Crave (16 page)

Momma turned in the yard, and looked directly at him. “You tell me you didn't do it. Look me in my face and say you didn't do it. I'm not having my kids around a murderer, a woman murderer.”

I expected him to get angry, to scream at Momma to get back into the house. Instead of hard, accusatory eyes, demanding submission, his eyes were pleading, begging to be believed, maybe even forgiven. He held his hand out to Momma and, in as even a voice as I'd heard from him, said, “Lois, I didn't do it. Please believe I didn't do that to Carmen.” Even as I stood there, with the image of Carmen's death swimming in my head, I wanted to believe him. I searched his eyes, searched for anything that would let me know for sure, but I only found more questions. Maybe there were no answers.

As Momma walked toward him and beckoned us back to the house, I knew returning was the right thing to do. I still believed he had taken Carmen's life, but Momma knew, and so I knew it wasn't time for us to leave just yet. I couldn't articulate it then, but I knew leaving before we were supposed to would only prolong the process. A premature exit would make it easier to roll backward over and over again. Best we ride Momma and Mr. Todd's marriage out, let the momentum of the wave force us to the shore rather than struggling, battling through the current in order to get there on our own.

Carmen was buried, the cops never came back, and the quieter, gentler Mr. Todd became our Mr. Todd again. He and Momma weathered the eruptions despite their frequency. They were constantly spilling over, boiling even because of simple things like uneaten food, left on lights, and unintentionally slammed doors.

As time beat along with slaps and punches, we heard more fights and less lovemaking, fewer make-up sessions. Momma remained resilient, steadfast in her determination to care for us, working at Frederick Military Academy and returning home to feed us. As the money disappeared and food became scarce, she grew innovative, turning packs of ramen noodles, ketchup, onions, and soy sauce into a yok feast, with hot dogs on the side. We learned to eat all parts of the chicken and suck on the marrow for a final treat. We ate every crumb of biscuit left on our plates. Also, mayonnaise, mustard, and potted meat sandwiches became delicacies in our home. We did not have much, but Momma made sure there was enough as we ducked Mr. Todd's tantrums.

When he entered the house, silence exited. It wasn't until he was slumped in the living room chair or laid across his and Momma's bed that quiet tiptoed back in again. So, the day silence reigned from sunup to sundown was awkwardly satisfying. On that day, I relished the normalcy of our home and the way we could see each other and converse with one another without Mr. Todd there. But his absence was as ominous as his presence. What did it mean? Would time away equal more rage to release when he returned? Was he plotting an end to us all?

Mr. Todd's prolonged absence eventually answered the questions it had spawned. Two days turned into two weeks, which turned into two months. In that time, the blue suede couch on which I'd spent most of my days lazing was repossessed by Rent-a-Center. The deliverymen, if I could call them that since they were not delivering, took the couch, the television, the bunk beds, and the dining room set. The house looked as if it were vacant with only Momma's bed and mine and Mary's left.

Momma's eyes often wore a tinge of red and her pretty face hardened under a mask of worry. Strangers sometimes stopped by the house demanding payment. Soon after, we began packing what was left of the last year of our lives, forcing into boxes our very existence.

I mourned that breadbox house as we said our final goodbye. The last time I stood on the blue sea of carpet, surveying the clean white walls, which no longer showed evidence of our living, I cried for our family, for the high windows I often peered out, and I even cried for Mr. Todd because he couldn't be what we needed him to be, not for us or himself. I cursed the first couple of months of Momma and Mr. Todd's marriage, the times when things were good, when he and Momma were in love, and we were settling into the idea of being a family. I wished it had always been bad, that I'd always known it would end this way, so I wouldn't have hoped for anything other than what I'd always gotten.

HIDDEN INGREDIENTS
HIDDEN INGREDIENTS

Nothing New in New
Nothing New in New

There's nothing new in new when it's just a replaying of old. So, moving to Constitution Avenue was just another move. The new house was just another house in the line of houses in which we had lived. Momma's new boyfriend, Mr. Robert, was just another boyfriend and Mr. Tony, the one who followed, wore the same non-newness.

Mr. Tony spoke with a thick New York accent and ended every sentence with, “You know what I'm saying?” Eight years Momma's junior, he was closer in age to me than any of Momma's previous men. If he would have been as most had, standoffish, attentive only for the sake of impressing Momma, this may not have meant anything, but he, like the rest of us kids, was growing into himself.

He wore a black Kangol hat that made him look as if he were wearing a pot lid on top of his head. He never left the house without his Kangol and I'm certain he slept wearing it. I'd never seen his bare head, but I believed he was concealing a receding hairline underneath.

From his Nike sweat suit and fat gold chain to the shell-toe Adidas he bent down to clean with every step, everything about Mr. Tony screamed “New Yorker.” His walk, a choreographed dance, with arms swinging and one limping leg jutting in front of the other, demonstrated how “bad” and “Brooklyn” he was. Ironically, Mr. Tony was not bad at all. In fact, he was a jokester who often got me in trouble. He'd sometimes stand behind Momma as she punished me and make faces until I erupted into laughter. After Momma whipped me for what she deemed disrespect, he'd creep up to my door, contort and stretch his face until I began laughing again. It was difficult to take Mr. Tony seriously. With that hat cemented to his head and broken English filtered through his heavy New Yorker lilt, we kids treated him like he was one of us. With Mr. Tony, we could entertain each other for hours, throwing
barbs back and forth. Sometimes, when we got into a jokefest that caused us to cackle on the floor, I'd see Momma standing in the doorway, hands on hips, lips tightly drawn, her head shaking from side to side in dismay. My siblings and I would quickly straighten up while Mr. Tony kept the joke alive by hooting louder than all of us combined.

One Saturday morning, Mr. Tony and Momma jammed the five of us into the backseat of Mr. Tony's blue Celica and shuttled us to Deep Creek Lochs Park for a day of crabbing. Momma gave each of us a piece of raw chicken, never the breast nor the legs, but half a wing, the back, butt, and the neck. Using a spiraling motion, we wrapped butcher twine from the bottom of the meat to the top, leaving enough gaps for the crabs to see, touch, and taste exposed flesh. Then, we tied the other end of the twine to stakes Champ fashioned from fallen branches, shortening them to sizes, which fit each of our hands. Momma and Mr. Tony showed us how to spike the sticks in the ground, so we'd know as soon as a crab had taken our bait. At first, we each sat, watching our white strings dangling below water, waiting for the slightest movement, but we quickly grew tired of waiting and ran off to the swings and the merry-go-round, only to return to pieces of twine clinging to what was left of our bait.

I was disappointed I didn't catch my own crab, but the bonanza was never in our individual attempts. It was in the traps Momma and Mr. Tony dropped farther away from the edge, right where the cement wall ended and the vastness of the loch began. When they pulled the trap from the water, there were a slew of crabs in the wiry contraption, clawing at each other and the sides of the stiff box.

As Momma and Mr. Tony inspected their catch, throwing back ones better caught in a year or two, I stood behind them waiting to see if a crab would catch a finger or hop out of the trap and hobble back to water. That never happened. Each time we went crabbing, the same always remained the same: the clawing, the clinging ensured the crabs would stay strung together until they met their steamy deaths.

Once we returned home, we morphed from crabbers to chefs. Momma took the stockpot, so large it draped over the eye of the stove, and added a small amount of water. Mr. Tony took each crab one at a time by the hind legs and either tossed it into the pot or held it up to his nose, daring the claws to snap.

After getting all of the crabs into the pot, he poured beer on the creatures and shoveled handfuls of Old Bay seasoning onto their hard shells and soft eyes. Acting as the conductor of an orchestra with the Old Bay as his wand, Mr. Tony dashed seasoning onto the crabs. Their screams, in the form of claws scratching and clanging, rose from the pot. He'd dash. They'd clamor. He'd dash again and the clanging of the claws against metal would continue until he stopped. We kids protested, screaming he was hurting them, but Mr. Tony's smile widened as we covered our ears and threatened to tell Momma.

When we protested too much, he'd lift one of the crabs out of the pot and chase us around the house with its claws snapping wildly in the air. Momma sometimes intervened, chastising him for scaring us, but the whole ordeal usually ended in giggles as the pot steamed and the clamoring subsided.

Soon after, a steamed crab perfume filled the house. Momma placed layers of newspapers in the middle of the table and with tongs took each crab out of the steam's fog. We crowded around, inhaling the sweet crabmeat waiting for us inside the shells.

Momma constantly reminded us to be careful of claws and sharp edges of cracked shells. As we suffered minuscule cuts that stung once in contact with Old Bay seasoning, we quickly learned dead crabs were as dangerous as live ones. We clawed around the “mustard” of the crab, careful not to contaminate the mined white meat with its yellow tint. Once we'd located the white flakes, nestled close to the crab's core, we doused them in a bowl of melted butter and lemon Momma had placed on the table. The sweet flakes danced with the butter's salt in my mouth, so I didn't chew immediately. I just allowed the meat to mingle on my tongue as I sucked in its lusciousness.

While eating, we talked politics of the family. Momma spoke about the newly beginning school year as Mr. Tony flicked crab shells at her. Champ bantered about joining the basketball team as Tom-Tom and Mary cracked the crab legs Momma placed in front of them with their teeth. I talked too, but I also pondered the way we, together, had captured this feast and prepared it with our own hands.

Those Saturday mornings hadn't cost us anything, other than the backs and wings of chickens to feed ourselves. We didn't need money, food stamps, or green stamps, to be redeemed at Be-Lo, in order to feel satisfied. All we needed were our joint efforts to feed one another and each other's company in order to feel full.

From Constitution to Queen
From Constitution to Queen

Living in one's head is a lonely existence. Even though my brothers, sister, and Momma were close by, the worlds in my mind became more engaging than conversations with family members. Sometimes I wondered about my father. Other times, Pee Wee and Mr. Todd crept in. I struggled to understand why I stayed in bed listening to my brothers and sister laughing and felt no urge to join. Kick fights, jokefests, and refereeing the many squabbles my siblings had no longer appealed to me. I was growing out of child's play, and I wasn't sure of what I was growing into.

I'd always been one to speak my mind to my brothers and sister, and Momma often admonished me for being disrespectful with them. I'd correct my thoughts and then my words, until I began to think the same disrespectful things about Momma. Those thoughts manifested in my actions. I'd sigh when she gave an order, take my time when she called me, and argue under my breath when I didn't like what she was saying. For those occasions, Momma backed me into a corner, slapped me in my face, and asked what I was thinking when I disrespected her. I could form no answers to her questions. I didn't know what I was thinking or if I was thinking. I just wanted to tell her how I felt, instead of her telling me how I should feel.

Luckily, our move to Constitution Avenue placed me in the middle of my extended family. My cousin Lisa lived three houses from us, where I spent many nights babysitting her two children, Angie and Michael Ray. With them, I became the momma, the one cooking and feeding, the one giving baths and lotioning bodies, the one deciding when it was time for play and when it was time for bed. I became the last one up, sitting in the momma chair, with children in the other room sleeping, clean, and full. In a quiet house, with nothing but darkness, and the soft snores of my cousin-children, I believed I was becoming a better mother than Momma.

When we first moved to Constitution, Momma walked the five of us to Aunt Vonne's on Queen Street. The houses, all duplexes, were joined together by narrow spaces in between. The small community sat snuggly in the middle of a cul-de-sac, which held children fearlessly shooting across the street on bikes and girls doing dance steps on the sidewalk.

As soon as we entered the Queen Street alcove, Aunt Angie's youngest boys, Hammerhead, Kojack, and Fred, rushed Champ, Dathan, and Tom-Tom. After becoming entangled in high fives and headlocks, the boys separated from Momma and disappeared behind Aunt Angie's house. We continued our journey to Aunt Vonne's where a group of girls were sitting on the porch, playing jacks. My cousin, Tricia, stood up to hug Momma as she approached the door. Momma proceeded into the house while Mary and I stood at the steps of the porch.

Tricia brushed her hands off on her jeans and reached out to Mary and me with hugs. “Y'all look so pretty,” she said. “And Mary you look just like your momma.” She began introducing us to the girls on the porch, “Y'all, these are my cousins, Laurie and Mary, and if anybody fucks with them you know what's gonna happen.”

Alarmed, I widened my eyes as I waited for Tricia to suffer the wrath of one of our parents. I'd never heard kids our age curse like that. I expected both Momma and Aunt Vonne to come out of the house swinging, but I could hear them in the living room laughing, oblivious to the crime that had occurred within feet of them. When the guillotine did not fall, I stared in awe of Tricia, a fifteen-year-old girl with dimples that looked like craters in her cheeks and cat-shaped eyes that grew narrower when she smiled. And when she smiled, I couldn't help but be mesmerized by the whiteness of her teeth and the way they sat uniformly in a row, not one larger or smaller than the other. “Come on over here and play, y'all,” she said, as she ushered Mary and me to open spaces on the porch next to her.

“Y'all know how to play jacks?”

“Yeah,” I replied, as Tricia placed the ball in my hand.

“Well, come on then.” I bounced the ball hard and made sure I didn't touch one jack I wasn't supposed to as I progressed from my ones to my tens. I wanted to impress my new best friend, even if she didn't know she'd been given that title.

We played jacks until the sides of our hands burned raw. Tricia then announced we were forming a dance group and she was going to show us some moves. We stood in front of her house in formation, one conceived in her mind, and began cabbage patching, snaking, and doing the Roger Rabbit. I'd never danced in a group before, but I imitated Tricia's movements in order to stay on step. Soon after, Momma and Aunt Vonne came out of the house, bidding farewells. Mary and I ran up to Aunt Vonne and planted double hugs and kisses on her. “Next time, y'all better come in and say hello to your aunt,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am,” Mary and I replied in unison.

“Okay, y'all, let's make it home,” Momma said as she pulled Mary into an embrace. I went to hug Tricia and my cousin Sherry, who'd joined in on the dance routines once the music began. As we were leaving, Tricia held up her hands,

“Wait a minute, y'all. Practice tomorrow at 3:00. You better be here or you gonna be out of the group.” We all nodded our heads, but Tricia didn't have to warn me. I was planning on visiting her the next day and that day's next day whether there was a group or not.