Caucasia by Danzy Senna

Author:Danzy Senna [Senna, Danzy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781435242043
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 1998-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

ashes and elbow grease

I avoided the Marshes for several weeks. Instead, I reverted to childish games, lolling around the house, cheating on myself at endless games of solitaire, and watching soap operas with a tub of ice cream on my lap. My mother took notice and seemed concerned that I wasn’t friends with Nicholas anymore. I had been putting off telling her about my screwup with the grandparent story. I feared she might do something crazy, like pack us up in the van in the middle of the night and move us to a roadside motel, or find some way to intimidate the Marshes into silence. I also knew it was just a matter of time before I had to tell her.

I finally got up the nerve while I stood on my head on the lawn one afternoon. It was two weeks after the incident. The coast was clear to talk. Jim had taken his Buick into town to get an oil change. He wouldn’t be back for at least an hour. My mother had just come home from the professor’s office and had stripped out of her denim skirt and clogs and into her Tai Chi uniform. She stood poised a few feet away in a frozen karate chop.

“Mum, just in case somebody asks, what should I tell them about my grandparents?”

She didn’t move an inch from her position as she spoke: “I thought we discussed this. Your grandparents on David’s side are dead. They kicked the bucket years ago. They were old Zionists. You know, back-to-Israel types, whom David rebelled against by marrying me. And my parents are still alive. My father worked as an executive at a textile company. Grandma was a housewife.” She moved slowly, gracefully, into another position. Then added, “Keep it simple.”

The upside-down world was making me nauseous, and my head was beginning to get sore, so I let my body fall onto the soft earth.

“Why?” my mother asked then, moving rather abruptly out of her Tai Chi position. She turned to face me. “Did somebody bring it up?”

I stood and looked at my big grubby sneakers. In a guilty mumble, I told her then what had happened at the Marshes’.

When I was finished, I braced myself for her whirlwind response. But she just sighed. “Shit. It’s my fault. I should have trained you better. I just knew you were getting too cozy over there.”

I looked up at her. She seemed only slightly anxious. Her mouth was fixed into a little point, but basically she was under control. She raked a hand through her hair. “Well, it’s not the end of the world. I’ll just have to do some damage control.”

She bit her nails, and I could see her mind clicking away. After a moment she snapped her fingers. She said that if they asked, she’d simply explain that I liked to fantasize about my Jewish grandparents because they had rejected me while they were alive. “They hadn’t wanted David to marry a Gentile, and you spent your childhood cut off from them.

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