A Song Flung Up to Heaven Read Free

staggered me. I thought my voice had killed the man, so I stopped speaking and Bailey became my shadow, as if he and I were playing a game. If I turned left, he turned left; if I sat, he sat. He hardly let me out of his sight. The large, rambunctious big-city family tried to woo me out of my stolid silence, but when I stubbornly refused to talk, Bailey and I were both sent back to Arkansas. For the next six years, my brother was the only person for whom I would bring my voice out of concealment. I thought my voice was such poison that it could kill anyone. I spoke to him only rarely and sometimes incomprehensibly, but I felt that because I loved him so much, my voice might not harm him.
    In our early teens we returned to our mother, who had moved back to California. Our lives began to differ. Just as Bailey had shadowed me earlier, he now seemed set on opposing each move I made. If I went to school, he cut class. If I refused narcotics, he wanted to experiment. If I stayed home, he became a merchant marine. Yet despite our dissimilar routes and practices, I never lost my complete trust in Bailey.
    And now, as I sat in my mother’s car being bombarded by the metropolitan flash and my mother’s attack on Malcolm, I held my peace; Bailey encouraged me to do so, and I knew he would be proven right.
    My mother’s Victorian house on Fulton Street was exactly as it had been when I left four years earlier. She had bought new rugs and added or changed some furniture, but the light still entered the tall windows boldly, and the air still held the dual scent of Tweed perfume and a slight hint of gas escaping from a very small aperture.
    I was encouraged to put my bags in my old bedroom and then to join Mother and Bailey in the vast kitchen for a sumptuous welcome-home.
    Mother told racy stories, and Bailey regaled me with Hawaiian songs and then gave me his interpretation of an island man’s hula. Mother brought out a recipe for Jollof rice that I had sent her from Ghana. She unfolded the letter and read, “Cook about a pound of rice, sauté a couple or three onions in not too much cooking oil for a while, then put in three or four or five right-sized tomatoes...”
    At this point in her recitation, Bailey began laughing. He was a professional chef in a swank Hawaiian hotel. The approximation of ingredients and cooking time amused him.
    “Dice some cooked ham in fairly large-sized pieces,” my mother continued, “and include with salt and cayenne pepper any leftover fried chicken into the tomato sauce. Heat through, then mix in with rice. Then heat quite a while.”
    We all laughed when Mother said she had followed the recipe exactly and that the dish was a smashing success.
    Bailey then told us stories about the tourists and their dining orders at his Waikiki hotel: “I’d like fried chicken and biscuits.” “Y’all have any short ribs and corn bread?”
    Mother telephoned friends, who dropped by to look at me and Bailey. Many spoke of us as if we weren’t in the room.
    “Vivian, she looks so good. I know you’re proud.” And “Well, Bailey didn’t grow any more, but he sure is a pretty little black thing.”
    The entire weekend was a riot of laughter, stories, memories awakened and relished in the bright sunlight. The specter of my distant son cast the only shadow. His arrogance and intractability were discussed, and my family put his behavior in its proper place.
    My mother said, “He’s a boy.”
    I said, “He thinks he is a man.” Mother said, “That’s the nature of the group. When they are boys, they want to be treated like men, but when they are gray-haired old coots, they go around acting like boys.” No one could argue with that. “Don’t worry about him. You have raised him with love. The fruit won’t fall too far from the tree.”
    The finality in her tone told me she was finished with the subject, but I wondered—what if the fruit fell and was picked up by a hungry bird? Wasn’t it possible