Can't Get Enough of Your Love (26 page)

Erlana would have shrugged her chip-filled shoulders at all these miracles. Lana might have wondered for a spell.

Joy thanks God for everything.

Last but not least, Joy also likes to travel, taking day trips just to take them.

I drove up to Rockbridge County to see the Natural Bridge, discovered by Thomas Jefferson himself, or so the brochure says. I'm sure some Native Americans might have discovered it first. Anyway, I checked out the bridge itself (“One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World!”), walked the Cedar Creek Nature Trail across the Lost River (all two feet of it) to Lace Falls,
ducked inside the Saltpeter Cave and looked at a Native American village, where the Monacan inhabitants don't do their thing until the weekends, when there are bigger crowds. I toyed with the idea of going into the Natural Bridge caverns, but I'm a little claustrophobic, and that cave goes down 350 feet, or ten stories. I could have visited a wax museum and a toy museum (which instantly reminded me of Izzie!), but I decided I had to get back to my little slice of heaven.

I eventually drove down to Dixie Caverns, where I was alone with my blackness (and I was the only black person) in a cave as cool as a glass of lemonade while trying not to frighten the tiny brown bats or step on salamanders no more than an inch long. It surprised me when we climbed
up
a whole bunch of stairs before descending into the cave, and our guide knew just about everything there was to know about the cave. He told us that a dog named Dixie had “discovered” the cave simply by falling in and barking for his master about a hundred years ago. I can't imagine being that dog all alone in that darkness and barking at the light.

Hmm. Actually, I know exactly how that dog felt.

At one point in that tour of the cave, we walked under what our guide called the “Wedding Bell,” and the rock formation did look like a big old bell. He told us that over a hundred couples had been married under that bell, and that if one drop of water hit you as you went under it, you'd be married within eight years. “If you get hit by two,” he added, “you'll have eighteen children.”

I was hit by
three
ice-cold drops of water. I wonder what that means. Maybe I'll be married within eight years
and
have eighteen children.

Speaking of children, I relived a piece of my childhood
at the Star City Roller Skating Rink one day. I arrived when it opened on a hot July day expecting it to be crawling with kids. It wasn't. I was the first person through the door, everything was dark inside, and they even asked me if I was some daycare worker when I paid for my skates. “No,” I said. “I'm just here by myself.” Yeah, they gave me strange looks. I skated by myself for a while to some old school funk until the daycare centers arrived. I became a giantess to a bunch of little kids whizzing by me wearing yellow-and-orange in-line skates. One little light-skinned boy with curly black hair and light brown eyes was having a difficult time staying on his feet, so I took his hand and helped him around. He asked me if I wanted to play some video games, and I said, “Sure.” When we got to the first game, called “Football Mayhem” or something like that, he held out his hand. “It takes two quarters to play.” That little boy ended up hustling me out of four dollars' worth of quarters while we played the most ridiculous football game ever created. Thirty yards for a first down? Two-minute quarters? No running game whatsoever? Where was Ms. Pac-Man? Still, it was fun hanging out with a milk chocolate boy.

I also visited the National D-Day Memorial, just up the road from me, hanging out with some scruffy, tattooed bikers with jean jackets and some ancient war heroes still wearing their old uniforms. I explored Explore Park, a series of historical buildings on the Blue Ridge Parkway, to watch “living history” reenacted by real folks dressed as folks dressed two hundred years ago. I raced a go-kart at Thunder Valley and lost to a ten-year-old boy who taunted me the entire time. I even played Skee-Ball, earning enough tickets for a sunshine tattoo and a gaudy plastic ring. I did some midnight
bowling over in Vinton (“Just one lane, please,” I said, not feeling sad at all), and I even made time to feed the ducks from a bridge over the Roanoke River beside where Victory Stadium used to be.

I wasn't on the clock, and I didn't have to be anywhere.

That's freedom.

But something was … missing.

And I thought it had something to do with my daddy.

“I'm going to Norfolk to find Daddy,” I say to Mama in early August. “Where should I look first?”

“Child, he's probably not in Norfolk anymore. Nor-ShipCo isn't owned by the same family as before, and he might have lost his job because of that. He could be anywhere.”

“Where do I look first?”

“Erlana, it's been seventeen years. You should make a few phone calls first, to see if he's even up there anymore. I'll bet if you look him up first in the White Pages on the Internet—”

“Where should I look first?”

Joy is persistent.

With only a full tank of gas, forty dollars, and a water bottle filled with Mama's sweetened sun tea, I drive five hours to Norfolk, taking the scenic route of 460 through towns like Spout Spring, Appomattox, Evergreen, Prospect, Nottoway, Petersburg, Disputanta, and Zuni. I keep my windows open the entire way, the steamy hot air filled with the scents of hottest summer: decaying vegetation, honeysuckle, and kudzu. Everything looks strange, different, and new at the same time. I try to see the scenery and the towns with an eight-year-old's eyes, but I fail, and in the failing, I see the beauty more clearly. An eight-year-old football
player missing her daddy couldn't have seen all this beauty, all this greenery tinged with browns and beiges and golds, all this small-town Virginia finery shining in the August sun.

Or all this traffic. Geez. And on a Saturday? “Where'd you learn to drive?” I shout. “In a video game?”

Joy does not like traffic, and Erlana and Lana agree.

I finally find myself on Granby Street on my way to Daddy's old house. I know it's a long shot, but stranger things have happened. I count the numbered streets—26th, 27th, 28th, 29th. Hang a left, and …

Either I've gotten huge or all of these houses have shrunk. Damn, they're all packed in here, and no one has a yard to speak of. You could wash your neighbor's windows without leaving
your
house. You could turn on a box fan and suck up your neighbor's mail. I stop in front of 623, where a FOR SALE sign sits in a dirt yard behind a chain-link fence. That fence wasn't there when Daddy lived here, and those trees were much shorter and actually had leaves. The bricks also used to be browner. Now, they're looking gray. Wait. Some fool tried to paint those bricks. They used to be a pretty brown!

I get out to stretch, stepping up to the gate. I notice no drapes on any of the windows and can see inside to a completely empty front room.

No one lives here. Damn. But I can see why. These dead-looking trees give no shade at all, and that yard is mostly sand. A house like this would be at home in Arizona or Nevada. And who paints brown bricks with gray paint?

I squint in the sun up and down the broken sidewalk, hoping to find someone, anyone, outside, walking in my direction. Directly across the street on the remains
of a plaid couch on the front porch of a magnificent old Victorian house sits a little gray old man. As far as I can tell, all he's doing is sitting. I wave, and he nods.

Well, I came all this way. I might as well talk to somebody.

Erlana wants to go home. Lana is hungry.

Joy wants to find her daddy.

I cross the street and stop at his gate. “Afternoon.”

He nods.

I point across to Daddy's old house. “I'm looking for Earl Davidson.”

“Who?” The man stands.

“Earl Davidson.”

He wipes his forehead with a blue bandana. “I haven't heard that name in years. Come on up.”

Shoot. Daddy's been gone a long time from this place, but in a way, I'm happy. That little house couldn't have contained him. I'm surprised it contained him when he was my daddy.

I open the gate and walk up a brick sidewalk to the bottom step of the porch, shielding my eyes.

“What you lookin' for Pearly for?” he asks, resuming his seat on the couch, a stack of newspapers beside him.

“Pearly?”

His eyes narrow. “You ain't police, are you?”

“No, sir. I'm his daughter, Erlana.”

Blink, blink
. “Pearly had a daughter, too?”

Too?
I have a brother somewhere? I guess that makes sense. I wonder if he also has a peanut head.

“You don't look like Pearly.”

I smile. “I take after my mama mostly. How long has he been gone?”

He looks up at the paint peeling from the ceiling of
the porch. “Hmm. Going on … seven, eight years. He took off for San Francisco to work on the docks out there.”

Joy has a sudden need to get in an airplane, but Lana, the eight-fifty-an-hour worker, can't afford it.

Erlana still wants to go home.

“My mama and I moved when I was eight, and I remember playing football at a park around here.”

“Probably Lafayette Park.” He reaches down for a can of Coke and takes a sip. “You say football?”

“Yeah. My daddy and I played football.”

“I believe it. Pearly was built like a linebacker.”

He hit like one, too. “Why do you call him Pearly?”

“He had the whitest teeth I ever seen on a black man.”

Pearly. I like it. “He used to call me ‘E.'”

“Yeah? He was always talking about someone named E, but I thought he was talking about his boy.”

Same thing. Wait. I'm the
boy
my daddy told this man about? “What did he say about E?”

“Just that E was gonna be in the NFL some day.” He scratches his head. “But if
you're
E, then …”

Yes, that's me. My daddy was bragging on me. “I, uh, do play professional football now.” I hate saying “semi-pro.” It makes me feel so cheap.

“You don't say?”

“I play defensive end for the Roanoke Revenge.”

“I heard about y'all having a league.” He leans forward. “You look more like a wide receiver.”

Not anymore, sighs Lana. Erlana tells Lana to shut up. Erlana wants to play defensive end. Joy just shakes her head at the both of them.

“I may have to play strong safety this next year.” If I
decide to play at all. It's no fun having no one in the stands to play for.

“Are you a mean girl?”

I smile. “When I play football I am.”

He leans back. “Your daddy was mean
all
the time. No one messed with him. Cats from around here would get up in his face, and all he'd do was smile that smile of his and crack those big ol' knuckles without saying a single word. They usually scattered after that.” He sighed. “The neighborhood was different then. Used to be a fistfight now and then, maybe a gunshot here and there, but now …” He shakes his head. “I don't suppose things are like that over in Roanoke.”

“We have our troubles, too.”

“Yeah. Too many fools out here with their courage attached to the trigger of a gun. Ain't too many real men like your daddy left.” He smiles.

I smile, too.

“You traveled all that way to find him on a hot day, and all you got was a story.”

But it was a good story, and I
have
found my daddy.

“You have to be hungry.”

“I am.” A little. My new body doesn't require as much fuel as it did before.

“Wish I could offer you something, but my wife isn't cooking today. Saturdays are when my wife and I go to Harry's. You ever hear of Harry's?”

I've heard that name before. “The barbecue place?” Mama used to take me there with Grandma Lula.

“Yeah.” He checks his watch. “Now would be the time to go so you can find a parking spot. It's downtown on Granby.”

“I think I passed it.” I stand. “Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.”

“I got plenty of time. You drive safe.”

“And, um, if you ever see Pearly again, tell him E says hello.”

“I will.”

I call Mama on my way to Harry's. “Mama, he's out in San Francisco.”

“I'm sorry, Erlana.”

“It's okay.” And it is. Daddy's still out there doing his thing. He's still working on the big ships, and he's still near the water in his sweatshirt, jeans, and boots. “Mama, did you know Daddy had a nickname?”

“You mean ‘Pearly?'”

“You knew?”

“Everybody knew. They called him Earl the Pearl after some basketball player.”

I'm learning so much today. “So it wasn't because of his teeth?”

“Yeah, he did have him some pearly whites.”

“And Daddy played basketball?”

“Well, he played something that kind of looked like basketball. He was pretty physical.”

I see my daddy busting through a double team or setting a pick. Boom! “Was he any good?”

“Not particularly.”

Good thing he taught me how to play football, then. “Guess where I'm going for dinner?”

“You on Granby?”

Mama's psychic. “Yes.”

“You're going to Harry's. Bring me back a sweet potato pie. A whole one, now.”

I smile. “I won't be home until late.”

“I'll wait up.”

“Okay.”

I pass Harry's and am two blocks away when I find a
parking space. Once inside Harry's, I read a dry erase board full of specials, but once I'm seated, I want only food for my soul. I eat a messy plate of wet ribs, the meat falling off the bone, and some macaroni and cheese good enough to rival Mama's, while an old jukebox plays some old soul.
This
is real food.
This
is how all food should taste.
This
is how all the food I should cook from now on until the end of my days should taste.