Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle (2 page)

“Divorces seem to be plentiful these days,” Mama commented.

I nodded although she couldn’t see me. “It’s worst when a client thinks her divorce lawyer should be at her disposal every minute of the day.”

Mama didn’t say anything.

“How long will you need me?” I asked again. My
spirit rose at the thought of eating another one of my mama’s meals.

“A week,” she said.

“A week,” I repeated, thinking that Sidney would surely expect me to use
some
of my vacation time while he was gone, especially to take care of my mama.

My mama’s name is Grace, but she’s called Candi because of her candied sweet potato complexion.

My parents are originally from Otis, South Carolina. They got married right out of high school and my father joined the Air Force. After a career of thirty years and the birth of my two brothers (Rodney and Will) and me, Captain James Covington retired and he and Mama moved back home to Otis, a town of five thousand people.

“Okay,” I told Mama, “but I want you to cook roast pork, fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, string beans and new potatoes, rice and okra. And, for dessert, I want carrot cake and sweet potato pie.”

On Saturday morning, we were in Winn Dixie shopping for groceries when the baby’s wail rang through the aisles. It sounded like somebody had
stuck a hand down the infant’s throat and squeezed its intestines.

I flinched. Mama held her shopping list in one hand, a can of mushroom soup in the other. She was saying something about sodium when the child’s second scream broke her concentration. She glanced in the direction of the cry. “Something is wrong with that child!” she said softly, putting the can of soup back on the shelf.

A voice over the loudspeaker suggested that shoppers visit the produce section … watermelon, grapes, and peaches were on sale. Then one of my favorite songs by the Manhattans began to be piped through the store.

Mama eased her shopping cart toward the juices; I hummed along with the music.

The baby screamed again, the sound as sharp as a police siren. Mama looked at me; I threw her a look of reluctance, but it didn’t do any good. She was going to see what the matter was with that child and that was all there was to it. I shrugged, then followed her toward the noise.

On the next aisle, near the canned vegetables, we spotted a woman who looked all of thirty-five years old, who smelled powerfully like the camphor used for canker sores. She was holding a baby and shaking it. The woman’s skin was dark. She had small eyes, and a very large nose. As we walked toward her, she looked scared, almost terrified.

I glanced at the baby … it was beautiful, although
its tiny face was as red as the labels on the cans of tomatoes that were on the shelf. It wailed again.

“Birdie Smiley, what’s wrong with that baby?” Mama demanded.

Birdie stammered but she didn’t stop shaking the baby in her arms. “I—I had no business—”

Mama interrupted impatiently, “That’s Cricket’s baby, Morgan. What have you done to that child?”

Birdie didn’t look up. Instead, she began shaking the baby harder. The baby screamed.

“
Stop that!
” Mama shouted, then she snatched the crying baby from Birdie’s arms. “If you keep that up you’ll knock the wind out of her—she’ll stop breathing!”

Birdie’s body was trembling. Beads of sweat were on her forehead. “I—I ain’t got no business keeping her … ain’t got no business letting her come with me … I just remembered, I ain’t got no business keeping
nobody’s
baby!” The words poured from her mouth like a hot flood.

Mama was cradling the sobbing baby in her arms, looking down into its wide-open eyes. “Now, Morgan,” she whispered. “Everything is going to be all right!”

“I ain’t got no business keeping a baby,” Birdie stammered. “Doctor told me I ain’t got the nerves for it … ain’t got no business … can’t take care of no baby … won’t do it again!”

The baby hiccuped and stopped crying. “I was at the hospital the day this baby was born,” Mama said, as if talking to herself. “She had the brightest
eyes, and when you talked to her, she paid attention like she understood exactly what you were saying.”

I looked closer at Morgan. She was indeed enchanting. For a moment, I felt a strange inkling, like the prickle of an unfamiliar emotion. Morgan’s eyes charmed me, too.

“Is Birdie some kin to Morgan?” I asked, thinking that such a nervous woman had no business taking care of this delightful baby.

“I don’t think she is,” Mama answered. “Cricket Childs, Morgan’s mother, is one of my clients.” Mama works for the Social Services Department.

“Then this beautiful child is the other side of the coin of a single-parent home,” I said.

“I suppose,” Mama replied, in a tone that told me that she didn’t think my statement relevant.

As long as Morgan held on to my eyes, I had to agree with Mama. This captivating baby girl looked almost a year old. She had thick black hair and a flawless milk-chocolate complexion. Her eyes were dark and bright, her mouth small and round. She smelled of Johnson’s baby powder. But cuteness wasn’t all there was to this little girl. There was something bewitching about that child’s gaze.

Mama smiled down at Morgan, clearly having fallen in love. This baby’s bright beckoning eyes had that kind of power. “I can’t imagine Cricket leaving you, sweet child,” Mama whispered.

Birdie Smiley stood anxiously rubbing her arm and staring at Mama and little Morgan when Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls eased
up quietly beside Mama. In Otis, these three women are jokingly called the “town historians” because they go out of their way to know everything about everybody in Otis. Mama actually finds them helpful. She calls them her “source.”

I was surprised to see the ladies, but Mama glanced at them as if she’d known all along that they were in the store. “Ladies,” she said, without taking her attention from the smiling baby, “it’s good to see you.”

“I told you,” Sarah Jenkins said, her voice strong despite her pasty complexion and constant preoccupation with her health, “that was Cricket’s baby hollering.”

Annie Mae Gregory is an obese woman, whose body is the shape of a perfect oval and who has dark circles around her stonelike eyes; Annie Mae always reminds me of a big fat raccoon. When she looks at you a certain way, she appears cross-eyed. She asked Mama, her jaws shaking like Jell-O, “Candi, what are you doing with Cricket Childs’s baby?”

“I ain’t got no business—” Birdie Smiley muttered, as if talking to herself again.

Mama glanced up. “Now, Birdie, Morgan is just fine now.”

Carrie Smalls is a tall woman with a small mouth and a sharp nose. She holds her body straight, like she’s practiced so that her shoulders wouldn’t slump—I’ve told Mama more than once that it’s Carrie Smalls who gives strength to the three women’s
presence, who gives a measure of credibility to what these three say. Carrie Smalls looks the youngest; she dyes her hair jet black and lets it hang to her shoulders. Now she looked down into Mama’s arms at the baby girl. “Where’s Cricket?” she asked, in an authoritarian tone.

Just about that time, Koot Rawlins, a large woman known for being full of gas, swung into the aisle and belched. Koot’s shopping cart was full of lima beans, rice, fatback bacon, and Pepsi. She nodded a greeting but kept walking.

I went back to staring down into little Morgan’s face. “My friend Yasmine, the beautician, she had a party a few weeks ago—a young woman named Cricket was there who told me she lived in Otis. Could she be this baby’s mother?” I asked.

Mama’s attention shifted back between me and the baby as if she was surprised. “There’s only one Cricket Childs that lives in this town, and she’s Morgan’s mother, yes.”

Annie Mae Gregory shook her head impatiently. “Where in the world is Cricket now?” she snapped.

Sarah Jenkins looked around. “I declare, Cricket’s got her share of faults—”

“Whatever Cricket’s faults,” Mama interrupted, “she’s a good mother. I can personally vouch for her devotion to this child.”

Carrie Smalls shrugged. “I reckon you think ’cause your job throw you to be with her that you know her better than anybody else. My question
now is where is Cricket, and why is she letting her baby cause so much confusion in this grocery store?”

“Cricket isn’t far,” Mama said, convincingly. “She must have left Morgan with Birdie for just a few minutes.”

Carrie Smalls motioned to her two companions that it was time for them to leave. “You work for the welfare, Candi,” she told my mother. “You know better than anybody else that if Cricket doesn’t take better care of her child, it’ll be your place to take her away from Cricket and put her in a home where she’d be properly taken care of. A grocery store ain’t no place to drop off a child—”

“I don’t think it’s fair to say that Cricket dropped Morgan off in the store,” Mama pointed out. “Birdie is taking care of the baby.”

Carrie Smalls responded sharply, “There are times when Birdie can’t take care of her own self, much less take care of a hollering baby!”

I watched the three women shuffle down the aisle toward the fruit and vegetables. But Mama ignored them. She was still staring at the baby in her arms. “We’ll find your mama, sweetheart,” she whispered. Her words seemed to hold the child’s attention.

Suddenly, I decided I shouldn’t be a part of this scene. Let me explain. I—I … well, I just don’t have a very strong maternal instinct. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I don’t like babies—it’s just that they don’t turn me on like I’m told they are supposed to do!

My girlfriend Yasmine, the one I told you about who fixes hair, is a voluptuous young woman who had her nose job long before plastic surgery became a part of black folks’ thing. Yasmine is about my age, unmarried, no children. And like me, she’s in a monogamous relationship. Her friend’s name is Ernest and while Yasmine won’t admit it, I know she wants Ernest to ask her to marry him so that she could have a house full of babies. Yasmine and I could be walking inside the mall, she’ll see a baby and her eyes will light up. She starts with “ain’t she cute,” or “she’s so precious,” going on and on until I feel like I am going to gag. If the mother of the baby allows, Yasmine even starts talking gibberish that she swears the baby understands.… The whole thing drives me crazy!

I’ve told Yasmine over and over again that the strong feeling for motherhood that she claims is normal just ain’t there for me. “Girlfriend,” she says, “something is
seriously
wrong with any black woman that ain’t turned on by a baby!”

I have to admit there are times when I find myself wondering whether Yasmine is right. For instance, as Morgan’s eyes drew me to her like a bee to honey, I found myself wondering what it would be like to have a daughter, and perhaps to have the kind of relationship with her the same as Mama has with me. That thought scared me. After all, I wasn’t Candi Covington. How could I be sure that I could pull off the maternal thing as successfully as she had? Anyway, I didn’t want to dwell on that thought, so I
decided that seeing Mama hold tiny Morgan to her breast, hearing her speak soft, kind words, and seeing Morgan respond with a bubble of spit and cooing sounds
wasn’t
what I needed to be watching right now.