Читать книгу Crave - Laurie Jean Cannady - Страница 21

Nowhere Man Nowhere Man

“If you want to see your daddy, look in the mirror.” This Momma said whenever I asked why I was lighter than everybody else and why my eyes were caramel drops and hers, my brothers’, and sister’s were Milk Duds. This she said when I asked, “Who do I look like, if I don’t look like you?”

I never found answers in the face looking back at me from the mirror. Yet, I ventured, time and time again, into that bathroom, with the tub scrubbed so ferociously it shined, to the place where Pine Sol was the breath of porcelain fixtures. I gawked in the mirror, stretching and scrunching my face, holding my lids open with my fingers, examining the specks of chocolate in my eyes. I never found him there. I covered my mole, the one set between my lip and nose, large, obtrusive, like a raisin in an oatmeal cookie. I did not find him there either. I sometimes pulled back my hair, turned my chin to the right, squeezed one eye closed, in an attempt to piece together my father. Still, all I saw was me.

Then I turned from that mirror to the father in my mind, the one who’d said, “See you later” right before my second birthday. In that version of him, my father had a hairline that swooped across the top of his head like a fat check mark. His skin was fair, like mine, and clear, too smooth for a man’s man. This might have prompted others to try him, but for his eyes, which could punch holes through faces with one glance. My father was not a big man, not a tall man, but the way that he walked, long, like he knew people were watching, added six inches to his stature. His gait was lengthy, hurried because he had places to go, people to see—namely me. And when he moved, his arms propelled him forward as if they were oars and life, his boat, cutting through seas constantly working to toss him over. In my mind, my father had never been capsized. He was not somewhere clamoring for air, every second drowning. My father had just drifted away because arms weren’t meant to be oars nor life, a boat, but he was finding his way back to me. This I knew because Momma told me that is what fathers do.

When I was twelve, I decided I would no longer search for my father in the bathroom mirror. He was in the world somewhere, which meant he could be found. I started in my small city of Portsmouth, Virginia, where the only limits were my two feet and the will to walk. First, I walked the streets, from my own projects, Lincoln Park, to the projects of Ida Barbour, Swanson Homes, and South Side. That search led me straight up Deep Creek Boulevard, with a left on Scott, another left down Elm, and back around to Prentis Park. During those expeditions, I traveled a perfect square, ending where I began, but I did not know that then. I just walked the road in front of me, with no destination in mind, hopeful my daddy would find me, just as I was trying to find him.

After months of walking, I grew physically and mentally tired of that strategy. My next step had to be more guided, purpose driven. Then I turned to Momma’s stories, the ones which dropped seeds into the garden of my imagination. He had an uncle, Uncle Benny, whose house Momma pointed out each time we visited my Aunt Vonne in Prentis Park. The small house sat quietly on the corner of Peach Street. It was a ranch with deep, emerald grass sparkling from the foundation to the curb. When we walked past, the windows were never open, neither was the front door. It looked as if the house were a time capsule waiting for someone to open it.

Each time, Momma pointed, “This is where your Uncle Benny lives. He’s your Grandma Mary’s brother.”

I wanted to ask if we could stop there, if I might ask him where my daddy was, but by the way Momma picked up speed and kept her face forward as she pointed at Uncle Benny’s home, I knew the answer would be “No.”

When I walked alone, I did not have to ask if I could stop. I didn’t need permission to go where directions to my father might be housed. One humid Saturday, I walked that perfect square, but I wasn’t staring into the windows of cars. I wasn’t looking to recognize faces whizzing by. I focused on my future with my daddy, something I believed Uncle Benny could give me.

I prayed the whole way there, asking God to make Uncle Benny love me, to make him see how good of a girl I was, so good he’d call my daddy and say, “We found your baby and she’s as perfect as you left her.” I prayed that the whole of the Carter family would descend upon that little house on Peach Street bearing gifts, money, food, so much food I would have forgotten ever being hungry. And I’d see me in them, my face in theirs, my color on their skin.

I knocked so softly it was as if I didn’t want the person inside to hear. I listened for movement on the other side, just in case the door never opened. I’d never met Uncle Benny before, so he couldn’t have known who I was by looking through the peephole, but I believed he could recognize my father, Carl, in me. There was part of me that celebrated and feared that.

Momma had described nights of merriment between Uncle Benny and my father. They sang, played cards, told jokes late into the night. Later, as if the room and all of its occupants had been turned inside out, the merriment would vanish. Curses would be flung like horseshoes clanging around a pole. Fists would be thrown for insignificant reasons. It didn’t take much for the laughter and hugging to turn to screams and heads clamped in headlocks so restrictive they put everyone in the room to sleep. Momma said most arguments ended with either Uncle Benny or my daddy sprawled on the floor, nursing a busted lip or a bruised head. I prayed Uncle Benny wouldn’t recognize that part of my father in me.

I knocked again, a little harder the second time. Whichever Carl he saw, I had to see him. I heard a shuffle on the other side of the door, but no lock turned. “Who is that?” His voice cut through the wooden slab. I cleared my throat and plastered a smile across my face, in case he could see me through the peephole.

I spoke directly into it as if it were a microphone. “I’m Laurie, Carl and Lois Carter’s daughter. Their eldest girl.” There was silence on the other side of the door. I wondered how much of me could he see through that tiny hole. The lock turned. The door squeaked open. There stood a short man, with salt-and-pepper hair, and skin darker than Momma and all of my brothers and sister combined.

I leaned forward, ready to apologize for having the wrong house and the wrong person for so long.

“So, you Carl’s girl,” he said.

I fought to stand still as I stared into his yellowed eyes, swimming in cataracts. He looked nothing like the father in my mind, so much shorter, darker, and his hair held no hints of the red that streaked through my ends.

“I am Carl’s,” I replied.

“Girl,” he responded abruptly. “I ain’t seen your daddy.” My face burned with his gruffness. I hadn’t asked any questions and he’d already decided he had no answers. Still, I prodded. Maybe my father’s location would slip past his nonanswers.

“Have you talked to him lately?” I asked.

“No, I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. He’s probably up to no good if he’s doing anything.” He stepped aside and waved me into the foyer with the flick of his hand.

The house smelled like hickory-smoked sausages mixed with the scent of decaying pine. I stood in the hallway, eyeing the rabbit ears of the floor model, wrapped in balls of aluminum foil. The carpet, like the lawn, was a sea of green, the color and consistency of a dirt-covered tennis ball. The walls where white, but under the haze of the room they looked like a roaring gray sky. I could only see two chairs, a sofa, and a lone armchair sitting in the middle of the room like a person with elbows pressed into knees, waiting for something to happen.

I had seen enough to know Uncle Benny wasn’t a man of money. In fact, I wondered if my family was better off than he was.

“Are you Carl’s uncle, my Uncle Benny?” I asked.

“Yep, but like I said, I don’t know where your daddy is.”

“Momma said you probably didn’t know where my daddy was, but that you could get me in touch with my grandma. I just want to meet her.”

He paused, peering at me through the sides of his eyes.

“How is your momma doing?” his voice softened.

“She’s good. She told me to see you because she wanted to see my grandma, to see how she was doing.” I could tell by the way he reversed to that lone chair that he had cared about Momma. He could shut me out, but Momma was already in.

I pried again. “Have you talked to my grandma lately?”

“Nah, I haven’t talked to her in a minute. She and your granddaddy up in Suffolk.” I turned my head toward the door, trying to hide my smile. I had another granddaddy. He would be a new person, a new life for me to imagine.

“Can I get their number?” I asked as he leaned back in his chair.

“Well, I think I have it somewhere in here.” He brought his hand up to his chin and tapped. Uncle Benny rose from the chair, like a mechanical hand was pressing him forward. I remained still, hands clasped in front of me, careful not to move as he made his way to a small dresser. He rummaged through drawers as if the number were hidden under years of mail. His hand surfaced holding a pen and piece of paper adorned in grayed wrinkles. He scribbled ten numbers, no name, no address, just numbers. With his crooked, gnarled fingers, he slid the paper toward me.

I wanted to hug him, to tell him I’d do the right thing and he wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore, but he didn’t look like he was up for hugging. I hadn’t said much as I’d stood in his home and he’d given no indication he wanted me to say more. I bounced home, anxious to dial those ten numbers.

That first day, after the first dialing, that number was a dead end. The phone hiccupped a busy signal from the time I put my quarter into the phone booth to late at night, when Momma said it wasn’t safe for me to go outside anymore.

I visited Uncle Benny several times after that. Each visit he stood guard over his foyer until he’d written ten new numbers. Each time, I either got a lady on the other end, singing, “This number has been disconnected,” or her twin chiming, “This number is not in service.”

There were those times the phone just rang and rang and rang or the busy signal’s broken chirp kept pace with my tears. Those were good days because there was the possibility someone would pick up the phone after I let it ring for the one-hundredth time, and there was the chance the busy signal would be silenced once they put the phone back on the receiver. As long as Uncle Benny lived on Peach Street, as long as there were ten numbers he could write, there was hope I could find the man that filled my imagination with the life we were supposed to be living.

One day Uncle Benny’s ten numbers silenced the incessant ringing in my mind. The voice of a girl, nasal, twisted in a southern drawl, breathed, “Hello.” I almost dropped the phone, almost ran from the booth when the ringing was replaced by a live person on the other end. I met my cousin, Tiffany, daughter of my uncle, Frank, Jr., who introduced me to my grandfather, Frank, Sr., whose laugh reached through the phone and poked a dimple into my cheek. He introduced me to my grandma, Ms. Mary, and she whispered, “Laurie? Carl’s girl?” so quietly I thought she didn’t mean for me to hear.

We became a family, in the span of minutes, me on one side of the phone, them on the other. I didn’t even ask where Carl was. If I got where they were, I was sure I’d find him.

They lived in Ivor, right outside of Suffolk, the same house my daddy was born in. Momma had been there many times, but she had never taken me there. I’d never thought to ask where my daddy had lived when she met him. The obvious can easily be overlooked when one’s search becomes blinding.

Momma agreed to take me to see my family soon after that conversation. Address and phone number in hand, I was on my way to meet my daddy. That summer morning, Momma loaded all five of us into Uncle Bruce’s car. It didn’t matter that I and my middle brother, Dathan, were my father’s only biological children. We all wore his last name, so by law and according to Momma, he was everybody’s daddy. We all sat in the back seat, amidst fidgeting and chattering about all of the fun we’d have in Suffolk with the other half of our family. Dathan wondered about cousins we’d never met and Mary asked if we’d see goats or pigs since we were going to the country. I prayed quietly my father would be there. I wanted to look into the eyes of the man I had imagined for so long.

On the hour ride to Suffolk, I rewound mini-soap operas I had orchestrated around my father’s existence. Would he, as I’d often imagined, be a drug dealer with lots of money, houses, and cars, and I’d have to arrest him, and turn him from a life of crime once I became an undercover detective? Would he be on his deathbed, drenched in sweat, begging for medicine, and I would walk in, wearing doctor’s scrubs, with a serum I manufactured myself just to save his life? Or, would I meet him through the love of my life, after I learned my new beau’s stepfather was actually my real father, and then we would all live happily ever after? I was anxious to learn which scenario fit. Wedged in between Mary and the door, I peered out of the window, watching as road, trees, and miles blurred by. Every so often, Momma slowed and I caught a glimpse of a tree limb, shrouded in leaves, still amidst the wind. I wished life could be lived in snapshots. If that were so, there wouldn’t have been ten years between the last time I’d seen my father and that day.

I just knew my father would be waiting for me once we arrived. I just knew they’d called him after our phone call, and he’d left wherever he was so he could meet me. I wouldn’t even let myself think he wouldn’t be there. In my mind, in that snapshot, we were going to be together.

When we pulled up to the house in Ivor, all of my allusions about my father being rich were slashed. No man who had money would allow his parents to live in the home Grandma Mary and Granddaddy Frank lived in. The house looked like a drunken old man, hands resting on a cane, teetering over. The porch, built of wooden planks, inclined from the dirt ground up to the front door. Even the door leaned, like a broken nose, crooked. The steps were wooden slabs. They too were uneven, stacked on top of each other, leading into a dark hole of a room.

Granddaddy Frank and Grandma Mary exited the door as Momma parked. I beamed as they opened the car door, as their outstretched hands welcomed us. Grandma Mary was a small woman, with skin as rich as coffee. She wore curls that hugged her head tightly and thin-rimmed glasses that sat snuggly on the balls of her cheeks. I stood eye to eye with her as she embraced me. Her tears ran down my cheeks. She wore a dress that hugged her waist and swung side to side as she walked. The smell of biscuits wafted through the open door of the house. I wrapped my arms around her, pressed my cheek against her face, and inhaled her aroma and warmth.

Granddaddy Frank was a tall man, with eyes the color of water over moss. His hair was a red clay hue. It looked as if it would run down his cheek with each drip of sweat. He had a smile that stretched across his mouth. I strained my neck to look up at him. With one fell swoop, he lifted me over his head, looked right into my eyes and said, “That’s Carl’s girl, all right.” In that moment, I felt as full as if I had bitten into the best part of me and found it to be as juicy as a navel orange.

Once we entered the house, I scanned the living room, searching for Carl. No face resembled the father I had constructed in my mind. A small commotion was brewing in the living room where my new cousins and uncle sat. They all wore the same smiles as Granddaddy Frank, large and long across the face. There was Uncle Frank’s daughter, Tiffany. She was about two years younger than me. She didn’t wear the same hunger I wore, sitting under her daddy’s arm. Then there was Bay-Bay, a tall boy of thirteen and Ronnie, the oldest of Uncle Frank’s children. He and my brothers immediately became engrossed in a handshake that sent them laughing to the floor.

Uncle Frank loudly greeted us. He offered each of us a hand and got up to hug Momma tightly. I loved his laugh, which sounded to me like a daddy’s laugh, one that started at the toes and burned in the belly. Grandma Mary and Granddaddy Frank began pulling small wooden chairs that looked as if they’d been cut from the wood of trees in their backyard. As Momma took a seat, Bay-Bay and Tiffany called me, Champ, Dathan, Mary, and Tom-Tom to the back room. The back room was the only other room in the house, and there were no light fixtures on the ceilings in either. Both rooms were lit by a small lamp Bay-Bay carried from the front of the house to the back. Once we settled into the room, Bay-Bay lit a candle and our shadows bounced off of the walls. In one corner, a small bed sat with a quilt sprawled across it. Next to the door was a vanity that held Grandma Mary’s toiletries.

Against the wall sat a chest of drawers covered in black and white pictures. I wanted to go through them and find the father that had only existed in my dreams, but I feared that would be too much, too fast. Bay-Bay and Ronnie decided we should play Duck-Duck-Goose, so I sat next to my new cousin and waited for the other one to tap me or one of my siblings on the head. We pursued each other mercilessly, sometimes not even waiting to be tapped before we shot from our seats and began chasing. In less than an hour, we’d tired ourselves and sprawled our bodies across the floor, touching heads, our feet facing the walls, making our own Carter star. It felt so right there, amongst family members that looked like the other half of me. I now knew where my light eyes came from and that my skin was redder than my siblings, not because I was the milkman’s baby as Champ had often claimed, but because I was Carl’s baby and I had proof in my cousins’ faces.

It wasn’t lost on me that I was in the same dimly lit room where my father had slept. I may have even been in the exact spot where he had lain when he was twelve years old. I wanted to pull Grandma Mary to the side and ask where my daddy was. I wanted the answers that my dreams could never offer, but I was afraid she’d order me away because I was prying, afraid she would see through my ruse and realize I was on a mission to place my real father in my reality. As hopeful as I was about my happy ending, I had a feeling they were protecting him from something. I just couldn’t bring myself to believe that something was me.

I watched and I waited until I had the perfect opportunity to pounce. We’d just finished a round of penny pitching when Grandma Mary walked in the room with an apron filled with biscuits. She held them close to her stomach, the warmth of her tucked in each mound. The biscuits were smaller than Momma’s and varied in shape, but there was no mistaking the soft aroma that tickled my nose. She went to each child in the room and waited while he or she picked the perfect biscuit for him or her. Then, she came to me. Maybe I was drunk from the smell of biscuits, or the heat radiating from the small balls had given me a sense of security I hadn’t felt before. I didn’t know how or why, but I knew it was time to ask for what was rightfully mine.

“Grandma Mary, can I call you that?” I asked even though I’d always called her that in my mind.

“You can call me that or just Grandma, baby.”

“I like that, Grandma,” I said, quickly trying out the word in my mouth. I then picked the smallest biscuit left in her apron, hoping she’d notice I wasn’t greedy, that I only wanted a little bit. Then I asked, quickly before my mind altered my words, “Where is my father?”

Her lips tightened. She blinked, a long blink, not long enough to be considered a roll, but longer than any blink should ever be. Whatever courage I’d had disappeared. While the others positioned themselves for the next game, I stood in front of her, waiting for her smile to curl into a frown. But, that moment did not come. She just looked into my eyes as I held, tightly, the biscuit I had chosen. I felt the heat moving from inside of the bread into my palms. I dared not bite into the dough. She hadn’t given permission.

Grandma Mary stared at me through melancholy eyes. She patted my shoulder, shook her head from side to side and punctuated each pat with an “Um, um, um.” I could tell she felt for me, felt my longing for my father, but I also felt a wall immediately erected, which guarded her from my needing. She took my hand into hers, the same hand that held the biscuit, and walked me over to the dresser that was covered in pictures. I expected her to pick one of the larger frames filled with smiling people, but she opened the top drawer, pushed aside a pile of underwear, and pulled out a picture as small as a stamp. She held it to her chest and looked down with a hunger I was familiar with. She then looked at me, her eyes softening under the deep grooves of her skin.

“You ever seen your daddy before?” she asked.

I shook my head no.

“You wanna see him?” I nodded, forcing myself not to grab the picture from her. With one hand gingerly placed on the other, she held the picture in front of me. I wanted to hold it close to my face, and stare eye to eye with my father, just as I had when I searched for him in the mirror. Instead, I held her hands in mine and looked down at the man staring back at me.

He was darker than I had imagined. His shoulders were slightly slumped and his chest looked as if it were caving in. I could see the thin outline of his arms under his green and orange striped shirt. His hairline was faint enough to be considered nonexistent. His eyes were dark like a melted Hershey bar and surrounded by a reddish tint that made him look as if sleep had eluded him for years. His nose resembled my own, starting as a narrow line between his eyes, but opening to an anchor that sat heavily in the middle of his face. His lips were smooth and one shade darker than the rest of him. They weren’t curled into a smile or turned into a frown. They were muted, a straight line that went from one side of his face to the other. I tried to read his eyes, tried to find something in them that showed they’d never held the emptiness Momma said she had seen when he’d beat her, when he used food money for beer, but there was nothing there for me.

Grandma Mary looked at me as I studied the picture. I wanted to ask if I could keep it, so I could remember him, but when I saw tears in her eyes, I knew that wasn’t the right thing to ask. Without her saying, I could tell that was the only piece of him she had left.

“Where is he?” I asked. “Don’t you know where he is?” She offered a smile and patted me on the head.

“I don’t know, baby. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“But where was he last? Is he still in Virginia?”

A look of apprehension shot across her face.

“No, I think he’s in Maryland. Probably in Baltimore,” she said.

“Why is he there? Is he ever coming back? Does he have a phone number?” I couldn’t stop the barrage of questions.

“I don’t know, baby. Don’t you want to eat your biscuit and go and play with the other kids?” she asked, gently ushering me toward the crowd.

I did not want to play or talk with the other kids. I did not want to eat my biscuit. I wanted to know where my father was. This I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t say what I felt. By the silent sadness that turned the edges of her eyes down, I knew she had given all she could. A glimpse, a nibble of him would have to be enough.

“Go on and play, Laurie,” she said. “Your cousins are going to miss you when you’re gone.” With a slight pop on my backside, she sent me over to the other kids in the room. I placed my biscuit on the dresser and began playing as hard as I could. I screamed with all of my might when we were in hot pursuit of one another and I laughed hardest, longest, and loudest, when I had to pee in a stew pot because I was afraid of going to the outhouse. I was in constant motion because I feared quiet.

We romped around the room late into the night. Just as I began to think we’d be making a pallet on the floor, Grandma Mary came into the room. “Come on y’all. Your momma’s ready to go,” she sang. We replied with groans and protests, but I feared going more than anyone could understand. We gathered in the living room and said our goodbyes. Tiffany and I hugged, promising we’d play together again. Bay-Bay, Ronnie, and my brothers finished the handshake they’d started earlier in the night. I hugged Granddaddy Frank and thanked him for having us. Grandma Mary emerged from the back room with my biscuit in hand.

“Laurie, you forgot your biscuit. You should take it with you. You might get hungry on the ride home,” she said as she wrapped it in a paper bag.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said as I moved toward her. She still smelled like biscuits, but that warmth I inhaled earlier had become cool between us. We were suffering the same pain, mourning the same absence, so I hugged her anyway.

“Bye, Grandma Mary and Granddaddy Frank. I can’t wait to see y’all again,” I said.

“Oh, we’ll see each other soon,” she said. “I’m going to make sure of it.”

I did not see her again until I was thirty years old. Even then we wore the same pain despite the living that hung between those years.

On the ride home, all of the other kids immediately fell asleep. As Momma drove the hour-long ride, I’m certain she thought I was asleep too. But, I was awake and my mind was going places it had never been before. The biscuit wedged in between my leg and the door remained warm, Grandma Mary’s heat radiating from it. Eating it now wasn’t an option. As long as I had it, I had proof I had a grandma and a granddaddy who loved me. If I had them, then I also had a daddy.

But now, I had a face, one that didn’t fit into the dream world where my daddy had recently lived. The man in that picture, he was not there, nor was he anywhere. Probably Baltimore. Probably not. For all those nights I’d hung on the phone waiting for the ringing to stop or for the busy signal to cease its incessant beep, they knew as much as I knew. Or did they know more? I couldn’t be certain.

I couldn’t trust anyone anymore, but what I could trust were my dreams, the realities born, raised, and matured in my mind, so I made a decision. My daddy would remain there, where he was safe, where I had control. And this other man, this missing ingredient, he would remain nowhere.