her to pick one of the larger frames filled with smiling people, but she opened the top drawer, pushed aside a pile of underwear, and pulled out a picture as small as a stamp. She held it to her chest and looked down with a hunger I was familiar with. She then looked at me, her eyes softening under the deep grooves of her skin.
“You ever seen your daddy before?” she asked.
I shook my head no.
“You wanna see him?” I nodded, forcing myself not to grab the picture from her. With one hand gingerly placed on the other, she held the picture in front of me. I wanted to hold it close to my face, and stare eye to eye with my father, just as I had when I searched for him in the mirror. Instead, I held her hands in mine and looked down at the man staring back at me.
He was darker than I had imagined. His shoulders were slightly slumped and his chest looked as if it were caving in. I could see the thin outline of his arms under his green and orange striped shirt. His hairline was faint enough to be considered nonexistent. His eyes were dark like a melted Hershey bar and surrounded by a reddish tint that made him look as if sleep had eluded him for years. His nose resembled my own, starting as a narrow line between his eyes, but opening to an anchor that sat heavily in the middle of his face. His lips were smooth and one shade darker than the rest of him. They weren’t curled into a smile or turned into a frown. They were muted, a straight line that went from one side of his face to the other. I tried to read his eyes, tried to find something in them that showed they’d never held the emptiness Momma said she had seen when he’d beat her, when he used food money for beer, but there was nothing there for me.
Grandma Mary looked at me as I studied the picture. I wanted to ask if I could keep it, so I could remember him, but when I saw tears in her eyes, I knew that wasn’t the right thing to ask. Without her saying, I could tell that was the only piece of him she had left.
“Where is he?” I asked. “Don’t you know where he is?” She offered a smile and patted me on the head.
“I don’t know, baby. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“But where was he last? Is he still in Virginia?”
A look of apprehension shot across her face.
“No, I think he’s in Maryland. Probably in Baltimore,” she said.
“Why is he there? Is he ever coming back? Does he have a phone number?” I couldn’t stop the barrage of questions.
“I don’t know, baby. Don’t you want to eat your biscuit and go and play with the other kids?” she asked, gently ushering me toward the crowd.
I did not want to play or talk with the other kids. I did not want to eat my biscuit. I wanted to know where my father was. This I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t say what I felt. By the silent sadness that turned the edges of her eyes down, I knew she had given all she could. A glimpse, a nibble of him would have to be enough.
“Go on and play, Laurie,” she said. “Your cousins are going to miss you when you’re gone.” With a slight pop on my backside, she sent me over to the other kids in the room. I placed my biscuit on the dresser and began playing as hard as I could. I screamed with all of my might when we were in hot pursuit of one another and I laughed hardest, longest, and loudest, when I had to pee in a stew pot because I was afraid of going to the outhouse. I was in constant motion because I feared quiet.
We romped around the room late into the night. Just as I began to think we’d be making a pallet on the floor, Grandma Mary came into the room. “Come on y’all. Your momma’s ready to go,” she sang. We replied with groans and protests, but I feared going more than anyone could understand. We gathered in the living room and said our goodbyes. Tiffany and I hugged, promising we’d play together again. Bay-Bay, Ronnie, and my brothers finished the handshake they’d started earlier in the night. I hugged Granddaddy Frank and thanked him for having us. Grandma Mary emerged from the back room with my biscuit in hand.
“Laurie, you forgot your biscuit. You should take it with you. You might get hungry on the ride home,” she said as she wrapped it in a paper bag.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said as I moved toward her. She still smelled like biscuits, but that warmth I inhaled earlier had become cool between us. We were suffering the same pain, mourning the same absence, so I hugged her anyway.
“Bye, Grandma Mary and Granddaddy Frank. I can’t wait to see y’all again,” I said.
“Oh, we’ll see each other soon,” she said. “I’m going to make sure of it.”
I did not see her again until I was thirty years old. Even then we wore the same pain despite the living that hung between those years.
On the ride home, all of the other kids immediately fell asleep. As Momma drove the hour-long ride, I’m certain she thought I was asleep too. But, I was awake and my mind was going places it had never been before. The biscuit wedged in between my leg and the door remained warm, Grandma Mary’s heat radiating from it. Eating it now wasn’t an option. As long as I had it, I had proof I had a grandma and a granddaddy who loved me. If I had them, then I also had a daddy.
But now, I had a face, one that didn’t fit into the dream world where my daddy had recently lived. The man in that picture, he was not there, nor was he anywhere. Probably Baltimore. Probably not. For all those nights I’d hung on the phone waiting for the ringing to stop or for the busy signal to cease its incessant beep, they knew as much as I knew. Or did they know more? I couldn’t be certain.
I couldn’t trust anyone anymore, but what I could trust were my dreams, the realities born, raised, and matured in my mind, so I made a decision. My daddy would remain there, where he was safe, where I had control. And this other man, this missing ingredient, he would remain nowhere.
UNNECESSARY ADDITIVES UNNECESSARY ADDITIVES
My first memories of Pee Wee don’t include his age or information about how he met Momma. I just remember he was tall. With dark skin and coarse, black hair that made his face coppery by comparison, he seemed nice, doling out candies and calling me Minnie Mouse as he patted my puffy ponytails. I never had the illusion that Pee Wee was my daddy. I knew my brothers and I belonged only to Momma, but from a distance, I watched the way he walked, with his back upright and tall, like an ironing board. I watched the way he ate, with a ferocity that made food disappear. And, I watched the way he touched Momma, sometimes softly palming the small of her back or holding her hand when they walked together. I loved him for the way he loved her even though he could never be my daddy.
One of the things I appreciated most about Pee Wee was the disappearance of hunger when he was around. I remember him and Momma tromping into the house, grocery bags under each arm. He wore a smile that meant there was a Hershey bar hidden in the bottom of the bag just for me. I’d watch, expectantly, as he and Momma unpacked food and loaded cupboards until they looked as if they would burst from fullness. Then I’d receive my treat, a blob of chocolaty sweetness I swished back and forth from cheek to teeth to tongue until my mouth became a chocolate cavern.
Pee Wee babysat us when Momma went to
