When Momma Said Grace

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When Momma Said Grace

“We’re gonna pray.”

“What for, Momma?”

“‘Cause I said so. Now give me your hands.” Momma reached out and took my hand and the hand of my brother, Michael, who sat across the table. She grasped them both tightly, bowing her head slightly.

“We never prayed before…” Michael began, but fell silent when he saw the tears brimming Momma’s eyes. He glanced at me before bowing his head in a similar fashion. With a sigh, I did the same.

We’d never been a praying sorta family. We went to church occasionally, when it looked good socially. Momma wore a cross around her neck that she fingered promptly whenever Pastor or someone else from Mayburry Baptist came knocking around our door. They’d come to drop food off in boxes or give Momma stamps to use at the store on the corner. She’d go off about how God was looking down on Mayburry Baptist and claiming them to be saints for bringing food to starving children’s bellies and how Jesus was waiting for them in Heaven. But as soon as the door closed, she’d go back to being our Momma, who cussed and drank and flirted with the postman. She never talked to us about God or Jesus or any of them other religious superheroes we was supposed to know about. Religion was just not who Momma was.

Daddy hadn’t come home for supper that night. Me and Michael guessed that was the reason for Momma wanting to pray. Daddy used to miss supper a lot when he worked for some factory that made metal parts for gadgets I didn’t know what the heck they did. But Daddy got fired from that job. Got the tip of his boot in the door before they grabbed him by the collar and flung him right back out again. After that, he’d spent a lot of time at home, sitting on the couch, drinking and cussing to himself. When me and Michael tried to get Daddy to take us fishing down by the creek, he’d say he was busy. Busy doing what, I don’t have a darn clue. He’d just sit and drink and cuss all day and all night.

Momma would make him sandwiches. He’d take two bites and give the rest to us. When me and Michael were sitting on the stairs, we heard Momma yelling at him that he was wasting away and that he’d better not do anything stupid to leave her babies daddyless. He’d yell and she’d yell right back. It usually ended with Momma huffing out the door. I swear some days Momma had smoke spewing from her ears.

Daddy had been gone that morning and Momma had been crying at the kitchen table when me and Michael came down to go to school. I told Momma that if she wanted me to stay home, I would. She sat right up and smacked my face. “Gracie Ann Pearson, you’ll go to school and you will learn everything there is to know about everything there is to learn, you hear me?”

“But Momma,” I had cried, rubbing at the red soreness on my face. “That’s so much…”

“I don’t care!” she’d cried, tears coming to her eyes. She’d pulled me close to her then, so we was looking eye to eye. “You’ll go on to school so you and your brother can grow up and move outta here, you understand? You don’t wanna stay here the rest of your life.”

“Yes I do, Momma,” I’d cried back, hugging her. Michael came in and hugged us too. “I wanna stay here for ever, with you.”

“No,” Momma pushed us away and gave us fifty cents each for milk. “You learn your science and your math so you can move up north and get decent jobs. Not these jobs 'round here.” She’d pushed us out the door and we was on our way to school without another word from her.

When we got home that afternoon, Momma’d been making supper for all day it seemed. It was the biggest supper we’d had in years. And Daddy still hadn’t come home. There wasn’t a plate set for him. Momma’d made us do our numbers and spelling before she told us to come into the kitchen and eat some supper.

And that was when Momma said we had to pray.

“Dear Father, full of heavenly grace, I pray you bless this food you’ve given us tonight. And I pray you watch these children in the days to come. Give them the courage to face whatever this world has to throw their way. And heavenly Father, I pray for George Scott Pearson, my husband. I pray you watch out for him and guide him tonight. We know we may not go to church as much as you’d like us to, but please watch out for George. In your name we pray, Amen.”

“Momma,” I said, not letting go of her hand. “You forgot to ask anything for yourself.”

Momma’d smiled as a tear rolled down her cheek. “All that I asked, I asked for myself.”

We ate the rest of our supper in silence.

My Daddy’d been real angry lately. Angry at God, angry at men, but mostly angry with himself. He’d seen all those business type men in their fancy suits driving by him in the streets and he’d thought to himself, ‘what makes them so different from me?’ And he couldn’t think of a damn reason. Not a damn excuse why those men could drive flashy cars while my Daddy couldn’t even put food on the table for his kids.

Anger had a way of getting to your head. My Daddy didn’t come home for supper that night or any night after. While me and my brother was asleep, the night before he left, he’d told my Momma that he was gonna make things right with the factory. Get his job back. And if they wouldn’t let him work, then no one was gonna work.

That night, while we was eating supper and my Momma was praying, my Daddy walked into the factory and shot twelve of them factory workers before an officer of the law shot my Daddy in the back of the head. He’d died right there.

Us and Pastor were the only ones at his funeral. We upped and moved all the way across Louisiana to live with Momma’s sister. Momma would cry and cry and cry, and all we could do was sit and wonder why Momma prayed every night to a God that could take away our Daddy. He’d never done nothing wrong. Always got the bad end of the deals. Never got played the right card. Momma made us promise that we’d go to school and grow up to be nothing like him.

But every night, while Momma’s praying to God to watch over my Daddy until she can join him, I’m thinking of those men in them fancy suits and flashy cars and I’m wondering what’s so great about them. What’s so great about men who make people’s Daddy’s get killed trying to take care of their families? And I just can’t understand why Momma would want us to be anything like them. I could have all the school and all the money in the world, but I’d never make anyone’s Daddy go away.

I never liked them fancy suits anyway.