would declare. "The only time I ever see a smile on your face is when you're singing in that church. You going to be a nun or something? Wake up. Shake your booty. You got a nice figure. honey. You're lucky, you don't take after your daddy in looks and be big boned like that Tania Gotchuck or somebody similar.
"You got my nose and mouth and you're getting my figure," she said with her hands on her hips, turning as if she were surrounded by mirrors.
Mama didn't need mirrors to look at herself though. She could spot her reflection in a glass on the table or a piece of silverware and suddenly fan her hair or touch her face and complain about aging too quickly. She wasn't. She was just anticipating it with such dread that the illusion of some tiny wrinkle forming or a single gray hair put hysteria into her eyes and panic in her voice.
"You wouldn't be so crazy nervous about yourself if we had another child," Daddy told her. "It would give you something more important to worry about."
He might as well have lit a firecracker in the middle of our living room, but for as long as I could remember. Daddy wanted to have more children. I know he wanted a son badly. However. Mama grumbled that giving birth to me had added a halfinch or so to her hips and another child would surely turn her into another one of those "walruses waddling around here with a trail of drippy-nosed brats they couldn't afford to have. Not me. I'm still young enough to turn a head or two."
"That's all that makes you happy. Lena," Daddy retorted. "Being the center of attention."
He didn't make it sound like any sort of accusation or even a criticism. It was just a matter-offact statement. Even so. Mama would go off on one of her tirades about how he wanted her to be fat and ugly so other men wouldn't look longingly at her anymore.
"You used to be proud to have me hanging on your arm, Cameron Goodman. I could see how you would strut like a rooster, parading me in front of your friends, bragging with your eyes. I let you wear me like some piece of jewelry and I didn't bitch about it. did I? So why are you complaining now?"
"I'm not complaining. Lena, but there's more to life now. We're settled down. We have a home, a child. We should be building this family. too," Daddy pleaded, his big hands out, palms up like someone begging for a handout of affection and love.
"I told you a hundred times if I told you once. Cameron. We can't have any more children on your salary." she replied and turned away quickly to end the argument or to run from it.
That wasn't fair or even a good excuse. Daddy made a decent salary. He had always done well. Now he was the head of security for Cobbler's Market, a big department store on Ninth Street. He had been a military policeman in the army; after he came out, he started working different security positions until he was chosen to head up one and then another.
It wasn't just his size that recommended him for the job, even though he stood six feet four and weighed two hundred and twenty-five pounds. He was considered a clear-thinking, sensible man who could manage other men. I know for sure that his calm, patient demeanor helped him get along with Mama. It took a great deal more than it took most men to get him to lose his temper. He seemed to know that when he did, he would unleash so much fury and rage. he couldn't depend on his power to rein it in. He was truly someone who was afraid of himself, of what he could or would do.
Amazingly, Mama never seemed afraid of him, never hesitated or stepped back even when it looked like she was treading on thin ice. I have seen her throw things at him, push him, even kick him. He was like a tree trunk, unmovable, untouched, steady and firm, which only seemed to get Mama angrier, Finally, frustrated with her inability to get the sort of reaction from him she wanted, she would retreat out of exhaustion.
"You're just like your father when it comes to your cold personality,' she accused, pointing her long, right forefinger at me like some prosecutor-- because to her way of thinking not to be outgoing and emotional was truly a crime. "There's where the ice comes into your veins. Certainly not from me. child. I'm full of heat she bragged. "A man looks into these eyes and he melts."
She would wait for me to agree or smile or look like I was envious. but I didn't do any of that and that brought a sneer to her lips.
"What is with you. girl? You think you're better than everyone around here or something?""
I shook my head vigorously.
"Because I never did anything to make you believe that. I never pumped you up with compliments and such until you walked around with your head back, looking like you got flies in your nose or something, did I? Well, did I?"
I knew she would keep at me until I spoke.
"No, Mama."
"No, Mama," she mimicked. "So?" she said, her hands still on her hips. "why are you home all the time, huh? Why don't you have girlfriends and boyfriends? When I was your age, my daddy put a double lock on the door to keep the boys out. Here you are seventeen,'" she said. "and you ain't been out on a real date yet. I don't hear the phone ringing either," she complained.
It nearly made me smile to hear her grievances. All the other girls my age were constantly moaning and groaning about how their parents came down on them for being on the phone too much or being out too late and hanging around with bad kids.
"Are you ashamed of this place, ashamed of us? Is that why you hardly ever utter a word? Your family embarrass you? Huh?"
I shook my head again.
"Because the worst kind of girl is a snob," Mama declared. "She's worse than the other kind who teases and such. Are you a snob? Is that what your friends think. too? You think because you have a nice singing voice, you can't waste it on us ordinary folks? Is that it? Because if it is, that's a snob. Well? Answer me, damn it."
"I'm not a snob. Mama," I insisted. "I'm not ashamed of you or Daddy either."
Tears tried to come m' to my eyes. but I slammed the door shut on them.
She raised her eyebrows, surprised she had gotten so strong a verbal reaction from me.
"No? Well, what are you then? What's your problem. girl? Why do people talk about you being strange and mute? People here say Good morning and you just nod or they ask you how you are and how your family is and you smile instead of talk. I hear about it. Some of them like rubbing it into me like oil or something. Is that why you don't have a close girlfriend and no boyfriends? I bet it is," she said nodding, "I know boys don't want to waste their time on someone who acts deaf and dumb.
"You ain't ugly, far from that. child. You look too much like me. What is it then? You just shy? Is that it? Was that grade-school teacher right about you years ago? You're Miss Bashful?'" She drew close enough to me that I could smell the whiskey on her breath. "Huh? You got no self-confidence?" She poked me in the shoulder. "You afraid they going to laugh at you?" She poked me again. "Well?"
I put my hand over my shoulder where it was getting sore. but I didn't cry or even grimace.
"What?" she screamed at me.
"No one interests me yet." I said calmly.
That stopped her. She thought about it a moment and then shook her head.
"Well, you don't have to think of every boy as your future husband. Ice. Don't you just want to go out and have a good time once in a while?"
I didn't answer.
"You're shy," she decided, nodding firmly. "You're just too much like your daddy. He was so shy. I had to kiss him that first time How's that? It surprise you to know that big, strong, bull of a man was afraid to kiss a girl? That's right. He was shaking in his shoes so bad. I could have pushed him over with one finger," she said. smiling, "I have that effect on most men. And you could, too, if you'd just listen to me. You don't even put on lipstick unless I hound you, and you still ain't trimmed tho
se eyebrows the way I taught you,"
Mama had spent six months in a beauty school when she was seventeen. It was her one real attempt at any sort of career for herself, but she lacked the sense of responsibility and the discipline to follow through. If she woke up tired, she just didn't go in, and soon they asked her to leave. However, she had learned a great deal.
"You need the arch," she pursued, running her forefinger over my left brow, "You put the high point directly above the middle of your iris. Brows are the frames of your eyes. Ice. Don't be afraid to tweeze them! Why should you be afraid of something like that anyway?"
"I'm not afraid. Mama." I said stepping back.
"Well then, why don't you do it? You can make your eyes look bigger. Remember what I told you: tweeze the hairs from underneath. not from above. Best time is after a shower. It's less painful, but a little pain can go a big way."
I looked down, hoping she would get bored as usual and start on some other pet peeve of hers, like how small our apartment was or how she couldn't buy the new dress she wanted because it was too expensive. Usually, she ended up threatening to go get a job, but she had yet to apply for work anywhere. Most of her day was spent looking after her hair and her skin, doing her beauty exercises or meeting her friends for lunch, which usually ran most of the afternoon. She always had too much to drink at those lunches and always reeked of smoke.
I once asked her why she smoked and drank if she cared so much about her looks and she responded by throwing a water glass across the room and accusing me of being too religious. She threatened to keep me from attending the church choir or make me quit the school chorus.
"It's the only time I ever see you show any interest in anything. What kind of a young life is that? Even birds do more than just sing."
Actually, both our school chorus and the church choir were award winning and were often asked to sing at government and charity events, but what did Mama know about that? She rarely came to hear me sing.
"You'll end up mealy-mouthed and fat, worrying about your everlasting soul day in and day out instead of having any fun." she rattled on. Now that she was on a roll, she seemed driven by her own momentum like some car that had last its brakes going downhill.
"My mama was like that and that's why I was glad to get out of that house when your daddy came along and made me pregnant," she said without the slightest shame.
Other mothers would hide the fact that you were an accident, but not mine. Depending on her mood when she talked about it, she was either seduced by Daddy or clever enough to get herself pregnant and married as a means of escaping imprisonment at home. Whatever the reasons, however, my birth had been a blow to her youth and beauty. She never stopped reminding me about that added inch on her hips besides the strain it was on her to care for a baby.
"If you looked after yourself more, you'd have boys asking you out. Ice. As it is, they won't give you a second look unless you become one of them easy conquests."
Her eyes widened with her own imaginings: me on a street corner or in the back of same parked car.
"You do that and I'll throw you out on the street," she threatened. "I'm not having people talk dirt about a daughter of mine."
I stared at her as if she was really talking nonsense now.
"Don't look at me like that, girl. It doesn't take much to turn a nice girl into a street tramp these days. I see it going on all around us. That Edith Merton might as well put a sign on her door out there." she declared, pumping her finger at our front door. "That whole family oughta be evicted."
The Mertons lived at the end of the hall. Edith's father was a city bus driver. She had a ten-year-old brother and her mother worked in a dry-cleaning and laundry shop. Edith's double trouble was to have developed a heavy bosom at age thirteen and to have parents who were so busy working to keep a roof over their heads and food in their mouths that she was left on her own too much.
Mama's obsession with herself and her youthful looks had one good result. I suppose. She was terrified of disease, especially anything that affected her complexion. I was prohibited from ever going into
Edith's apartment. and I was never to invite her into ours. Mama saw her as walking contamination and pointed to every blotch on her face as evidence of some sexually transmitted disease.
As a result of what I learned people would call a bad neurosis. Mama wanted our home to be immaculate. If she did any real work, it was to keep our house and our clothing clean. Of course. I was the one who did a major part of all that. but I didn't complain. Except for my singing in the church choir and the school chorus and doing homework. I had little to compete for my time.
However, shortly after Mama and I had our most recent one-sided conversation about my anemic social life. Mama came to the conclusion that it was finally beginning to reflect poorly on her.
"I go out with my girlfriends," she complained, "and before long they're all talking about their kids in some new romance, bragging about the way they get all spruced up or how pretty they are and I got to sit there with my mouth as sewn tight as yours usually is, just listening and hoping no one's going to ask me about you. But I know what they're thinking when they look at me: 'poor Lena. She got that great burden to bear at home,' How do you think that makes me feel, huh?" she whined,
"I'll tell you," she said let knowing I wasn't going to offer any answer, "It makes me feel like I got some kind of a retard at home. a girl who never gets her hair fixed in a beauty shop, never listens to me about her makeup, never asks for a new dress, never does nothing but read or listen to her music and go singing with some travel agents to heaven. You're an embarrassment!" she declared finally. "And I mean to do something about it once and for all.'
I had no idea what she meant, but I did look at her with curiosity, which made her smile.
"You need a push. girl. That's all. Just a little head start. Even your daddy says so." she told me.
I doubted that. More than likely, she went into one of her tirades when he had just come home from work late and was tired and he couldn't offer much resistence. To shut her up, he probably nodded a lot, grunted and looked like he agreed, but my guess was he wouldn't even remember the topic of conversation the next day if he was asked about it.
At least. I hoped that was true. Daddy never lied to me or ever criticized me for being too quiet or too withdrawn. He liked the tranquility he and I enjoyed when Mama wasn't around to lecture us on one failing or another. More often than not, he and I would sit quietly, both of us reading or listening to his jazz records. We said more to each other in those silences than most people did talking for hours and hours.
"Listen to that trumpet." he would say and I would; he would nod and look at me and see that I understood why he loved jazz so much.
He had a valuable collection of old jazz albums that included Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey on drums, and female vocalists like Carmen McRae, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. He loved how I could listen to Carmen McRae singing "Bye Bye Blackbird" and then imitate her. He said I did a wonderful job imitating Ella Fitzgerald's "Lullaby of Birdland," He would play it and I would sing along. I could see the deep pleasure in his face whenever I performed for him. If Mama was there, she would thumb through one of her beauty magazines and look up at me occasionally, torn between giving me a compliment and complaining about me being content at home with them or my disinterest in the music girls my age loved.
"You're turning her into some weird kid. She doesn't listen to hip-hop or any of the music kids her age listen to and it's because of you. Cameron." she would grumble.
"I'm just listening to real music," Daddy would reply. "And she enjoys it. What's wrong with that?"
"Real music." Mama muttered. ''My idea of real music is going somewhere to hear it and dance and have a good time, not sitting in your living room tapping your fingers on the side of an armchair."
They did go out on weekends occasionally, but Mama was never happy about the places Daddy took her.
The people there were either too old or too calm or out of touch with what was really happening.
"You're not out in the world like I am," she would tell him. "You just don't know."
Daddy didn't argue. He drew his music around him like a curtain of steel and sat contented, as contented as someone soaking in a warm bath. I listened, sang, learned about tempo and beat, phrasing and rhythm while Mama pouted or went into her bedroom to turn on the television set very loud. Those nights, we drove silence out the window.
Finally. Mama really decided to do something about me, to take control of my destiny, just as she had threatened. She was back to that idea that some girls just needed a little push. Well, she was going to give me more than a little push. She was going to give me a firm shove.
She returned one afternoon, stepped into my bedroom while I was sprawled on my bed doing my math homework, and made an astonishing
announcement.
"Thank your lucky stars. girl. I got you a date with a handsome young man."
"What?" I asked, turning.
"I got you a date for Saturday night. We got to go out and buy you something decent to wear and then I have to help you get yourself together, fix your hair, do your makeup. When you go out with someone, you represent me, too," she declared. "'People gonna say that's Lena Goodman's daughter and by the time I'm finished fixing you up, people gonna say. 'I would have known anywhere that was Lena's girl, a girl that pretty has to be her daughter.'"
"What do you mean, a date?" I asked, my heart thudding like a fist on stone.
"I know you kids don't like to think of it as a date. Somehow the word became old-fashioned. You just what--'hang out with someone' nowadays?" She smirked and shook her head. "Well, to me a date's a date. The man picks you up, takes you somewhere nice, and pays for everything. That's still a date in my book."
"What man?" I asked, sitting up.
"Louella Carter's younger brother Shawn. He's gonna be home from boot camp on leave this weekend, and we arranged for you two to be together Saturday night. He's a very good-looking boy and a boy in the army is gonna be well mannered. too. I spoke with him on the phone myself and he was all, 'Yes ma'am' and 'No ma'am' and 'Thank you. ma'am."