Sydney was in her bedroom near the rear of the house watching TV when she heard Kendra yell her name. It was Friday night. The sixth grader was enjoying her show while her grandmother was “entertaining” one of her friends after having just finished her shift at Church Hospital South. Sydney wondered what she wanted this time.
When she came into the living room, Kendra and Jesse were playing a card game. The air was full of cigarette smoke. "Sydney, bring me and Jesse a couple of beers!" The kitchen was a few feet away from them, but the girl did as she was told. She was already the same height as her grandmother, but she never gave her any lip. As she set the cold drinks on the coffee table in front of them, she noticed that Kendra had stopped laughing and carrying on with Jesse. She was looking at her hard like she just spilled beer on the card table or something. Then she took a long drag of her cigarette. "Tomorrow I’m taking you to get fitted for a bra,” she said, “so you can stop walking around here looking like a common whore.”
Sydney felt her heart in her stomach as she looked at Jesse rubbing his bowed head. She stood up carefully trying not to cause her new, budding breasts to receive any further unwanted attention. Fully upright, she clasped her hands together over her chest and took the queue of silence as permission to leave the room. She walked away entirely deflated and wished that she lived anywhere else but here with Kendra. She closed the door to her room and rummaged through her dresser drawers until she found an oversized sweatshirt. She pulled it out and quickly put it on, wondering why her grandmother called her that awful name and humiliated her in front of Jesse. Of all the men that Kendra had over at the house, Jesse was the only one who did not make her feel tense. He always asked her if she was keeping her grades up in school and Sydney noticed that when he visited, Kendra seemed calmer. She laid her head down on her pillow and heard Jesse raise his voice although she couldn’t make out what he said. She wanted out of Kendra’s house and would have called her mother in California if it wasn’t for two things: the time difference and the fact that Tracy didn’t want her either.
***
Tracy was fourteen when she gave birth to Sydney. From the moment Tracy began to grow into her womanhood until Sydney's first birthday, Kendra made Tracy's life intolerable. She reminded her daily of how disgusted she was with her for embarrassing her and making her such a young grandmother. Kendra did not lift one finger to help her care for the infant. “You made your bed, now you gotta lie in it. Even though you probably didn’t even use a bed.”
Sixteen-year-old Sidney was in Montgomery for a month attending bible camp at their church. Tracy lied and told him that she was fifteen instead of thirteen. So he told her that since she was pretty, he would be happy to show her what all the kids her age were already doing back in his hometown of Detroit. The teenagers were together every day for two and a half weeks. Tracy would sneak him into Mrs. Bradley's house, the lady she babysat for, and each afternoon at 3 o'clock when the kids were napping, Sid would sneak away from camp and the two would play “house.”
Tracy was in love. As Sid kissed on her neck, Tracy would talk about Kendra and tell him how sad she was and how much she wanted to go away. For the first time in a long time, she felt cared for when Sid would say, "baby, don't think about none of that stuff ‘cause I'm here now and I know how to make it all better." Then he would pull her closer and have her doing things with her body she never knew was possible. He told her that one day she would thank him for getting her well prepared for all the other men she would be with. But Tracy told him that she only wanted to be with him.
When bible camp was over, Sid began to prepare to go back to Detroit but certainly not before having one last afternoon with Tracy. Nine months later she bore a daughter and for a solid year she did the best she could, but she did not know how to care for a child. She thought of nothing but Sid and obsessed over plans to get to Detroit to be with him. So, on Sydney's first birthday, Tracy collected all the birthday cards with money in it that Kendra's friends gave as gifts for the baby and stuffed the bills in her pocket. While her mother was having a nightcap with their new neighbor, Tracy crammed some clothes in her book bag and looked down at her daughter sleeping in the crib. "Good luck baby, I gotta go,” she said. She kneeled down and kissed her and walked out the backdoor headed for the Greyhound bus station. The next morning Kendra woke up alone on the couch and saw a folded piece of paper with “Mama” written on it. She grabbed the paper and unfolded it revealing a note that read:
Mama,
By the time you read this, I’ll be long gone. I can’t take care of the baby all by myself. I’m not cut out for this. I’m too young and I need to get out of here.
Goodbye,
Tracy
Kendra sprang up and scurried into Tracy’s bedroom. She was fuming as she looked down at her plump granddaughter who was happily preoccupied chewing on a stuffed elephant. Kendra surveyed Tracy’s closet and found it nearly empty. At that, she yanked the remaining clothes down, breaking the pole they hung on, and emitted a piercing screech that caused Sydney to shutter and wail uncontrollably.
***
It was just after six o’clock in the morning and it was quiet except for Jesse’s snoring and the soothing hum of raindrops tapping the window of Kendra’s brick house. Although she was not a fan of brick houses, they were her only option when she purchased it in one of Montgomery’s newest residential subdivisions two decades earlier. She loved that it was near her job at Church Hospital South, the Black hospital on the Black side of town which seemed like a world away from Church Hospital East. Unlike her childhood home in Los Angeles, there were no stucco houses. It was one of the first things that she observed about Alabama. Brick houses and trees, so many wild, burly trees.
Despite the brick, Kendra adored her home. She spared no expense on the house that some said she loved more than her own offspring. She paid to have her landscaped lawn and sprawling pink rose bushes tended to on a regular basis. The hypnotic fragrance from the roses seeped into the two-bedroom, one-bathroom house providing a perpetual inviting aroma. The modest home was outfitted with cheap furniture that was camouflaged by Kendra’s decorative touches to mimic the homes that she admired on popular television shows.
And there were framed photographs of Kendra’s family in every room except the bathroom. The framed photograph in the kitchen was of Kendra’s mother holding a casserole dish. A handsome man with black leather-like skin and a long straight nose wore a suit and hat in the framed photograph that hung in the living room. Sydney was told that the man was Kendra’s father. In Sydney’s room was a photograph of Tracy and Tracy’s brother, Daniel Jr., both of whom Sydney knew very little about. She knew that her mother abandoned her, but that did not stop her from fantasizing that Tracy would come back for her one day. As for Daniel Jr., she could never get much out of Kendra about him other than he drowned at a young age.
Sydney, sensing that Kendra’s small, fractured family was a sensitive subject, would sneak into Kendra’s room to look at the raggedy, over-stuffed photograph albums that her grandmother stowed away under her bed. Sydney was mesmerized by the old, regal faces of the strangers and imagined stories about them. She always searched the back of them to record the words that were inscribed there, to copy it in her secret notebook along with a description on the photograph. She stored her most valuable item that included a photograph of Tracy affixed to the inside, safely in her desk’s lowest drawer. Sydney was so curious about her ancestors and periodically busied herself with trying to piece together her family history. On good days, she would get answers from Kendra. However, on other days her attempts were squashed when Kendra would grunt and say, “stop asking me all these questions!”
Having worked the 7am-3pm shift for the last fifteen years, Kendra was an early riser even on her days off. After she made a pot of coffee and lit the fireplace, she crawled back into her lush queen size bed complete with the softest egg crate foam mattress topper, slippery rose gold silk sheets and fluffy down comforter. She had to finish putting Jesse out so she could enjoy her day off.
"C'mon, girl." Jesse pleaded. "It's raining out there, plus I'd be leavin' this dynamite body here all alone."
"Jesse, the sun and the heat will be out any minute and you know it. And I really don't care 'bout you leavin' me long as you come back with some scrambled eggs and sausage." Kendra was lying on her stomach with a crooked smile on her face as she lightly shoved him. "Oh, and don't forget to get strawberry jelly for my English muffin. I can't eat the muffin without strawberry jelly."
Jesse took Kendra's slender, graceful hands into his to keep her from nudging him. He smiled looking down at her in awe of her flawless face with its high cheekbones. There wasn't a blemish to be found. Jesse was transfixed by her eyes and smooth skin the color of red clay. She had a natural glow to her, and Jesse was still in disbelief that he was actually lying in bed with her for the fourth time since they met two months ago.
"Oh, baby." Jesse said, knowing he was taking his chances. "I got an idea. Why don't you go on and make us a nice, home-cooked breakfast and we'll eat it right here."
He gave Kendra a loud slap on her bottom that jiggled under her long, pastel, see through nightgown. Kendra stared at him for a second before she propped herself up, threw her head back and shouted out in laughter. "Man, you must be crazy if you think I'm gonna get up and cook for you!" She stopped laughing and stared at him, "What have you done for me?" Jesse looked like he just saw a ghost; his eyes wide and mouth slightly opened. Kendra moved her head to one side waiting for an answer and when she didn’t get one, she answered for him. "Right, nothin'. You haven't bought me a single thing, so I don't know what possessed you into thinking that I would do a damn thing for you." Kendra tightened her lips and shook her head. She sprung out of bed and tied on her flowy lavender robe.
"It's time for you to go, Jesse," Kendra said as she reached for her hairbrush and began to smooth out the tangles from her hair. She had long, wispy, dark brown hair like her mother and Jesse liked to playfully tug at it. She watched him now through the mirror above her dresser as he got up from the bed. He pulled his shirt on and slowly buttoned it, covering up his high yellow chest and then fastened his pants, his face and heart pained by a woman unlike any other he’d ever met. But Kendra was oblivious to the fact that he was wounded. She was only aware that he looked like a fool with his shirt buttoned up incorrectly with one side of his collar awkwardly flipped up. Instantly disgusted, she wondered what she saw in Jesse when they met at her coworker’s birthday party. That night he was witty and fun and most importantly, generous with his money. But on that early, rainy April morning in Kendra’s small, toasty, coffee-scented house, Jesse Yarbrough was just plain ignorant and obviously broke. Those were two major no-no’s for Kendra. After all, it was 1988 and the days of settling for broke men were over. Suddenly, she could hear the familiar sound of her granddaughter’s new favorite song, Biz Markie’s “Vapors,” that she played constantly, coming from her bedroom. It was the perfect distraction. Kendra, relieved that she was awake, opened her bedroom door, headed for the kitchen and yelled, "Sydney!"
"Yeeessss?" Sydney stopped the cassette tape playing on her small boom box and appeared before her grandmother.
Kendra began to take off her eleven-year-old granddaughter’s head scarf and spoke loudly, so her overnight guest was sure to hear, "Guess what you get to have for breakfast?"
Flummoxed, yet excited by her grandmother’s enthusiasm, Sydney grinned as she guessed. "Donuts?!"
"No, chile.” Kendra smirked. “I'm gonna make a big ‘ol breakfast! Omelets, grits, and...pancakes!" Sydney's grin disappeared. Her typical breakfast was cereal, Honey Nut Cheerios, Kendra’s favorite, or Fruit Loops if she was lucky enough to be granted her own favorite.
Kendra, recognizing Sydney’s disappointed frown, quickly shooed her away, "go on back in your room, I'll tell you when it's ready." Kendra began to pull out the pot and pan from the kitchen cabinet above the sink when Jesse entered with his shirt buttoned properly.
"So, you mean to tell me that I can't have none of that food you ‘bout to make,” he questioned.
"That's right, when you do for me, I'll do for you." Kendra explained without looking at him. Sydney turned back and saw the man drop and shake his head before exiting the kitchen.
"Well, Kendra, that's too bad. I really wish I had some money to get you some breakfast and whatever else you want, but I lost it all last night gambling. If I'd known that...."
"Oh ok, so you're a loser?" Her facial expression bore phony interest. "Well, come back around when you start to win something," she said, rolling her eyes. Then she proceeded to fill the pot with water. Sydney felt ashamed as she peered into the room and listened from the hallway.
Jesse forced a laugh, "Alright, then." He grabbed his jacket off of the chair and in that moment, he accepted that this woman who all the men in town lusted after was too good to be true. She was as fine as they come, but she wasn't the kind of woman that an average, honest working man like him could possess.
“So, that’s all that’s important to you, woman? Money?”
Kendra squealed loudly as she turned her head to face him. “Ha! Well, we know it ain’t important to you since you don’t mind throwing it all away.” She raised her voice even louder when she saw his mouth preparing to respond. “As for me, I value my money! I work too hard not to have what I want. I’m tryin’ to get out from over here. This side of town is going down fast. And I should be over in one of those new builds in Rabbit Park with three bedrooms and a deck in the back. I should be driving a new car with a CD player in it and have extra money to go on a trip every now and then! And ain’t nothing wrong with that! I just want more, who doesn’t?” Kendra calmed down and sighed, “except you.”
Dismayed, Jesse turned and walked out of the kitchen. Sydney quietly crept into the living room and opened the door for him as he put on his coat. "Good morning, Miss Sydney." Jesse greeted her with a nod. Sydney smiled. "You be good. Don't grow up to be like your grandmother in there. She's a fox, but that’s not everything. You remember that." He chuckled, shaking his head. "That's one cold lady that’s got her hooks in me." Sydney watched as he walked down the newly dry driveway, start his pick-up truck and drive off. Feeling the residue water from the awning drip onto her face, she slammed the door shut and walked into the empty kitchen. There was not one pot on the stove.
She found Kendra lying across her bed drinking coffee as she gossiped on the phone. "Go dry those pans and put them up and get some cereal." Confused, Sydney walked back into her room and put her cassette tape into her Walkman and turned the volume up to drown out Kendra's loud account of how she put Jesse's "sorry butt out on the street." In between loud laughter, Kendra hollered, "yes girl, in the rain—you know I ain't nothin' nice!"
Contributor Notes
Jina DuVernay is a librarian, archivist, and freelance writer. DuVernay has published several articles and book chapters that center around archives and librarianship. The California native currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia where she is pursuing a PhD in Humanities at Clark Atlanta University. You can find her on most platforms @jinaduvernay.
