CHAPTER 17
I ARRIVED at the Oakland airport in late March. From the moment the plane landed on a day as gray as tepid dishwater, my main objective was to get out of Oakland as soon as possible. Within minutes of snatching my luggage from the carousel, I boarded a train for San Francisco. From the train window, the city’s despair oozed from the shabby houses, the struggling residents, even the graffiti was sad and pathetically executed.
While many things languish in Oakland, some things have always thrived. Oakland, like any ghetto worth its salt, can boast robust exponential growth in several businesses: organized crime, churches, liquor stores and fast-food joints. It is a rare block that is not inhabited by one. Many host all four.
The sense of gloom didn’t lift until the train left Oakland, slid under the bay and emerged in San Francisco, where I booked a hotel room perched precariously on the boundary between the affluent shopping and residences of Union Square and the squalor of the Tenderloin. One could literally stand on the corner where the hotel sits, look to the right and be face to face with dozens of the city’s underclass gathered for the social services offered by my hotel’s neighbor, Glide Memorial Church. If you looked to the left you’d see scores of tourists toting huge shopping bags emblazoned with the logos of upscale department stores like Macy’s, Nordstrom’s and Bloomingdale’s.
Standing on that corner where these two worlds meet, I couldn’t help but think how for the past two years I’d also been standing on a similar line of demarcation that runs between my birth family and my adopted family. Though a narrow strip of metaphorical macadam separated these two worlds, crossing between them was no easy feat. Once one has crossed from one to the other, re-entry was as hazardous as a rocketship’s fall through the upper atmosphere. The potential to crash and burn was great.
I settled into my hotel room and slept for twelve hours. Then I called my mama. We made plans to meet. I took the train back across the bay and hailed a taxi back to our old neighborhood. She had not strayed more than half a dozen blocks from the little yellow house.
During the taxi ride, I struggled to keep pessimistic thoughts at bay. My mood lifted when my big, burly Nigerian cab driver unself-consciously started singing along to Celine Dion’s “The Power of Love,” which blared from the radio. As a huge Celine Dion fan who gets berated by my friends for my predilection, I found his unabashed enjoyment of the song charming and a mood booster. When he pulled up in front of my mama’s house, in a show of support I joined him in belting out a verse before I got out:
Lost is how I’m feeling lying in your arms
When the world outside’s too much to take
He grinned at me in the rearview mirror. I grinned back.
My mother lived in a little beige house with dark green trim, with a tiny yard out front teeming with overgrown grass and weeds. Four steps led me onto her concrete porch and past a picture window. I tapped solidly on the black wrought-iron security door. I waited. I tapped again.
“I’m coming!” my mother said through the closed door. I could hear her fumbling with the lock. When the door opened, I had a hard time seeing her because her house was dark inside and the black iron mesh of the security door was obscuring.
“I can’t move fast. It takes me a minute. Whew!” she said as she swung open the security door. I noticed right away that she had shrunk. At least a foot. Contributing to her short stature was the fact that she had a back problem that prevented her from standing fully erect. Her hair was a wild, white cotton ball and her eyes twinkled with a combination of mischief and glee. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt and cotton pants with an elastic waistband and brown Ugg boots. She reached for me and we hugged. It was a hug I had been waiting for for a very long time. There was no emotional preamble. In my imaginings this hug took place in slow motion accompanied by a sound track worthy of a 1940s melodrama. In reality it felt more like two acquaintances meeting after a brief absence as I rested briefly in Mama’s arms.
She invited me in. Her living room was dark, warm and close. The curtains were drawn and streaks of cigarette smoke drifted throughout the room like cloud cover. She told me to relock the security door.
“You can’t forget to lock up around here.” She chuckled and walked in a slow, plodding way back to her overstuffed chair that sat facing a flat-screen TV tuned to The People’s Court.
“Wow! You have a lot of pictures!” I said, noticing dozens of family photos, many I’d never seen, ranging from large 8x10’s to tiny wallet-sized, lining the walls and resting in frames on bookshelves. We never displayed photos in my childhood home. There were old photos of my siblings: Deborah as an infant, a large photo of my mama in her twenties holding my baby brother. A photo of me and my brother sitting on the floor at Soledad with Daddy in front of a mural. Louise as a smiley little girl. My paternal grandmother, my mother’s great-aunts. Several photos of Deborah, Donna and Teresa as little girls before the other siblings came along.
All of my siblings in various life stages were represented, including pictures of me from elementary school. In one photo I was smiling brightly into the camera with a perfect sphere of an afro. I was wearing a heavy coat, which was my custom even on warm days to mask my growing bosom. I recognized childhood photos of Donna’s daughter Latasha and Teresa’s daughter Atraui. My brother, Randy, now a husky full-grown man with wife and child. There was an adult picture of my sister Louise with her children. She lives in Las Vegas. Mama told me her firstborn were twins, which made me smile because when we were kids and played the board game Life, she always wanted to have twins in her car token as it rounded the board.
There were many children I did not recognize. Nieces and nephews conceived, born and grown up in my absence. Mama instructed me to show her the photos of the people I did not know.
“My blood pressure acts funny if I stand up and sit down too much.”
I showed her a family portrait of a young light-skinned woman surrounded by five children. “Oh, that’s your niece Latasha and her kids. She live in Houston.” I pointed to a dark-skinned little boy. “That’s Donna’s other child, Bruce.” I showed her another photo of a beautiful brown-skinned little girl with thick, long braids standing with a handsome, slim boy. “These are two of Deborah’s children. Teresa and I raised them after Deborah died.”
“Where are they now?” I asked.
“Oh, they around. They was the sweetest little thangs when they was little. But because Deborah was using crack when they was in her, they went kinda wild when they got older. We couldn’t handle them. They grown now, living they lives.” She told me Deborah’s firstborn, a boy, was born with severe birth defects from his mother’s drug use and remained in the hospital for a year after his birth. He was adopted by a caring family after he was well enough to leave the hospital. He would never learn to walk or speak. Mama showed me pictures in a photo album of my sister looking thin and sickly in the hospital, holding the baby she’d never raise.
“She visited him a lot when he was in there. Because he was born with so many problems, she made sure she didn’t use as much crack when she was pregnant with her other kids.”
I stared at all these faces staring at me from the wall. I didn’t know how they could bring my mother comfort. All I could think about when I stared into these faces was how much many of them suffered.
“Hey!” my mother said. “Get me that photo album over there on that shelf.” She pointed to a book resting on a shelf to the right of the TV.
“This?” I asked, touching it.
“Yeah. Bring it here,” she said, gesturing for me to sit in the overstuffed chair next to hers.
I sat down and began to pass the photo album to her. “No. You open it.” I took it onto my lap and opened it and saw photos of me. Photos taken after I went to live with Jane. There was a photo of me graduating from high school, pictures of me hiking the Appalachian Trail. There were enough photos to fill half the book. Many of the photos I recognized as ones I posted
on Facebook. Someone (probably Teresa) had downloaded them and had prints made.
“I’ve been following you,” my mother said, staring at me intently.
“So I see,” I said. This collection of photos made me feel as if I’d just discovered I had a stalker for several decades. I returned the photo album to its place on the shelf.
“So you live here alone?” I asked.
“Well, me and Marsellus.”
“Marsellus?”
“My Rottweiler!”
“Your Rottweiler?”
“I got him when he was a puppy. His full name is Marsellus Wallace, after that tough guy in that movie Pulp Fiction.”
“Oh.” I thought: Who is this woman? She never showed the least interest in dogs before, and now here she is with a Rottweiler as a companion?
“He out there in the backyard. You can go look at him but don’t go out, he don’t like strangers. The only people he like is me and Atraui. Teresa and Randy scared of him ’cause he’s so big.”
I walked a few feet toward the back of the house and pulled the drapes back, exposing a sliding glass door. Lying in the middle of the yard was indeed a big Rottweiler. He stared at me through the glass, mildly curious. I was a dog lover, so to me Marsellus didn’t inspire fear. I thought he looked downright cuddly.
“He’s so cute!” I cooed.
“Yeah, he’s a good boy. He’s normally in here with me but I put him out for you.”
I took my seat next to her and noticed the various prescription bottles on the little end table between us.
“What are all these for?”
“Lawanna, I got a lot of thangs going on. High blood pressure, COPD, arthritis, sleep apnea, asthma . . .” she said as she lit up another cigarette.
Like most old people, she went into a detailed description of her medical history over the past decades. I sat across from her, riveted.
“I have an appointment with the doctor to get my own oxygen tank soon,” she said proudly. In that warm, smoke-filled room with disgruntled litigants screaming at one another on the television, I was thinking I could benefit from an oxygen tank myself. Though I was feeling a bit queasy from the cigarette fumes and the too-warm room, I couldn’t imagine any other place I’d rather be than right there listening to Mama telling me about how much she hates wearing her dentures.
I spent a couple of hours catching up on that first visit, and when we embraced to say good-bye, I felt an unexpected closeness. When she called out “Love you!” as I descended her porch for the waiting cab, I paused to tell her I loved her too. And I meant it.
• • •
Uncle Landon was coming to pick me up at the BART station near his home. He still lived in the Fruitvale neighborhood, which was just one BART stop from Eastmont, but the two neighborhoods couldn’t have been more different. As I exited the Fruitvale BART station, I reflected on how the Fruitvale neighborhood had always been a step up from Eastmont, but while Eastmont had slid farther downward over the years, it looked to me as if Fruitvale had held steady and in some respects improved.
When Uncle Landon pulled up and stepped out of his car, I was surprised to see he had not aged much at all. He was sixty-eight and still tall and fit. He told me I was heavier but wore it well. As we drove along, Uncle Landon told me about his recent return to the Bay Area. A lifelong community activist, he left for several years to do community organizing in post-Katrina New Orleans. He and his current wife had returned to Oakland almost a year previously—he and Jan had been divorced for over a decade—and were still in the process of unpacking.
We pulled up in front of the always welcoming two-story bungalow with the large tree out front, and I was flooded with pleasant memories of hanging out with Uncle Landon, Aunt Jan and my cousins. I remembered taking my then two-year-old cousin Thembi to a yard sale next door and how the homeowner greeted my cousin with baby talk and she responded in full sentences and how impressed the woman was. I remembered setting the table for dinner and playing with my cousins. I spent a lot of time in this house. I was sure that without my uncle and the sanctuary he provided, my life would have been a lot more hazardous.
When we went inside, the house enveloped me in its familiar woodsy scent. They had done some renovating over the years, expanded the house to create a beautiful family room, but for the most part it was the same: bright, clean and welcoming.
I asked about Daddy, and Uncle Landon said that Daddy went back to prison for five years for domestic violence. He didn’t seem to want to tell me much more about him. I got the feeling he didn’t want to talk about Daddy because he didn’t want to tell me that he wasn’t interested in seeing me. Though I would welcome a visit from my father, I was not troubled by his continuing absence. Uncle Landon showed me some recent photos of Daddy and it looked as if life had not been treating him so kindly. My once vibrant, handsome father stared back at me from a photo as a shrunken old man with a hard, weathered face. I have a hard time missing him because I never truly knew him.
Uncle Landon wanted to know what I’d been up to professionally, and I spent the next hour and a half telling him about my travels and my work history with the homeless, African refugees and the environment. He seemed to swell with pride at each revelation. I could see that more than anything, he was proud to know that I, like him, did work that benefitted others.
Next he got out the photo albums and caught me up on my four cousins who, unbelievably, were all grown women. One cousin was married and lived in the Pacific Northwest, another was in college in San Francisco, another lived up the street with my Aunt Jan and had a small daughter. Another also lived in Oakland and had two grown sons, one of whom got into some scrapes with the law and was living with Landon. I told him I was glad to see he was continuing to be a shelter in a storm. That made him smile.
• • •
Mama and I took a trip to see her aunt Nell, my great-aunt, whom we visited occasionally when I was growing up. Aunt Nell was one of twelve children. At ninety-five years old, she was one of the remaining two. My aunt Nell had one of the few homes in the neighborhood in which the front and back yards were perfectly manicured. Her lawn was like a neon green shag carpet, and it seemed colorful flowers were always in bloom. As we pulled up to her house, this fact has not changed in a neighborhood where many houses fall into neglect. Aunt Nell’s little house was still a showpiece.
She didn’t have small children in her home often, so it had a cream-colored carpet and was decorated with lots of little breakable porcelain and glass figurines. There was a crystal figure of a seal balancing a ball on the tip of its nose that I was particularly attracted to as a kid, but I never got to do more to it than stare and dream. While at Aunt Nell’s, Mama watched us like a hawk to ensure we didn’t destroy anything.
“Don’t touch that!”
“Get away from there!”
“What did I just say?”
With dark looks and threats, Mama was usually able to keep us under control. Unlike our house where anything goes or Uncle Landon’s house, which was child-friendly, Aunt Nell favored French colonial reproduction furniture with the cushions sealed in thick plastic and glass-topped coffee tables. We had to be on our best behavior. If we were good, Aunt Nell would reward us by allowing us to take a piece of candy from one of the candy dishes she kept on the coffee and end tables. We had our choice of a mint, toffee or Jolly Rancher. I always chose the toffee, which I’d promptly pop in my mouth, and spend the next few minutes savoring the sweetness until it was a distant memory on my tongue.
When we entered Aunt Nell’s house that morning, everything, including the crystal seal and the candy dishes, was in its rightful place. But the gleam was gone. After more than twenty years, the plastic was no longer hermetically sealing the couch, which was finally showing a bit of frayed edges. The cream-colored carpet had dark tracks in the high-traffic areas, reminding me that we were in another time.
Aunt Nell, who had been a heavy woman, was now rail-thin b
ut sprightly. She hugged and kissed me enthusiastically. She used a walker to get around and was a bit hard of hearing, but aside from that she was as well preserved as her furniture. I can only hope to be as fit in mind and body at ninety-five years old.
We spent the afternoon looking through photo albums. Aunt Nell had really old photos I’d never seen of my mother’s mother. There was a photo Mama was proud of. It showed her mother as an infant in a frilly white gown with a small ring on her finger.
“My mother’s family was from Texas and dirt poor, but look how rich she look in this picture! She even got a ring on her finger. Most kids ain’t got rings but my mama had one,” she said, staring at the photo.
There were also photos of Aunt Nell and her sister, Aunt Dilly, as young women and newly arrived in Oakland from Texas. They were sitting near the water with their hair done up and wearing pretty dresses. My favorite was a picture of Mama as a girl of five or six years old. She is alone and stares at the camera solemnly. Even at that young age she seemed not quite sure of her surroundings but ready for anything.
When we finished reminiscing and prepared to leave, Aunt Nell told me I could have a piece of candy if I liked. I reached over and plucked a toffee from the candy dish on the end table. I unwrapped it and popped it in my mouth, anticipating the rich creaminess. What I got instead was a mouthful of stale candy. This piece tasted as if it had been sitting in that bowl since the last time I was there, decades ago. I didn’t want to insult my aunt so I tried to eat it even though it tasted like I was sucking on a glob of crystallized crazy glue.
Before we left, I asked Aunt Nell to tell me the secret to her longevity. She laughed and said, “I really don’t know. I ate soul food my whole life. The stuff they say is real bad for you too! I can’t cook so much now, so I like to eat the fast food now. I really like pizza.”