DEENA SLIPPED INTO the silent sanctuary of Emmanuel Rises, pumps muffled against the ruby carpet. Her gaze skittered past scores of bowed heads before she spotted her family in the front, their pew for the last thirty years. Despite the diligent tiptoe, Grandma Emma snapped to attention mid-prayer, as if connected to her granddaughter by some basic biological need for admonishment. So when that old finger jerked in impatience at the pew, Deena hustled down the aisle and squeezed in between Caroline and Rhonda, just in time for the amen.
“Mhm,” Emma murmured, running a critical gaze over Deena’s smoke gray pants suit. It featured an angled collar and V-neckline alongside boot cut slacks that lay just right. Retail price for the Gucci ensemble—jacket, black silk shirt, slacks and high heeled shoes, should’ve been in the neighborhood of thirty-five hundred, but a secondhand consignment shop in Bal Harbor brought it home for less than two.
“It was all I had to wear,” Deena mumbled.
Aunt Caroline gave her a once over. “Well, you wore pants two Sundays ago, too.”
Newport breath singed Deena’s nose and she sighed.
Emmanuel Rises was a conservative church, she knew that, baptized in the holy fire and washed in the blood of the lamb. Still, there had to be room for reason. Could they really argue that Deena’s understated pants suit was less appropriate than Aunt Caroline’s dimpled cleavage and leopard print dress?
Caroline shot Deena a sideways look of disdain before pulling out a mirror and primping fat blonde curls. Her platinum hair was sharp against dark skin, sharp against crimson talons and sharp against gold teeth.
Fuchsia lipstick and scuffed white pumps rounded out Caroline’s sordid church attire. She was the oldest of Eddie and Emma Hammond’s four children. A mother at sixteen, a grandmother at thirty-three; at fifty-two Caroline Hammond was a great-grandmother. Even so, she’d never been an outcast in their family. On the contrary, she set precedent for what was to come.
There were three women of childbearing age in the Hammond family who were without children. Aunt Rhonda, who constantly fielded accusations that she was a lesbian, Deena’s sister Lizzie, who would surprise no one if she stood up and declared she were pregnant that moment, and Deena, who avoided men like the malevolent beings they were.
“Where’s Lizzie?” Deena asked suddenly, scanning the pews for her sister.
Emma shook her head. “Didn’t come home last night.”
Deena sighed. How many nights would a teenage girl have to disappear for it not to give her grandmother cause for alarm anymore? Whatever the number, she didn’t want to know.
Lizzie’s descent into anarchy began with adolescence. To Deena, it seemed that budding breasts and a menstrual flow brought with it an exponential madness that worsened each year. At eleven her little sister was suspended for wearing a transparent tee with the phrase ‘Pay for Play’ on it, at thirteen it was for offering sexual favors to her math teacher in exchange for a passing grade, and at fifteen it was for giving fellatio to a waiting line in the boys’ restroom. How had two sisters, so similar in appearance and upbringing, made such drastic departures? One regarded her virginity as indisputable proof against their grandfather’s claims of inherent whoredom, while the other sought to authenticate his accusations with a come-one-come-all attitude. Still, Deena held out hope that her sister could be rehabilitated.
“You wasting your time,” Caroline murmured, shifting in her dress to reveal the puckered thigh that matched her cleavage. “Lizzie is who she is. Anthony was who he was, and you are who you are. End of the damned story. No sequel.”
Deena frowned. Indeed, she was who she was. But the statement only begged a question. Who the hell was she?
She turned her attention to the pulpit.
Lenora Howard, the pastor’s wife, was a dark and thick woman with ample curves. She strutted to the podium in a golden knee-length dress and broad-brimmed hat of satin and organza. With a gracious smile and a voice of theatrical formality, First Lady Howard welcomed the church’s visitors before diving into announcements. The youth group was selling raffle tickets, Thursday night’s choir practice was cancelled, and Sister Laura Marshall’s niece was being added to the sick and shut-in list.
“Also, as you all are aware, the Fellowship Hall is in need of renovations. The church is requesting a volunteer to spearhead the organization and to plan these much-needed improvements.”
Her grandmother struggled to her feet. “I would like to volunteer my grandbaby, Deena, for the job.”
“What!”
Emma gave Deena a warning glance before turning her attention back to First Lady Howard. “As I’m sure the church knows, my grandbaby be in charge a building them big ole buildings, what you find down there on the rich folks’ part a town. So I ‘spect this would be nothing to her.”
Nothing?
“Well, praise the Lord,” Lenora Howard crooned.
“Praise the Lord!” the congregation echoed.
Deena balked. Stop praising the Lord, she wanted to shout. But the words just wouldn’t come.
“Amen! Amen! Deena Hammond, Emmanuel Rises’ own certified architect is going to bless us with a new Fellowship Hall,” Lenora continued.
“I can’t—I don’t have the time—”
She sank in her seat, horrified as her pleas were muffled by applause.
When the family arrived at Grandma Emma’s place after the eleven o’clock service, Deena washed her hands and went to work prepping Sunday dinner. Her grandmother labored next to her in silence, coating catfish with cornmeal and chicken with flour so that she could fry them both. Afterwards she would dice the boiled chitterlings.
Chitterlings. Deena could remember the first time she laid eyes on the pig entrails—in fact, most of her family could. She’d sampled the offal without knowing what it was before spewing it into Grandpa Eddie’s face. He wanted to beat her, she was sure of it, but the family laughed until it would’ve seemed as though he were a poor sport for hitting her.
She grew to like chitterlings, or chittlins as they were called, boiled in a broth and served up with a dash of hot sauce. In fact, she grew to love many of the foods that had been so foreign to her when she first joined the family—fried chicken gizzards and chicken livers, okra and black-eyed peas, pig’s feet and neck bones. As a child, she’d been curious about the hodgepodge assortment of food on their table: while delicious, she knew scraps when she saw them. Grandma Emma explained to her that the African American food tradition was born of a necessity for survival. Slaves would make do with what they had—things they could grow, and meat discarded from the master’s kitchen. As a young girl, it fascinated her that black people had such a rich food tradition, an actual meaning attached to the food they favored. Her mother’s Spaghetti Wednesdays and Meatloaf Sundays could hardly boast the same.
It wasn’t long before Grandma Emma took Deena under her wing and showed her how to clean chitterlings, pick the freshest collards, and deep-fry a catfish. Each Sunday Deena studied hard, in an effort to cook like her grandmother, like a black person.
She studied other things to seem blacker. She watched her cousins for the appropriate fashions, the proper use of vernacular, and suitable music and television programs for a young black youth. As a teenager, she pretended to love hip-hop in public though she listened to classic rock in secret.
It was all an attempt to fade into the fabric of the Hammond family—and by fade she meant disappear. Oh, there were times when she was the center of attention, when her contrary ethnicity came up, but many more when she simply went unnoticed. And while unnoticed wasn’t synonymous with acceptance, it was a step in the right direction.
Two hours past the end of service, the Hammond family gathered around the supper table. Two of her three aunts, a smidgeon of cousins and, for a painful moment, Deena’s thoughts turned to Anthony, who would never be around to lie about why he’d skipped dinner again.
“So, I was thinking that you could put one of those pretty roofs up in the Fellowship Hall. You know, like them ones that ain’t nothing but windows? That should be good,” Grandma Emma said.
“Naw, what you should do is a regular roof but paint like angels and demons and stuff, like the one they got overseas,” Aunt Caroline said.
Did she mean the Sistine Chapel?
Deena looked past her aunt.
“Grandma, please. I can’t do this. I don’t have the time to work on a new Fellowship Hall.” She stabbed at her collard greens in despair. “You just don’t know my boss. He keeps us on a short leash. In-kind donations have to be vetted through the proper channels. And anyway, I’m swamped at work.”
Emma glanced from Deena to Caroline, tapping ash on the side of her dinner plate. “If you don’t put that goddamned cigarette out at your father’s table,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Alright, alright.”
With an exasperated sigh, Caroline stumped her Newport on the plate, ashes cascading next to three fat pieces of catfish. She shifted in her seat and with two fingers plucked the fabric of her dress from the wet folds beneath her breasts.
“Listen Deena, I gave them people my word that you are gonna do that hall, now you ain’t gonna make no lie out of me,” Emma said with the point of her fork. “You understand?”
Deena lowered her gaze. “Yes ma’am.”
Emma turned to her granddaughter Keisha, Caroline’s fourth child. She was the same age as Deena.
“Now where’s that eldest child of yours at?”
“With his daddy,” Keisha said, as she stabbed at butter beans with a fork. “He’s the only one that really comes to see about his kid, you know? Snow’s a good dude.”
Caroline nodded. “He’s got some ways about him, but he does handle his business.”
Aunt Rhonda looked up. “So, he still deals drugs?”
Deena grinned. She loved Rhonda. The woman was an oasis of sanity in the Hammond desert of madness. The youngest of Emma and Eddie Hammond’s children, she fled the Hammond household three months shy of her eighteenth birthday to pursue a nursing degree at the University of Florida. Now she worked in the maternity ward at Jackson Memorial.
“Not everybody went to college, Rhonda,” Caroline said with a roll of her eyes. “Like I said, he’s got ways about him. But my grandson Curtis don’t never go hungry.”
“Mhm,” Rhonda said, lifting Coca-Cola to her lips. “Shouldn’t you thank the taxpayers for that?”
Deena giggled.
“And what the hell are you laughing at?” Keisha snapped.
“Nothing.” Deena lowered her gaze. “Nothing at all.”
Keisha snorted. “Right answer.”
The smell of weed met Deena from across the table. When she looked up, her eyes met Keisha’s, darker and flitting with scorn. Never had she been able to figure out what she’d done to earn Keisha’s wrath, but she’d owned it from the beginning. Memories of an eleven-year-old Keisha flaunting Deena’s wardrobe at school each day still ate away at her. The last gift of a once-doting father, Keisha had taken the clothes with glee, relishing both them and the shock on her classmates’ faces each time she recanted the story of how Deena’s father had died.
“Bet if the church was payin’ ya, you’d have time for the Fellowship Hall,” Keisha smiled. She plopped a sliver of cornbread into her waiting mouth and grinned.
“Mhm,” Caroline agreed.
Emma grabbed a few thick pieces of fried chicken from the tray and dropped them on her plate before turning a critical eye on Deena’s food. Collard greens, stewed okra with tomatoes and onions, butter beans and cornbread. No meat. Not a single piece.
“Chile, what in the world wrong with your plate? “Emma demanded.
Keisha and Caroline snickered.
Deena glanced down. “Nothing. I thought I’d try to eat a little healthier.” That, and she was saving room for dinner with Tak.
“Child, gimme that plate.” Emma produced a large, demanding hand. “You gone starve yourself listening to these white folks bout what you gots to eat. You gots black blood in ya, you needs to eat black folks’ food. Simple as that.”
Deena handed the plate over and watched in dismay as she dumped an assortment of chicken and catfish on it. Her gym’s treadmill didn’t have a setting high enough to run off all that fat.
Emma dropped the plate in front of Deena with a scowl. After succumbing to her stare, Deena reluctantly poked at a crispy piece of chicken thigh.
“Eat!” Emma snapped.
With a sigh, she dug in.
“So,” Aunt Rhonda said brightly. “What are you working on these days, princess?”
Deena was the only one she called princess, and the only one whose job necessitated variation.
“Renovations for a parochial school. I’m making it handicap accessible.” She tasted the collard greens. They were salty.
“So, basically you putting a wheelchair ramp in,” Keisha said.
“Well, not exactly. There’s a complete re-envisioning taking place. We’re turning over every stone to make the place not just handicap accessible but handicap friendly as well. Hallways are being widened, walls knocked down. We’re even putting Braille—”
“It’s a lot of crackers that work with you, huh?” Keisha said.
Deena froze. “What?”
“Crackers. White folks,” Keisha waved a hand in exasperation. “Never mind.”
Her mother laughed. “She ain’t notice them, girl. I mean, she is one of them.”
“I’m just as much black as I am white,” Deena spat.
But her aunt laughed. “Well, I can’t tell.”
“She’s right, Deena, whether you like it or not. You ain’t got nothing from your daddy. It’s like that white woman spit you out,” Emma said. “White as snow, don’t cha know. White as snow.”
She lowered her gaze. It was always the same. She was Gloria Hammond’s daughter. White as snow, don’t you know.