Girls Like Us

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  Mom

  Not.

  Once.

  Not when I fell. Failed. Flunked out.

  Not when I thought I was done living. Learning. Loving.

  Not even when I broke your precious heart.

  Not once have you doubted me.

  Not.

  Once.

  This one’s for you, My Love.

  OLA AND IZELLA

  11 Weeks & 6 Days Along

  Summer 1972

  Evangelist, Ola, and Izella formed a tight assembly line in their tiny kitchen. Evangelist shelled the peas, sixteen-year-old Ola bagged them into perfect portions, and fifteen-year-old Izella organized them by date in the deep freeze. Izella hated being the youngest. Always stuck with the easiest jobs—organize the vegetables, lay out the spoons, wipe down the table. She wanted to cut, strain, mix, and bake like her big sister, Ola, did from time to time, but Evangelist wouldn’t allow it.

  “Quit daydreaming, Babygal,” Evangelist snipped as she vigorously stirred shortening into her hot-water cornbread. “You backing us up.”

  Izella sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes before picking up the pace. Her mother never let her forget her lowly place in the house; she even called her Babygal as a constant reminder.

  “I’m fixing you girls some turkey necks and hot sauce,” announced Evangelist with a wide, drawn smile. “Your favorite since y’all could hold spoons.”

  “I can’t,” Ola told her mother with a grimace. “I think I got a bug.”

  “You stay sick, gal,” Evangelist told her firstborn, before grasping a piping-hot cauldron from the potbelly stove with her bare hands and placing it in the middle of their small wooden dining table. “Now, everybody down to your knees for grace.”

  The three dutifully crouched to their knees in the middle of the spotless kitchen, clasped hands, and closed their eyes for prayer.

  Evangelist began. “Oh blessed, kind, loving heavenly Father. Bless this family with the grace of a thousand angels, oh God. Bless this food and the loving hands that prepared it, oh God…”

  The sisters peeked at each other and giggled. It had become something of a tradition for them to chuckle during their mother’s lengthy prayers. She prayed long, as Ola would say. A food blessing could easily last ten minutes, and by the time it was over, they were starving and their knees ached, but there was no way around it. Their shotgun house was outfitted with oak planked hardwoods. It was small, but it was always clean and filled with strangers, since their tiny living room doubled as a neighborhood church, pastored by Prophetess/Evangelist Flossie Mae Murphy. Everyone from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high was welcome in their small home.

  Evangelist had been called to ministry after what she called a young life in the world of sin. Word on the streets said that, before Ola and Izella came along, she had run a successful backyard shot house and bootlegged whiskey and moonshine from Savannah. Even though her mother was a woman of God now, Izella could easily imagine her that way. Evangelist’s nature was to bring people in and surround them with joy. When she became a mother, that joy was from the Lord, but as a young woman, she spread that joy through illegal liquor.

  “Amen.” Evangelist ended her grace. “Now, grab a spoon and fill up before chapel. We’ve got a full house tonight. That traveling tent revival out of Detroit went up last night. They stop by every year for southern home cooking. Last year was standing room only; remember that, Ola? Babygal was probably too little to remember.”

  Izella cringed until Ola caught eyes with her and mouthed the word help.

  “Evangelist?” Izella asked her mother.

  “What is it, Babygal?” she replied.

  “I forgot to take Mrs. Mac her bread this morning,” Izella said with her head hung. “You mind if we miss supper today to walk down to her house?”

  Evangelist stopped her stirring to stare at her daughters. “Look here now, girls. I know Mrs. Mac is mean as a snake, but she’s been through hell and came out the other side scarred up. It’s a wonder she’s still walking this side of heaven with all she’s been through. I’m not trying to punish y’all. I’m teaching something that can’t be taught in school or even at church.” Evangelist poked her index finger into Izella’s sternum. “Life ain’t got a thing to do with what you want. You were put on this earth to help people who can’t help themselves. Feed people who can’t feed themselves. Even wipe people up when they can’t do it, you understand me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Izella.

  “You too?” she asked Ola. “You’re the oldest.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ola replied. “I understand.”

  “Now,” she said before going back to stirring. “Go on ahead and take that poor woman what might be her only meal today.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they said, and scurried out the back door.

  “Back before the streetlights!” Evangelist yelled after them.

  Ola and Izella quickly walked to the first intersection and turned the corner.

  “Thanks,” Ola told her sister. “I couldn’t stomach one spoonful of turkey-neck juice.”

  “You’re welcome, but you owe me,” Izella replied. “I actually wanted them turkey necks. Where we going?” Izella skipped after her big sister.

  “Where else?” Ola pointed to the recreation center where her secret boyfriend, Walter, worked.

  Izella stopped walking. “Ola, I didn’t skip supper to watch you and that boy all hugged up again. Besides, I really do need to take Mrs. Mac her loaf of bread. She crippled and can’t walk no more.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Ola started. “You head on over to mean old Mrs. Mac’s house, and I’ll go hug up with Walter, that way you won’t have to see us.”

  Izella turned back toward home. “I’m telling Evangelist on you.”

  “Okay, okay, okay.” Ola gave in. “I’ll go with you to Mrs. Mac’s house, but don’t get all into a talk for hours and hours like you do. I don’t know why you want me there; she just ignores me. You and Evangelist are the only two folks she likes in the world.”

  “I’d ignore you, too, if you called me mean old Mrs. Mac,” Izella replied. “You don’t even try with her. Ask her a question about her life every now and then.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t care,” Ola said before tugging at one of Izella’s fuzzy pigtails.

  “Exactly. You’re a low-down dirty gal.”

  Ola stopped cold and folded her arms tightly. “I’m not low-down; I’m just not interested in those old, sad slave stories all the time.”

  “She hasn’t told me one sad slave story, thank you very much.”

  “Then what y’all talk about in that back room, then?”

  “You really don’t know?” Izella asked, stunned. When Ola shook her head, she continued, voice hushed. “Mrs. Mac was a reader back in the late eighteens, hiding out in the weeping woods of Savannah. She tells me stories, real stories about curses and hexes
and love spells and protections. She can even read my hand and tell what I’m gone be when I get big.”

  “You lying,” Ola said with a phony confidence. She could hardly believe that after months of daily visits to Mrs. Mac’s she had no idea about any of this. “That’s a bunch of baloney. What she tell you?”

  Izella could tell that Ola was trying to act like she didn’t care. “None of your business! You don’t even like Mrs. Mac, re-mem-ber?” Izella skipped forward with bigger strides.

  “Wait.” Ola followed. “You think she can tell me how many babies me and Walter gonna have? Or if we’ll have a house with a yard or a fence or a pecan tree?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why?” Ola asked angrily. “I’ve been bringing her old tail bread every day. She owes me a telling.”

  “She ain’t no fool, Ola. She knows you ain’t no friend of hers, and she don’t read folks she don’t like.” Ola tugged at Izella’s pigtail again. “Ouch!”

  “Make her like me, then.”

  Izella stopped in front of Mrs. Mac’s paint-peeled front fence, pulled the fresh loaf from her satchel, and handed it to her older sister. “Here,” she told her before slowly opening the fence. “Do it yourself.”

  Holding the bread like a newborn baby, Ola slowly walked across the overgrown yard, avoiding busy ant beds and uneven concrete slabs pushed up by unkept tree roots. She’d taken this walk a hundred times before, but now she walked with a new purpose. Her very future depended upon what that old bat told her, and she was about to find out no matter what.

  When they reached the rickety front screen, she looked back at her little sister to find her at her heels for support. Though she was younger, Izella was always wiser and more mature than Ola. No one dared speak it, but it was an obvious fact of their sisterhood—the eldest leaned heavily on the youngest.

  Sensing Ola’s nervousness, Izella called out to Mrs. Mac. “Yooo-hoooo,” she hollered before knocking on the screen, which was hanging on by a single hinge.

  “Come on in, young’un.” A small but significant voice echoed from the heart of the shotgun house.

  The sisters snaked their way through the cluttered home. Ola nearly tripped over the sail of a hand-carved wooden ship that was the size of a shoebox. The wood scraped her bare calf, leaving a bloody splinter behind.

  “Damn it!” Ola yelled out as blood dripped on wrinkled clothing that was sprawled on the floor. “What the hell was that?”

  Ola lifted the bloodstained ship and immediately regretted it. Upon closer inspection, it was no ordinary ship; it was filled with blank-faced enslaved people. She didn’t want to see, but she had to look. The tiny details of the carving must’ve been labored over with the smallest of instruments. A slit-skinny mother held an even thinner baby in her arms; a muscular man crouched with slouched shoulders; a child stood tall and alone. It was a work of horrific art. So beautiful that Ola wanted to cry.

  “Put my shit down, gal!” Mrs. Mac’s voice broke the spell of the moment.

  “How did she know?”

  “She’s a seer, too,” Izella whispered in response. “Blind, broken folks can see better than the rest of us sometimes.” Izella eased the ship from her older sister’s hand and gently placed it on the cluttered table. “Come on. And don’t touch anything.”

  The sisters headed to the smoke-filled back room, where the distinct smell of marijuana and unfiltered cigarettes was thick and stout. Izella confidently entered the bedroom first and took a seat at the foot of Mrs. Mac’s ash-smeared bed.

  “You’ve got worry all over you,” Mrs. Mac said in a kind, genuine voice. “What’s wrong, child?”

  “It ain’t me, Mrs. Mac,” Izella replied with a small smile. Then she motioned toward the bedroom door, where Ola stood, sneakily plugging her nostrils. “Come on in, Ola. You know Mrs. Mac.”

  Ola watched her step as she entered the room. Every small stride took strategic avoidance of black ashes, spent tea bags, and little white granules of salt or sand.

  “Oh, just walk straight, you,” Mrs. Mac spat with impatience. Her use of you (sounding more like yew) as a nickname cut deeper than a cuss—it was a disgusted you, a repulsed you, a you that you’d never want to be called, and both sisters knew it.

  “I’m s-sorry,” Ola stuttered. “I was just trying to … uh. I didn’t want to mess up your … uh. It’s a lot of stuff on your … uh.”

  Izella put her head in her hands as her sister floundered.

  “I can’t stand folks who don’t tell it like they think it. You didn’t want to dirty your pretty Mary Janes on this old woman’s filthy floor. You as see-through as a crystal siren bell, you.”

  There it was again, that you.

  “What you want?” Mrs. Mac asked in a repulsed hock. “Spit it.”

  Ola looked to Izella for help, but Izella was wise enough to keep out of it. Mrs. Mac wasn’t the type to be manipulated by youth. She wanted it straight or not at all. Instead of speaking, Izella nodded Ola along like a jockey would a skittish horse.

  Ola spoke in a soft voice. “I, ma’am, was hoping to get a read.”

  Mrs. Mac laughed in a cackle. “You don’t need a reader to read you. You one of them gals with boys in your head and not much else. They just want a piece of your new body, and then they want to throw it in the trash. But ain’t no point in telling you. You’ll know it when it ain’t no time left to change it. You won’t know you in the trash until the garbageman coming, and then it’s too late.”

  Mrs. Mac paused her contempt to suck a lengthy drag from her cigarette and open her crust-filled eyes, which had been closed the entire time. In her pause, Ola took in the look of the lady. She was half-covered in a dingy bedspread that Evangelist had knitted her a year ago. Her hair looked like it had been cut by a blind person—it probably was, since Mrs. Mac was legally blind. Her skin was layered wrinkles, like a chocolate cake melting in the hot sun, each layer stacking on the one underneath. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot, maybe from the marijuana, and both pupils blue-grayed over like marbles. She was a thrown-away woman. A human being that Ola couldn’t imagine living a life worthy of living.

  “I hear your judgments in your pretty little head,” Mrs. Mac said. “They louder than your words.”

  Ola knew the old woman had her dead to rights. She had little patience for old women wasting away from hard memories. She hadn’t told a soul about it, not even Izella. Ola stood as still as possible. She weighed her next move. She could cut tail and run before the woman had another chance to demean her or read her thoughts. Or she could stand her ground; after all, Mrs. Mac was just a half-blind old woman. What could she possibly do to her? Ola decided on a third option—denial.

  “I wasn’t thinking anything of the sort, ma’am,” she lied. “You have a lovely home, and I’d like very much to hand you your bread so you can enjoy it. Best bread in town, ma’am.” Ola placed the loaf on the woman’s side table.

  Izella again placed her head in her hands and shook it, which Ola took as a bad sign.

  “Come here, you.” Mrs. Mac lifted her unsteady hand. Her hand reminded Ola of the screen door hanging on its hinges. “I’ll read you.”

  Ola walked forward, intentionally ignoring the mess at her feet. She wanted to be read. She wanted to know if her and Walter’s picket fence would be white or red. She wanted to find out, once and for all, how many kids they’d have. She wanted to look into her beautiful future and know. She needed to know.

  Ola looked at the old woman and smiled; she’d won. She was about to get read.

  Mrs. Mac grabbed her hand tighter than Ola thought possible. She cried out in pain, but the old woman wouldn’t let go. The pain changed. It started as a simple squeeze, like when the nurse is taking blood pressure, and it turned into a heat like embers. Her hand burned so badly Ola felt tears streaming from the side of her eye. Just as quickly as she’d snatched her hand, the woman let go. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, but it felt like an hour.r />
  Mrs. Mac stared wide-eyed at the front of Ola’s neck. She squinted her blind eyes as if she was focusing in on a small bit of something near Ola’s Adam’s apple. “Lean in closer,” she said.

  Ola leaned in a bit.

  “Closer than that, you.”

  She leaned in closer still.

  Squinting at Ola’s neck, Mrs. Mac whispered, almost pitying, “You’ve got a heartbeat in your neck, gal.”

  Izella leaped from her seated position and grasped her mouth in horror. But Ola had no idea what that meant. She grabbed her neck, thinking she’d been snake-bitten or rubbed too much into some poison oak. From the look on Izella’s face, it had to be bad. “What is it? What does that mean? What’s on me?”

  “It ain’t what’s on you,” said Mrs. Mac. “It’s what’s in you. That garbageman already coming for you, child.”

  * * *

  Three days after Mrs. Mac dropped her bomb, Ola and Izella were still reeling from the news. Ola was in complete denial, watching her panties day and night, trusting the blood to magically appear. Izella, however, believed the prophecy beyond a shadow of a doubt. She’d seen Mrs. Mac work, and she knew she was the real deal. Mrs. Mac knew things she shouldn’t have been able to know. Like how the boys were going to come back from the war twisted in the head. Or how bell-bottoms were going to take over. Hell, she even told Izella that old fuddy-duddy Nixon was gone win the presidency. She also said he’d tuck his tail before his time was up, which turned out to be a whopper, but everybody’s wrong sometimes.

  Ola was just deciding to go on about her business, with the exception of the hunger strike. Aside from handfuls of aspirin, Ola hadn’t eaten a bite since that fateful afternoon, Izella noticed. Ola continued on pressing and folding her bobby socks, hot combing her hair into her favorite Dorothy Dandridge pin curls, and visiting Walter at the rec center like there was nothing growing in her belly. The only evidence of her predicament was the raw egg yolks she kept throwing up. They slept head to foot in the same twin bed, and Izella had a front-row seat to the breaking down of her sister’s facade during vomit sessions.