I said, “Come to wish you a happy birthday.”
She said, “It aint my birthday.”
I said, “I know it aint.”
Momma blew smoke at me.
I said, “Why you on the roof?”
She said, “Come out here.”
I said, “I aint.” My whole life felt like I was a bug crawling inside a coiled-up garden hose—smaller and smaller circles, slick-dark and rubber-smelling, the only hope of escape something likely to drown you as save you.
Momma raised her voice, said “Come out here, Dawn.”
I said, “I’m a mother now, Momma.”
“Well,” she said, “Who aint?”
The wind quit and Momma said, “Hubert’s mad at me.”
“How’s he mad at you?” I said. “I thought he was in jail.”
Momma said, “Come out here with me, Dawn.” She turned from me, not too fast, not too slow. She didn’t talk in a hurry. She seemed to be at normal speed, said, “Who’s that with Cora?”
She didn’t seem excited, didn’t get all tangled up on her words, seemed to be saying what she meant to say. All this to say, she didn’t seem high to me. But I didn’t always know about high, didn’t know about pain pills and what they did to you.
I knew Momma and Evie lived for them. Knew my brother Albert, my uncle Hubert, and a bunch of others sold them.
Pills were easier to stay away from in Tennessee. So was crazy. Easier married to Willett Bilson and his momma’s houseful of fragile things, her house full of quiet sleep.
I pulled up the window screen and stepped onto the radiator under the window. Swung my leg out and straddled the window frame. Momma stood at the roof’s edge amid loose siding and shingle scraps. Her shoulder blades come up out of her tank top like the oars of a boat, my name tattooed between them in cursive where she’d never see it. I got through the window and onto the roof without falling, but it was not a smooth exit. I am not a fireman nor a ballerina. I am big. I am an ox.
My mother sat down, her toes hanging over the gutter. She turned and looked at me over her shoulder, one leg straightened out, its foot out in the air. She patted the spot next to her with her cigarette hand.
I didn’t know to sit there or not. Smothery heat didn’t help me think. Two downpipes ran across the roof on either side of the window, framing the space where Momma sat. I guessed the shingles were hot and sticky.
I said, “How can you sit on that?”
“Used to it,” Momma said.
“Momma,” I said. “Are you high?”
Momma didn’t turn around. She said, “No.”
I said, “We seen a wreck on the Caneville Road.”
Momma said, “Anybody die?”
I said, “Probably.”
Smoke came out in a cloud over Momma’s head. She said, “So June’s down there?”
I said, “Yeah,” pushed the window closed behind me, and sat down with my back against the wall. The shingles weren’t so hot as I thought. I said, “You OK with that?”
Momma said, “With what?”
“With June coming back.”
“Got to be,” Momma said. Another cloud of smoke bloomed off her head. “I miss that tree,” Momma said.
There had been a red oak in the front yard, big enough to have branches you could touch from where Momma sat, big enough that me and Momma could only barely touch fingers when we hugged it from opposite sides. Last time June got busy saving Momma, she had a man trim some limbs off the oak hung out over the street. Big storm a week later knocked the whole thing over. Bad roots, the guy from extension June called said. Thing blocked traffic, lay there a month across Momma’s yard, right across the steps into Glenda’s yard next door, before Mamaw got somebody to cut it up.
One old lady in the projects down the hill across the road from where the tree trunk lay went and lived with her daughter in Corbin waiting for that tree to get gone. She was afraid the trunk would get loose, roll across the road, and explode the illegal propane tanks between Momma’s house and her apartment. Blow her to Kingdom Come. I don’t blame her. Who can you count on? Thirteen pickup trucks of cut wood come out of that tree.
I said, “Lot hotter out here without that tree.”
“Seems like,” Momma said.
Down below Mamaw lined out more chores for Gene. Her voice was like radio static. Momma peered over. “Who’s that guy?” Momma said.
“Some guy June picked up,” I said.
Momma turned to look at me, her eyebrows riding up her forehead. “Do what?” Momma said.
“Hitchhiking,” I said.
“Oh,” Momma said.
“There she is up there,” I heard Mamaw say. “Not the sense God gave a goose.”
Momma said quiet and tough, “Geese are smart.”
I said, “And they honk a lot.”
Momma laughed, said, “Hubert’s out.”
I said, “Is he reformed?”
Momma sat quiet. “No doubt,” she said with another puff of smoke.
I said, “Why’d they arrest him?”
Momma said, “Who knows?”
“You do,” I should have said out loud instead of just thinking, but I’d been knowing a good while no point asking Momma for something she hadn’t already give you.
The bedroom window pushed open. June held Nicolette back from climbing out there with us. “Hey yall,” June said. Momma snapped a look over her shoulder, turned back to the sky, pushed out another cloud of smoke.
How cold Momma was made me hurt for Nicolette. Nicolette stood at the window, watched her grandmother like she was a biting dog or a flower she’d been told not to pick. I stood up, reached to Nicolette through the window. She put her hand in mine. Her hand was sticky and buzzed with energy, a beehive hand.
June said, “I’m taking her over to see Houston.”
I squeezed Nicolette’s hand. “You like that, honeypot?”
Nicolette said, “I aint no honeypot.”
She let me put my hand on her hair. I curled my fingers over her ear. I lay my hand against her cheek, and that was too much. Nicolette knocked the hand down, said, “Momma Trish.”
My mother turned around. “Hey, baby,” she said. “You going to see your papaw?”
Nicolette said, “You can come too.”
Momma said, “I can’t today, baby. You hug that old goat for me. All right?”
“Yeah,” Nicolette said.
June put her hand on Nicolette’s shoulder. Our eyes met and June said, “We’ll be back.”
I nodded. They left. My mother lit another cigarette. In my mind, my mother’s coal truck heart T-boned mine, a dreadful crash on an empty stretch of road, all shattered glass and twisted metal, no law, no ambulance in sight. I climbed back through the window, set on the stairs,