One Better Page 5

  Sterling didn’t see or care about the tears that fell from her mother’s eyes. She moved to the kitchen and poured two fingers of Courvoisier into a glass tumbler while she continued. Spice appeared to be petrified, rooted in her seat. “Bullshit! It’s all bullshit! Lies. You just wanted him to feel sorry for your ‘abandoned’ ass.”

  Spice’s tall form seemed to shrink several inches. She made an attempt to collect herself and speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Her lips trembled and tears fell from her olive black eyes.

  Sterling would never forget the look on Spice’s face. Every detail, every scowl, would be etched in her memory. She fled, slamming the door to her bedroom. “You bitch,” was all she could think of as angry tears streaked her face.

  But suddenly the thought of going back to bed with Travis made her feel hollow.

  Was there no one who could love her enough?

  CARMEN

  What shall I tell my children?. . . You tell me—’Cause freedom ain’t freedom when a man ain’t free.

  —LANGSTON HUGHES

  B efore she had left Spice’s duplex for home, Carmen had rinsed and refilled her flask with Absolut, which she hated. She preferred Popov vodka, but her supply was depleted at home, and she didn’t feel like a trip to the party store.

  Once inside her apartment, she felt a wave of nausea and rested on a footstool for a moment.

  Looking around at her “fun furniture” living room, as she called it, Carmen was temporarily warmed by the bright blue, red, and yellow sofas and chairs and the colorful Crayola rugs sprinkled over shiny hardwood floors. She shrugged off her coat and thought back to her conversation with Spice.

  Carmen couldn’t understand Spice’s fears. Her friend’s home was filled with beautiful treasures and loving memories. The girls might bring her trouble, but on the other hand, there was so much possibility. Even now, Mink’s daughter, Azure, was a special source of pleasure.

  Carmen had warned Spice when Sterling disappeared for a week immediately following David’s funeral that unless her problems were dealt with, Sterling’s grief would boomerang back at Spice. Carmen knew. For the past twelve years she’d lived in the nine-hundred-square-foot garage apartment that was part of the mansion adjoining Southern Spice. She’d always had a good view from which to observe Sterling and Spice. She’d seen how each was suffering from a longing for affection and how both were too stubborn to show how they needed the other. Carmen felt that she was the only one who could make Spice understand that the resentment and anger Sterling expressed through destructive actions were really a desperate cry for her mother’s love. And that was why Sterling demanded more from Spice than Mink. But how could Carmen lay this on Spice without hurting her?

  Funny, Carmen thought, they’d both started out in Midnight on equal footing, with equal problems, yet Spice was now rich and successful and Carmen was still struggling to come to terms with the ephemeral illusions of her past. What could have happened to those pretty dreams?

  The thought of a quick drink got her up as far as her purse, and she poured a double shot from the flask into a tumbler, then turned on the television.

  A rerun from Little House on the Prairie was on. Often, when she watched the show, Carmen was brought to tears. Pa, Michael Landon’s character, was a believably perfect father who seemed capable of solving any problem that faced his family. Carmen smiled, watching his handsome face and easy smile as he kissed his wife on the cheek.

  Having never been married, and not seeing the possibility of marriage in her immediate future, and now without a child of her own, Carmen at times could not contain her resentment of Spice, who had it all.

  Resentment, she knew, was a union of sorrow and malignancy. She detested the passionate jealousy she felt toward her dear friend’s fortune. Surely Spice had paid her dues and then some. Carmen wished she could rid herself of her envious feelings. Spice had shown her nothing but love, and Carmen couldn’t help feeling guilty. She took another drink.

  It was a quiet night, as serene as a meditating nun. But the plush dark sky outside her kitchen window offended Carmen. As the moon’s crescent shone through the skylight, Carmen wondered when Spice was going to stop and pause and thank God for the blessings that she had and just be happy. As she downed the last of the booze from her flask and set down her empty glass, her eyes again scanned the stark white walls of her apartment.

  “How has my world been reduced to this walled-in space?” she said aloud. She stood and moved to the window. Somewhere in the back of her mind, thoughts of her son, now gone, surfaced once again, and she felt moisture coat her eyes. Despite the two sweatshirts, her body began to tremble and her teeth chattered. She couldn’t shake the bone-chilling cold that had crept inside her soul.

  Back in the kitchen, she opened the bottle she always kept on reserve and consumed two more quick drinks. At first she felt normal; then, as she turned to move back to the living room, she could feel her body moving as if in slow motion.

  “Just one more shot.” She poured a tiny bit more into the glass.

  * * *

  You’ve got to take better care of yourself, Carmen. . . . That’s what Spice always told her, even when they first met.

  Twenty-seven years ago Carmen had been living in Midnight, Mississippi. She and Antoinette Green, as Spice was known then, had shared a large home with three other single mothers. Carmen had one son, and Spice one daughter, Mink. All the women received county checks. Spice and Carmen were close, got along like sisters. Both were determined to get off welfare and wanted a better environment for their kids. They found work as cooks at one of the local chicken shacks. Within a few months they agreed to pool their money and move in together. That way they could schedule their hours at work so they could baby-sit each other’s children.

  The two worked as short-order cooks in a restaurant popular with truck drivers. They were paid cash under the table at $2 an hour, well below minimum wage back then. But the big tips and free lunches made the trade-off worth it. Often they talked of how long it would take to save enough to tell the government what to do with their paltry checks. They figured two years would do it. Meanwhile they lived in their three-bedroom farmhouse three miles from town and enrolled in a local cooking school, both working toward a chef’s license. They got off welfare. Though Carmen was nearly two years older than Spice, it was clear from the beginning that Spice was the more stable of the two. Even then, Carmen had liked her booze too much.

  After a few months, Carmen and Spice discovered that they were both pregnant. They had been ashamed to admit their stupid mistakes to each other. Plagued with uterine complications from the beginning, Spice was bedridden the last two months of her pregnancy and forced yet again to live on welfare.

  But her luck changed when she met David Witherspoon, who was visiting his family in Midnight the summer after Sterling was born and stopped in at the Silver Spoon diner. Spice was on duty, and from his counter seat, David watched Antoinette add her own mixture of spices to the food he’d ordered. She’d told him that she learned about spicing from reading the periodicals from France in her doctor’s office. From then on, David came in frequently to see Spice, and one day he teased her that she was “the spice of his life.” The nickname stuck—it suited her.

  Spice’s special seasonings, which she shared with Carmen, had become so popular in town that the church began asking them to cater events. Soon the affluent white folks asked that Carmen and Spice cook for their dinner parties. Before they knew it, their catering business flourished.

  David had fallen in love with Spice, as well as with her two young daughters, Mink and Sterling, and he soon asked Spice to marry him and move back to Detroit, where he worked as a carpenter for General Motors. Spice agreed, telling Carmen that she admired David for his levelheaded maturity and his habit of banking ten percent of every paycheck.

  It was the combination of David’s maturity and Spice’s ambition that made Carmen love and yet envy them so muc
h. Even then Carmen knew they were a couple who could accomplish anything.

  Carmen had to give it to the man; even though he was three inches shorter than Spice and his nose was a bit large for his dark face, his mouth a bit too small, and his eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets, David didn’t look bad, just interesting. When you took into account his wide shoulders and thick legs and thighs, he was surprisingly attractive. In fact, the more Carmen looked at him, the better looking he became.

  David pulled Carmen aside before he left for the city with Spice. Privately he told her that she would always be welcome in their home. Their pleasant conversation ended with a discussion about marriage. She left that day with an impression of a good man who believed that marriage was supposed to be for a lifetime.

  It would take a lifetime for her to forget him.

  Carmen never did stop loving David. But as time went on, she loved him like an older brother. She had grieved beyond measure when he passed away. But so much had happened in between.

  A rerun of Good Times failed to make her laugh, or even smile. Bored, empty, and lonely, she dialed Spice. There was no answer; the voice-mail box was full. She thought about calling Sterling or Mink but changed her mind. Maybe they would think she was butting in on their business. After all, she was an aunt in name only.

  After she’d hung up her clothes, she tried calling Spice once again. Still no answer. I’ll see her at work in the morning.

  Dressed in zinc white flannel pajamas, Carmen lay back in bed for an hour, listening to the wind still howling outside. She was restless. No amount of booze calmed her anymore.

  Her mind haunted her, going back in time.

  After Spice had left Midnight for Detroit with David and her two daughters, Carmen fell into a depression. Her drinking problem worsened. She lost her job as a cook, and without Spice, she couldn’t handle the catering business. Ultimately she was evicted from their apartment, and the state helped her and her son, Adarius, move into a small house in a run-down part of town. There, Carmen met and fell for a man who introduced her to drugs.

  In and out of flophouses and rehab facilities for four years, Carmen had given up on life when the social workers finally put her son into a foster home. She was eventually picked up and jailed for possession of heroin.

  “Enriquez!” the bailiff of the correctional facility had hollered.

  The big-breasted woman had stopped in front of Carmen’s cell. “Me?” she had asked. “No one knows . . .” She had accepted the thick letter through the bars. Carmen’s hands had shaken. It had been the first letter she’d ever received from anyone since she’d landed in jail.

  It had been from Spice, of course, whose letter rushed through the events of the past few years. Spice had described in detail the life she and David had built for themselves in Michigan. They’d been married for over six years and had finally fulfilled their dream of opening a classy soul-food restaurant. Spice had explained how they’d gotten started when the opportunity came to purchase a ruined Victorian house. With his expertise as a carpenter, David had bartered his services with other skilled trades to aid him in completing the work on the mansion. Now, Spice had said, their business was growing. Despite their struggles, they had obviously been happy.

  Each month thereafter, Carmen had received a letter from her friend. How Spice had found her or why it took six years to get in touch were questions never to be answered. The point was, Spice was back beside her in her heart. Spice’s letters had lovingly described the renovation of the Painted Lady, which proceeded even after the restaurant had opened. Spice clearly had put her stamp on each room. Each even had its own fireplace masoned of varying stones. Sterling and Mink had helped Spice select the colors for the vast rooms, many of which were circular and all true Victorian in style. They had painted the walls in shades from dark rose to sage avocado. Spice had complained in her letter that the ceilings were at least twelve feet high and it took twice as long to paint them.

  Close to the time of her first parole hearing, Carmen had received a letter from eight-year-old Mink, neatly printed with enclosed Crayola drawings from six-year-old Sterling. Both girls had addressed her as “Aunt Carmen.” How those letters had made her cry! Looking back, she knew again the warmth of Spice’s friendship. Her friend had not forgotten how important it was to Carmen to feel a part of Spice’s family.

  Even back then, Carmen remembered, Spice had worried over Sterling. While Mink did her best to help her mother, Sterling, two years younger, did nothing but create a mess. Even through the letters, Carmen could tell that Sterling was making a bid for attention. When would this child be more secure? Hadn’t they—Carmen and Spice—done their best in that little apartment on Beale Street? Every time Sterling had cried, someone was there to hold her, comfort her. She had been rocked to sleep, sung to, loved. What was missing for Sterling?

  Spice had always ended her letters with “Promise me you’ll take better care of yourself, Carmen. Love, Spice.”

  Carmen picked up the quilt from the end of the bed and carried it with her to the sofa in the living room. She changed the channel to CNN and set up the electric coffeemaker, then waited for it to brew.

  Everywhere she looked in her apartment there were reminders of children. A sixty-year-old baby buggy filled with porcelain dolls was next to the bookshelf in the far left corner. An eight-by-ten smoke-stained baby photo with a pair of bronzed baby shoes attached sat on top of the television. Not tonight. Quickly Carmen moved her gaze away. Pictures of Mink and Sterling at different ages were on the walls, as well as on the surfaces of tables and shelves.

  Her hands shook as she tried to balance the hot coffee on its saucer. She made it to the sofa and sipped the cooler liquid from the saucer before setting it down. When had the tremors gotten so bad?

  Around one o’clock in the morning, Carmen was awakened by the wild wind whistling past her bedroom window. Thick flakes of snow had begun to fall seemingly from nowhere. The wind picked up speed steadily, and minutes later beautiful star crystals and snowflakes swirled, forming a mist.

  Through the open window, she watched the splendor outside. The pristine visage that fresh snow brought always renewed her spirit, releasing her childlike side. “Hey there, little fellow,” she called to the brown rabbit making tracks in the snow, “what’s your hurry?” She felt surrounded by life’s wonders—beauty available to every human being. But it was rare that she could take it in, appreciate it.

  Like most alcoholics, Carmen suffered from mood swings—the high of booze before the stupor set in and the depression of dealing with reality whenever she attempted sobriety.

  Once out of bed, she knew nourishment was essential. But as she tried to force down a bowl of vegetable soup with crackers, she was appalled by the taste and replaced it with two double shots of vodka before taking a shower. Her small form had grown frail as alcohol had become the only calories her body received.

  Closing her eyes, she hugged herself and prayed once again that her frigid heart would awaken. As she sipped her coffee, she knew that even if she hadn’t slept well, at least she’d be sober when she went to work.

  MINK

  With children we must mix gentleness with firmness. . . . They must not always have their own way, but they must not always be thwarted. . . . If we never have headaches through rebuking them, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up. . . . Be obeyed at all costs; for if you yield up your authority once, you will hardly get it again.

  —CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

  W ake up, Mommy.” Azure’s grip was insistent as she shook her mother’s narrow shoulder.

  Tick, tick, tick—frooom. The furnace rumbled as the heat kicked on. Mink turned over, her thoughts coming together with each clink of hot steam filling the pipes. She could feel her tongue, thick and dry, before she spoke.

  “I’m up,” she said with her eyes still closed. She reached over and felt the cool empty space beside her. “Where’s Daddy?” she asked, sudd
enly opening and adjusting her eyes to the bright overhead light.

  Azure was three and a half years old. Nicknamed “Baby-Z” by her father, Dwight, she had her daddy’s crooked smile, wide nose, and broad forehead. Her small ears, like Howdy Doody’s, were positioned on a head that seemed to be waiting for the rest of her tiny body to catch up. Her long fingers, thin and flat like the black row of piano keys, and narrow feet were the only features she had inherited from her mother. And then there was her dark fuzzy hair, brushed in an afro puff that her daddy loved to fix for her, which enhanced her pixielike appearance.

  “Dunno.” Azure climbed into the rumpled bed beside her mother and tugged on her arm. “I’m hungry, Mommy. Fix me breakfast, please.”

  From just outside the doorway, Mink could hear Jelly Jam, Azure’s Yorkie puppy, panting heavily. When Mink moved to the end of the bed to grab her robe, she felt a jolt of pain, a reminder of the fiasco with Sterling. “Shit,” she shouted as a broken fingernail got caught in her sleeve. Jelly immediately backed up. He knew better than to enter her room. “Isn’t Erma up yet?” Mink glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Good Lord, it was just past eight A.M. “Damn,” she muttered. She’d planned on sleeping till nine.