Mama's Roots

My mama was born in Macon, Georgia on August 26, 1944. I think my grandmama must've been visiting someone down there because she talked about riding back to Kinston, NC on the bus when my mama was only a couple of days old. Mama was the third child in the family. My aunt Evelyn, who my grandaddy christened Butch because he wanted a boy, was the eldest and then my Uncle Cecil, who instantly became Buddy, came along a year later and a year after that my mama. There was another baby. A still-born baby that my grandmama told me was absolutely perfect except that all of it's orifices were covered over with skin. It's nostrils and ears and mouth were all sealed. She buried it in a shoebox out in the garden. Another baby -or maybe it was the same one, maybe I'm mixing up stories, but another baby was buried underneath my grandaddy. After the still-born child, came my Uncle Danny and my Aunt Joette. They grew up in east Kinston in a poor hardscrabble neighborhood where people grew their own vegetables and my grandmama took in laundry and my daddy worked as an electrician when he wasn't in jail for beating the shit out of my grandmama and their children. He was mean. Mean as a snake. Mean just for the sake of mean and it was all exacerbated by massive quantities of alcohol. I believe he was a gin man. My grandmama was beautiful. I don't mean pretty or handsome, I'm talking Ava Gardner gorgeous. When I was 20 or so, I met a man from east Kinston who, upon finding out I was Pauline Kelley's granddaughter drew back and said, "You're grandmother was the most beautiful woman I ever knew." Too bad it didn't get her any farther than five hungry children and a mean-ass drunk for a husband. For kicks, grandaddy used to make the three oldest kids fight each other out in the front yard. He'd make them literally beat each other up or else he'd beat all of them himself. Those were the choices. So, when my mama was eleven years old, grandaddy got thrown in the tank for beating the hell out of grandmama. Only this time, she'd had enough. She went before a judge and asked for a divorce. He agreed, but then he told her she'd better pack her kids up and leave or else my grandaddy would kill her. It was 1955.

How My Daddy Died Part 2

John was on the phone. He said You need to leave right now. I'm looking up plane tickets so you can fly out as soon as possible. Mama says they're keeping him alive until you and Angie can get there. Just try to stay calm until you get home. Drive slow and careful. So I hung up the phone and found Chris and told him what John had said and he said Go! Take care of everything and call us when you can. So I went. I bawled all the way through the parking lot and all the way home. I trembled and quaked and sat down at the computer to find the first flight back home. I found one out of Boston that left in less than two hours. I threw clothes into a carry-on bag. Underwear, sweatshirts, a pair of jeans, my laptop and charger, my journal, a toothbrush, my birks. I was wearing a t-shirt and a sweater and holey jeans and thick socks and Soloman hikers so that I could run through the airport if I had to. We left the house and I called Angie. She was already on the road and said she'd pick me up at the airport when she got into Charlotte. It snowed a little on the way to Boston. It was cold. The airport was crowded and the plane was packed. I sat at the window. Scrunched into the window seat wearing three layers of clothes including a winter coat. I cried the whole time. Shaking and queasy. Praying Please don't let me lose my Daddy. Please let this not be what it is. But all the while knowing that it was futile. That this was exactly what it was. I arrived in Charlotte and ran through the airport. Called Angie and she was 10 minutes away. She picked me up. We didn't talk much. Traffic was bad. It was 5pm rush hour. It took an hour for us to get to the hospital and it was strange because it was the new hospital which I'd never been to. Angie dropped me off while she parked because my stomach was so upset I had to run to the bathroom and heave and poop. After I came out, Angie was just coming in and Sarah and Katie had come to the front waiting area to bring us back to the ICU. That long hall way. Shining floors and fluorescent lights and my head throbbing with every thump of my heart, with every foot step and Mama standing at the end of the hallway. She held me and I sobbed, I wailed. I'd never known the wailing and gnashing of teeth until that moment. I was near hysterical and Mama was very calm, and pale. She was wearing Daddy's John Deere tractor jacket and it hung down past her knees and she whispered to me. He's hooked up to machines, they're keeping him alive. He and I talked about that and this is not what he wanted. His kidney's shut down and he's eat up with the infection. He's on dilaudid and morphine but he can still hear us. We're all going to go in there and we can stay as long as we want. We can talk to him and be with him and then when we're ready, they'll unplug the machines and eventually he'll stop breathing. The nurses said it could be anywhere from a couple of minutes to a few hours. But not until we're ready.

It had been almost a week since I'd talked to Mama. Other than a "hey" here or there in between her talking to John. I woke up today feeling okay. But then it went down hill. I went out with John for a little while, but within 10 minutes I knew that was a mistake. I felt sorry for myself. I felt sorry for everything. I felt premenstrual and sad and then it all fell apart after I got home. I cried. Crying because I miss my Daddy is an all-consuming cry. It's not like crying because I need to release. It's crying because there's nothing else I can do. Because I can't think or breathe or move. I thought about calling Mama. About calling Angie. But I couldn't do it. So Mama called me. She knows these things. She asked me if I feel him around me. I don't. I think because it would make it worse if I did feel him. It would hurt more. But Mama says he's around her. And Daddy guiding Mama is good enough for me.