The Lost Daughter: A Memoir (23 page)

It was another short loop that meanders through laurel, Douglas fir, madrone and oak. The trail promised to lead me to one of the remaining old growth redwood stands in that section of the forest, which is mostly second-generation. A little over a mile in, I spotted the Old Pioneer, which easily dwarfed the younger redwoods in girth and height.

The Old Pioneer was not one tree but a cluster of trees whose bark had fused together over time. creating this towering ancient that still stands despite evidence of fire damage that has hollowed out about thirty feet of the trunk. I stepped into the crevice at the base of the tree and stared up into the darkness of the Pioneer’s hollowed innards. I sat cross-legged in the shadows, closed my eyes and lost myself in the quiet and the terrene emanations of my refuge. When I emerged about a half an hour later, I was ready to shed the solitude for the comfort of kinship.

IT WAS MOTHER’S DAY,
and I was thinking of pushing Mama from a moving vehicle for backseat driving me like Miss Daisy. Her logic was that she hasn’t seen me since I was a teenager, pre-driver’s license, and therefore wasn’t totally convinced that I knew how to safely drive the car I’d rented specifically to take her out that day. If she didn’t let up soon, I would be forced to fake the sudden onset of a disabling bowel condition to get out of this.

“You have to slow down if you want to make that left.”

“I know, Mama.”

“Ain’t that the exit? You betta get over to it before we pass it.”

“I’m on it!”

Despite all the effort I had put into compiling meticulous directions to get us from her house in East Oakland to an IMAX theater in Emeryville and then to a toney soul food restaurant in downtown Oakland, she insists on trying to offer alternative routes.

I wanted her to relax and let me worry about getting us around and she wanted to show off her knowledge of the only city she had ever lived in. Things nearly reached the breaking point for me when she tried to direct me out of a Target parking lot where she had shopped for video games to blow some time in between watching
The Avengers
movie (her choice) and brunch.

“Turn right to get back to the street.”

“Thanks, Mama, but I think I know how to get out of this parking lot.”

She’s also showing me behavior I’ve never even heard of, like
passenger
road rage.

“Did you see that motherfucker almost cut you off?”

“I saw him. No worries.”

“Watch out for that asshole over there in the blue car, he don’t look like he know what the fuck he doing!”

At least it’s clear where I get my love of cursing. I tried to diffuse her anger by getting her focus off the road.

“When I went to visit Uncle Landon, I was impressed by how much the Fruitvale neighborhood is being built up.”

Instead of diffusing her anger, she seamlessly redirected it and went on a rant about how little public officials have done to serve the East Oakland neighborhood.

“You know the Mexicans took over Fruitvale. It used to be black now it’s damn near all Mexican!”

To Mama, Mexicans were all people south of the border, from Mexico to the tip of Chile.

She continued, “They were able to get politicians elected who gave a damn! Our representatives ain’t worth shit because niggers don’t vote for who’s good, they vote by race! That’s why we ain’t got shit in East Oakland! Just churches and liquor stores! Black politicians in Oakland ain’t done a motherfucking thang for us, Lawanna!”

While I sympathized with her concerns, her tone of voice and her anger made me think of the times when I was a kid and it was directed at me. My head was starting to throb but I stayed quiet, keeping my face blank and my eyes on the road, feeling like a back-country hiker playing dead in the hopes of avoiding a grizzly bear attack.

Luckily her anger ran its course just as we pulled up to the restaurant. Because of her COPD, she couldn’t walk more than a few feet before getting out of breath, so I dropped her off at the curb in front of the restaurant, instructing her to go inside and wait for me at the table while I searched for a parking spot.

I took several tours around the block not because parking is scarce but to decompress from my stressful time in the car with Mama, which felt akin to Chinese water torture. Ten minutes later, after regaining my equilibrium, I got a parking spot on a side street and made my way back to Picán Restaurant.

I had scrambled to get reservations because I hadn’t planned on spending Mother’s Day with Mama. It had never occurred to me back in March that things would go as well as they had. So just a week before, I had found myself spending the whole day on the Internet searching for just the right restaurant that still had open reservations for Mother’s Day brunch.

Picán (which serves upscale Southern food) is a black-owned business and one of Oakland’s few quality restaurants. The online reviews were highly favorable and I was able to snag the last reservation. After a peek at the online menu, I knew Mama would appreciate the offerings that included biscuits and gravy, catfish, buttermilk fried chicken and slow-cooked collards—some of the foods she used to cook for us growing up.

I entered the restaurant and I was pleased to find towering ceilings, a rich décor and dramatic lighting. There was an air of homey elegance that was complemented by Michael Jackson music wafting through the main dining room filled with a multicultural crowd of large families at long tables and in booths, and mother-daughter duos at two-tops scattered throughout.

It was easy to spot Mama sitting alone and looking a bit forlorn at a small table in the middle of the dining room. I paused to take in the scene. There was a red rose on the table in front of her, given to her by the hostess. She looked adorable in one of her new outfits: a patterned top, black slacks and silken black ballerina flats. I gave her a haircut the week before, so her wild white afro was gone, replaced by a sophisticated cropped do. She looked as good as any of the women in there, but I could tell she felt out of place in this upscale crowd.

As I approached the table, I could see her slyly sizing up a sophisticated older woman who was sitting at a two-top next to ours with her daughter, who was a bit younger than me. When Mama saw me, she looked relieved. “I was wondering what happened to you.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry that took so long.”

While we perused the menu, we enjoyed the cream biscuits, coffee cake and maple butter our server left for us. We complimented the surroundings and peeked over to see what the couple next to us was having. The sophisticated black woman and her daughter recommended we try the ribs and shrimp and grits. Then the older woman engaged Mama in a bit of small talk and soon they were laughing and discussing recipes and stories about the welcome revitalization of downtown.

I could tell Mama was starting to feel like she belonged. The tension had left her face and body, and she was no longer glancing furtively around the room like Cinderella newly arrived at the ball.

A friendly waitress came by and took our order. While we waited for our food, we rehashed
The Avengers
movie, which we both enjoyed. We cracked each other up quoting funny lines from the movie, like when the Thor character defends his evil brother against the critiques of his fellow Avengers, then quickly points out that the brother was adopted when he is told his brother recently massacred a large number of people.

Mama also loved the scene where Thor and the Hulk, fighting side by side, succeed in defeating a behemoth from another dimension. After the beast is conquered, they stand together in victory when out of nowhere the Hulk punches the daylights out of Thor, sending him soaring out of frame.

We were nearly in tears with laughter. We discussed who our top three favorite Avengers are. We both selected Iron Man as our favorite but differed on the remaining two. Mama picked Thor and the Hulk. I chose the Black Widow and Captain America. We both agreed the Hawkeye character was a waste of screen time. Hawkeye from the old TV series
M*A*S*H
would have made a better impression.

Then before I knew it, Mama and I were deeply engrossed in a debate regarding who was the
ultimate
superhero badass, the Hulk or Superman. We go back and forth for a while. I’m standing firmly behind Superman and Mama’s going with the Hulk. I pointed out that Superman could reverse the rotation of the planet. Mama countered with Superman not being as intellectually strong as the Hulk’s alter ego, Dr. Banner, thus giving the Hulk the advantage of having both brains and brawn. I saw her point but in the end we agreed to disagree.

Our food arrived. We started with a tasty plate of grits and shrimp. For the second course, Mama got barbecue ribs and I got fried chicken. For dessert, we shared strawberry shortcake and chocolate cake so decadently rich it made my eyes water.

Over the course of the meal I found myself scanning her face for her reaction to each bite and asking if she was enjoying herself. It pleased me to no end that she was. After our meal and on the ride home, the car was full of the pleasant aroma of the tangy sweetness of Mama’s leftover ribs sitting in a doggy bag on her lap. Mama, who loves to cook, was thinking out loud as she tried to mentally reconstruct the ingredients in the sauce used in the shrimp and grits recipe, which she planned to re-create at home. I noticed that in addition to the doggy bag and the rose, she had also taken the brunch menu from the restaurant.

When she saw I had noticed, she said a bit shyly, “I want to show my friends what they was serving.”

I was genuinely sad to drop her off in front of her house. We kissed and exchanged “I love you’s!” and she was out of the car. I took a few moments to flick through my notebook in search of directions from her house back to my hotel. When I looked up, I see that her friends from across the street seemingly materialized out of nowhere and had joined her on her front porch. As I pulled away, I could see she was flashing a broad toothless grin with her friends and passing what looked like the menu to one of them. On the drive home, my mind’s eye envisioned her also sharing the ribs and a detailed description of our day. Cute.

I WENT TO TEXAS
to visit my niece Latasha. Last time I saw her, she was a curious little girl just barely out of diapers who secretly marked the walls and furniture of our apartment with slashes of purple marker. Now she was thirty-four years old and the mother of seven. She had invited me to Houston to attend a large family reunion. It wasn’t a Williams family reunion. Latasha was abandoned in Houston by my sister Donna when she was just fourteen years old and her little brother was ten. My sister left them with a great-aunt one morning, said she was going to work and never came back. It took just a few days for our great-aunt to catch on that Donna wasn’t coming back. Latasha, after nearly twenty years, was still hopeful.

Tasha met me curbside outside of baggage claim at George Bush Airport on a hot and humid afternoon in Houston that threatened rain. As she approached, I could still see the tiny girl in the pretty woman with the solid frame typical of the women in my family. She was a no-frills type of gal. No makeup. No jewelry. From her father’s side she had inherited light brown skin with reddish undertones, which folks from the South called “redbone.” She also had a healthy dusting of freckles sprinkled across her cheeks and nose, not unlike Uncle Landon. Her hair was thin (a trait from my mother’s side of the family) with a loose curl pattern, which she wore in a slick ponytail. Otherwise, she said, the humidity would turn it into an untamed cotton ball. She was dressed in an oversized T-shirt, Capri pants and sandals. She approached me with a shy smile. When she got within touching distance, I reached out and embraced her, kissing her cheeks deeply and repeatedly the way I did when she was a little girl.

She led me to a black car that belonged to her best friend, Sista, a very large woman with a shaved head, flawless makeup and eyebrows so manicured they looked as if they were stenciled on. She wore a sleeveless top that highlighted the soft rolling contours of her arms. Sista had the figure of the ancient beauty woman artifacts of old—flesh upon flesh that does not repel but beckons you near. When she hugged me, she smelled of flowers and her skin was cool and soft despite the heat. Her nearly hairless head accentuated the flawless symmetry of her face and the impish gleam in her bright eyes. Also present was Latasha’s eight-year-old son, Maurice, a beautiful redbone like his mother. After we got in the car, he sat quietly in his mother’s lap, which Tasha said was completely uncharacteristic of the boy, who can be a terror. While she told me this, he looked back at me from the front passenger seat with a little face dominated by big brown eyes and a cherub mouth with an expression that seemed to say,
“Lies! All lies!”

We left the airport and headed toward Tasha’s home, where we would spend the night and get picked up the following afternoon for an hour drive into the country for the reunion. I learned that Sista is the daughter of the woman who eventually took Tasha in after Donna left.

Tasha and Sista met in high school. Sista, who has always been very overweight, was being teased by a group of students. Tasha witnessed the bullying and decided to step in and defend Sista. She told me she did it not because it was the right thing to do but because, since her mother left, she had been holding in a lot of anger and used every opportunity she could to vent. That day she unleashed her anger in defense of Sista. They became fast friends. When Tasha became pregnant with her first child at sixteen, it was Sista’s parents, Mama and Pop, who gave her support and encouraged her to complete high school despite her pregnancy.

Because Sista is an only child and had no interest in having children, Tasha became a second daughter, and her subsequent children the grandchildren of Mama and Pop. Tasha’s oldest son, eighteen-year-old Ladarian, who was about to graduate high school, lived with Mama and Pop.

During the drive to Tasha’s house, I told her about my memories of her as a child. About the night Donna went into labor and denied she was pregnant all the way to the hospital. I told her what I thought when I went to the hospital to see her for the first time. I was ten years old and thought my two-months premature niece hooked up to wires in an incubator was the ugliest baby I’d ever seen. She looked like a wrinkled old white man.

I told her how much I loved her when she came home. How everyone loved her. How I mourned when Donna took her and moved away. Tasha listened to my recollections with a small smile on her face. When I was done, she told me that sadly she had no memories of me. I told her we would make new ones.

Tasha lived in low-income housing on a very rough side of town. As we pulled up to her place, the end unit of a series of townhomes surrounded by a high fence, Tasha joked that the fence was to keep the residents in, not the bad elements out. Sista dropped us off with the promise to pick us up the following afternoon and was gone.

Owing to the fact that Tasha is a single mother with six children living with her, ranging in ages from two to sixteen years old, I didn’t know quite what to expect of the living conditions in her home. I knew the house I grew up in with five siblings was nearly always in disarray. Chores were often neglected, bickering between us was constant.

When we entered her five-bedroom duplex, I saw that it was clean and bright. Family photos lined the walls. I was relieved to exchange the sweltering embrace of a Houston summer afternoon for a spot on her sofa in the air-conditioned coolness of her living room.

Within minutes, my great-nieces and -nephews came down the stairs and indoors to greet me. The two oldest girls were in high school and seemed to be the closest of friends. Kieaira was sixteen and looked exactly like her mother in complexion and personality. Breannah, thirteen, was the spitting image of my sister Donna, with her dark, smooth skin and athletic build. The opposite of her big sister, she was smiley and bubbly. Elton was eleven and a bit on the shy side but was very polite and inquisitive. He also resembled my sister Donna. A’Mya, nine, was in my lap from the moment I sat down and was full of questions. Maurice had shaken off his innocent angel routine and was solidly competing with his sister A’Mya for my attention. But the star of the house was two-year-old Hailey. She was an adorable little bundle of baby pudge and attitude in full-blown Terrible Twos mode. She had no interest in letting me touch or hold her and seemed to be just barely tolerant of my presence in her kingdom. Tasha told me the quickest way to her heart was through her stomach, a bottomless pit from which no food is excluded.

I attempted to bribe her with bland, wafer-thin rice crackers I had brought to eat on the plane. I wasn’t confident she would find my offering appealing, but I gave it a go because I was desperate to get my hands on baby flesh. Surprisingly to me, but not her mother and siblings, she liked the cracker I gave her and begged for more. Within a few minutes she was munching happily in my lap.

I spent the afternoon chatting and playing with the three youngest children, the teen girls having more important things to do than spend the afternoon with a great-aunt. While Tasha prepared a dinner of fish and chips, she told me all she ever heard about me was that I was adopted by a rich movie star. She had expected me to be snooty and she thought I’d have reservations about staying at her place. I told her that her place is the Hilton compared to places I have slept during my travels. I shared with her stories of the Appalachian Trail, Africa and Antarctica. She listened and asked lots of questions.

Over the course of the evening I was touched by how close and loving her relationship was with all of her children. She was affectionate but when necessary chastised with love. There was no fear or anger in this house. The children freely shared sweets and toys with one another, something rarely seen when I was a kid. The youngest children were not allowed to wander the streets at will. Each and every one was accounted for with updates every half hour. There were thank you’s and yes ma’am’s.

After dinner and after the children had been put to bed or on the sofa to watch a video, Tasha and I sat in plastic chairs on her back porch in the lukewarm night under an inky sky. It was Friday and Tasha pointed out that per usual there was a fight in the parking lot of the convenience store across the street. Knuckleheads from the neighborhood. We watched the pushing and shoving from our seats behind an eight-foot wrought-iron fence. I was secretly worried about one of the combatants whipping out a gun but Tasha didn’t seem concerned so I relaxed. After the fight broke up, I asked Tasha more questions about her life with Donna.

I remembered, as a young child, how close Deborah and Mama were. How they joked and gossiped like girlfriends. So when Deborah left, I knew that Mama had not just lost a daughter but her friend. I was happy to see Donna fill that role. She became the one who always rode shotgun and was the boss when Mama wasn’t around.

This all changed not long after Tasha was born. The once close relationship Donna had with Mama quickly deteriorated. They began to fight about money, the state of the house and about Tasha. Donna was very possessive of her baby and was quick to brush off any attempts from Mama to give her advice regarding the infant. Mama’s drinking was getting worse, too, and this did not help the situation.

Just before Tasha’s first birthday, Mama and Donna had a big falling out. One night there was lots of cussing and threats coming from both sides. I lay in my bed in the dark not daring to leave the security of my room but unable to block out the yelling that easily penetrated the paper-thin walls. All seemed normal the next morning when I got up for school. Mama was asleep and Donna was changing Tasha’s diaper. I kissed the baby and tickled her ribs, making her giggle so hard Donna shooed me away fearing I’d make her rewet her diaper.

When I came home from school at the end of the day, Mama was on the couch with her beer and a blues album was blaring from the record player. I went to play with the baby only to find the room she shared with her mother was empty. The crib was gone. The toys were gone. Their clothes were gone. All that was left was the sweet scent of baby powder lingering in the air.

I didn’t know where they’d gone. I didn’t ask. I accepted that the people I loved were not always going to stay around. I pouted for about a week and moved on. It would be a now grown-up Tasha who would fill me in on what her life was like after she left our home.

Donna took her baby and moved to Texas to stay with our great-aunt. Donna got a job and a boyfriend. Tasha tells me she had a happy childhood for a while, then a little brother came along. The boyfriends came and went. There was abuse. Abuse from the boyfriends and abuse from Donna.

Tasha told me of a time she heard a little girl on TV call her mother “Mommy” instead of the term “Mama,” which is how she was taught. She said the word “Mommy” sounded much more loving and playful than “Mama.” She decided she would stop using “Mama” and start using “Mommy” instead. One afternoon after school, she went home and called out to Donna using “Mommy” and Donna responded by slapping her in the mouth. She told Tasha never to call her Mommy again. “What you trying to do? Act white?”

I could see by the pained look on Tasha’s face that the memory and the sting of that unwarranted slap still lingered. She rose from her seat on the back porch and opened her back door. I could feel the chill of the air-conditioning, which she liked cranked up to an arctic blast, on my bare arms. It made me shiver.

“I need a beer,” she said. I could hear the television and the children talking inside. Then the door closed and I was alone again.

When Tasha returned, she told me how hollowed out she felt when Donna abandoned her. Despite the abuse, she still loved her mama. She still needed her. The great-great aunt who cared for her and her little brother believed in raising kids the old-fashioned way. Tasha’s brother, being a boy, didn’t have to do chores or stay in the house. It fell to Tasha to cook and clean, and playing outdoors with friends was strictly forbidden. On top of that, Tasha’s brother had close family in Texas. His father and his father’s family lived nearby and they’d often come over to take him on outings and made sure he had new clothes and toys to play with. Tasha had no one.

A few months after Donna left, Tasha got in the habit of keeping a telephone book in her bedroom. She’d scan the Williams section looking for Donnas or even D initials. There were a lot. She’d call these numbers and say, “Hello, my name is Tasha. I’m looking for my mama, Donna. Is this her house?”

Tasha stopped her story, shook her head and giggled to herself.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

Tasha told me that it wasn’t funny then, but what she did made her think of an old joke told by the stand-up comic Katt Williams. It’s a joke about how annoyed black people get when a wrong number calls but how friendly and helpful whites are in comparison. The joke goes like this:

Brrring!

White Lady: Hello? . . . No I’m sorry there’s no Shaqueeta here. . . . Well, what number did you dial? . . . No, it’s a nine not a seven. . . . Well, try it! . . . If it doesn’t work, call me back! We’ll figure this thing out!

We had a good chuckle. Tasha told me that story because she encountered a lot of annoyed black folks during her calling sessions. But this didn’t stop her from making the calls. Then one evening a white lady answered. Instead of hanging up, the lady asked questions and when she heard that Tasha had been abandoned and had been calling all the Williamses in the phone book looking for her mama, the white woman burst into tears and asked Tasha if there was anything she could do to help. It was an awkward encounter for Tasha. She politely thanked the lady and hung up. She never made another one of those calls again.

When Tasha was fifteen, she got word that Donna was working in a store downtown. Tasha went to the store and sure enough there was her mama behind the counter. It had been more than a year since she’d left. She greeted Tasha warmly and told her curious coworkers that the girl was a friend. Then she sent Tasha on her way. When Tasha came back to the store a few days later, the manager told her Donna had quit. He didn’t have contact information. Years would go by and Tasha, in an attempt to build her own family that would not leave her, would have four children. Though she was a grown woman with children and a valued member of a chosen family, Tasha still secretly longed for her mother. She got a tip that Donna was living in a residence in Houston and went by after work to follow up. She knocked on the door and Donna answered. Donna seemed resigned to the fact that yet again she had been tracked down. She let Tasha in. A young girl came out of the kitchen.