Small Great Things Read online

  One day, I ran into her friends when I was on my way home from school. This time, though, Rachel wasn't with them. "Ooh, look what we got here," said the tallest one, Fantasee. She yanked at my French braid, which was how the girls in my school were wearing their hair those days. "You think you so fancy," she said, and the three of them surrounded me. "What? Can't you talk for yourself? You need your sister to do it for you?"

  "Stop," I said. "Leave me alone. Please."

  "I think someone needs to remember where she from." They grabbed at my backpack, unzipping it, throwing my schoolwork into the puddles on the ground, shoving me into the mud. Fantasee grabbed my Christie doll and dismembered her. Suddenly, like an avenging angel, Rachel arrived. She pulled Fantasee away and smacked her across the face. She tripped one of the other girls and pummeled the third. When they were all flattened, she stood over them with her fist. They crawled away, crabs in the gutter, and then scrambled to their feet and ran. I crouched down next to my broken Christie, and Rachel knelt beside me. "You okay?"

  "Yeah," I said. "But you...you hurt your friends."

  "I got other friends," Rachel answered. "You're my only sister." She tugged me to my feet. "C'mon, let's get you clean."

  We walked home in silence. Mama took one look at my hair and my ripped tights and hustled me into a bath. She put ice on Rachel's knuckles.

  Mama glued Christie back together, but her arm kept popping out and there was a permanent dent in the back of her head. Later that night, Rachel crawled into my bed. She'd done that when we were little, during thunderstorms. She handed me a chair that was made out of an empty cigarette pack, a yogurt cup, and some newspaper. Trash, that she had glued and taped together. "I thought Christie could use this," she said.

  I nodded, turning it over in my hands. Probably it would break apart when Christie first sat in it, but that wasn't the point. I lifted up the covers and Rachel fitted herself to me, her front to my back. We rode out the night like that, like we were Siamese twins, sharing a heart that beat between us.

  --

  MY MOTHER SUFFERED her first stroke while she was vacuuming. Ms. Mina heard the crash of her body falling down, and found her lying on the edge of the Persian rug with her face pressed up against the tassel, as if she was inspecting it. She suffers her second stroke in the ambulance en route to the hospital. She is dead on arrival when we get there. I find Ms. Mina waiting for us, sobbing and overwrought. Edison stays with her, while I go to see Mama.

  Some kind nurse has left the body for me. I go into the small curtained cubicle and sit down beside her. I take her hand; it's still warm. "Why didn't I call you last night?" I murmur. "Why didn't I go visit you this past weekend?"

  I sit on the edge of the bed, then tuck myself under her arm for a moment, lying with my ear against her still chest. This is the last chance I will have to be her baby.

  It is a strange thing, being suddenly motherless. It's like losing a rudder that was keeping me on course, one that I never paid much mind to before now. Who will teach me how to parent, how to deal with the unkindness of strangers, how to be humble?

  You already did, I realize.

  In silence, I cross to the sink. I fill a basin with warm, soapy water, and I place it beside my mama. I pull down the sheet that was left on her, after emergency intervention failed. I have not seen my mama naked in ages, but it is like looking in a mirror that distorts by years. This is what my breasts will look like, my belly. These are the stretch marks by which she remembered me. This is the curve of a spine that has worked hard to make her useful. These are the laugh lines that fan from her eyes.

  I begin to wash her, the way I would wash a newborn. I run the cloth up the length of her arms and down her legs. I wipe between her toes. I sit her up, leaning her against the strength of my chest. She weighs next to nothing. As the water drips down her back, I rest my head on her shoulder, a one-sided embrace. She brought me into this world. I will help her leave it.

  When I am finished, I cradle her in my arms, setting her back gently against the pillow. I pull the sheet up and tuck it beneath her chin. "I love you, Mama," I whisper.

  The curtain is yanked open, and Adisa stands there. In counterpoint to my quiet grief, she is wailing, sobbing loudly. She throws herself on Mama, clutching fistfuls of the sheet.

  Like any fire, I know she'll burn out. So I wait until her cries become hiccups. When she turns and sees me standing there, I truly think it's the first time she realizes that I'm even in the room.

  I don't know if she holds out her arms to me or I hold out my arms to her, but we hold on for dear life. We talk over each other--Did Mina call you? Had she been feeling poorly? When was the last time you spoke to her? Shock and anguish run in loop, from me to her and back again.

  Adisa hugs me tight. My hand tangles in her braids. "I told Wallace Mercy to find himself a new interview subject," she whispers.

  I draw away just long enough to meet her eye.

  Adisa shrugs, as if I've asked a question. "You're my only sister," she says.

  --

  MAMA'S FUNERAL IS an Affair with a capital A, which is exactly how she'd want it. Her longtime church in Harlem is packed with parishioners who have known her for years. I sit in the front row beside Adisa, staring at the giant wooden cross hanging on the chancel wall, between two massive panes of stained glass, with a fountain beneath. On the altar is Mama's casket--we got the fanciest one money could buy, which is what Ms. Mina insisted on, and she's the one who is paying for the funeral. Edison stands near Pastor Harold, looking shell-shocked, wearing a black suit that is too short at his wrists and ankles, and his basketball sneakers. He is wearing reflective sunglasses, although we are inside. At first I thought that was disrespectful, but then I realized why. As a nurse, I see death visit all the time, but this is his first experience; he was too little to remember his daddy being sent home in a flag-draped coffin.

  A long snake of folks shuffles down the aisle, a macabre dance to look in Mama's open casket. She is wearing her favorite purple dress with sequins at the shoulders, and the black patent pumps that made her feet hurt, and the diamond studs that Ms. Mina and Mr. Sam gave her one year for Christmas that she never wore because she was so afraid one would fall out and she would lose it. I wanted to bury her in her lucky scarf, but in spite of turning her apartment upside down, I could not find it to bring to the undertaker. "She looks like she's at peace," I hear, over and over. Or "She looks just like herself, don't she?" Neither one of these is true. She looks like an illustration in a book, two-dimensional, when she ought to be leaping off the page.

  When everyone has had a chance to file by, Pastor Harold starts the service. "Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters...this is not a sad day," he says. He smiles gently at my niece Tyana, who's sobbing into little Zhanice's tiny Bantu knots. "This is a happy day, for we are here to celebrate our beloved friend and mother and grandmother, Louanne Brooks, who is finally at peace and walking beside the Lord. Let us begin with prayer."

  I bow my head, but sneak a glance around the church, which groans at the seams with well-wishers. They all look like us, except for Ms. Mina and Christina, and in the back, Kennedy McQuarrie and an older woman.

  It surprises me to see her here, but then, of course she knows about Mama. I was at her house when I heard.

  Still, it feels like a blurred line, like wine and cheese at her home was. Like I am trying to put her in a box and she keeps escaping the confines.

  "Our friend Louanne was born in 1940," the pastor says, "to Jermaine and Maddie Brooks, the youngest of four. She had two daughters, and made the best of her life after their daddy left, raising them to be good, strong women. She devoted her life to serving others, creating a happy home for the family that employed her for over fifty years. She won more ribbons at our church fair for her pies and cakes than anyone else in this congregation, and I do believe that at least ten pounds around my middle can be credited to Lou's sweets. She loved gospel music and Th