Grace After Midnight_ A Memoir - Felicia Pearson [10]
“I don’t know nothing ’bout no heaven,” I said.
Mama smiled and started quoting scripture. The words sounded pretty, but the words didn’t mean much to me. I imagined heaven as some make-believe place folks invented to make themselves feel better about living down here in hell.
Pop was the same.
He liked to talk about how Jesus would come down at the end of the world and swoop up all the true believers.
“When is the end coming?” I asked.
“Soon, baby,” he said. “Real soon.”
“How soon?”
“Could be tomorrow. Could be tonight. That’s why we gotta get ready and stay ready.”
I loved me some Pop, but I couldn’t buy that line. Tonight the sun would set. Tomorrow it would rise. Tuesday would follow Monday and Thursday would follow Wednesday. Same old shit, day in and day out. Far as I could see, no magic Jesus would be dropping out of the sky any time soon.
I couldn’t fault Mama and Pop for believing in the magic, though. The meaning behind the magic was beautiful. But the magic did something to Mama and Pop that removed them from the world—at least the way I looked at the world. They were characters in some goody-goody movie where there’s always a happy ending. I liked looking at the movie, but I knew it wasn’t for real. I couldn’t live in that movie. I was living in another movie—a shoot-’em-up.
Mama and Pop were super-sweet folk, and I know that sweetness must have rubbed off a little on me. But I saw them as two people with their heads in the clouds. They didn’t see what was really happening in my world. My world was ruled by street smarts.
If you have them, you survive; if you don’t, you die.
That was an exciting idea.
But the idea that Jesus was coming back to get the good guys and punish the bad didn’t mean anything. I didn’t believe that shit for a minute.
AIN’T NO
AVERAGE DAYS
Every day can be a little scary. Or a lot scary.
When I was coming up, fear came early and quick, but I think I musta blocked it or forgotten it.
Some scary shit, though, I ain’t ever forgetting.
Ain’t ever forgetting the day I was just standing up in the kitchen washing dishes. Mama had just come back from a little vacation. She was upstairs taking a nap. I’d just gotten home from school.
Just your average day.
Until I hear a knock on the door.
“Your cousin home?” asks this nigga standing there. Nigga looks all jittery.
“Who you?” I ask.
“T.”
“I’ll go see.”
I go look for my cousin, who’s a man about twenty-one. He’s back in the bathroom.
“T is up in here looking for you,” I say.
“Tell him I’m in the bathroom.”
I tell T.
T says he’ll wait.
Meanwhile, I hear my cousin slipping out the back door.
When I look up, T is gone.
I go back to washing a plate.
Then Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
I drop the plate.
Somone’s shooting.
Someone’s shot.
Someone’s screaming, “Your cousin’s down.”
Look up the street by Collins Funeral Home. My cousin is laid out on the sidewalk, blood all over him. Homeboys are going through his pockets, stealing his drugs and his money.
Cop sirens are screaming.
Helicopter whirling overhead.
Cousin ain’t dead, but he’s paralyzed.
It was T who shot him. Later I learned that my cousin had fucked up T the week before, and this was payback.
This was life on East Oliver.
Cousin was running down Oliver to get his piece that he had stashed in another crib. T caught him before he got there.
I think to myself—T could have started shooting back at the house, could have shot me, or Mama, or all of us.
This is how it goes.
Cousin shot. Cousin I loved. Same cousin who always brought me Chinese food. Cousin who liked to get high on weed and laugh with me for hours.
One day Cousin is running around.
Next day Cousin is paralyzed.
Ain’t no average days.
“SHE MY DAUGHTER.”
When folks asked Mama about me, she’d always say, “She’s a good girl. She’s a good daughter.”
That was Mama. Mama saw the good in everyone.
Truth is, I was a good daughter—or least tried to be. Wouldn’t ever let anyone say a bad word about Mama or Pop. Anything they asked of me, I did. Willingly.