THE MESSAGE

Sun just coming up it seemed and it was hazy and J Geils Band was on the radio. Dad was snapping his fingers. He was having trouble quitting smoking. He would light a Vantage and then drag on it and then stub it out in the ashtray. Honeybaked ham sat wrapped in its copper colored foil in the back seat braced with a belt as if it were sentient and required protection. Past the Lampost Lounge and decayed non-descript industrial structures and smokestacks and water towers empty and the random stray stopping to smell and pee and then trotting on. We crossed over tracks and up into the labyrinth of government housing and past the liquor store with its crime scene tape wrapping front to back as some sad gift, several men standing still in front drinking from brown bags, ignoring massive NO LOITERING sign affixed to front burgular barred door.

We stopped. Ree Ree was outside. She was wearing a halter top and hot pants and no shoes. Her hair was tied in corn rows. She was smoking and talking to a man. Dad unbelted the ham and picked it up and we walked down the concrete stairs to the aparment. Broken bottles and trash pocked the stairs and stray cats wild and distrusting shifted about the roofs and trash bins. I heard music blaring from outside. Dad knocked on the door. Clifford came to the door after several knocks. Clifford smelled like smoke and he looked tired. Clifford opened the door. Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" played on the stereo. Stack of Sugar Hill singles on the floor. Card table crowded with men. Top covered in ash. Lowenbrau bottles piled on the table top. On the floor. Moreen laughed. Lord what yall doin here Mister George, she says. Moreen smelled like smoke and she looked tired. We brought you an Easter ham, Moreen, Dad says. Yall nice. Yall too nice, she says. Come in hear, I makin up some eggs and grits for all yall an I want yall to have some, she says. Clifford gets up and sets the stylus back on "The Message."

Moreen cleaned our house and my grandparents' houses and aunts and uncles houses. She lived with Clifford. She had fourteen children. Ree Ree was one of the fourteen. Ree Ree was always pregnant or having a child. Many of the fourteen were always in trouble or in juvenile. Moreen made the best fried chicken I've ever had. She made the best scrambled eggs too. Her grits were great. She used to cut up a whole chicken on the counter at home and save the gizzard and liver and then she'd soak the legs and thighs and breast in buttermilk. While she waited on them soaking she fried up the gizzard and liver. She ate them and said mmmm mmmm while she chewed and sipped coffee spiked with Chivas Regal.

Moreen's stove is going full keel. Cast iron pans on four burners, who knows what in the oven. She spoons something brown and thick from a soup tin. Use drippins, she says. That what give them eggs good taste. Drippins pop and melt in the pan. She cracks eggs in her huge black hands the way chefs do, holding them between thumb and forefinger and both yolks slip into the bowl and she beats them into soft yellow with a forks tines and slops cream into them and salt and pepper and into the pan. The pan screams. She shakes the pan on the fire. She circles the fire with the pan. Egg settles and goes white and she hits it with pepper again. Eggs fluff and she shakes the pan and they peel off the bottom and are cooked through and glistening with fat. Grits spit and pop on back burner. She adds water from a measuring cup and stirs them. She tastes them. She salts them. She stirs.

Clifford hands dad a Lowenbrau. He drinks it. The kitchenette clock says 8:14. There are sirens going by. Ree Ree comes in the kitchen and takes a cigarette out of Moreen's pack of Kools on the counter. You bet stop that smokin girl, Moreen says. You bet stop smokin my Kools girl. Moreen stirs the grits and tastes them again. She spoons drippins into the pot and stirs them. She cuts an inch of butter and folds it into the grits. Clifford screams at a man at the table. That bullshit, he says. That bullshit as ah mothafucka, he says. Moreen screams at them. Aint you known we got chillun in here, she says. Aint you known?

She hands me a paper plate of grits and eggs and red hots. She hands dad the same. She pulls a Kool from the pack and lights it and drags and exhales smoke through her nostrils and picks at her afro. Aint they known how crazy they actin, she says. It Easter mornin. Aint they known that? Moreen looks at dad and asks what we have planned for the day and he tells her we are going to his folks place for supper and she says that real nice. He pulls her aside and hands her a card and tells her not to tell Clifford or the others about the card and I see her open it and ball up the cash and put it in her pocket. Aint yall nice as all, she says. Aint you? She smiles and her teeth are chipped and broken and her eyes are huge and brown and yellow like mica. Clifford screams at the man again and he comes across the table and they are fighting and Moreen is screaming. She grabs the pot of grits off the stovetop and throws them at the man and he is there on the floor screaming, the grits stuck on his face and hair and Clifford is laughing and kicking him and saying that what you get for yo bullshit.