A Place Called Home (Short Story Collection)

By Maxine Thompson

This collection of short stories explores what it means to be part of the African Diaspora in America. Each character, despite different life experiences, suffers from a profound sense of alienation. Each is searching for that elusive place called "home." We see a middle-class couple at a crossroads in their careers, their marriage, and their lives. A child whose mother is on crack tries to win a spelling bee with no parental support. We revisit the memories of a homeless man who had once been a talented singer. A father returns home to his adolescent daughters after a seven-year absence. An adoptee wonders about reuniting with her birth mother. A dark-skinned woman questions the role she has played in the family in the shadow of her light-skinned sister. This sacred place is what this offering is about-this quest for "home"-be it spiritual or physical. Home is the center, which all human beings seek to reach. These characters are all displaced through their race, place in time, or moment in history. They reside in a spiritual "wasteland" and it is their job to define-and obtain-"home."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maxine Thompson
• Release date: Oct 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536514964

Maxine Thompson

About the Author Maxine E. Thompson was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, but has resided in Los Angeles, California since 1981. After graduating from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, she worked as a Child Protective Services social worker for twenty-three years, first in Detroit, then later in Los Angeles. Ms. Thompson attempted her first novel, The Hidden Sword, at the age of 16, when she was the first black student to integrate St. Francis High, an all-white school, in Traverse City, Michigan in 1967. In 1989, Ms. Thompson became a recipient of an honorable mention in Ebony’s first writing contest for her short story, “Valley of the Shadow.” In 1994, she won an award for her short story, “The Rainbow,” through the International Black Writers’ Association (IBWA). She won a PEN Award for her first novel, The Ebony Tree. She has had poems, short stories and articles published in e-zines, national magazines, such as The Writer and Final Call, and anthologies such as Proverbs for the People. She has written three self-publishing columns on the Internet found at http://www.careermag.com, http://www.bwip.org, and http://www.blackmarket.com. She is the author of five novels, The Ebony Tree, No Pockets in a Shroud, (Hostage of Lies), LA Blues, LA Blues 2, and LA Blues 3, a contributor to 5 anthologies, an author of novella, Capri’s Second Chance, How-to-Write, Publish, and Market Ebooks (2000). She has written She began hosting internet radio on March 5, 2002 at VoiceAmerica.com, and continues to this day on Artistfirst.com, where she started on March 4, 2004 and still interviews authors, and keeps abreast of the news in the publishing industry. Ms. Thompson is also the founder of Black Butterfly Press, which created an e-zine for new and self-published writers called On The Same Page,(www.maxinethompson.com), and later created a blog, at Maxinethompsonbooks.com. Dr. Maxine Thompson is the owner of Maxine Thompson’s Literary Agency and Maxine Thompson’s Literary Services where she acts as a literary agent, a ghostwriter, a book doctor, and a developmental editor.  Email [e-mail].

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A PLACE CALLED HOME

(SHORT STORY COLLECTION)

Maxine  Thompson

Copyright © 2001by Maxine E. Thompson

Inglewood, California 90303

All rights reserved

Printed and Bound in the United States of America

Published

Black Butterfly Press

First Printing, December, 2001

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN  0-9647576-5-6

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This book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. Address inquiries to:

Maxine E. Thompson

http://www.maxinethompson.com

email: [e-mail] [phone]

Printed in the United States of America

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Dedication

To all the griots who went before me and were unrecorded by the printed word.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maxine E. Thompson is an award-winning writer.  She worked

as a Child Protective Services worker for twenty-three years in

the inner cities of Detroit, then Los Angeles, but her first love

has always been writing. She attempted her first novel,

The Hidden Sword, at the age of 16, when  she was the first

Black student to integrate St. Francis High, an all white school,

in Traverse City, Michigan in 1967. She self-published 2 novels,

The Ebony Tree and No Pockets in a Shroud, and one short

story collection, A Place Called Home.

From 1982 to 1986, she won many poetry awards.

In 1989, Ms. Thompson won $1,000 in Ebony’s first

writing contest for her short story, Valley of The Shadow.

In 1995, she received a PEN Award for her novel,

The Ebony Tree, and an International Black Writer’s Association

award for her short story,

The Rainbow. She received certificates of merit for outstanding

achievement in Writer’s Digest’s Self Publishing Contests

in 1995 and 1997.

She has had many poems, short stories, and articles published in e-zines,

national magazines and anthologies. Maxine Thompson has also

authored several eBooks, How To Market, Sell and Promote

your book Via Ebook Publishing and a Short Story Collection

entitled, A Place Called Home.

In 1999, Maxine Thompson created On The Same Page, an Internet column for new and self-published writers found at http://www.maxinethompson.com. She has written monthly Internet columns for Black Women in Publishing at http://www.bwip.org, and The Black Market at http://www.theblackmarket.com. She has written book reviews on Netnoir, and columns on www.careermag.com

Thompson also writes on www.blackeventscentral.com. This brings exposure to other writers on her webzine.  She has had many articles and short stories published off-line in anthologies, as well as on-line in e-zines. She also is a guest columnist for the international newspaper, The Final Call. She was featured in Black Issues Book Review in the July, August 2000 issue. She is featured in the August 24, 2000 California Crusades Newspaper because she’d launched one of the first African American eBook publishing companies on the Internet. 

In April 2001, she was featured in Black Enterprise as an eBook publisher.

She  has done internet radio for interviewing authors since March 2002, and is currently on Artistfirst.com as the Dr. Maxine Thompson Show.

She is the author of novels, The Ebony Tree, Hostage of Lies, LA Blues series 1, 2, 3, Novellas, Katrina Blues, Capri’s Second Chance, a contributor to 5 anthologies, Proverbs for the People, All in the Family, Secret Lovers, Never Knew Love Like This, and Saturday Morning. Four  Ebook Series, The Hush Hush Secrets of Writing Fiction that Sells.

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Among other services, Maxine Thompson’s Literary Services provides ghostwriting and story editing.

Maxine Thompson is a literary agent. You can find her services at http://www.maxinethompson.com and her different books at http://www.maxinethompsonbooks.com.

VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

Tulsa, Oklahoma

1988

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"Is her plane here yet?"

Lord, you would think it was the second coming of Jesus! She looks on in amazement at how her father’s fawn-colored irises bathed in milquetoast eyes leap forward like a baby’s at the sight of its mother. In an attempt to keep down the lava bubbling up in her breast, she holds her breath.

If she had not seen it happen so many times over the years, she would not believe it herself. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, she is fading. . . disappearing . . . In a moment, she will be invisible. . .no ears . . . no eyes . .  . no face. . .no body. Voices boomeranging overhead confirm this phenomena.

She at the airport now.

Oh yeah?

Say she gon’ rent a car, but if someone can pick her up from the airport, she’ll do it later.

That girl always was something. Tell her she bet’ not insult me by rentin’ no car. Sister here.  She can go get her.

How gracious, she thinks. So like her father to volunteer her services freely, and so like her sister to pretend she did not want to impose on anyone, but ....

Briefly, several pairs of eyeballs belonging to her relatives flicker in the direction of the chair she, the invisible one, is glued to; then, they turn away.

That’s all it took, she smirks. One phone call, and there goes all her years of hard-won respect. She, the one who had sacrificed and stayed home to care for her ailing mother, M’Deah, is obliterated to nothing.

From the time Uncle Lucious, M’Deah’s brother, answered the pay phone in the corridor outside the hospital waiting room, everything had changed. Up until this point, she had been called Willa by Aunt Hattie, Uncle Lucious, Cousin Opal and the others. Now, she is Sister again.

She is no longer seen as someone important to M’Deah and her three-year battle against cancer. (She had not realized how, in spite of her anguish, she had relished being seen as an individual in her own right, and not as her sister’s shadow.) With her father calling her by her childhood nickname, Sister, she really felt as small and insecure as the girl in her had.

Peering out the glazed windows of her eyes at her father, Willie Fred, she is startled by the  transformation. If it is possible, Willie Fred suddenly looks younger than his sixty-eight years. Florescent lights from above reflect on the broad expanse of his face. They do not reveal the webbed wrinkles and deep furrows of his life. Instead, highlighted is the polished patina of his hickory-colored skin.

Evidence of the long hours of keeping a vigil at the hospital that have eroded his sturdy face seem to vanish. Willie Fred is beaming, not for the daughter at his side, who has devotedly nursed, fed, and bathed M’Deah, but at the prospect of seeing his other daughter, Gazelle, who has come all the way from the big city to Muskogee, Oklahoma.

M’Deah, his wife of forty-nine years, is dying. But Gazelle, the light of their lives, is home. Maybe Gazelle can hold back the dark horse of death.

From her invisible space, Willa can see all of her relatives in the waiting room’s cubicle mentally dismissing her, their eyes already brimmed with anticipation for the arrival of the light-skinned one. It is 1988, and after forty years of living, things haven’t truly changed for her. 

Suddenly, Willa feels real tired. Now she knows how a worn-out rag doll, cast aside by its youthful owner and staring dumbly out at the new-fangled, walking, talking replacement, must feel.

If you’re yellow, you’re mellow.

If you’re brown, stick around.

If you’re black, STAND BACK!

*     *     *

Willa drives down the highway to the airport; a slow drizzle of rain begins to fall. Her windshield wipers strike a painful rejoinder to the pulse of her emotions. Inquietude is new to her.

Fields of hazy buttercups, black-eyed Susans, gladiolis, and daffodils dance across the screen of her mind. The flowers of girlhood, the bloom of which, for her, has never been consummated.

When she thinks of Gazelle, she thinks of buttercups. Always tawny of limb, honey-kissed as its pistil, and lemony-round of face. As girls, self-assurance had come as naturally to Gazelle as diffidence had come to Willa. They were as different as day and night, so much so, the other children called them Salt N’ Peppa. Willa is so like Willie Fred, for whom she is named. In her opinion, she has always been too broad of nose, too full of lips, too short of hair.

But why shouldn’t they be different, she sighs.  After all, as she learned at the age of eight, they had different fathers. Tracing back through the nebulous days of childhood, she still visualizes this little vignette.

On an especially tearful Saturday, she is having a tantrum in front of the kitchen stove, where she undergoes a bi-monthly form of torture like clockwork.

On this lost day, though, she wants to know why she has to have her crinkly locks straightened with a pressing comb and Gazelle’s cinnamon-toast locks are not. With no aplomb, the brusque, no-explain M’Deah informs Willa that Gazelle has a different father. Period.

M’Deah never mentions this again, and with her being as formidable as she is, Willa dares not broach the subject with her again.

Over the years, Willa has managed to piece the story together like a patchwork quilt. It was said that Willie Fred and M’Deah married while they were still in high school back in the late 1930’s.  During World War II, when Willie Fred enlisted in the army and was shipped overseas, M’Deah met and fell in love with a Creole man from out of New Orleans, Louisiana. Called Black Jacques, he was a professional gambler, and from what the relatives whispered, also quite a lady’s man.

Apparently, M’Deah wrote Willie Fred a Dear John letter, asking for a divorce. However, before the divorce ever had a chance to take place, Black Jacques had skipped town, leaving M’Deah in a family way.

No one ever knew what M’Deah and Willie Fred said, or how they even reconciled behind what M’Deah pulled, but after the war, they resumed living as man and wife. No mention of Black Jacques was ever heard in our house. As far back as Willa remembers, Gazelle has never been treated as though she was not Willie Fred’s natural daughter. On the contrary, she has been pampered, and even as an adult, she is catered to when she comes home to visit.

One story in the annals of family folklore had it that when Gazelle was about four-years-old, she had developed scarlet fever. The family lived farther back into the country part of Muskogee at the time, and the closest doctor was a number of miles into town. During those years Willie Fred and M’Deah didn’t own a car. They say Willie Fred carried Gazelle bundled in his arms until he found a white doctor who would save his baby’s life.

Two years later, the appearance of Willie Fred’s own biological daughter, Willa, did little to change his attitude towards Gazelle. Willa has the same meek temperament her father has. Gazelle, although the bearer of Black Jacques’s hazel-green eyes, which on some days appeared murky gray, definitely inherited M’Deah’s bossiness. 

Even grown folks were intimidated by Gazelle’s willfulness when she was a child. All anyone seemed to notice were the two sandy ropes hanging to her waist and her dusky melon complexion. Even when grownups scolded Gazelle, there was a beam of pride in their voices.

No one seemed to notice Willa, the timid, dark sister. Only M’Deah was ever stern with Gazelle, calling her Miss Prissy. Everything Willa has ever done has been eclipsed by Gazelle’s accomplishments. Gazelle has been the only one to go to college.

When Willa graduated from high school, M’Deah had to undergo surgery for one thing.  The next thing they knew, she ended up having a leg amputated due to complications stemming from her sugar diabetes.

Needless to say, Willa would not hear of going off to school leaving M’Deah. She has worked graveyard shift at the post office for years and spent her days caring for M’Deah and cooking for Willie Fred.

On the other hand, Gazelle is married to what the family considers a successful businessman, has had two honey-colored children, now ages nineteen and twenty, who are away at college.

Gazelle is the epitome of everything Willa is not. At forty, Willa has no husband, no children, and no prospects of getting a family, either. Without the swaddling of her parents’ dependency on her, she has nothing. Bereft of this, Willa feels naked, exposed.

She remembers how when M’Deah’s left leg had to be amputated over twenty years ago, Willie Fred and the others kept saying, We don’t know what we would do without Sister. Over the years she has gained a certain, long sought-after peace. Gazelle’s return, as it is, is the epicenter of an earthquake. Willa has never questioned the way things are, but today, she does.

I am reclaiming lost saffron shores

of the River Nile of my soul.

*     *     *

Girl, aren’t you going to hug me back? 

Willa still hears the citifiedness in Gazelle’s voice. Icy fire sears Willa’s brain. She wills herself to embrace her sister. Impeccably dressed in a tailored, white linen suit accented with a dash of magenta, Gazelle is as self-possessed as ever. Her perfume rides daintily upon the air behind her as she switches her hips in a slow provocative swivel.

From habit, she walks ahead of Willa, with the younger sister on her heels. Willa suddenly feels like the story of the country mouse, when she glances down at her own drab, brown tweed outfit.  She feels like a winter blast next to the springy whirlwind that is Gazelle.

As usual, when around Gazelle, she becomes aware of her plumpness. Subconsciously, she bridles herself, sucking in her stomach and throwing back her shoulders.

But today with satisfaction, she notices Gazelle’s sylph-like figure is becoming as full as a lush pear. She’s no longer the svelte woman of two years ago, when she returned for M’Deah’s last surgery. Matter of fact, Willa notices, she is turning darker, subtly, like an autumn leaf browns first around the edges.

Willa still can’t get over this new fleshiness in Gazelle. Her sister has always prided herself on being petite. George, she would say, sticking out her rosebud mouth and pouting as petulantly as a girl, is an old fuddy-duddy about my weight. George is her husband.

For the first time it dawns on Willa. She’s getting older, she thinks, incredulously. Then, she remembers a fact she has not taken into consideration lately since all of her peers have been either her parents’ surviving friends or relatives. I am too!

As they wait for Gazelle’s luggage in the baggage area, Willa inquires, How’s Detroit?

The same.

Detroit, where Gazelle has lived in a large brick house on Outer Drive Street, for the past twenty years, is still the Big City to people from Muskogee. Willa winces as she recalls the flood of years when Gazelle has come home like a babbling ravine through a desolate valley, washing them with the news from the Outside World. Today is different, though.

As Gazelle grabs her hands between her own, Willa feels her fear pulsing through her blood. How’s M’Deah? Don’t lie to me. Give it to me straight, Gazelle cries out.

*     *     *

M’Deah.  You woke?

Yes, Daddy. The voice is so faint, it is barely audible.

Your baby home. Gazelle be here, soon as Sister git  her here.

The little mound under the hospital covers is scarcely larger than a child’s grave. M’Deah, once a big-bosomed, velvety Black woman, has always been a citadel of strength. She has never apologized, or offered an explanation for her life, to anyone. In the face of death, she is no different. Under the ravages of the disease, her hands, which have become bird-like claws, clutch at the covers. She weakly beckons to Willie Fred to lean closer.

Sister, M’Deah whispers.

I can’t hear you, M’Deah.

Sister.

What about her?

Tell her...Tell her....

With that M’Deah drew her last breath, too soon for her firstborn to set foot in her room, and too late for her last born to say her good-byes.

*     *     *

Why are you packing? I thought I was the only one leaving.

Willa studies her sister, standing arms akimbo, in the doorway of the bedroom they shared as girls growing up.

She holds her stare on Gazelle so long that Gazelle, becoming uneasy, looks away from her. Willa returns to her packing.

Well, you’re not, she replies, stonily.

Gazelle gives her that searching look Willa has caught her sneaking at her all throughout the week of the funeral goings-on. Finally, she blurts out what is on her mind.

"What’s wrong, Sister? Things seem fair to me.  I’m glad M’Deah left you her half of the house, and the biggest part of the insurance money. I know we’re all