Any Day Now

CW: Themes of and/or references to racial slurs, child sexual abuse, colorism, and homophobia

“Mama, you want some water?” Florence asked her mother, Miss Mamie, who was sprawled across a queen-sized bed. Florence was Miss Mamie’s oldest daughter, and her voice was deep and husky, like a man’s.

     “No,” Miss Mamie said. “I don’t want no water. What I want is for you to leave me alone. Always bothering me with something or another.”

      Miss Mamie looked at her daughter as if she had never seen her before. Florence was a huge woman with a big, plain face that looked like neither her mother’s nor her father’s. She wore a red blouse with a plaid skirt that came almost to her knees and white tube socks that were rolled down to her ankles.

    “Why don’t you fix yourself up some?” Miss Mamie said to Florence. “Put some makeup on. No wonder nobody ever wanted to marry you.”

     “Oh, Mama,” Florence said and laughed that silly laugh of hers. Florence was nearly fifty years old, with six kids, and no husband. She had never once concerned herself with getting married.

     “I got one at home just like that,” a voice said, startling Miss Mamie. She sat up in bed.

      “Is that you Eddie?” Miss Mamie asked.

      “No, Mama,” Florence said. “That’s our minister, Reverend Keels.”

       “Reverend Taylor my minister,” Miss Mamie wondered why Florence was so confused. Who asked her anyway?

     “Reverend Taylor been dead now about two years.” Florence looked towards the Reverend Keels for confirmation.

     “It’ll be two years in August,” the Reverend Keels said, nodding his head. “Miss Mamie, I’ve been coming to see you once a week for over a month. Don’t you remember?”

     “Yes sir, of course I remember,” Miss Mamie said, lying. She didn’t remember much of anything these days. Some things she wanted to remember. She got tired of everybody correcting her when she called them the wrong name. But there were things she was glad to forget —like her family and the way they treated her when she was a child. She had dark skin, black really. The kind of blackness you had before you stepped on a slave ship or off. And they called her blackie and burnt toast and midnight, even her mama, who didn’t seem to like her much anyway. “You just like yo no good daddy,” her mama told her often. And her half-sisters, light-skinned and beautiful, Beulah and Noreen, could do no wrong.  Her mother made her wash all of their clothes. Miss Mamie had to cook every meal, clean the house, and chop wood in the wintertime while her stepdaddy would sit on the back porch and watch. Her mama wouldn’t let her go to school, and when she did get a job, Miss Mamie’s mama took her whole paycheck.

       Miss Mamie took a better look at the reverend. He sounded so much like Eddie. But he didn’t have none of Eddie’s good looks. Eddie was a thinner man, with a darker complexion. From a distance, the reverend could pass for white.

     “Would you like me to pray for you, Miss Mamie?” the reverend asked.

      “Do whatever the hell you want” is what she wanted to say. But since this here was a reverend and she was so close to dying, “any day now,” she heard her children whispering when they thought she was asleep- she gave the reverend a phony smile and said, “yes, sir, will you please?”

     It was peculiar to Miss Mamie that she wasn’t in any pain. If a person was dying, it seems like they should feel some pain. She just hoped she wasn’t asleep when her time came. She wanted to be wide awake, so she could look death in his face and let him know she wasn’t afraid.

    “Who’s that?” Miss Mamie said, after she woke up from a short nap and seeing a strange man in her room.

     “Mama, that’s our minister, Rev. Keels,” Florence said, not sounding like herself.

     “Reverend Taylor my minister.”

     “Reverend Taylor passed away about two years ago, Mama. Don’t you remember?”

     The Reverend Keels smiled and looked kind of embarrassed.

     Well, he might be a reverend but Miss Mamie sure didn’t like his looks. He was a complete stranger to her. And she didn’t like no strangers in her house. She remembered the last time a stranger was in her house.

    “Florence, bring me my glasses.”

     “Mama, I’m Lucille. Florence went out to get some groceries.” Lucille was Miss Mamie’s second daughter. She had married a respectable man, a doctor or lawyer or something like that. Lucille had her own house, not like Florence or Jimmy, who still lived with Miss Mamie. And that Florence was such a slut with all those children. Different daddies, all of them-- even the twins. And Jimmy had been a good boy. He didn’t start getting into trouble until right after his daddy left. He was always messing around with drugs, getting into fights, or stealing, even from her. Miss Mamie had to sleep with her money between her legs so Jimmy could not find it.

     “Well, Lucille, where my glasses?”

     “They’re on your face, Mama. You napped in them.”

     Miss Mamie reached up her hands and felt her glasses on her face. She felt a little silly. Hell, why should she? She was sick and old, almost seventy-five. Why would anyone with good sense expect her to remember where her glasses were?

     Miss Mamie looked around the room. There was a stranger- oh no, that was the new reverend. See, she remembered. “Reverend Keels,” she said and smiled, like a little girl who had just won a bet. “Could you please read to me from the scriptures?”

     “I’ll be happy to, Miss Mamie.” The Reverend Keels opened up the bible and began reading the 23rd psalm. The 23rd psalm, Miss Mamie thought, who reads that psalm? Anybody over the age of five knows it by heart. He probably wasn’t even a real reverend. Still, she didn’t mind. She did like his voice. He sounded so much like Eddie.

      Miss Mamie had met Eddie when she was working at McGovern’s Shoe Factory. They treated their black workers pretty good back then; though, they had white and colored restrooms. And the Black people- or rather, colored people- could only come in through the back door. They liked Eddie, though. They even let Eddie train the colored workers, and he had taught her how to make shoes.

     Eddie was a delicate-looking man, with his hair, wavy and slicked back. And though he was only 23, he already had his own house. Eddie loved paintings and poetry and other stuff Miss Mamie hated. He liked everything in its place, and he worried about whether the curtains matched the fabric on the sofa.

     Miss Mamie’s family had teased her mercilessly when she and Eddie began dating. She had defended him, though not understanding most of his ways herself. And that time, before they had gotten married, when she put Eddie’s hand down her blouse, he got up from the sofa and ran. She had thought he was just being respectful.

      On their wedding night, Eddie told Miss Mamie that he knew she was a virgin and wanted to take things slow. Ten days after the wedding, Miss Mamie was still a virgin. Things didn’t get much better after the marriage was consummated. Naturally, Miss Mamie had a curiosity about sex. But after a couple of times, she felt no great desire or need for it. Miss Mamie was content with the rare performances that Eddie offered. And, somehow, together they managed to produce four children.

    It was the night Miss Mamie’s mother had died, and Miss Mamie came home unexpectedly that she found a stranger in the house. Her mother had gotten terribly ill. And she and her half- sisters were supposed to share the responsibility of taking care of her. Miss Mamie’s half-sisters were selfish people, so Miss Mamie did the majority of looking after their mother. Miss Mamie had gone to the kitchen to get herself something to drink, and when she returned to the bedroom, her mother was no longer breathing. She called her half-sisters, Beulah and Noreen, and told them to come over immediately. Exhausted, she left her mother dead and alone and went home to her husband.     

      Something’s not right, Miss Mamie thought as she opened the door to her house. She could hear a strange man’s voice coming from the bedroom. Imagining an intruder had broken in and was assaulting Eddie, Miss Mamie grabbed the first thing she could lay her hands on-- an antique vase Eddie had bought at an auction. But when she opened the door to the bedroom, what she saw made her doubt her eyesight and her sanity. There in her bed was her husband and another man, both naked. Miss Mamie threw the vase at the stranger, but missed, hitting the wall instead. The man got out of the bed and Miss Mamie jumped on his back. Eddie, who had begun to pick up the pieces of the broken vase, pulled her off and then held her while the man got dress. It would be later that Miss Mamie wondered would anyone think it was funny that a man would protect his boyfriend from his wife.

    After the man left and no more tears could be cried, Miss Mamie asked Eddie how could he do such a thing.

     Eddie explained to Miss Mamie that he always knew he was different. “I always knew I liked men.”

     “Why did you marry me? Me?”

      “I thought you could change me.” Eddie said. Miss Mamie felt both flattered and insulted.

     “We can work through this,” Miss Mamie said, not quite believing it. “We have too. For the children”

     Everything was fine at first, but Miss Mamie began with the questions. How many men had he been with? Eddie refused to answer that. She was his wife, she told him. She had a right to know. Was it different with a man than a woman? And he had looked at her as though there was something the matter with her. Her! And those times he had been with her, was he thinking about other men? He couldn’t take anymore, he said. So, he packed his things and left. The only one of the children who acted like they cared was Eddie Jr.-- who cried for a week.

     Eddie always sent money. Miss Mamie could give him that. But she didn’t like it when people would ask her where her husband was, and she didn’t know. Of course, she would make something up. But a wife should know where the man she married was, shouldn’t she? And now, since the money quit coming when the last child had gotten grown, she didn’t even know if Eddie was dead or alive.

     Eddie was indeed alive and living not more than thirty miles from Miss Mamie. He had heard about his wife’s sickness just as he had heard about Florence’s whoring around and Jimmy’s problems with the law. He knew Lucille had done well for herself and Eddie Jr. had taken a lot after him.

    Eddie wanted to visit Miss Mamie, help the children nurse her. But who was he kidding? No one would want to see him, except maybe Eddie Jr. who came to visit him a couple of times of year. Father’s Day and Christmas. Eddie Jr. never forgot. And always with a present, one for Joseph too. And Joseph, always so eager for Eddie Jr. to come. A little too eager, maybe.

    He had to watch Joseph with Eddie Jr. Eddie knew what an appetite Joseph had for young men with brown, beautiful skin. Joseph had brought enough of them home. But Joseph was dead now. And all Eddie had were an army of memories and a battalion of regrets. Memories of Miss Mamie, when she was young and sad and so sure the world had no use for her. Regrets over how he had used her. At first, he thought he was doing her a favor, taking her away from a house where her family crucified her daily with their words. It was a litany of insults and tears. Maybe he wasn’t the type of man women wanted, but he offered Miss Mamie love, kindness, family. And everything was going along well until that night.

      But Eddie was old now, too old to continue lying to himself. The only person he was doing a favor for was himself. Eddie knew no one could cure him of his affliction or chase away the pretty men in his dreams. But maybe she could salvage his manhood, or at the very least his soul.

     His mother had tried to do that when Eddie was fourteen, and she found him with his pants down and a boy in front of him on his knees. Eddie didn’t know how long his mother had watched him and the boy. When he opened his eyes, she was standing in his room, motionless--as if she believed that if she did not move, then what she was seeing would not be real. She threw the other boy out of the house and took Eddie to see their minister. After much crying and praying, the minister assured Eddie’s mother that it was nothing to worry about and it was just a phase the boy was going through and asked could he possibly talk to the boy alone. After the mother left, the minister began touching Eddie, rubbing his shoulders, and before Eddie left the church, he had lowered his pants for minister as well.

     When Eddie’s father found out about him being gay, he tried to tempt Eddie with women. He brought home anybody willing. Pretty young girls, a bored housewife, a couple of frustrated widows, prostitutes. But Eddie had refused them all. So, his father decided to beat it out of Eddie, this alien thing that kept his son from being a man. He whipped Eddie so badly with a belt that Eddie bled. And then his father cried and asked God to forgive him for whatever he did to deserve a son like this.

     Eddie stayed in that house until he turned eighteen and then he moved to a town where no one knew him. There he learned the language of real men, their gestures, their habits. He told the dirtiest of jokes, and what it ordinarily took two men to do Eddie did by himself. He learned to chew tobacco and would spit when other men spit. He scratched his crotch even when he didn’t want to. Then Eddie met Miss Mamie. He knew that simply being black in the white man’s world was a burden but to be literally black in the black man’s world was something extra. He thought they could lean against each other. And together they could survive the nastiness of the world.

     The very first week he met Miss Mamie--the week he taught her how to make shoes, he knew he would marry her. And on their wedding night, he too was a virgin, a virgin of women. He was repulsed by her body, her scent, and was grateful when she showed little interest in sex.

    The night Miss Mamie’s mother had died, Eddie had been so careful, sending the children over to a neighbor’s house, calling Miss Mamie early in the evening to make sure everything was o.k. How did he know her mother would die later, and Miss Mamie would come home and find him in bed with Joseph?

     Eddie had wanted to stay. He loved his family usually, and when he did not love them, he did not mind pretending that he did. And Miss Mamie, so shocked to discover his other life. She could never understand that love even under the best conditions was poor competition for passion. But it was those damn questions that made Eddie leave. Those questions-- punctuated with looks of disgust. He wouldn’t answer them. He couldn’t.

     Miss Mamie never told anyone why Eddie left. Not even the children. Why should she? It was nobody’s business but hers. She listened when women talked about finding husbands or lovers with other women. She consoled them. She wiped away their tears. She did all of this without pity or understanding, but rather she envied them--profoundly.

    Eddie Jr. was in the room with Miss Mamie now. ”Mama, drink this for me please.” He was her favorite, you know--so kind and gentle, just like his father. She prayed often that he did not inherit everything from his father.

     Why were all these people in the house, Miss Mamie wondered. Her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Miss Mamie drank the water Eddie Jr. had given her. And then she remembered. Someone was dying, she heard them say. She wished she could remember who.