I looked over at Daddy, who was watching me with hurt in his eyes. I was sure he noticed that I hadn’t spoken a word to him. I wanted to, but I just wasn’t ready.
I shook my head. “Can we talk?” I asked her.
She looked surprised. “Really?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, if you and Daddy aren’t about to go to bed.”
Her eyes darted at Daddy. He didn’t say anything.
“Yeah, we can talk,” she told me. “Why don’t you get changed and meet me in my room.”
“Well… I kinda wanted us to talk privately.”
“That’s okay,” she told me, watching Daddy out of her peripheral. “We won’t be interrupted.”
Daddy got up and went to the hallway closet and pulled out a blanket and a pillow. Mama and I watched as he spread them out and then stretched out across the couch to go to sleep.
“That’s where he’s been sleeping for the past few weeks,” Mama said.
Daddy settled on the couch as if he didn’t hear her, but I knew that he had. It was written all over his face. I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but I knew he hadn’t meant for it to get this bad. He laid there in a pitiful stupor, and as much as I loved him, I wasn’t sure if I pitied him.
**********
I knocked on Mama’s bedroom door after taking a shower and changing into my night clothes.
“Come on in, baby,” she said through the door.
I walked in slowly, realizing that it had been years since I’d set foot in the room. It was different than I had remembered. The headboard and matching dresser were new, and the back wall was painted a pale shade of green. It made the room appear bigger, which I liked.
“Come, sit,” she said to me, patting the bed.
I walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“It’s good to have you home again.”
I smiled at her. “It feels good to be home. Despite the circumstances.”
“So, what’s up?”
I shrugged, still looking around the room. There was a lot I wanted to say, and a lot I wanted to ask. I just didn’t know where to begin.
“What happened, Mama?” I asked.
She looked like she didn’t want to answer me, but she did. “Well, as you learned the last time you were home, Karen, your Daddy has a gambling problem.”
“A gambling problem? Mama, this looks like more than just a gambling problem.”
She leaned her head back against the headboard, obviously very stressed.
“We don’t have any money, Karen,” she told me. “We’re flat broke.”
“But I don’t get it. You both have jobs. Good jobs. How can you both be broke?”
She laughed. “It’s funny how things work out like that, huh?”
How could she joke at a time like this?
“No, Mama. It’s not funny at all.”
Her countenance fell. “No, it’s not.”
“Mama, what’s going on?”
She shook her head slowly, looking down at her nails. “He’s sick,” she told me. “Your Daddy… He’s a sick man, Karen. He’s sick, and he has been for years. And I’m trying my hardest to be strong and stand by him, but I can only do so much.”
Her last words panged me. “Mama, you’re thinking about getting a divorce?”
She exhaled loudly. “I’m tempted to, Karen. I really am. And I know the Lord does not like divorce. But I honestly feel like I can’t do this anymore.”
She started to cry. Feeling bad for her, I crawled across the bed and sat next to her. I wanted to put her head on my shoulder, but instead held her hand. She gripped it tight as she tried to regain her composure.
“Twenty-one years,” she told me. “That’s how long I been married to that man. Twenty-one years.”
“That’s a long time,” I reminded her gently. “You sure you ready to throw that all away?”
“Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I want to. But then I think about everything else, and I think that I shouldn’t. You’re grown now and out of the house, but I still got a baby boy at home and he needs his daddy. But then I ask myself, you know, is this really fair to him? Yeah, his daddy is in the house, but what kind of example is he setting for him? Karen, I know he hears us argue. I know he hears the fights. He’s getting older now, and we can’t hide the fact that we aren’t happy from him anymore. The boy is smart, you know that.”
I agreed with her. “Yes, Mama. Kevin is smart.”
“We haven’t been happy in years,” she confessed to me. “We used to be happy… But that was a long time ago.”
“Mama, what happened?”
“I been stupid, Karen. I been an old, stupid fool.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t be like me, baby. Don’t you marry a man and lose yourself in the process. No matter how good he is to you, never forget who you really are. Okay?”
“What are you—”
“Promise me that, Karen.”
I nodded, even though I was unsure. “Yes, Mama. I promise.”
“Good.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes before she continued.
“I was so happy when we got married,” she told me. “I was young, just a few years out of high school. Everybody told us we were crazy, too young to be getting married. But I felt like everything would be okay because I really loved him. Plus he was good to me and had a promising career ahead of him. And your Daddy promised me that he would always take care of me.”
I scooted closer as she continued to talk. The more she talked the more she cried, and the more I wanted to cry with her.
“But then he changed,” she continued. “About fifteen years into it he changed. He all of a sudden became obsessed with money. We were always okay, you know? We didn’t always have what we wanted, but we did have what we needed. Until now, that is. I was so proud of your Daddy, Karen. He worked so hard to get this house. We had so much debt. We had school loans and maxed out credit cards. We both worked so hard to get all that paid off, and then we saved all our money to get this house.”
“I remember that,” I told her.
“Yeah. But then about five years ago he started gambling. Now I never agreed with him, because I don’t believe in gambling. I don’t believe that God honors money that comes that way. But he insisted that it was just harmless fun, and being the naïve little wife that I was at the time, I believed him. I was so stupid, Karen. I should have taken over the family finances right then, but I didn’t have a clue that things were gonna end up this way.”
“Mama, tell me what happened.”
She sighed heavily, almost too tired to continue her story.
“He started gambling more, started betting more. He got addicted to it. And I knew this, but I still didn’t take over the family finances. This situation that we’re in right now is all my fault.”
“Did you try to talk to him?”
“I did. I did over and over again, but he wouldn’t listen. He would say I was sassing him, ‘cause he was used to me doing whatever he told me to. And I used to, but that was when he never told me anything wrong, so there was no reason for me not to listen to him. He started gambling behind my back, and he started to owe so many people. He went and took out an equity loan on this house, and I didn’t even know about it until the bank started calling. We owe so much money, but your Daddy has a problem. I thought things were going better, but then he would never have money. It got to the point that he kept asking me for money for things like gas and dinner, which I knew he should have had. I kept bugging him about it, and he finally confessed that his paycheck would be gone before he even got it, paying bookies back.”
“Oh no. Mama, I’m so sorry.”
“Then I didn’t even know until it was too late that he’d gambled all of your school money away. It turns out the money was gone before you even graduated from high school. He just got lucky your first semester and won on a bet to pay for your school.”
It was suddenly starting to all make sense. The fights that they constantly had couldn’t have just been about me. They were about money, too. I just never knew.
“Is that why you were so mad at him?” I asked.
“When?”
“When I got pregnant?”
She looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
“The fights, Mama. When I got pregnant you and Daddy fought like crazy all the time.”
“That wasn’t because of you, honey. Well, in a way it was, but it was indirectly. I was mad at your Daddy for gambling so much. I felt that he was being two-faced, living a double-life, and I didn’t like it. It was sickening to me how he would go to church on Sunday morning and front like he was such a good, loyal, God-fearing man, and all the while he was scheming. Then you got pregnant, and it was just too much for me.”
“But you were mean to me,” I reminded her. “You were so cold. You wouldn’t even support me when I started doing things at the church. You said I wasn’t good enough.”
Remorse poured out of her face. “Karen… That day you came in here and asked me to take you to the doctor, my whole world was falling apart. I was losing faith in my husband and in God. And then you, my baby, came in here and told me you were pregnant. I just flipped out, I didn’t know what to do.”
I started to cry. “You called me a whore,” I told her. “I was in so much pain, Mama. Do you know what it was like for me during that time in my life, Mama?”
“Karen—”
“No, Mama!” I cut her off. I didn’t want her to say anything. I didn’t want to hear any of her reasoning. Nothing she could possibly say could make up for the way she treated her only daughter. “You should have been there for me,” I told her. “I lost everything. My boyfriend, all of my friends. I lost my baby, Mama. And you just acted like you didn’t even care.”
She reached over and kissed me. “I didn’t mean it, baby,” she told me. “Honestly, I really didn’t. I knew you were in love with Terrance. And at the time he seemed like a really good kid. But it was just too much for me. You were my baby, and you came in here telling me you were about to have a baby. Your Daddy was always gone, out in the streets, trying to hustle when he didn’t have to. And I blamed him for it. I blamed him for your mistakes.”
“But you could have talked to me,” I said. “I was scared, Mama. And I needed you.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me,” she apologized. Guilt was all over her face. “You were so young, baby. And I know you must have been so scared.”
“Why did you treat me like that, Mama?”
“I’m sorry baby,” she apologized and hugged me. “I know I hurt you real bad. And you may not understand everything I’m going through right now, but one day you will. I’m not asking you to forgive me right now, because I know that’s a lot, and you might not be ready to. And I understand. But I pray that one day you will learn how to forgive me.”
“Everything’s gonna be okay,” I assured her with a hug.
She shook her head. “No it’s not. Everything’s not gonna be okay. We’re flat broke, Karen. We don’t have any money. It’s all gone. Your Daddy went and maxed out all of his credit and my credit, too.”
“Oh goodness. Mama, I’m so sorry.”
“Do you know what he did yesterday? Yesterday he went to the bank and took out everything. My whole paycheck that I just got that we needed to pay bills and buy groceries. He took it all out. Left us with a zero balance, and went to that damn race track…”
She started to cry again.
“Oh no.”
She forced herself to stop crying and then wiped her eyes. “Whatever you do, Karen, you make sure you marry the right one.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That Terrance is a good kid,” she told me. “And he loves you very much. If it weren’t for him I don’t know where this family would be right now. He took you in when you didn’t have a place to stay… And now he’s paying my bills. And my husband is downstairs sleeping on the couch… Because he doesn’t know when to stop… All he had to do was stop…”
Moved with compassion, I pulled her over to me and put her head on my lap, just as I had often done with Kevin when he cried. She held on to me tightly and cried, overcome with emotion. She was falling apart right in front of me.
“You gotta be strong, Mama,” I instructed as I stroked her hair. “For Kevin. He needs you.”
“I know,” she whispered. “And that’s why I gotta leave.”
My chest pounded. “What? Mama, that’s not what I meant.”
“I know. But that’s what I gotta do. I can’t keep putting my baby through this. Not knowing how he’s gonna eat… Not knowing if his Daddy’s coming home. All this is starting to affect him at school. His teacher says he doesn’t play at recess, and he sits alone in class. He’s becoming so withdrawn, and that’s not like my baby at all.”
All I could do was shake my head. I hated to imagine my baby brother going through so much pain. I knew it was bad before I left, and I hated to leave him. If I had the money I would take him to Daytown with me and enroll him in a school there. He wouldn’t be with his parents anymore, but at least he would have a peaceful place to sleep at night.
“I know what I gotta do,” she whispered to me. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to go to the grocery store and buy some food for this family. Then after that, I’m going by myself to open a checking account in another bank, and I can’t tell your father about it. Then I’m going to write a check to pay the light bill before the city turns them off.”
She lifted her eyes up at me. I looked away, not wanting to accept her dilemma. I couldn’t help but to think that if Jeremiah were alive and his father were behaving the same way that mine was, that I probably would do the same thing.
“Look at me,” she said, sitting up. “I’m supposed to be your Mama and here I am acting like a big ol’ baby.”
“You’re fine,” I voiced soothingly.
“No, no, no. I gotta get myself together right now. I can’t be acting like this.”
I gave her another hug. “I love you, Mama.”
“I know, baby. I love you, too.”
We sat in quietness for a few minutes before she spoke again.
“How are things with you and Terrance?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, don’t give me that. You know.”
I pouted. “It’s good, I guess. But he’s been pressuring me to be his girlfriend.”
“You aren’t having sex with him, are you?”
I was insulted. “Mama!”
“Girl, I’m being real. That is a nice looking young man you living with, and I know you think he’s fine. Don’t you?”
I was too ashamed to answer.
“You don’t have to tell me. I already know.”
I laughed. “What do you think you know?”
“I know you got hormones just like every other young person in the world, and I know that boy be working out with that basketball team and he got muscles. Come on, girl. You can’t fool me. But I ain’t gon’ get in your business. You grown now, and what you do is your business.”
“Thank you.”
“Just be careful. Don’t get yourself in any more situations before your time.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Now, I believe Terrance is a good catch. You already know how I feel about him. He’s a good man and he’s good to you, and he has a good future lined up for him. All he gotta do is keep on doing what he’s doing. And you’re a smart girl. But don’t be so holy that you let that good thing slip away from you. You’ll end up like me. Broke.”
She was confusing me. “Are you asking me to sleep with him?”
“What? Girl, no. Don’t be silly. But you don’t have to be so cookie cutter sharp. I know you have your beliefs, but don’t force your beliefs on him. You’ll mess around and push him away.”
“Mama, I don�
��t want to talk about Terrance anymore,” I stopped her. The conversation was going in too many directions, and it was starting to freak me out.
“Okay. Fine. But listen to me. No man is perfect. Shoot, look at your Daddy down there sleeping on the couch. I know you’re waiting for God to send you somebody, but don’t overlook what’s right there in your face. I know Terrance may have his flaws, but never take for granted a man that loves you.”
“Yes ma’am.”
She sighed. “Go on ahead and get out of here. It’s getting late, and we gotta get up in the morning.”
“Okay,” I said, then slithered off the bed and walked over to the door.
“Goodnight,” Mama told me.
I turned, a thought coming to mind. “Daddy’s not coming up, right?”
“Nope,” she answered. “He’ll be down there on that couch until he wakes up in the morning to go to work.”
“Is he comfortable down there?”
“Do you see concern on my face?” she asked. “I ain’t comfortable with these damn bill people calling my house twenty four seven, threatening to cut my utilities off. And I sho’ ain’t comfortable with me and my baby going to bed hungry ‘cause he don’ stole the grocery money. If I ain’t comfortable, he ain’t gon’ be comfortable, either.”
I cleared my throat to hide my surprise at her tone. She was pissed.
“Remember how I used to sleep in the bed with you and Daddy when I was little?”
She smiled. “Yeah, wit’ yo’ big ol’ butt. Always talkin’ ‘bout you were scared of the dark.”
“I have a confession to make.”
“What?”
I grinned. “I wasn’t really afraid. I just wanted to be with you.”
“We knew,” Mama smirked.
I was almost afraid to ask, but I figured that it was worth the shot.
“Mommy,” I cooed in the best innocent little girl voice that I could. “Can I sleep wit’ you?”
She laughed out loud. “Girl… Come on up here.”
I scurried back to the bed and stuffed myself under the thick coverings of the bed.
“Now, stay on your side,” she told me. “Don’t be kicking me in my back, sleeping bad like you used to do.”
Casting Down Imaginations Page 23
