Eating Clouds

“What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape “

from “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats

Six days a week, for all of my childhood and some years beyond, my Aunt Yvonne worked in Jackson, Mississippi at two jobs servicing white people. Her employers and those she served loved her, and rewarded her well for her art as a chef. We thought her rich because she took my sister and me shopping at the end of each summer and bought us clothes for the start of school in the fall. When she retired, Aunt Yvonne collected a social security check that paid for her to live. What she saved also helped pay for college, down payments, drug treatment, restitution, and bail for sundry children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and others. In her eighties, Bell’s palsy struck and only half of Aunt Yvonne’s face turned up when she smiled. When she was in service, she always smiled. And she always took care to assure that her appearance and behavior were asexual and guileless.

Stepping lively and beaming smiles, Aunt Yvonne left her house at nine in the morning to help cook at a nursing home. She wore shoes that made sense for a woman who would walk to the bus stop three blocks over and stay on her feet all day. Her serviceable dress – always a governess grey or washed out blue or barely there brown – was short sleeved and buttoned in the front. The hem fell below her knees and the waist was ill defined. Her hair was tightly bound in a bun at her nape and carefully secured with the required black net. No enticing lock ever dared to peek out.

Aunt Yvonne wore no make-up or perfume, but she did wear talcum powder between her legs and her breasts to guard against friction and sweat. A surprisingly dainty handkerchief with flowers and lace grew visibly from her cleavage. In that position it hid where her bosom overflowed, and it was handy when her face perspired. No white person ever saw Aunt Yvonne sweat, but the steam from the pots and pans burned an eternal glow on her cheeks and brow.

Neat and trim in sensible shoes and hair net, cool and collected with her handy kerchief and talcum powder, Aunt Yvonne marched down the road, swinging one arm as if leading a charge. On the other arm swung her large black pocketbook with the necessary money and keys, and enough room to bring home leftovers. She also carried The Upper Room and a New Testament, and a small black apron with white ruffles around the edges. This apron and her dress constituted her uniform for her evening job.

After the nursing home, Aunt Yvonne became the proud pastry chef at “one of the finest white restaurants in Jackson, Mississippi” where colored people entered through the kitchen and stayed there. From that kitchen, Aunt Yvonne gained fame for turning out the lightest biscuits and dinner rolls in town. “Feathers!” some exclaimed. “Clouds!!” they rhapsodized. No white person who ate Aunt Yvonne’s cooking ever choked on quills or saw tears flow like rain. Aunt Yvonne was a sorcerer making magic.

She returned to us each night with bags full of treasure for two little girls who had fought sleep to greet their “Aunty Vonne” when she came home from work. We knew she had braved the nether world to fight for us, and she always brought us her softest clouds to eat. She had taken care to season them herself so that we would not have to swallow our own tears.

Six mornings a week, Aunt Yvonne charged down Cox Street and disappeared around a corner my sister and I were not allowed to turn alone. Neither one of us would have to cook or clean for white people to make our living, she declared. Armored in protective clothing and covered with fairy dust, Aunty Vonne carried books of spells in her sorceress bag as she rode her unicorn to battle the demons who threatened our safe kingdom. Confidently, she charmed the ogres posing as helpless old people and deceived the dragons pretending to be courtly ladies and gentlemen so that they mistook her for a plain and harmless colored girl. Seduced by her smile, they never realized she fed them slow poison of bitterness concealed inside their bread. And they never knew she took back the best of her magic to feed us divine dreams.

Heavy Air

“Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?”

From “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats

The house was breathing loudly. Inhaling as if lifting heavy air – some of it spilling over and through the fingers. Falling in plops. Like molasses. Exhaling was a train braking, with no station in sight. I tensed, waiting for the derailment, until the heavy air lifted once more. And somewhere in my waiting darkness the uneven rhythm lured me into a fitful sleep.

The summer before, when I was five and my sister was six, my MamaGran was attacked by her generous heart. It began for me with MayCath’s hysterics interrupting my dreams. My sister and I stood on the edges listening to MamaGran’s gasping while our youngest aunt, MayCath, ran next door, screaming for her older sister, our Aunty Vonne.

Aunt Yvonne called the doctor from her house because MamaGran had no phone. Leaving MayCath on the porch with her hysterics to wait for whoever would come, Aunt Yvonne brought a wave of calm into MamaGran’s house. The three of us rode it together as we listened to MamaGran trying to push air through her lungs and patted her arm in turns.

“They’re here,” MayCath eventually called out in whispered urgency. Not sure who “they” were, I saw strangers lifting MamaGran like a baby and carrying her and Aunty Vonne away in their van. We were left with MayCath, barely a teenager herself, who never in her grief and worry thought to explain to two quiet little girls, the urgency, the possibilities. We had never known someone to go away and never come back.

Throughout the following weeks I heard adults talking about MamaGran’s large heart, as her bed and bedroom were made ready for her return. Our father came South early to pick us up for the return trip to Chicago – or so I supposed. I think now he’d rushed down “just in case” MamaGran’s heart was indeed as large as her generosity and gave her similar troubles.

A tall, hippy woman with big feet and raised blue veins on her hands, MamaGran’s light skin was darkened with dots of liver spots and moles. Her salty hair was thick, long, and easily tangled like mine; both of us were tender headed. When mama combed my hair, I’d squirm and cry out as she pulled my scalp with the tangles. Mama would give me a sharp hit in the head with the comb and scold, “Be still, girl!” If I could, I’d run to MamaGran before mama could get to my head. I still squirmed when MamaGran combed by hair but I never cried out. MamaGran knew my pain; she never pulled my scalp or hit me. Because I had her hair and tender head, I feared getting MamaGran’s large and tender heart as well.

When I learned the difference between large and enlarged, being big hearted stopped being a double-edge sword I ducked in fear that my every kind deed would viciously turn to bite back.

The summer following MamaGran’s attack, I saw the result of a heart that was too large. MamaGran moved slowly and seldom left the front porch. She tended her garden sparingly and went to church only if offered a ride. Her rose bushes started to stoop as much as she now did. But from the porch swing, she’d watch us hopping the pattern we had drawn in Aunty Vonne’s driveway dirt between the two front yards, or teaching the southern girls how to jump double dutch with the clothesline. 

Many evenings Bubba and his sister Jean and some of the Klines crossed the street to play pitty pat or smut in the parlor room. A fireplace was handy to provide the soot for whoever lost at smut and MayCath’s piano provided entertainment for whoever had to sit out a hand of pitty pat. MamaGran never played piano or cards but I could see her through the screen door watching us from the porch.

MamaGran still sent us to tell the man on the truck to stop by so she could select three watermelons – one to eat immediately and two to put under the house to keep cool for later. She’d also buy a half-bushel of peaches to can, instead of her usual bushel or more. We still helped her by washing and rinsing jars and lids, but instead of peach cobbler we got banana pudding as payment. And she sat rather than stood as she worked in the kitchen. Most of the peaches stayed uncanned but not uneaten. MamaGran’s peach tree was also in decline.

Except for the slowing down and the drooping, little else important changed  for us during our summer sojourns at MamaGran’s. When a canning jar broke across my pointing finger, cutting it to the bone, MamaGran was able to bind it tight enough to stop the blood and she even bathed it in Mercurochrome and love enough to stave off infection. When my sister’s last baby tooth hung loose, giving her pain and hunger for solid food, MamaGran was strong enough to tie a string to a doorknob and slam the door to pull it out. There was no blood and my sister screamed only a few seconds, or so it seemed to me. MamaGran was waiting with warm salt water and patting hugs. 

I learned to love banana pudding until I ate nearly a whole one and threw up on MamaGran’s neglected roses. I learned to eat cucumber that grew up on vines in MamaGran’s backyard while missing the greens and root vegetable that required so much bending and digging for cultivation. Aunt Yvonne made sure a telephone was installed in MamaGran's house.

Sometimes, while playing summer games, I was overcome with sudden stillness. I’d glance around for MamaGran and invariably find her close by watching. My eyes became a camera lens and my squint into the sun a shutter as I made pictures of MamaGran to remember: tsking by the rosebush leaning on her hands on her ample hips, veined-fingers spread out and pointing behind her; resting on the back steps slowly snapping beans that pinged in the metal bowl at her slipper-clad feet; sitting on the front porch swing slowly moving wherever the wind wanted her to go. 

And the summer I was six, I lay awake late each night listening to the sound of heavy air and waiting breathlessly for a train to derail.