Making The Rounds

            Still early and the sound of the tennis ball pierced his ear. He swatted it full force over the net.

            “Hey, Byron slow down. You are going to hurt yourself on the court if you keep playing so hard,” his partner said. “Let’s take a ten-minute break.”

            “Just putting my all into it,” he said. “Let’s keep going.” I’ll be ok. Have to catch my breath.”

The group played until late morning.

Byron arrived back home at his usual time with their Sunday bagels, smoked fish and cream cheese and walked into the kitchen. Joyce came down the carpeted stairs in her nightgown and robe, slippers and red toenail polish. When she heard the garage door open, she met him in the kitchen as he closed the back door. She reached in the fridge for eggs to scramble and selected apples from a basket to cook. Her wet fingers smelled of grapefruit from twisting one on the juice maker.

“Hi honey looks like you had a tiring game. The bagels smell good. Have some grapefruit juice. Who played with you Byrony?”

            “Thanks, the same crew as last week and we played hard …I need a shower right now.” He downed the juice then kissed her mouth. “Toast the bagels and I’ll be back Jo. Make scrambled eggs too.”

He grabbed a glass of water and headed upstairs. He then turned on the shower to warm the water. Lying on the bed he wonders if he should get a new shirt for the trip to his eldest daughter’s house in Missouri.

Spring came fast. The first weekend of the month passed, and south Michigan had sixty-degree days. Everything was unpredictable during the transition of seasons. Standing near the open-bar Byron attended a fraternal club meeting this evening at a restaurant downtown for the annual Royalman business meeting.

            “Hey Byron! I’ve missed a couple of meetings this year. Are you doing ok? Listen doc, my daughter had a baby boy last month at the age of forty. Can you believe it - my only girl. My sons each have a couple of children now too. My wife flew to San Diego to help out and will not be back for a month, until after Easter,” the club member said.

            “Well, you know my daughter Muriel is expecting this June. The grandchildren are adding up. I have seven now and want more,” Byron said.

Doctors told him his blood pressure medication was working and he planned to close the bedroom door and kiss Joyce from her eyebrows to her dark mound. On that Saturday evening they turned into bed early. They connected on an emotional level, despite inconsistent communication on both sides during mid-life; rumors of infidelity caused distance – their strengths though complimented each other, while they were still opposites in many ways. The Randolphs had a symbiotic marriage; he was the provider, gardener, an intellect, while she was a cook, painter, the traveler. This night Joyce opened her legs and turned over for him to slide his body inside of hers, on top of hers and he could feel her warmth and wetness as if it was forty-two years earlier. They held each other throughout the night. The numbness in his left leg didn’t bother him much anymore. He crossed Coronary artery bypass surgery off his to-do list, even though he knew the survival statistics.

Nothing was missed during those two next weeks by him. Byron met with a professional club on Tuesday night, The Association, a group of friends who have monthly dinner meetings. Over the years, these men planned social outings together. Byron hosted this meeting at the Renaissance Club. Yet another chance to see his colleagues as he made the rounds.

            “Hey Byron, good meeting. Your friend from North Carolina who talked about healthcare for older black men spoke to my sensibilities,” a club member said. “I have had issues with joint pain, and I may go to see him. Time to get tested for colon cancer again too, oh joy.” 

            “Thanks. I was happy with the turnout - almost a hundred percent,” he said. “To bad Sam nodded out at the end …glad he sat in the back because he snored some,” Byron said laughing.

            On Friday the doctor had dinner with his two sons and youngest daughter, along with her family in Detroit. Although awakened by bathroom trips during the night, Saturday morning came, and Byron landed at St. Louis Lambert Airport early in the afternoon. His daughters who lived on the east coast met him there too, Muriel from New York, and Suzette flew in from Massachusetts the day before with her husband and their daughter. The sisters and their mother had already been babysitting the Keats boys for a few days. The boys’ parents planned to return in the morning from a conference.

The oldest grandson looked like his mother. He had red-brown skin and round cheeks. The fraternal twin boys, who are three years younger, resembled the Keats family. One was the spitting image of his father, but fair like Byron, and the other resembled his father’s square shouldered father. The toddler was a combination. Watching the kids was a reason to hang out at the Keats’ house with its big backyard and a huge playroom in the basement. Hanging out on the couch with the baby the family watched an English movie, The Full Monty in the family room.

Byron caught his breath from running from one side of the room to the other.

“These kids just want to get into everything,” he said. “Look what I did, my own limbs helped to bring them here.”

            Everything was changing from Byron’s perspective. The fresh air in the backyard from the rain helped him to see that his life was the way it was meant - what was for him. Joyce barbecued fish for Byron, ribs and chicken, hot dogs for the kids, and made potato salad, baked beans, string beans and macaroni and cheese. She served her Parmesan cheese garlic bread and blackberry pie. The weekend replenished him except for the play station hogging, the fighting and the mess. Byron had considered not coming on this trip because he was physically stretched. A telephone conversation with a daughter who said you should travel convinced him, so he had his salt and pepper hair and mustache trimmed.

            He drove his daughters to the airport late Sunday. He stayed at the bottom of the escalator while they proceeded to their gate waving to them in his trench coat. Byron then joined his grandsons playing video games at the airport arcade.

He and Joyce flew home in the morning. Their week started off with a dinner at Harvey Wong’s, across the Canadian border and through the Windsor tunnel.

“Byron, why do we always come to the same restaurant time and time again? There are just so many other restaurants we could go to, even though I like that Harvey Wong cooks everything here himself,” she said.

            “Oh honey, this place has become a part of who and whose we are. I want you to plan a trip to New York and Boston within the next couple of months. And in August we are going to go the NMA conference in Hawaii.”

He worked a half-day on Wednesday to balance out hospital rounds he made on the weekend.

This last hump day of the month he attended the medical society meeting. The gathering was held at Ebenezer Baptist Church and he gave a speech to the members about the Michigan Hospice health care organization that he directed for five years. He spoke about dignity when dying and helping the terminally ill with their transition. He professed that death is not final, but a rebirth and pain management and faith eliminated fear of the transition.

After his talk, Byron sat down at the head table. In ten minutes, a piercing pain ripped through his heart and minutes later its beat ceased. He slumped over going unnoticed at first. He felt no pain after a few seconds and for many moments he fought death and crossing into the spiritual world. But he continued to float towards the white light in slow motion. From overhead he observed friends putting him onto a stretcher by ambulance technicians. He heard his colleague say blocked arteries had brought on a massive heart attack. Even surrounded by doctors his pulse could not be revived. His own father and mother had died from heart disease.



She had chosen not to attend the dinner meeting that night, a good thing in her mind. Joyce pushed back anger that he didn’t agree to a heart bypass but consoled herself by believing he was now observed in God’s house and taken from the earth plane for a higher purpose. Locked in her bedroom while people made plans downstairs she felt numb. Having lost her own father and a brother she knew how to push the pain down and filter it through language and words. 

The day of the funeral internment rain poured all morning. During the church service, the stain-glassed windows began to glow, clouds moved away and the sun remained. The skies opened up for Byron. Later that year, Joyce told the family that her lights had turned off and on in the house and that the shorted doorbell and shower temperature rising and falling was probably him haunting her, as her daughters said. Cards, letters and plants piled up for months.

***

Remains at the Cabin

The cedar house was hardly a cabin at all when they finally reached it. It was a place halfway between somewhere and nowhere with lost souls everywhere. A condition chosen and found through four hours of freeways, two hours of highways then sixty minutes of one-lane roads which were encroached upon by tall pine trunks, bare halfway up because their full tops blocked the sunshine. The dirt road with trailer-tracks on it eventually ran out and the white mini-van couldn’t move any further because there was nowhere left to go. A navy SUV followed with headlights blaring; it was a miracle that they found the place in the black light, dropping rain and snow. The glow from the North Star helped to light the way.

The oldest boy directed them though; insistent on sitting in the front seat, at twelve his cockier implant was a year old. Scars formed on his ears from a surgeon pinning them back – ears born filled with fluid to block the verbal abuse his father had forced into his mother’s ears while pregnant. He pointed and pushed out words. His enhanced eyesight afforded him an increased sense of direction. The gang of five stair-step kids twelve, ten, nine, seven, and five years-old, a three-quarter century old grandmother with an arthritic hip, and three daughters: two married mothers, the youngest Eugenia and the oldest Suzette brought a case of wine and a computer for the weekend and the middle sister Muriel was eight-months pregnant …they all poured out of the cars with bags and groceries. 

            In the wet cold of Traverse Bay springtime, the cedar wood planked body of the house and its walls made of glass was inviting. A long cedar deck lead human footsteps through the cabin’s door – a mouth that opened to wooden ceilings and more wood floors; cedar wood breathed everywhere – lined with golden hued curves the indoors begging every family inside. The cedar cabin sat on a hill overlooking a bay with lanky pine trees in salute behind it. Secrets seeped into the organic structure and the freshwater bay in the house’s backyard. Renters always left something behind; they left a part of them within this house and some sustenance for the cabin.

On one side the house rested against trees coming up past the top deck that surrounded the cabin on all sides - except above a cleared space for parking cars that led to the walkway to the bay. The house appeared to acquiesce to platoon boats, birds, bears and coyote, as an aged person might, who could merely rest giving in to family and caretakers for everyday survival during the senior years. Each hour red northern cardinals took flight circling for wing exercise, sometimes signs of season changes and food. Bears and a rumored Bigfoot slept in the distance; scuffles and growls echoed as did coyote howls – it sounded like packs rambling through the deep woods at night. It was two years ago that the sisters made an agreement to lose themselves up north during the in-between season where nature and energy awakened. Two years ago Eugenia ran towards the north where she didn’t need her husband’s permission to boil bark, herbs, spices and sugar for healing her son’s hearing, and to tame the advanced tongue and hair of her youngest. The year before Suzette had rented a guesthouse near a ski resort in the next town over. She invited her siblings, husbands and grandparents to join she and her two girls and a boy in the silence of the north for spring break. The only takers were sisters and her mother, and the children because they knew that the time in the slow country, during this transitional season was also meant for cultivating psychic traits, learning the mysteries of the unseen and unknown.

These supernatural gifts disturbed Suzette’s peace as a teenager and brought the wild side out of her. The summer after she turned legal, she moved with her diploma south to Louisiana, to the New Orleans French Quarter with her best girlfriend. On the outskirts of New Orleans she had a few relatives, but it was hard to get around without a car. These relatives were cousins of her grandmother who at twenty moved from Louisiana to Chicago as a part of a wave of folks taking part in the U.S. great migration when people of color left their birthplaces and all they knew – to escape discriminatory laws.

That summer Suzette learned how to parlez Francais with more fluency and an authentic way to cook okra-shrimp gumbo. The girls stayed in a studio apartment visiting with spiritual counselors in the area learning about their ancestry and how to navigate the future with the use of crosses, rosaries and bibles that decorated their spiritual advisors’ homes offices. They learned about the recognition a soul makes when it encounters the familiar.

Insight was shared and secrets of their wrinkle free skin showed Creole power in their lives. Many of the ancestors had midnight straight hair, honey-olive skin, tomato red lips and fingernails like her grandmother. The teenagers aspired to sing and dance; they worked as barmaids which led to dancing at private parties, full nude sometimes, and sometimes only with tops off or down around the waist. Their taut bodies and brown nipples put spells on the men. Sex was pleasurable, and feeling adored, then paid to be touched by the older men. At first it was educational, but after a while it took one glass of sangria and then two to free her mind from the perverse men. Threatening curses kept them from getting out of line. The pair survived six months on noodles and beignet doughnuts before Suzette’s mother flew out at Christmas and brought the girls home; Suzette’s best friend already pregnant. Using protection was the lesson learned by the sisters.

On Friday evening of spring break the children felt a draft coming from the back on the ground floor of the house. They noticed a hole in a ground floor window screen and an unexpected guest; she was a coyote fast asleep on the floor in the pantry. The coyote might have pushed through looking for food and gotten comfortable. As a force of family, they blocked the stairs, opened the back door and the animal darted for her home in the woods trampling over Muriel who was standing nearby. Left behind in that alcove though, was what appeared to be three creatures with flushed faces and wide eyes.

Standing behind the scene the kids saw their aunt’s skirt totally absorbed in blood coming from the direction down between her thighs. Her wails had gone unheard amid the chaotic scene she was now on her side rubbing her emptied womb and her eyes followed her newborn baby’s placenta and torn umbilical cord going through the doorway.

A large star shone above the cabin reflecting over the water as the family split up, half of them cared for the aunt and the others followed the oldest boy and the trail of blood. The girls picked up the still breathing baby coyotes to take them to their mother. The three followed the bright star to a pile of dried leaves mixed with hardened mud and pinecones. Looking up at everyone there was a baby boy under the leafy blanket cleaned and whimpering. He poked his chin out at them and up towards the stars.

***

Perseverance 

                    The birth of her niece, her sister’s daughter was born in Massachusetts while she ate dinner on Long Island in late August. Victor’s mother invited Muriel, whom she had met once before, a seventy-something woman who wore gemstone jewelry and wanted to keep the pair’s relationship going. The theology of friendship, loving and living was explained as being intertwined and neither could succeed without the other. The combination of place, timing, and feelings made those words stick. This mother asked them to work on communication in the relationship and to be mindful that ebbs and flows would happen, but to keep moving forward with affectionate feelings and all would turnout, as it should be. 

___

                    They met the year before at a Black Ski conference. Clouds cleared and Victor spied her in line storing her skies at lunchtime. The Colorado Mountains in the distance blended the wispy clouds and sky. Muriel’s profile at the ski corral became carved in the peaks. 

                    Hello down yonder, save me a seat, woman,” Victor said. “Hey Muriel.” 

                    Hats covered heads. She pretended not to know him, stiffened then turned when he called. 

                    “Do I know you? I guess your face looks somewhat familiar,” she said.

                    A crowd gathered on the deck surrounding Shush Lounge. White chairs and tables 

disappeared underneath jackets and polyester clothing. Charcoal and food scented the outdoors. 

                    She said he had followed her, but she saved him a muddy chair anyway because as skiers, they both understood the process endured to achieve the goal of exploring the mountain mass and terrain. 

                    Snow sealed the outdoors and a waiter served hot cider with vanilla liquor around the table. After grilled burgers, mixed greens and parmesan cheese fries the group headed to the slopes. The atmosphere got colder as the chair lift climbed three quarters of the way to the elevation pinnacle; they exited the second level chair lift and separated to tackle the two-mile run. 

                    She and Victor ended up alone on the backside of a mountain and snowplowed around the side overlooking a mountain range towards downtown passed a cafe, Highland chair lift, and the ski school. He left her to handle bumpy blue slopes, and then he cut across green runs down to the village. He thought about her drawing him while he had slept on the couch yesterday, his mouth slightly opened in front of sliding glass doors of the rented condominium. She displayed the picture on the refrigerator for all six guests of the condo to observe, along with other candid sketches from the trip with her old brother. Muriel added a pine tree seen through the sheer drapes behind Victor’s resting head in the picture.

                    “Oh, so you like to push my buttons, don’t you,” he said. 

                    While leaving the condo that morning he kept looking at her from across the room. He would catch her figure while in the hallway and at different angles. What he didn’t say was that he liked almost everything about the little he knew of her. She caught snowflakes on her tongue. 

                    On Saturday at Shush Lounge he sang Purple Rain; she replaced songs with dancing around and sipping up hot wine then cracking up - a deep energy was felt. Her shirt became unbuttoned and he pushed his hands down the back of her pants. She placed her hands over his thighs and stiffened pants. During their walk to their accommodations they fell into a snow pile rolled and kissed for an hour. He felt her body up and down under her clothes and she kept her hands warm inside of his shirt and pants. When their days ended together in Colorado, they decided he lived only a few states away from her and a relationship could be possible.

___

                    The Long Island evening has become dark outside now under the dinner table chandelier. Muriel blurted out to the group that her sister had had a baby. It was an unconscious thought that came out of her mouth spontaneously. She took it back because her sister Suzette had said earlier the labor was set to be induced in two days. The family then went upstairs to dress for the evening. She took pictures at the concert and when proceeding up the small driveway of the house under the moonlight later, the kitchen lights glowed. Victor’s father told her that her mother was trying to reach her; said her sister had given birth at 7:26 pm. The baby girl exited her mother’s womb and entered the world as those words left Muriel’s lips. Tears streamed and her mother said Suzette had natural childbirth, except for a mild muscle relaxer given during the middle of the twelve-hour labor and they had named the baby Corin. The parents discussed mutual friends. Connections between these families throughout the generations surfaced. History and ties existed between African Americans due to migration from Southern States to the North to escape Jim Crow laws and before that the Underground Railroad. The baby’s delivery changed Muriel and it stirred her, made her restless too. She edited photographs for a living using her eyes, brain and hands at the same time and she secured three positions at different publications climbing to senior editor. Her commute to Rockefeller Center was the main part that had become a tiring ritual for her though.

___

                    All Saints Day today - and she is back home on Sunday morning. Unconsciously she dressed and her feet followed her mind. The tree deposited leaves on her shoulders while she crossed the street. She entered the church and sat, shoulders touching other worshippers. She listened, watched closely for messages. Washington Baptist Church was built in 1860. The oak pews are cushioned with turquoise pillows. The choir harmonized calming the congregation and their voices incarnated a powerful presence. The singers wore monochromatic black clothing accented with scarves made of from Kinte Cloth. She stood at attention, a posture of reciprocity, mentally lifting from the pew and falling to her knees. Lost in the piano notes, the soprano’s song and singing words departing from her mouth, she raised her arms palms up opening an erogenous zone. Her favorite seat was in the middle section of the sanctuary about halfway to the pulpit merged in-between others. The man's dress shirt in front of her was not tucked in completely. The person with the suit on next to him stood like a teenager, and the women on the other side had a triangle of moles on the back of her neck. They held hands intermittently during the service. 

                    The pastor finished a glass of water cleared his throat and said good morning. “We welcome the Holy Spirit in our minds, hearts, and lives,” he said. “Please welcome your neighbors and tell them that God will keep his promises.”

                    The eleven thirty service lasted one hundred minutes. She felt as refreshed as after eight hours of sleep. Muriel and the small family standing in the pew in front of her introduced themselves to each other after the service.

                    The last time she got lost in darkness with Victor was the same way she felt at church sometimes. They acknowledged looking for healing and showed one another that they needed and loved the other. Tears were shed. Body was shared. He tenderly massaged her breasts holding her nipples between his lips and pulling on the tips. She closed here eyes and sucked him until the skin was so stretched by blood and come that he needed her body to soothe him and to soften it again. They orgasmed - one following the other both times that dawn.

___

                    Sag Harbor lit up the next summer, as did the Atlantic Ocean seen through Ruth’s restaurant – a Labor Day weekend vacation spot. Nine including she and her niece at the end of the table ate pie. Sunbathing suppressed her appetite but this evening she felt famished. It was the end of a summer vacation with her sister, niece, mother, few cousins and friends. The live music started to play in the bar area and she was deciding whether or not to stay longer. She tilted her head backward while talking and caught the eye of a man walking through the front door, and then towards her. Yes, it was he; his voice she had not heard in a few months. 

                    “I feel guilty because I can’t promise you anything,” he said. I really don’t want to hold you from meeting someone else …so let’s just be good friends.”

                    She remembered these words as the last that came out of his mouth when she had visited Maryland during Easter break. Nothing negative had happened between them, except distance and unclear expectations. She believed that their relationship was a supernatural connection, but he would not commit; he gave her an out. The hole in her heart from his void had finally begun to heal over and she had stopped replaying their memories in her mind.  

“                  “Victor, hello, I’m surprised to see your face,” she said. You look rested. How are you? Although calm, she felt her heart leap through her cleavage.

                    “I heard that you were in town and I thought maybe I would find you here,” he said. “Your face was the first thing I noticed when I entered the door and you look beautiful. How is everything?”

                    He held her niece, and while he took time to sit next to her mother, across the table she slipped into an intoxicating state caused by chemicals bouncing inside her limbs and brain. The feelings were tangible, oozing everywhere and still the same. And after they both had a cocktail, he kissed her so boldly she thought he nearly tore her lips off. While walking home he carried her on the beach and threatened to toss her into the ocean while she convulsed from laughing and protesting.  

                    Although only getting three hours of sleep at his cottage the next morning they felt energized from their room-to-room lovemaking. She returned to her house first thing. She was traveling that same evening and no future plans were made with Victor. 

                    “Same time next year honey,” he said. She walked to her door.

                    “Same time every year,” she said. He waved back to her.

                    Several months passed and although Victor called a few times they had gotten together only three times and not recently. She was also guilty for not following through more, although she had anonymously hung up on his voicemail a few times because she got scared. She felt vulnerable, and decided she must call him again this week to talk about her plans for her impending motherhood. She prayed about it. 

                    Right on his own time schedule a healthy boy made his entrance, a week early during late April. He weighed just shy of eight pounds and was twenty inches long. Muriel cried and yelled during childbirth and in intervals for two more days after she gave birth while in Michigan with her family on a spring break vacation in the Upper Peninsula. Within a day Victor had arrived and Eugenia picked him up from the airport. The next day his parents flew in.

                    “My spirit has been taken to higher levels of connectedness. The birth really felt mostly like a dream …especially with that bright star hanging over the bay,” she said. 

                    The group took turns keeping her company during the twenty-two-hour labor and three-day stay at Traverse City Hospital. The first six months after delivery she spent in Baltimore with him and their baby and some of the year with her parents who doted over the baby, before returning to Brooklyn. 

___

                    Morning whistling birds and a fourteen-month old boy awakened from sleep. She was living full-time back in her brownstone apartment and mimicking a marionette while floating out of bed to the bathroom. Urine flowed; it awakened her as it tinged the toilet. Disinfecting her hands, cleansing her face and brushing her teeth occurred at the same time as she freshened up for her toddler, who could now climb down from his bed by himself. Blue Jays chanted and the sun ascended as little Christian smiled at his mother peering down. He reached for her breast. 

                    “Maah, mah, meelk plees,” he said hugging her. “I want milk.”

                    “Good morning sweetums, nope, not now only before bedtime. We'll have almond milk and oatmeal for breakfast. Let’s get ready; we have to get you to daycare,” she said. She scooped up her son. 

                    Christian’s father would commute from Baltimore on the weekends until his transfer to New York when his financial services promotion was finalized. She had finally negotiated a part-time schedule with her company, but today she planned to amble in springtime around her neighborhood and walk. As they left the house, Christian directed his index finger at their cat in the chair against the window near her art supplies. The feline was nestled under falling drapes with ears pressed against the window to eavesdrop on the birdsong. Christian’s spirit mimicked a sea sponge soaking new things instantaneously and after trying two other daycare facilities whose approaches just didn’t work for her ‘indigo’ child, this mother decided on an in-home childcare center. Teachers told her that he was the kid who remained calm, listened and led the class in their assignments. He was a rebel though, saying plenty of no answers to anyone. This center had toddlers play in the backyard garden instead of watching television and the children brushed their teeth after snacking. 

                    She daydreamed as she parked her stroller, carried Christian inside and exited the childcare center. She remembered her annual vacation this past February out West to ski with Victor. His parents kept their baby that week. What a contrast in nature between the two visual scenes. New York City’s mountains are the Manhattan skylines. She walked underneath ginkgo biloba trees with falling fruit, picked up litter unconsciously while on the cement sidewalk near her brownstone duplex the pair was negotiating to purchase. Dandelions lived in-between stone cracks. Breezes caught petals, feathers. 

                    “Hey Al,” she said. Her ancient neighbor Mr. Thomas did not notice her until she turned the key of her front door. 

                    “It sure feels like August,” he said. She waved back halfway opening the front door. 

                    Her cat snored in a ball on the oak and leather chair as she entered her home. A dead bee rested inside the windowsill as she opened the curtains and heard the cat growl. She dropped her purse then listened to the messages on the answering machine. The babysitter was available on Saturday and Victor said he would call back. She planned the upcoming weekend in her mind. Christian would stay with the babysitter until he arrived late morning. She had a drawing class at the Botanic Gardens. 

                    Wherever she traveled she sketched. While skiing she drew the pine trees twisting alongside the chair lifts. On Long Island she recorded the seagulls during an evening as sun merged in Brooklyn, she sketched exotic plants and brownstone buildings. She bounded letting the inside door slam behind her. Pulling up weeds she walked backwards away from the house. The day was young and a walk of city streets to record with charcoal was on the agenda. She and Christian will prepare for Victor and a visit soon from Suzette. The first cousins grew close.         

***