L.A. Blues III (7 page)

A week later, as I drove to LAX to pick up my long-lost sister, Rachel, my thoughts were in turmoil. I wanted to get it right this time. I'd always felt guilty, as if I were the reason the family had broken up. I was the one who'd call my father, Buddy, when Rachel's father, Strange, was beating Venita. My father got killed because he was trying to make sure I wasn't molested. My mother went to jail to hide the fact that her then ten-year-old son, Mayhem, had killed her boyfriend, Strange. Through therapy, I'd learned it was not my fault, but I still felt guilty.

I didn't have any pictures of Rachel when she was young. I only had pictures of her in my mind. She was eight going on nine the last time I saw her. She had large buck teeth. She had super thick braids, which she wore behind her ears.

The plane arrived early and I found Rachel waiting in the baggage claim. She had told me she'd be wearing a navy blue jacket. I guessed she had left the unpredictable weather in Michigan and didn't realize how warm California could be at any time of the year.

“Are you my sister?” she said in a baby-sounding voice, which reminded me of the same voice she had when she was a child.

I nodded. We hugged a little awkwardly.

“Good to see you again,” I said.

She looked me up and down, appraising my black slacks and ankle boots. “I guess I remember you. It's just you look different now.”

“I used to wear my hair cut short.”

“I remember how you used to bring me gifts when I was a little girl living in the foster home. I never forgot you. I was so afraid I'd imagined you . . . That I'd never see you again.” Her eyes welled with tears.

If I could have frozen this moment in time, like a butterfly in amber, I would. I thought of the movie,
Color Purple,
based on Alice Walker's book, where during all those years, the two sisters, Celie and Nettie, saw each other through the prisms of their memories as the same little girls with “pick tails,” and how they felt when they met. Now I knew why they touched each other's wrinkles. I cry every time I watch that ending.

That's how I felt. I fingered Rachel's face. I held both of her hands in my hands. I glanced down, looked at her hands, and saw a long lifeline across her right palm, which matched mine. “We both have a long life in front of us.”

Rachel blazed this beautiful, even-toothed smile at me when I said that. “I hope we live to be a hundred like the Delaney sisters. Then we can make up for lost time.” Rachel's teeth obviously had suffered braces. I was surprised how much she looked like her father, Strange, who was crazy as a Betsy bug, but she also looked like Venita. She seemed to have a sweet personality; totally different from me.

Now she wore her hair shoulder-length in a wrap. Whereas I was a deep café noir color, Rachel was a café au lait hue—like her deceased father, Strange. She was a color in between Venita and me. I wondered, would Venita be color-struck over this light-skinned child she'd given birth to and prefer her to me?

I wanted to get this right this time though. I felt so bad that I caused my little sister to be separated from us as a family. But we were so crazy, I don't know if being with our family would have done her more harm than good.

I was still burbling with excitement, though. It was as if an angel came forth when Rachel contacted me.

I grabbed her weekend roll-on bag and headed to my car in the parking lot across the street from Delta Airlines, wondering what this visit would bring.

I pulled up to the curb of Venita's brick-front, Spanish-style colonial in View Park, an old, established, middle-class Black neighborhood, with its hedges trimmed in silver mist begonias. Her house stood up the hill from Leimert Park and the old Magic Johnson Theater, which was now called the Rave. I was expecting to see the same ghetto fabulous cougar who had left L.A. over three months ago to go into hiding with Mayhem's three sons to keep the Mexican cartels from killing his seed.

Instead, I was in for a surprise. My jaw dropped when I saw my mother. She was wearing an all-white cotton caftan, and donned a head wrap like the Black Muslims. She'd done a 180 since I last saw her wearing a red weave and long fake nails. Her natural nails were now clipped short with a clear polish. She was studying to become a Black Muslim. I guess she even had the boys studying with the Nation of Islam. I noticed the
Final Call
newspaper on the table.

As soon as she saw Rachel, Venita threw her arms around her, kissing her face and sobbing loudly. In fact, they both were in tears. As they stood holding each other, I felt so jealous, I thought I would explode. Finally, Venita pulled away and she hugged me, seemingly as an afterthought.
Strike one,
I thought.

Once we stepped inside the vestibule and across the shining rosewood floors in her living room, Venita waved us into her formal dining room. Mayhem had bought her this old, sixty-year-old refurbished house with the wainscoting, the arched doorways, and the high ceilings. She had beautiful oak molding trimming the perimeter of the ceiling in the dining room. Her sea mist French provincial sofa and loveseat complemented the living room area with her copy of an Emmy Lu masterpiece painting on her crème de menthe walls. Although Venita had only been back in L.A. one week, the floors were shining, and the house was bright and cheery, not dank and dark as if it had been closed up for the three months she was on the run with her three grandsons, Milan, Koran, and Tehran.

“Come on in and eat,” she said. She had the table set and waiting. The table was set with white linen, candles, and a centerpiece of hybrid roses that were pink and white, which, I assumed, Venita took out of her yard.

In addition, a bowl of fresh peaches trimmed with strawberries sat on the middle of the table. A crystal bowl filled with lemons balanced the table. She even had a crystal bowl filled with water with a magnolia floating at the top, which gave off a beautiful aroma. Another soft incense wafted on the air and I couldn't quite make out the fragrance, but I thought it was a jasmine scent.

She'd cooked a vegetarian meal of creamy linguine with pan-roasted cauliflower, spinach, and white beans, couscous, chiles rellenos (which used to be one of Romero's favorites), split pea soup, and a green salad. She'd also baked an apple pie, which had the house reeking of cinnamon.

The boys were acting so well behaved I couldn't believe they were the same children I'd met before I went to Rio. Milan, Tehran, and Koran had each grown about two inches over the summer. They no longer wore earrings in their ears and they no longer had the different Mohawks and shag haircuts. They all had their hair cut close to their scalp. I didn't see any more of the “we want to be Crips” personas.

“Hello, Auntie Z,” they said in unison. Unlike the little boys who told me I wasn't even their auntie before.

All three came and gave me a hug. They didn't have the same thug bravado they masked when I met them before.

“How did you enjoy Chicago?” I asked Milan, the oldest nephew, who was ten. He seemed to have changed over the summer.

“It was good, ma'am.”

My jaw almost dropped to the floor again, but I didn't give away how shocked I was.

Before we ate, Venita led the family in prayer. We held hands and nodded our heads. “Allah, thank you for reuniting my family for me,” Venita said. “May you lead us to find my youngest son, Daniel, Zipporah and Rachel's brother.

“I've made a lot of mistakes because I was in darkness and did not know your word and I didn't know my role as the Black woman. I didn't know that I am the descendant of kings and queens in Africa, the offspring of the original woman, Lucy. Please thank you for giving me another chance to be a mother to my adult children and a grandmother to my grandsons. Let me make restitution with my children. May we learn to love one another so we can be a family again. Amen.”

With my head bowed, I tried to remember us ever sitting down and eating as a family when I was at home, and I couldn't. We had barbeques with the Crips at a local park, but it was never a family thing. The Crips had been our family back then. I had no nostalgic memories of fond childhood meals, other than cold cereal, hot dogs and beans, and McDonald's, when I still considered it a treat.

For the first time, I felt a piece of some of what had been missing in my life. I guess underneath, we all wanted that Norman Rockwell family tableau.

 

After dinner we looked at the photo album Rachel had brought with her. It included both of her birth certificates—her original one, and her adoption birth certificate which was created when she was nine years old. I remember at the time how there had been a push to get older Black children out of foster care and into permanent homes. She had brought a lot of photos taken after her adoption, and I showed her some of the pictures I had growing up with Shirley. No one had bothered to take pictures of Rachel when she was in foster care. It was like she'd been invisible. There was a picture taken of her just before her adoption.

“I wish I had more pictures to show you of us when I came to see you,” I said wistfully. “But I was so young and foolish, I didn't realize how important that would have been for you. I was trying to survive myself. I always had planned to try to get you once I got on my feet, but after I got on the police, my schedule was too crazy to raise children . . . I guess life just got in the way.” I didn't want to add that I became a lush over those years so I didn't follow-up and visit anymore.

“That's all right. You were a child yourself.”

“I wished I could've done better.”

“You're sure you don't have any pictures of you and Mayhem when you were with our mother?” Rachel asked in an unbelieving tone.

I shook my head. There was nothing else to say. Obviously, as a family, we'd never kept a good photo history. That showed how trifling Venita had been as a young mother. Thankfully, both Rachel and I had taken plenty of family photos with our electronic cameras since we were adults. Rachel showed me pictures where she'd gone to Ghana. I hated I didn't have any pictures of my trip to Rio earlier this year, but I'd been there on business and had lost my camera. I hated I hadn't taken pictures of my nephews when I found them. But we spent the evening taking pictures on our digital cameras and making up for lost time.

“I'll start a new photo album,” Rachel said.

“Yes, we can exchange our photos through e-mail now,” I said.

“Now I've got nephews, a sister, and a mother. When will I meet my oldest brother?”

Venita hesitated. She couldn't explain that she had been on the run with her grandsons because of this infamous oldest son and she herself hadn't seen him lately.

“He's out the country right now,” I interjected. “You'll meet him later.”

“Okay. Cool beans. I want you all to come to my wedding next year, too.”

“For sure,” Venita said, smiling.

In her every word and action, I could tell Rachel mourned not being with her mother when she was growing up. One thing was for sure, Rachel didn't know what she'd missed—nothing, as far as I was concerned. Our childhood had been so dysfunctional. I was still traumatized whenever I even thought about it: the weed smoking, the drinking, the uncles who were in and out, the gangbanging, the drive-bys, and the shootings. Please!

Throughout our reunion, I could tell all Rachel wanted was Venita. She wasn't thinking about me, her big sister, who used to struggle to come see her in the foster home even if I had to catch three buses through a series of gang territories when I was still a teenager myself. But instead of wanting me, my baby sister's eyes tasted, licked, and followed Venita's every move. When Venita chewed, Rachel swallowed. I could tell she was enamored with our mother. She never even asked about her father, Strange, who, as far as the White man's law knew, was murdered by Venita. I think Rachel knew Venita allegedly had murdered Strange, but she never brought that up. I wondered what she would think if she knew that her half brother had killed her father for fighting our mother while she was pregnant with her? I had repressed the memory myself, so no one knew, besides me, my mother and Mayhem. Anyhow, Venita took the fall for that murder rap and did twenty years in prison.

Just from what I was observing, Rachel seemed as if she had mourned not having her childhood with my mother. Maybe a child never forgot being inside their mother's womb, hearing her voice, rocking to her heartbeat. Maybe there was always that bond. I didn't know. Unconsciously, I felt my stomach. Would my baby feel like that about me? A warm feeling coursed through me. I would love this baby with all I had, and hopefully, this baby would love me back.

After dinner, I was surprised when I saw Venita take Rachel by the hand. “Please forgive me, baby girl. I'm so sorry I was not there for you. My mind was all messed up with this gang stuff. But now I'm learning how to be a proud Black woman through the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan is the best thing that ever happened to our family. Even the boys are acting better.”

She reached over and hugged and kissed Rachel, who melted like a baby in its mother's arms. “I'm sorry I didn't know how to love. I love you so much. I will spend the rest of my life showing you love.”

I felt another twinge similar to how I felt when I saw the way Venita reacted to Mayhem's sons after I took my nephews to her to keep the cartels from massacring the three boys. I felt sheer, unadulterated jealousy. Envy of the automatic bond she and the boys seemed to have. Envy for the natural affection Venita had for Rachel. Was it because Rachel was light skinned? Worse, I couldn't stand how my baby sister was just latching on to our mother, Venita. Why couldn't she have been a good mother when I was a child? Why couldn't she have acted like this when we were growing up?

I think what irritated me the most was that Venita was doing the one thing with Rachel that she never did for me. She had never apologized to me for all the crap she'd exposed me to as a child, from causing my father to get murdered in front of my face, to the domestic violence, to being driven in a wild black and white police car without seat belts, then placed in the old, now-defunct McLaren Hall in the middle of the night, which was traumatic in and of itself, on the night my dad was killed and she was arrested.

I could feel the barometer of my repressed rage boiling to a volcanic level, but I tried to calm myself down.
Strike two.

After we finished taking pictures, Rachel and I washed up the dishes, while the boys went into their rooms to play with their Xbox games. Venita offered to help, but we both said at the same time, “We got this.” We laughed, and started feeling a little more like sisters.

Afterwards, Venita, Rachel, and I went into the family room to continue to talk.

Venita turned to Rachel and took her hand. “The worst thing that happened was when you were born and they took you away from me. I'd lost a baby that was stillborn, but to leave a baby in the prison hospital . . . That was one of my lowest points. After that, I started changing while I was in prison.

“Then, earlier this year, Mayhem was kidnapped and I didn't know if I would get him back. But Z helped get my child back safely.”

What?
Before I knew it, I lost it and went off on Venita. “How can you apologize to her and never apologize to me?” I didn't know where this boldness came from, but I was tired of being the oldest daughter in a Black family—the one the mother leaned on. “And what about Mayhem? He's the reason for all our trouble.”

“Haven't I already apologized to you?” Venita's voice sounded uncharacteristically meek, which made me even angrier.

“The truth of the matter is you haven't. It's been a ‘too bad, suck it up' attitude toward me. And now that your precious Mayhem has gone back to Brazil, I don't care what happens to him this time.”

“Oh, no, you don't mean that, Z. I always hoped you guys would be there for each other when I'm dead and gone.”

“Oh, don't guilt me now,” I growled.

Venita spoke in a soft voice. “Z, what can I do to make it better between us?”

I got quiet. “You don't get it, do you?” My words were so filled with venom; it surprised me at how much anger I harbored toward Venita. “You're the reason I became an alcoholic, that my life is such a mess now. You were the cause of my father's death. Every time I try to get my life straight, I deal with your life or your son's life, and mine's get messed up.”

“Well, I'm sorry you feel this way. David is your brother. Your hating me is not going to bring your father back. I haven't tried to bring trouble into your life, but sometimes we can't outrun our past.”

Rachel looked shocked. I guessed she didn't know about all these family secrets.

Venita stood up and came and embraced me. “I love you, Zipporah I Love Saldano.” I knew my mother was serious when she called me by my middle name, “I Love.”

She continued, “You've become quite a woman and I am proud to be your mother. You're much smarter than I am.”

I couldn't answer that. What comeback could you have for that? Rachel came over and hugged and we did a group hug, which made us all cry. My emotions had never felt more raw.