“Well, should I leave?” she asked when I started toward my room instead of coming over to greet her.
“Oh, please, Glenna, gimme a minute to put my coat down.”
Her eyes dropped and her smile wavered, but just for a moment. “Okay,” she said and turned back toward Delia. “Kenzie’s grumpy!” Glenna yelled and then laughed in her very best good-witch voice.
“She’s always grumpy!” Delia said and then she laughed too, but her laughter got muffled in the smoke of the frying chicken.
I walked into my room and placed my coat on my bed. I sat down and unlaced my boots. I just remained there for a minute or two, trying to compose myself. It wasn’t working but I went back to the living room anyway.
“Hey,” I said again and leaned down and kissed Glenna’s cheek. “Happy holidays.” I sat down beside her.
“Uh-huh,” Glenna answered and gave me a sideways look. “So I see you put a tree up.” She pointed at the sad piece of timber that barely filled the small corner of the living room.
“Yeah,” I said and wished I had a magazine to flip through. I didn’t want to look at her.
“Trying to call up some Christmas cheer?” Glenna’s eyes dared mine to look right at her.
I couldn’t and so I kept looking at the tree.
“So where ya been?” Glenna asked and turned her body toward me. She rested her elbow on the back of the couch and cocked her chin in the palm of her hand.
“Out,” I said and started to get up. I didn’t want to do this.
“Out where?” She grabbed at the end of my sweatshirt, pulling me back down to the couch.
I didn’t say anything else; I just turned and gave her a look.
“Uh-huh,” she sounded and released my sweatshirt.
I stood up again and walked toward the Christmas tree. I needed to do something with my hands, so I fiddled with the ornaments, moving them from branch to branch.
“Kenzie, get that can outta the freezer for me,” Delia said as she laced a plate with paper towels to catch the excess grease from the golden-brown chicken parts. “Okay, Glenna, the chicken is ready and so are the fries. I got ketchup and hot sauce.”
“What you got to drink?” Glenna called back to her.
“Um, Kenzie, look and see if any more of that Pepsi is left in there,” Delia said and scratched at her head.
“Yeah, a little bit,” I replied as I peered into the bare refrigerator. That was basically all that was there. A halfempty bottle of Pepsi, a stick of butter, and a loaf of bread. The first of the month was still two weeks away and I only had twenty dollars in food stamps left.
“You need me to go out and get something?” Glenna said as if reading my mind.
“No,” I snapped.
Delia looked at me with wide eyes and I heard Glenna mumble something under her breath.
“What’s wrong with you, Kenzie?” Delia asked and shook her head in disgust.
“Nothing,” I said in a quiet voice. What was wrong with me?
We settled in the living room, balancing our plates of chicken and french fries on our laps, eating with our hands, and licking our fingertips instead of wiping them with the cheap paper napkins Delia had placed on the small living room table.
The conversation was light and broken in places by the sound of the television and the music that moved in from Delia’s bedroom. Random gunshots from the street or loud talking in the hallway outside our door took up the large open spaces left between our words.
It wasn’t noticeable right away, not during the first fifteen minutes or so, but the closer we came to the reddishbrown bone of the chicken we ate, the less we found to say to each other. Instead we looked to the bowl and the remaining tiny wing parts and scraggly french fries that rested at its bottom.
We wanted to keep our mouths filled with food so the real words, the hurtful ones that moved around the dark corridor behind our tongues like specters, did not drift out. I swallowed hard and glanced over at Glenna. I could see she was uncomfortable. I could tell by the way she felt the need to giggle behind every other word she spoke and the intense way she listened to Delia ramble on about her Saturday-night bingo games and how the person sitting next to her, beside her, or in front of her always seemed to win the jackpot instead of her. “I just ain’t got no kinda luck,” Delia said and shook her head pitifully.
Glenna’s head bobbed up and down with interest and agreement, but her eyes darted around the apartment and her mind studied the poverty Delia and I had fallen into, or, rather, had been dragged into by Hy-Lo.
A roach crawled up the wall and Glenna shivered at the sight of it. We didn’t have roaches when we lived in the apartment on Rogers Avenue or in the house on Autumn Street. At those addresses we had had almost everything a middle-class income could buy. Here on Sutter Avenue, on the first of the month we collected money from the state, lived in a government-run housing project, and paid for groceries with food stamps. We had roaches here, and not much else.
“You need some lights on that tree,” Glenna said as she leaned back into the cushions of the couch, watching the roach as it kept moving up the wall. “And what happened to the star?” she added and looked at me.
I shrugged my shoulders and smirked at her. Delia rolled her eyes and said, “I don’t know why she even bothered putting that thing up.” Her tone dug at the anger growing inside of me.
“Well, because it is Christmas,” I spat without looking at her. There was silence for a long time before I spoke again. “And we always had a tree before …”
My words hung thick in the air around me. Delia turned her head away and rested her chin on the back of her hand. Glenna cleared her throat and ran her hands over her hair.
We would leave the space void of words, but we each knew what the others were thinking.
“Well, we just always had a tree for Christmas,” I said, trying to fold the corners of that void, creasing it and smoothing the middle before tucking it away.
The Cosby Show
came on and Delia gave it her full attention. Glenna kept snatching glances at her watch and tapping her foot to some song that played in her head. She wanted to go, but wouldn’t be the first to make the suggestion, even though a blue smoky evening was quickly snuffing out the dim light of the afternoon sun.
“You remember how Dad always brought home the biggest Christmas tree he could find? I mean, they were always at least six feet tall and the branches were so long and wide … upmf! Those were some big trees.” The words just tumbled out of my mouth and the smile that followed topped it off like a cherry on a sundae.
Glenna’s and Delia’s heads spun around on their necks so quickly that a snapping sound followed.
I dropped my eyes and kept on talking even though I did not know what was compelling me or why I felt the need to go on. “Oh, and then we’d be up till at least three in the morning decorating it.”
Delia made a face at me, but her eyes were soft. “Yeah, he always waited until near midnight on Christmas Eve before he went out and got the damn tree,” she said and reached for a cigarette. “Always a scene too. The trees were always too damn big, he had to trim the branches down just to get it through the damn door.” Delia huffed and smoke came out of her mouth in a big white cloud. “And then he had to saw off the top just so we could stand it up.” She inhaled on the cigarette again and shook her head in dismay.
Glenna’s face was a mask of surprise. She was familiar with the Lowe family stories, the ones that brought tears to your eyes and made you doubt that you would ever marry or have children.
“Then there was that one time, remember, Mom, when we bought that angel hair—oh, we were up scratching all night long …”
I had dragged her into a conversation about a man she had been married to for over thirty years, a man who had abused her for all of those years, a man who she had found the courage to walk away from only after he was unable to walk at all.
“Had to put you and Malcolm in the tub before you clawed your skin off!” Delia laughed and then her face went slack. She had said his name and brought the small joy that floated around us crashing down to the ground.
“Yeah, I remember,” was all Delia’s quick misery allowed me to say and then I looked down at my hands.
The small smile that had moved across Glenna’s face faded, she stretched her arms above her head and forced a yawn that would clear the way to her leaving. “Well, I gotta—” she started to say, but Delia cut her off.
“Christmas just don’t mean much anymore without Malcolm. He was the one always put the star on the tree.” She stood up and walked over to the Christmas tree and grimaced. “Why you had to go and get a tree, Kenzie, why?”
I avoided those eyes of hers and stared at her feet instead. The house was filled with the saddest type of quiet for a long time. I supposed Glenna was holding her breath because she was seated right next to me and I didn’t hear a sound coming from her.
“I just wanted it to be like it used to be,” I said without looking up.
“It used to be bad,” Delia said and looked back at the tree.
“And you call this better?” I asked.
“I call this different.”
“Well, I call this worse,” I said and leaned back into the couch. My shoulders brushed with Glenna’s and she jerked.
“Worse? Humph. So you mean to say you didn’t mind seeing my face and arms bruised and banged up? That was okay with you?”
She’d never spoken about her abuse, not openly like she did now, as if it had been on the front of the
Daily News
or announced on the six o’clock evening news, and certainly not in front of Glenna. She had never spoken about it aloud and maybe she’d thought not saying the words would make it less real.
My mouth fell open, and before I could answer Glenna touched my knee. I pushed her hand away. “That’s not what I mean, Mom … Of course … I mean I hated that you allowed him to—” My words were getting all mixed up.
“
Allowed,
Kenzie? Is that what you call it?” Delia laughed bitterly and bowed her head before lifting it again to look at me. Her lips were curled into a smile that made me feel terrible. “You think I allowed your father to beat on me? Well, if afraid to stay but more afraid to go means I allowed it to happen, then you’re right.”
She walked past me and went to grab her pack of cigarettes off the table.
“If trying to make a home for my children—I mean a good home for my children—means I allowed it, well, I guess I damn well did!” She lit a cigarette and sat down.
Glenna twisted her behind further into the couch and raised her hand to touch my knee again, but changed her mind and laid her hand to rest on her own knee.
I wasn’t through yet, and did not know why I even continued, but I did and things just got worse, when all I wanted to do was make things better.
“You think that we had a good home, Mom? I mean with him beating on you and then beating on me and Malcolm—you thought that was a good home?” I had my hands stretched out in front of me, palms up, pleading for some type of understanding.
“Did you ever go without, Kenzie?”
“Mom, I—”
“Did you ever go without? Without food, clothing, shelter?”
“I—”
“Did you?” Delia’s voice was low. Her voice, even and mean.
“No,” I said quietly. I could feel my eyes melting, becoming soupy. I was able to look at Glenna now, but she was disgusted with me and avoided my eyes.
“I didn’t have a father, Kenzie, and I went without everything. Every goddamn thing. You think it was easy for your grandmother and me? We had a room, one bed, and one goddamn pillow. I had to share a fucking pillow!” She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. I could see tears sparkling in her eyes, but she blinked them away. “Me and her for years. Cooking on a hot plate, wearing hand-medown clothes. We didn’t have nothing or no one but each other and it just wasn’t enough!”
She stopped, bent over, and stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray. She looked at Glenna and her eyes were apologetic, but she kept on anyway.
“There were nights when I had to stay alone, nights when Mama had to work overtime, double-time or triple shifts so we could have shoes or a coat or just a new pair of drawers. Humph, I was six or seven, maybe even younger, and I was always alone. Me—” She slapped her chest loudly. “In a rooming house filled with strangers—a child. Alone.”
Glenna lifted her eyes and quickly moved them between Delia and me before dropping them again. She reached for her glass of Pepsi, lifted it, and realizing the glass was empty cradled it between her hands. She kept her eyes lowered.
“You and Malcolm had everything that I wouldn’t have been able to give you without him. New bikes, roller skates. Oh, and let’s not forget the clothes! Did you ever not have the latest style?” She raised her eyebrows and waited for me to answer.
I just shook my head.
“What about that private school you went to, Kenzie, what about that? Yeah, I know your grandmother paid some and you had your little scholarship money, but where do you think the extra money came from, the money that paid for the ski trips and camping equipment? The plane and train tickets to Colorado, Martha’s Vineyard, and wherever else you begged to go with those rich white girls—what about that?”
I couldn’t find the words to respond to her accusations, so I just hung my head.
“Uh-huh,” she said and pointed at me. “I didn’t want my kids to have to do without and you didn’t! I did without so you didn’t have to. I did without a normal happy life so you didn’t have to live the way I did before Mama married Sam!” She reached for another cigarette and then took a deep breath before lighting it.
“Every day, every goddamn day I told myself that when I had children, they would have a father and their own fucking pillows!” That last sentence came out entangled in the white puffed smoke of her exhale.
We were all quiet for a long time.
“Afraid to stay, but more afraid to go,” she uttered again and inhaled on the cigarette.
Glenna and I stood on the corner, our backs against the wind that slapped angrily at our coats. We didn’t say anything, just tried to keep warm by dancing in place. The streets were almost deserted except for the occasional police cruiser. We’d been out there for about half an hour and not one taxi had passed.