Gone Crazy in Alabama

For the memories of Mary Edwards Coston
and Edith King Lloyd Williams, my grandmothers

Vonetta, Fern, and I didn't sleep well last night or the night before. There's something about preparing for a trip that draws my sisters and me closer together than we already are. Maybe it's the planning and excitement of going places or seeing who we're going to see.

As soon as we dragged our suitcases out of the attic, my sisters and I race-walked along Herkimer Street and headed to Mr. Mack's store on Fulton to buy a bag of candy that would last the whole trip down south. We planned to fill our hands with different-flavored Jolly Rancher sucking candy, wax lips, and Pixy Stix, plus Bazooka bubble gum to last the whole trip, starting from Brooklyn, New York, then to New Jersey, all the way down to Georgia
and lastly to Alabama. Vonetta was good at keeping track of things and divvying them up between us, so I let her be in charge of handing out the “new state” candy. Candy was enough to send Vonetta and Fern over the moon, but it didn't mean the same thing to me. It was too hot for Mr. Goodbar, and a box of Good & Plenty only reminded me of watching movies at the RKO with my pa. All of that was different now that I shared him with Mrs., but as long as Pa's wife stayed with us in our house on Herkimer Street, even after their fights, I gladly shared my father.

We were about to go inside Mr. Mack's when three girls who had been in Vonetta's third-grade class two years ago came out laughing and chewing on long red licorice. “Hi, Vonetta!” they all sang at her.

“Hi,” Vonetta returned weakly.

“Hi!” Fern echoed, but louder.

Then they sashayed past us, the one wearing Vonetta's watch snaking her wrist around and around like a baton twirler, except there was no baton. Just Vonetta's watch. The watch Vonetta had let her “hold” and never got back. She sashayed and twirled her wrist and arm purposely so Vonetta could see her watch, and when Vonetta did nothing and said nothing, I got angry. At her.

I said, “Vonetta, go get your watch.”

Vonetta tried to act like she didn't hear me but I knew she did.

“Don't think I'm going to get it for you.”

“No one asked you to.” She tried to sound tough, like she wasn't afraid of me. “Besides, I didn't want that old watch in the first place.”

“Yeah,” Fern said. “She wanted a charm bracelet. With ballet slippers, a heart, and a shamrock for luck.”

“Not a stupid watch,” Vonetta said. “All it can do is tell time.”

“Tell time, take a licking, and keep on ticking,” Fern sang.

Vonetta sucked her teeth. “Licking and ticking. What's so special about that?”

I said, “Pa gave it to you. That's what's special about your watch.”

“So.” She rolled huge cow eyes at me. I didn't care what our mother, Cecile, had told me about looking after Vonetta. I wanted to knock her out.

Then Fern said, “Yeah. So. If it's so special, and she should have it, where's
my
watch?”

Fern planted both hands on her nothing hips and tapped her toe, doing her best Vonetta impression. Turning eight hadn't grown Fern any taller. It had just made her mouthy.

“Where's
my
watch?” she repeated.

“Safe in my drawer, where you won't lose it.”

“Well, I want it,” Fern said. “And you can't keep it from me. If you don't cough it up, I'll tell Mrs.”

I shrugged. “Tell Mrs.”

“I'll tell her and she'll tell you—”

Then Vonetta, her ally, cleared her throat, fluttered her eyelashes, and finished in a voice as close to our stepmother's as she could mimic, “Delphine. Your sister is capable of wearing a watch.”
Capable
was one of Mrs.'s words. She used it against me to make me stop helping my sisters.
Vonetta is capable of doing her own hair
. Then Vonetta burned her ears with the hot comb, and who had to rub Vaseline on burned ears and finish pulling the hot comb through Vonetta's thick, thick head? Not Mrs.

“Fine,” I told them both. “And when you lose your watch, don't come crying to me.”

“Boo, hoo, hoo,” Fern said. “Delphine, you better gimme my watch when we get home.”

We left the house giddy and returned crabby. A giant sack of candy made no difference.

I had chicken to wash, flour, and fry and a lemon cake to bake and frost. It all had to be done before I went to bed that night. Pa said we had to be up before the sun to get the first Greyhound down to Atlanta. From there, Big Ma and her neighbor, Mr. Lucas, would be waiting to drive us over the state line to Alabama to our great-grandmother's little yellow house that sat just on the edge of Prattville on twenty acres that ended at a creek.

Mrs. poked her Afro into the kitchen to offer her help but she looked as green as she had earlier that morning. Pa
said it was the summertime flu but I knew better. There's no monthlong flu, summer, winter, or otherwise. I said, “No, thank you. I'm almost done.” Mrs. seemed grateful and went back to the sofa to lie down.

I preferred my sisters' company in the kitchen but we weren't exactly on speaking terms, which was hard to maintain because our voices either followed or lay on top of one another's for as long as I could remember. We spoke almost like one person, one voice, but each of us saying our own part, kind of like those records Cecile used to play with a singer's voice catting and scatting like a horn, piano, and bass. Or like Pa's old doo-wop records with duos and trios that went high, higher, then low. We've been laying our voices down, catting and scatting, and following variations of the same notes for so long we didn't always know we were doing it. But others noticed. The way we flowed in and out of our words drove Mrs. crazy, and she'd give us the eye like,
Cut it out
. “You're individuals,” she'd say. “One complete thought for each complete person.” But when you're used to speaking as one, it's hard to stop just because someone is under your roof and says stop.

As I whipped, beat, and stirred the lemon cake batter, I missed hearing my sisters' voices and having them around me.

Vonetta, Fern, and I could afford to have our little scraps. Closing a door behind us and stomping away didn't
mean a thing. Sooner or later Vonetta or Fern would open the door to my room or I'd open the door to theirs. My sisters and I might quarrel but we didn't stay mad or gone too long a period from one another's sight.

Heaven knows we've had our share of long gone. Like our uncle Darnell, who'd left us after he had stolen from my sisters and me. I knew it was his fighting in Vietnam that made him turn to drugs, and I knew it was the drugs that made him steal from us. I didn't know how much I'd miss him when he left.

It seems every time the door to our house on Herkimer Street is slammed shut too hard, pictures flash before me. Pictures of Cecile, our mother, leaving back when my sisters were barely walking and I was four years old.

I've been dreaming a lot lately, kicking the covers every which way. I've been dreaming . . . running to the door to keep it from closing hard . . . to keep footsteps from walking out . . . walking away . . . away . . . But as long as my legs are, I never get to the front door fast enough. As strong as my arms are, I can't keep Cecile from leaving. Uncle Darnell from leaving. Big Ma from leaving. Or Mrs., when she's mad . . .

I can't stop the dreams. I can't stop seeing the opened door and the footsteps.