by Africa Fine
Gillian had to admit that she also catered to her sister. There was something about Brenda that made her feel protective. That childlike quality that often annoyed Gillian was also vulnerability. When Brenda talked about their father, her grief was so naked that Gillian wanted to hold her sister in her arms and shield her from the world. Sometimes she did just that, thinking about the fact that the two of them were all that was left of their immediate family. They had found their way back to each other, and Gillian did not want to go back to being alone, to surviving instead of living. She even found a way to let go of some of her secrets, to let her sister in.
“Why didn’t you ever have kids?” Brenda asked her over dinner one day. “Ernest and I want lots and lots of kids.”
They were sitting in the kitchen, eating the lasagna that Brenda had requested for dinner. It was a warm spring night. Brenda and Ernest had been in Cleveland almost a year. The white curtains fluttered in the breeze from the open windows, and the night felt moist, although it had been dry the past few days. Brenda smiled at Gillian when she asked the question, but Gillian’s stomach dropped and her appetite fled. She considered a lie, something innocuous and light, something that would help her forget the truth. But the truth found its way out of her mouth before she could stop it.
“I had a baby.” Gillian looked down at her plate. When she looked up, Brenda was beaming, not comprehending the tone in Gillian’s voice.
“That’s great! So I’m an aunt. I always wanted to be an aunt.”
Gillian couldn’t bear her sister’s excitement, so she looked at Ernest. He’d stopped eating and was watching her, his eyes soft and sad. He knew. He understood.
“She died when she was just five days old,” Gillian whispered. “Her name was Lily.”
Things were different in the house after that night, although Gillian couldn’t have said why. Brenda agreed to enroll in summer classes at Case Western, but she signed up for night classes, leaving Ernest and Gillian to eat dinner and spend their evenings alone together. They were good companions, talking for hours about politics and poetry. Ernest showed Gillian his poems, and she played him the old Billie Holiday records that her father had forbidden so long ago. She hadn’t listened to them in years, not since she had married Jeremiah, not since she had been surviving. For the first time in her life, she had a true friend. She told him all about Jeremiah, and he laughed at the ironic justice of her ex-husband’s monthly payments. She told him about her childhood, about her father, about her and Brenda’s real mother. He listened, and they laughed together. Each summer night was a joy for Gillian.
Brenda always returned home late, bearing outrageous stories about the classes she was taking, stories that Gillian never doubted until the night she smelled liquor on her sister’s breath. She knew Ernest smelled it, too, but neither of them commented on it, and they soon went to their respective rooms. Gillian waited to hear the sounds of muffled arguing through the vents, but their silence serenaded her to sleep.
The next night Ernest explained why he wasn’t angry with Brenda.
“She can’t have children. The doctors, they told her she can’t have children.”
Gillian felt an ache spread through her chest. She knew how it felt to be a mother. She knew what it was like to have that taken away. After Lily, she had just assumed that she would never have another chance to be a mother. She reached out and took Ernest’s hand.
“I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “She’s just struggling right now. I need to let her do it in her own way.” His smile was melancholy. That was the moment when she fell in love.
* * *
Those summer nights were the best times of Gillian’s life. The later Brenda stayed out, not even bothering to make up stories about class anymore, the more Gillian wanted to protect Ernest, to shield him the way she had once wanted to shield her sister. She told herself that he was like a brother to her, but this was a lie. Ernest was everything she had ever wanted in a man, and it didn’t matter that she he was sixteen years younger. It didn’t matter that he was her sister’s husband. It didn’t matter, and Gillian was ashamed. She knew the pain Brenda must have been feeling, but she resented the way her sister dealt with it. She should stay close to the people who loved her, not push them away. She should thank God for the man she did have instead of the babies she could never bear.
The night in June when Brenda stayed out all night, Gillian did hold Ernest in her arms. And they kissed. They woke up in her bed, their clothes strewn around the room, to the sound of Brenda’s key fumbling in the lock.
* * *
Ernestine Jones was born in December 1970. She came early, and they weren’t sure she would live. But she did. Gillian took nine months off, then worked nights so she could care for the baby during the day while a sitter stayed nights. Every time she looked at Ernestine, she felt a little of her sadness over Lily slip away.
Brenda knew the baby was Ernest’s. When she found out, she ran off. Gillian never knew where she went. She took all her clothing and left behind her diamond wedding ring. Through her shame Gillian began to hope that Ernest would stay with her and forget about Brenda. They would be a family. She would have a real family.
Instead, he quit his job and spent his days looking for Brenda. Sometimes he found her and begged her to come back to him. She always refused, and on those days he trudged back to Gillian’s house.
“I love her,” he said.
It was that simple. He loved Brenda, not Gillian. She understood. Love was the reason she let him keep coming back.
Six months after Ernestine was born, Brenda and Ernest reconciled. He packed his bags and said his final good-byes to Gillian. She mourned him even before he died, before he was found in a Milwaukee hotel room shot dead by Brenda, who’d then turned the gun on herself.
If she had had nothing to live for, the guilt and sadness would have been crippling. But Gillian had the baby, the daughter Brenda could never have. Ernest’s daughter. Gillian made a vow to put the past behind her, to love this baby, to make a life for the two of them.
She was not alone.
* * *
She stopped speaking then and just looked at me. I felt dizzy. Everything I knew about myself—everything I thought I knew about myself—changed in that instant.
“Ernestine, I am your mother.”
Chapter 27
“You are still you”
After I got Gillian settled back at home, I went to my desk. On top sat the envelope from the State of Ohio. My birth certificate. I ripped it open, and there, right in official ink, was verification. The one I had seen must have been changed, a fake created to convince me my parents were Brenda and Ernest. This document, straight from the government, told the truth. Gillian was my mother.
I went for a walk. It was early evening, and I wandered around until I came to a baseball field filled with prepubescent boys wearing shorts and uniform tops. There were four lighted fields, and in each of them a little league game was underway. I stopped to watch and listen, grateful for the distraction.
“Choke up on the bat, Patrick.”
“Patrick, choke up on the bat!”
Patrick looked over in confusion. He took another fruitless swing, dragging the bat in the dirt on the way through.
“Choke up on the bat, honey! Oh, wait, that’s the wrong bat. You need a lighter bat, Patrick!”
Patrick frowned. I imagined what he was thinking. This bat, the one with the green handle, was the one he wanted. A lighter bat? Who cared? This one was green.
Another swing, another miss. Patrick’s mom came out onto the field, to his eight-year-old horror, and handed him another bat.
“That’s better. See, it’s red white and blue,” she said. Patrick looked it over, then used it to strike out.
Blam! Patrick whipped the red white and blue bat into the fence, threw his helmet down and stomped the dirt.
“It’s okay, Patrick, you’ll have time to hit again,” she coo
ed.
Patrick grabbed the fence and shook it, giving another good kick before he walked to the dugout with the other members of the team.
I watched as the crowd of parents tried to suppress their smiles.
“Boy, he sure does get excited, doesn’t he,” another mom said as she watched her son, the consummate professional at eight years old, pick up the red white and blue bat and drag it to the dugout.
“You what? Can’t you do anything right when I’m not there?” One of the dads was holding a marathon cellphone conversation near the bleachers. The other parents were so used to it none of them even looked up. Occasionally, he would yell out some encouragement to one of the smaller kids on the team, but the phone remained glued to his ear.
“Hey Jesse, pick up a glove and catch some balls,” Jesse’s dad yelled. Jesse stood daydreaming.
“Jesse, grab a glove, catch some balls,” he yelled louder. No response.
“JESSE—”
“Will you shut up?” a woman who must have been Jesse’s mom hissed. Jesse’s dad shut up, and Jesse finally grabbed a glove and went out to catch some balls. A few minutes of silence passed.
“Corrine. Corrine. Corrine.” Apparently, Jesse’s dad had a way of calling your name until you couldn’t ignore him, so Jesse’s mom turned around before he started yelling again.
“What?”
“Corrine, I’m sorry, I just wanted him to grab a glove and catch some balls,” he explained.
The mom waved her acceptance of the apology and turned back toward the field. The rival team took the field.
“Oh, look, most of them are small.”
“Are you crazy? Look at that kid. And that one. They’re supposed to be seven and eight years old, right? They’re huge!”
Mikey’s mom sighed. “It makes me glad Mikey doesn’t really know the score of these games.”
“Yeah, Kevin asked me who won the practice game last week, and I said, ‘oh, they did,’” Kevin’s mom said. “He goes, ‘By how much?’ And I said, ‘Oh, a couple.’ It was really 10-2, but he scored a run, so who cares.”
The moms laughed and Jesse’s dad frowned in disapproval. Kevin’s dad opened his cell phone to make another call, and the batter stepped up to the plate.
It was listening to aliens speak a strange language. The causal exchanges of normality came so easily to them. Family units were assumed. These mothers watched their sons play baseball. They would always be there. Their lives were open. There were no devastating secrets, no deceptions so great they lasted for thirty-five years. They never questioned who they were or where they fit. They just fit.
I watched another inning, hoping no one could see the tears wetting my cheeks. I wanted to run. I wanted to leave Florida, my job, Jack, Gillian. I wanted her words to be lies. I wanted to go back to a time when I didn’t ask too many questions, when I didn’t feel I needed to know the truth. I wanted the truth to be something else, something nice, something good.
I went home, looked in on Gillian and then headed to my desk. I looked up a travel web site and booked a trip to the first place that came to mind. I had never been to Barbados, but I believed it was far enough away for me to escape. I imagined myself sitting on the beach at the luxury hotel I’d booked, sipping a drink made of local mangoes, feeling the Caribbean waters splash over my feet, warming my face in the sun. Barbados, I told myself in those moments, would be the place I could become someone new, someone whose mother wasn’t a liar, whose family wasn’t damaged, whose life wasn’t fractured. I would walk slowly and eat well. I would be happy.
I don’t know how long I sat there lost in my Caribbean fantasy. It was dark by the time Jack found me. He didn’t ask me what I was doing. He glanced at the computer screen, which still showed my reservation to Barbados. He looked at me for a long time.
“Tell me,” he said.
I was silent for a long time. How do you tell someone this kind of thing? How could you not tell?
“My aunt isn’t my aunt.”
I’d had hours to try to digest this, but it still seemed incomprehensible as I said the words aloud.
“What?” I looked at his confused face and burst into tears.
“Gillian is my mother.” Jack took me into his arms and held me while I sobbed. He waited for me to speak again, and when I could, I told him her story, my story. When I finished, he still didn’t say a word.
“So you see? Everything I thought was true wasn’t. I thought I was someone I’m not. Why would she lie?” I knew I was babbling and in danger of breaking down again. Jack held my fingers between his.
“Let’s go for a drive.”
I looked at the computer screen for a long moment. Finally, I pressed cancel on my reservation and followed Jack.
* * *
We rode north along I-95 for hours until we reached Cocoa Beach. It was just miles from Cape Canaveral, and there was a space shuttle launch scheduled for the next day. The town was crowded with onlookers trying to catch a glimpse of a spaceship, and the sounds of car horns and booming music added to the old Florida feel of the town. There were strip malls filled with stores selling five-dollar t-shirts and cheap nylon bathing suits. There were surf shops and ice cream parlors, and restaurants boasting the freshest seafood dotted the beachside roads. The air smelled more like the sea here, fishy, a little musky. South Florida was organized, civilized to the point of repression. Cocoa Beach seemed more authentically Florida.
We kept driving, crawling behind lines of cars with no destination in mind. We talked about things that didn’t matter: classes, politics, gossip. Jack told me stories about college, about his sister Maggie. He saw her once or twice a year, but never in St. Louis. She was older when their mother left, and she understood more about how things had been between their parents. She left for college just as the whole thing with the other man developed, and Jack never blamed her for not wanting to come back. She hated their father, never talked to him. She told Jack that she would rather be alone in the world than put up with James Kingston and his annoying wife.
I knew what he was telling me. No family is perfect. Parents do bad things, not because they want to hurt you, but because they don’t know any better. He told me how Maggie was a successful television writer. He took my hand and I squeezed. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I loved him for trying.
As the sun set, I dozed off while Jack drove. It felt good to stop thinking for a few hours, to let everything go and just rest.
* * *
When I woke up, it was dark. I was in my bed and only a small lamp was lit. Jack sat in a chair by the window, reading. I looked at the title of book. It was one of my childhood favorites by Rosa Guy. The Friends. It was about pride, about a fractured family, about a girl who was trying to figure out who she was, who she wanted to be. I must have read that book five times when I was a kid.
Jack looked up and closed the worn cover.
“Are you okay?”
I sat up and nodded. Then I shook my head no.
Jack came to sit next to me on the bed. He smelled of lemons.
“Tina. You are still you.”
I shook my head. “I’m not. I’m nobody. I’m not even good enough for her to acknowledge me as her daughter.”
He cut me off. “Did she say that? Did she say why she didn’t tell you?”
I shrugged. He nodded. “So you don’t know everything. You might never know everything. So what? That doesn’t change who you are. You’re Tina Jones. Smart, funny, gorgeous, interesting, infuriating, nosy, and sensitive.”
I studied his eyes for signs of deceit, for a signal that he was just trying to make me feel better. I saw only love.
He squeezed my hand tighter. “Marry me.”
My mouth dropped open. How could he ask me this now, when I had just gotten the worst and best news of my life? I had found my mother, and she had been right there all along. How could he want me? I wanted to yell at him, pound on his chest, make him hurt.
In
stead, I kissed him, a long, seeking kiss. I lost track of time, of the air around us, of everything except the feel of our lips against each other. And when it ended, I spoke.
“I want to. But I need more time.”
He took a deep breath. “You can take as much time as you need.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Chapter 28
“Hollywood romance is overrated”
The day I put my mother in the nursing home was one of the worst days of my life. I was more miserable than the day I found her in Cleveland, on the floor and helpless. I grieved more than I did when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. I was more on edge than the day, just about a year ago, that I found out she was my mother. I couldn’t imagine the day she died being worse than this one.
I felt like a failure for not being able to handle her anymore. There was no number of nurses that could adequately care for her at home; besides, we didn’t have the money for that. She was too far gone for assisted living, or what was called a Special Care Unit. The ones in our area only accepted people in the early stages of the disease, and in the year since Gillian told me her story, the disease had progressed quickly. The day she wandered off and we found her sitting on the wall separating Flagler from the Intracoastal Waterway, wearing only a bra, jogging pants, and bedroom slippers, I knew that I had to make a change. But I changed the locks on the doors and waited, still hoping there was some other solution besides the nursing home.
The last time she was coherent was soon after she told me that she was my mother. She looked up at me at breakfast one morning and repeated what she had been telling me all my life.
“You can’t change what already is.”
She went back to eating her oatmeal, spilling more than what reached her mouth. Elaine cleaned her up, and I looked down at my plate, no longer hungry.
