Let Us Give Thanks
by Margaret Irby
"I'm seventy-two years old and I ain't going nowhere this morning except to the bathroom!" Jessie stuck out her chin.
Roe stood over her mother. "You're seventy-six and get up!" She threw back the covers of the sagging bed.
The heat in the projects was long overdue to be turned on. The radiator and the room were cold. Jessie pulled the covers back up so that all Roe could see were stiff grey hairs poking out from a terry-cloth turban.
"Don't you talk to me like that, I'll whoop your tittly," she said in a muffled voice.
Roe yanked the covers back down.
They glared at each other in a showdown of chins. That was the family resemblance.
A tall and capable woman, Roe meant business. "You can't back out now. You're the one who taught me to always keep my word, so be an example, or I'm going home. I have my reputation."
"Reputation!" hooted Jessie, clapping her dry cracked hands. "What'd you know 'bout reputation when you was a li'l bitty thing and I had to work night and day just to make it? Why don't you do this yourself? You was the one who wanted to be in show business. All my pay going to those damn tap lessons!"
"You know good and well there was more future in business," said Roe.
"Hmmph. What thanks I get with you traveling all over the world, speaking languages?"
"Mother please. Stop trying to make me feel guilty and put on this suit."
Roe placed the box of folded plastic at the foot of the bed, sat down beside Jessie and stroked her arm. She knew how to play her mother when she had to. "You're not afraid are you?" she said.
Jessie gave a raucous cough and kicked the box onto the floor. "I'm scared of nothing! I've been juking in this dog ass town for too long." She patted the nightstand for her cigarettes. Her long red fingernail caught the lace doily for a brief moment. Then she dug into the pack, extracting the last one before crumpling the green and silver paper.
Roe remembered how her mother used to strut down Nicholas Avenue like nobody's business, her smooth face under a velvet turban, an extra long Benson and Hedges menthol poised in her mouth. She'd squeezed fun out of the city, dancing in clubs, having boyfriends. Roe had always felt the burden and privilege of being an only child and yet today, it seemed to her that her mother was the child Roe had never wanted.
"But I ain't gonna make a fool outta myself. For what?" Jessie was saying, blowing a steady white stream of smoke.
"Well, for one thing, all your great grandkids will get to see you on television," said Roe.
"Well, I would like for my grands to see me on television." Jessie's toes curled like claws. "Naw, forget it."
"I always thought you were the bravest woman in the world," said Roe.
But the Bronx, like everywhere else, had changed, had gotten more expensive too.
Jessie stiffened. "That was before I got held up in the elevator," she whimpered. "Little son of a bitch put a gun to my side. It was hard and cold too!"
Roe picked the box up off the floor and lifted out the crushed plastic square. As a tactic of last resort, she said, "I'll bet Raymond would be proud of you."
"Oh, I wish Raymond was here," cried Jessie. "I miss his big black self. She blew more smoke rings into the air. "And I miss your Cab too."
"Well I don't. I'm happy nobody's under my roof that's cheating on me." Roe laughed. "I want to tell you it feels good!"
Sliding her arms under her mother's shoulders, Roe lifted Jessie to sitting position. "C'mon now, straighten up." She peeled off Jessie's nylons and rolled them into a neat little ball. Off came the gown. She unfolded the gummy brown cube and stretched it against her mother's back. Jessie wriggled against Roe's pulling but she let her do it.
Yeah, she had been a swinging chick all right. But she hadn't been dancing in years, with her memory playing tricks on her like she was losing her mind, Roe sassing her and oh Lord, Raymond lying up there in this casket, just the thought of it made her want to cry. And all that damn paper, those forms for nothing, Raymond's veteran's pension so little she knew somebody must have stole it. All she wanted to do was get on a motorcycle and ride out of town.
After a while she muttered, "Maybe I am a little chicken shit. I never thought I was."
Roe didn't answer. She was reading the directions in four languages.
After a little while more, Jessie exclaimed, "No, it's your daughter Barbara Jean is the Chicken Shit! She didn't even come to Raymond's funeral on account of being scared of dead people. When I call over there, I always ask to speak to Chicken Shit."
"You shouldn't call her that," said Roe. The smell of new tires filled the room. She reread the instructions but found it hard to concentrate. "But I'm glad I only had her and I wish I hadn't even had her. Men and children, all alike. Make a woman tired and that is the truth."
This whole ordeal was making her tired too.
"I need a smoke!" blurted Jessie.
"Mother, you've already smoked your whole pack. And anyway, I don't want you smoking," said Roe. "Now stand up."
"That's fine, missy, whatever you want or don't want." Jessie groaned.
Her legs had old age in them. But her posture was regal. Now the sticky flaps of the suit's legs hung open. Roe fed Jessie's feet into the openings one at a time and then zipped up the sides.
Jessie's topless torso shivered as she stood knee deep in the bear suit. Suddenly she started towards the door, mumbling under her breath, "And if I don't get me a cigarette, I'm going cross the street and get me somethin' from those dope addicts."
But the plastic covering hindered all movement.
"Why you think I want to be a bird when I never even got on no ass airplane?" she sniffed. "When I worked for Mr. Rosen, he and Mrs. Rosen were always trying to get me to Europe to cook for them but I said no, I don't fly, no thank you, no way!" She blew her nose with a lilac tissue. "This is like being...a clown or something." Then she blubbered, "You are making me eat shit because you are the Devil!" Roe felt like slapping her mother. "Okay! Then you want to go live with your sister in South Carolina?"
"All those mosquitoes! No ma'am. And all those damn peoples having babies like rabbits! No way!"
"Then stop being so difficult and calling all these curse words. You wanted to be independent. You wanted a job. So do the job." She paused. "All right then. For the record, I want you to know I've appreciated everything you've done for me. Now there's the doorbell and you standing here half naked."
"Maybe those fellows want some," Jessie cackled lewdly.
"C'mon, let's go," said Roe, quickly fastening the bra, slipping a camisole over Jessie's head, sticking her arms through the rubbery sleeves, and zipping her up. She gave her mother a warm pat. "Now behave your butt."
Jessie made a sarcastic face. "Happy Thanksgiving to you too, honey."
Two big men marched through the front door. The first man, the burliest, was obviously the boss. He scowled. "This one's going to be a job. More work than usual."
"I'm outta here. I gotta catch the bus," said Jessie.
"Good morning Ma'am," said the second man. "Are you Float Number 23?"
"Why?" retorted Jessie, "Are you the man in the moon?"
He guffawed as if she had just told a marvelous joke but the boss was not amused. His square eyes narrowed.
"Lady, you have to cooperate. We're going to have to stretch you out on this table and gear you up."
"I'm a Day Worker, not a circus animal!" yelped Jessie. "Cleaned houses forty years so my daughter could get degrees. She speaks Chinese and Japanese, and I don't know what else."
"How much do you weigh?"
Jessie's chin shot out. "Now don't get fresh with me, I ain't dead yet. Who asked you how long is your dingy? Next, I suppose, you gonna want to know how old I am."
"I'd say around 165." He opened a complicated tool kit. "Let's use the two-forty-six and the nine-twelve. I want to make sure she holds." The men strapped Jessie on a stretcher and carted her outside to the curb, working fast, like movers. Coatless, Roe followed them. She watched them lift the ropes and helium tanks down from the van. Rubbing her arms, she asked, "My mother will be all right won't she?" Her voice had become fretful. "She has a little diabetes and high blood pressure. They said it was safe for anybody."
"Lady move out of the way so we can do the job."
Jessie's eyes were rounded with fear.
"Here," said the nice mover who had guffawed, and offered her a plastic flask of cheap whiskey. "You're not the first to get twitchy."
"Hold her. We better get going if we're gonna finish by ten," said the boss.
They pumped in strong rhythmic presses. The wind blew brown leaves off the one pitiful sidewalk tree.
"Whooaaa!" hollered Jessie. She crossed herself. "Whew! If I didn't need the money. Oh Lord, help me Jesus. What needin' the money does!"
The men eased their bulbous acquisition onto the rolling platform trailer and sped away.
Roe managed to get herself over to her daughter Barbara Jean's house, where they, and a few dozen other grand and great-grandkids, sat in front of Barbara Jean's television that she'd inherited from Cab, her father, who'd got it from his mother, back in the days when there were still S & H green stamps. The family sat cross-legged on the shag carpet, assorted chairs, and on each other's laps, and talked and laughed and left static on the station until it was eleven o'clock, time for the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. All fifteen pairs of eyes were on the look out for Jessie.
"Look at Grandma," shouted the oldest child, "there she is! I hope they do a close-up. Cool!"
Images of Pluto and Mickey Mouse and Snow White bobbing down Fifth Avenue. The kids were fired up. "Gram, Gram, Gram," they chanted, "Gram, Gram, Gram." Images of Jessie's face moved across the screen. Images passing of the Long Island College marching band. Images of the whites of Jessie's eyes, looking terrified. "Gram, Gram, Gram." The children stepped up their knees playing imaginary instruments, "Gram, Gram, Gram." A break from our sponsors. A Nabisco commercial. Casper the Friendly Ghost. Then Jessie's body turning over in space, around and around, like an oversized stuffed brown astronaut.
"Now is Gram supposed to be a teddy bear or just what kind of bear?" asked Barbara Jean, bouncing her tenth baby on her lap.
"Gram, Gram, Gram," intoned the children to a sea of sequined majorettes.
"Hey, she's really up high! She's higher up than any of them. Cool! She's the highest one!"
"Gram, Gram, Gram! the children shrieked.
At that moment the brown blob floated, floated, floated away, into space, smaller and smaller, smaller and smaller, and even smaller.
"Gram," cheeped the children, as the television speck dwindled into pure sky.
They all stared at the screen, waiting. Now there was just Papa Bear and Baby Bear in the cussed parade. Roe sat speechless. Her chin went down. Then everybody's chin went down.
Finally Roe whispered, "My fault."
Then she wailed, "I could've worked overtime, taken another job, made her move in with me. But no, no, no! I wouldn't live in the Bronx, I wanted to go to China, I wanted a Japanese boyfriend, I wanted my own damn life!
She was shaking and her eyes were strange. No one had ever seen Roe act like this. Barbara Jean trembled and cried. All the children trembled and cried.
The very next day Roe moved in with Barbara Jean. She became Barbara Jean's slave. She acquired a kind of hollowed-eye stare.
And every night thereafter, in the middle of the night, Roe heard Raymond and Cab and Jessie stomping around the project, waking her up so that she had to rise and go tell them to shut the fuck up.
