Kristen Gentry's "Mama Said," An Excerpt of the Story

Mama Said

The JFK Bridge links Louisville with Jeffersonville and hovers over the Ohio River, which is brown, not blue, and this has always made you sad. You have seen documentaries and news stories about pollution, watched large pipes barreling plant and factory waste into rivers, oceans, streams on TV screens at school and at home. You have seen the ways that people destroy the world around them, destroy one another, destroy themselves. It is easy to cry about this and everything else—your mother has taught you this.

Last summer at Waterfront Park with your cousin Zaria, you imagined a couple trying to create a romantic moment on the riverfront during the day with all that brown water unmasked and the face of the Colgate clock on the Indiana side dark and sullen like it knows there’s nothing about Clarksville worth lighting the sky red.

“It’s like dead dogs and shit floating all in the water,” Zaria had said. You conjured a golden, non-descript mutt, bloated, X-eyed, drifting on the current, past the Belle of Louisville and two lovers sitting on a blanket spread on a patch of grass, sipping from wine glasses, and you laughed until your stomach cramped, and you couldn’t meet Zaria’s eyes without starting all over again.

Last night, after hanging up the phone on your mother and what she’d told you, you reimagined the scene, and your mother replaced the dog drifting on the river. Nothing about that scene made you want to laugh.

You were not surprised when your mother told you she’s dreamt of disappearing into the Ohio. A type of vanishing is what she’s been looking for all along with the sleeping, the Vicodin and OxyContin. Since you were thirteen, you have had the same nightmare about coming home, peeling back the comforter and sheet shrouding your mother, holding your breath as you check for hers and find that it has stopped. When you search for a pulse, her wrist under your thumb is still warm. You are minutes, maybe seconds, too late from saving her.

You have always known your fears are your mother’s fantasies, but you’ve been polite enough to keep your dark thoughts to yourself.

***

You are starting to realize that you have no solution for your mother’s depression. There is nothing you can say. Nothing you can do. You will never save her.

You don’t want to believe this.

This is your whole problem.

***

“You can’t fix her. She’s got to get better on her own,” Zaria has told you this a million zillion times.

You know this is true. It’s the whole reason you moved to Bloomington—one hundred miles away from your mother—to attend Indiana University instead of just going right near downtown to the University of Louisville. Her sadness is extensive and destructive, a hurricane you had to escape. You think it’s not fair that even when you are being selfish your mother controls your actions.

You’d gone home the break weekend, your first full weekend home since school started because you rarely got full weekends off from your job cashiering at Kroger. Your mother said the two of you would go to the movies, and you’d really been looking forward to it. You hadn’t been to a movie together since you were a kid, and she used to make funny faces at you with her eyes crossed and lips poked in a duck pout, back when you weren’t the one doing all the work for a smile or burst of laughter.

She slept all weekend, and when you were in your car early on Monday morning, ready to leave, and she was walking down the driveway toward you, you wished you could run her over and she wouldn’t bleed or die, just know how mad you were.

She wore hospital scrub pants the gray blue of storm clouds and a faded red “Orlando” T-shirt from a family vacation seven years ago when you were eleven and she and your father were still married, but barely happily so. A small hole about an inch to the right of the tail o of “Orlando” exposed the side of her breast. The hair tornadoing from the top of her wrap cap ruffled in the cool breeze. Her face was dull and needed washing.

The rushing click of heels on pavement drew your attention to the next-door neighbor, Carla, who threw an absent-minded frown of curiosity before catching herself and lifting her mouth in an awkward smile, her hand in a stiff wave that only you returned.

You were embarrassed by your mother’s appearance and rudeness. Carla was nice, and you’d hoped she and your mother, both middle-aged single mothers, could be friends. Carla went out some nights in red cowboy boots and made her thick, frizzy hair even thicker and frizzier with teasing and hairspray, which seemed to indicate a mildly aggressive, fuck-what-you-think sort of self-assurance that you wanted to rub off on your mother. Carla could have been someone your mother could talk to and get her excited about leaving the house, someone you could call to go and check on her when needed. You weren’t sure if your mother had any friends who’d continued to stick around with all her dodging and sometimey ways.

She squinted up at the sun as if confused by it, crossed her arms, and clutched her elbows in her palms like she would break apart if she didn’t hold herself together.

“I’m gonna miss you, Jay.” Her shaky words fell to you. She was crying. This is to be expected with your mother and her depression. She usually cries stoically, silently, alone. What you call her thug tears. But that day, when she finally looked down at you, she broke wide open, and there were hiccups and snot and pain blown right into your chest.

You’d wanted her to feel the disappointment you felt, but you watched your mother, folded like a love letter you’ve desperately wanted to read all your life, and you shut off the car and wrapped her in an awkward hug as both of you limped back into the house and settled onto the couch.

She told you she felt guilty about not being there for you, not just this weekend but during your early teenage years when she was preoccupied with the back and forth of taking pills and then trying not to take pills in rehab. She told you she wasn’t currently using (you’d wondered), but she thought about it because of the depression; it had always been there.

“Always?” you asked her, recalling those goofy mother-daughter moments.

“You know, I grew up poor, country, black—dark-skinned black—and it wasn’t easy.

Even when I was little, sometimes it was hard to find something to be happy about. So, yeah . . . ” Your mother paused and nodded, like the weight of what she was about to say and what it prophesied for her future was settling over her. Her face was somber with the accepted defeat by a formidable opponent.

“Always,” she finally answered, and you felt a hopelessness all your own creep inside. It must have bled onto your face because your mother said, “I do feel genuinely happy sometimes. You make me happy.” She grabbed your hand. “You make me very happy . . . and proud.” She smiled, sheepish and close-mouthed.

You didn’t believe her. She’d had you for eighteen years and had still said “always.” You thought your mother’s game was weak and sloppy, but her hand was warm and squeezing yours, and her smile reached her eyes.

You told her to let go of the past. “Now is what matters. We’re here now, together.” You told her, “I’m here for you.”

After everything was said, you sat quietly, uncomfortable with what you now knew until your mother was snoring beside you. She slept often, but never snored. This was reassuring. She was in a peaceful sleep. You covered her with a blanket and waited until she woke up to leave. You didn’t want her to feel abandoned.

The next Friday, you surprised your mother and drove down, even though you were scheduled to work on Saturday and had a test on Monday, math, which you were failing, driving down your GPA and putting your scholarship in danger. You thought you and your mother could catch the movie you missed last weekend. When you arrived at five o’clock, she was in the bed sleep, wearing the same old T-shirt. She said she didn’t feel like going anywhere and that you should have called. You left and went to Zaria’s apartment.

“You can’t fix her. She’s got to get better on her own,” Zaria told you for the million zillion trillionth time. “I know it’s hard, but you can’t sacrifice your life for hers.”

Zaria understands your situation because she has her own situation with her mother Dee and Dee’s crack addiction. While your mother gets ghost with sleep that stretches for days, Dee gets gone ghost, floating around West End corners, alleys, and boarded-up houses.

Zaria’s words weren’t revelatory, but they were true and solid, the whisper of your intuition given voice, finally louder than your fears and guilt. You nodded and said, “I know,” and felt a soft, pink piece of yourself quiver with the effort of hardening.

“Mama, look.” Malik, who stood hunched over the coffee table coloring with fat crayons, smacked Zaria’s thigh. He pointed to his half-colored page of a smiling orange airplane that appeared to be grounded on a green nest.

“That looks good, but, baby, the sky’s not green. Look.” She pulled the blue crayon from the table. “Blue,” she said and handed Malik the crayon. She pointed to the blank space around the plane, circling the clouds. “This is the sky, and the sky is blue.”

Malik shook his head. “I don’t want blue.”

“Okay, it’s your picture, just remember the sky is really blue. I don’t want you getting your colors mixed up.”

He frowned, his three-year-old face contorting into grown-man seriousness as he tried to figure things out. “This is blue?” He traced Zaria’s path around the page.

“Yes. That is the sky, and the sky is blue,” Zaria repeated.

He sighed heavily, exactly the way he’d no doubt heard Zaria sigh many times, before returning to the picture to scratch blue on top of the green, around the orange airplane, through the clouds.

“Mama, look,” he finally said and stepped back to show her what he’d done, how he’d painted the sky for her.

Zaria gasped in exaggerated awe. “That is perfect! A masterpiece!” she exclaimed, and Malik beamed in the wake of her smile.

***

Melissa’s mother, Beverly, had a heart attack.

No one saw it coming.

Even if your mother doesn’t jump, you will see death approaching her from miles away. Zaria expects every phone call to be a strange white person telling her that Dee has overdosed. These alone are reasons not to touch Melissa, to keep your arms folded around your own chest, reasons to hate her, but you have more.

***

Zaria had Malik when she was sixteen. Dee was somewhere getting high while Zaria was pushing him out. Zaria is already a statistic, but you will not let her join the ranks of teen mothers who’ve done something tragic and/or stupid because they felt overwhelmed and trapped in motherhood.

Zaria works part-time at UPS and attends Jefferson Community College full time, making steady progress toward her associate’s degree in social work. You are always watching her for signs of mama burnout. This summer when you weren’t working, you took Malik to the park, out for lunch, to spend the night with you at your father’s house. Zaria hasn’t been on many dates since Malik was born, which is probably a good thing since a shiny car and wavy hair still turn her head, but you push her to go to Applebee’s with friends, out to the movies. You tell her to wear a tight dress and go to clubs so she can dance and feel bass pumping in her stomach. You don’t want her to forget herself.

Sometimes you think you understand those teen mothers who’ve done the tragic and/or stupid things. You are nobody’s mother; nonetheless, sometimes you still feel trapped. You feel a recklessness burrowing to your core.

***

The Monday after the disappointing visit with your mother, you left math class feeling dazed and dumb. You didn’t have the official confirmation yet but knew that you’d failed the test.

On Wednesday, your mother called while you were at the math study group you joined on Monday. You didn’t want to answer, but she rarely calls you. She was crying. Another problem you couldn’t solve. Exhaustion swept into your bones, but you remembered what you’d told her (“I’m here for you”), the way her smile reached her eyes when she’d told you you make her happy. You told everyone you were going downstairs to the lobby to take the call. They said they were getting hungry and taking the studying to Mama Bear’s for some pizza. You stayed behind.

***

You remember Beverly from move-in day. She had a blond bob and was dressed for function in a breezy beige linen dress with thick-soled hiking sandals, in contrast to your mother, who wore jeans on an eighty-five-degree day because she thinks her legs are too fat and cursed as soon as she walked into the dorm room’s stifling heat.

“Unh unh. I’ll be back.” She dropped the shopping bags full of the new bedding she’d bought for you, and her flip-flops, obnoxious with Coach C logos on the footpad, slapped the linoleum tile as she walked away.

You and Zaria stood just inside the doorway. The baking room grumble-hummed with the efforts of the old air conditioner perched in the window, struggling to make a difference. Melissa leaped from the bare mattress of the twin bed she’d claimed for her own.

“Oh my god! Which one of you is JayLynn?” Heat marked her face with the tender pink flush of a double-cheek smack, and her blue eyes zipped between you and Zaria, who exchanged a look with you because Melissa was legit bouncing, on her toes. Zaria smirked as you hesitantly revealed yourself.

“I’m so happy you’re here. I thought something had happened to you. I was hoping we could go to the induction together and grab lunch before,” Melissa said, “but I gotta eat something now. Where’s your purse, Mom?”

“Check under some bags. It’s here somewhere,” Beverly tossed the words to Melissa before turning to you. “Are you excited?” Her grin was all teeth and a little disarming. It seemed to push: be excited!

“Yeah,” you replied and smiled a shaky smile before crossing the room to sit your bags on the other bare bed.

“I’m starving,” Melissa groaned.

“You are not starving,” Beverly corrected her. “You ate breakfast.”

“Yeah, hours ago.” Melissa hunched over, pawing around pink and purple plastic storage bins and white garbage bags. Her denim shorts dug into her thighs, and you predicted that she would struggle with the freshman fifteen.

Beverly rolled her eyes, and you liked her a little for that. Zaria dropped the box she was carrying by your feet.

“Are you her sister?” Beverly asked her.

“Big cousin,” Zaria clarified.

“Are you a student here too?”

“No, I attend JCC in Louisville.”

“Oh.” Some of the chirp in Beverly’s voice died, some expectation zapped. “But you can still help her navigate the transition to college. Living on campus is one part—a big one—but there’s also adjusting to classes, syllabi, the different professors, maintaining a schedule.” Her voice rose in singsong as she listed the adjustments, casting her words to Melissa, who was preoccupied with the triumph of finding Beverly’s purse, a brown, hardware and logo-free, leather sack bearing a hard-worn patina, from which Melissa pulled granola bars and a large freezer bag full of grapes after plopping back on the bed.

“Y’all want some?” she offered.

You and Zaria declined. The grapes were bright green and jewel shiny. You weren’t hungry, but you wanted to squirrel handfuls of them into your mouth until your cheeks puffed. You felt like the Trix rabbit or Hamburglar or some other pitiful character whose hunger was always being taunted by something they couldn’t have. Your mother had stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast before heading to Bloomington late, setting out at eight-thirty for a two-hour drive that made you late for the ten o’clock check-in, and she had not bothered to pack snacks.

Melissa shrugged and ripped a granola bar’s packaging open with her teeth. “My period must be coming. I just wanna eat everything. God, I’m glad it didn’t come today. Trying to move all this crap in the heat, and I’m all bleeding and bloating and gross?”

“Melissa, Jesus.” Beverly frowned. “Nobody wants to think about that.”

“She’s a girl, Mom. It’s not like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Plus, we’re roomies. We’re gonna know so much about each other after this year.” She grinned at you.

Zaria raised an eyebrow that said, This white girl is gonna be something.

Beverly and Melissa volunteered to help you and Zaria bring in the rest of your things. You found your mother in the car sipping a can of vending machine Coke, blasting the air conditioning, and listening to the radio. James Taylor sang over a folksy guitar.

“It’s just so hot,” she whined through the open window.

“Yeah, Mama, it’s August,” you said.

She didn’t register your sarcasm.

“I thought I was going to pass out.” She sighed, laid her head back on the seat, and closed her eyes, which prevented her from seeing you roll yours.

You were tired of her being so weak, always run down and worn out when you needed her.

She opened her eyes slowly, as if coming to. “I’ll be ready in a minute.”

“Beverly and Melissa are helping me,” you said in hopes of hurting her feelings, letting her know that you would be fine without her. Beverly, Melissa, and Zaria were pulling your belongings from the trunk. Beverly dragged a turquoise plastic storage container identical to Melissa’s past the car’s driver’s side and called to your mother, “Don’t you worry about it. We’ve got it. You cool off.” Her calves were tight with muscle.

“Roomies help roomies, no problem,” Melissa said. She hugged pillows to her chest and marched behind Beverly.

Zaria shook her head at Melissa and followed with more boxes.

“Well, they seem nice,” your mother said. “You want to come in and sit with me for a minute?” She patted the passenger seat and smiled, but her eyes held a seconds-away-from-crying gloss. You didn’t want your mother’s tears here, even though you understood that most of those tears were for you. They said, I’m proud of you. I love you. But you also knew some of those tears were for her because you were leaving her, maybe because she was lonely, possibly because the tears were for reasons that you and no one else would ever understand.

“I gotta get going,” you said. “I’m already late.”

You carried all the tears your mother had ever cried, the words she didn’t say, with the rest of your stuff.

“Mama Said” is reprinted from Mama Said, Kristen Gentry (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2023), 1–20. For more information visit kristengentry.com.