Requiem

This was your place, Dad.

This was the place you took your family every summer.

Where mother turned “brown as a berry” while dripping sandcastles with your daughters

who would only trade their seat in the sand for a ride on a float with you at the helm.

And the waves rocked us and the sun baked us and love filled us.

This is the place I brought my family

and where my family brought their families

because Josh only wants to go to “our beach”.

And we never did what tourists do because we weren’t tourists.

We were home.

This is the place I came when we knew something was wrong,

when you refused to stay in the hospital because you “weren’t sick”.

You’d never been sick.

Not even a headache.

But you were and you went.

The beginning of the end.

This place is still yours.

I feel you everywhere.

In the blue and green of the ocean

and the whitest sand of the “prettiest beaches I’ve ever seen”.

In the wind near the surf and the sidewalks along the beach road where you walked until you couldn’t.

There are some places I can’t go yet,

where walking in the door opens an empty space

where the sound of people calling out your name should be

and there will be empty barstools where we should be sitting

and you would order grits and hug the chef

and squeeze my hand, at least once while we were eating.

Maya’s Mail

My friend’s new husband used to deliver Maya Angelou’s mail. They changed his route last year, so he doesn’t anymore, but he used to. As soon as I heard, I imagined taking a trip. The town they live in couldn’t be more than six or seven hours away. I could be there in the same amount of time it takes me to get to the beach, and I’ve been known to drive to the beach and back over a weekend.

But I didn’t. I didn’t make that trip. Truth be told, the idea never became much more than that…something I thought about now and then…a musing atop a pile of reverie in a corner of my brain that never gets enough light to grow anything.

I hadn’t read her books, either. The first time I heard the title “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” was when a high school English teacher added it to her “suggested” reading list. This was the same teacher that required us to read books like “Great Expectations”, “The Scarlet Letter”, and “1984”. And, I had to read them! No Cliff’s Notes for this girl! My mother’s eyes narrowed when she saw those distinctive yellow and black stripes among my classmates’ books. I worried sometimes she’d stop letting me be friends with those girls, like the time she told me I couldn’t go over to Tina Green’s house anymore, because Tina Green’s house was not a house. It was an apartment and only itinerants lived in apartments.

I don’t know if it’s because of, or in spite of, the fact that I actually had to read those torture devices of semi-modern literature, but I remember quite a lot about all three of those books. If only “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” had made the required list.
But it was Atlanta. And it was the 70’s. Just a few years before, my mother had fired the last of a succession of large black women who dressed like nurses to do the ironing. Shortly afterwards we moved to north Atlanta only to be bussed back to south Atlanta schools. That’s where I met Kathy whose blackness escaped me until I learned we were moving again. More north this time. So north that there wasn’t any chance of making any black friends. Mother took the scrap of paper with Kathy’s telephone number on it. “You won’t be needing this.”

Oprah Winfrey introduced me to Maya Angelou when I was a new mother and anxious for every kind of reassurance. Her voice, as it slid from her mouth, down the front of her blouse, and into her gorgeously expressive, caramel-colored hands reminded me of Mae, my favorite of my mother’s maids. Like Maya, she was a large woman and handsome, and when she wasn’t using her mouth for soothing, she was smiling. Often she did both at the same time.

It wasn’t until I read “Phenomenal Woman” though, that I began to truly appreciate the gift of Maya Angelou. I saw myself there. I think we all did. Maya had a way of working words like dough until they formed something that fed us all. She was the epitome of civilized in a world that seems to have forgotten the meaning of the word and, as long as she was there…waiting for me to visit, there was hope. There will never be another like her.

Daddy’s Girl

My father fathered four females.

I am the eldest.

“My name is Stacye, and I’m a Daddy’s Girl.”

Of course I am. We all are. We have a Daddy…we are girls. And, like all good southern girls, we actually call him “Daddy”.

Addressing him that way comes naturally. Admitting to it conjures images of Orson Welles, syrup dripping from the corners of Joanne Woodward’s unlined mouth, and a discomfort that smells like warm gardenias.

By now, you have an image. My blonde hair is long, as are my legs. My eyes are large, and probably blue. There’s a natural curve to my lips, which are carefully painted pink; never red. And, you would be right.

Except, the image is that of my sister, my baby sister to be exact; the one who still throws her limbs on either side of his recliner as she sprawls across his lap, the one that bakes for him, calls him daily, and houses him when he leaves the crystal sands of his beloved beach for important family events, such as his birthday, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

But I was there in the early days…

On Saturdays, we logged hours in his two-toned El Camino, driving around town doing errands. His “Honey-Do” list became our “Trip for Two” list, as we traversed suburban side-roads between the post office, hardware store, garden nursery, and occasionally, the local mechanic.

Mostly, we talked.

“Never forget who you are!” I especially loved that one. “You’re a Howell!”

He said as though it meant something. He said it as though mere mention of our name was enough to garner the respect of anyone within hearing distance. He said it so often that I believed it.

He told me stories of him and Joe Wiggins. It was always “Joe Wiggins”, never just “Joe”. Perhaps there was another Joe. I don’t know, he never said. But, he never mentioned his childhood friend without inserting his surname.

I remember the sun being particularly bright one Saturday afternoon. We’d probably just dropped my car off…again. The dilapidated shop occupied most of a block-long side road. They specialized in foreign “jobs”, such as Hondas, Toyotas, Datsuns, and Cortinas. They didn’t actually specialize in Cortinas. No one did. Because, no one east of the Atlantic drove one…except me.

“Why don’t you divorce her?’ My right hand swept blonde wisps from my face. The air conditioner in the El Camino had stopped working weeks ago.

“Because Howells don’t divorce.” He said it as though it were true. He said it as though he was raised by two loving parents instead of a crotchety grandmother who insisted he sweep their dirt floor each morning before mounting the newspaper-laden bicycle he later rode to school.

And I believed, because I didn’t know.

He taught me about cars. He didn’t change his own oil. He had “Eddie, The Mechanic” to do that. But, he taught me to change mine.

He lay under the car, while I leaned across the engine. We changed the oil, added water to the battery, and checked all the other fluids. When we were done; large, continent-shaped swatches of my flannel shirt were missing.

“Battery acid.”, he said while ordering me inside to change my shirt with just a look.

But I kept it. I kept the shirt. I even wore it a few times. Now, I’m sure it lies alongside my holey Peter Frampton t-shirt; the one I kept for almost twenty years before deciding that I really never would wear it again.

But I will…

Angels will sing, harps will play, and there I’ll be…Daddy’s Girl…wearing a holey flannel shirt over a faded Peter Frampton t-shirt.

“Do you feel like I do?”