I felt completely drained and needed to relax for just a few moments before I started on the kitchen. I took off my shoes, drew my feet underneath me, and lay my head on the armrest of the couch. I wished I’d had some fresh homemade jelly on hot buttered biscuits. My mother used to do a lot of canning and preserving of fruits and jellies. She learned it from her mother, who’d learned it from her mother.
I was determined to get to a library and check out a book on making jams and jellies. When I was little, each season, my mom would go to the vineyards or the orchards and handpick fruit for her homemade preserves. I remembered going with her once. We put on old clothes and scarves on our heads to protect us from the dirt and dust. We left early in the morning and drove out to the fruit farm to pick apricots from the trees. There were lots of other families there. The sun was barely up. The people who ran the farm gave us big huge croaker sacks, which were really itchy-looking, although the hard, dry bags with fibers sticking out all over them were strong enough to withstand a great deal of weight.
My mother, Zarina Meyers, was a free spirit, and always smiling. She said she smiled because we were not promised tomorrow. She was in and out of the hospital all of her life. My mom said that we should live, and be thankful and be happy.
“Get out of that box,” she would say, “and try something new.” That was her life’s motto. My dad, I think, was both in awe of and amused by her. She had a degree in sociology from Stanford, but she was an artist in her heart. In my father’s eyes, she could do no wrong. To him, she was the greatest thing since baseball was invented. Some days he would come in the door from work and my mother, the artist, would have changed the house’s interior to canary yellow with murals of beautiful blue-and-green waterfalls flowing. My dad would smile and shake his head and just say, “Z, you’re something else.” And we would enjoy our new yellow house, until she felt artistic again and wanted to try something else new.
I must have dozed off on the couch thinking of Zarina, because I dreamed of her. I didn’t remember ever dreaming of my mother before that evening on the couch.
She looked the way I remembered when I was five years old. Long hair pinned up into a bun. Slanted almond eyes. Size six frame. Full pinkish brown lips covered with cool golden-chocolate-colored lipstick. She wore a sheer orange scarf around her neck that matched her golden skin. She’d just come in through the door and had on a tawny-colored leather jacket and heels. I was in the living room sitting next to my dad, watching a western on television.
She had a new eight-track tape in her hand. She was popping her fingers and singing out loud. She looked great, like a
Soul Train
dancer, and if you hadn’t known that she’d just gotten out of the hospital four days prior, then you would have been convinced that she felt great too. She popped the eight-track into the player and pulled me up and my dad up to dance with her. Marvin Gaye blared from our speakers. I stepped from side to side and watched my parents. My dad had an Afro maybe three inches long. He had on a green ribbed turtleneck and thick forest green polyester slacks. My mom kissed my dad, walked over to the TV, turned it down, and upped the volume on the tape player. She pulled him in and moved her arms behind her as she popped her fingers and shook her shoulders. My dad’s knees were slightly bent, and he swayed and looked at my mother with a big grin on his face. They were having a ball. I stood back and giggled and changed the weight on my feet, watching them dance. Mom pulled me in and we all danced in a circle. Dad just shook his head and played along.
When I woke up it was ten o’clock in the evening, and a tear rolled down my cheek and onto the arm of the now tear-stained couch. A long time ago, somehow, I’d managed to turn the tears off, and they never came back until this moment. I’d lost my mother, darn it! My mother was a good person. She was a wonderful person from what I could see. I wished I knew more. Dad never spoke of her. Zarina was different, and unusual. Not like Charlotte, who was all stuffy and conservative. I was stuck somewhere in between both of them.
I was the person who made sure that life appeared fabulous. That is what I did for the sake of others. I didn’t want folks to know the truth, but did it matter if I, myself, knew the truth?
I got up from the couch and went into the kitchen. I grabbed the phone and called my father.
“Hello,” he answered.
“Hi, Dad, it’s me.” I grabbed a pen out of the drawer and took an envelope from the stack of mail on the counter.
“Hey, pork chop,” he said. I drew some circles.
“How are you feeling today?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m feeling fine, pumpkin. Just resting, and watching the news. How is my baby girl?”
“I’m good.”
“Are you still saying them prayers for me?” I could hear him smiling through the phone.
“Yep, you know it! Every time I think about you.” I added a couple of wavy lines. “Hey, Daddy, where’s Charlotte?”
“Aww, she’s gone to get her hair done. She’s mad with me, you know, because I went down to the shop and did a transmission today, and the doctors think that I should be on bed rest.”
I stopped doodling. “Well, Daddy, if the doctors say that you shouldn’t be back at work yet, then you can’t go. That shop isn’t going anywhere, and Mike and the rest of those guys are capable of taking care of it for you.”
“I know, baby, but it’s hard just sitting here, doing nothing.”
“I hear ya, Daddio, but just sit tight. Hang in there. It won’t be too much longer and you can move around all you want to. Okay?”
“Sure. Fine.”
I put the pen back to paper. “So, Charlotte, she’s really hot with you, huh?”
“Hotter than a fried moth in the porch light.”
I laughed. “A fried moth in the porch light, Daddy?”
“Yep. But she’ll be alright. And I’m feelin’ good.”
Good. Now the question. I decided to just be blunt and come out with it. I cleared my throat. “Huh-hum. Daddy, do you have any of my mom’s stuff?”
“Sure, baby, your momma has all kinds of stuff in there, just tell her what you need.”
“No, Dad, I mean
my
mom, Zarina.”
Silence.
“Hello?” I said.
“I, I’m here . . . baby. Baby, that was a long time ago . . . Boy, you kind of caught me off guard. Chantell, come around here tomorrow. Okay?”
That was pretty much all he said, but I could hear the pain radiating in his voice. I didn’t like to hear my dad’s voice strain like that. Zarina still made him weak. Daddy liked to make light of things. He liked to joke. We were alike in that respect. It was a mask. That was his mask of protection. My mask of protection was Gucci shoes, and Chanel body wash.
“I’ll be there tomorrow evening.”
“Good,” he said.
Then he changed the subject. “Hey, Chantell where is Eric? I haven’t heard you mention him lately.”
“Oh, don’t mention him, Dad, we’re on the rocks.”
“Oh, sorry, babe. Hey, don’t y’all have a little boat thing that you are supposed to do together coming up?”
“Yes, Daddy, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, okay. I’m sorry, baby. Chantell?”
“Yes, Daddy?”
“Make sure you make some time to come over here so that we can talk. Okay?” he said.
“Okay, Daddy. I won’t forget. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
“Good. Good night, princess.”
“Night, Daddy.”
Trying to Get a Grip
T
omorrow hadn’t come because I wasn’t ready to deal with Zarina yet. I lost my nerve, I was chicken, whatever. I talked a good game, but not knowing who my mother was, was a big part of who I was.
I was trying to get that dream out of my head, but I kept playing it back. I kept seeing my mother. She looked so happy. I felt lonely. She left us. I felt abandoned, and nothing my dad was going to say could change that.
I went to work and felt like I was a hamster running on a wheel and not getting anywhere the entire day. It was the first time in months that I’d gone the whole day and not called to check on my dad. I was sitting at my desk shutting down my computer when I remembered the Wednesday evening service that night at the church.
Pulling into the Faith Center parking lot, I grabbed my Bible out of the backseat and made my way over to the church’s doors. I had gotten there a little late, so I missed the first part of the message that was being taught. The speaker was a tall man who stood up front in a dark blue suit, with a pair of silver-framed glasses on. He told us that God wouldn’t do for us what we could do for ourselves.
“God’s not going to brush your teeth! God’s not going to comb your hair! He will supply food for the hungry, but He isn’t going to put the food in your mouth!”
I sat there listening to the tall man with the tiny crowd, then something clicked in me, and I almost bit my lip!
God had given me the resources, I just hadn’t used them. I remembered my conversation with the guy from the Employee Assistance Program, when I kind of quit my job. He had said, “Sometimes it takes a little work to find the right person to talk to.” I remembered that he’d even advised me to pray. I said, “Thank you, Jesus,” because even though I was in honest-to-goodness turmoil, I was starting to think maybe God was trying to get through to me.
After church, I took out the number of the second therapist that was given to me. At this late hour, I’d probably get a message machine, but I dialed anyway. The therapist actually picked up, and we set an appointment for next Tuesday at 2 p.m. I’d be there, but in the meantime I went home and crunched on a bag of Spicy Doritos for dinner.
A Confession
I
just needed to talk, okay? I was trapped in this cycle of shame, and guilt, and pretending that nothing was wrong when I really felt awful, and I was determined to find a way out. I phoned Tia during work at the beauty school. There was always some drama going on with the young students. Tia was a stick-in-the-mud, but she knew every Nas and Nelly song. She and Ron owned the college together, and Ron worked there part-time when he could.
The school’s phone rang, and I was surprised when he answered. “Hey, Chawnee Chawn, what’s up?” he said cheerfully.
“Hey, Ronnie Ron, how is the barber college going?”
Tia’s husband, Ron, was a lot older than her, and while they both had a great sense of humor, they were as different as Top Ramen and chestnuts. Tia was a thin, relatively quiet and conservative woman with a pageboy haircut. She was very pretty and quite elegant. Ron was kind of on the husky side, loved to laugh, and was a keen businessman.
In his regular day gig, he was a real estate investor, and he owned probably ten businesses in the Bay Area—mostly dental complexes and things of that nature. He was also part owner of a big construction outfit in SF. He was Creole, short and kind of stocky. His eyes were hazel, and he had black curly hair that he wore all combed back.
I thought Ron was smart, country, and funny as all get out.
He said, “I’ma tell you right now . . . Don’t be crying when your friend is gone. We’re packing up and moving our behinds to Nebraska if things don’t get no better around here!”
“Oh no, what happened now?” I asked teasingly, sounding disappointed.
“I’m telling you, Chawn, I’ma sell this d**n school cuz these little Negroes don’t know how to act! I ain’t got the time or the patience to deal with they little behinds,” he said only half jokingly. Tia loved teaching hair care, and the school was her mother’s school from back in the day. They kept it for sentimental reasons, but Ron was not a sentimental businessman.
“Tell me what happened,” I said.
“One of the girls done had a razor in her head, like she fresh out the jailhouse. And when the student washed her head, she unknowingly shaved a patch out of the top of the girl’s hair. Correct me if I’m wrong, if you put a razor to hair, the chances are pretty good that it’s going to cut the hair, right?”
I laughed. “Yes.”
He said, “Boy, I’ll tell you. Then some fool name Jimmy done snuck and took it upon himself to do a d**n Jheri curl. That fool messed up and forgot to put on the neutralizer on some dude name Big Red’s hair.”
“Aw naw!” I said, egging him on. “So what happened?”
“Well, Big Red asked Jimmy why he ain’t got no curls. And Jimmy done told the boy that he had done a new kind of curl on his head; he tole Big Red to give it until tomorrow for the curls to take.”
“Well, was it?” I asked.
“Was it what?”
“A new kind of curl?”
“Naw, you know that boy ain’t know’d how to do no curl! He just started Tuesday.” He paused. “Now Big Red done said he go come back to whup on Jimmy.”
I put my hand over my mouth and tried not to laugh.
“You should have seen him. Big Red was ’round here looking like a wet mop!”
“Oh naw!” I yelled.
“Yep, and I’m supposed to keep an eye out and call the police if I see him around here. But he is not going to come up in here fighting. I’m telling you now. I am not having it!”
“Is everyone okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, these knuckleheads is fine,” he said with a chuckle. “Tearin’ up folks’ stuff.”
“Well I’m glad. Where’s Tia?”
Tia then got on the phone and said, “What’s up, girl?”
“Girl, your husband is a mess!”
“I know he is,” she said. “How are you doing?”
I dove right in. “Not bad, but I have something to tell you.”
“What?” she asked.
“You have to promise not to tell anyone.”
“Chantell, I would never tell or repeat anything that you told me in confidence. Now spit it out! What’s up?”
I took a deep breath.
“Hello?”
How was I going to say this?
“Chantell, what’s wrong? You’re scaring me.”
“I, ahh, I’m going to see a psychiatrist.”
“And?”
“That’s it. I’m going to see a shrink, because I need someone to talk to about stuff.”
“Chantell, honey. That ain’t nothing. It’s a good idea to talk to someone.”
“I guess I just feel embarrassed, or ashamed.”
“Girlfriend, the shame is in needing to take care of yourself and not doing it cuz you embarrassed. That’s the shame. I’ve seen a therapist off and on for a couple of years now. It’s one of the best things that I’ve done for myself and our marriage.”