so we can head off to Reno,’ I pleaded, while in my mind, I had a picture of her and her sisters, clear as if I was looking at a television set. They was waiting by the side of a stage in them red sequined dresses with the halter neck, and I was standing by with four face cloths. ’Cause Brenda sweated more than the others, I used to keep two on hand for her and one for Joy and Anndora who was there more for show. They sang the odd do-wops, but Brenda, singing the lead, got the sweatiest, so soon as they finished their stint, I’d hand ’em each a face cloth and rush on stage to collect up any of the big sequins that fell off while they was finger popping and dancing about. Them sequins was too hard to come by and way too expensive to just leave at every venue. So after I’d collected them up, I’d sew ’em back on ’fore the girls had to wear the dresses again. That was part of my job as their wardrobe mistress. But that was more the title their record company give me, so’s the accountants knew what to put by my salary on the girls’ weekly tour accounts. I did a whole lot else, including making sure Anndora and her sex-mad self turned up to the shows at all and seeing that Brenda had enough to eat when and if she wanted, though a diet wouldn’t have hurt her one bit. She always was too big. Not roly-poly fat, but big like a mountain across the girth. Backside as well come to think of it.
Remembering how happy we all was back then is what got my eyes to tearing, and I was grateful when a few measly tears dribbled down my cheeks, ’cause as much as I don’t hold with women crying, especially us colored ’cause we supposed to have more sense, it seemed right to show some emotions, though I wasn’t making no sounds.
Sitting there on the toilet, my throat grew that tight, it nearly gagged me just to swallow. I knew a cream soda would of eased it straight away, but me and Freddie’d drunk the last of them six cans watching tag team wrestling on TV the night before.
But I dragged myself into the kitchen anyway, realizing full well as I headed down the hallway that I wasn’t going to get no cream soda to drink. That was my pretend, but what my mind was actually set on was a kingsize box of Sugar Pops that I kept in a cupboard for Joy. They was left over from her last visit and even though the date on them had expired I didn’t sling ’em in the trash, ’cause as long as I saw them everytime I opened the cupboard, I got the feeling Joy was coming any minute.
She didn’t visit us but twice a year since she moved to New York from LA a few years back, ’cause she said Rex didn’t like California. That was her excuse, but I reckoned that she used to sneak to LA and just not make it up to Frisco to see us. Not that I told her as much. She had her own life to lead and I never did want her to feel like she was obliged to come ’cause she owed me and Freddie B a visit. But still, I knew when she did turn up, she’d be expecting to find Sugar Pops like I always kept in store from when she was little and used to sit up at my table munching on ’em and reading the funny papers.
Even after she got grown and wanted to show off that she’d give up the funnies and didn’t like to read nothing but the New York Times, she still couldn’t pass up Sugar Pops with chocolate milk poured over ’em. She’d say, ‘What you eat is one thing, but what you read is something else,’ and I’d take that as my cue to slip the National Enquirer off the table ’fore she sat down, so I wouldn’t have to sit through her lecturing me about reading rubbish. When the girls was touring, I didn’t never get to read what I liked, ’cause if Joy caught me buying Jet or Drum in them airport lounges, she’d shoot me a look out the corner of her eye like she was the only one grown and I was a child, and I’d put them back.
While I stood there in my kitchen with my bare feet on the cold linoleum floor and tried to believe that Joy was coming like we’d planned, nothing would stop my mind from trailing back and forth over memories, and I caught myself hugging that box of Sugar Pops so tight that I’d crushed it. Both my cheeks was wet with tears, though I still wasn’t crying out loud. Just sniffling like a big baby.
‘Tears ain’t never solved nothing,’ I listened to my better self chastise ’fore I set it straight. ‘Aw, shut up. You think you know everything. I can cry if I want. That child was as good as mine.’
And it was true. So much so that after Joy came along, thirty odd year back, it didn’t never trouble me no more that I couldn’t spawn none of my own.
But my better self was in a ornery mood and said, ‘Don’t shed no crocodile tears in here, and furthermore, you can throw out that old tired box of Sugar Pops ’cause neither you nor Freddie B eats that mess no way.’
I stuffed the box in the trash and headed for the living room with the sound of Tammy’s voice on the phone singing in my head. Joy’s dead…Joy’s dead…Joy’s dead…
With our living room drapes at the cleaners and with nothing but flimsy white nets up to the big picture window, it was shocking bright being that the window’s south facing. The sun had the nerve to shine like it was gonna be a good day and it bounced off the brass planter that Joy’d sent me from Puerto Rico last Mother’s Day and hit the mirror over the mantel. Usually San Francisco mornings is still dull and misty in late March, so I should of been glad it wasn’t miserable and drizzling like it had been for the past week. But I was ready to be mad about anything.
All that buoyed my spirit for half a second was spotting my glasses on the teak dining table that Freddie B will insist on keeping pushed under the window that looks across to the Bay Bridge. I grabbed my ugly bifocals and shoved them on, and soon as I could see good, my head cleared up enough for me to say, ‘Have you lost your mind throwing away that box of cereal when that may be all y’all got to eat ’fore you know what’s hit you. You better fetch that mess out of the trash before God strikes you for being wasteful. And what if it’s a mix-up and Joy ain’t dead?’
That’s how come I still couldn’t bring myself to wake Freddie B with the news. What was the point telling him something that I didn’t believe myself? And anyway, repeating tales can make them real.
I knew what not to think but not what to think, and turning to head back into the kitchen to retrieve them Sugar Pops my eyes fell on the one thing that I realized soon as I looked at it, they should of avoided. It was Joy’s first grade picture taken a couple years ’fore her and her family moved to our building in Oakland from Wilmington, Delaware. It’s such a cute picture. She got her hair in two braids and is smiling to beat the band with both front teeth missing, which she tried to pencil back in ’fore she gave it to me and which completely ruined the photo, but I still put it in a nice gold painted picture frame. At the time, though she wasn’t but eight, it made me furious that she was childish enough to draw in her teeth, and I asked her why she did it. She could see I was in a temper and said she’d erase it, but like I said, ‘Child, you can’t be erasing on no picture. That’s ridiculous.’
‘Don’t tell Mama. Please please don’t tell my mama,’ she all ’a sudden cried out with her eyes bucked like she was scared to death.
I hadn’t never seen Joy crying, not that I’d known her more than a couple months, but she was happy natured and didn’t never get into stews like children usually do. But she was sure scared that day that I’d tell Tammy.
It made me wonder whether Tammy beat on her or something, but I didn’t never hear no whipping noises and didn’t never see Tammy raise her hand to none of her children. Not even Anndora, who needed it ’cause she could get set on doing something and bring the house down till she got her own way. But Joy didn’t never put a foot wrong at that age that I could see, so there wouldn’t of been no reason to hit on her.
Anyway, that day Joy gave me her picture I made her a promise that I wouldn’t never tell her mother. She made me say, ‘Cross my heart to God or hope to die’, ’cause she wouldn’t believe me. Over the years I had to promise not to tell Tammy quite a few things. ‘Don’t Tell Mama ought to be your middle name,’ I used to say to Joy.
Standing there in my living room looking down at that first grade picture, I said out loud, ‘Miss Joy ‘‘Don’t Tell Mama’’ Bang.’
The sound of it made me chuckle, though thinking back, I had many a sleepless night ’cause I was worried that Tammy should have been told something that Joy made