Mama was living in Boston with her cousin Loretta that summer. Loretta said she had some business to attend to out in California and thirteen-year-old Mama came right along with her. When they hit Oakland streets, Mama saw Daddy’s face plastered on signs and posters all over town. Said he looked like Louisiana bayous tasted: rich and overgrown; that skin a whole muggy river. Scrawny and prepubescent girl that she was, she said she was gonna make that man hers, make him show her where the water flowed in Oakland.
The Oakland Police Department decided not to press charges once The New York Times picked up the story, and Daddy was released two weeks post-arrest. Some of the Panthers threw him a release party in the streets, then had a barbecue at a West Oakland park. It was Mama’s last day in town and she begged her cousin to take her.
Mama went straight up to Daddy and said, “Hi. I’m Cheyenne, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Daddy didn’t pay her no mind, but Mama watched him all day. Watched the way he spread out his arms when he laughed. Watched him sing with that perfect mouth oval. Watched him dance with a pretty woman twice her age when the jazz came on.
Mama didn’t mind waiting. Went back to Louisiana, grew up, worked almost ten years in a hospital answering calls, and saved up enough to move out to Oakland. Then Mama went looking for Daddy, twelve years after she first met him in that park. She eventually found him bartending in a little pub off MacArthur Boulevard in 1989, when downtown was full of crackheads and abandoned buildings and cops who still liked to mess with Daddy, the lead-up to his eventual lockup.
Mama knew she was that kind of beautiful that seemed to have just walked out of a painting. Her hair was teased into a faux mohawk like she was starring in a Whitney Houston music video and she was a graceful tall, took these huge steps when she walked. Mama wore wide-leg red pants to go fall in love with Daddy and kept them even after they tore at the seams. This time, when Mama strutted up to him, he was so mesmerized he almost dropped a bottle of whiskey. Not by the way she looked but by the way she existed. Mama was like woman grown out a seed, arms twisting, fruit and breasts and all things hard to resist. Daddy wanted to wrap his arms around her trunk and Mama knew he would.
An orchestrated love is almost more precious than a natural one; harder to give up something you spent that long making.
Mama married Daddy and they moved into the Regal-Hi by the time Marcus was born. When Mama looked at Daddy, she saw posters of a lightning boy’s face. She didn’t never see the way Daddy fogged up in the winter or how he would save a dollar bill before he’d ever save a family photo. I only ever saw Daddy and his music: dancing in the kitchen. Daddy was away in San Quentin from ages six to nine for me and I barely remember him not there. Marcus don’t feel that way, though. Used to throw a tantrum every time Daddy tried to touch him post-lockup. Mama used to tell him, “You lucky yo daddy got out ’fore you even grown a single hair on that face.”
And she was right: we were lucky that everyone knew Daddy’s name, until the day when suddenly we weren’t so lucky, and Mama’s trunk splintered.
“You’d really give me Uncle Ty’s number?” I ask.
Mama coughs again on the end of the line. “Course I would. Just want my babies to come see me out here first.” She says it and it sticks onto the insides of my stomach, the way Mama makes everything into a deal.
“Mama, we ain’t gonna try to get you out again or nothing. Can’t do it even if I wanted to. You in a halfway house now, you should be happy about that. And you know Marcus not going nowhere for you.” My teeth grind and I don’t know why she always makes me say it, crush all the parts of me that just want her to hold me and hum.
“You gotta talk to him, Kiara, really talk to him. I know you ain’t been trying like that and it’s okay, baby, I just need you to come here. Give me an hour and I’ll give you all your uncle’s shit. We got visiting hours Saturday morning. I know I’ll see my babies there. You be there.”
And Mama repeats this, goes on about all the things we’re gonna do together. I don’t say nothing else because her voice is here, breathing into me. I sit down on the tile floor, close my eyes, lean back against the wall, let the phone send her voice right to me, let the heat melt me away. Mama hangs up at some point, the bathroom lightbulb goes out at some point, and I drip into sleep at some point. The night blurs together into a stream of Mama’s voice.
The bus ride up to Mama is loud. The windows don’t open and the whole vehicle is a fever of noise and muck and bodies without destinations. I didn’t even know there was a bus to Stockton, but I looked it up and got on the first one this morning straight out of Oakland right through Dublin to Mama. When I boarded the bus, I already knew it would be hours of waiting to escape. I have a window seat, but this woman with three trash bags full of clothes decided to sit next to me and I swear those bags smell like the section of West Oakland right by the wastewater treatment plant.
Yesterday I went to the studio looking for Marcus and found him where he always is, rapping some nonsense. I begged him to come visit Mama with me, but he refused, over and over again, no matter how many of my tears escaped, said he’d already tried working at the club for me, that he needed space to record his album.
Not long after I left Marcus, Alé called and asked if I wanted to share a washer at the laundromat down the street with her. I haven’t seen Alé in a while, but after everything with Marcus I couldn’t imagine sitting and waiting in the apartment for night to come, so I said yes. Still, when I went to the apartment to fill a pillowcase with my dirty clothes, the only ones I could find were Marcus’s. So I took Marcus’s laundry to meet Alé and when I poured it into her basket, she looked up at me like a bloody knife had fallen in there with all the clothes.
“What?”
“These ain’t even your clothes.”
Instead of laughing at me or hollering or going over to one of the girls sitting in the line of the lavandería chairs and telling them, Look at this girl, she don’t even wash her own clothes, Alé hugged me. Came right up to me and enveloped me into the damp sweat of her shirt.
We sat there watching the water flood in on the fabrics, turning them all a darker color and then taking them for a spin. Alé tried asking me what was going on, why I haven’t been around, what’s up with our rent, but I kept my eyes on the suds of soap collecting on the glass. She dropped it and stared with me until it was time to change the load.
I get off the bus in Stockton, which looks like the desert has found its way to Northern California, reminding me of what it was like up in Marin County the day we reunited with Daddy. The dust in the air gets in my eyes and I hope Mama’s got enough heart left in her to disregard Marcus’s absence.
The day Daddy got released from San Quentin, Mama borrowed Uncle Ty’s dusty Honda and drove Marcus and me to Marin to pick him up. Marcus didn’t wanna come. Mama threatened him with everything she could think of until finally, when she said she’d take away his time with Uncle Ty, he said he’d go. We were sitting in the back of the car while Mama paced around the parking lot in front of us, the buildings uniform and cream-colored and industrial. I watched Marcus’s twelve-year-old fingers search the cracks separating the middle seat, coming up with cracker crumbs, remnants of weed, and a broken pencil.
Daddy walked out of those doors with his arms spread up, hands facing the sky, teeth so dazzlingly white I thought he must’ve been using whitening strips inside, but Daddy said it was just God keeping them clean so he’d look nice for his babies. His face was so unfamiliar, I didn’t even realize it was him until Marcus huffed beside me and Mama took off running across the parking lot toward him. She ran fast, sprinted into him, and he stumbled back, but held on to her waist. Mama gripped her hand inside his short ’fro, speckled silver, and we could see her shaking from afar.