The Last Goodbye -- Looking For The Woman Who Raised Me Like A Mother

When my father first saw Eunice she was sitting on a bench, holding a sleeping baby and she was crying. It was 8 in the morning and she'd been up all night. My mother said that my father walked into the kitchen holding a baby and trailed by a tall black woman and said, ``Anne, this is Eunice and her son Gabriel. They're going to be living with us.'' Mother was speechless. Eunice lived with us for 14 years.

We were living in a three-storied house in those days. We rented out the two upper stories because we needed the money. There were bills from my father's four years of medical school and two children and another baby about to make her debut. My mother calls that house her Menagerie. There was assuredly a murder on the second floor, she remains convinced of it; but the police found insufficient evidence. There was the night of the attempted rape in the back courtyard when my father ran out into the dark in his boxer shorts swinging his stethoscope as a weapon in a vain attempt to catch the culprits.

The crumbling house in the sometimes-dangerous neighborhood ceased to be worth it. Unpaid debts and all, my parents decided to return to Michigan, a state considered by them both as decent and safe and, as my father often said, ``lacking, in southern belles.'' They asked Eunice if she wanted to go; she is said to have barely paused before declaring herself ready to leave. Black women in the earliest years of the 1950s had few variables to sort through; it may be that she feared a return to whatever it was that made her sit on a bench all night. In any case, she felt that a new city in the industrial Midwest with a white family of shaky means but bright promise was a better card to play than the known factors and future possible park-bench-sojourns.

Eunice was the only child of a widowed mother who worked for a prosperous family and lived in the servants' quarters.

Eunice never went to school, but like her mother before her, she learned how to read and write and she made use of the opportunities presented to her. She was a woman of intelligence and grace. She had a kind of ultimate faith in manners and the usefulness of self-discipline. ``Stand up straight,'' she'd tell me. ``It's good to be able to stand up straight - don't forget.''

IT WASN'T UNTIL my first day of school that I realized Eunice and Gabe weren't simply part of our family, that they were there by design rather than ties of blood. Eunice walked with me, telling me of the wonders of school. There were other children heading down the quiet morning streets, many with their mothers or older brothers and sisters. None were with tall black women. As we left the parameters of our tiny neighborhood and entered foreign territory, we were stared at, openly and with curiosity. I looked up at Eunice, but she only squared her shoulders, gripped my hand even tighter, and continued speaking of the magical qualities of school. When we walked into the schoolyard, people turned and watched us, and I heard the word ``nigger.'' The teacher snubbed Eunice. Was afraid that someone would hurt Eunice and wanted to leave with her, but she bent and kissed my forehead and was gone. When the school day was ended, she was waiting outside, standing near the curb, away from the know of mothers there to etch their children.

That night I went to her room and sat on the edge of her bed and rubbed the toes of my saddle shoes together and managed the courage to ask her about the word I'd heard in the schoolyard. I have a clear memory of her in that room. She sat in a rose-print chair, legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded in her lap, gabardine suit from the 1940s with never a wrinkle or a smudge, seed pearl broach at the base of her throat, dark hair looped into a chignon low on the back of her head. She said nothing for a few moments and then, ``Nigger is a word used by people who have no manners, it means African.''

I took this in stride, knowing already that the world was full of people who had no manners. I did wonder about Gabe, I asked, ``Well, if people are mean to Africans, maybe Gabe shouldn't go to school. Maybe he should just stay home''.

``Gabe will go to school, but not the one you go to.''

``What school? The one by Grandma's?''

``No, honey, a school for African children. Downtown.''

``But how will he get there? Will Daddy take him on the way to the hospital?''

``No, Gabe will live downtown during the week and will come home on Saturday mornings.''

I couldn't believe what she was saying. I wondered if they'd send me away too. ``But,'' I said, ``Daddy and Mom won't let any of us live somewhere else, will thy?''

``Honey, Gabe isn't one of your Daddy and Mom's children. Gabe is my baby.''

``But isn't Gabe one of us kids and aren't you one of Daddy's wives?''

``No, we just live here.''

``But I told everyone at school that you were one of my mothers and Daddy had you and Mom for his wives.''

``When you get to school tomorrow, you tell them that you made a mistake. You tell them that I'm the housekeeper.''

``I can't, they'll say I lied.''

``You do as I tell you to.''

``What's a housekeeper?''

``Go to bed now. We'll talk tomorrow.''

``Eunice, I love you to the end of the Milky Way.''

``That's how much I love you too. Now go o bed.''

I went to bed that night thinking that the world was about to shatter. I feared that Eunice might go away too. I swore that if she did, I would leave my father, mother, brother and sister and go with her.

I woke in the night afraid that Gabe might already be gone. I went to the room that he an my brother shared and found their beds empty. I ran to my parents' room and saw Johnny and Gabe asleep across the foot of the bed. I climbed onto the bed with them and pulled the corner of the bedspread over Gabe's shoulder. I lay still, pretending to be asleep, knowing that if my father woke he might send us back to our rooms. He tossed and whispered to my mother, ``Jesus loves the little children. I wish I could say the same for myself.''

My mother laughed and said, ``Stop that, they might think you mean it.''

EUNICE and my other were friends. They sat up late at night talking. They went for walks together. They went shopping together and ate lunch in restaurants. They went downtown because it was a more comfortable area for Eunice than the closer suburban malls. I know now that my mother did a lot to smooth the road that Eunice traveled; but as my mother recently said, ``She was my friend; besides, what's the matter with shopping downtown?''

On winter days when I'd get in from school, there was always a simmering pot of cocoa on the stove. Eunice would let me sit on her lap and she'd put an arm around me while I drank my cocoa and warmed up. At night I'd visit her in her room and sit on the edge of her bed and we'd have our talks. My last act before going to bed was always to go to the head of the staircase and listen to the muffled sounds of Eunice and my mother talking, or to sneak onto the porch that adjoined my parents' room and take a peek at them sitting in the yard drinking lemonade, talking, the glow of the yellow mosquito candle glinting through the bowers of the trees. I don't recall a day of my childhood when Eunice didn't play a central role.

Gabe left. My sister kept saying, ``Where's Gabe?'' He came to like his downtown. He stopped coming to visit us. Today I doubt that I would know his face. I think of it as a face that was always smiling.

The day of my 12th birthday Eunice told me that I was a woman. I found the notion intoxicating and quickly vowed to manicure my nails each and every night. I told her of my resolve. No, she said, there were other matters connected with womanhood of more importance: being hurt, she said, and taking responsibility for what you do and for what your actions mean to others. I played Monopoly that night and forgot about manicuring my nails.

Eunice knew that certain symbols of behavior were signs of one's true character. These were passed along to me in the form of bits of advice. Don't wear too much jewelry, it makes you look like a Bathsheba - don't forget. Don't fidget - don't forget. Don't let a day go by without learning something - don't forget. The list of things I wasn't to forget was long and tortuous and really very wise.

Eunice left when I was 15. The reasons for her leaving were my parents' divorce, financial downfall and a general collapse of the family. I cried madly the night she left and screamed that I would follow her. The house was too large, too quiet. I had my youngest sister to look after. Eunice came to visit and told us that she had an apartment downtown and a good job. She and my mother sat in the kitchen and talked. They kept the door closed but I saw Eunice give my mother money. My mother decided to move to a different state, and we lost touch with Eunice.

I was 25 when I began looking for Eunice. I started by asking my mother for details that might turn into clues. That's when I learned that Eunice had never gone to school, that Eunice's husband had met an unfortunate end. My mother thought that Eunice might be found through the churches. I did all the obvious things, and when they failed I sat in my car on Sunday mornings in front of the churches where the black people went. I drove around downtown looking for her. I took to going to the department stores and pausing in the areas that sold the type of garments she'd once worn. I saw many older black women, but none of them were Eunice.

I drove slowly through the housing projects where the blacks had to live. I'd stop my car and scan the groups of women waiting at the bus stops. I walked through the African section of the museum on Saturday afternoons. I left notes saying ``Eunice call Cynthia'' on the bulletin boards in all the laundromats and convenience stores. I began to feel the weight of the poverty so etched on the bodies and faces of all the old women who could have been Eunice.

An elderly woman bedded down for the night in the doorway of a store that sells neon plastic jewelry and lace-pattern hose. She put one coat on the cement, wore one and used the third as a blanket. Her embarrassment was palpable; people stopped and watched anyway. I shut my eyes and prayed the typical female prayer: that Eunice lived in a pretty house with a kind and loving husband. I walked on down the street and passed an outdoor cafe, operating at full tilt; laughter was light, you could hear the money talking.

A quiet army of old women moved along the city streets, arthritic hands, feet that hurt, dog-eared clothing mended and mended again, too little money, a hesitation away from falling through someone's fictive safety net.

Late one night, while I was walking near the bus depot, a cab pulled to the curb near me and the driver shouted, ``You lost?'' No, I told him. I thought of my brother, me and Gabe playing in the wading pool under the trees in the back yard. I saw my mother and Eunice lying on the grass under the weeping willow, my baby sister asleep on a yellow blanket between the two of them. They fanned themselves with faded paper fans given out by a Japanese restaurant and thought so lovely and exotic by 6-year-old me. I wanted a cup of cocoa and a warm arm to hold me while I lost the lonely frosted feeling of the night. It was time to leave. I couldn't find her.

Eunice, I love you to the end of the Milky Way. Don't forget.

CYNTHIA VANN IS A FREELANCE WRITER LIVING IN BANGOR, MAINE.