Tomb of My Heart

This story has content related to death, natural disaster (Hurricane Katrina), and mental health.

After the hurricane our house stood, battered but proud, mostly intact, unlike others on our block. This was because of Uncle Willie, of course – in the end it was his passion that killed him. I’ll never forget my Uncle Willie; that man is more house-proud than a brand-spanking new bride just got herself her own home, Mama used to say. We had the same small shack as everyone else on our tight block, but he managed to scrape up enough cash to paint our porch railing every spring, plant a few scraggly shrubs. The yard was always neatly swept, although he never wanted anyone to see him doing that. He would creep out before the first cocks started crowing and sweep so quietly even our neighbor’s nasty dog, Old Bubber, wouldn’t be disturbed.

Uncle Willie was my daddy’s great-great uncle, older than anyone I knew.  One of his dark eyes was brightened by a little smear of fried-egg white, which looked just like a crescent moon to me. I must have been about eight or nine when I noticed it. I remember saying to him, Uncle Willie, there’s a moon in your eye and he laughed to beat the band as he set me back down onto the concrete floor. “You watch,” he said to Mama. “This little one got the soul of an artist. She sees things others don’t.” I didn’t much know what that meant, and at that time all I was seeing was dream-water, but I liked that he thought well of me.

It was true that Uncle Willie liked his drink. Still, unlike other men I’ve known, men who sometimes loved me and sometimes wanted one thing only he never got ornery. He became mellow and thoughtful with his drink in hand. Drinking brings me closer to the Lord, he’d say, and though all it did for those rascal men I used to mess around with was give them a dance ticket for a night with the Devil for Uncle Willie it was true.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw him sweeping the yard, late one night when I’d been awakened by a nightmare. I’d had a terror of water my entire life, which in retrospect is spooky as hell. No one picked up on why, or they might have dragged me over to Madame Zuzette or the Apothecary for some training, not that I would have took to it. I don’t think I have a sixth sense or nothing like that but my fear of water was dead on. We didn’t know that then, of course. And anyway the water that decimated my people did it real, real slow. In my dreams the water was fast, terrifying, crashing wave, wall of water, tomb of my heart, overtaking everything before I could even exhale. When I was littler I used to crawl in bed with Mama, once or twice being startled by a male body besides her. She was good, my mama -- she’d kick a man out of her bed before she’d let me suffer. But at some point I sort of understood why they were there, and I didn’t want to bother her. She worked so hard - -she deserved a man’s arms around her at night, even if it never was the same man for long.

So that night I got myself up. I looked around at my three white walls and the curtain Mama hung up back when Uncle Willie needed to move in with us. He washed that out every week, too, wringing it out with his strong hands then hanging it over the line. Nobody appreciated cleanliness  -- order-- like he did. “All them years in the military,” Mama would say, grateful for his help. I touched the curtain with my hand – if I couldn’t get to Mama just knowing he was breathing on the other side of that soft fabric was a comfort.

I didn’t call out for him like I wanted to but instead went to get myself a glass of cold milk. When I walked past his empty bed I felt a small shock. He wasn’t in our tiny powder room, where you could take a shower by pulling a cord over yourself while you sat on the toilet. We still had a little outhouse out back; lots of us did, and I do think he used it at times. I didn’t worry, but after I drank my milk I peeked outside and there he was, sweeping the yard from corner to corner.

It just about broke my heart to see it. He was such a tall and lanky man; even age hadn’t bent him much. To see him stooped low like he was, dust kicking up around him, did something to my stomach. I didn’t think he’d like to see me watching him, so I crept back to bed. But when I got up later that morning I hugged him extra hard. He was as constant as the moon in his eye, always looking out for us, making our home as nice as it could be. When he got money to shore up the foundation and install a new roof Mama didn’t say nothing but thank you. Even I knew there had to be something funny about that money, but when I asked Mama she whacked me with her hairbrush. “What you think?” she asked. “Cards? Numbers? It ain’t none of your business. Be grateful you got a roof over your head.” I knew she was right. I settled back to watch her brush her long blond hair. My hair was pale yellow, like hers. Being mixed was funny like that. I looked exactly like my Daddy but my skin had never got any color like his had – folks who was mean said that was why he left, but if Uncle Willie was around when they was saying it he would look at me sternly and shake his head. I had pale skin and pale straight hair but as Uncle Willie said it didn’t much matter what you looked like, at the end of the day we were all still family.

The summer of the hurricane Uncle Willie slept too much and Mama had to work a lot of doubles, so she sent me away to spend some time visiting with my Aunt Selma and her three kids, my cousins, though I never thought of them that way. The thought of kids who acted like hers did sharing blood with me sent a chill through my bones. They were mixed, like me, but rich, and spoiled, with a white daddy who scared the shivers out of me but was usually away, traveling for business. We were opposites; they had a Black mom, and I had a white mom, but my mom didn’t seem white like their dad was white. They had pretty caramel complexions and talked like white girls on tv, never missing a chance to make fun of my “country” accent, even though I was the one who lived in the city. They never wanted to share the dolls they dressed, dolls with glossy curls and clothing nicer than anything I owned. When Aunt Selma brought me my own Barbie that summer Adelaide tried to flush it down the toilet first chance she got. She did get a spanking for that one but it did nothing to dim the hate I had for her, a glowering hate that I had to hide because Mama would use more than her hairbrush on me if she found out that I’d misbehaved. Aunt Selma wanted to buy me a new doll but I had already fished the one I had out. I had named her Cecilia because “C” was my favorite letter and I liked names that ended with an “A.” I wanted her, not some new doll I didn’t know yet. Adelaida laughed at me for that one, too, but I didn’t care.  I could never imagine being so mean. To be fair, there were 58 of us, cousins, ranging in age from just-born to ma’am and I guess even good blood gotta take a turn somewhere. Uncle Willie used to tease Mama about that, how much kin we had. You know how you Irish are, he’d say, and well, us Black folk….they’d both chuckle while she swatted him with her dish towel. They weren’t no blood relations but I’ll tell you one thing for sure, they sure did love each other. Mama had a sense of family loyalty that ran deep, and she stayed connected to Daddy’s people long after he walked out on her.

When the hurricane hit I had no idea. Mama had been calling me every night from work but then she missed two nights in a row. “Work stuff,” Auntie lied when I asked. I knew Mama worked hard and I also knew how much I mattered to her. Late on that second night I woke to a water nightmare. I hugged Cecilia close and tried to settle my breathing. I wanted some milk but I could hear Auntie bustling about the kitchen and I knew she weren’t gonna be no comfort for me. She was making funny noises, almost like crying. Still I didn’t connect her sounds to myself. Auntie had a lot to cry about, what with those wretched children of hers. But the day after that, the day I was supposed to fly back, Auntie sat me down. “You have to stay with us a while, Kailyn,” she said somberly. “There’s been a hurricane. I can’t reach your folks.”

The minute she said the word “stay” I felt a feeling like my mind leaving my body. I was floating up, up. Up. I knew about hurricanes. I knew about water. I knew about Uncle Willie’s new roof. But the thought of it didn’t give me much comfort.

“You try not to worry,” she said. “I suspect they got out. It’s just – lines are down. You know.”

I didn’t know. I was ten years old and all alone in a house with a doll who’d been dunked in toilet water and a cousin who hated my guts.

The more Auntie tried to reassure me the more I knew they were dead. Mama had an old beat-up car that barely ran under the best of circumstances. She used to sing to it to get it to start, or sometimes to get it to stop. Uncle Willie couldn’t drive. There were lots of things that might have kept them in place, not the least of which was Uncle Willie’s pride. When he had a drink or two in him and the calm hand of Jesus relaxing his old heart he loved nothing more than to tell tales of all the hurricanes he’d survived, although after he found out about my nightmares he tried to do it out of earshot.

Minutes hours days ticked by without a word. The only good thing was that my cousins stopped being mean to me. Now they just avoided me, keeping a wide berth. I stopped speaking altogether.

                                       ****************************

They never found Mama’s body, although they did find her car, pointing in the wrong direction, driving away from home, which just about killed me til I figured maybe it got spun around in that rush of water. Uncle Willie, of course, was trapped by that brand-new roof of his. Some folks on our block managed to hack their way out of their stifling attics and survive by clinging to their roofs but my poor, proud uncle had no such luck. Aunt Selma held a service for both of them even though we never knew for sure where Mama was. Sometimes I pretended she was still alive, somewhere on the earth. I wanted her alive even if she never called me or looked for me. I wanted her alive even though I would have killed her myself if she tried to drive away and left Uncle Willie home alone. I wanted anything but having to stay with Auntie. But nobody cared what I wanted. I was frozen, a block of ice. I didn’t even cry at the funeral, and yes I did hear folks talking about that.

I don’t know what I did for the next few months. I know I rode a yellow bus to a brand-new school building where kids shouted and joked around me. I must have responded to teachers when they called my name, filled out my worksheets or whatever, because I never got into trouble. For Christmas that year I received a new Barbie even though by then I think we all knew I was too old for Barbies. I also got the one thing I really wanted, a Nintendo DS. All us kids got one.

That DS saved my life, I’ll tell you that. I’d position Cecilia and Newbie (that Barbie didn’t deserve a name) in the kitchen sink, the bathtub, occasionally the toilet if Auntie’s housekeeper had come through that day. I’d position them all kinds of ways but always, always they were drowning, always, always they were trapped. I’d take picture after picture of them on my DS. That summer they set up a kiddie pool for my newest cousin Bryant and let me tell you I had a field day with that. Only when I was exhausted would I save them, first Cecilia, of course. She got CPR while Newbie waited. Cecilia always came back to life. Then I could dress her in a new pair of pink heels or put her in Adelaide’s Malibu convertible if she was out with her awful girlfriends. When I could get my hands on the convertible I put that in the water too, but always it was pointed towards our house. If there was time Newbie might get saved too, but usually not. She was like Uncle Willie, trapped by things she didn’t have any control over.

In the end it was Adelaide got me into trouble, and my trouble got me a new life. Adelaide went through my DS and found all the pictures of drowning, drowning, drowning dolls, dolls drowning naked, dolls drowning in wedding dresses, dolls drowning in bikinis, in holiday wear, in Barbie’s classic winter coat. She showed Auntie and Auntie about had a fit. The school psychologist tried to say I was normal, it was a grief reaction, but apparently my pictures were too graphic and freaked Auntie out. I was shipped off to live with my Aunt Dee, who had no kids of her own. Aunt Dee was quiet and fat and let me drink all the milk and take all the pictures I wanted.

By the time I was ready for high school I had a real camera and quite a collection of images. Aunt Dee let me apply to the arts school even though Auntie Selma said I’d never get into college without a proper education. We ignored her and sure enough I got into Creative Arts High. I was forced to take pictures of things besides dolls drowning but they let me keep some of those pictures in my portfolio, and when I graduated it was a doll image that won the “Storyteller” award.

I waited twenty years to go back home. I knew all about the condition of the house from Mrs. Gates, who’d come to the funeral and talked all about Uncle Willie and how ours was the only house that was still livable. I didn’t see how anyone could live in a house with a drowned man in the attic but I was too polite to tell her so. I wasn’t polite enough to nod, though – I think I just stared at her while she blathered.

I went to see her straightaway, even before I drove by our old place. “It’ll break your heart to see it,” she said. “Those new owners. Humph. Wasn’t no one like old Willie.”

I didn’t know a thing about the new owners but all I could think was who would want to live in a house that had become both executioner and graveyard. My poor Uncle. Maybe they didn’t know his story, though, or maybe they were just desperate for a place to call their own. I wanted to tell Mrs. Gates about how he swept the yard every morning, how my dreams of water-walls would drive me to the window, where I’d see him in the grim light, sweeping, sweeping everything away, just like the water that would come later, sweeping away everything I ever cared for.

Except him, of course. He didn’t get swept, only trapped, trapped by his own values, or maybe his compulsions.

I had brought my camera but was unable to photograph the house. I could barely stand to peek at it as I drove up the block. After the hurricane I’d never had a water nightmare again. Instead I dreamed of shiny nails, pounding themselves into a house that would one day become a tomb. Though I couldn’t take pictures of the house, for my next series I did photos of nails, hammers, wood, buckets of tar – shiny then rusted, hopeful then decrepit. Solid, then steam. Before and after. That was my life.

That one won awards too, and even finally got me a good man for a while, one of the judges, a guy who appreciated my silences, the way I spoke through my art. But even the accolades couldn’t make up for the one thing I wanted – one more night at home, Mama snoring softly while I crept out for some milk, Uncle Willie, heart in hand, greeting the day with the love borne of his broom.