The Color of Family (14 page)

He got to his feet and slapped his hands together in one loud clap as if to clap away the thought like some bothersome gnat. And with his mood seemingly altered by the magical smack of his hands, he reached for his mother's hand to get her to her feet and said, “Okay, let's get going. We've got some furniture to move.”

So Aaron followed his mother over to the sofa and went to his respective side after watching his mother return to the spot where she was obviously most comfortable. He crouched and got his grip, and just as he was about to count down to the moment when he'd heave, Tippy the Fourth jumped onto the sofa and smack onto Aaron's coat. “Get offa there!” Aaron yelled with all the discontent he'd always had for that cat. “Go on, shoo! Get on, now,” and this time he reached over to give the cat a firm swat.

“Don't you hit her!” Antonia scolded. She stood straight and nearly arched her back in catlike defense of her feline love. “She's not hurting a thing,” she said as she gently picked up Tippy the Fourth and set her down in the hallway just outside the French doors.

“I just don't want all that yellow cat hair all over my good coat,” Aaron said, sulking as he picked up his coat to brush off yellow hairs he couldn't see but was certain were there.

“She is not gonna hurt your coat” was all Antonia said as she closed the doors between the living room and front hall.

Then Aaron mumbled beneath his breath, “Stupid cat,” knowing his mother wouldn't hear as she went back to her couch-hauling squat.

“All right, are we going to do this or not?”

“Okay, all right, just let me get back in place,” Aaron said, laying his coat gingerly across the rocking chair that had come up from New Orleans with his mother.

So once more, Aaron went to his side of the sofa, and actually got his end in midair. Antonia managed to lift her end a few inches off the ground, just high enough to move it several feet. In
fact, they got Antonia's end just past the edge of where the chairs sat before the phone rang.

“Just let it ring, Ma. We need to get this done.”

“I can't leave a phone ringing. I just can't,” she said, pleading with her son with her eyes. “I'm gonna set my side down now, all right?”

“Okay,” Aaron said as he blew out a breath of annoyance. “Just tell whoever it is that you can't talk long because I've got to get on home, Ma.”

“Just keep your calm. I won't be long,” she said before she picked up the phone.

Aaron watched his mother's face shift as she listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. And as if it were as reflexive as a blink, his eyes narrowed with curiosity when he heard Antonia say after a series of
uh-huh
's, “So why're you calling now to ask me? I've been here. You've known where I've been for forty years because that's how long I've been writing to you.”

And that's when Aaron knew. So he stood erect from where he'd crouched, stepped in front of the sofa, and plopped himself down for what he knew would be the duration. But then, to his surprise, his mother was reeling it in.

“Okay. All right,” she said with a curious grin. “Okay. Okay, I'll be there. I'll see you then. Bye, now.” She put down the phone and joined Aaron on the sofa, only she sat at the complete opposite end.

“So who was that?” Aaron asked.

She smiled distantly then slowly took him in, announcing, “It was my past, my present, and my future. I'm going to lunch with Agnes, darling. At Clayton's!” Then she looked over at her brother's picture sitting on the sofa table and spoke to it, “In just five days, I'm going to finally meet your boy.”

Aaron took her in for several long seconds before closing his eyes. He had to get away, just remove himself emotionally, because in those moments, after he actually heard what he never thought he would, Aaron couldn't decide if this was the beginning, or the end. Letting out a long, deep sigh, as his head slumped onto the pedestal his hands and forearms had formed, he could only manage to say, “Well, this is just fine.”

E
llen chopped garlic with slow precision, and with the memory of her mother's fingertips. She remembered with fondness the way she used to take her mother's hand, then breathe in a nose full of her mother's fingers that filled up her every sense with the perfume of garlic. They made her think of a woman who cared enough about her family that she didn't mind that her fingers carried a pungent smell. All that mattered to a mother like this, Ellen always believed, was that her family was well fed with the food that only she could prepare for them.

When she looked down, Ellen noticed that the tips of her fingers were wet with a thin film of garlic juice. So she laid her knife softly on the chopping board, then tore off a paper towel. She dabbed her fingers dry on the paper towel and pressed them lightly on the side of her belly, where she thought the baby's face might be. “This is what mommy's fingers are going to smell like when they're not smelling like hospital antiseptic,” she said quietly with a thin smile she knew her baby couldn't see but believed it could feel.

And she was so caught in that moment with her baby that she didn't even hear Rick when he walked into the kitchen.

Rick took her in with puzzled eyes for a few seconds before asking, “What are you doing?”

“I'm letting the baby smell my fingertips. I want to let this baby feel comforted by the fact that his mother's always going to cook good food. This garlic smell will make that clear, I think.”

“Well, I don't think that baby's going to appreciate the smell of garlic any more than an adult can, to tell you the truth.”

“I like the smell of garlic. I think it smells like perfume.”

Rick said nothing to that as he put a tablecloth and matching napkins onto the counter. “Okay, I found the tablecloth and napkins. Do they need to be ironed?”

Ellen regarded him with a certain disturbance, then took her fingers off of her belly. As she picked up the knife and went back to chopping garlic, she said with the barest edge, “What do you think, Rick? Do they need to be ironed?”

Rick looked at them, then blew out a breath of exasperation and said, “Yeah, I guess they do. I'll go and iron them.” As he scooped them back into his arms and went to go into the laundry room, he turned to Ellen and asked, “Tell me again why we're all of a sudden doing this?”

“Because, Rick, we've never had any traditions in my family. We never had Sunday dinner, or anything like that. Today is Sunday, and what better day to have a tradition than on a Sunday?” She chopped some more, and then as she felt Rick about to walk away, she continued, “Even Thanksgivings and Christmases weren't celebrated in any traditional way. It was just Ma and Poppa, me and Aaron. We didn't have any cousins, or anything, who would come over for dinner because they all lived down in New Orleans. One year, I remember, Grandmommy Jackson came up from Louisiana, and that was nice enough. That felt like tradition, except that was the only year she came up. I don't want that for this baby. I want this baby to feel and live with a tradition that only family can give.”

Rick walked toward the laundry room, and just as he went in, yelled back, “Well, I have to tell you. I still find it odd that your family never did this on Sunday. I mean, in a way that's as dispassionate as a white family.”

Ellen's eyes widened with the prick of aggravation. She turned toward the laundry room, and asked, “What in the hell do you mean by that, Rick?”

“I just mean that my family never did anything like the bonding through Sunday dinner, and neither did any of the other white families I knew when I was growing up in Brooklyn. But black families did. It shows a kind of emotional detachment not to, that's all.”

Ellen stretched a difficult smile onto her face, then walked to the aperture of the laundry room and said, “Rick, honey, I know you don't mean to, but what you just said sounds racist.”

“Racist?” Rick said with amazement. “How in the world do you get racism from what I just said? I was saying that white families have no passion to bond through something like that, and I was just making the same comparison with your family. That's all.”

“Rick, the tradition of a Sunday dinner is not cut along racial lines. I know many, many white families who get together every Sunday for dinner come hell or high water. It's not even a tradition, it's a command. Maybe that your family didn't or the other white families that you knew didn't either says more about your family's values and those of all the families you knew in Brooklyn.”

“Well, all I'm saying is that it's been my experience that white families who have that tradition are anomalies. White families just don't seem to do that.”

“That's what you say. I don't agree.”

“And I don't agree with you. So I guess we just disagree on this.”

Ellen watched him as he tested the iron to see if it was truly hot enough by putting an old-fashioned licked finger to the metal plate to hear the sizzle. All he had to do, she thought with a certain annoyance, was check the ready light. But anyway, that wasn't even half of what bothered her as she stood there waiting for something else. How dare he, she screamed in her head, stand there so sure in his correctness. She had thought to walk away, simply go back to chopping her garlic and not pick at something so insignificant. Except that it wasn't so terribly insignificant in the grand picture. If he thought she came from a dispassionate family, then that shouted out loud exactly what he thought of her level of passion. So she went closer to where he stood ironing and prodded, “Rick, how can you say that we don't have any passion for one another in my family?”

Rick ironed with a stiffness that said he wouldn't answer. But then, he looked up at Ellen and replied, “Because, Ellen, your family is so uptight about how you really feel about things.”

“How can you say that, Rick?”

“Because it's true. You and your brother go around talking about how your mother has lost her mind thinking that Clayton
Cannon is her nephew, but not one of you has ever admitted the truth about that whole thing.”

“The truth,” Ellen said flatly. “And the truth as you see it is what, Rick?”

“Neither one of you has ever admitted that you hate your mother for showering him with the attention that should have been yours and Aaron's. And you two have never admitted that you hate Clayton Cannon even more for just existing.”

“I don't hate my mother, Rick,” Ellen said with eyes that had glazed over into steel.

“Well, okay Ellen. I'll give you that. Maybe you don't hate your mother. But you certainly don't love her without questioning her love for you. And you all have just never dealt with that. All I'm saying is that Sunday dinner would have brought that out a long time ago, and I don't think any of you want that. So Sunday dinner could never have been a tradition for your family.”

Ellen stood for a few seconds contemplating whether she should give him a dose of angry passion, but she was sure it was clear in her bearing without actually bringing up his shortcomings. But then, as if it had a will of its own, her ire simply slipped from mind to sound when she said, “Well Rick, I wasn't so uptight about my feelings when you cheated on me. I told you exactly how betrayed I felt and how hard it was for me to forgive you. But most importantly, I told Aaron all about it too. He was my rock through that whole time, and I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't confided in him. You call that lacking passion with one another?”

Rick put his head down as if to focus on one stubborn spot of wrinkles as he moved the iron back and forth and in circles over one corner of the napkin. Then, looking only partially at her, said with the faintness of residual shame, “That's different, Ellie.”

“How is it different, Rick?”

And then, looking fully at her, he firmly answered, “It's different because I'm not a part of this whole thing, Ellie. I never have been. Everything going on between you and your mother was here long before I came into the picture. I'm sort of like filling. The backdrop. I'm like some pawn in this thing, except I'm a pawn without a clearly defined purpose. That's what I am. I've always
been a pawn who's had no idea how or why I'm being used, but the one thing I know for sure is that I'm most definitely being used.”

“Rick, where is this all coming from?” Ellen said with an amazed stare directly into his eye.

“Well, Ellie, I'd say it started the day you took me home to meet your family. Surely you must remember that, because you didn't give your family a clue that I was white. Do you remember that?”

“Yes,” Ellen said softly, staring at nothing in the far-off corner of her mind.

“Yeah, well I'll never forget it. I'll never forget that it felt like someone was peeling the enamel from my teeth when your mother followed your father into the dining room and, before she could even get out of earshot, said, ‘All I have to say is that I have nothing to say.' She was in shock, Ellie. In shock because here was this white boy sitting in her living room loving her daughter, and he was not what she expected her daughter to bring home as a suitor.”

Ellen went to the corner of the room and sat in the chair that was pushed between the wall and the dryer. She leaned her head against the dryer disconsolately. “Rick, we've been over this again, and again. I don't know how many ways I can tell you that I didn't think you being white would bother my mother so much.”

Rick went to her and knelt in front of where she sat. He took her hand gently and said, “And see, Ellie, I can't believe you could have thought such a thing. Because to just say that you didn't think she would have had a problem with me being white doesn't explain it completely enough for me. Why didn't you think it would bother her, Ellie? And really tell me why this time.”

Ellen let tears that had come to her from some surprising place fall freely as she gazed into her lap. Then she said in precisely measured words, “Because, Rick, she had wanted this white man to be her nephew for as long as I can remember. It never even crossed my mind that she wouldn't except a white son-in-law as lovingly. I'm always dealing with my patients' subconscious actions regarding their impending motherhood, but I guess if I
were to look at my subconscious feelings about my mother, I'd have to admit that in a way, I thought I might be gaining her favor by marrying you.”

Rick's face shifted further into shock with each word Ellen spoke. His lips moved in unintelligible shapes, as if his words were about to be dubbed seconds out of sync like a bad foreign movie, before he said, “Ellen, you just don't get it, do you? Antonia has never seen Clayton Cannon as a white man. To her, he's as black as she is, and you are, and Aaron and Junior. In your mother's eyes, the only thing white about Clayton Cannon is his skin. In her soul, in
his
soul, she sees him as black.”

“I know that now,” she said. And then she leaned into Rick and let him fold her in his arms. She let her head fall softly on his shoulder, and she simply stayed there. Safe. Impassioned.

 

It seemed to be some sort of miracle to Ellen the way her mother and father, and Aaron, arrived on her doorstep at the exact same time to ring the doorbell as a group. Ellen was all the way in the kitchen, so she drew in a deep breath and started on her way down the hallway, straightening a knickknack here, a candlestick there. When she finally reached the door, she swung it open with the excitement she'd built on top of layers of emotions in varying degrees of genuine joy, and not a little woe. And so there they were, ready and willing, she could only presume, to try something new. So why did all their faces look so dubious?

“Well, come on in,” she ordered them. “Don't just stand out there. Come on in for Sunday dinner.”

They walked into the front hall, each one with steps more halting than the other's. But it was Aaron who guided the whole group into the living room. He took the three steps down and crossed the room to sit on the couch against the wall. But when he saw his mother and father just standing there at the top of the steps as if waiting for something more formal to bring them to sit, he prompted, “Well come on down and sit. Don't just stand there.”

“Yeah, don't just stand there, Ma, Poppa,” Ellen said, descending the steps herself. “You don't need to be invited to sit down.”

Junior sat down next to Aaron, looking with expectancy at Antonia. And by his example, it seemed, Antonia slid past Aaron to sit next to her husband.

Ellen crossed the room and sat in the chair on the side of the coffee table. She slid off her little ballet slipper house shoe and rubbed her foot intensely, back and forth, on the carpet for a good scratch. “What is it you say, Ma, about when your foot itches?”

“It means you're going on strange land,” Antonia answered.

“I think it means you need to wash your feet,” Aaron said as he plucked and dipped a piece of broccoli from the platter Rick was placing in the middle of the coffee table.

Rick laughed as he stood up.

Reacting to the encouragement, Aaron said, “It is funny, isn't it? And true, too.”

And by now, the rest of the room was having itself a healthy chuckle at Aaron's humor when Ellen, with her laughing tears welling in the corners of her eyes, said, “Aaron, you are so nuts. It does not mean my feet need washing.”

“Well, that's what it sounds like to me,” Aaron said, taking her in with eyes he'd forced to become sober, humorless, as a part of his gag.

Ellen laughed her way down to a comforting simmer, then reached over and took her brother's hand. “See, this is what I'm talking about. Us getting together every Sunday and doing just this.”

“Just what?” Junior asked.

“You know, having fun with the laughs and the jokes. This is fun!”