Red Hats (5 page)

“I can’t find the stink! I put him in the tub and washed
everything, everywhere. Maybe he’s sick,” she had reasoned.

“Did you wash under his neck?” Harold had asked.

“What do you mean? He don’t have no neck,” Alma had replied.

Harold had lifted Todd’s tiny head and pulled back the skin, revealing a crease filled with stinky baby cheese that made them both bend at the middle and gag. It took a few days to eliminate the odor completely. After that incident, Alma had made it a point to wash Todd’s neck every time she changed his diaper. Todd had the cleanest neck in baby history.

Now the preacher finished earning his money, sending Harold to heaven. Alma was ready to leave, too, but Angel explained to her that she couldn’t up and leave, because it was customary to sit and allow people to offer their condolences.
These people are phony. They just want to look me in the eye and rejoice in my pain.

Angel lovingly gave her a pair of dark sunglasses—her Angel thought of everything—and patted her hand as the mourners passed by, expressing their sorrow. Alma simply nodded. She didn’t even look at most of them.

She stared at Harold in the casket, wishing he would sit up and tell her he was only kidding. She grieved over every bad word she’d ever said to him and wished she could take them all back. Death was real. We agreed marriage was
till death do you part
, but we never put a face on death, so it didn’t sound quite so bad.

Alma now saw the face of death, and it scared the hell out of her. What had she gotten herself into? Death was supposed to come in threes, an old wives’ tale. It never comes for only one person. Threes. She wanted to be the second of the three right now and wished she could be taken, because it hurt too much to be alive. Todd squeezed her hand to signal that someone was talking to her.

“Momma, it’s Ms. Cartwright.”

“I’m so sorry about your loss. Harold was a good man. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know. I’ll be happy to do it,” Ms. Cartwright said.

You can get out of my face,
Alma thought, then nodded and looked to Todd, sitting to her right. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out why he had brought that white woman of his to a black church up in Harlem, but she was glad he’d come home nonetheless. Alma smiled at him, thinking he looked just like his daddy. A new, improved version of Harold. Todd had all his teeth, unlike Jesse, who was missing an upper front tooth. He looked like his father’s side of the family, but everyone said he was the spitting image of her, in many ways and for many reasons.

Todd could have done much better than the
thing
sitting next to him, she thought. Hadn’t she taught him about the civil rights marches she used to participate in? Todd’s children, the mutts, had gotten a lot bigger than they were in the pictures he sent.

Alma rolled her eyes as Angel’s husband, Darryl, a.k.a. Fatso, waddled past her. She was glad for the shades, because
her eyes couldn’t hide her contempt for him. They’d had a little spat earlier in the day, because he kept digging his huge hands in the pots of food Angel was preparing. When his finger dipped into the barbecued ribs, well, that did it.

“How big do you want to get?” she’d demanded.

“I’m hungry,” he’d said between chewing, swallowing, and reaching for more.

“You stay hungry. I’ve never seen somebody do aerobics running from pot to pot like you. Listen to you chomping on them bones like a wild boar. You making me lose my appetite.”

“Talk to your mother, Angel,” he’d warned.

“What are you going to do? I’ll throw the chicken in the middle of the street and watch you get hit by a car trying to pick it up.”

“Momma, please be nice,” Angel had begged.

“OK. I’ll be nice. Darryl, please get your fat ass out of my kitchen so we can save some food for the guests, the invited ones.”

He had taken offense but grabbed some more pieces of ribs and left the kitchen, telling Angel they should go.

“Angel was invited!” Alma had yelled after him.

He hated her, and she hated him, but the rules of a funeral say that you have to put your feelings aside and pay honor to the survivors of the deceased.

*   *   *

“Momma, can I
talk to you?” Jesse asked at the reception.

“Sure, baby.”

“Not here. Can we go in the bedroom?” Alma nodded. She would have to face the bedroom eventually.

In her mind’s eye, she relived Harold’s cold, stiff body lying on the now empty bedframe. Todd and Angel had dragged the mattress outside, because Alma was too spooked to enter the room with it still there.

“What is it, Jesse?”

“Momma, I know this may be bad timing, but Daddy said he was going to give me money so I can get that trumpet. Did he leave me anything?”

“Yes, son. A swift kick in the ass, and I’m going to give it to you right now if you dare fix your junkie mouth to ask me something that insensitive again,” Alma replied.

She knew it had to be more than reefers he was smoking to be that disrespectful. That’s why she hated these funereal rituals, because of stupid people like him not knowing how to act. Jesse was lucky Rae Ann picked that moment to walk through the front door sporting a red miniskirt. Alma turned her attention to the noise in the living room. When she saw the perpetrator of the commotion, it took all of Alma’s children to restrain her as she snatched up her butcher knife.

“Don’t change your clothes, folks, because there’s going to be two funerals tonight,” she said determinedly.

“Why are you doing this, Alma? What did I ever do
to you?” Rae Ann’s voice was slurred. She was drunk and probably wanted some closure. “I only want to pay my respects,” Rae Ann drawled.

Alma hated her. Todd begged Rae Ann to leave, but she demanded a quick drink first. Alma threw a bottle of vodka at her head, and she ducked as the bottle splashed its contents all over her exposed legs. That was all the drink she was going to get.

“You’re going to be drinking your own blood after I cut your throat, you little two-bit tramp. Get your bleached-blond ass out of here.”

“Fine! I’ll leave. What goes around come back around, Alma,” Rae Ann warned as she defiantly turned and left.

Harold’s brother, Fred, watched this drama unfold.

“She gave Harold that heart attack,” he whispered to several non-family members, loudly enough for Alma to overhear. “I live three blocks from here,” he went on. “I know how much stress she put poor Harold through. He would come by all hours of the night, complaining how Alma locked him out or called the cops to make him get out his own home. Leave her. That’s all I’d tell him. Now look what’s happened.”

This particular clique of guests murmured their agreement. Alma was livid. Angel squeezed her hand.

“ ‘I can’t leave,’ Harold would say. ‘She needs me,’” Fred said mockingly. “I asked him what he was doing on my couch, then, if she needs him so badly. ‘She just needs a little space till the morning,’ he’d say. Can you believe this?
Next thing you know, the sun’s up, and Alma’s waiting outside my place with a hot cup of coffee and buttered roll for him. It was the strangest relationship I’ve ever seen, but thank God I won’t have to bear witness no more. This is the last time I’ll ever have to look her in those squinty eyes. Good-bye and good riddance.”

I’ve still got my butcher knife, little Freddy. Better watch your tongue,
she thought.

When the guests
had departed, Angel helped her mother pull out the couch and make her bed.

“Lay next to me until I fall asleep,” Alma said through the moans and groans of her aching body trying to dodge the springs poking through the pancake-thin mattress. The reality of sleeping alone made her cry again. “I want him back.”

“So do I, Momma.”

“How could God do this to me?” she asked her Angel.

“Sometimes God allows us to be tested, Momma, but he will never put anything before us that we can’t handle. You have to be strong.”

“It’s going to be hard, baby. I’ve been with him for forty-four years. I don’t know who I am without him.”

“I know,” Angel said as she stroked Alma’s freshly dyed hair. “I want you to come live with us for a while.”

“I can’t do that, Angel.”

“Why not?”

“There’s not enough room for you, me, and Fatso in that house. Actually, there isn’t enough room for him and nobody in that house.” They both laughed.

“You’re crazy, Momma.”

“I’m going to stay right here. I’ll be fine. It will take some time, but your momma is strong. My daddy didn’t raise no punks,” Alma joked. “I’ll be fine. This, too, shall pass, so the good Lord says.”

A week had passed since the
funeral, and life was hard for Alma with no friends and no routine. She spent most of her time gazing out the window, buzzed by the stronger dosage of Valium prescribed for her anxiety attacks. Still, panic invaded and consumed the tiniest of tasks Alma set out to accomplish.

Something as simple as folding laundry would lead her mind to wondering what she would do for extra money now that Harold’s pension was cut off. How could she keep a roof over her head and not be a burden to her children? Would this feeling of overwhelming guilt ever pass, or would it haunt her for the rest of her existence?

These were the questions playing on a loop in her mind.
The only temporary fix was the dulling effects of the drugs. They helped to shut off her receptor.

To make matters worse, Alma had anxiety about becoming an addict like Jesse, whom she had recently threatened to slap with a restraining order. He had come by the house seemingly to look after her.

“Momma, I wanna be here for you. It’s not good for you to be alone right now,” he had said convincingly. “Let me stay here, do the chores around the house, run errands, and cook for you.”

“Thank you, son.”

No sooner had he moved in than Alma noticed things were moving out. One day, she had dashed into her bedroom after a long walk, recommended by Jesse, to find one of Harold’s cufflinks on the floor. It was from his twenty-four-karat-gold square set, the one with his initials, H.S.W. She had picked it up to put it back in the dresser drawer and saw that all of Harold’s jewelry was gone. Alma knew right away that Jesse was the culprit. He had even taken Harold’s wedding ring. Probably pawned it for God knew how little money.

When he came back that night wearing a new pair of jeans, he had lied and said he didn’t know what happened to the jewelry. The next day, Jesse had been busted trying to cash one of Harold’s pension checks. Alma had wanted to press charges, but how could a mother put her son in jail?
What would people think?

“I’m ashamed to call myself your mother. You are no
longer welcome in my house, and if you do come around, I will take my knife and cut you to the fat meat,” Alma had warned.

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to get that horn,” he’d said through crocodile tears.

“You’re sorry, all right. Now, get on out of here!”

On the other hand, Angel called her on a regular basis to make certain she was doing all right.

“Hey, Momma, do you need anything? Are you taking your medicine? Are you sure you don’t want to come to Texas for a spell?”

“No, baby, Momma is fine,” she always said. She wasn’t, but she didn’t want her daughter to worry, so she lied. Angel had enough to occupy her time. Between the new baby and the baby elephant she called a husband, her plate was full.

Todd was a real disappointment. He had left the day after the funeral.

“I had to go,” Todd’s tinny voice had echoed from his cell phone in Germany.

“You just barely said hello, son, and then the quickest of good-byes.”

“I didn’t have the time. This trip wasn’t exactly planned. Everything was so sudden. We were running late for the plane. It’s hard traveling with kids. We couldn’t wake them because they were jet-lagged from the trip over. Plus, my job expected me back for an important project I’m heading up.”

Todd had presented every legitimate excuse in the
book, but Alma blamed the white girl. She had his head all messed up. He was under her control. Alma believed the
wet dog
was against her because she had asked her not to leave her stringy blond hair all over the bathroom sink. Alma was also pissed that Wet Dog had used her good hairbrush and ended up giving it to Helga as a gift. Their leaving like that was her way of showing Alma who the real boss was, snatching her son off to another world when he needed to be with his mother.

Alma noticed that Rae Ann kept her drapes closed since Harold had died.
No one else wants to see those ten-inch titties.

The radio was her only friend. It amazed her how vivid the brain was, how a song could pull up not only images but smells and emotions, too.

She caught herself many times having one-sided conversations with Harold. It was funny how long she would be talking, not even expecting a reaction, because that was the relationship they had. She talked, he didn’t.

Alma decided the best thing to do was to put all of his belongings into boxes and either store them or give it all to charity. It was easy to find his things, since Alma relegated all of his worldly possessions to three areas: a dresser drawer in the bedroom, one small section of her closet, and the front hallway closet, where he kept his suits, hats, and jackets. Harold had never complained about the arrangement.

“If it makes you happy, it makes me happy. I don’t need
anything else to wear. I’ll just clothe myself in your love,” he had told her after she expressed how bad she felt that he didn’t have more space.

Alma put his favorite burgundy fedora on her head, smoothing out the brim and pulling it down to cover her right eye the way Harold used to wear it. This was the hat he had worn the first and only time they went to the opera. It was the middle of winter, and a customer at Harold’s second job as night watchman at a construction site had given him two tickets to
Madame Butterfly.
They hadn’t been on a date in a while thanks to the call of parenthood, so they’d jumped at the chance to get out of the house. It was freezing cold as they walked from the train station toward the Majestic Theatre on Broadway.