Sins of The Mother

My grandfather was an alcoholic for as long as he was alive and for as long as I can remember him. Some men had drugs, others women but my grandfather’s weakness, his vice was alcohol. It debilitated him to the point when he drank he went from walking with an old hand carved African cane to crawling on the floor , shrieking at Grandma for not making biscuits for dinner. When he walked his whole body shook like someone placed him in a life sized blender and pushed puree.
Harold Martin was his name and he helped me with spelling words, instructed me on how to light him cigarettes on the stove when he had no hand held lighter and how to make toasted liver pudding sandwiches at 11:30 at night. Like some twisted Norman Rockwell painting, I was content to lay at his feet on a Friday night huffing exasperatedly because I was forced to watch Barnaby Jones reruns in boredom and drag off to bed during Gunsmoke. His Pall Malls, which he pronounced Pail Mails made me cough and like those cigarettes he was strong, he got your attention and at times he could offend you. The family’s quintessential anti-hero who cursed his wife because she was a devoted Christian but let me borrow hundreds upon hundreds of dollars for my car payment when I asked. He grumbled about the house being dirty but possessed what his grandchildren referred to as a piss pot, an old plastic white container which transferred his urine from the living room to the bathroom urinal. He was a hell raiser. The curmudgeonly old man people saw as the pisser and parishioner. If he lived alone he would have been the old man children whispered about at Halloween. He had served some time in the army but was released on a dishonorable discharge. No one knew why.
My grandma, Marjorie on the other hand was more parishioner. A genteel and sweet woman to all she encountered. They say a child can change the life of those she meets well that is what they say happened to Grandma when my mother gave birth to me almost 30 years ago. They say she joined the church, stopped smoking and drinking and became a pillar of polite Sanford society. She was beautiful with salt and pepper hair, deep set brown eyes; skin the color of burnt caramel and full lips. She only had a 9th grade education but she spoke like a Rhodes Scholar. And while grandpa collected social security checks she worked two jobs.
My mother, Sandra Martin channeled more of my Grandpa’s pisser personality and the parishioner be damned. She became my mother at sixteen, the wild child of the family she drank too much and listened too little. She brought me home to a sanctified grandmother and a heathen of a grandfather. Ma was there for the first ten years of my life with me and my grandparents. Grandma was known to say most of the time she was ‘running up and down the road’ from old juke joints to older bootleggers. All the while I took the time to become the apple of my grandparents’ eye. They did better by me than they did their own children. They were honest enough to admit it to themselves and anyone else who dared to challenge the attention and praise they rewarded me at every given turn. Later on when my fascination with Grandpa became reverence for my grandmother and I lay at her feet she reminisced enough to tell me she did all the things she did because she pitied my parentage. My absentee father who was fathering other children now and my angry mother who had never met a drink she didn’t like.
In the little town of Sanford, North Carolina there was always a place to get a shot glass of vodka or to dance the night away. There was town. There was country. Town was where the projects stood, where the police was only 2 minutes away but if there was a disturbance the blood had already dried before the sirens were switched from on to off. It was where housing projects stood as great monuments to the poor and how they lived. You could walk two feet to borrow some sugar or some rolling papers to roll a joint. While in the country, houses were old. Some rundown with no running water or lights, surrounded, protected even by trees. Churches were around every corner. Your closest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away and the only time you visited was when someone had passed away tragically.
Bootleggers were the only thing town and country had in common. In town the bootlegger was the single mother who took a portion of her monthly check to keep her stock of Budweiser, Heineken and the cheapest vodka she could find within cabinet distance covering black eyes with cheap make up from the Dollar Store around the corner. Her boyfriend stayed with her part time and didn’t work in any other room but the bedroom to try to keep her remotely happy so he had a place to stay at least through the winter months.
Country bootleggers were a different sort. There were two kinds. The first was usually between the ages of 45 and 50 years old , a mistress with missing teeth in front, with big guts and bigger egos whose paramours visited on Friday and Saturday nights when there wives were presumably sleep and before Sunday when they performed their Deacon and Trustee duties at the local church.
The other was the old man who never married and had a taste for women of the younger sort. Those outrageous women who had dyed their hair colors not meant for their complexion. They flirted for money. They flirted for drinks. They flirted for drugs. They flirted with the idea sex could get them anything and everything they wanted. They had children way too young and became bitter before their time.
Grandpa and Mama were fortunate enough to be placed in the country where not one but two house waited eagerly for their business. Grandpa liked the shotgun house where you went in with a drink from the front and came out tipsy on the other side. He had been friends with Julian, also known as June Bug, our next door neighbor for his entire life. He was known to take advantage of this in the middle of the month came and he requested a fifth of vodka on credit until the first of the month brought his monthly stipend.
A quarter of a mile up the street his 1st cousin Emma pulled out her old record player on Fridays and Saturdays to play so her customers could listen to the old sounds of Rick James, Cameo and Kool & The Gang.. Ma loved to listen to music and she loved to dance. Emma’s was her favorite Saturday night spot.
As the sun crept through the curtains Sunday morning I jumped in relief at the sound of the black phone perched in the hallway on the wall between my bedroom and the kitchen. The kitchen smelled and sizzled from burning Bergamot hair dressing. My hair was a wild, brown crown around my face and the heat began to burn my scalp. I informed Grandma only to have her scoff at my apparent pain and explain it was not the heat but the steam from the hot iron.
“Hush gal. You alright.”
Grandma placed the straightening comb down on the stove. I wiped the mixture of sweat and grease from my forehead.
“Hello.” She said sweetly. She listened intently. I bit my nails and she popped my fingers.
“Uh, huh. Okay. Thank you for letting me know.” She hung up the phone rushing me into my room to put on a pair of pants under my night clothes. I didn’t hesitate I know Mama was headed home and we had to prepare. We walked through the bushy path my pink bunny slippers picking up rocks and she held my hand as she knocked on our neighbor, Ms. Pearlie’s door and explained the situation. She agreed.
“Thank you. Go hide, Jocie.” I didn’t waste any time under the bed I went between the boxes of shoes and her large and extensive photo collection. Ms. Pearlie’s house smelled like most old folks’ home a mixture of medication, old clothes, home cooked food and vapor rub. That smell surrounded me as I waited for Mama’s arrival. I was ready. Ms. Pearlie and Grandma had prepared me. It seemed like forever. I waited to hear Mama for her to make her grand entrance at the front door. I knew she was coming she always came. Her voice a tad higher, her clothes a bit disheveled but always looking for me. And when the raucous knock came to the door I placed my eyes on the white orthopedic usher shoes Ms. Pearlie had placed in front of me to hide my face. I heard her ask for Jocelyn, not Jocie so I knew she was mad. She only called my full name when she was angry. She asked Ms. Pearlie pointedly. Had she seen me? No, she answered. Was she sure? Yeah, she was sure. I tried peaking past those damned orthopedic shoes blocking my vision of her. At the time I needed to see the texture of her face, the color of the white of her eyes. If they were any color but white I was in for a very rough morning and I knew it. She wouldn’t have an explanation as to why. The shoes blocked my vision. I moved once. She didn’t see me and I couldn’t see her. I moved the second time and I saw her bright, platinum hair, the early morning sun shining brightly upon it. I moved the third time and I saw her face. And those blood red eyes. The only problem, she saw the usher shoes move and she saw my inquisitive brown eyes as well. Her face contorted, she stormed past Ms. Pearlie’s frail frame like a tornado hitting a trailer in Kansas. She pushed the bed back and grabbed my hair in one swoop of violent motion.
“Sandra, don’t do that,” Ms. Pearlie said with quiet disapproval. She was too fragile to defend me.
Mama cursed a blue streak as she pushed past her into the green grass of Ms. Pearlie’s front lawn. My knees scraped the rocks as she dragged me. Her words were gibberish about my sorry ass father and questionable whereabouts. The tears began flowing as I opened my mouth to scream from the pain. My body went limp and my scalp began to throb. My body from the top of my head to tip of my feet became an extension of my mother’s fist gripped tightly in my hair as she pulled me from one side of the yard to another until I heard her body go thud. I felt the oomph as she let my hair go and fell to the ground. Eyes blurred with tears I looked up to see Grandma holding what looked like a tree trunk in her hand.
“Leave her alone, Sandy.” I sucked in air as the mucous flowed like water from my nose I could taste the salt of my tears as I stood behind Grandma using her for a human shield.
“Oh, okay.” Those were the only words she spoke from her mouth. At the time I thought it was because she was trying to size up the situation but now I think about it and she was drunk, tired and Grandma had hit her so hard she was drooling from the mouth like a rabid canine.
Ms. Pearlie watched from her porch her thinning grey hair still in pink sponge rollers, cars passed our little country road slowing down; a captive audience to the melodrama unfolding before them. Mama was a raging bull, I was her red flag, her emotion and anger in the flesh and Marjorie Martin, my Grandma was the matador. All three of us sat there looking at each other until the police pulled up in Ms. Pearlie’s yard. Grandpa called the police we found out later. Mama gave up easily enough. After she was placed in the squad car I watched from the side of the road as they drove her to the station to do what they called 24 hour detox.
Grandma grabbed my hand and we walked through the woods through the path to the house in the country where the trees hug the road and the thick green bushes hide secrets of almost any kind. Grandpa was crouched on the floor in the screen door shaking like jello. They didn’t say anything. I opened the screen door. Grandpa crawled back to his place on the couch. Grandma walked in behind me and headed straight for the kitchen. She turned on the stove again then looked at me.
“Sit down over here girl and hush up I have got to finish straightening this stuff.”