On Saturdays, when she wanted to go shopping, we’d often get up at seven in the morning so we could get to the mall with the cheapest discounts by that afternoon. I hated this most of all in the winter, when we’d have to march around the city and wait at poorly sheltered bus stops in the freezing cold.
Once we got to the mall, Mom had a whole new schedule and set of rules. “Don’t ask me for nothing,” she’d warn. “You know what we’re here for. We’re gonna get what we gotta get and then we’re gonna go.”
If I was good and didn’t ask for anything, sometimes she’d get me a slushy or a slice of pizza to get me hyped about carrying her shopping bags home. The transportation jigsaw puzzle on the way back was even worse, because I had to do it loaded down with bags. These days sometimes took up to six hours of preparation and transportation just to spend an hour at the mall.
Back then, all this drove me mad with frustration. But as I write about it today, I’m not complaining. I actually appreciate it. Unbeknownst to her, Mom was preparing me for the grind ahead. As I’m working on this book, for example, I’m in my trailer on the set of a movie. This is what my day was like yesterday:
When I woke up, I ran for ninety minutes. I lifted weights for another hour. Then I had to pack my stuff to switch hotel rooms. After that, I had lunch, followed by three back-to-back meetings that lasted another hour and a half. From there, I went straight to the lobby to take a van to the movie set. I got there at four in the afternoon. I didn’t start shooting my scene until midnight. That scene only took fifteen minutes, and then I waited another two hours to shoot for twenty minutes. I waited another hour and a half until a production assistant told me they didn’t need me anymore, at which point I caught a van back to the hotel and went to bed just after four in the morning.
In other words, I’m pretty much doing the same thing I did as a kid. I’m living a tightly organized and structured routine, except instead of getting to the mall, I’m spending twelve hours on set just to shoot for thirty-five minutes.
If I complained about this or threw a tantrum, I probably wouldn’t be working today. Instead, this schedule is something I easily accept, because it’s always been a part of my life. It turns out that the things I hated most as a child are the same things that serve me the most as an adult.
9
* * *
SNAPPING FUCKING PEAS
“Hey, Nance,” one of my aunts was telling my mother on the phone. “You know, Shirrel’s having everyone over for dinner tomorrow. Want us to swing by so we can pick you and Kevin up on the way?”
I stood next to the phone, thinking, Please, please, Mom, say yes. Say yes. Say yes.
It would save hours of time and aggravation if my aunt gave us a ride. But I couldn’t say this out loud because if I uttered even a word, as soon as she got off the phone, Mom would pop me.
One of the things my mom hated most was when it looked to others like her household was out of control. I’d tried begging her to accept a ride once before, and her response was to pause, smack me around, and snap, “Don’t you embarrass me. You shut your mouth when I’m talking.”
Hoping for the impossible, I dropped down next to her and waited, only to hear her tell my aunt, “No, we’re okay. I don’t need y’all to pick us up. We’re gonna take the bus.”
The goddamn bus. I could recite every advertisement on that fucking bus by heart.
I walked to my bed, using every ounce of willpower to keep myself from kicking something. “How’d you get so stupid?” I yelled into the pillow. “Why don’t you wanna get a ride nowhere? Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”
* * *
Family dinner began at six in the evening, so we left the house at ten in the morning. We started then not because the commute to the middle of nowhere in West Oak Lane was so long, but because . . . I don’t fucking know why. When we arrived, the only person at the house was my cousin Shirrel, who was twenty years older than me. Her husband, Preston, was out getting groceries, and their kids were in the street playing.
Eventually, my aunts Hattie, Patsy, and Mae arrived, which meant I was now sitting around with five old ladies, bored out of my skull, hoping they’d let me go outside and play. But instead they put me to work in the kitchen.
Some people cook with love. I prepared the food with hate, muttering angrily under my breath the whole time.
Me: You got me in here snapping fucking peas. Ain’t nobody else here. I’m hanging out like an idiot for four hours before the dinner. This is bullshit.
Mom: Kevin, wash that pot out for your aunt.
Me: Yes, Mom. I’ll wash your pots. I’ll wash your pots with my piss. See how you like those snap peas a little soggy.
Of course, I couldn’t actually work up the nerve to sabotage the food or rebel in any way. I washed pots, cleaned greens, and cooked while my mom talked and laughed with her sisters in the living room. Eventually, other relatives arrived, and my cousin Preston came home. He went straight upstairs to watch Die Hard.
“Hey, your aunt said to take that vinegar upstairs and give it to your cousin,” my mom yelled soon after.
“Why don’t she just take it to Preston her own damn self?” I muttered under my breath.
Then I realized that if I took the vinegar upstairs, I could watch some of the movie with him.
I climbed the stairs, but the moment I crossed the threshold of his room, Preston yelled, “Hey! What are you doing? Boy, get outta here.”
“I have your vinegar.”
“So they got you down there in that kitchen doing a bunch of shit?” he laughed.
“Can I stay up here with you?”
“No! Put that on the table and get out of here.”
I did as he asked, then sat at the top of the stairs so I could at least listen to the movie. “Boy, what are you doing?” he barked after a couple of minutes. “Get back down there with the women.”
I went back down there with the women. (Sometimes you don’t realize how pathetic your own life is until you see it staring back at you on the page of your book.)
As I set the table just before dinner, fed up from the work, I thought about the long bus trip we’d have to take home in the cold that night. That’s when I decided to make my move.
I pulled my aunt Patsy aside and whispered, “Don’t tell my mom that I’m asking you, because if she finds out, she’s gonna get mad at me. But please don’t let her make us catch the bus. When we leave, it’s gonna be late, and we’ll be out there so long in that cold.”
Then I pulled my cousins aside and pleaded with them as well, working all the angles. When they told me that they got me, I breathed a sigh of relief.
During the meal, once everyone started drinking, one of my older cousins said, “Nancy, that boy don’t want to be on that bus tonight. Let us take you home.”
“No, he’s fine. Kevin, ain’t you fine?”
“Yeah.” No, no, no, no.
“We should get outta here now anyway so we can get home at a reasonable hour.”