by Terra Little
Vicky’s face is unreadable as I take the phone from her. “Hello?”
“Helena?”
“Yes, Mama, it’s me.”
“Vicky says you’re settling in okay, but I wanted to find out for myself. You’re working now?”
“The night shift, and it’s killing me,” I say without thinking. Everything goes still and Vicky and me look at each other. I hear the sound of my mother’s gasp in my ear. “I squeeze cream into snack cakes.”
She checks back into the conversation a little at a time. “Nothing wrong with an honest day’s work.”
“No, ma’am, there’s not, and at least it pays more than minimum wage.”
“Well, you can’t expect to start out making seventy grand a year, like you were before. That’s pretty much done with. I have some of your stuff here, whenever you get ready for it. Some music and a few pieces of furniture, things like that. Been keeping them for you.”
“Okay. How are you, Mama?”
“Cholesterol’s a little high, but other than that . . .” she trails off, knowing she hasn’t really answered my question.
She doesn’t ask, but I still say, “I’m good too. Getting used to everything. A lot of stuff is different or else completely new. It’s a little strange.”
“Takes time,” she says. “I was trying to let you get settled before I came down there. I’ve been wanting to come and see my grandbaby anyway. She keeps telling me about some outlet mall they built not too far away, and let her tell it, I got to get down there and check it out.” She lives in Las Vegas, where there have to be outlet malls damn near on every corner, but she will make the trip to visit the one Beige wants her to visit. The outing is easily worth several hours of traveling, unlike visiting a prison.
“That sounds like fun,” I lie. I have never particularly cared for shopping, and the idea of doing it now makes me think I have developed a phobia. Too many people in one place and too much noise. “Beige will like that, and it’ll be good to see you. You like Las Vegas?”
“It’s not home, but I guess it’ll do. What do you think of that little town Vicky moved to while you were gone?”
“It seems okay.”
I can’t help feeling like I am being reminded that everything started with me and what I did. My mother is a big city girl at heart, and so are Vicky and me, I guess. We grew up with family in every part of the city and my grandmother close by. Some of the women more distant in relation even had men we called uncles in their lives. I pulled the trigger and caused a mass exodus. Without the matriarch, my family fell apart.
There has always been a woman at the head of my family. My grandmother birthed four children, two boys and two girls, each by a different man she never married. Neither my mother nor my aunt Dierdre ever married but, between them, they had enough illegitimate children to form their own football team. Vicky and I have different fathers, and neither of us can identify the mystery men since we were too young to remember what they look like. It is the thing to do in my family, have as many babies as you want outside of wedlock and not feel bad about it. As for my part, I added Beige to the mix. She is my mother’s only grandchild and, like Vicky, I hope she breaks the cycle.
When my grandmother died, my mother relocated to Las Vegas and my aunt Deirdre followed suit, making her home somewhere in Mississippi. I embarrassed the family and made it impossible for them to live in the city they had both lived in all their lives. The stigma was too much for them.
One of my uncles took the easy way out and died before I could cast a pall over his life. Vicky took Beige and ran. What my mother calls a small town is really a good-size city with a cozy, small-town feel near the Missouri state line. I don’t think Vicky could bring herself to abandon the state where she was born altogether, but she did a good job of separating herself from everything that happened. Here, she can walk the streets without being recognized as the hysterical woman from the ten o’clock news all those years ago. Here, Beige can go to school and have a normal life, without being whispered about and pointed at, identified as the girl with the murdering mother.
Lines have been drawn and sides taken. Some think I am a monster, and some don’t think about what happened at all. It is easier to sever the lines of communication than it is to open them up and hear what is being said. I don’t know where most of my cousins are or what they are doing. I don’t know if they know I have been released, and I don’t think they care.
“Well, I better get off of here,” my mother says, slipping back into my thoughts. “Long distance is ridiculous these days. Before I go, you need anything?”
I look around my room at what I have managed to accumulate and shake my head. I have as many pairs of jeans as I need to have a clean pair for each day of the week, socks in every color I can think of, and the earrings Beige finally returned. “No, ma’am. You coming soon?” I don’t need anything else except to see the look on my mother’s face when she sees me. I need that.
I hand Vicky the phone and go back to my laundry. She touches my shoulder softly and catches my eyes. “Hold on, Mama,” she says, and then she drops the phone on the bed.
Seconds later, we are in each other’s arms, squeezing like boa constrictors. This isn’t a benediction and it isn’t about forgiveness, but it is a long time in coming. She is saying something to me and I am all ears. I have always been able to hear what her mouth doesn’t say, and I hear her now, though she is silent.
She is telling me whose side she is on.
Chapter Six
I have to take Isolde into the restroom with me because I have no choice in the matter. I have to allow her to watch me empty my bladder. I have to pee in a cup that is too small to accomplish the task without splashing my hand. She sees that I am wearing hot pink panties with little black monkeys all over them. I feel like a monkey, a circus animal made to dance on command.
She sees that I am menstruating, that my flow is heavy, and that it stains the urine she has requested. She wears thick gloves and holds the cup I pass her between two fingers with a look of vague disgust on her face. I feel two feet tall; humiliated, like a prisoner straining at my leash, promised freedom but still denied.
I feel like a criminal. My life is a joke, and I wonder if it will ever be funny.
She takes a long time wrapping up with her friends and I wait patiently. I remember being a teenager, and I know there is important bullshit to talk over before the school day comes to a close. She is probably discussing tomorrow’s outfit and plotting on some unsuspecting boy she has her eye on. I see her laugh at something one of her friends says, and then she props a hand on her hip. She throws her hair from one shoulder to the other and strikes a pose.
She sees me standing on the sidewalk and makes her way over to me slowly, surprised to see me at her school. Her friends shoot me curious looks as they split up in different directions, but I only see Beige. I was out running and she lured me here.
I swipe sweat from my forehead, wipe it on the seat of my track pants and smile. Everywhere I sweat there is a dark, damp circle—under my arms, between my breasts and down the middle of my back. I must look a mess. “What’s up with the rolling backpack? You have back problems or something?” I point to the black case she is pulling along behind her.
“I mean, I know when you were in school black kids didn’t have actual books and everything, but these days one book weighs about ten pounds,” Beige jokes and cracks a smile. “You expect me to carry all these books home?”
“You ride the bus,” I say.
“Yeah, but I’m walking with you today, right?”
She doesn’t have a choice. I don’t have a car and her bus is gone, but I was hoping she would want to walk with me, was prepared to run back home if she refused. “I figured out a shortcut.” She cuts me a doubtful look and collapses the handle on her backpack, shrugs it on her back, and falls in step with me.
Later on I say, “I didn’t embarrass you by coming, did I?”
�
��No, but all this walking is going to have to stop. You exercise too much.”
“It’s good for you.”
“If you say so.” I reach out and press the button to change the traffic light, and she touches a finger to my bicep. “How come you’re trying to look like a man?”
“You think I look like a man?” I look for the truth in her face and can’t find it. Her eyes travel from the top of my head to the sneakers on my feet. She finally shakes her head, no. “Maybe like one of those sports women. Mia Hamm or somebody. Like you can kick some booty if you have to. You got into working out while you were in there?”
I don’t pretend not to know where there is. “It was either that or sit around getting fat and lazy or mean and ugly. Did you try working out some algebra problems the way I showed you?”
“Yeah, my teacher didn’t know what hit her. Tell me what else you did.”
“I hope you’re not gathering information, planning on finding out for yourself?”
“Please,” she says, flapping a hand. “I’m not . . . I don’t . . . I mean . . .”
“Good,” I cut her off. “You want to take the bus from here?”
Beige grabs my arm and slows my roll, makes me meet her eyes. “No. I want you to tell me what you did in prison.”
“Three days a week I taught computer classes, and when I wasn’t thinking up new ways to keep from going insane, I read books. I had a crazy cellmate who didn’t know how to read, so I helped her learn. And yeah, I got into exercising. Lifting weights and making myself look stronger than I really was. The harder you look, the less likely you are to be victimized. It’s not like what you see on television, trust me. It’s not like a resort, where you go and serve your time and people leave you the hell alone. It’s not like anything you can ever imagine.”
“I know it’s not.” She is angry with me, thinks I am patronizing her. She snatches her hand away and takes off walking. I have to skip a few steps to catch up with her. “I still wanted to visit you.”
“I didn’t want you to see me like that. In there.”
“I thought you just didn’t want to see me.”
“I called every chance I got,” I say, and it sounds pitiful to my own ears. “I made Vicky send me pictures all the time and I wrote letters, but you didn’t write back. You stopped coming to the phone when I called.”
“I was mad at you.”
“I know. I was mad at me too.”
“I’m still mad at you.”
“I know that too.”
“Everybody else’s mama was at the school and going on field trips with us, but you couldn’t.” We turn the corner onto Vicky’s street and she pushes ahead of me angrily. The look she shoots me over her shoulder is red hot and hard. “I used to make up stories when the other kids asked me where my mama was. You just don’t know . . .”
“I think I do. What did you tell them?”
“It’s not important.”
“What did you tell them?” I say, really wanting to know. I think I have an idea, but I want to hear her say the words. Suddenly, it is important to me. I need to know exactly what I am dealing with, so I know how to fight it. I can’t fight a demon I can’t see. “Tell me.” I take a page from her book and grab her arm as she goes up the porch steps. She tries to jerk away from me, but I hold fast. My eyes remind her that I am still her mother, and she simmers down to a barely appropriate level.
“I told them you were dead,” she says in a strange voice.
I chew on what she said late into the night, turning it over in my mind and digesting it fully, looking for my reaction and eventually finding it. It is not what I expect it to be. It is not anger or even jealousy, not self-righteousness or self-pity. What it is, is understanding. I accept that I am not the only prisoner in the house.
“Listen,” I say as I lean in Beige’s bedroom doorway. It is past her bedtime, but she is wide awake. I have disturbed her in the middle of sneaking and listening to her MP3 player when she is supposed to be asleep. She pushes the headphones away from her ears and checks my face to see if I am about to start lecturing. I wish it were as simple as that. “I know you probably don’t need me to be your mom now. You have Vicky for that, I guess. But what about as a friend? Do you need me for that?”
We stare at each other and I wait for a response, but she offers none. It’s something to think about, to consider, I tell her and then leave her to her clandestine music. I should probably say something about her needing to get to sleep, but it would be hypocritical. I know what it is like when sleep plays games with your mind but won’t completely take it over.
An exercise in self-flagellation is what this is. Twice, Vivian has had to intervene and call the session to order. Two of the women insist on sniping at each other, taking digs that cut so deeply even I feel the sting. One of them has committed some imagined offense against the other and she has to pay for her transgression. It is a matter of the strong against the weak, and we all know who the weak one is. I feel a little sorry for the target of the attack, but I feel even more sorry for myself. I’d rather be boiling in a pot of scalding water than made to put up with this shit.
Mary, the predator, narrows her eyes at Tanya, her prey, and points a shaky finger across the circle at her. “What do you think about that?” she challenges. She is of the opinion that Tanya is the lowest of the low, a woman who allowed drug addiction to be more important to her than her own kids. She has just announced that, instead of probation, Tanya should be in prison, rotting away.
Vivian’s eyes dart around the group, from face to face, until they land on my mine. I am watching Mary closely and trying to decide if I have the energy to open my mouth and jump into the midst of the discussion. “Helena, you look like you have something to add,” she says hopefully.
“I don’t,” I reply without looking away from Mary. Not yet, anyway. This is our ninth session, and other than the beginning introduction, I don’t contribute anything meaningful to the group. I fill a chair and listen, which Vivian knows, but tonight she is hoping that I can help her take the group down another path, away from the violence hovering in the corners of the room.
“I don’t think nothing about it,” Tanya spits out, glaring at Mary. “I been clean for eight months and I see my kids every week. Ain’t nobody in here that don’t have something in their past they ain’t proud of. Everything the child services folks tell me to do, I do, because I want my kids back.”
“Shouldn’t have never lost ’em in the first place.”
For a second, Tanya looks defeated. She sinks in on herself and stays that way. The rest of us get a chance to see what giving up looks like. Then she draws in a mouthful of air and breathes fire. “Who the fuck are you to tell me about my life, you sanctimonious bitch? You have to be in this goddamn class just like everybody else, and that means your shit stinks, just like everybody else’s. You’re so quick to jump down my throat about my shit, but I notice you ain’t too quick to talk about your own shit. Why the fuck are you here, huh? Where yo’ damn kids at?”
“Why are we even talking about kids and shit?” We all turn our heads and look at Liz, the only white woman in the group. She is usually as quiet as I am, but now she is compelled to speak. She searches everyone’s faces with her eyebrows raised, waiting for an answer that makes sense to her. “This is supposed to be an anger management class, but all we seem to do is sit around, putting each other down. Especially you, Mary.”
“Watch yourself, white girl,” Mary growls. Now she is on the hot seat and she doesn’t like it. I smile for the first time since I walked through the door nine weeks ago. I like it when kingdoms fall and totalitarianism is overruled. “I’m talking to Tanya, not you.”
“That’s all you ever do is talk to Tanya, and I may not be black, but it seems to me you need to be concentrating on working out your own issues.”
“How about if I work out my issues while I’m kicking your white ass?”
“I’m sensing anger,�
�� Vivian jumps in and sounds like an idiot. “Where do you think it’s coming from, Mary? What’s at the core of it?”
“I’m starting to get angry my damn self,” a woman named Justine says, and the tone of her voice makes several of us snicker. She glances at her watch and slants an incriminating look at Vivian. “I got better shit to do than sit around, wasting time listening to Mary pick on people. I could be at home with my kids, ’cause I know where they are.”
“Fuck you too,” Mary tells Justine. “I asked a simple question, and all of you bitches are suddenly jumping on my case?”
“How is the situation with Tanya’s kids any of your business?” Liz says.
“It’s not,” Tanya answers for Mary. “That’s the point. It’s not.”
“Obviously something about the situation makes Mary angry,” Vivian suggests evenly. “I think we should explore that. I’d like to go around the circle and have everyone say something constructive to Mary about where they think her anger comes from. Can we do that?”
“All right.” Justine shifts in her chair and folds her arms across her chest. “I’m going first. I think Mary’s anger has something to do with her own mother.” She looks at Mary. “Seems like her own mama was a drug addict or something and she’s putting her shit on Tanya. And I got your bitch, bitch.”
Mary opens her mouth to object, but Vivian holds up a hand to stop the tirade that she knows is coming. “Wait a minute, Mary. Let’s hear everyone out.”
“Oh, so now it’s jump on Mary time, right?”
“Doesn’t feel good, does it?” I mutter.
“Excuse me?”
I am caught up in the simple task of picking invisible balls of lint from my shirtsleeve, and that is why I don’t notice that I am the sole object of attention. I look up and run into Liz’s curious gaze. If she has been unusually quiet, I have been even more so. She stares at me like it is just occurring to her that I am able to produce sound.
