Portals in Memory’s Moon light

It was the third of July in ‘65, and my cousins, Cheri, Amoni and me, Reba, along with our parents, had come together at Grandma Hyacinth’s to celebrate the holiday with a picnic to Bear Mountain Park the next day. Chuckling, the girls and I untangled the clothesline we found in Grandma’s yard.

“Oh goodie,” beamed eight-year-old Amoni. “This rope is long enough for our game of Double-Dutch, right Reba?” 

Her speech was garbled and mouth juicy from her futile efforts to blow Bazooka bubbles. 

“Reba,” Cheri called before I could respond to Amoni. “You and her turn while I jump,” she insisted, after a huge bubble exploded across her lips. 

“I wish I could do that,” Amoni, moaned.

I rolled my eyes at Cheri.  “Why you always got to be first?” 

“Well,” she sassed, placing her hands on her hips. “In case you forgot, that’s my gum you and Amoni is chewing.”

She was eleven. A year younger than me. But her fat mouth and behind was bigger than mine.

“That don’t have nothing to do with double-dutch, Cheri, and you know it.”

“Yeah, it do.”

“Yes, it does.” I corrected just like Mama did whenever she caught my brother or me using what she called improper diction.

“Oh, so you a teacher now,” Cheri spat releasing a bubble bomb in my face.

“You only think about yourself, Cheri, and no one else.”    

The game was temporarily forgotten as we bickered. Squeezing her stout body between us, “Stop it.  Stop it!” Amoni yelled. “ ‘Member. Grandma, said,  “Family like nuts under a tree. We have to stick together.”

“Silly Rabbit,” Cheri teased, cracking another pink wad. “Granny never said that.” 

 “She did too.” Amoni shot back. Her eyes started to water.

Cheri stood in the middle of the collapsed rope and stuck her tongue out at Amoni. She seemed to take pleasure in making her cry.

“That’s ‘roots’ under a tree,” I said.  “And remember, Amoni,” I snarled in Cheri’s direction. “Some of those roots may be rotten.”

Wiping her face with the back of her hand, she started to dance.  Her wiggles resembled and mirrored a fat worm. Snatching the rope from the ground, she began to chant.  Seconds after, Cheri and I joined in…

“Bubble gum, bubble gum       
Penny a packet.
First you chew  it,
Then you crack it.
Then you stick it
In yo’ jacket.”

Our mothers were sisters.

Cheri looked just like her mom, Rhianne. Her hair was short, brown, and wavy, her cheeks dimpled, and her chest and behind were well developed for her age. Grandma Hyacinth sometimes mocked—that although Rhianne was the youngest of her daughters, she was in a brassiere and girdle long before the other two. Amoni was a blend of both parents. Her skin was freckled, and her body was brown-bear-cuddly, like her father, Oswald.  Yet, Amoni’s hair was curly and red, like her Momma Bee’s. And no matter how neat Beatrice combed it, Amoni’s head always looked like the Fright Wig that the comedienne, Phyllis Diller wore at the end of the day.

Everyone claimed I took after my father, Pete.  I was tall and athletic with his thick black hair and hazel eyes; which made me popular with the boys. Yet the emerald sparkle in Pop’s gaze kept him in the ‘shit-shack‘ with my mother, Rhodora, because she claimed he used his jelly-bean green eyes to charm pretty women he’d seen. 

I smiled as my arms moved with the rhythm of the rope. Tomorrow our families would travel from Grandma’s place, in Queens, to the big park to celebrate the 4th of July. My mind abandoned the yard and traveled to the mountain where we’d feast and enjoy fun in the sun, if and only if Cheri played fair. She always made trouble whenever we played games. For example, during dumb school, she insisted on being the teacher so she wouldn’t be left back. When we played freeze-tag she refused to follow the rules and would always move. And during a game of Jacks, when the small metal prongs were tossed in the air to see who went first, she’d push friends out of the way and grab the most for herself. When I complained, my mother would shake her head and say Cheri was the type of child who could get on your reserve nerve. So, when I had had enough of her selfish behavior, I let the rope go slack.

“It’s time for you to turn Cheri.”

With her lips poked out, she snatched the rope out of my hands. Amoni mocked. “Look, Reba.  She’s mad. She only wants to jump, not turn.” 

“Well, that’s too bad. She can’t have her way all the time.” 

Cheri took three steps towards me. My longer legs reached her in one. Amoni hopped between us. “I wonder if Grandma Hyacinth baked her butternut raisin cookies for the picnic tomorrow?”

I glanced down at my cousin. “She makes them every holiday Amoni. You know that.”

“But we don’t know what kind of nuts she’s going to use,” Cheri said with furrowed brows.

“Last year she used pecans, with raisins. But I like them with walnuts,” I bragged.

“I don’t want to play anymore. I’m hungry.” Cheri pouted.   “Me, too,” Amoni sobbed.

“Girls,” I chimed in, “We already had our cooking lesson on how to mix the ingredients for the macaroni and cheese and just when our mothers were starting to teach us how to peel and chop potatoes for the salad, you started screaming, Amoni, about the onions burning your eyes. And then you, Cheri, grabbed the sugar instead of the salt to season the chicken, and that got us kicked out of the kitchen.”

“It was too hot in there anyway,” Cheri mouthed off, snapping another bubble.

“But I like helping my momma around the kitchen,” Amoni sniffled.   

“And don’t you act like Miss Goody Two Shoes, Reba,” Cheri squelched. “Because after you let the boiled egg slip from your fingers, and then stepped on it, we definitely had to leave the kitchen.” 

“Yeah, I know,” I huffed. “Now, I’ll never find out why Granny’s friend, Mildred, ran after her husband with a rolling pin!”

“Nosey people make me sick.

Nosey people sit on bricks…” 

Amoni and Cheri sang and pranced around me.  

“So, what!  We’re still not allowed in the kitchen.”

Then Amoni wailed, “I’m hungry.”

“I have an idea,” Cheri smirked halting their dance.

“You do?!?” we chimed, mockingly.

I squinted in her direction. On top of being selfish, she could be a Tricky Chickee.    

 Skipping energetically over to Grandma’s shady porch, she plumped her grown self-down.  Amoni followed. Seconds after, with leaded feet, I dragged myself over, too.

“What’s the plan?” I asked, squeezing between the duo.

“I know how you can go in the kitchen, Reba, and not get in trouble,” said Cheri.

“Why should I go?”   She drew a breath. “Cause you get your meinnastration!”   

Amoni clapped both hands over her mouth. Her eyes grew wide. And my throat went dry. I couldn’t believe Cheri said that. All women of a certain age knew that word, but none dared to repeat it in public or out loud like she did.

Amoni took in my rosy mug and started to giggle.

“It’s pronounced men-stru-ation,” I uttered, standing tall and pulling my shoulders back. “And what’s that got to do with swiping some of Grandma’s cookies?”

“Well,” Cheri replied, crossing one Bermuda shorts leg over the other, “If anyone asks why you’re in there, you can say you got it.”

“What! You want me to lie, Cheri?  I’m not doing that.”

“But I’m hungry,” Amoni yelled. Big tears dripped down her puggy cheeks.   Cheri stood, folded her arms under her swelling chest, and teased.

“Yu’s a fat, black chicken, Reba.”

Amoni joined in and both flapped their arms and legs and clucked like birds.

“Alright, alright.  I’ll do it, but first, Cheri, you got to promise that you’re going to start playing fair. And when I come back with the goods, you’re going to turn for me and Amoni with no complaints.”

“Yeah!” Amoni yelled.

“Ooohhhh-K,” She groaned.

“Cross your heart and hope to die,” Amoni demanded, moving in close. On tiptoes, she glared at our cousin. After Cheri crossed herself, I walked towards the screen door, pulled it open, and spat…

“If I get into trouble, Ima tell you kissed that boy, Franklyn, down the street. Cheri.”  

 Amoni’s eyes opened like headlights. “You did that!?”   

“No!” Cheri groaned, glancing down at her dirty blue Keds.

I entered the kitchen and closed the screen door gently behind me. The room was dim, cool, and appeared larger without our mothers and Grandma buzzing around like honeybees. Good!  My cookie-thieving would be easy.

“Ouch!”

I clapped my hands over my mouth. Accidentally, I had bumped into a small table, loaded with soda, beer, and whisky, waiting to be iced. Our fathers had the easy task of buying, packing, and later drinking the picnic booze, while our mothers slaved away in the kitchen.

My knee began to throb. But the succulent aroma from the larger table on the left, like nose candy, diminished my pain. The countertop was crammed with fried chicken, potato salad, peas, and rice, Bajan codfish balls, and fruit salad. I began to salivate as I checked out the homemade cakes, and pies, and in the center of our mother’s flavorsome work, were Grandma’s scrumptious, mouth-watering butternut raisin cookies. On two silver platters, the golden circles, encrusted with walnuts and raisins, rested in the center of the feast, as if they were running the whole, mouthwatering show.    

 Laughter from the living room stifled my trance. The TV was on, and the sound of ‘Ozzie and Harriet‘ echoed throughout the space. Creeping closer, I saw that one of my aunts had a shoe off. Another’s white slip hung precariously beneath her skirt. In the opposite corner, a pair of bare feet and red toenails were all I could see as the parka floors groaned beneath Grandma’s persistent rocking seat.

I smirked. The Betty Crockers were taking a much-deserved cooking break. Quickly, I put six cookies in a paper bag and was nearly out the door when I heard…

“My next-door neighbor, Hazel, is a witch.”

I froze. Peeking back into the living room I saw Amoni’s mother, Rhianne, stand and walk towards Grandma’s, 7ft. mahogany, claw foot mirror.  As she brushed her curly head, my mother Rhodora’s reflection appeared beside her sister. While she fluffed her dark hair in the glass and added a coat of scarlet to her lips, she announced, “Glossine rubbed her body in oil at God’s Temple.”

I almost dropped the cookies.  Glossine…

Who was that?  Mama hadn’t been to church in a while. And everyone knew that Grandma wasn’t happy when she started listening to Sunday’s service on the radio.  Then Cheri’s mom, Bee’s image filled the reflector. There she straightened the white ribbon on her ponytail and tightened the belt of the same color around her waist. The adjustment made her behind look as if she had gotten a balloon stuck in the middle of her A-line skirt. Turning side-to-side, like a model, she giggled.  “Girls, Arthur and I have been hanging out heavy.”

The Betty Crockers gave a hearty hoot.   

Oh no! How could she do this? She was married to Larry. And I loved Uncle Larry. He bought me records by the Supremes and the Temptations and let me talk on the telephone as long as I wanted. How could Auntie cheat on Uncle L?  My eyes brimmed. Yet, more horrible was listening to them laugh and then hearing my dignified Grandmother, whom neighbors, church members, and even winos respected, tell her daughters to keep it all a secret. I was crying so hard, I jumped like a gazelle and stumbled into Granny’s hefty bosom, when I heard…

“What’s the matter, Sugar?  And why are you in here, sniffling in the dark?”

Caught stealing and bewitched by snooping, I dropped the cookies and sprinted like a crazed dog out the door. 

July 3rd, ’95             

It’s 98 degrees and although we have three fans spinning in Granny’s pantry, we are sweating like whores awaiting judgment in a holy place.

Many moons have passed since my cousins, Cheri, Amoni and I, gathered here in Queens to celebrate Independence Day. Distance was the issue. Cheri lived in Connecticut, Amoni, in Virginia, and recently, I traded the Big Apple for the Land of Enchantment, New Mexico.  However, this gap had no influence on our conflicting personalities.

“Cheri you were the one who decided to add pig feet and blueberry cobbler to the menu after me and Amoni cleaned the kitchen. So, those pots in the sink belong to you.”   I argued as the three of us left Grandma Hyacinth’s stifling kitchen for her cool back porch.

“Well,” She shot back. “That only proves that I’ve done most of the cooking ‘round here, so you or Amoni can scrub those pans.”

“Whaaat?! You’ve got one hell of a nerve. Cheri.”

“And you, Reba, have been bossing us around since we were kids. But, we’re grown folks now. So, talk to the hand,” she barked, shoving her left palm in my face.

And the fussin’ and cussin’ was on, just like when we were young. Thirty-nine, and a year younger than me, not only could Cheri still work your reserve nerve, but now she was able to pester the flies off a buffalo as well. I supposed arrogance had been the catalyst for her being divorced a third time. For instance, the big house in the Hamptons, that she just had to have nearly bankrupted hubby number one. And her cheating (we pretend not to know about) as well as her high, unattainable expectations had taken out the last two.

On the other hand, despite her shortcomings, Cheri was dazzling. The short, curly brown hair of her youth was now a rich, deep burgundy and full as a lion’s mane. Her figure, voluptuous like the singer Chaka Khan, caused most men, and knowing my cousin-- a few women, to lose their minds. And Cheri kept every self-indulgent inch in britches tight enough to burst stitches.

“You’re still a fat, black chicken, Reba!” She teased, flapping her arms in the air like a bird.

Cheri knew her mocking stung me more than it did when we were kids.  Forty pounds had rounded out my formerly athletic physique. But, like most folks, Cheri only saw the tip-top of the iceberg.  I believe it was Oprah who said, “If you don’t have a man, you need spaghetti.” And for three empty years, I’d been filling my plate full. But, occasionally, the same jelly-bean-green twinkle I inherited from my Pop’s eyes would grant me a spicy male nod and smile.        

 Grandma’s porch door squeaked when Amoni entered from the kitchen.

“Like tree branches,” she uttered, lovingly “Our lives have grown in different directions, but the roots beneath unite our family as one.”

I chuckled. Cheri pouted. “You’ve finally gotten Grandma Hyacinth’s old adage right,” I said with another giggle.

Possessing a kindred spirit, Amoni, was the mediator, just like in the days of our childhood.   “Plus,” she continued with an arm on her trim waist, “You all are going to wake Grandma with your foolish arguing.”

Amoni’s big, round beachball figure had disappeared over the years. Nowadays, she resembles the lovely Angela Bassett. Like the actress, her hourglass figure was lusty and fit. And her savage, Phyllis Diller hair was now a jet-black pixie cut.  Her husband was ten years older, and their life was like a song. The love in their hearts always remained young.  And their world was a sprawling Shangri-La.   

Our brothers have inherited the tradition of buying, packing, and later drinking the picnic booze. And our mothers have passed on their Independence Day cooking obligations to us. Subsequently, my cousins and I can cook the handles off Florida, Idaho, and Texas, but we couldn’t duplicate Grandma’s recipe for her delicious butternut raisin cookies.

Then, one Christmas day, after licking our chops from a delicious meal, we looked over at the countertop where the butternut raisin cookies usually sat like royalty and…

“Grandma, where are the cookies?”  We all chanted at the same time while leaning forward in our dining seats.  We peered down at Granny so there’d be no cookie misunderstandings.   

“I ate so much. I didn’t even leave crumbs,” she said. Rubbing her burly belly. “Well, I’m off to the bathroom.”    

The dinette was snowflake quiet as Grandma Hyacinth shuffled off toward the restroom.   

 ***Tired from hours of cooking for the 4th of July family outing, my cousins and I tread softly into the living room, where our eighty-year-old Grandmother Hyacinth was dozing in her automatic rocker.  Poor health had waylaid Granny’s bodacious cooking.  But, worst of all was discovering, last year on Christmas day, that not only had she forgotten the recipe for her sumptuous, butternut raisin cookies, but, on Easter, she whipped up a batch of ‘Betty Crocker Oatmeal Cookies’ and served ‘em up as if they were the real thing! 

Another guerilla-sized fact was, sad to say, that--NO ONE in our extended family of twenty had the recipe, either!  

Cheri entered the parlor first. Vanity motivated her towards Grandma’s towering claw-foot-looking glass. In pink shorts and matching tank top, she jostled her crimson, lion’s mane while turning this way and that.

Granny looked up and yawned.  “Them sugar-daddy shorts are tighter than a clam with lockjaw, Cheri.”

Me and Amoni doubled over in fits of laughter.

Ignoring Granny, Cheri said something I never thought I’d hear her say.

“I just can’t seem to get rid of this lower back pain.”

My heartbeat with a quickness. Her words caused me to think about children. My husband and I wanted kids but now that I’m divorced, and forty-one, I worried and wondered if they would ever come.   

Amonie looked down at the gold heart ankle bracelet her husband gifted her on their last wedding anniversary and questioned if the cancer growing inside her would make this present her last.

Cheri glared at her image in the mirror, patted her tummy, and mused, “I better call Doctor Donahue before this child sends this gorgeous figure of mine astray.”  

Next, Amoni’s reflection emerged beside her cousin. Fingering her pixie cut, she gazed, rotated her head, and uttered, “I don’t know what’s causing these annoying stiff necks.”   

Hearing my cousin’s true confessions and knowing they’re waiting on me, I joined them in front of the 7ft. Mahogany mirror.  Squinting my jellybean greens, I shook my shoulder-length dreadlocks and sighed.  

“I swear these grays, are cropping up everywhere.”

Grandma’s deep cough faded our reverie and mirrored images as we rushed to her side.

“Are you okay, Gran?”  We all called out in unison and then relaxed when we saw that her coughs were sprinkled with laughter.   

“I’m okay,” she choked out, struggling to speak. “Just give me a pillow so I can prop myself up some, because, Granddaughters, I’ve got a story to tell.”

She chuckled, adjusting the canary-colored sheets about her legs.  Cheri, Amoni, and I glanced at one another. Grinning like we were kids, slinging mudpies,  we formed an arc and folded our legs at her feet.

“Well, my gorgeous angels, when I saw you standing in the mirror, it reminded me of something that happened to Reba when you were just children.” 

“What happened, Granny?” We all tee-hee‘d together.

 “Do you remember the time when your mothers and I were in this same room, resting from the cooking we’d done for the 4th of July picnic to Bear Mountain?  And like you girls, they spent time in the mirror. Cheri, your mother, Bee, like you, suffered with arthritics, except hers was in the knees. She hurt so often that she nick-named the pain ‘Arthur,’ like for ‘arthur-it is’. 

Laughing hard, Granny started to cough again. Concerned, we unlocked our legs and scrambled to our knees, preparing to stand up.

“Don’t ya dare move,” she hacked. Waving us away, she straightened the lemon-colored sheet about her limbs.

“For her back pain,” Grandma said, eyeing Amoni, “I recommended that your mama, Rhianne, use Witch Hazel Ointment. And that witch can still do a hocus-pocus, so I suggest you use it on your neck.” 

Turning her head, she pointed a crooked finger and grinned at me. I lowered my jelly-bean greens, for the twelve-year-old within was already getting embarrassed by what she was going to say.

“Reba,” she chuckled, “Like you, your mother, Rhodora, grayed early, so she kept a bottle of Glossine Hair Color & Temple Grower to hide the gray.”

Then sitting tall in her rocker, she stuck out her ample bosom as many in the temple of Granny’s church-going and proud, no-nonsense women would do, and said, “After you dropped the cookies, Reba, and ran outside, your mother said that later you started talking about the witches in ‘Snow White, ‘ ‘Sleeping Beauty‘ and ‘Hansel and Gretel‘. Next, you seemed to get agitated and kept asking if a man named ‘Author ' was coming to the picnic. So, we figured that while you were in the kitchen you’d been eavesdropping again on our conversation and had gotten things twisted, thinking that your Aunt Bee was cheating on her husband with a man named Arthur.”

“Yep,” Cheri chortled as the four of us convulsed with laughter. “Reba was always pocking the beehive and then crying when she got stung.”

“Shut up, Miss Skintight,” I teased back.

Between our hoopla, Amoni said, “I miss your cookies, Grandma.”  Cheri murmured, “I haven’t had one in years.”

As my humor softened, I added, “I’m sorry none of us thought to write down…”

Grandma Hyacinth slipped, lifeless, at that moment, from her rocker.

From my mind’s eye, I see my granddaughters huddling over me as if I went to dine with Jesus. But since the Lord isn’t ready to serve me, I lapsed into the Land Between and joined with my mother's spirit, Secret. Secret, the great-grandchild of a slave had started visiting, often, from this far-out place. The last time she was here, I told her amnesia had stripped away things in this world while sharpening stuff in ‘the between crystal clarity. She whispered that we no longer had to fret over relatives who rejected me and made me cry when they said I was an outside child because, soon, she’d take me to meet my birth father. And just before vanishing, Secret breathed into me what she’d never learned to jot down before gently rocking me away from the soft, moist, sweet place Between.  

*** “Grandma, Grandma,” My grands shook me and screamed.

“Stop It! Stop it, I say. At my age, I’ve earned the right to drift off whenever I please.”

“I was annoyed since I never intended for my granddaughters to see me sink into the shadows and secrets of the Land Between.”

“What you girls standing around for?”   A reservation? Let me up! I want something from the pantry.”

Cheri, Amoni, and I were as hushed as a paper airplane while Granny hobbled into the kitchen. 

Soon we could hear the squeaking of cabinets. “Who wants to help me make butternut raisin cookies?”   

Cheri beat me and Amoni into the kitchen and washed every bowl, pan, plate, and utensil without being asked. While Amoni recorded the recipe, I lit the stove and helped Granny with the mixing. And soon, VOIlA! The aroma of walnut raisin paste, creamed butter, and vanilla all saturated the space. An hour later, three silver trays were piled high with heavenly, golden rings that sat like divas of the dinner among the holiday food we had prepared. Afterward, on the evening porch, we gathered there since it was cooler than the kitchen. And merging along with the calling song of male crickets to their mates, was the delightful melody of cookie munching. And alongside our tears of love and joy moistening our cheeks, we hugged and kissed with sweet butternut raisin lips beneath the moonlight.