Once Upon a Mattress


My mattress came today.

Three aggressive, hard-working Latino boys dark with sweat fought the three flights of stairs to get the queen-sized promise of dreamful sleep up to my bedroom. I buzzed them in and then opened my door so that the delivery workers would not have to stop. Standing there like a guest upon whose face the door had been slammed was the box of CD stands that I bought in Reading, PA maybe five days ago, or three cities ago, an eternity.

Delighted that they had arrived so soon, I welcomed the box into the house, gave it a temporary home, and helped supervise the mattress’s grand entrance into my world. This was a special moment because, as is with most things, God’s hand was all in it.

I was walking hurriedly up 6th Avenue maybe a month ago doing the myriad things I do when I have those three or four solid days of break in New York from the tour. Having assimilated as much as anyone can into the swing of the city, I quickly offered a flyer-presenter the gesture that says, no, thank you, don’t take it personally, and I have shit to do. It’s a necessary gesture in a city where someone is always trying to pass something out to you, and I try to add a bit of politeness by using words, too. Halfway across the street I realized that the flyer was for Sleepy’s Mattress, which was in the area.

I turned around, slightly embarrassed that I had been so automatic with my No to the advertiser. Sleepy's was having a giant sale in fact, wherein mattresses were as much as 40% off.

Needless to say, I went, and Jerry, the Italian salesman, let me lay down on everything in the store. Double pillow tops, single pillow tops, everything. I settled on his Kingsdown mattress, convinced that of the many salesman in the place, Jerry was the only one committed enough to move the mattress off of the box spring and on to a platform bed so that I could experience it the way it would be felt in my room. Jerry went on to tell me that if I put $25 down on the mattress it would hold the sale price while I flitted about the country trying different mattresses at hotels, and in stores, and I had the option to change mattresses at any point.

This mattress you see, is very important because between the end of the tour in Toronto, the extended concert with three opening acts, and the tour-end Halloween party a few nights before, I haven’t slept a lot. Like many others on the tour, I craved that single moment when I could walk into my place and fall out. To leave the fun, the party, the intoxication of dancing before multiple thousands of people, the otherworldly feel of visiting many cities and leaving them before their beds get truly warm, to leave this and end up at home in the path of a good sleep at the intersection of a normal dream and a wonderful mattress.

And although I made it here to New York on Saturday afternoon with no cab drama, I had to settle for the worn futon, makeshift bedding capable of only makeshift sleep. This morning at 10:47, minutes after my spirit woke me up and gave me thought to turn on my cell phone just in case the delivery men needed to call, they did. As Sleepy’s promised, they freely delivered my $1700 mattress that absorbed only $800 out of my pocket, thank you God (and Jerry). And now, cushioned by a down pillow or a Tempurpedic depending on what mood my neck and back and shoulders are in, I can sleep.

M&M&M

Miss Mary Mahoney's Le Cafe is small and rectangular with a roof lower than the one in my new Brooklyn condo. It has an old wooden clock at its center, bead-boarding dressing the walls' waist. And a huge mural is a crop top with cartoonish depictions of people celebrating St. Patrick's Day, blessing of the shrimp boats, music flying off of the piano, sailors throwing flowers during Mardi Gras, and crawfish hiding around the fat letters of their scribbled name.

In the corner of this twenty-four hours establishment (it's 1:00 a.m.), three servers and a cook are sitting at the table, smoking cigarettes and drinking what couldn't possibly be water out of Styrofoam cups. The waitresses look weary, the waiter wearier, and they looked at me a moment ago, when I walked in, as if I had just jumped out of a space-ship, as if to say, "Did you mean for us to get up and serve you?"

Maybe nobody else in this neck of Mississippi wears cornrows.

Anyway, the waiter has come over to me and offered a placemat/menu with favorite choices that none of the ritzy restaurants at the Beau Rivage could offer - hotcakes, beignets, French toast, hashbrowns, shrimp or catfish or roast beef on a poboy, hamburgers... I started with the hot chocolate and asked the waiter to bring me a cup of gumbo.

The hot chocolate is advancing my reflection on the day. Biloxi has surprised me. I was thrilled that architects of our hotel saved us the inconvenience of walking through the casino to get to the elevator corridor (a la Las Fake-us, NV). I was happy that directly across the street from our hotel is a gas station with typical Arco/Shell/BP staples and a Waffle House directly behind it (don't sleep on Waffle House). I am happy that here, everybody says hello, and as I walked past the train tracks earlier, I had a whole conversation with a complete southern stranger who had stopped his own chatter with a friend to holler from the loading dock -

"Having a nice walk today?"
"Yes, thank you."
"Working out those legs huh?"
"Got to do that sometimes, you know?"

- and he laughed and I laughed too because he thought I was a Southerner who just didn't feel like driving today.

When I walked into an old entertainment shop that featured more VHS tapes than anything else, the proprietor told me his 30% sale was an effort to retire. I later found out that the man has been retiring for about 10 years, and the sale stickers are as old. Something abou this revelation makes me smile.

I am considerably less happy about the sparseness of meat in my gumbo. The pallid waiter knew it and refuses to charge me. He puts my order in for a catfish poboy and then sits down with his smoking colleagues.

"You know what I like about you?" the cook asks my waiter before the seat can gets warm, "your life expectancy is not very long. You from up there in Wyoming but now you down here in Mississippi and that'll cut yo shit short."

Don't ask me the segue, but somehow, from where I sat, I end up in this conversation that took a turn toward insurance premiums. Now I remember that mystic thing about the South that never stops disarming me: anybody will have a conversation with you and nobody wants you to feel anything short of at home. Here in Biloxi, where the air conditioner is on during Christmas, the same hospitality applies.

It looks like even Helga, the most Casperly of them all, with scarlet lipstick and a map of lines of 10 additional facial muscles formed from giving shade, might be smiling. Some concert fans at the hotel warned me earlier that Helga doesn't have a reflection in the mirror. It's fine. My poboy and hot chocolate doesn't taste any less good.

Family Reunion - Bizness Meet'n


Last night, at the end of the fish-fry, Cousin Beetle made an announcement in the kitchen that seemed directed only at Mardres and the few other Storys from Sacramento.

“So tomorrow morning, the family meeting at 8:30 will be at Taco Bell,” he said

“Well, I always preferred Burger King, myself, so I can have it my way,” I joked, responding to his humor.

Only when my ass was rolling off the sofa at 8:00 a.m, wasn’t shit funny. The family business meeting, whose business was still a mystery to me, would take place at 8:30 a.m. because Beetle needed to have Taco Bell open to the public by ten.

“He manages the place?”

“Yeeaaah, chile,” Aunt Marian replied. “He got lots going on here in Arkansas, honey.”

“You are kidding,” I said.

“We’re not going to get there at 8:30,” Rosalyn decided. Following in the trend we had lately of being in each other’s heads and having the same responses to most of what went on, I understood her completely.

“You mean it’s on CP time, AND this is a family reunion,” I said.

“Yes, that’s right,” she said.

But we ended up getting to the meeting anyway and to our chagrin, most of the people who planned to show up were there. About thirty folks arranged themselves in the shiny booths at Taco Bell so that Madame President Veoletta Story could call the meeting to order. There were local reports from representatives of various regions from Storys and Williamses with births, deaths, shout outs.
It was trippy. People suggested. Others agreed. Things were motioned and seconded. We had an extended conversation about what to do when family members wanted reunion dues reimbursed upon not being able to make the event. Some people thought it was unfair to planners who are counting heads in advance of cancellations and use their monies to help prepare for members’ coming. Others feel times are hard. It was all very black.

I loved it.

The previews ended and we got to the main event: Las Vegas vs. Los Angeles for reunion 2005 site. Rosalyn, who only re-engaged herself in the meeting once she realized that she might have been voted historian last reunion, aptly threw me to the wolves, allowing me to be the spokesperson against Linda (secretary) on why the reunion should happen in Los Angeles instead of Vegas. Of course I noted that there is such a large contingent of Storys and Williamses in the Los Angeles area (Linda included) and that for planning, budgeting, and convenience it made sense. Folks wanted to gamble. The kids asked what they could do in Vegas. I shook my head to indicate nothing while another cousin listed several things. The debate went on for quite some time as Uncle Brandon fought to persuade everyone to consider L.A. Naturally when we won the vote by three, I felt like a total asshole, for fighting for the cause when I knew I might not be able to attend and plan the rally. It was comedy.

And there were no hard feelings. Linda later came over to our room so that I could type out the minutes. [Mind you, our efforts to produce hard copies of the minutes for people to take home with them would soon be thwarted when we discovered that the hotel computers were too archaic to handle a foreign print job and nobody had even heard of Kinko’s.] After we finished, she schooled Aunt Marian and me on family genetics, in particular, the hereditary disposition for impregnating women and then denying that it ever happened.

“I was daddy’s little girl and worshipped the ground he walked on until he ruined it by moving in two doors down from our house with another woman,” Linda told us of Hugh Pat.

“Girl, naw!” Aunt Marian cooed.

“My mama was too sweet. She would go ahead and continue cooking for him one dinner while he go eat over one house and then eat at our house.”

“Stop it.”

“I’m not playing. He would go eat over her her house, come home late and then eat at home with us,” Linda said.

“She knows something chile, something we don’t. That’s why she tolerated it all those years,” Aunt Marian suggested.

“Girl please, she was just too sweet about it. When I was in high school I went to apply for a job and the woman looked at my resume and asked me how I was a Story. I told her Hugh Pat is my father and her whole face started glowing. ‘Hugh Pat? How is that man doing? Tell your daddy I said hi, in fact you may use my phone to call him if you’d like. Oh by the way I’m Ernestine…’ and she’d go on and on like that.” Linda dramatized it beautifully, turning into a giddy coquet to give us Ernestine.

“Did you confront him about it?” I asked her.

“Uh huh. I came home one day and asked my daddy who Ernestine was. He would get to stuttering, and you know that’s when you know a man is lying through his face when he gets to stuttering.”

We fell out laughing.

“I had to quit my job because nobody ever asked me how I was doing, just about Hugh Pat. Had to change churches, too, when I realized by that silly ass grins those women had that Daddy had been THROUGH the church, too.

“Then,” she continued, “when I got older, I asked Daddy if he had any other kids. ‘No, baby, I don’t have any other kids.’ Right. ‘Do you have any strays in Kansas City, Arkansas? Anywhere?’ He insisted he didn’t. I said, ‘Daddy, now you talkin’ about that heart attack you think you ‘bout to have, I promise you you’ll have it if I find out there are other kids.’ He told me no. Just lying. Denial.”

“You have other siblings, Linda?” Aunt Marian asked, obviously to instigate.

“All over honey. I know about a few but ain’t no telling, girl.”

“Were he and my grandfather close,” I asked? Two and two became four.

“Baby, they were thick as thieves. Lie for each other, cover each other’s asses. And they were good looking men back when. Hugh Pat and Willie was some hos if ever there were hos in the family.”

This was too funny to be real. I made it a point to check with Darryl, a scientist and good friend, about whether there a male chromosomal pair could mutate with denial and work its way through a family…

Family Reunion - Day 2


I thought Magnolia represented the extent of countrification that this reunion might get. This was before I turned on to 82 and began the drive to the late James L. Pashell Story’s house in Noxubee, the location of the fish fry. The highway looked familiar, a long stretch of pavement flanked by high trees that leaned toward us slightly, as if begrudging 82 for burying their cousins.

But then we turned off on 11, a road marked by a blue sign so inconspicuous I’d have missed it entirely at night. From this point, we were driving through the forest with directions whose landmarks are “the bend in the road,” “the dip in the shoulder,” and “the cows chillin on the right.” These roads aren’t made for cars – especially traveling opposite directions.

God’s sudden decision to bawl all over His garden fought my visibility, thwarted my windshield wipers, and threw Aunt Marian into a tizzy in the backseat.

But when we got there and spotted the small sign with “Story” printed across it, everything was worth it. I met several folks, including Beetle, whose energy was refreshing but not as countrified as I expected. He was, after all, a country boy before he defected to Cleveland, only to come back to Arkansas and don the pastor robe.

“Chile, this is Jamal, Howard Jean’s son,” Aunt Marian explained, as if Howard and Jean were one word.

“I know, I could see it the minute he walked in,” Beetle said, extending an arm. I grabbed for the rest of him, too, embracing the family as they embraced me.

After we met briefly, Aunt Marian managed to decrease the decibels in her voice enough for tell me all about him without other folks catching it.

“Now you know that man got eight kids,” Aunt Marian explained. “Two in Cleveland, two Texas somewhere, two in Arkansas, and two I don’t know where they are, chiiiiile. But he stopped his sinful ways and became a minister, honey!”

Back when I was in junior high and my mother was working to discourage me from screwing for the sake of it, she employed a wonderful scare tactic: she explained that she had been trying for ten years to make me and nobody’s sperm could get to her awkwardly situated uterus – until my father came along. “What does that tell you about your genetics and the potency of that sperm? It WILL find the egg and she WILL get pregnant.”

Little did she know, she was telling a truth much bigger than she realized. It’s a Story thing – these men in the family have kids aplenty, and most of them were conceived around the word “Oops.”

I made my way to the kitchen, a less tall space with a downward slant, as if one of God’s storms may have considered picking it up from its behind and drag it up toward heaven. Certainly the journey was sprinkled with His flavor because the people consumed the catfish as if on a mission to expand their stomach capacity.

I was no exception.

The entire scenario felt un-new to me, as if I had been here before, done this. Whatever essence of Story passed down, it pushed its way to the top of my heart, like small children competing to see over adults. The six cobblers that sat over on a table dangerously placed alongside the path of the catfish line grinned mischievously like Eve at all of us as we stood determined not to be the first one to dig in. Without even being told, I knew the scenario: two cobblers were peach, two were apple, and the other two were something else, and fifteen minutes after the first portion was dished, people would see only the tablecloth beneath two of the Pyrex dishes, along with a few escapee peaches, the only evidence of what was there earlier. Cousin so-and-so would complain that there wasn’t enough peach cobbler and resort to the other fruity options and be surprised, momentarily, that the maker of the peach delight could throw it down in spite of the fruit available at the time. Aunt such-and-such would agree, give it an Amen. Others would laud the cook and testify to the sumptuousness of the peach, only available here in Magnolia, and apologize to the folks who missed it.

I would be one of the others.

So I scooped my cobbler, feeling remarkably a family member.

At one point, an older gentleman with a rugged face but soft expressions on it pulled me aside and introduced himself. He turned out to be Wakwanza’s father, Lynn, and his countenance showed signs of hardship, stress, and worry, almost as if he’d mothered a child instead of fathered one. He welcomed me into the family. Fuck the jovial temperament of the household; out isolation from everyone gave him a platform to tell me how he truly felt about everything, to let me know what was on his heart, and what being a man/father means to him.

I understood. Even without knowing him well I understood that his sense of right and wrong went far beyond the general spirit of philandering and irresponsible baby-making that covered the DNA of the Story men.

Later, I walked back into the dining room and caught the whole area in a game of spades. I took a seat, then gave it up to one of the ladies. But let me not front. Chivalry prevails, but so did my urge to instigate, Don King style, to marshal the event. I watched as two of my younger cousins (India and Michael) got slaughtered by Wakwanza and Latanya. It donned on me that I was the only full-fledged artist in the room, although I could see others in development, and so I could contribute my general insanity. I talked shit, turned coat, boosted the esteem of the underdogs. It was high competition drama. Latanya left to the bathroom. I looked to check her hand. It wasn’t there.

“Uh huh, I had to take my cards WITH me,” she said upon return. This was serious business. I then sat beside V and invited her into my trash talk.

“You need to be playing whist. V do you play whist?”

“Yes,” she said, as if I’d asked her if labor was painful.

“I think we need to be playing whist, show them how to play cards for real,” I said.

“Uh huh. They don’t know nothing about real cards,” she agreed. We watched the game get more heated.

I left to get more catfish. Inside the kitchen was an entire new contingent of folks who had come from Sacramento. They had video cameras, would get up in your face with it, press record, and ask you your name, your relationship, and where you were from. It was hilarious. It was so family reunion. I loved it.

After about three or four hours, when kids were busy flying fireworks outside in the front yard__no, front acre of the house, Lavester starting organizing the caravan to Bossier City, LA to gamble.

I hated casinos, and I hated gambling, the lights, the cold temperatures designed to keep people awake enough to waste their money. But I would probably go, just for the car ride. It was bound to be exciting and eventful. This was a black family reunion, right?

Family Reunion - Day 1

When Aunt Marian and Rosalyn took me to Aunt Mabel’s room, I was slightly nervous. This would be the first time the old female contingent of Storys laid eyes on me. They would be warm, welcoming, engaging, and pull a less formalized Barbara Walters segment on me.

Aunt Lottie especially.

I had been forewarned about the pistol of an 80-something-year-old, even spoken to her briefly on the phone when I was Milwaukee. She was lucid enough to remember, too.

“Yes I heard the show was cancelled,” she told me. “I remembered talking to you and so I knew you wasn’t coming. But I have a friend work over there at the center, and I told her to look for you.”

She’s fierce. She had spies and shit. She loved to be in everybody’s business and didn’t apologize. Kim, a cousin in LA who had encouraged me to come to this reunion, told me about how Aunt Lottie pinned her down on why she was 38 and manless. “I don’t know, I try to get them but I run around nicely dressed with my briefcase in hand and these men go after the little girls with paper bags,” Kim had explained. “You need to go and get you a paper bag, girl,” Aunt Lottie suggested.

Fortunately, Aunt Lottie spared me a trek through my personal life and, at the insistence of Aunt Mabel (whom I’d met already), told us about the store she ran back in the day.

“These two fools came up in my shop and tried to rob me. So I took my gun__” Aunt Lottie began.

“What kind of gun?” Roz asked.

“A .45. I would have been okay but I wasn’t supposed to come from around the counter. They ran but I chased those suckers out of the store.”

Shortly after, Veoletta Maxey walked in. I instantly loved V, a woman on the brink of retirement from her principalship at a school in Kansas City. I erroneously began calling her Aunt V. She just felt like my aunt, although the arms of the Story tree would explain otherwise. Beneath the veneer of her soft pink top, V’s matriarchy, an ease of warmth and conviction of knowledge seeped from her aura like old fragrance. I may have totally misread her, but there was something about her energy that fed the youngster in me, the tike awed at mothers (mine, too) who could put their feet up in a peach cobbler, and then in someone’s ass when necessary, and then return them to a classroom floor to stand and spread the knowledge. V and I would be close.

Over the course of about ten minutes, a few more people dropped in, Uncle Titus and his beautiful but guarded daughter Cheryl among them. But the reunion began when a dark brother in his thirties walked in draped in a loose tank top framed with perspiration and a towel that must not have lived up to its duty. Shorts, socks, tennis shoes worn from the drive.

“Hey people we finally made it here, driving from L.A. How are you Uncle Titus, Marian, Lynette,” he greeted. Then he got to me. “And you must be Jamal?”

“Yes,” I said, extending my arm.

Now I’m no stranger to funk, and I’m not squeamish about it, but I was wearing a linen shirt, so I was tentative about a hug. What he said next displaced my reservations.

“I’m your Uncle Brandon.”

“Nice to meet you.”

He swooped through the room, continuing to greet the family as I struggled with the information. It was very simple, really: since this was my father’s side of the family, Uncle Brandon had to be his brother. This meant that my sperm donor succeeded in not only keeping me from relationships with my half-brothers, but from his as well.

As Uncle Brandon's wife, her daughter, his son, and his nephew piled into the room for introductions, it dawned on me that the nephew, a tall wiry man with Kobe features, Shaq coloring, and Tupak bone structure was my first cousin. So was Brandon's son, a 16-year-old with middle-line-backer shoulders and a strong contrast of smooth skin and thick, dark facial hair. These people, the whole contingent of Storys, as well as the uncle that couldn’t make it, all lived within fifteen minutes of the dance company I worked for in L.A. when I was in high school.

“We’re going to go check in now, but we just drove here and we couldn’t wait to see you,” Brandon announced, as he gathered the posse to leave the room, packed at this point like a too-small black disco.


I was already outside, a little flustered, very hot, awestruck, and__deep in my heart__livid with the sperm donor. But there were too many more people to meet for my anger to surface (this turned out to be the state of affairs for the entire weekend, fortunately). Later, Rosalyn told me the story about Uncle Brandon.

“It’s really interesting,” she began, matter-of-factly. “He came to the reunion in ’99, waltzed in from nowhere and announced that he was happy to be there. He pointed to your grandfather, Willie, and said, ‘That’s my dad over there,’ and the old man looked like he might expire at any moment. It turns out Willie had an entire family separate from your father and Marian and nobody knew about it for years.”

“My father knew though, didn’t he?” I asked with accusation.

“Eventually he did, but he wanted nothing to do with them, doesn’t keep in touch or anything.”

“Wow.”

There was more. When we got back to our room to cool off and prepare for the fish fry that night, Aunt Marian got on the phone.

“Geraldine? Girl where are you? Chiiiile you need to come on over here and meet Jamal. Yes Chile. He’s sitting right here, girrrrrlll…”

And when Geraldine walked into the room I met her, noted the suggestion of purple in her lips and the deep set eyes, cookie dough coloring. She looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure whose aunt she was; everyone had an aunt at this reunion. My aunt, the one I knew about anyway, cleared it up for me. “This is your Aunt Geraldine,” Aunt Marian said.

I gave her a hug, suddenly aware that she looked more like my father than Marian, his whole sister.

“Yeah, you look just like him, too” she said. “I don’t know why he tried to deny it,” Aunt Geraldine assessed. Everyone in the room laughed at her candor.

“Welcome to the family, hon.”


Aunt Geraldine has three kids, the youngest at 33 or so. They grew up about 10 blocks from where my mother taught school for about 15 years or so, maybe 20 minutes from where we lived.


“Chile Howard Jean don’t keep in touch with nobody else either, Jamal. Viper got ‘im honey,” Marian said. Viper was her nickname for my father’s wife. She’s a whole other level of unkind to think about, so I had learned to laugh at how pleased Aunt Marian was with the nickname than to actually conjure up the mean soul it belonged to.


“It’s okay baby, you belong here,” Aunt Geraldine said “I had to come to the reunion, same as you and then make Willie acknowledge me. I’m the firstborn, just like you.”


Her brother, the sperm donor, suspiciously missed this reunion for the first time. Coincidentally. I could relegate my hostility toward him for some other point in the future, if not pray it away and let God deal with it on His own terms. I once calculated that because he made my mother go to court with a paternity suit (instead of just handling his business as an adult like she originally suggested), my biological co-parent spent $43,200 in child support over the years. It hardly covers fatherlessness. It doesn’t even begin to apologize for my arranged ignorance about the family members at this reunion. But there was no time for concentration on injustice. I decided to simply enjoy these relations whose presence I had missed for many years.

All-you-can-eat fried fish forthcoming. I would concentrate on that, too.