Gone Crazy in Alabama (12 page)

On the second day after the space launch Big Ma said to JimmyTrotter, “Now, son, you've watched enough flying spaceships for today. I need to see my program.”

By “her program” she meant the other channel, whose midday news show was more interested in the drowning of that secretary in Cape Cod than in the moon mission. The astronauts could have shaken hands with moon men on live television. As long as one of the Kennedys was in the news, Big Ma had to know all about it.

JimmyTrotter was too respectful to utter an “Aw, shucks” and too old to poke out his bottom lip and pout. He scooted up like he had been sitting on hot coals and said, “Yes'm, Aunt Ophelia.”
Yes'm
, and not the full-out
“ma'am,” a word that belonged back in the slavery days.

He strode over and bent low to kiss Ma Charles. “I have to be going. See about Miss Trotter.”

“You stay put, son,” Ma Charles fussed. “You can see your spacemen right here.” But at this point, they weren't showing the telecast of the real Apollo 11 spacecraft, only a simulation of it racing toward the moon. And at times we heard the astronauts' voices going “Roger this” and “Roger that” to mission control.

JimmyTrotter grabbed his basket of eggs and went back over to kiss Big Ma, who wiped his kiss away like she'd been buzzed by a fly. He waved to me a good-bye and left.

“See that, daughter?” Ma Charles said. “Don't you feel ashamed, chasing that boy outta here? Heaven knows what he'll tell his old great-granny about our un-Christianly kindness.”

Big Ma said, “Mama, I can't listen to this program and listen to you.” That was practically a “Hush up,” although our grandmother didn't dare say those words to her mother.

Ma Charles went on tsk-tsking about “these chirren today.”

“I'll tell you, daughter. I won't be here forever to take care of you.”

Big Ma uttered a faint “Yes, Ma,” mesmerized by the darkness and glow of black-and-white photos of the sorry
Ted Kennedy and the drowned blond secretary who could not be saved. I doubted my grandmother blinked once during the news show—even when there was no more actual news to report about the drowning. Her eyes were pulled into the television screen like JimmyTrotter's had been as he hoped for a glimpse of the astronauts instead of those simulations and the broadcasts of mission control. Like JimmyTrotter, Big Ma was hoping for more.

I knew which parts Big Ma liked. She liked the parts about how the Kennedys were like kings and queens in America and how tragedy followed anyone named Kennedy. Big Ma wouldn't vote for a Kennedy, but in secret, she liked both the ballroom gowns and the pillbox hats Jackie wore as Mrs. Kennedy, and frowned upon the slacks and shades she wore as Mrs. Onassis. She liked seeing the young, important Kennedy families, and in her way, she liked the sadness of the country weeping for them. It was the story of them that she liked. When the newscaster gravely reminded us that this new tragedy sealed the final ending to “our nation's Camelot story,” Big Ma said, “Yes, sir. It surely does.”

Ma Charles wasn't finished fussing with Big Ma. “But you'll send me to my rest worrying about my only child.”

Big Ma said, “Don't worry on my account. The Lord will provide for me.”

“Wish you took as much interest in a husband like you do in them Kennedys.”

“Can't hear, Ma.”

“Won't hear,” her mother corrected. “You know, Elijah Lucas won't be eligible forever. One day you'll look over and—”

Big Ma finished it for her: “Smell his wife's pecan pies cooling on the windowsill.” Big Ma added, “I have a husband waiting for me in heaven. Don't need another.” She pulled herself out of the chair to turn up the volume on the television and then plopped back down.

“Can I make you some tea?” I asked my great-grandmother, who continued her tsk-tsking even if Big Ma couldn't be moved.

“All I've done, I've done for that one there.” Ma Charles pointed at her daughter, but Big Ma refused to look her way.

“I'll boil the water,” I said.

“I don't want tea,” Ma Charles snapped. “Tea won't fix this curse.”

“What curse?”

Big Ma sighed, long and heavy, a moan beneath it. Still, her eyes stayed pulled toward the newscaster.

Ma Charles began to tell me about the curse. That Big Ma had to wait ten years before she had Junior, my pa. And then another dozen years before Darnell came.

“Maybe she was sick,” I offered quietly. I thought about Mrs. at home sick, throwing up at the sight and smell of food.

“Sick? What sick? I tell you, it was a curse put on my own child to get back at me.” My nose and mouth scrunched up in disbelief but Ma Charles went on. “Nothing would give my father's other daughter more pleasure than to see my generations cut off before they got started. The Lord shows you, be careful what you wish on others. You'll wish it on yourself.” She almost smiled, but then fixed her face, probably so as not to gloat over Miss Trotter's family tragedy.

The lunar module separated from the command module and landed on the moon's surface that Saturday afternoon. We saw a simulation of the landing but we heard the real thing. The minute the lunar module touched the moon's floor, all of us watching TVs and listening to the broadcast became earthlings, waiting for the two astronauts in the lunar module to step outside and onto the moon. I had a time getting Vonetta and Fern to stay inside to watch the landing, let alone wait for the two astronauts to climb out and walk on the moon. Vonetta and Fern had been good earlier, watching and listening as the space shuttle orbited around the moon, taking its time to fire off another rocket to land. When the spacecraft finally separated into two
ships, one landing and the other one staying up in space, we all cheered. Big Ma and Ma Charles prayed. But that seemed to be all there was to it. The spacecraft sat on the moon for hours and Vonetta and Fern wanted to go outside and run around with the chickens before the sun went down.

“Call us when Martians come.”

“Martians are on Mars.”

“Call us when the Moonies come.”

“There's no such thing as Moonies.”

“If there's Martians, there's Moonies.”

“Just call us when something happens.”

Off they ran.

The only thing happening was a lot of radioing between mission control and the astronauts. JimmyTrotter took a chance and ran through the pines and over the creek to check on Butter and to get whatever afternoon milk Sophie was willing to give. He came back by six for supper, which Ma Charles was only too glad to have Big Ma heap on his plate. We told him he'd missed the little silver men that came to greet the lunar module, but he pulled out his transistor radio and laughed in our faces.

It was long after our bedtime and still nothing had happened. I didn't have to ask. Ma Charles told Big Ma, “Let 'em see it,” and Big Ma fussed and went to bed. We cheered our little victory, but Vonetta and Fern had
drifted off on our mountain of pillows and sheets spread out on the floor.

I glanced at my Timex. If the astronauts planned to climb out of the Eagle, they had to do it soon, or the only thing we'd be seeing at midnight would be the picture on the TV screen of the American flag or the Indian chief posted at the end of the broadcast day. I wanted my sisters to see the astronauts on the moon almost as badly as I had wanted them to see the Jackson Five on TV for the first time. I knew they shouldn't miss any moon walking but I found myself, like Mr. Lucas and Ma Charles, drifting off to sleep.

Around ten forty-five that night, JimmyTrotter poked me in the shoulder. “Cousin Del, it's about to happen.”

“You sure?”

“Any minute.” Even Walter Cronkite's voice had that quiet excitement of a sportscaster announcing a big-deal golf putt. It was about to happen.

JimmyTrotter tugged on Mr. Lucas's sleeve and Mr. Lucas pretended he'd been awake. He gently nudged Ma Charles and then called out, “Ophelia. Come on out. Ophelia, come on before you miss it.” Big Ma took to hiding in her room when Mr. Lucas stayed to watch the moon mission.

Even Big Ma wanted to witness the astronauts walking on the moon. She joined us in the living room, but wouldn't sit in the empty chair next to Mr. Lucas.

I tried to get Fern up while Jimmy pulled Vonetta's ear. Not hard, but playful. Light. I'd never thought of anyone besides our parents, Fern, and once, Uncle D, really and truly liking Vonetta. JimmyTrotter not only liked Vonetta, he adored her. She woke up smiling at him.

Fern stretched and opened her eyes. She saw the simulated spacecraft and sleepily sang, “The itsy-bitsy spider dropped on the yellow moon.” Even on the color television screen, the moon wasn't yellow or silver. It was whitish gray. And dull. But Fern did get the spider part right. The lunar module looked more like a four-legged spider than an eagle. But I'm sure it wouldn't have been the same if the astronaut had said “The Spider has landed” when they first touched down on the moon's surface.

Finally, we were watching the real thing. The real-live broadcast and not a simulation with actors playing the parts of the astronauts. Finally, the words “Live from the surface of the moon” showed up fuzzy but readable on the television screen, and we were seeing the real moon. We all cheered. Big Ma said, “May God have mercy,” and Ma Charles shook her tambourine. The snowy figure of an astronaut in a padded white suit with a bubble helmet and backpack climbed down the ladder of the Eagle in what seemed like slow motion and did what I never thought I'd see. He stepped foot on the moon. The words “Man on Moon” flashed before our excited and astonished eyes.

Big Ma gasped. From the corner of my eye I saw a
motion from Mr. Lucas to Big Ma. He reached over to touch her hand. I didn't look on but I noticed my grandmother hadn't snatched her hand from Mr. Lucas the way she wiped away kisses and shooed off hugs.

The television console speakers crackled. JimmyTrotter lifted up his hands and asked everyone to be quiet so we could hear Walter Cronkite and the astronauts. Cronkite said, “Armstrong is on the moon. Neil Armstrong—thirty-eight-year-old American—standing on the moon!”

JimmyTrotter shouted, “We won the space race!”

It wasn't long before gunshots went off in the air from miles away.

Two things sprang to mind as I watched one astronaut on the moon, and then another astronaut running, hopping, and frolicking on the moon. That there was a third astronaut hovering above in the command module far above the hubbub. While the two below tested their weightlessness, picked up samples of whatever moonie-eyed lovers looked up to, and marked up the moon's surface with moon boot tracks, the third astronaut was left behind holding everything together.

The other thing that sprang to mind was that the moon was beautiful at night from a distance, but it surely was a lonely place up close.

Once the two astronauts had walked on the moon the excitement seemed to die down for everyone except JimmyTrotter, who listened to updates on his pocket radio and watched Apollo 11 news on our television set when Big Ma's programs weren't on.

Soon everything would go back to normal. The astronauts would return to Earth to their families and we'd forget we were all earthlings. I thought it was funny when one of the astronauts called their space capsule a “happy home.” If that tight little spaceship was a happy home, then that astronaut's real home must have been a sad one.

A happy home had nothing to do with three men in a bubble eating sawdust food and watching pencils floating
in the air. A happy home meant having everyone under one roof, sitting around the table, eating a peach cobbler or pecan pie.

I thought about Pa and Mrs. Then I thought about the baby. Having a little brother wouldn't be so bad. Or maybe another sister.

Uncle Darnell came in that morning from having worked an all-night shift. He gave Big Ma the local newspaper with her gossip paper folded within it and Big Ma went back to her room and left the television to JimmyTrotter.

Vonetta, who wasn't speaking to Uncle Darnell, poked Fern.

Fern poked her back, but asked, “Uncle D, did you buy a quart of milk?”

“Depends,” he said. “Who's asking?”

Vonetta gasped, her eyebrows raised high. “You got it?”

“Got what?” he asked. If ever I missed my uncle's dimples, it was now that he didn't smile at this perfect opportunity to tease his favorite niece and let his dimples show.

“Milk,” she answered.

“Did you ask me to bring home a quart of milk?” No dimples.

She was silent.

Ma Charles stood up, her finger pointed. “No milk but cow's milk straight from the cow! Not in this house.”

I spoke up. “But Ma Charles, store milk comes from cows. At the dairy farm.”

“I know what I said and why. They don't have grass at the dairy factory,” Ma Charles said. “And if they do, believe me, those factory cows don't graze on grass that springs out of dirt. I'm not ignorant,” she said. “I've seen 'em penned and chained worse than convicted killers. No, sir,” she declared. “You won't pour a bowl of prison milk in this house.” As ludicrous as she sounded, she meant it.

“I'll stop at the McDaniels' farm this evening. Bring home some milk,” Uncle D said.

“Shouldn't have to drive six miles out of the way when we got fresh milk over the creek,” Ma Charles said.

“Auntie, I can't help that Sophie's drying up before Butter's ready,” JimmyTrotter said.

“Course you can't,” she said. “It's that great-granny of yours that put something on that cow to keep her from milking. She'd kill a calf to see that my great-grands stay deprived of milk, and no one needs milk more than Rickets here. Bones just as weak and puny.”

Jimmy smiled a little, the way Pa looks away and smiles when Big Ma says something crazy, and there was no shortage of craziness down here in Alabama. “Auntie . . .”

“Oh, I know she does it to spite me. She sees all my kin are here. It's nothing but pure spite and you can tell her I said so.”

I opened my mouth to say whatever Big Ma would
have said if she wasn't squirreled away reading her gossip paper, but JimmyTrotter gave me a head shake. Like,
No. Let her go on
.

“I know how that sister of mine is. You tell her, I know about the curse.”

Only Ma Charles and Miss Trotter could get themselves riled over things that made sense only to them. There was such a thing as being too much alike and equally stubborn.

“As long as I have milk for my cornflakes,” Vonetta said, “I don't care about anything else.”