“Mama’s just painting a lot, that’s all. She’s working on a series.”
“I know my sister well as anybody in this room, and I can tell this ain’t about no series. Why didn’t y’all get her some help? They got counselors over at the hospital.”
“Counselors?” I asked. “Why would she need counselors?”
Aunt Ros sat up in the rocker and it tipped forward. “Henry, you stay at that office all the time. You even working on Saturdays now. And June, you fooled yourself into thinking that you out there trying to finish a doggone series. But really all y’all doing is sinking in a pit of mud.”
I shook my head. Aunt Ros had bust up in here like she had a magic telescope that could see inside us all the way from Memphis. Aunt Ros had always been like that, thinking she could fit everybody into a psychology textbook.
“Mama, tell her you’re fine,” I said.
Aunt Ros did not stop. “June. You are coming to Memphis with me for a couple of weeks, and I won’t take no for an answer.”
“Ros, I can’t do that. I can’t just up and leave.” Mama’s voice sounded weak.
“You getting on that bus with me, Junebug.”
Daddy did not protest. Maybe he was grateful for the interference. Maybe they both were. I tried to read his face, but his eyes would not meet mine.
“And Henry, you are going to—”
“Aunt Ros. You can’t just come down here and uproot the family. You don’t know everything. Mama and I go to church on Sundays now. She’s fine. And Daddy doesn’t work any more than he always has. It’s just his practice is growing.”
She turned to me. “Civil Townsend, why ain’t you working? You ain’t worked since summer. Mabel say you at that trial every day. Those are not your children. You trucking down to that courthouse every day like you they damn mama.”
“Ros.”
“I’m sorry, Henry, but you know it’s true.”
“It’s hard for me to get a job in Montgomery right now, Aunt Ros. Everybody blames me.”
“Nobody blames you, baby,” Aunt Ros said.
“They talk about me behind my back. They call me a troublemaker. Blame me for what happened to those girls. Even the folks at church look at me funny.”
Aunt Ros did not move to comfort me. “Who talks about you?”
“Everybody.”
“Baby, there’s always been people who don’t understand the sacrifice of justice. You trying to make a bad situation better. If you know that in your heart, that’s all that matters.”
The sacrifice of justice? How little Aunt Ros knew. She had been away from Montgomery too long. Whether it was the Birmingham church bombing or Ruby Bridges, there wasn’t any justice for little Black girls, and never had been.
* * *
? ? ?
INSTEAD OF US going to church that Sunday, Daddy took Mama and Aunt Ros to the bus station to see them off. I couldn’t go. It just hurt too bad to see Mama looking all pitiful and vulnerable like that. Ros had held up a mirror to the family, and Mama had finally given in to her exhaustion. Her eyes seemed to have sunken and her cheeks drooped, showing her age in a way I had not seen before. When I walked into her room the morning of their departure Aunt Ros had been dressing her, Mama just sitting there, catatonic.
I said my good-byes at the house. Aunt Ros declared that by the time Mama returned home she would be so transformed she would be cooking. Daddy just laughed because on their wedding day, Mama had made it clear that she could not cook and never would.
A few days after they left, Daddy launched a hiring search for a junior doctor who could help in his practice. He joined a men’s poetry circle that met Saturday mornings. I lounged around in bed all morning, and watched TV in the afternoons. It seemed like the family had left me behind.
One day, Ty knocked on the side door, but I didn’t answer. He left a note.
Alabama State got an opening for a registered nurse. If you work here, I’ll bring you coffee.
Attached to the note was a flyer with pinholes at the top. Instead of writing down the information, Ty had taken the entire paper. I folded it and put it in my desk drawer.
I was still wallowing in self-pity when Lou called me later that afternoon and told me the defense had rested its case.
“Already? What does that mean?”
“They submitted their documents, then motioned to have the case dismissed. Said the plaintiffs filed prematurely. Then they presented evidence that HEW is currently revising its sterilization guidelines. Said my case didn’t have legs to stand on anymore.”
“What did the judge say?”
“He said,” and Lou imitated the judge’s gravelly drawl, “I will take this into consideration.”
“You sound just like him.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve listened to that voice so much I hear it in my sleep.”
“So now what?”
“We wait.”
“How long?”
“Not long. He’ll go through the court notes, write up his judgment.”
“How long is not long?”
“I don’t know. Hey, what are you doing at home in the middle of the day? Want to go get something to eat? I’m about to go down to the Ben Moore Hotel.”
“No, I’ve got something else I need to do today.”
“Okay, well, I’ll give you a call if I hear anything.”
“Thanks, Lou. I’m serious. Thanks for everything.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
It was afternoon, but I was still in my pajamas. I put on slippers and walked out to our backyard. The white plastic chair creaked as I sat in it. That crazy rooster started to crow and I called right back to him. He stopped short, as if confused by my response. I slid my fingers through my shirt between the buttons and felt the round softness of my belly, trying to imagine what it would feel like to swell with the rising firmness of a growing fetus.
The wind rushed my ears. I had so many questions, but I knew most of them were questions for God. Was Mama really sick? What was I doing with Mace? Should I go back to the clinic and work? Was it my fault those girls had been sterilized?
There was a time when we’d talked about things. I’d talked to Daddy. Daddy had talked to Mama. We carried no secrets, thoughts circulating through our family with the neatness of a simple triangle, intimacy working its natural path until the answer was reached.
I had never really understood my mama, so the notion of dealing with her depression any differently than usual mystified me. The paintings seemed to hold a key, how they meant different things to different people. I could comprehend that interpretive freedom was an important creed of civil rights for her. Black art, she’d always said, did not have to be representational or realistic to be political. The power of art to speak to you sometimes lay in its unwillingness to be penned into one thing. It was the kind of argument that had always made me look at Mama and think: She cannot be penned into one thing, either. As for me, I craved order and rationality. I needed to understand. Not understanding was knocking me clear off my feet.
My belly warmed beneath my fingers. I breathed in and out; it rose and fell. How on earth would I make sense of it all if that verdict came back against the girls, if the judge did absolutely nothing to change things?