She sighed deeply and ran her thin fingers through her hair, hair that had once had a healthy sheen to it and now looked dull, with strands of gray invading like a threat. I hated to see Mama age. Worry and trouble weighed heavily on the hands of her clock, rushing time along. I wanted her to be forever young with a face full of smiles and hope and a voice filled with laughter and song. For as long as I could remember, Mama had to work hard. She hated the thought of being on welfare. No matter how wasteful and neglectful Ken was, Mama wouldn't succumb. She had a steel rod of pride through her spine.
"As long as there's an ounce of strength in these legs and arms," she would tell us, "I'm never going to let the government tell me I'm part of the problem. No sir, no ma'am, no. Latisha Carrol's got a long way down before she hits bottom."
Right now, she looked like there wasn't all that much longer to go. Currently, Mama worked at Krandel's Market stocking shelves and packing groceries like some high-school dropout. She never complained about it, however.
None of us had any kind of job, but when Roy was younger, to earn tip money he would go to the supermarket and carry groceries out to cars for people. Once an elderly white lady gave him a twenty. Mama felt sure she meant to give him a dollar and just made a mistake. She told Roy to wait for the lady and return it as soon as he saw her. Roy didn't want to. That twenty nearly burned a hole in his pocket, but he was afraid to spend it. Finally, he saw the same old lady and told her what she had done. She looked at him as if he was crazy and told him he must be in error. She doesn't make those kind of mistakes. He came running home to tell Mama, who sat back, thought and said, "Well Roy, if that old white lady's so arrogant she can't admit a mistake, then it's honestly yours."
Ken told him he shouldn't have bothered trying to give it back anyway, but Mama always had a bigger influence on us than Ken did. I don't remember exactly when Roy lost respect for our daddy, but I think Ken knew all along that his son didn't look up to him. Maybe that was part of the reason he stayed away from home so much.
"Your daddy's gone and left us again," Mama said.
"Good riddance to him," Roy snapped.
"You know I don't like that talk, Roy Arnold. He's still your father and you know what the Bible says about honoring your father and mother."
"God wasn't thinking of him when he had that written down, Ma," Roy said angrily.
"Don't you go claiming to know what God meant or intended, Roy Arnold," she fired back at him, her eyes filling with the heat and light of her passion. Mama always felt that holding on to her religion was the only glue that held us together. She wasn't a regular churchgoer, nor did she chase us to church on Sunday as faithfully as some other mothers herded their children, but she never let us drift too far from prayer and the Bible.
Roy shook his head and lowered it as he slumped with fatigue.
"I'm going back to bed," he muttered.
"Y' all go back to bed. You've got school in the morning and I don't want to have to shake you girls awake, hear?"
"Are you going to bed, Mama?" I asked her.
"Soon," she said.
I looked at Beni. We both knew she would stay up most of the night tossing and turning with worry. Bills were the ghosts that haunted our home, flashing their numbers on the walls in Mama's room, piling themselves on her shoulders. Ken never worried about our bills. It was always a battle to get him to pay for some of our expenses before he spent his paycheck, when he had one, on his own pleasure and
amusement.
Whenever Ken ran off like this, his paycheck disappe
ared with him and whatever small amount Mama might have gotten from it was gone too. She didn't make anywhere near enough at the supermarket to take care of our needs.
"Beni and I will look for work tomorrow, Mama."
"No, you won't," she retorted so fast it was as if she'd expected my offer. "I want you girls
concentrating on your school work."
"But Mama, other girls our age are working part-time here and there," Beni protested. "Why can't we?"
"So when do they do their homework, huh, Beni? They work after school. They drag their sorry selves home late and don't do any reading or writing, and then they work weekends and can't study then either," Mama declared.
"We aren't going to college anyway, Mama. It doesn't matter," Beni said.
"Why can't you try to be more positive, Beni? Ram manages to," Mama said, her eyes narrowing.
Beni flashed an angry look at me.
Mama shook her head and looked at Roy.
"We'll be all right, Mama," he said. "I'm taking that job at Slim's Garage. be giving you as much as he ever did, probably more."
"I don't want you giving up on school, Roy," Mama said, but not with a great deal of insistence. Roy was a man now, eighteen, with broad shoulders pumped with pride, pride she knew he had inherited from her.