yfritz's Journal, 29 June 2024

My dearest friend Geraldine owned a tiny old house which her late mother bought shortly after the civil rights era ended. “Mama’s house,” she’d refer to the house with utmost affection and respect. Mama’s cast iron skillet was still intact and sometimes we cooked giblets together in the kitchen with a sagging floor. When I met Ger the house was already hopelessly dilapidated; nevertheless, it was a welcoming sanctuary in that particular neck of the woods. Men and women who grew up with her freely walked in and out of the house through the squeaky screen door, hoping to find food or beer or cigarettes. Like clockwork they got severely cussed out by Ger. She didn’t mind feeding them but she hated it when they kept the fridge open a second too long. She masterfully elevated the obscenity to poetry, and her siblings and childhood chums enjoyed it and loved her all the same.

I no longer care to convey how much her house and her friendship meant to me. It doesn’t matter anymore. Gentrification has erased the old community, her folks and neighbors have been displaced one by one. I looked up their old addresses on Google street view, wondering if their gardenia bushes were still in the front yards. The pictures indicated that their properties were razed down with absolute totality. I figured that the gardenias didn’t stand a chance. I’ve come to terms with the change, but I admit that my heart sank when Ger phoned to inform me that, after all the years of resisting, she decided to let go of Mama’s house.

I think about the hours when the dusk replaced the shrieking of cicadas with the nocturnal pulse of tree frogs in Ger’s backyard that blended into the copse behind. Those summer sounds reminded Ger of the rapturous Baptist funerals she often attended, and she would randomly remark “Bootsie delivered a good eulogy, sho nuff.” Many of her kinfolk were nicknamed like that. Boo, Boog, Boon, Boopie, Bootsie, or Boochie. The variation went on and I couldn’t keep up. “He is a pastor now? I thought he was in jail,” “No no no, that’s Boochie. Bootsie is my other nephew.” Oh I see. We then gossiped about the one in jail, how he drove his father to despair and eventually to an early grave. That was just one of many sordid tragedies which plagued Ger’s relatives. Illnesses, violence and poverty reigned the family and the majority of them did not live past their 60s. But that’s not how I remember them. I remember them for the gardenia bushes they planted in their yards. I let gardenia’s fragrance permeate my memories, the scent was there when I was wiping blood off the faces after a fist fight broke out between Boo and Bookie or whoever. I occasionally changed adult diapers for Boochie‘s dad and somehow I recall those moments with the scent of gardenia instead of the odor of waste matter. One hot afternoon as I was cleaning Boochie’s dad, he asked me to lubricate his lame legs with olive oil. “Boochie says this miracle bible oil will cure me and I will walk again.” This was after he solemnly vowed that he’d never believe a word of anything his son had to say. I took the bottle that had a Food Lion label on it, and in anguish I smeared the green oil on his wasting legs. I was willing to believe in Food Lion miracles. The angular lion compelled me to get the dying man out of the bed. I lifted his skeletal torso upright with my arms as if we were dancing cheek to cheek, and voilà, his oiled legs took one step. Sort of. One could argue that I cheated by by pivoting my leg to move his leg forward. I say, a step is a step, he did definitely bear weight on his feet for the first time in years. “I’m walking, look, I’m walking,” the tone of his voice revealed a tortured soul. I was shook up, not by the miracle bible oil, but by the faith he had in his crooked son’s words, the faith that was simply a distorted form of despair to which he was confined. My heart was heavy. As I walked out of his house cicadas shrieked the last shriek of the day and gardenia assaulted my olfactory nerves. That day I learned that gardenia could be cruel. It was saying, the man is a goner. I drove to Mama’s house, because that was what I did back then, Mama’s house was where I went when I was sad. Ger was waiting for me there, sitting in the backyard, amidst the night chorus of tree frogs. She inquired about her brother, and I told her about his olive oil. She paused. She was tired of funerals. She lit her cigarette and looked at her untamed gardenia shrubs. “You know, he planted those for Mama.”

It’s been 16 years since I left North Carolina, and I was never able to grow gardenia here in Northern Virginia. It’s simply not possible. This year I finally got one bud to bloom. It was small and imperfect, but it did effuse the intense perfume and uncovered my longing for the neighborhood that has been lost for good. And I now vividly remember that the scent of gardenia is cruel. I don’t understand why I bother to grow the shrub that compounds the grief. Mama’s house is gone. We all felt safe in Mama’s house, life was not kind but in that house we did our best to be kind to each other. Now we are all dispersed. As a matter of fact most of them passed away and I started to forget their names. Last I heard Boochie was still in and out of jail. I believe he is the only one remaining in the area, holding the fort so to speak.