She smiled a very bright smile. “Are you reading my mind?”
I smiled back, pleased with our connection. I stood up to leave and she fol owed suit, dumping the rest of her ice cream into the trash can. She approached the prizewinner, hanging on the wal in between the eye doctor and the rent-to-own place. Because she stood so close, her reflection layered over the images in the frame.
“Mother,” I said, “I thought we were leaving.”
“These people are not better than us,” my mother said, through clenched teeth. “We have everything that they have. I work hard every day. I have my associate’s degree. She’s only been to beauty school. And you are a better daughter. We are better people.”
She was so near the photo now that her lipstick marked the glass.
“Come on,” I said, taking her by her arm. “Let’s just go.”
“You’re fine, aren’t you, Dana? You feel okay about your childhood, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m okay.”
“Because you know that a lot of black children never know their fathers.”
“Chaurisse doesn’t know her father,” I said, trying to make her laugh.
My mother looked to the left and then to the right, like she was about to cross the street. Then she took the frame by its edges and lifted it upward until the wire on the back disconnected from the hanger. She tucked the portrait under her arm like she had paid for it.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“Mother, you have to put that back.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” she said, striding for the door, looking determined and weirdly professional.
I jogged to catch up with her and reached for the frame, but she swept it from my reach. She made it through the double doors and into the back parking lot. She was running now, laughing like she had just stolen the
“Mother,” I cal ed after her, “please slow down.”
“I can’t,” she cal ed over her shoulder. “I just can’t.”
PART II
Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon
12
A PECULIAR START
MY FAMILY STORY STARTS in Ackland, Georgia, in 1958, when my mother, Laverne Witherspoon, was fourteen years old.
She had worn her Easter dress, lilac cotton with pressed pleats. At the time, this dress was her greatest achievement. Even in church, when the preacher led everyone in prayer, she found her attention pul ed away by her beautiful sleeves and careful embroidery. Now it was to be her wedding gown. For a moment, Mama thought that maybe this was her punishment for thinking too much of herself, for spending too much money on the slick nylon lining. When Mama had twirled on Easter Sunday before church, her mother said, “You look like a bride.”
Now, my Grandmamma Mattie pul ed the used-to-be Easter dress from the chifforobe and tossed it on the bed where my mama lay, stil as a cadaver. “Come on, Laverne,” Mattie said. “The boy says he’s going to marry you.”
My mama stil didn’t move. Mattie pul ed the covers back and found my mama naked except for her panties, ashy except for her tear-shiny face, and skinny except for her bulging already stomach. Mattie made a couple of idle threats and even tried talking sweet, the way a mother is supposed to, but final y she set about dressing Mama the way you change the sheet out from under an invalid.
“You need to be out in the streets rejoicing, instead of making believe you’re dead.” Mattie jerked the bodice up over my mama’s hips. Mama whimpered at the sound of the careful seams giving way, but she didn’t help or resist as Mattie propped her into a sitting position. “What kind of mother are you going to be? You can’t be stupid and be a decent mama.”
My mama was so stunned, she couldn’t speak. She didn’t hardly even know my daddy yet. Like everybody else in town, she recognized him by his thick and square glasses, ugly as army issue. She knew his name and what church he and his mother went to. His father was long dead and his mama was a live-in for white people, so she left Daddy and Uncle Raleigh alone in the house six days out of the week. This is what everybody knew about my daddy.
This mess came as a consequence of her cousin Diane fal ing in love with Uncle Raleigh. Love is what Diane cal ed it, but Mama knew this to be a basic case of color-struckness. Daddy and Uncle Raleigh were just juniors in high school, but Diane was a senior and was starting to look for a husband, one that she could make some pretty babies with. Mama had gone in the first place only because Diane didn’t want to go to the boys’
famously unsupervised home by herself, leaving people plenty of room to speculate. So Mama went along with her cousin after school, and when her cousin disappeared with Uncle Raleigh, Mama was by herself with Daddy. This whole situation was just a matter of who was sitting next to who, when. Next thing Mama knew, there was a baby growing inside her and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. At fourteen, my mama couldn’t believe that the events of one clumsy evening had led to this. She hadn’t even known it was possible.
When Mama stopped being able to hold down her lunch, she was worried, but it was the burnt-penny taste in the back of her mouth that sent her to see Miss Sparks. From eight until noon, Miss Sparks served in the capacity of school nurse, but Mama liked her best as the home ec teacher who praised her sewing. Miss Sparks was known for her high-pitched voice that sounded almost like opera when she scolded rowdy students with her trademark
