by Terra Little
“Tight?”
“Fine, Mom. Duh.”
“Oh, well, there might be some hope for the little four-eyed drummer boy yet.”
“He plays the trumpet.”
“Whatever.” I flap a hand.
She is hungry, so we go through a drive-thru. Then we call Vicky from Beige’s cell phone to tell her that Beige is with me. No telling what time I will bring her home, so don’t wait up. School is almost out for the summer and the homework is light. We drive to my apartment and park, cross the street and venture into the park. Spread her books open on a picnic table and pretend to study.
I am trying to remember what I know about probability and coming up with blanks when Beige lays her pencil down and says, “Is that why you did what you did to Great-Grandma, because you loved her too much?”
“No. Love—true love—should never hurt. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“I think so.”
“Good, because if someone says they love you and they hurt you on purpose, they don’t love you. Get away from them, get out of the situation any way you can, and get on with your life. Wait . . . that’s not quite right. Definitely get out of the situation, but don’t send yourself to prison doing it. Promise me you’ll do that. Get out, I mean.”
“Okay, but I don’t understand—”
“I didn’t love her,” I say. “And it didn’t seem like she loved me. I hated to be around her.”
“I remember going to her house a few times when I was younger,” Beige confesses in a low voice, as if someone might overhear what she is saying and accuse her of being mean for saying it. “I didn’t like it.”
I am holding my breath. “Why?”
“It just didn’t feel right to me. I didn’t like the way it smelled, and she made me feel funny. Always staring at me and calling me Bee-Bee. I told her my name was Beige, but she kept calling me that. . . . I cried every day after you left.”
“I cried too. Probably every day for a year straight. I decorated the walls of my cell with your name. Put your pictures up everywhere, so I could see your face every day.”
“Nana said you wasn’t in your right mind when you did what you did.”
I am not ready to go there with Beige. I need a few minutes to get my thoughts together and put them in order. “My attorney thought I would get a few months in jail, at the most, and then probation,” I say. “He said he’d had a few other clients with cases similar to mine where the guys got probation, and he knew the judge pretty well. I wasn’t supposed to go to prison, but I did. And I definitely wasn’t supposed to be there for as long as I was. That part I didn’t do on purpose, Beige.”
“Nana said—”
“Your grandmother is so deep in denial that she can’t think straight. She remembers what she wants to remember and to hell with the rest. Kimmick says that’s common with victims of sexual abuse. Do you know what that means? Sexual abuse?”
I watch her face lose shape and form. She clamps a hand over her mouth and quickly makes her way from a moan to a cry. She is a smart girl. She knows what I am saying to her and what it means. She reclaims the breath she lost in her struggle not to fly apart, and fists her hands in her hair. Looks at the table. “Who is Kimmick?”
“This guy I hate but that I talk to sometimes. He says that people can only take so much before they reach a point of no return. Some people know enough to seek help right away, and some just want their shit to go away, to deny it ever happened. That’s your grandma’s deal. They’re calling it familial dysfunction these days.” I ease her hands from her hair and wrap them in mine. “Other people find a gun and pull the trigger. That’s my deal.”
Beige pulls away from me and pushes away from the table. Stands in the grass like she is ready to charge me. She is angry and she doesn’t know why. Or maybe she does know why and she doesn’t know what to do with what she feels. Her chest heaves, and I think, if she has a heart attack, I will never forgive myself. I will throw myself to the ground and curse God until He takes me along with her. I will die before I ever know what life is really all about.
I shrug helplessly and swallow the tears in my throat. I can’t do anything about the ones falling from my eyes. “I did the wrong thing, Bey. I did. But I couldn’t take any more. I lost the ability to think clearly. All I knew was that I had to make somebody hurt the way I was hurting. I didn’t think about the consequences of what I was doing. I didn’t think about what would happen afterward, and I should’ve. It never crossed my mind that I’d lose you. I just knew I had to make it stop, couldn’t let it keep going on. Don’t be mad with me anymore, Bey, please. Don’t keep punishing me like this, because I don’t think I’m strong enough to take it. Not from you.”
“Why did Great-Grandma do that to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
I shake my head and reach for her. She comes to me without hesitation, sits on the bench next to me and falls sideways into my arms. “Maybe one day, if I ever really have to.” If she ever remembers, I think, and hope she never does. “For now, I want you to hold on to childhood as tight as you can. This should be the best time of your life.” I lock her up in my arms and kiss the top of her head.
“Childhood sucks,” Beige decides a few minutes later. She is suddenly inspired by the topic and probably grateful for something else to grab onto. I listen to her go on and on about getting her own apartment and a job, so she can shop all the time. “I’m not having bills,” she swears heatedly and makes me smile into her hair. “I’ll eat out all the time, so I won’t need a refrigerator and stove, and I’ll never be home, so I won’t need gas or electric. I’ll come to your house to do my laundry.”
Her cluelessness about adulthood makes me feel joy for the first time in a decade. I squeeze her tighter, in no hurry for her to grow up any more than she already has. I have missed so much. “Was it good to you, Bey? Childhood?”
“It was okay,” she says. “Still is. Except for when you embarrass me in front of my friends. Wait until you get old. I’m coming up to the nursing home and clown you in front of your friends every day. Watch and see.”
“Oh, so I’m going into a home?”
“Probably not. That just sounded good. I love you too much to put you in a home like that. They don’t treat the old folks right in those places. I think I’d kill somebody if they hurt you.” She realizes what she has said seconds after I do, and the moment passes in silence. I am the first to giggle. “Sorry.”
“You were always warm and safe, Bey? Nobody ever hurt you?”
“No.”
Then, I think, my living is not in vain.
Chapter Twenty
Beige thinks it is corny that we all wear the same blouses in the same color, but Vicky thinks her idea is the best one since sliced bread. She beams proudly when the photographer compliments her color choice and asks where we bought the blouses. I tell her the wheel and dirt came long before dry silk was ever thought of and shoo her over to where my mother and Beige are standing, already in position. I have never quite developed an affinity for having my picture taken, and I can’t stop glancing at my watch.
We take family portraits for the first time since Vicky and I were teenagers. Then, it was just the three of us, and now there are four of us, posing stiffly and pasting wooden studio smiles on our faces. We split up, and Vicky and I pose together, then we flank our mother and rest loving hands on her shoulders. Then it is Beige’s and my turn, and the photographer doesn’t have to coach smiles out of us. We are giddy for the camera.
“I want a ten-by-thirteen of that one,” Beige says, staring at the proofs of her and me.
My mother looks over Beige’s shoulder and smiles. “Me too,” she says. Her smile widens when our eyes meet.
There are no secrets in my house. I will not allow them, and if I cross boundaries in ensuring that what I will not allow does not occur, then it is for a good cause. Boundaries can be es
tablished later, but secrets will ignite and burn in hell before they ever have a chance to invade my sense of security.
From the moment Beige is able to string two words together, I tell her that she must tell me everything. That I am her mother and I will keep her safe. I tell her never to answer a knock at the door and never to allow a stranger into our home. I tell her never to go with a stranger and never, under any circumstances, to allow anyone to touch her in ways that she does not want to be touched.
I make her repeat after me as I recite the parts of her anatomy to her. “These are your arms,” I say and point. “These are your legs and your feet. Do you know what this is?”
She looks like an adorable little ghost when she smiles. An ethnocentric Casper. She slaps a dimpled hand on her belly and giggles. “This is my belly, Mama,” she squeaks.
She thinks we are playing a game, but I know we are not. “What about this?”
“My bottom.” Another giggle. “My butt-butt.” She slaps her butt cheeks and cheeses at me.
“This?”
“My piracy,” she informs me, suddenly serious. “Nobody touch it.”
She means her privates, but she is close enough. “That’s right. Nobody touch it. You tell me if they do, all right?”
“A’wight.” She hops on the tips of her toes as I pull a nightgown over her head and tug the hem down over her legs. I sit back on my haunches and feel around for her slippers. I finally find them and help her push her feet into them. She is like a little monkey, wrapping her fat little arms around my neck and wrestling for control of my face. She wants me to look at her, and I do.
She talks so close to my face that her lips brush mine. “Ceral, Mama. Want some ceral.”
“You just had dinner,” I say, but she knows cereal is in her future.
“Ceral.”
In the kitchen, Beige spies a bag of cherry licorice that I have forgotten to hide, and she dances a jig. Tries to snap her fingers in time to the beat she creates. “Canny,” she chirps. “Canny, canny, canny.” Cereal is a distant memory now.
“Thought you said you wanted cereal.”
“No. Canny.”
I peel a rope of licorice from the package and stoop down to her level, tap my lips and pucker up. “Kiss first.” She comes at me with all the force she owns. Almost knocks me on my ass as she kisses my lips with gusto. She chews her candy, and I stare at her, thinking that she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. “Bey?”
She focuses on my face without missing a beat chewing. “If anybody else ever tries to make you kiss them on the mouth, you tell me, okay?”
I can’t let it go.
Aaron goes over on his back when I push. Still half asleep, he spreads his arms for me and then wraps me so tightly that I sigh from the relief of it. I spread out with him, my face finds his neck, and I breathe in his scent. It calms me, but I still can’t stop shaking.
I shake like a leaf, like I am in the middle of a blizzard wearing a bikini. My teeth chatter, and the only warmth I can find is the warmth I steal from him. He pulls the covers over me and rubs my back. Massages me back to sleep.
“She was my baby,” I whisper to Aaron. “She was my baby, Aaron. Mine.”
“Shhh,” he pats and rubs, kisses my chin and then my shoulder. “I know. It’s over now. Shhh.”
My session with Kimmick runs over, and I am five minutes into his next client’s session when we are finally done. I use up another five minutes, blowing my nose and getting my face together before I step out of his motorcycle haven into the waiting room. There is one other person in the room, and I don’t make eye contact. I hurry toward the door.
“Lucky?”
I freeze and turn in slow motion.
“Patty?”
She looks like Patty, but then she doesn’t look like Patty. Her hair is shorter, stylishly cut, and she has gained a few pounds. She stands, touches her mouth and is about to cry. I walk over to where she stands and search her face. I am looking for anger and resentment where there is none. Her eyes tell me that she knows I did what I did because I wanted to help her. That she was helped.
“I thought you were going back to the South.”
“I was, but you know . . .” She touches her stomach and I see that what I first thought was a few extra pounds is really a baby growing. “I got engaged to a truck driver, and his people are from around here. You know how that goes.”
I nod. “I see you went back to wearing nail polish and stuff.”
“You’ve got on lipgloss,” she points out. “Looks good. How you doing, Lucky?”
“Good. You?”
“Good. Better. Kimmick’s fat ass works a number on you, huh?”
“He’s no joke,” I say and smile.
Patty gasps and claps her hands under her chin. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you do that.”
“First time for everything, right? This is your first baby?”
“Yes, and I’m supposed to be having twins.”
“Congratulations. Two reasons not to go back.”
“You got kids?”
“One.”
“Then you got a reason not to go back too.”
“Got about a hundred of them,” I say. “Maybe I’ll see you around, Patty.”
“Maybe,” she says and waves.
We are not friends, but the fact that we both survived a war makes it easy for us to hug before we part ways. We hug each other a long time, smelling the scent of freedom on one another’s skin. Once upon a time, she didn’t know if she was going to make it, and I was sure I wouldn’t. But we did. Both of us. And that means something. We both swallow the lumps in our throats when we pull apart.
“Baby, look at this,” Aaron says.
He walks over to the weight bench, takes a free weight from my hand and replaces it with a sheet of paper. I read it slowly. “You found her.” Stella’s daughter is so close that I can reach out and touch her. If she were a snake, she’d have bitten me a long time ago.
Beige and I find her twenty minutes west of the city, where she has been living for the past two years. Hers is one of four apartments on the second floor of a women’s transitional housing complex. Because of Aaron, I know she was arrested for stealing and sent to prison to complete an institutional substance abuse program. She is clean now, working with Children’s Services to regain custody of her children, and working part-time at a nearby grocery store as a cashier. She is this close to getting her babies back, to getting her life back, and I hope there is room in it for Stella.
Beige juggles a bag of potato chips, a soda and four candy bars, and elbows me in the side. She whispers, “What if that’s not her?”
I set a fruit cup and a bottle of juice on the conveyor belt and nod my head. “That’s her. She’s got Stella written all over her.” Stella lives in her daughter’s face the same way I live in Beige’s face. She is there, in her daughter’s eyes, her lips, and the tilt of her head as she checks the register tape for errors. They have the same fingers.
The line moves up and we move with it. I curse under my breath when the woman in front of me takes forever filling out a check. I toss a pack of the gum Aaron has to chew while he works on the belt and tell Beige to put back three of the candy bars she’s holding.
“You’re getting papaya juice,” she complains.
“Fruit juice, candy. How are we talking about the same thing? If you had four cups of yogurt or something, you might have a point to argue.”
“You used to let me eat candy all the time.”
“Yeah, well, Gary Coleman used to be cute, but now? Not so much. What’chu talking ’bout, Beige? Pick one and put the rest back.”
“Excuse me, ma’am. Is this your stuff?”
I stare stupidly, and Beige bumps me from behind, reminds me why I am here. I glance at Crystal’s nametag and shake my head. “Yeah, this is my stuff. But not the four candy bars. I’m not paying for those.”
“Mom . . .” Behind my b
ack, Beige motions that the candy bars should be rung up too, thinking I don’t see her.
“Um . . . should I add them, or . . .?”
“You look like her,” I blurt out and sound simple.
“Excuse me?”
“You look like your mom.”
She looks at Beige and raises her eyebrows curiously. Thinks I am two cards shy of a full deck. Beige shrugs and latches onto my arm. “Don’t look at me. I ain’t never seen your mom, but this is mine.”
I slide her a look. She wants those candy bars badly. “Stella is your mom, right?”
“You know my mother?”
“Yeah, she talks about you all the time.”
“They told me she was dead.”
“She’s not. Who told you that?”
Crystal looks at the line forming behind me and Beige and starts scanning our items. She moves slowly and lowers her voice. “The people at Social Services. They said they lost track of her some years back and she was probably dead.”
That makes me mad. “Stella’s not dead. What the hell is wrong with the system? She’s not dead. She lives a half-hour from here, has a damn job and everything. She looked for you and couldn’t find you.” My hands are shaking as I scrub them over my face. “Damn. She wants to see you. All this time you thought she was dead?”
“Me and my mama ain’t exactly had the perfect relationship. Ain’t really had any kind of relationship for a long time. I didn’t think one way or the other about her.” She hands me a plastic bag and makes change for the twenty I give her. Pauses a few seconds to count out my change and lay it in my hand. Then she looks at me with eyes that are old and tired. “I’m glad to hear she ain’t dead, laying in the ground somewhere by herself, but I don’t know if I’m glad to hear ’bout her wanting to see me. I don’t know if I really care.”
“Stella’s a good person.”
“She might be now, but you don’t know nothing about what kind of mother she was. I don’t need unnecessary problems in my life right now. Got enough as it is.”
