Knowing Read online

  When Katherine hung up the phone, she felt encouraged. Ginger is getting some sense, she thought. She’s finally managed to keep something from Jackson. Yes, that child is getting more and more like me every day.

  3

  For Once in My Life

  Thinking over her mother’s words, Ginger headed for the bathroom. She knew that the only thing that would take her mind off Jackson was a trip to the mall. She placed her cosmetic tray next to the sink and began applying her makeup. As she reached for the translucent powder, she studied the large veins in her right hand for the second time that day.

  She turned her attention back to the mirror and used a thick sable brush to stroke her face with a thin layer of golden flecked powder. Ginger looked younger than she was, but after seventeen years in a factory, her body didn’t feel youthful.

  Jackson’s reaction earlier bothered her more than she cared to admit. She wanted his approval. She needed his approval, and his unconditional love. If she accepted less from life, how could she expect her kids to make that giant step and struggle for independence? She had drilled it into their heads for years: “After college, work at a place of business for a couple of years, then strike out, after you’ve learned the tools of the trade, and work for yourself.”

  Ginger wanted to set an example for her children. To teach them the importance of education. Especially for her two sons, who thought athletes were it. Though she loved sports, and had nothing but praise for superstars like Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, Shaquille O’Neal, and Clyde Drexler, she wanted them to understand that sports couldn’t always secure a future. She’d told Jason and Christian that though she took pride in watching the Black male superstars excel in their chosen fields, she wanted her sons to be able to fly not just in a game, like Michael Jordan, but to fly in life.

  Most children desire to do things for themselves. Ginger knew that it was up to her to instill in her children a strong sense of self-knowledge and an understanding of the power of God. So much to teach them in so short a time. Would they listen? God willing . . . Would they trust in her learned knowledge about life? God willing . . . Would they respect her decisions as a parent, as their mother? God willing.

  Children . . . her children, the living art of God and man, a product of nature. Like a web of God, spinning out of itself — a pattern, a design, a geometry, a journey back to God himself. Oftentimes we see ourselves better through our children. We connect with our feelings. These feelings become knowing. Ginger knew her life was not the example God wanted her to set for her children. How could she expect so much of them if she didn’t fulfill her own destiny?

  She knew that she had to trust in the power of God that was within her. Ginger crossed her palms over her chest. Her spirit and part of her blood were running through each of her children’s bodies. She felt the deep beat of her heart. Time . . . life . . . love . . . children.

  Jason stood outside her bedroom door and tapped twice before he entered the room. Peeping around to see what his mother had been doing in there so long, he stared wide-eyed into her sad face. “Mama, Kim’s on the phone,” said Jason. “You want me to tell her to call back later?”

  “No, that’s all right, Jason.” She forced a smile. She hated for her son to see her so depressed; she always wanted to project a positive attitude. “Tell her just a minute.” Placing the unused Q-tips and sponge wedges back in their containers, she wiped away the traces of powder staining the white porcelain of the sink. “Jason,” she called out, after he’d left the room. He poked his head back around the door. “Are the kids okay?”

  “Fine, Ma. I fed them some pizza downstairs. They’re watching cartoons.”

  “Pizza for breakfast, Jason?” She picked up the receiver.

  “Yo, Mama. Chill. It won’t hurt ’em.” He bounded from the room, before he accidentally mentioned he’d served it to them cold. The way they liked it. Cold cereal, cold pizza for breakfast. What was the difference?

  “Hi, Kim.” Extending her right arm, Ginger stretched out her hand. Making herself a promise, a promise that she knew she would keep: If she wanted to be a professional, she had to start looking like one.

  4

  Ain’t No Woman Like the One I’ve Got

  In the center block of Market Street near Fenkell, formerly Christ Temple Baptist Church, the newly acquired building was being renovated as the current headquarters of the Production 10 Motorcycle Club. This building was their second acquisition. Little Bubba and Jackson, along with twenty other lifelong members, had formed the club in 1970, and each owned a share of the structure. Monies made from cabarets and party rentals were used for utilities and the upkeep of the building. Occasionally they went on field trips; their intention was not profit but pleasure.

  “Damn it’s cold in here, man!” said Little Bubba, blowing into his cupped hands, then vigorously rubbing them together. He walked over to the thermostat and turned it up. “Man, I’m surprised to see you down here this early in the morning.” He eased onto the bar stool next to Jackson. The ten-foot-long mirror stretched across the wall behind the bar, reflected the image of two old friends. Looking at the heap of plumbing apparatus covering the dance floor, Little Bubba said, “I thought we set the meet-up time at noon”

  Jackson fumbled with the wrench on the counter. He hadn’t expected anyone to show up here at the club before 12:00 P.M. He wanted a few hours by himself to think. “Been talking about bringing down that extra toilet and sink of mine for the last few months. Thought I’d do it today. Might as well get both of the bathrooms installed at the same time.”

  Little Bubba looked puzzled for a moment. Lifting his hat, he scratched his gray-speckled crew cut. Jackson never missed his Saturday morning Westerns on the cable channel at home. There was a television set at the club, but they didn’t have cable. “Your satellite dish still working all right?”

  “Yeah,” Jackson said. “Same old reruns.”

  Walking around the bar, Jackson opened the refrigerator door and peered in. He put two cold beers on the counter and then leaned his back against the cool surface. The smell of cold beer filled the air. “Watching the game tonight?” asked Jackson.

  “Wouldn’t miss it. The Pistons are playing Cleveland tonight. . . right?”

  “Yeah, at the Coliseum.” Jackson turned on the television set, and sat down beside his friend to watch the morning news. “Gonna be a good game. Pistons need to win this one tonight.”

  “Got twenty dollars bet on ’em suckers, they better win.” Little Bubba, feeling the warmth of the furnace, shed his wool jacket. Shuffling through his deep pockets, he extended a small yellow bag to Jackson and opened his own.

  “Hey man . . . thanks.” Just like old times, thought Jackson. “Man, this bag must’ve come all the way from Mississippi, they’re tough as hell.” Biting down on a curled pork crackling, he cursed from the side of his mouth through clenched teeth.

  “Them big teeth you got shouldn’t have no trouble biting nothing.” Little Bubba smiled. He and Jackson had grown up together down South. Little Bubba stood barely five feet five inches tall. Because his baby brother hadn’t learned how to say brother correctly he’d always called him Bubba, and the name stuck. After Jackson and Bubba entered high school, though, Bubba’s younger brother grew like a weed and shot up four inches taller than Bubba, so he changed the nickname to Little Bubba. “How’s the kids and Ginger doing?”

  “They’re doing fine. Just fine.” Jackson pondered for a bit, then added, “Her oldest son Jason got a job bagging groceries at Krogers. It’s working out pretty well. Plans on buying a car before the summer’s gone. . . . Henry ain’t in no more trouble is he? He found a job yet?”

  “My boy still ain’t found no job. Don’t think he want one.” Little Bubba shook his head shamefully. “Giving up them drugs ain’t easy. I promised Lillian ’fore she died, I’d do everything I could to put him in a drug rehab, and see that he got back right.” He jockeyed himself toward the pool table. �
�Three years, and each year been worse than the last one. Last night . . . no, this morning, he came in around five o’clock looking like he been rolling around in a gutter. I pray to God Lillian can’t see him, otherwise she’d be turning over in her grave. I had to get outta there this morning before I killed him.”

  Little Bubba fetched another cold one for each of them. They talked and joked about the easy days of growing up back home, reminiscing with the same old stories they’d told each over the past twenty years, knowing they’d still provide a laugh or two.

  Z.Z. Hill’s down-home blues bounced off the freshly painted black cement walls of the renovated church building. Five black and white and red hands of cards — aces, kings, queens, jacks, and tens, of hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds — were stenciled in three-foot sections at various intervals around the room. Jackson shuffled his feet to a slow dance, using the pool stick as his mate. Turning up the volume, he watched Little Bubba smiling to himself, nodding his head to the melancholy beat.

  The digital clock above the bar registered 11:47 A.M. “Man, it’s almost noon,” Jackson said, clearing the empty beer cans lined up along the bar. After consuming a twelve-pack, playing fifteen games of pool, and making several trips to the newly installed men’s toilet, they were both beat.

  Little Bubba flushed the toilet with a bucket of water, and took a seat at the bar. “Jackson, we gotta get that toilet finished. I can’t haul too many more buckets of water. I’m too old for this. I think I’d be better off waiting ’til I get home to use the bathroom.”

  Rinsing out the last beer can, Jackson placed it back inside the carton, which he stored next to several boxes of empties by the door. Joining Little Bubba back at the bar, he picked up a discarded wrench and began tapping it against the counter.

  “Okay, pal.” Little Bubba turned to look Jackson square in the face and exhaled. “We’ve been friends for a long time. What’s botherin’ you?” Jackson waved him off. “Don’t tell me it ain’t nothin’. I been knowing you too long. Something must’ve pissed you off to get you away from John Wayne and Matt Dillon.”

  Jackson couldn’t help but smile. The beer had relaxed him somewhat, and he’d begun to feel like talking. “It’s Ginger. We argued this mornin’ before the kids were up.”

  “Man, don’t you go getting that pretty little wife of yours upset. You got a fine woman. A hardworking woman. If I had —”

  “What makes you so sure I did something wrong?” Jackson started to get defensive. “She is the stubbornest woman I ever met in my life. I didn’t have no trouble like this with my first wife.”

  “I don’t mean no offense, Jackson, but you know these women up here ain’t like our women back home — they a mite feisty, but they still good women. Now you know I was sorry, too, when your wife passed ten years ago. But — in the time you and Ginger been married, you seem happier to me. I knew she was good for you when you stopped hanging down here at the club until all hours of the night like you used to. Ain’t no married man got no business hanging around all these single men night after night. ’Cause you know they ain’t up to no good.”

  “Yeah. I’m getting too old for that kind of life. I’ll be forty-four in a couple of weeks. Got twenty-four years in at the plant, and six more to go ’til I retire. I’m gonna work two more years after that, and that’s it. Ginger doesn’t know it, but I’m looking at buying some property this summer when we go home for our family reunion.”

  “You planning on moving back?”

  “Yeah. In eight years her daughter Sierra’ll be graduating from high school. She doesn’t like going down South, anyway. None of Ginger’s kids like it, just Autumn. She’s a Montgomery through and through. We stopped making the boys go last year, and let them stay with their father until we get back. I wouldn’t dream of taking Sierra away from her father — she’s crazy about her daddy. I can’t stand the son of a bitch. I hate to see him coming every two weeks. He’s got her spoiled rotten.”

  Little Bubba eyed Jackson, lifting an eyebrow. “About as spoiled as your Autumn?”

  Jackson’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Hey, that’s the only baby I’ve got. She’ll always be my baby.”

  “You talked it over with Ginger? How does she feel about moving to Mississippi?” Little Bubba asked.

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “So it’s like that.”

  “Yeah, it’s like that.” Jackson reached behind the bar and pulled out two foam cups, and turned down the volume on the radio. He could only stand so much music. He liked listening to the news station. “I need a drink. You want a shot?” Little Bubba nodded. Jackson poured them each a hefty splash of Christian Brothers, topping it off with a bit of Coke.

  The clock ticked noisily in the background as they sat sipping their drinks. Jackson described the scene with Ginger that morning while they had their third drink.

  There was a long pause before Little Bubba spoke. “I hate to tell you this, man, but you’re wrong.”

  Jackson’s hazel eyes held a lethal calmness. Setting down his drink, he leaned his elbows back on the bar. He respected his friend, but he wasn’t going to listen to someone trying to tell him how he should run his home or his wife. He said coolly, “How do you mean?”

  “I’ve talked to Ginger occasionally at the club’s family picnics. She’s very intelligent, and I won’t even mention how everybody in the club raved about the leather chaps and vest she made you. It’s obvious she’s talented too. Man, you can’t hold a woman like that back. I wish Lillian had pursued her gift of painting with the same passion. After working all them years in a factory, I can’t blame Ginger for wanting to get out. Personally, I wouldn’t want my wife working like a dog in that car plant.”

  Jackson bristled at his comments. What did Little Bubba know? Or more, what right did he have telling Jackson anything? “Last time I checked, you didn’t have a wife.” Jackson knew that was below the belt, but he felt his friend had crossed the line, so why shouldn’t he?

  Little Bubba knew deep down his old friend didn’t mean any harm. If any other man this side of heaven had made that remark about his dead wife, he would have pushed his size eight and a halfs down the crack of his ass. He drained the bottom of his drink and grabbed his coat. “If I had a wife like yours . . . I’m telling you man, these nineties women ain’t taking that male chauvinist shit no more. They’re walking out, and ain’t looking back. I just hope that you wake up before it happens to you.”

  “Sierra, you and Autumn get down here,” Ginger hollered. Two pairs of feet pounded down the stairs as Ginger cleared the half-full cereal bowls from the breakfast table and set them on the sink. “Didn’t I tell you not to pour more cereal in the bowl than you were going to eat?” Their heads nodded in agreement. “Then why are they half-eaten?” Ginger raised her voice and the bowls simultaneously.

  “Mama —” Sierra kicked Autumn in the leg — “we were planning on coming back downstairs to finish just before you called us.” She handed Autumn her bowl and spoon. “See . . . we were gonna finish.” Autumn, following Sierra’s lead, lifted the bowl to her mouth and drank the remaining milk. They were still stuffed from the leftover pizza Jason had fed them earlier.

  “Where’s Christian? I want this house clean in the next two hours. I’ve got a lot to do today. Let’s get with it,” Ginger called, already climbing the stairs.

  When Ginger wasn’t looking, Sierra kicked at her sister — then snarled, “I told you to let me fix it. My stomach feels like it gonna bust open.”

  * * *

  “I know, Ma. I’m getting my room cleaned up, Ma,” said Christian, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. “Yes, I saw the list you left on my dresser.” Every Saturday, the same routine.

  Ginger left a similar list on Jason’s dresser. When he came in from work, she’d let him rest for a couple of hours, and then he’d have to pitch in and do his part like everyone else did. He grumbled and mumbled, as they all did. Well, she was just as
sick of cleaning every weekend as they were. Maybe she’d find out how much it would cost for someone to come in and do the heavy cleaning every two weeks.

  Jackson waved to Autumn, Sierra, and Christian building snowmen in the yard as he pulled into the driveway. The leather seats squeaked at the release of his 220-pound frame. He was surprised to see Ginger’s minivan missing from her section of their three-car garage.

  The smell of Pine Sol greeted him at the back door, and he knew without looking that the house was spick-and-span. Although as he walked down the upper hall, the familiar odor of teenage funk funneled from Jason’s room. Kicking off his cowboy boots, he discarded them along with his jeans and shirt in a cluttered pile near the bed and stretched out on the mattress.

  Later that evening Ginger returned home, carrying a large box. “Where have you been all day?” asked Jackson, looking up from the television set.

  “I’ve been over at Kim’s. I called home to speak to you, but Jason said you were still sleeping.” She placed the black box on the chaise next to her purse. Walking into her closet, she slid off her gym shoes, scooting them into their cubbyhole. She folded her jogging suit, and placed it in her bottom drawer. Up above her were rows of large white, square hat boxes stacked on top of each other. Several round black glossy boxes were imprinted with the name of Henry and Hatter in gold letters — a men’s hat store. Ginger loved the way she looked in men’s hats. After changing into her nightgown, she retrieved the box from the sitting room and rearranged the shelf to accommodate her latest purchase.

  “You bought a new hat?” Jackson asked over the loud cheers coming from the set. He wanted to talk about anything other than the problem at hand. He hoped she had forgotten the real estate idea, but after talking to Kim all afternoon . . .