I nodded and wrenched the top off of a large jar of basting oil. Dana stood at the doorway with her hand on the push bar, looking at us like she was about to go off to war. “Good-bye,” she said.
She couldn’t have been at the end of the driveway before everybody started talking about her.
“Something feels sad about that girl,” my mama said.
“I was about to say the same thing,” said the lady with the lap baby. “I wonder what kind of home she’s going back to.”
“There was a girl like that at my high school,” my mama said. “Had a baby for her daddy. She had that same beat-down way about her.”
“But such a pretty girl,” the old lady said. “And al that hair.”
“Pretty ain’t everything,” I said, surprising myself by speaking up.
“You jealous, Chaurisse?” my mama said.
“No. I’m just saying there could be more to her than just that. And she might have a good home. She could just be lonely. It’s a lot of people walking around that’s lonely.”
SINCE IT WAS a Wednesday night, Mama and I sat down to dinner by ourselves. My mother stood at the counter tossing a large salad. She was always watching what she ate. My mother was on a diet on the day I was born. On the bottom of my foot, there is a birthmark, several smal brown splotches arranged like a little constel ation. These are orange seeds, I am told. There was a rumor that pregnant ladies who consumed lots of vitamin C would lose their baby weight faster. It didn’t work. My mother grew two dress sizes after I was born, firmly lodging her at a size 18, which made her eligible to shop at the fat ladies’ store.
I went into the fridge and pul ed out two cans of Coke, diet for mama, regular for me.
“You want a glass, Mama?”
She said, “Can is al right for me.”
We sat at the table, across from each other, she at the nine, and me at the three. The twelve and the six are for Daddy and Uncle Raleigh, even if they aren’t here.
Mama squeezed a lemon over her salad while I layered mine with Green Goddess.
“There’s no point in eating salad if you’re going to do that.”
“I know,” I said.
She shook her head at me. “That girl this afternoon, she looks familiar. What was going on with her?”
“I don’t know.”
Mama said, “She nervouses me.”
“She’s al right,” I said. “I kind of like her.’
“She tel you what her problem is? She pregnant?”
“She was worried about going to col ege. That’s what she was talking about.”
“It’s good for her to be concerned about her education. I didn’t finger her for the type.”
“Can’t judge a book by its cover,” I said.
“What are you thinking about col ege?”
“What do you think about Mount Holyoke? That’s where Dana said she was going.”
“Never heard of it, but it can’t be any better than Spelman Col ege. That’s where I would have gone if things had turned out different.”
My mother finished her salad and looked into the bowl with a sort of empty dissatisfaction. She reached for a saltine cracker and ate it slowly.
She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.
“Your daddy’l be home after while. What do you think he wants for dinner?” She got up and opened the freezer, and found four chicken legs. She set them in a bowl of warm water to thaw. “I should make enough for Raleigh, too.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Might as wel .”
16
THE REST, LIKE THEY SAY, IS HISTORY
WHEN I WAS JUST three months old, sick as a dog with colic, only Daddy could calm me down. I would wake up crying that high-pitched miserable cry and Daddy would get out of bed, go to my room, wrap me up in a couple blankets, and we might spend the rest of the night touring the back roads of DeKalb County in the Lincoln. It wasn’t just the fresh air that soothed me, though I stil like to drive with the windows open, even in winter. It was the going that I liked. Around that same time, Raleigh bought me a baby swing from Sears, Roebuck. He assembled the pink and yel ow contraption with a flathead screwdriver and an Al en wrench. Once it was upright and sturdy, Uncle Raleigh and Mama waited for me to start crying.
Being as I was a preemie, born almost dead, I cried al the time. At the first whimper, Mama and Raleigh scooped me up, strapped me in, and started the swing to rocking. When the whimper switched over into something more in the category of a howl, Daddy was the one who rescued me, told them to give it up.
While he and I were cruising al over southwest Atlanta, down by Niskey Lake, even winding through the beautiful paths at West View Cemetery, Mama and Raleigh were taking the baby swing apart and fitting it back in the cardboard box. Al that back-and-forth did nothing for me. I needed forward motion and the quiet hum of a wel -tuned engine.
