Uncle Otis’ heart is swelling like a balloon. It’ll burst and he’ll die soon, Mama says. Mama talks on the phone to Aunt Loretta about it on the way down to Dothan.
“I told him to lay off that coke, Roberta. I told him. I’ve been off it for months now, probably a year. He just don’t listen, girl.”
I googled it before I left, Dothan. In the Word, it’s the place where Joseph’s brothers dropped him in a well and sold him into slavery. In Alabama, it’s the peanut capital of the world. Second to that fame was the cotton. I watch the white tufts out the window, they look soft enough to hold. Mama puts her phone on speaker and Aunt Loretta gets to bull-shitting; says Grandma is doing great, better than ever! Mama sucks her teeth in when she hears this.
It’s been the two of us ever since Daddy got the job working in corporate at Weigel’s. First Black man that high up. Ever since, we’ve been alone together, me and her. But that’s okay, it’s part of the sacrifice. I changed schools this year, now I wear a wool uniform and perm my hair. I met somebody.
At every stop light Mama mutters meditations her Reiki master gave her. I can release this, I am whole. Again and again and again. Her life coach recommended she take a new approach to her fear around dementia. She’s been taking this Buddhist class at the community college, it’s about non-attachment in grief.
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When we get to Dothan, we pick up Aunt Loretta and her half-brother, Uncle Otis and take them to eat at Outback Steakhouse. All my other aunts call him ‘the bastard.’ They hate him and swear he took their Daddy Melvin away, but Aunt Loretta kept a soft spot for him.
Aunt Loretta is Mama’s cousin, but it’s rude for me to call her by her first name, and Cousin Loretta sounds too country, so I call her Aunt. Same for Otis too. And when I look at them in the rear view I can’t help but think how opposite they are. Aunt Loretta is as skinny as a twig and as yellow as a piece of butter cake. And when Uncle Otis closes his eyes to blink, I’m certain if it was real dark at night, I couldn’t find him if even if I was looking.
We were hoping to take Grandma with us to Outback, but Aunt Loretta says she’s staying at her friend Janie’s house for the evening. She scratches at herself, looks down when she says this.
“They wanted to watch M.A.S.H.”
I can tell no one buys this, but we’re hungry and it’s been a long trip, so no one presses. In the booth, I focus on the appetizers. I shove pumpernickel bread gobbed with white butter in my mouth and feel around for my phone in my back pocket, and Mama wants to know everything new with Loretta and Otis, and Uncle Otis keeps grazing Loretta’s hand when they reach for the Bloomin’ Onion.
Both of them scarf down the food like they haven’t eaten in days. They spoon in loaded mashed potatoes while chewing bites of broccoli. I’m getting nauseous: Aunt Loretta’s perfume stinks, she wears White Diamonds, and keeps lying about how broke she is with big, puppy eyes, even though she has a fresh roller set. She orders the Surf n’ Turf and a double Dark and Stormy and she eats it all, smacking down even the tails. Uncle Otis gets a T-bone and his skin looks just like it, grey and pockmarked. I hear the gristle tear while he cuts it.
“You have to go against the grain.” He grins. The meat doesn’t move. I grunt, then poke around on my phone under the table. It lights up. Nothing.
Even in the dimmed, restaurant fluorescents, Uncle Otis doesn’t look too good, and it’s true: the cocaine is making his heart swell. He’ll be dead three months from now and we won’t go to the funeral. But at the Outback, he has me and Aunt Loretta and Mama laughing. He rubs Loretta’s knee slowly a few times, but doesn’t know I see him. He goes over the knee cap, like he’s fluffing the skin there. Plumping it. I keep watching Loretta, hoping she’ll say something, and my face turns hot. She smiles at Mama, full of quarter-colored caps, takes a sip, then moves his hand higher. The waitress brings the check and Mama takes out her American Express.
“Ohh you something now, ain’t you?” Loretta hoots.
“Girl, please.”
“Well in that case, what do y’all got for dessert?” Uncle Otis almost splits in two. He stares at the Gold AMEX that’s almost maxed out.
“Whatever you want, you can have. Order the whole goddamn menu!” Mama drinks her Painkiller and shakes back the ice, “Thank you for tending to Mama. You know I wish I could.” She grinds on her ice pellets for a minute. “I can’t believe she’s almost 87.”
Otis looks Mama all over. Then he stares her in the eye and smiles. He has little dimples I didn’t see before.
“You just never age, do you, Roberta? Looking as beautiful as ever.”
“Ha. It’s only concealer and fillers, don’t let me fool you.”
“No, it’s that good heart of yours.” He looks down her shirt. It’s used Burberry and she bought it on eBay.
“You never forget us po folk down here, huh?”
“Nigga, please!” Mama looks at me and bugs her eyes out. I stuff more buttered bread and squeeze my knees together.
We end up ordering one of every dessert with coffees and Uncle Otis belches the rest of the meal. He smells like a dumpster, I start gagging and glare up at him, but he’s still not done with that T-bone. After the cheesecake, he gets back to tearing up that old, raggedy piece of steak, looking down, saying softly, “Excuse me.”
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Me and Mama stay at the La Quinta in the center of town next to the confederate bust of General Beauregard. Usually we stay at a Hilton Garden Inn at least, but we don’t want to seem high saditty. I like it though. The room is big! Two queen beds and lots of Neutrogena French milled soap I press to my nose and smell. I watch CSI Miami on the bed while Mama looks for roaches and cameras. She doesn’t find either, but there is mold in the back corner of the shower so she calls down on the white phone to tell them about the spreading spores. They say if we don’t say nothing about it they’ll give us the room for free so she ends up telling me to stand toward the front of the shower where the mold isn’t when I wash up. Later, I keep the soap to my nose while I bathe, staring at the black slime.
I’ve been talking to Cory from my Algebra class on my Tracfone at night after Mama goes to sleep. On the last day of 7th grade we traded numbers but I haven’t said anything to anyone about my grown folk’s business. He tells me he can talk in the evenings after 9 when his minutes boot up. Last night I checked to see if Mama was asleep then I started texting him. But I stopped and pretended to be asleep when I heard some whimpering, it went on forever.
Before school let out, Heather told me Cory gave her his number, too. But I don’t care. What we have is real.
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Loretta lives on the corner of Poplar and 3rd. We go to her house the next day to pick up Grandma. She looks dead. And the house isn’t nothing to look at, neither. It sags in the middle and the front porch is all but broke off. Begonias weep around the front door. In the yard, I see two pitbulls chained up to an oak tree. The names ‘Beauty’ and ‘Daisy’ are embroidered in petal pink on their collars.
When I hug Grandma, I’m afraid I’ll snap her. She looks all of ninety something pounds, her dentures poke out her mouth, and she doesn’t know who we are. Aunt Loretta is on food stamps and buys all her ‘sustenance’ for Grandma off her WIC voucher. But she can’t afford a lot so Grandma is stuck eating Hungry Man XXL meatloafs and Great Value meal replacement shakes. Aunt Loretta takes us inside and offers us some tap water. We both say no and I go to sit on the couch. Judge Mathis is on. Grandma sits across from us in her rocker. She stares off in space with her mouth open.
“Hey Ma.” Mama says. She reaches to hug her. As Mama holds her, Grandma pats her shoulders like a stranger, not a daughter. Her face looks stone serene, like someone with a lobotomy.
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We’ve only been down to Dothan one other time, when we moved Grandma here from Chicago. She’d left Alabama long ago with some man she met passing through town who didn’t last. But she stayed there, started doing hair, had her daughters, and made a little life. But then her memory started going. She left the gas stove on all day, got lost coming back from her walks around the block. We shopped her around, looking for a caretaker. The only person we found was Aunt Loretta, who offered to take care of her in Dothan if we paid her rent.
Stopping first in Chicago, we drove over to Maywood where the house stood she purchased for her and the girls in her late 40’s. A tiny, narrow home with a cement basement, large porch, and kitchen with barred windows which flooded with light.
It was a Wednesday when we packed Grandma’s belongings in a Mayflower truck outside her front door. As she slept, we went through her things, sorting them as essential or give-aways.
The movers drove the freight to Alabama, and we followed them a day later, flying out of O’Hare back south. We told Grandma how good it would be for her to go.
“You’re going home!”
Home home home. We said at her, while she waited, mostly mute. Crossing back into the sticky Dothan heat, even in winter, she sensed the knowing of the place, smelling deep, closing her eyes, watching scenery repeat on reel out her window.
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Mama says she’s gonna take Grandma out for a few hours so I have to stay at Loretta’s. Gross. It’s kinda fun though once we get warmed up. She puts on some Earth, Wind, and Fire and pours me a glass of Moscato, my first ever. She says I can have some if I shut up about it. It tastes kinda like Minute Maid.
She asks if I have a boyfriend while she lights a cigarette. I want to tell her about my man, but I’m too shy. We flip through a Jet Magazine and talk about hair styles. I tell her I want box braids all the way to my butt crack. She says she has a friend who could hook me up. We drink some more and my head swims and I start giggling and swaying in the living room. Loretta comes with me.
“Girl this makes me feel 18 again!” she sings and twirls, “Like I am still wide eyed and fresh. Like I ain’t never done a bad thing in my life.” We bump to the beat. I’ve got stars in my eyes.
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It’s a while later when I realize I’ve drifted off. The TV is still on, making the room light up. My phone says it’s midnight and Mama still isn’t back. I have one missed call from her, a voicemail tells me she’ll be home soon. I yawn and get up. I go to find the bathroom, wash out my eyes, and poke around Loretta’s medicine cabinet (Lifestyle condoms, red enema, Mitchum deodorant), when I hear someone moan. I hear Loretta telling someone go deeper. I hear someone else too, a man, I think. Walking down the hallway I get closer to the sounds and I can’t help it, something makes me look, and when I peek around the corner, blood drains from my face to my feet. I see that same pockmarked face from the Outback rolling around, pressed in Loretta’s milky neck. I see a big body pushing in and out. I feel my knees buckle, my eyes blur. I walk with sea legs to the front porch and sit down on the concrete. Shaking, I try to find my bearings. Beauty and Daisy howl at me, jowls toward the sky.
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In the morning, we take Grandma out for a good breakfast. At Waffle House she orders a pecan waffle and a hot coffee and the waitress who takes our order wears tiny butterfly clips that catch the light and flutter and her eye shadow is baby powder blue and creases in the socket. Grandma calls her Madam Butterfly.
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That night we have a sleepover. We take Grandma back to the La Quinta where she plops on the bed and takes her t-shirt and bra off and her breasts droop everywhere, her nipples point down. She takes her dentures out and places them on her night stand and I decide I never want her to leave. She runs her tongue over her gums then slumps. When I walk by to use the bathroom, she tells me I have nice legs and a pretty smile. She tells me I sure could be fast if I wanted to. I blush at this, but Mama smiles, says dementia makes people say off things.
Grandma is alive between the three of us, a different woman with spirit. I feel the life running in her, it’s hot blooded, and now I smile too, I reach for her hand.
I don’t want to get our hopes up, I push the wave inside me down. Mama sighs while she wraps her hair in a silk scarf then puts her oils on and I clip my retainer in. I wish we had the strength to fly.
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Uncle Otis comes by the hotel in the morning to see Mama, and shoot the shit. He drives trucks for BI-LO and leaves for weeks at a time, so he comes to say goodbye for a while. We meet him outside the hotel and all sit in the rocking chairs, Grandma too. Her neck is limp again and she stares at a fly fidgeting in motor oil. I say I’m going for a walk and sneak behind the dumpster to see if my boyfriend Cory will text me. I shake the phone, willing sweet nothings. I’ve been using up my minutes too much, I only have a few left for the month. I wonder if he’s talking to Heather.
Otis makes a shadow over me.
“What you doing back here?” his mouth is a tight line.
I shrug my shoulders and start playing Snakes II. I feel that heat in my face again. He clears his throat and I glare up. He meets my eyes.
“You didn’t see that the other night.” I stare at his shoes and he shifts his weight on his feet. I spit at the ground. He comes toward me, yanks me by my arm.
“You hear me?”
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We take Grandma back to Loretta’s house later that day and Mama gives Loretta 500 dollars in a money order and an Outback gift card so she can feed Grandma better. Loretta promises to do so and they hug.
We go to say goodbye to Grandma and we kiss her on her head. I squeeze her shoulders and she smiles at us like a baby searching someone’s eyes.
When Mama gets back in the car and drives off she starts losing it, screaming, fuck fuck fuck, and pulling thin pieces of hair from her crown, wiping her eyes. Grandma can’t say her name any more and we know Loretta will use the money on booze and coke.
Mama screams so hard, blood vessels burst in her eye whites. I float above the car.
She’s having one of her breakdowns again. I start picking at the skin on my lips and find a good, dry piece, right in the middle, that will split the center of me. Still no messages from Corey. We fly through the cotton, and I think of wading in it, lying face down in it. Imagining it like cool water. I want every burr to prick my brown ankles. I press my head to the window wishing it would crack. I’m wishing I could fall out the hatch. I’m wishing Grandma could come stay with us in Tennessee. When I ask, Daddy gives a low no. We can always visit, honey.
We stay the night in the middle of nowhere at a Bed and Breakfast called The Iris House. The floors creak as we walk to the second level and the furniture is coated in dusty lace doilies. Mama takes her “Zen medicine” and falls asleep with all her good clothes on, mouth wide, sprawled over the polyester quilt with little stitched fish. I wait until midnight to pull my phone out. Under the sheets my bed glows blue, and I’m smelling on one of those French milled soaps again. I stole three from the La Quinta. My baby Cory sends me a message that makes my heart jump:
“U up?”
My face flushes. I feel my underwear pulse tight. I want to look at my body in the mirror, so I walk to the bathroom and hear the whimpering again. I try to open the door but it’s locked. A crack of light spills from the floor.
So, I lay flat and turn my face to the side. I squint one eye and see Mama face down on the white tile, shuddering. Like she’s looking for something. She’s weeping with her whole body and I can’t tell what’s worse: me seeing her like this or her knowing I’m watching her fault line spread. I stay on the floor, pressing my cheek further in. I look through the crack and don’t blink.