We just enjoyed the family thing--getting together, eating food, making memories to ridicule each other with over upcoming holidays; I will never forget the time my 6 foot, 4 inch uncle stumbled and assaulted the sliding glass patio doors, sending the doorway tumbling and bouncing off the naked concrete by the grill. We all stopped, staring at him in this strained silence, expecting what? A rewind perhaps, an explanation? And he, standing there in the now open frame, rubbing his face and laughing sheepishly--he relived that moment for years.
It might be important to understand that the side of the family I spent most of my Christmases and Thanksgivings with was my mother's side. Not that my father's family was antisocial, though they did have a way of making any gathering more about salad forks and seating arrangements than catching up; it's just that my mother's family was more readily available and the New York-bound patriarchs. Living and managing in all spouts of Atlanta living, my family lived less than a half hour away from my grandma, the center of all family functions, lent the top half of her two-story home to one of my aunts while she made due downstairs. All my aunts and uncles lived close--and when I say "all" I suggest about a half dozen siblings making up my mom's brothers and sisters, as well as a handful of nieces and nephews for each of them. To take a wild guess, for any family gathering, there had to be at least fifteen of us, and that was the bare minimum--not counting the ones who sometimes opted out of family functions to spend the holidays making music in their off-limit attics, wafting the rafters with the heady stench of smoke not quite incense. These things did not faze us then.
There were so many of us and we were all so close, that your absence really did not matter. You were as sure to be there with us in some way as my family was guaranteed to stand around in tight circles, tipping little red solo cups in unsteady hands, laughing, snorting, scented with Exclamation and Newports, remembering that time you danced your wig off at 60s thanksgiving dinner or that fight you had in grade school with that girl whose nose you ripped.
My mother's family, predominant five to one, female to male ratio, lived for the art of the gab. Hovering over full cups, smelling faintly like mixed peach drinks they sipped, permitting the big-eyed, elementary version of me only the smallest regretted sucks solely for laughs. These were the women who taught me the secrets to life even when they tried to keep them from me. My cousins and I never hovered too far from them, learning the proper way to shake one's ass on the dance floor or how a man was never worth as much as they let him think he was. And I'd watch my aunt Tonya, her long blonde hair tipping over her peeking collar bone or my aunt Valerie, swaying with her ribbed chest protuding, jutting the air. It was some wild world that needed to be studied, some wild world of women.
And in this world, these women loved to talk. My mother included. Of course, I didn't anticipate being on the outside of their chatter.
I mean, it happened before. My cousin, just a few months younger than me, wanted to be a professional singer. They often paired us up, she refused to sing Annie without me, and I had a singing voice closer to scraping your fingernails on half-empty water bottles than broadway.
"She sounds like her father," they would laugh, ushering us to sing more and I, confused, would belt out louder and longer because, well, I love my father. This time wasn't like that. It was the first real time I ever felt like something else in my family.
It was one of those grilling holidays, perhaps Memorial Day, perhaps Labor day, but certainly not the Fourth of July. If there had been fireworks we would have seen them. We were visiting my Aunt Valerie in Decatur and we had all piled into her backyard for some grilled hamburgers and good times. I hovered near my mother, because, that was what I did best and my mom, like many of the other women, spent their time hovering near the food, cooking--and I do love food.
Some of my younger cousins had invested their time in a sorry game of soccer. I say sorry because of the condition of the backyard--more clumps and patches of rocky red soil than grass, sad little sprouts of limp green lilting out and smashing underneath light-up Nikes. Tiki torches shoved in crooked angles in the dirt, they used them as goal posts, or they tried to weave the balls around them, the game seemed to have no rules. Though they called me over, I refused to play, instead, hovering around the adults, trying to be apart of that woman's world. I ignored the ball as much as possible when it bounced off the soil into the concrete beside me, only sometimes shooing it to the long expanse of wooden fence before returning to my neglect of it. I had no time for child games, but it was in one of these half-hearted soccer ball repulsions that the conversation started.
"And of course, there go the Forde's. Always coming in here trying to outshow somebody. Always gotta be best dressed."
They laughed and I looked back at them, upset that I had missed something. My mother pursed her lips, smiled, shifted, but simply denied. I remember her response was unremarkable and my aunts felt the same way because they continued their insistence.
"Always gotta come in here done up and looking sharp. Tryin' to outdo everybody." my aunt Valerie chimed in and it was the first time I stopped to actually look at my mom. I mean look at my mom. For the first time, I was judging her.
My mother had always been this pretty woman, but today she was a woman with thick layers of dark red lipstick, immaculate short hair, and a thigh-high black skirt--embarrassingly flawless. My father had always prized hygiene, almost pushed it down my throat. He keeps bottles of cologne in his car, spraying himself every time he gets out of his car, because he prizes the scent so much--no specific kind, just different bottles, all strong scents, all constant. Even my dad's pants were fitted, clean, his New York jersey the whitest shirt in the crowd of uncles.My sister, painfully adorable. And then there was me.
I did not dress up that day to impress them. I was lucky if I even dressed myself. Left to my own demise I'd spot my hair in crooked, braided pigtails, huge sunglasses, and some awkward dimpled smile on my face. Never did I think when I put on that checkered pair of bedazzled overalls that I would be making a statement. It was at that moment I ceased to judge my mother, and that all the judgement fell upon myself. I was ashamed because, unlike everyone else laughing at our expense, we just didn't fit in. I did not mean to upset anybody, and I did not think that I thought I was better than them. But of course there was the soccer game still going on beside me, and here I was on the concrete patio, too good for that game. My sneakers were still clean, barely scuffed, and the others? Caked with red dirt.
At that time I wasn't aware of the sparsity money can bring. At that time, I, my whole family, was measured by the worth of our blue jeans, long before I even knew Girbaud, Guess, or Levi. These jeans, as all our clothes that day, defined us. And I could barely realize at the time, though I felt it like you feel a tugging at your shoulder, that somehow, we had fallen short in their eyes.
