Gloria

Night Shift

Chapter 13: Gloria

The television was on. The volume was set to nine — the number visible in the corner of the screen when Gloria pressed the volume button, the number nine the result of years of calibration, years of finding the exact volume that allowed Gloria to hear the television from the recliner while Jaylen slept in the back bedroom undisturbed, the volume that was loud enough to provide the sound that Gloria needed, the sound that was companionship, and quiet enough to preserve the silence that Jaylen needed, the silence that was sleep. Nine was the number. Nine was the boundary between Gloria's waking and Jaylen's sleeping. Nine was the compromise that the house had settled on, the house that held both of them on the nights when Delia worked, which was five nights a week, which was most nights, which was the arrangement.

Gloria sat in the recliner. The recliner was brown, upholstered in a fabric that the furniture store had called "mocha" and that Gloria called brown because Gloria did not subscribe to the furniture industry's practice of giving common colors uncommon names, the practice that turned brown into mocha and gray into slate and blue into cerulean, the practice that Gloria found unnecessary in the way that she found many unnecessary things — not objectionable, not offensive, just unnecessary, the way a second helping of butter on cornbread was unnecessary, the way a third rinse in the washing machine was unnecessary, the things that people did that they did not need to do and that Gloria did not do because Gloria's life had been built on the principle of necessity, the principle that said: do what is needed, do it well, do not do what is not needed.

The recliner had been James's. This fact was the recliner's primary identity in the household — not its color, not its fabric, not its manufacturer, but its owner, its original owner, the man who had sat in it for twelve years before the aneurysm took him on a Tuesday afternoon in September when Delia was fourteen and the world was one thing and then, between one heartbeat and the next, the world was another thing, the world without James Robinson in the brown recliner in the living room of the house on Millbranch Road. The recliner survived him. The recliner sat in the living room the way a monument sits in a park — marking the place where something was, testifying to the presence by occupying the space the presence had occupied, the recliner James's recliner even though James had been dead for nineteen years and Gloria sat in it now, sat in it every evening, the sitting not an appropriation but a continuation, the chair holding Gloria the way it had held James, the holding the thing, the chair's function unchanged by the change of occupant.

The television showed a rerun. The show was a procedural — one of the crime shows that the networks repeated endlessly in the late-night hours, the shows where detectives solved crimes in forty-four minutes with commercial breaks, the crimes tidy and the solutions complete and the justice rendered in the time allotted, the shows that bore no resemblance to the actual crimes that Delia dispatched responses to every night but that Gloria watched because the shows were familiar and the familiar was the point, the shows providing the background sound that Gloria needed, not for entertainment but for company, the sound of voices in the house, the sound of activity, the sound that said: someone is here, someone is talking, the house is not silent, the silence held at bay by the voices on the screen at volume nine.

Gloria did not watch the screen closely. She watched it the way a person watches a fire — peripherally, the gaze resting on the movement and the light without tracking the details, the plot unnecessary, the characters unnecessary, the dialogue unnecessary. The watching was the being-in-the-room-with-the-sound. The watching was the staying-awake. The staying-awake was the job.

Gloria's job. Not her paid job — her paid job was over, had been over for three years since she retired from the Memphis City Schools cafeteria system after twenty-six years of service, twenty-six years of the hairnet and the serving line and the industrial kitchen and the children who came through the line with their trays, the children who were hungry and sometimes the children who were only hungry, the children for whom the school lunch was the meal, the only guaranteed meal, the meal that the government funded and the school provided and Gloria served, the serving not just the putting of food on the tray but the looking, the looking at each child the way a mother looks at a child, the looking that assessed and registered and noted, the looking that saw the child who had not eaten and the child who had bruises and the child who was wearing the same clothes as yesterday and the day before, the looking that was not in the job description but was in Gloria's description, Gloria who could not stand behind a serving line and hand food to children without seeing the children, without looking at them, without performing the silent assessment that her own motherhood had trained her to perform.

Her unpaid job was this: the night. The keeping of Jaylen. The staying-awake until midnight, until the boy was deeply asleep, until the sleep was established and the sleep would hold and the grandmother could close her own eyes with the confidence that the child would sleep through the night and would wake in the morning when Delia arrived and the morning routine began. The staying-awake was not difficult — Gloria had always been a night person, had always found the late hours comfortable, had always preferred the quiet of the house after everyone else was asleep, the quiet that was her quiet, the quiet that belonged to her in a life that had not contained much that belonged exclusively to her. The marriage had been shared. The motherhood had been shared — shared with Delia, who was the child who required the sharing, and shared with the community, with the neighbors and the church and the school, the village that raised the child, the village that was Whitehaven, the village that was the block, the village that was the network of women who watched each other's children and fed each other's children and disciplined each other's children because the disciplining was the village's right and the village's duty and the village understood that a child was not one mother's project but the community's project, the community's investment, the community's future.

But the night — the late night, the post-midnight hours — the night was Gloria's. The night was the space where Gloria existed without a role, without a function, without the identity of mother or grandmother or cafeteria worker or church member or neighbor. In the night, in the recliner, with the television at volume nine and the boy asleep in the back bedroom, Gloria was Gloria. Just Gloria. A woman in a chair in a house on Millbranch Road in Whitehaven, Memphis, Tennessee, watching a show she was not watching, staying awake because staying awake was the habit and the habit was the life and the life was the night.

At 10:30 PM, Gloria got up from the recliner. She walked to the kitchen. She poured a glass of water from the pitcher in the refrigerator — the pitcher with the filter, the Brita pitcher that Delia had bought for her because Delia had read something about the Memphis water, something about the aquifer and the treatment and the minerals, and the reading had produced the pitcher and the pitcher had been accepted by Gloria without comment because the accepting-without-comment was Gloria's response to Delia's care, the care that Delia expressed through objects — the pitcher, the blackout curtains for Gloria's bedroom (purchased but never installed, because Gloria did not use blackout curtains, Gloria slept fine with the regular curtains, thank you), the new smoke detectors (installed by Delia one Saturday, three detectors, the installation performed with the efficiency that Delia brought to everything, the efficiency of a woman who did not waste time), the objects the language of the daughter's love for the mother, the objects saying: I see you, I worry about you, I am taking care of you the way you are taking care of my son, the way you have taken care of me, the taking-care a loop, a circuit, the daughter caring for the mother who cared for the daughter who cared for the son, the care circulating through the family like blood through a body.

Gloria drank the water. She set the glass in the sink. She walked down the hallway to the back bedroom. She opened the door.

The room was dim. The nightlight — the crescent moon, the plug-in that Jaylen had chosen at Target — the nightlight cast its pale gold glow on the walls and the bed and the boy. The walls were the walls of Delia's childhood bedroom, painted a neutral beige that Gloria had repainted when the room became Jaylen's room, the beige replacing the pink that Delia had chosen when she was ten, the pink that had been the color of Delia's girlhood, the color that Gloria had looked at for twenty years before the repainting, the pink a daily reminder of the girl who had grown into the woman who now worked the night shift while the room that had been pink was now beige and the bed that had been Delia's was now Jaylen's and the generations had shifted, the generations rotating through the room the way the shifts rotated through the day, the day shift and the night shift, the daughter's childhood and the grandson's childhood.

Jaylen was asleep. He lay on his side, the Spider-Man sheets pulled to his chin, one arm under the pillow, the posture the same posture every night, the posture that children find and keep, the body's preferred configuration for sleep, the configuration as consistent as a signature, as recognizable as a face. Gloria looked at him. She stood in the doorway and looked at him the way she had stood in the doorway and looked at Delia thirty years ago, the same doorway, the same looking, the looking that was the grandmother's looking and had been the mother's looking and would be, perhaps, the great-grandmother's looking if the generations continued to rotate through this room on Millbranch Road in Whitehaven.

The looking was the check. The check was the function. Gloria checked on Jaylen at 10:30 PM and at midnight and at 2 AM if she was still awake and at 5:30 AM when her own alarm went off and she rose to prepare for Delia's arrival. The checking was not anxious — Gloria was not an anxious woman, had never been an anxious woman, had survived the things that a Black woman in Memphis survived over fifty-eight years without anxiety, or rather had survived them with a form of anxiety that was so deeply integrated into her daily functioning that it was no longer recognizable as anxiety but was simply vigilance, the vigilance that was not a disorder but a response, the rational response to the world's irrational dangers, the vigilance that said: check the child, check the doors, check the street, the checking the practice of a woman who understood that the world did not automatically protect what she loved and that the protecting was therefore her responsibility.

She checked. Jaylen was asleep. Jaylen was breathing. Jaylen was safe.

She closed the door. She returned to the living room. She returned to the recliner. She returned to the television at volume nine.

The show had changed — the network running a different procedural now, a different crime, different detectives, the same format, the same resolution, the same forty-four minutes of simulated justice. Gloria did not notice the change. The change was irrelevant. The sound was the point. The sound was the staying-awake.

At 11:00 PM, the phone buzzed. A text from Delia. Gloria picked up the phone — a Samsung, a model that Delia had helped her choose, the phone a concession to the technology that Gloria did not love but accepted because the accepting was necessary, the phone the connection between the grandmother and the mother during the night hours, the phone the line that linked the house on Millbranch Road to the building on Poplar Avenue, the line that carried the texts that were the arrangement's communication system.

The text said: "Busy night. He ok?"

Gloria typed: "Sleeping good."

The exchange was complete. Two texts. Eight words total. The eight words the entire communication, the eight words containing the information that both women needed — Delia needed to know that Jaylen was sleeping, and Gloria needed to know that Delia was working, and the knowing was mutual and the knowing was sufficient and the knowing was the arrangement functioning, the arrangement in its operating mode, the two women in their respective posts, the grandmother at the house and the mother at the center, the grandson asleep between them, the sleep the thing they both protected, the sleep the gift they both provided, the sleep the childhood that they were building for Jaylen out of the materials available, the materials being: a grandmother's house, a nightlight, Spider-Man sheets, a blue-rimmed bowl, Honey Nut Cheerios, and the stubborn, relentless, unconditional collaboration of two women who had decided — not in a conversation, not in a formal agreement, but in the daily practice of showing up — who had decided that this child would be raised well, would be raised safely, would be raised in a home that was actually two homes and a life that was actually two lives and a night that was actually two nights, the mother's night at the console and the grandmother's night in the recliner.

Gloria had not always understood Delia's job. In the beginning — six years ago, when Delia had come to her and said "I got the position at the dispatch center, the night shift" — Gloria had understood the words but not the work. She understood "dispatch" as a category: the people who answered the phone when you called 911. She understood "night shift" as a schedule: 10 PM to 6 AM. She understood the combination as a job that her daughter would perform and that would pay a salary and that would require the arrangement, the arrangement being Jaylen at Gloria's house during the shift, and the arrangement was fine, the arrangement was manageable, the arrangement was what mothers and grandmothers did.

What Gloria had not understood — what Gloria came to understand over the six years, gradually, in the way that understanding arrives when it arrives through observation rather than explanation — was what the job did. Not what the job was. What the job did. What the headset did. What the calls did. What the voices of strangers in crisis did to the person who heard them, night after night, shift after shift, month after month. Gloria came to understand this not because Delia told her — Delia did not tell her, Delia did not bring the calls home, Delia maintained the separation, the bank — but because Gloria saw. Gloria saw the way Delia looked in the morning when she came to pick up Jaylen. Gloria saw the weight. Not the tiredness — the tiredness was expected, the tiredness was the night shift's tax, the tiredness was physical and the physical was manageable. The weight was something else. The weight was in the eyes and in the set of the mouth and in the particular quality of Delia's silence on the mornings after the bad shifts, the silence that was not the absence of words but the presence of something that words could not carry, the presence of the calls, the calls that Delia did not talk about and that Gloria did not ask about because the not-asking was the respect, the respect that Gloria extended to Delia's work the way Gloria would extend respect to any work that cost the worker something, any work that left a mark.

Gloria understood the mark. Gloria had her own marks — the marks of twenty-six years of cafeteria work, which were not the marks of crisis but were the marks of labor, the marks of standing for eight hours and lifting the heavy pans and enduring the heat of the kitchen and the noise of the children and the repetition of the days, the days that accumulated into years and the years that accumulated into the retirement and the retirement that was the relief and the relief was real because the work was real and the realness of the work was the thing that Gloria recognized in Delia's work, the recognizing the understanding, the understanding the bond.

She did not tell Delia that she understood. She did not say: "I see the weight." She did not say: "I know what the calls do to you." She did not say any of the things that a mother might say to a daughter who was carrying something heavy. She showed the understanding the way she showed everything — through the doing, through the practice, through the cornbread she made on Sundays and the cereal she prepared every morning and the text messages she sent every night and the checking on Jaylen at 10:30 and midnight and 2 AM and 5:30. The doing was the saying. The saying was the doing. And the doing said: I am here. I am holding this end. You hold that end. We are holding the child between us. The holding is the work. The work is the love. The love is the holding.

At midnight, Gloria checked on Jaylen again. She walked the hallway. She opened the door. The nightlight glowed. The boy slept. The Spider-Man sheets were pulled to his chin. He had not moved. He had not stirred. He slept the deep sleep that Gloria's house permitted, the sleep that was the product of the house's safety, the house's warmth, the house's Gloria-ness, the particular quality of a grandmother's house that children absorbed through the walls and the air and the sheets, the quality that said: nothing will happen here. Nothing bad. This house is the house where bad things do not happen. This house is the house where you sleep and you wake and your grandmother is in the kitchen and your cereal is in the bowl and the world is managed and the managing is invisible, the managing done by the women while you sleep, the women who hold the night while you hold the blanket.

Gloria closed the door. She returned to the recliner. She considered sleeping. She was not tired — or rather, she was tired in the way that fifty-eight-year-old women were tired, the tiredness chronic and managed and accepted, the tiredness not a condition but a companion, the tiredness that came with the age and the history and the body that had worked for forty years and retired and continued to work, the work now unpaid but no less real, the work of grandmothering, the work of holding.

She turned off the television. She left the lamp on — the floor lamp beside the recliner, the lamp that provided the low light that Gloria preferred in the night hours, the light that was sufficient for seeing without being sufficient for wakefulness, the light that invited the dozing that Gloria would do in the recliner, the dozing that was not sleep but was rest, the rest that was the grandmother's allowance, the grandmother resting while the mother worked and the child slept, the three states — working, sleeping, resting — the three modes of the family during the night shift, the three modes that the arrangement maintained, that the arrangement required, that the arrangement held in balance the way a mobile holds its elements in balance, each element dependent on the others, each element weighted to maintain the equilibrium.

She dozed. The dozing was light — the surface sleep, the sleep that a part of the mind remained outside of, the part that listened for Jaylen, that listened for the sounds of a child waking or crying or calling out in the night, the sounds that would bring Gloria from the recliner to the bedroom in the seconds it took to walk the hallway, the seconds that were the grandmother's response time, the grandmother's dispatch, the grandmother's arrival at the scene of whatever small emergency a seven-year-old produced in the night — a bad dream, a need for water, the disorientation of waking in a room that was not his own room.

She dozed and she listened and she held the house and the house held the child and the child held the sleep and the sleep held the childhood and the childhood was the thing, the thing that all the holding was for, the thing that Delia worked for and Gloria kept for and the arrangement existed for, the childhood that was Jaylen's, the childhood that was second grade and Spider-Man and Honey Nut Cheerios and a grandmother's house on Millbranch Road and a mother who worked at night and a father who was absent and a life that was constructed, deliberately, carefully, stubbornly, out of what was available, the available being: two women, one boy, two houses, one night shift, one arrangement, one love expressed in the vocabulary of practicality, the vocabulary that did not include the word love but that enacted the word love in every bowl of cereal and every text message and every check on the sleeping boy and every morning when Delia walked through the door and Gloria said "morning" and the morning was the word and the word was the love and the love was the arrangement and the arrangement held.

At 2 AM, Gloria woke from the doze. She rose from the recliner. She walked the hallway. She opened the door. The nightlight. The sheets. The boy.

He had turned in his sleep — from his side to his back, the arms spread, the posture of a child surrendered to sleep, the posture of total trust, the body open and vulnerable and unguarded in the way that only a sleeping child's body is open and vulnerable and unguarded, the posture that said: I am safe here. I do not need to protect myself. The world is held. The holding is sufficient.

Gloria adjusted the blanket. She pulled the Spider-Man sheets back over his arms, the pulling a gesture so old and so instinctive that it preceded thought, the grandmother's hands performing the function that grandmother's hands had performed for as long as there had been grandmothers and blankets and sleeping children, the function of covering, of tucking, of ensuring that the child was warm, was wrapped, was held by the fabric the way the child was held by the house and the house was held by the grandmother and the grandmother was held by the practice, the practice of checking, the practice of covering, the practice of holding.

She stood in the doorway for a moment. She looked at Jaylen. She thought of Delia — not a conscious thought, not a deliberate thought, but the thought that was always there, the thought that ran underneath Gloria's other thoughts the way the hum ran underneath the dispatch floor's silence, the thought that was Delia at the center, Delia at Console 7, Delia in the headset, Delia listening to the city's emergencies while Gloria stood in the doorway of the back bedroom and looked at the boy who was Delia's son and Gloria's grandson and the reason for the arrangement, the reason for all of it — the night shift and the thermos and the recliner and the television at volume nine and the text messages and the checking and the cornbread and the cereal and the drive to school and the curtains and the sleeping and the waking.

Jaylen. The reason was Jaylen.

Gloria closed the door. She walked the hallway. She returned to the recliner. She did not turn the television back on. She sat in the brown recliner in the quiet house on Millbranch Road and she held the night, the way she held everything — quietly, steadily, without complaint, without recognition, without the expectation of recognition, without the need for recognition, the holding the thing, the holding enough, the holding the grandmother's work, the work that no one would write a job description for because the job description was: everything. The job description was: be here. The job description was: hold the child while the mother holds the city. The job description was: love, expressed in the vocabulary of practicality, the vocabulary of Gloria Robinson, fifty-eight, retired, Whitehaven, Memphis, Tennessee, awake at 2 AM because awake at 2 AM was where she was needed, and being where she was needed was what she did, and the doing was the life, and the life was the love.

At 5:30 AM, Gloria's alarm sounded. She rose. She went to the kitchen. She prepared the cereal — the Honey Nut Cheerios in the blue-rimmed bowl, the milk on the counter, the orange juice poured. She started the coffee — the coffee for Delia, in the MEMPHIS mug, black, the coffee that would be ready when Delia arrived, the coffee that was the morning's first offering, the grandmother's first act of the day, the act that said: you survived the night, here is coffee, the night is over, the morning has begun.

She set the table. She wiped the counter. She checked the clock. 6:10. Delia would arrive soon. The car would pull into the carport. The door would open. The daughter would walk in. The daughter would be tired. The daughter would carry the weight that Gloria could see but not name. And Gloria would say "morning" and Delia would say "morning, Mama" and the exchange would be the exchange, two words, the two words the handoff, the night shift ending and the day shift beginning, the grandmother handing the child to the mother, the mother taking the child from the grandmother, the transfer the arrangement's daily transaction, the transaction that had been performed approximately two thousand times over six years and that would be performed again this morning, the same words, the same sequence, the same love.

Gloria waited. The coffee brewed. The cereal sat in the bowl. The boy slept in the back bedroom.

The morning came.