Slow Way Home (5 page)

Mary Madonna stood on Nana’s front porch wearing her banner that spelled out Miss Sunbright in yellow glitter. The tiara was back in place, and she waved her arms real big.

“What do you want?” Mac screamed over the roar of the motor.

With her head thrown back and walking just as prissy as the day she was crowned, she screamed, “Mama said for you to pull me in Poppy’s cart. Like in a parade.”

Mac nudged me in the rib and then asked her, “How much you willing to pay?”

“I got fifty cents back at the house,” she said.

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“A dollar.”

“Mama!” she screamed.

“All right, fifty cents.”

After we hooked up the wooden cart that Poppy used to pick up limbs to the go-cart, Mary Madonna knelt in the scattered bark and pine straw that lined its bed. She waved as we circled the hog pen, the tree swing, and the old Chevrolet.

“Be careful,” Uncle Cecil yelled under the hood of the rusty car.

Poppy glanced up and shook his head.

“I’m gonna be in the Christmas parade this year,” Mary Madonna said as she waved at the trees. “Just like Mama was when she was queen.”

“Mama wasn’t no queen,” Mac said.

“She was too. She was Dogwood Festival queen back in high school.”

Mac nudged me. “Prove it. I’ve never seen no picture of Mama in a crown.”

“That’s ’cause all the pictures are at Grandma Spencer’s house. I saw them. All covered up with wax paper so they won’t spoil.” Mary Madonna clutched her arm like she might have a bouquet of roses to worry with.

Searching my brain for any pictures of my own mama with a crown on her head, I finally remembered the picture of her holding a baton in Nana’s yellow scrapbook. “My mama was a majorette.”

Before the last syllable finished coming out of my mouth, Mary Madonna yelled, “Your mama was no such thing.”

“Nana’s got a picture of her.”

Mary Madonna had her hands on the side of her hips. “Well, she must’ve been dressed up for Halloween, ’cause your mama’s never been nothing but trouble.”

“Shut up, Mary Madonna,” Mac shouted.

“Well, it’s the truth. Nobody would pick something like her to be a majorette. All she used to do in school was act trashy. Smoking cigarettes and chasing boys.”

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“Shut your lying mouth.”

“That’s how come you don’t even know who your daddy is. She didn’t know which one to pick.”

Wanting to knock that shiny crown right off her head, I turned but realized she was too high above me. Mary Madonna’s nose flared as she looked down at me. She smiled and adjusted her sash. “If I don’t tell you, who will?”

I wanted the engine to drown her words in the roar. “Shut up!”

“Mama’s right, you been babied too much. Birthday or no birthday, you need to hear this.”

Mac turned towards Mary Madonna. “Stop it, Mary Madonna. I mean it.”

Her words were almost as loud as the roar of the engine. “It’s just the truth. Everybody knows it except him.”

When Mac turned around to stare Mary Madonna into submission, I spotted his blue sneaker on the accelerator. Before he could push me away, my foot reached over and slammed Mac’s shoe. The gas pedal sunk towards the metal floorboard. Our heads jerked and the go-cart lurched forward. At the same time, the make-believe float dis-connected from its hook.

“Ma-ma-a-a!” Mary Madonna screamed. The cart flew past us with a mind of its own, past the tool shed, past the back porch, and right into the side of the hog pen.

Mary Madonna screamed and ducked her head as the cart slammed into a fence board. Hogs scattered, and Mary Madonna flew through the fence gap, landing crown first in murky hog doo-doo.

Aunt Loraine screamed and jumped from Nana’s back porch.

Nana followed, and her look of terror made me realize that I would get a whipping.

After Mary Madonna was hosed down and checked for bruises, the real excitement began. “What happened here?” Aunt Loraine demanded. “I mean it. I’m not budging until we find out.”

“Now, honey, it was just an accident. Those kids ought not to’ve been pulling that cart to start with,” Uncle Cecil said.

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“It wasn’t no accident neither,” Mary Madonna screamed and buried her wet face in Aunt Loraine’s miniskirt. “He did it.” Her finger seemed longer than an elephant’s nose as it sought me out for punishment.

Moving backwards, I felt my throat close up. “I . . . didn’t . . .”

Aunt Loraine threw her arms in the air. “Why, I should’ve known.”

“Now, hold on,” Nana said. “Brandon, did you do this?”

“I . . . uh . . . she was . . .” Watching Aunt Loraine’s nose grow red and her eyes twitch, I wanted to run down the driveway and keep on going. The vision of an orphanage with crying babies hanging out of the window flashed through my mind.

“Brandon didn’t do nothing,” Mac said. “It was me. I hit the gas too hard is all. It was like Daddy said. An accident.”

Mary Madonna threw her head back and cried even harder.

“Nuh-huh. He’s telling a story.”

Uncle Cecil molded the brim of his cap. Looking into his eyes, I always thought of Mama. They were shaped in that slanted way like hers, and I figured it was the only way they were alike. “We can stand here to midnight bickering over this. Now look, she’s not hurt. It was just an accident, Loraine.”

“Cecil’s right,” Nana said. “They had no business pulling that trailer to start with.”

The screeching from a tree limb as it rubbed against the tin roof was the only sound I heard. Aunt Loraine stared at me until finally she was forced to blink. Soon the big fake smile that I figured she’d learned from her days as the queen returned. “Accidents will happen, won’t they, Brandon? Even on birthdays.”

After Mary Madonna landed in the hog pen things changed. Aunt Loraine halfway agreed it was an accident, but I knew she blamed me.

Her eyes would search me up and down while I stood on the wrought-iron trailer steps. I could read the blame as she pursed her
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lips together and sighed whenever I sought Mac. “He’s busy doing homework,” she’d say and close the vinyl door.

Though I hungered to run along the creek bank with Mac or swing with him on the tire swing, I knew it was for the best. I had caused him trouble, trouble he didn’t even deserve.

Drinking the usual after-school Pepsi, I sat at the kitchen table and spelled all the words Nana called out from the book with a bee on the cover. I hated the baby way the bee was drawn with a big smile on his face and two wide eyes. Staring out at the old Chevrolet propped up on blocks, I mapped out the lonesome journey I would take on a wild safari, all the while sounding out words like “handsome” and “homecoming.”

Sitting inside the rusty car, I ran my hand over the navy seats envisioning that my touch made the torn leather covers completely whole and brand-new again. Keeping one hand on the thin metal steering wheel, I watched the African roads before me and turned every so often to see Nana pruning the big fern that rested on the porch rail.

Her humming rang out and suddenly what she meant to be “Shall We Gather at the River” became the chant of some undiscovered ancient tribe. Just when I swerved to miss an elephant, I heard the roar. Not a roar like Poppy’s tractor, but louder. A roar louder than even a lion.

Nana covered her brow and squinted to make out the noise.

Turning to look over my shoulder, I heard the roar make its way around the bend in the driveway. And right past the crepe myrtle, the beat-up car with the blue door appeared. Frozen, all I could do was hit my leg to make sure what I was hearing and seeing was not a dream. But no matter how hard I tried, the roar and final sputter of the muffler would not go away. Never before had I wanted so bad to jump up and find a wet sheet and Nana’s halo of long, wavy white hair standing guard at my bedroom door.

Watching Nana, I wanted to yell. To warn her that the visitor was not a new insurance man making his route. It was the collector, coming to get what was hers. But I did nothing but sit while cool sweat trickled down the back of my neck.

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Her hair was black again and, seeing her stand at the car’s blue door, I noticed she was skinnier than before. She wore the same big white sunglasses and waited so long before speaking that I hoped against hope that she was just a hippie passing by seeking a handout.

“Hey,” my mama said. She eased forward the same way I had eased backward the time I saw the rattlesnake drift across the driveway.

Nana turned her back and continued pruning the fern just like the roar was some sort of thunderstorm that had passed over. Nana casually turned her head and looked right at me. Seeing that wrinkled brow was like reading some kind of secret code, and I slid down the seat until my eyes were even with the rusted piece of metal that was once a door lock.

My mama’s voice cracked when she first began. “Now, I know what you’re thinking. And yeah, I did wrong. I know it, Mama, but I changed this time. I really have.”

Nana continued to cut the fern. “Only thing I see changed is your hair.”

Mama sort of laughed and ran her hand through the short hair.

“Yeah, I went back to black. Blonde just always was . . .”

“Trashy,” Nana said and stripped away another leaf.

Mama raised her hands towards the sky and sighed. “Yeah, well.

How’s Brandon?”

My hand reached for the door handle, and I fought ripping that door right off its hinge and cussing her out. I’d pretend like I was somebody mean and hateful like Aunt Loraine and yell things like,

“Go on, trash,” until she cried real hard and begged forgiveness. Then remembering that she had promised to come back and get me when things got better, I let go of the handle. Maybe she was keeping her word. I pictured a big house up in Canada. A two-story house like all the popular kids at school had.

“You don’t need to worry about him,” Nana said.

“Well, he’s my son, okay. I mean I can’t help . . .”

Nana turned to face my mama and shook the pruning scissors.

“The Lord gave you a good kid, but you sure didn’t do right by him.”

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“Damn it, Mama. I didn’t come here to fight, okay.”

“Sophie, that’s the problem. You never cared enough to fight for the boy when you had the chance.” Mama put her hands on her hips and stood on the porch step.

“What the hell does that suppose to mean?”

“Listen to me. Your Daddy and me spent many a night with Brandon. Nights working out all the demons your way of living planted in him. Mending all the scars you and your sorry men left on him.”

“Scars? I never laid a hand on my boy.”

“You didn’t have to. You let everybody else beat on him!” Nana raised the scissors up in the air. “When I think of all the mess that boy’s been through. No, no you’re not about to see him. That’s it now.”

Mama stepped backwards, and only then did Nana put the scissors down on the porch railing.

“Well, aren’t you Miss Fine Christian Lady with her long glorious hair. I guess you’re telling me I’m not good enough for second chances, huh?”

“You know better. Every time we bailed you out of one mess, you’d go fall right back into another. My only regret is that the woman down at social services didn’t pay me any attention when I told her to come take Brandon out the first time.”

“Listen, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. That’s all changed. Really, this ain’t the same Sophie you’re talking to.” My mama’s wrist fell limp like she was telling town gossip. “See, I went through one of those rehabs up in Canada. Learned I could either be pitiful or powerful.” Mama smiled real big like I pictured them teaching her at that place up in Canada.

“And you with no money.” Nana shook her head. “Lord, you expect me to believe this foolishness?”

“The government paid for it. Everybody gets it up there. And, besides, I met a man . . .”

“Well, sir, how did I know that was coming.”

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“Mama, this is different. He’s a widower. Got plenty of money.

Walter, that’s his name. He wants us to get married and everything.

He’s even gonna open up a beauty shop for me to run.”

“Sophie, you beat all. After not hearing a word from you in over a year, you just roll in here wanting him back like nothing out of the ordinary. I declare, if you weren’t so pitiful, you’d be a regular Lucille Ball.” Nana hadn’t yet closed the screen door before Mama fired the last shot.

“Mama, don’t you force me to do anything. He’s still my boy, okay. Any court will tell you so.”

Nana flew out the door and down the steps faster than I had ever seen her move. Before I could blink, Nana landed her hand against the side of Mama’s face. I flinched at the pop that was louder than the firecrackers Mac and I had lit last Fourth of July.

Mama stumbled, still touching the injured cheek. “Bitch!”

The beat-up car’s engine turned over and over, and just when I feared the fighting was not going to end, Mama drove off in a spray of sand, covering Nana’s prized fern.

Watching Nana clutch her apron and half skip to the back of the house yelling, “A.B., A.B., where are you at?” I laid down in the car seat and thought for a second that, if I was real still, maybe I could hide forever.

A blue jay landed on the dogwood branch that dipped down to the old Chevrolet. In a flutter of wings the bird turned his head down towards me. His tiny eyes seemed to be looking right into the fearful parts. But his peaceful stare failed to trick me. I had seen the signs of trouble before.

If anybody had joined us for supper that night, they never would’ve believed that my mama’s visit had rattled any nerves. Poppy told a joke every now and then, and I would fake-laugh to let them know I could play the game. Anything to keep conversation away from the car with the blue door.

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It was only after I had dressed for bed that I discovered how bad it really was. Their words floated from the kitchen table and every so often became tangled with the clanging sound of a spoon hitting Nana’s cup of cocoa, the same cocoa she claimed settled worried nerves.