There was hardly light coming into my bedroom with the drapes closed, but I squinted to look from corner to corner. Wasn’t much to take in but two easy chairs and a old dresser with the portable TV set on it. It was the same room where Joy’d slept last time she come to stay. Me and Freddie B hadn’t been long moved into the apartment and hadn’t nobody lived in it ’fore us. Even though it was a poky size and painted avocado green, she said she was real happy to see we’d settled in a brand new building with a nice view of the Bay Bridge. She was due for another visit in four days, and her and me were gonna take off for Reno. Freddie B said he didn’t mind me tagging along with her. He was always generous about letting me go off with Joy and loved her near as much as I did. She was the child we could never have, my baby sister Helen used to say.
But odd as it sounds with me being practically old enough to be her granny, Joy was my best friend, right from the get-go. From back thirty-odd years ago when she wasn’t but eight years old, I could have a better time with Joy than anybody. For a start she was always like somebody grown and had more common sense than most. And with my husband out working all the time and having to take on-site jobs that was fifty or sixty miles away from home, I didn’t see him awake much except on weekends. So I spent a lot of time on my own till Tammy and her three little girls moved across the hall from us in Oakland that February of 57, right after my brother Caesar’s birthday. Or maybe it was 56. Whenever it was, it was too long ago to think about.
Hearing Tammy’s voice down the phone suddenly jarred me out my thoughts. ‘Baby Palatine, are you still there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, why don’t you say something?’ Tammy asked. I could hear her sucking away at a cigarette.
‘Ain’t nothing to say.’ How could I tell her that I was mad ’cause Joy was supposed to be coming and I was really looking forward to the trip to Reno. It was way too soon for me to take in more than that. Pitiful as it sounds, I wasn’t able to think beyond that one disappointment.
Tammy must of thought I’d lost my mind, and she wouldn’t have been far wrong when I come to think that I wasn’t crying or nothing and my voice didn’t even crack like it do when I hold back tears.
I said, ‘Listen, Sugar, you caught me ’fore I had chance to set on the toilet. Why don’t you let me call you back.’
‘Baby Palatine,’ she asked disbelieving. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah. Right as I can be under the circumstances. How ’bout you?’
She was the one had birthed Joy into the world and she wasn’t crying neither, whereas most mothers would have been hysterical. But then Tammy wasn’t like most mothers. By her accounts feelings was things to keep to yourself, although she was known to let herself get well and truly revved up if anything happened to Anndora. But it seemed like a bus could run over Joy and Brenda, and Tammy wasn’t fazed. She liked to claim it was ’cause Anndora was her youngest, but I wasn’t never convinced. My baby sister Helen said from the first that she laid eyes on Tammy with them three girls that Anndora was favored ’cause she was the lightest skinned and the prettiest. But I didn’t want to believe that, although as I got to know Tammy better, I grew to thinking Helen may not have been far off the mark. Crazy as she talks when she got that alcohol in her, ol’ Helen can put her finger on the button about some things. A alcoholic can zoom in on the truth quick as a child ’cause they can’t take in but the bare facts, and like Helen said, there’s a whole lot of mothers that would have got to ignoring Brenda, homely as she was. So Tammy couldn’t be chastised all that much for it.
Brenda was the eldest, and it was hard to believe looking at her big bulgy lips, eyes and forehead that she slipped out the same womb as Joy and Anndora. There was Anndora looking so beautiful – green eyed and olive skinned with that wavy auburn hair. So fine that it was easy for anybody to catch theyselves gaping at her even after they got to know her ugly ways. And Joy who wasn’t just special to look at with her black almond eyes and perfect features, she had a wonderful way about her, always ready with a smile and something nice to say to somebody. That dark honey brown skin of hers just glowed, she was that bright in spirit, and when she walked in a room, frisky as a prancing puppy, strangers and everybody would want to talk to her. If Joy’d had of been born with a tail, it would have been wagging all the time, and it was more than once when she did them newspaper interviews while her and her sisters had that hit record of theirs that them writers described her as captivating. That was a perfect word for her, and I couldn’t have said it better myself ’cause Joy could charm blue birds out of the cherry trees. And to see her in one of them slinky evening gowns they used to perform in … well couldn’t nobody wear a gown like Joy Bang with her long legged self. She was queen.
‘Baby! Baby Palatine! Hello! Are you still on the phone or am I just giving away money to A T & T?’ Tammy’s voice in my ear jolted me out of a vision of Joy in her red sequined gown. Glimmering. It was my favorite, out of all their stage outfits. ‘Dammit, Baby Palatine, I know you’re still there, because I can hear you wheezing.’ Tammy was always making a to do about my touch of asthma. ‘Now, I’ll hold on while you go to the bathroom, because we have a lot to discuss.’
‘Well I plan to be a few minutes,’ I said, ‘so I’ll call you back.’
If I could of had things my way, I’d of turned back Freddie B’s clock and tried to sleep off what I was wanting to believe was some kinda nightmare. ‘Maybe I’m just dreaming this,’ I tried to pretend, but something else kept saying, ‘This is for real’.
Tammy’s voice jumped in my ear again. ‘My line’s bound to be busy, because I have to call Brenda and Anndora somehow. So keep trying, if it is … Don’t you want me to tell you how Joy died?’
No I didn’t. So I just put the receiver back like I hadn’t heard the question. That’s a trick I learned off Freddie B who was still sound asleep next to me. I switched off his alarm ’cause if he didn’t wake, I didn’t need to tell him nothing.
Joy dead didn’t make no more sense to me than if somebody’d said the sun fell out of the sky. It’s no wonder I was pretending like it wasn’t true.
I grabbed my upper plate from by the phone and put both feet firmly on the floor. My legs didn’t feel like they was mine and I held on to the bedpost for a minute before I shuffled off to the bathroom like I do every morning first thing.
Thinking back on it, I guess I was in shock ’cause I acted like folks who been in a bad accident and ain’t unconscious but might as well be, ’cause they try to keep going like didn’t nothing happen. Once I seen a man act just that way after a motorcycle had hit him … the blood was gushing off his ear and he was laying on the ground wanting to talk about the weather.
I should of been boo-hooing hearing Joy was dead, but instead, I sat on the toilet cool as a cucumber and did my business. It wasn’t till I reached for the toilet paper that I noticed my hand was shaking like somebody with St Vitus Dance.
‘Joy’s dead,’ I heard myself say.
‘Don’t talk ridiculous, fool,’ I answered back. ‘She can’t be dead. Y’all’ll still be driving to Reno this Sunday night, you watch.’
I was really looking forward to spending a couple nights with her in a hotel, like in the old days when her and Brenda and Anndora was out on the road promoting the hit record they had out in 77. Bang Bang Bang they called theyselves.
I heard myself say to Joy like she was standing by me in the toilet, ‘It was gonna be like better days. You and me in a nice hotel with room service and crispy, snow white sheets that I didn’t iron myself. And me running you a hot bubble bath…Did you mess up, Joy? Your Uncle Freddie B’s been laid off work two months, and we can’t afford to have you go messing up on us now. So pull your socks up, child, and stop fooling ’round.