Mixing It Up with Mama, N. R. Robinson

I awake to the clanking of pans on burners and what had been a distant memory: the smell of creamed eggs and toast. Mama’s “Hope you’re hungry!” confirms she still has eyes in the back of her head.

When I’d gotten the word to haul ass to D.C., I’d been stuck in a place, Aberle Home for Boys, in the wee town of McKeesport, Pennsylvania. Out of the blue came the call: Grandma warning that Mama was shacked up. “You won’t believe it,” she promised. “Her fiancé is a nutjob from their asylum. You need to get down here quick!”

“Hold up,” I said. “What can I do?” Well, wasn’t I, at fifteen-and-threequarters, practically a man? And who, if not me, would put an end to their madness? When I arrived in the early AM, I was worn out, thumbing it through the revolutionary air of the ’70’s Civil Rights Struggle.

Foggy with sleep, I stand and hug Mama’s back (though I am no longer the hugging type). Mama seems preoccupied with preparation, yet zeal climbs through the cloth of her cotton shift (though Mama is no longer the zealous type).

“You sleep good?” she asks. At my grunt, she adds, “Where you living? Where’s your sister now? Y’all keep in touch?”—all in concerned earnestness. He, Mama’s “nutjob,” is still asleep. Earnest-acting, I shoot back: “Everything’s fine. Yeah, we do. Things couldn’t be better, Ma.” My voice sounds incomplete.

After years apart, here I am being unfruitful, by not-so-earnestly mixing it up with Mama. I feel awful about my closed-up state. But why worry her if she can do nothing to help?

Because of our untethered relationship, Mama doesn’t dig deeper. Or, possibly, her words these days are simply few and far between. As for myself, I hope—studying her new serenity in the creamed-eggs-smelling air—that I am seeing Mama’s future.

Early on in her hospitalization (a.k.a. her institutionalization, a.k.a. her incarceration), Mama took to smoking. After our meal, Mama draws at a Kool menthol and then breathes a fistful of smoke. For no better reason than my rage is up in smoke and mingling amicably with hers, I think: My “putting an end to” can wait ’til later. “So, when’s the big day?” I mumble, as she’s wiping down the table. In lieu of an answer, Mama hauls me to my feet. As we embrace, she whispers in a scraped-out voice, “You a sweet boy, Nicky.” With an extension of her arms, we are face-to-face: her bright umber irises are flecked with cinnamon and embers. You can nearly see them afire, see something afire in them. It is as if Mama is forever looking at a sky burning. “Just stay outta trouble,” she says, “and everythin’ll work out,” as if her God has said such directly to her. Then Mama gently turns me in the direction of the door.

N. R. ROBINSON grew up in Junior Village, a Washington D.C.-based, government-run orphanage that was the oldest and largest institution of its kind in America. A ninth-grade dropout, Robinson went on to earn a general equivalency diploma and then graduated from the University of the District of Columbia. In 2006, he left an executive position at Microsoft to begin the thirteen-year journey of scribing his coming-of-age memoir, Our Family Walks. A graduate of the creative writing programs at Florida Atlantic University (MFA, 2009) and the University of Missouri (PhD, 2016), he is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Claflin University, where he serves as Editor of the student literary journal, Edisto River Review. He can be contacted at nickrobi@hotmail.com. About his essay, “Mixing It Up with Mama,” Robinson says, “I was attending my first writing conference of the summer, the 2019 Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, and our non- fiction workshop leader, Dinty W. Moore, gave us the prompt ‘the smell of home.’ I immediately recalled my mother cooking creamed eggs for my sister Cookie and me when we were small children. That delicious smell filled our small apartment. As I sat down to write that evening, I remembered seeing a writing contest with a prompt photo that had something to do with eggs. A Google search brought me to IHLR’s PhotoFinish page and the photo of a broken egg. The idea was set; my fingers flew.”