Erasure (7 page)

I poured the oil and vinegar on my salad and nodded. “I appreciate that you have to do everything here with Mother,” I said. “I know it’s not fair.”

“The way it worked out.”

“Can I help in any way?”

“Yeah, you can move to D.C.” She looked me in the eye and then smiled. “If I need you, I’ll call you. There is one thing.” When I looked at her, she put down her fork and remembered cigarettes. “Mother’s running out of money.”

“But I thought—”

“So did I, but it’s running out anyway.”

“I don’t have much. I don’t make anything on my books.”

“Don’t sweat it,” she said. “I was just letting you know.”

Now, I was feeling awful, like a failure, letting both my sister and my mother down. Living in my own little bubble I had never thought about these things. I felt myself sinking.

After lunch, my sister asked if I’d stop at a bookstore with her, said she wanted to pick up something for one of her staff who had just had a baby. I asked if she wanted to give her one of my books and Lisa said that she’d prefer to give the woman something she could read. Then she laughed and I guess I laughed with her.

While Lisa wandered off to the garden book section, I stood in the middle of Border’s thinking how much I hated the chain and chains like it. I’d talked to too many owners of little, real bookstores who were being driven to the poorhouse by what they called the WalMart of books. I decided to see if the store had any of my books, firm in my belief that even if they did, my opinion about them would be unchanged. I went to Literature and did not see me. I went to Contemporary Fiction and did not find me, but when I fell back a couple of steps I found a section called African American Studies and there, arranged alphabetically and neatly, read
undisturbed,
were four of my books including my
Persians
of which the only thing ostensibly African American was my jacket photograph. I became quickly irate, my pulse speeding up, my brow furrowing. Someone interested in African American Studies would have little interest in my books and would be confused by their presence in the section. Someone looking for an obscure reworking of a Greek tragedy would not consider looking in that section any more than the gardening section. The result in either case, no sale. That fucking store was taking food from my table.

Saying something to the poor clone of a manager was not going to fix anything, so I resigned to keep quiet. Then I saw a poster advertising the coming reading of Juanita Mae Jenkins, author of the runaway bestseller,
We’s Lives In Da Ghetto.
I picked up a copy of the book from the display and read the opening paragraph:

My fahvre be gone since time I’s borned and it be just me an’ my momma an’ my baby brover Juneboy. In da mornin’ Juneboy never do brushes his teefus, so I gots to remind him. Because dat, Momma says I be the ‘sponsible one and tell me that I gots to holds things togever while she be at work clean dem white people’s house.

I closed the book and thought I was going to throw up. My sister came up behind me.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said, dropping the book back onto the stack.

“What do you think of that book?” she asked. “I read it’s going to be a movie. She got something like three million dollars for it.”

“Really.”

The reality of popular culture was nothing new. The truth of the world landing on me daily, or hourly, was nothing I did not expect. But this book was a real slap in the face. It was like strolling through an antique mall, feeling good, liking the sunny day and then turning the corner to find a display of watermelon-eating, banjo-playing darkie carvings and a pyramid of Mammy cookie jars. 3 million dollars.

My sister offered me the loan of her car for the afternoon if I’d pick her up from work. I dropped her off in front. The picketers were back. They spotted Lisa and began to shout at her. “Murderer! Murderer!” they said. I got out and walked with her through the line and to the door, realizing as I did so that she did it alone everyday, that I wasn’t there to be the protective brother, that she didn’t need me. Still, she accepted my escort graciously and told me she’d see me later. I started back to the car, catching good looks at the wild, sick, raging faces. One man held a huge poster with the picture of a mutilated fetus. He shook his fist at me. For a second, I thought I saw the face of the man who had been staring at us from the bar in the restaurant, but then he was gone.

Story idea—a man marries a woman whose name is the same as that of his first wife. One night while making love he says her name and the woman accuses him of calling out the name of his first wife. Of course he in fact has called out the name of his first wife, but also he has called out his present wife’s name. He tells her that he was not thinking of his first wife, but she says she knows what she heard.

I drove around the city for a while, noting while doing so how it was possible to be comfortable inside an automobile. My sister had taken my compliment about her automobile as an offense and perhaps, in some way, that was how I had meant it. I had never understood spending so much money on a set of wheels. But I had to admit that it was comfortable, quiet and that it made sense that my sister would want to be able to unlock her car and turn on the lights from across a parking lot. Still, I felt out of place behind the wheel of the thing—what else was new. I drove through Georgetown, then up Wisconsin, then back across Massachusetts to Dupont Circle. I went to my mother’s house, wanting to catch her before her nap. That way I’d be able to leave because of her coming “down time” and because I had to pick up Lisa.

“My Monksie is home,” Mother said again.

We sat in the kitchen and she made tea. “You’re looking great, Mother.”

“Go on,” she said. “I’m an old lady. I don’t know about this tea, sweetheart. This woman who used to be one of your father’s patients brought it to me.”

“That was nice of her,” I said.

“She’s a sweet woman, but, lord, she’s even older than I am. I can’t seem to get it through to her that your father has passed away.” She put the cups and saucers on the table.

“Where’s Lorraine?” I asked.

“She’s out doing the shopping.”

I looked at the calendar on the wall. It was from last year, but on the correct month. “Mother, that calendar’s out of date.”

“Lisa keeps telling me that, but I can’t remember to change it.”

“Tell you what, I’ll pick up a new one for you.” As I said it, I wondered what kind of grief I might cause Lisa by buying Mother a new calendar. Would the old lady go on and on about where it came from? I could imagine the months peeling by and Lisa having to endure,
Would you look at that picture of the Grand Canyon. Monksie gave me that calendar. He noticed that the old one was out of date.

“Here you go.” Mother set the teapot down between our cups, then sat. “So, how was your meeting?”

“Fine,” I said. “The paper went well and now I’m done.”

“That’s good,” she said. She got up and turned the dial of the burner to off a second time, then sat back down.

“You should be careful burning things in that fireplace,” I told her. “It’s never been used. The flue is probably stuck shut.”

“It did get sort of smoky in the living room.”

“You shouldn’t use it at all.”

“I’m finished burning the things anyway.” She poured the tea.

“What were you burning?” I asked.

“Just some papers. Your father gave me instructions when he was in the hospital. He said, ‘Agnes, please burn the papers in the gray box in my study. Will you do that for me?’ I told him I would and then he asked me to please not read them.”

“So, did you?”

Mother shook her head. “Your father asked me not to.”

I looked at the counter and saw a blue box sitting there. “You’re not burning the stuff in that box too, are you?”

“That’s what I burned. It did make the living room smoky. I never thought about the flue. That’s why we never had a fire in this house. Because I’m afraid of fire.”

“I knew that about you, Mother.”

“Oh, I didn’t offer you milk. Would you like some?”

“No thanks.” I blew on the tea and drank some. “So, are you meeting with your club much these days?”

“Not so much. They’re all dying off. Young women aren’t interested in bridge anymore.”

“From what I gathered you ladies never play bridge anyway.”

“Is that what you gathered?” She laughed softly. “I suppose that’s right.”

I looked at her eyes and could see the fatigue. “Maybe you should stretch out for a while.”

“I do feel a little tired. Lorraine’s making dinner tonight. We’ll eat at seven, but you can come at six for cocktails.”

“Okay, Mother.”

Anyone who speaks to members of his family knows that sharing a language does not mean you share the rules governing the use of that language. No matter what is said, something else is meant and I knew that for all my mother’s seeming incoherence or out-of-itness, she was trying to tell me something over tea. The way she had mentioned the smoke in the living room twice. Her calling the blue box gray. Her easy and quick capitulation to what it was she and her cronies actually did at their meetings. But since I didn’t know the rules, which were forever changing, I could only know that she was trying to say something, not what that something was.