What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day... Read online

  “Do you still have them?” Joyce said. I was sure I did. Somewhere.

  “Well, I’ve still got mine,” Joyce said. “Maybe we can find something in there.”

  “Something spiritual?” I said, remembering the movie in which Tina Turner converted to Buddhist chanting after Ike beat her with a shoe in the back of that great big limo. I didn’t know if I was ready for all that yet.

  Joyce laughed and started treading water, something I have never been able to do for longer than ten seconds without sinking like a stone. “Don’t say it like that. I don’t mean we have to start playing tambourines on the street. Maybe we could just try the meditation or something. Eddie swears by it.”

  “Eddie meditates?” I said, giving my treading water its best shot and failing miserably.

  “Twice a day, he told me,” Joyce said, splashing for the dock, with me and my pathetic dog paddle bringing up the rear. We hoisted ourselves up onto the dock and immediately collapsed from the intensity of our feeble efforts.

  “We are in bad shape,” Joyce said.

  I was wondering if Eddie went all the way and sat cross-legged on a pillow and lit incense and shit. “What else does Eddie do?” I said.

  “T’ai chi.” Joyce closed her eyes. “It’s sort of like yoga, but it all flows together when you do it right. It looks like a dance. He tried to teach it to me once, but I was too embarrassed to do it all by myself, and Mitch wasn’t interested. Eddie said that in China, big groups of old people do it outside at dawn in the public parks. Maybe that’s what I needed. Some other old folks to be out there creaking around with me.”

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. “I’m not that old, big sister. I ain’t creaking nowhere yet. And don’t you forget it!”

  “I never forget anything,” Joyce said, suddenly serious. She opened her eyes and turned toward me, propped up on one elbow. “When Mitch died, I thought I would never be able to swim in this lake again,” she said. “I thought it would make me too sad or too mad or something. But it never did. It always makes me think about him and remember what a good man he was.” She smiled at me. “I miss him every day,” she said softly. “Every single day.”

  I reached over and took her hand and squeezed it and we lay there like that for a while, just looking at the moon and listening to the crickets.

  “I’m glad you’re going to be here when Imani comes home,” Joyce said.

  “Me, too,” I said. And I was.

  • 14

  eddie showed up this afternoon with a bag of the reddest tomatoes I’d ever seen. He was dashing off to town for something or other, but promised to come back and have dinner with us. Joyce lined the tomatoes up on the windowsill where the sun made their red roundness look almost artificial, it was so perfect. I could practically feel the juice running down my chin.

  “These will be great in the salad tonight,” she said.

  I must have looked disappointed because she relented and handed me one.

  “Maybe you should make sure they’re not poison.”

  “No chance,” I said, passing it under the cold water and biting into it like an apple. Even without salt, this tomato was spectacular. Firm and sweet and juicy without a hint of green. It actually tasted like sunshine.

  “Jesus!”

  Joyce laughed. “Is the man a tomato-growin’ somethin’ or what?”

  “If he actually grew these, he is the tomato master,” I said, popping the last bit of it into my mouth.

  “It’s all organic, too,” Joyce said. “No chemicals, no pesticides, no poison.”

  “I don’t even see a garden,” I said, eyeing another tomato greedily.

  “He plants a little ways off from the house to get the best sun,” she explained.

  “What else does he grow?”

  “Everything. Potatoes, collard greens, lettuce, turnips. He used to raise rabbits before he was a vegetarian.”

  “To eat?” I couldn’t imagine Eddie slaughtering bunnies.

  “He meant to raise them to eat, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it,” Joyce said. “Should we eat outside? The mosquitoes haven’t been too bad this summer.”

  “Sure,” I said, glad Eddie had a soft spot for small creatures in tight spots. I could definitely relate.

  Joyce handed me a blue ceramic vase I recognized from a long time ago. My mother liked to fill it with wildflowers. “Remember this?”

  “Not without Queen Anne’s lace and some black-eyed Susans.” I tucked it under my arm and headed outside, but those fresh tomatoes winked at me from the windowsill. “How about a tomato for the road?”

  “How far are you going?” Joyce knew I could have stepped right out the front door and gathered more flowers than we needed. Sustenance was a poor excuse, so I switched gears quickly.

  “Ple-e-e-ase?” I said, falling back effortlessly into the irritating whine all little sisters carry as a blood memory and a sacred trust. If you don’t annoy your big sister for no good reason from time to time, she thinks you don’t love her anymore, and I was crazy about Joyce. I shifted into overdrive. “Puh-leeeez?”

  “Take it, take it!” She winced, tossing me the smallest of the remaining fruit. Joyce can’t stand whining.

  “You brought that on yourself,” I said, washing my prize and turning to see Joyce smiling tearily at me. Brattiness didn’t used to make Joyce feel sentimental, but these days it doesn’t take much.

  “Welcome home, little sister,” she said softly. “You look great.”

  • 15

  if everybody who claimed to be a vegetarian cooked like Joyce and Eddie, the world would be a much safer place for a whole lot of animals. By the time we got through with homemade pasta, homegrown vegetables, and Eddie’s angelic tomatoes, we decided to wait a few minutes before tackling the peach cobbler. No wonder Joyce had a hard time dieting. The girl could burn.

  She and Eddie exchanged news while I sat there watching the stars come out. I was realizing how many more stars you see in the country than you ever see in the city when I heard Eddie say something about finishing a house in Grand Rapids.

  “Is that what you do?” I said. “Build houses?”

  “Houses, fences, furniture,” he said. “I’m a carpenter.”

  “Just like Jesus.” I was just being a smart aleck, but I realized that with his hair hanging down around his shoulders, the beard, the sandals, and his penchant for dashikis, he definitely had a biblical sort of look going.

  “Eddie’s the best around,” Joyce said, refilling iced tea glasses all around.

  “Is that what you always did?” I said, sipping the icy lemon-peppermint mixture.

  Eddie smiled slowly. “Not always.”

  I waited for him to continue, but he just looked at me. He had answered my question, but gone no further. I’d have to frame my questions in a less open-ended way unless I wanted to end the evening without any more details then I’d had when we started.

  “I saw something funny yesterday,” Joyce said. “This kid was visiting somebody in the hospital and he had on a T-shirt that said ‘Jesus Was a Black Man.’ Period. I watched him walk down the hall and all these white folks were glaring at him like they were waiting for God to send a lightning bolt in defense of his whiteness. But when you think about where he was born, what are the chances he’d be a blue-eyed blonde?”

  She was right about that. “The sunburn alone would have killed him,” I said.

  Eddie laughed at that so loud it startled me and I knocked over my iced tea, but it didn’t matter. We were outside and I didn’t break anything. I mopped up a little while Joyce went in to get the cobbler and then me and Eddie just sat there looking at the sky, which was dark enough now to reveal the thousands of stars that only show themselves without the presence of neon.

  “Can you name them?” he said.

  “Only the real obvious ones,” I said.

  “Which ones are those?”

  I pointed. “The Big Dipper, The Little Dipper, and som
etimes Cassiopeia’s Chair, if I concentrate real hard. Can you?”

  “I can do those three and Orion’s Belt.”

  “My father knew them all,” I said. “I almost went blind as a kid trying to make out bows and arrows and goats with fishtails.”

  “Your father was the one who showed me the ones I know.”

  “Really? I always forget that you knew him.”

  “That’s because you weren’t born yet,” he said. “I was probably about eight or nine and I was running away.”

  “From home?” I was trying to imagine him as a wayward eight-year-old.

  “From here,” he said, laughing and shaking his head at the memory. “Your father passed me on the road and figured it was a little late for me to be out by myself.”

  “So he showed you how to find the Milky Way?”

  “He asked me if I needed a ride somewhere, and when I didn’t answer, he said he was going home and sit on his dock and read the sky and if I wanted to come, he’d sure like some company.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t take you home to your mother.”

  “He probably figured that was the last place I wanted to go. We turned in right here and strolled on down to the lake like this is what we always did on Saturday night. We sat down on the dock and took off our shoes and he started reading the sky to me, just like he said he was going to.”

  Eddie stopped and looked down the slope at the dock as if he could still see my father and his boy self down there talking softly so they wouldn’t wake up my mother. “In the morning I woke up in your front room on the couch. Your mom gave me some breakfast and told me she’d talked to my mother, who was glad to hear I was okay, even if she was going to have to beat my butt when I got home.”

  “Did she?”

  “No. She said she was sorry things were such a mess and if I ever felt that way again, to let her know and we’d figure out another way to come at it.”

  “Did you?”

  “I didn’t have to. After that I figured she was doing the best she could and I ought to be helping her instead of driving her crazy.”

  Joyce came back out with the cobbler, some freshly whipped cream, and a pot of coffee. For a while nobody said anything and then the mosquitoes came out from wherever they had been hiding and chased us inside. Eddie helped us clean up and as we dried the last dish, Joyce invited him to come to church with us in the morning.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Just thought I’d ask,” Joyce said, laughing. “I figured I could get extra points in heaven by bringing in two nonbelievers on the same first Sunday.”

  “Are you a lapsed Baptist, too?” I said.

  “I’m not a Christian,” he said, making me instantly curious.

  “What are you?”

  “Now, that’s another question altogether.” He shrugged, a gesture I was beginning to recognize as one of his favorites. “I don’t really know yet. But I’m working on it.”

  Okay with me, I thought, watching him walk off into the darkness, heading for home via the path at the edge of the lake. I’ve always been a sucker for a work in progress.

  • 16

  when we got to the church, Joyce took me downstairs to show me the nursery. The room was clean and bright, and even though it was only ten o’clock, there were already two toddlers and an infant comfortably in residence. A young girl who looked about fourteen, but was probably a couple of years older from the way she was handling things when we walked in, was balancing the baby expertly on her right hip while bringing out a box of toys to entertain the other two children, who seemed to be twins.

  “Do you want puzzles?” she asked, and they nodded slowly in unison without letting go of each other’s hands.

  “Let me do that.” Joyce pulled out several colorful wooden puzzles with pieces big enough for little hands to grab on their own and made the introductions.

  “Aretha Simmons, meet my sister, Ava.”

  Aretha smiled, shifted the baby to her left hip, and extended her hand. “Welcome,” she said. “Or I guess I should say welcome back.”

  “Thanks,” I said, as two more toddlers and their mothers arrived and Joyce went to greet them.

  “How old is your baby?” Up close, Aretha didn’t look quite so young, but she didn’t look like she ought to be a mother yet either.

  She laughed. “This little pumpkin?” she said, tickling the baby gently under its double chin, which resulted in a contented gurgle and a sleepy yawn. “This is Doetha’s baby.”

  “Which one is yours?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Hey, Ree.” A young woman with a sleeping bundle breezed by us and deposited her baby gently in one of several portable cribs.

  “Hey, Tomika,” Aretha said. “How long she been asleep?”

  “About twenty minutes,” Tomika replied. “She ought to be good for another hour, but I brought a bottle just in case.” She handed over a frilly pink diaper bag.

  “You better.” Aretha slung it over her baby-free shoulder. “Otherwise, get ready, ’cause you know I’m bringin’ her right up to you!”

  “You gonna be the one answerin’ to Old Lady Anderson if you let this chile mess up her solo!”

  “Everybody know she ain’t my baby,” Aretha said. “How am I gonna be the one in trouble?”

  “’Cause everybody also know I ain’t got no sense,” Tomika said with a grin. “You got no excuse!”

  Aretha laughed, put the now-sleeping baby she’d been carrying in the crib next to Tomika’s daughter, and turned to collect another one, already awake and howling, from a harried-looking young woman who practically threw her child into Aretha’s arms and ducked upstairs to the relative peace of the sanctuary.

  Joyce was busy getting the toddlers settled in with their choice of toys, picture books, puzzles, and doll babies almost as big as they were. It looked like an appropriate time for me to make my exit upstairs, too. I told Joyce I’d meet her after the service, waved at Aretha, who waved back while reaching to wipe a nose that needed it, went upstairs, and took a seat in the back.

  There were three or four older men in the front on the left-hand side who I took to be the Deacon Board and two solemn ushers in dark suits and white gloves when you first walked in, but the congregation was overwhelmingly female, from the young ones who had dropped off their babies downstairs to the ones who had been old for as long as I could remember them. There were flowers on the altar and, as always, a large painting of a sweetly blue-eyed Jesus kneeling in prayer. I remembered our conversation of the night before and I mentally substituted Eddie’s face, but that brought on such a rush of feelings that didn’t have anything to do with church that I blushed in spite of myself.

  It was already warm in the sanctuary, and the lazy ceiling fans were being actively outclassed by the hand-held variety provided by Brown’s Funeral Parlor up the road in Baldwin. I think they’re probably the people who put us on the list to receive the suicide booklets, but I couldn’t swear to it.

  It wasn’t long before the choir took their places at the back of the church, the organist nodded her readiness up front, and we all stood for the processional. Mama and Daddy weren’t big on church, so we hardly ever went while I was growing up, but I always like the music and they were singing one of my favorites, “Great Gettin’ Up Mornin’.” The choir started as one voice:

  In that great gettin’ up mornin’,

  Fare you well, fare you well,

  In that great gettin’ up mornin’,

  Fare you well, fare you well.

  Let me tell you ’bout the comin’ of judgment,

  Fare you well, fare you well,

  Let me tell you ’bout the comin’ of judgment,

  Fare you well, fare you well.

  They were right behind me, clapping and singing, and they sounded so good they made me shiver even in all that heat. They surrounded my less-than-stellar soprano with such a symphony of passionate praise that I felt like I
could really sing. We all did. The pews were full of smiling, swaying black women, eyes closed, heads thrown back, voices loud without apology, all of us convinced we were singing our sanctified asses off.

  Then, all of a sudden, I heard a female voice lifting up and swooping over our best efforts like Diana Ross assuming leadership of the Supremes. This was a voice that celebrated the delicate, death-defying balance between the secular and the sensual that makes Sunday morning service the sweet, sweat-drenched experience that it is.

  God’s gonna up and speak to Gabriel,

  Fare you well, fare you well.

  God’s gonna up and speak to Gabriel,

  Fare you well, fare you well . . .

  The choir, rising to the challenge of this amazing voice, leaped even higher in pursuit of the same ecstasy, and those of us in the pews opened our eyes and glanced at each other to confirm the unexpected wonder of it.

  Blow your trumpet, Gabriel,

  Fare you well, fare you well.

  Blow your trumpet, Gabriel,