Shem Creek Read online

  “Well, I did. Let’s put this stuff away and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Lindsey followed me around the room, not helping anything except the pharmaceutical industry that manufactures my anxiety medication.

  “Momma, listen. I’m not moving here. I’m going to NYU. This isn’t about me. I mean, look. Okay. Whew! Damn! I’ll help you. I mean, I’ll go back to Jersey with you and pack up all my stuff . . .”

  “We’re all going back together. I can’t pack up a lifetime of your belongings without you to sort through it all. . . .”

  “You’re right. When do we leave?”

  “Tomorrow. We’re driving.”

  “Oh my God! Fourteen more hours in the car? Crap! We just did this. And then turn around and come back here? Just like that?”

  “You always were the smart one, Lindsey! I’m thinking you can leave your winter clothes at Daddy’s and maybe he can keep some other stuff for us until I find us a house here. And, I can’t buy a house here until I know how much we’re gonna get for the house in Montclair, right? So, either we will stay with Aunt Mimi for a little longer or we can look for something to rent. Anyway, the most important thing is to get the Montclair house looking right to go on the market. That means . . .”

  “Throwing out tons of shit!”

  “Language! Really, Lindsey! But, that’s the general plan. We’ll probably put some stuff in storage for a while.”

  “God, Mom! This is so depressing! I mean, I’m going to Montclair, coming back here, then going back to New York Labor Day weekend and starting school and you won’t be in Montclair for me to come home to on the weekends! I don’t want to spend my weekends with Daddy and Patti! She drives me crazy and he is crazy! You know that!”

  Lindsey choked up and started to cry like I hadn’t seen her do in ages. I knew what was upsetting her—too much change in too short a period of time. She hated change. Always had. I put my arms around her and let her cry on my shoulder.

  “Baby, listen to your momma. Everything’s going to be fine. This will all work out just fine. It’s the best thing for all of us. Right?”

  “I know,” she said. Her voice was shaking with uncertainty. “I’ll just be the one in Daddy’s backyard, burying cash in coffee cans and counting Cipro for when the cloud of terror floats over from Manhattan!”

  “Don’t worry, honey. I just know this is for the best. Your momma has never done a crazy thing in her whole life.”

  She raised her head and looked at me, half smiling. “Well, you just did.”

  “Thanks a lot! And you know that extra money I’m getting from my new job?”

  “Is this the part where you buy me off? I need a Coke.”

  “Yep! It’s for airline tickets. Get me a Coke too, honey. Diet, if there’s any left. Listen, Mimi says you can fly from LaGuardia to Myrtle Beach for under two hundred dollars. That’s ten trips, which I have to tell you I don’t think you’ll even want to take! Once you get into the swing of college you’ll forget about your old momma.”

  She filled two glasses with ice from the door of the refrigerator and poured, handing me one. “Don’t say that, Mom. I know I can come here but I don’t like the idea of you not being there!”

  “So, you want me to sit in Montclair and wait to see if you want to come home for the weekend?”

  “Pretty much sucks, right?”

  “Pretty much a little-girl-with-a-potty-mouth thing to say, sweetheart.”

  “Ugh! I hate growing up! You want a piece of cake?”

  “Sure, why not? A sliver, though.”

  I looked around my sister’s kitchen, doing inventory. The sparkling clean white countertops and shining oak floors were beautiful. Her cabinets were white too, with paned glass doors. Old linen napkins with lace borders tipped over the edges of her shelves. Her cobalt glasses, all lined up in rows, were not chipped. Her red-and-cobalt patterned plates, all stacked, matched. Everything in the room and especially the pound cake on the footed platter sang of a happy life, an organized life. The appeal of it was becoming addictive.

  The front door opened and closed and my sister had returned.

  “Heeeey! What are y’all doooo-ing?” She sailed in the room singsonging and gave Lindsey a peck on the cheek. “Isn’t that cake the best thing you ever put in your mouth? I swear, sometimes they just turn out.”

  “It’s like eating velvet!” I said with my mouth full. “Why didn’t you answer your cell phone?”

  “Honey baby! I was getting my nails done! I can’t be fooling around in my purse with wet nails!”

  “Aunt Mimi! Momma has some news!”

  “Did you get the job?”

  I nodded my head and Mimi started whooping and hugging my neck and then Lindsey’s.

  “This is the best, best news! I swear! Oh, y’all! I am so thrilled!”

  “Me too!”

  Lindsey stood on the sidelines, shaking her head.

  We carried on for a few more minutes and then we heard the front door open and close—very quietly. Gracie appeared in the kitchen, sunburned and wobbling. She was reeking of beer. There was a hickey on her neck the size of a prune.

  “Waddup?” she said.

  I was mortified and for my sister to see her behave this way was almost unspeakable. No one said a word. We simply stared at her. She must have decided she was too trashed to pass for sober because she turned to leave the room, holding on to the door for support.

  “I gotta go to ma room,” she said, “I’m grounded.”

  “This is one reason why we’re moving back here,” I said to no one in particular.

  “You need a hand with this one,” Mimi said. “She’s as drunk as a coot!”

  In the distance, as my young hellion ascended the stairs, we heard her lilting call in the music of the debauched. “Ah maight beeee shit-faaaaced, but Ah suuuure had fuuuun!”

  “I’ll make a lady out of her if it’s the last thing I ever do,” I said.

  “Good luck,” said Lindsey.

  “It might just be the last thing you ever do!” Mimi said.

  “Watch me,” I said with supreme confidence, seriously doubting that I could do a thing except to frustrate the hell out of myself. “The hopeless battle will begin as soon as she sobers up.”

  “Two are stronger than one,” Mimi said, “I’ll help.”

  Three hours passed and no word from my lovely younger daughter. No word, but plenty of snoring. Her snorts and grunts could be heard all over the hallway upstairs. Supper was ready and it was time for her to rise and join the living. Mimi and I passed each other on the steps.

  “Want me to get her up?” she said. “She’s been sawing logs forever!”

  “Yeah, I guess we have to,” I said. “Let’s go in there together.”

  We opened the door and there was my Gracie, curled up in a ball under the sheet. Her breathing was soft and even. Part of me wanted to wake her tenderly and another part of me wanted to pull her hair out by the roots. I still had to get us all packed for tomorrow’s trip and she had yet to learn about our plans.

  “She looks so innocent,” Mimi said, “like an angel.”

  “Angel my big fat foot,” I said. “That’s Fred Breland’s child, not mine.”

  “Humph to that!” Mimi leaned over her and shook her shoulder. “Gracie? Gracie? Sugar, it’s time to get up. Come on, now. Let’s go.”

  Gracie groaned and rolled over, blinking her eyes and yawning. “Lemme sleep a little longer, ’kay? Close the door!”

  “No way, honey, you’ve got to get up now,” Mimi said. “Supper’s ready.”

  “Not hungry,” she said and rolled over again.

  There was no reason for Mimi to be so nice to her. My temper zoomed to boiling. I threw back the sheet and pulled her feet to the floor. “Get up and go wash your face,” I said, “we’ve had enough drama from you. You come home trashy drunk and with a hickey on your neck? You will not embarrass me in front of my sister for one more minute! Move
it!”

  It would have seemed that the theater department should have closed for the day but as soon as we were gathered around the table (that would be champagne for three, thank you), the news of my job and our move became the topic of heated conversation.

  “Well, you can move down here if you want to,” Gracie said, “but I’m not living around a bunch of rednecks.”

  “Thank you, Gracie,” Mimi said.

  “I don’t mean you, Aunt Mimi. You know that. Look, I love my life in New Jersey and I can live with Daddy. He said so.”

  “Yo! You want to live with Patti?” Lindsey said. “Are you nuts?”

  “Negative. No one’s moving in with Daddy and his wife,” I said. “The court awarded me custody and that’s how it is.”

  “Mom? We’re gonna have a big problem here if you try to force me to do this. I’m not kidding!”

  “A big problem?” I said with surprising calm.

  “Yeah! A huge one! Here’s the line and here’s you!” She drew a line with her fingertip and then stabbed at a point on the other side.

  I was not amused.

  “Are you threatening me, Gracie?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use that tone with your mother,” Mimi said.

  Gracie was pushing her food around the plate, seething with anger. Lindsey stepped in.

  “Listen to your sister here, Gracie. Big deal. You get to spend the summer at the beach. You get the tan of your lifetime. You’re smarter than half the population here. You can dance with Charleston Ballet Company, which is professional! Let’s see if they teach modern dance. Who knows? You get to perform at the Gaillard Auditorium! In two years Juilliard will be licking their lips to have you!”

  “Yeah, right,” Gracie said. “They left a message this afternoon.”

  “You know, I am really not enjoying these implications about southerners. Northerners are no smarter than—”

  “God! Why is everybody so sensitive?” Gracie said.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, Aunt Mimi. I meant that Gracie is smarter in the ways of the world.”

  “And, that’s the problem,” I said, unable to filter the sarcasm from my voice.

  “Well, I am not moving here!” Gracie said, in a low voice. “And, that’s final.”

  “You don’t get to pick final,” I said. “You’re a minor.”

  “Never mind now,” Mimi said. “Look, I have an idea. Gracie? Why don’t you stay here with me while your momma and Lindsey make the trip to New Jersey? I’d like to spend some time with you and hear your side of things.”

  Gracie looked at me and I could see her mind at work. Which was worse? Two days of endless driving on I-95 and packing your life in boxes? Or, five or more days at the hands of the Taliban—make that Talibelle? Tough call.

  “You can stay if you want,” I said, with what I thought was a nonchalant delivery.

  Gracie looked from one of us to the other and then, after what seemed like forever, she spoke.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll stay with Aunt Mimi on one condition.”

  “Which is?” Mimi said.

  “That if I tell you my side and you agree with me that I get to go back to New Jersey in August.”

  Maybe Gracie did have her own point of view. Maybe I was making the wrong decision for her life. One thing was for sure. I wouldn’t miss her for the next week. No. I wouldn’t miss her one damn bit.

  “Nope,” I said, “quit campaigning because here’s the deal. There’s no bargaining. Period. I made the decision to move us here, for very good reasons and that’s it. I am sick to death of your fresh mouth and the million and one stupid things I have seen you do over the last two years. Your behavior is going to change!”

  “Mom! Stop . . .”

  Gracie pounded her fist on the table and my anger exploded. At this point my heart was pounding in my ears.

  “No! You don’t tell me when to stop and you listen to me, Gracie. I mean it. Do you think that I enjoyed pulling you out of the police station? Do you think I have enjoyed all the phone calls from the faculty at Montclair High regarding your behavior in class? Your endless wisecracks? Your foul language? Your grades? No, no. Things are changed as of right now, this minute! Unless you want to spend your life making French fries or delivering pizza, you are going to do your homework, get good grades and behave yourself! You don’t have to come to New Jersey with us because then I would just be worried about what you’re doing anyway. No. You stay here with my sister and give me a few days of peace with Lindsey. And, let me warn you now, if I hear one word about you picking up thugs at Taco Bell or any other place and you coming home like you did today, I will ground you for a thousand years! Am I understood?”

  There was silence at the table, followed by more silence. I was breathing rapidly and everyone knew I was within seconds of slapping Gracie to the floor if she made one objection. At that moment, she realized she had no support, and to my surprise she said nothing. In New Jersey, we would have been at a level of mother-daughter anger that would have frightened the neighbors. Lindsey would have been screaming over us to stop yelling and she might have been holding me back from hitting Gracie. Maybe it was because of Mimi’s presence and because we were in Mimi’s house that Gracie opted not to throw a full-scale fit of temper. Or, maybe Gracie wanted to be stopped. Now, there was a possibility worth exploration. And, hellfire, she had to grow up at some point, didn’t she?

  THREE

  GRACIE SPEAKS

  MOMMA and Lindsey left early this morning. Personally, I thought Lindsey was crazy as hell to make the trip without a fight, but that’s how she always was—the good DooBee of the family. And, I guess I was feeling a little guilty about yesterday, so I got up first and made pancakes for everyone. Aunt Mimi was right on my heels, resetting the table, moving the forks to the left and the knives to the right. She was like a little obsessed with the table looking like a magazine layout. I mean, who was gonna see it? I said zero about it. I hoped I hadn’t been left behind to get trapped for a giant lecture on alcohol and hickeys.

  The morning speeches came from Mom, who rushed in the kitchen all nervous and clucking around.

  “Now, Gracie? No nonsense from you while I’m gone. Is that understood?”

  “Yeah, I understand,” I said.

  “I’ll call from Richmond and check on you,” Mom said. “Do we have gas? Oh, yes, I filled up last night. Anyway, Gracie, you behave yourself or else!”

  “I already said I would, didn’t I?”

  I was standing by the stove, filling plates with food. When Lindsey snickered, I gave her the finger behind everyone’s back. She shot one back to me and we giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” Aunt Mimi said.

  “My daughters are making obscene gestures to each other,” Mom said.

  Mom had eyes in the back and the sides of her head.

  “Oh, Lordy! I have my work cut out for me!” Aunt Mimi said, with a sigh.

  I knew what that meant—that Aunt Mimi was going to make this gargantuan effort to Carolina-ize me. I could deal. It was still better than a million hours in the car, driving up and down I-95.

  Anyway, by the time they took off, I was exhausted and considering going back to bed. No such luck. Aunt Mimi, the general, was waiting for me.

  “Come on, Gracie, let’s get these dishes.”

  I said, “At home whoever cooks doesn’t have to wash.”

  “Well, this ain’t Kansas,” she said. “Here’s a sponge.”

  Normally, I would have flat-out refused, but it was too early to bicker, even for me. Besides, she said it smiling and it’s harder to bite someone who is smiling at you.

  “So, Miss Gracie? Tell me what’s going on. Why don’t you want to be down here with your Aunt Mimi? What’s the problem with South Carolina?”

  “It’s not you, Aunt Mimi. It’s just that it’s weird, you know?”

  “Honey, you’re gonna have to spell it out for me. I gave up mind r
eading a long time ago.”

  The hot water was running, filling the sink area with steam. She rinsed and placed the plates in the dishwasher. I scooped crumbs from the counter and put the milk, butter and syrup back in the refrigerator. How was I going to explain this to her without insulting her?

  “Look, I’ve been living in New Jersey all my life! All my friends are there! And my friends are very different from what I see around here. They’re black, Hispanic, Asian, everything! I mean, there are two thousand kids in my high school in Montclair!”

  “There are over two thousand kids at Wando here.”

  “There are?”

  She nodded her head, thinking she had me, but it cut no ice.

  “Yeah, two thousand bubbas! Look, I have kids in my bio lab with gunshot wounds and they didn’t come from deer hunting, okay?”

  “Gracious! Honey . . .”

  “I know thugs with four-point-three GPAs that pack heat in their lockers!”

  “Heat?”

  “Handguns.”

  “What’s the matter with these children? And, more importantly, why would you want to know them? Aren’t you afraid you’ll get tangled up with them and get hurt?”

  “Not at all. Look, we’ve got the Bloods and the Crips for sure, but we’ve got every kind of nationality you can name. We think and talk about different things than the kids down here. . . .”

  “Bloods and Crips? What in the world?”

  “Gangs, Aunt Mimi. Like the Bloods and the Crips are totally famous all over the country. There’s this initiation you have to go—”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing in all my life. . . .”

  “And that’s the point. Neither has anybody else down here. I mean, my term paper for world history last year was on female genital mutilation!”

  “Dear heavenly mother!”

  “See? People here are all the same. White kids hang out with only white kids. Black kids hang with blacks. In Montclair, we don’t care about that stuff. I mean, the black kids and the white kids in my school sort of go their own ways after school and even in school but the difference is we don’t look down on each other. You know what I mean? We live in the whole world! Not just one tiny pocket like this?”