Family of Lies

by Mary Monroe

  My last two periods had been very light and I’d been feeling light-headed and weak a few times during those two months. But I had experienced similar symptoms before, even when I wasn’t sexually active, so I hadn’t given it much thought. My annual visit to my OB/GYN for a routine checkup was coming up soon, so I made a mental note to mention my symptoms to him.

  On the day of my appointment, I treated my friend Mabel Cunndiff to lunch at the E&O restaurant, one of the best places in town when it came to exotic Asian cuisine. Mabel and I had attended the same boarding school. She had recently married and moved to the Bay Area.

  “You look so tired and puffy,” she said as we enjoyed our fried rice, veggies, and blackened prawns and white wine. Mabel’s husband was a doctor, so she paid close attention to things like how other people looked. “Are you all right?”

  “I hope I am,” I replied as I speared another prawn with my fork. “But if something is wrong, I’m sure Dr. Parker will tell me when I see him this afternoon. I have been feeling funny, though. It seems like no matter what I do, I ache somewhere,” I said, chewing on the prawn even though my jawbone was aching now. “I’ve had this weird, sharp, burning pain in my stomach for the past two days.”

  Mabel’s big brown eyes got even bigger. Her sharp little nose began to twitch like a rabbit. She gave me such a mournful look you would have thought that I’d just told her I was dying. “Uh-oh! That’s the same kind of pain my mother had just before she died,” she warned. “I feel sorry for you.”

  I froze. I suddenly lost my appetite, so I set my fork down and pushed my plate to the side. “I thought your mother died of cancer.”

  “She did. That weird, sharp, burning pain in her stomach was cancer of the intestines.”

  “Nobody in my family has ever had cancer,” I pointed out.

  “So?” Mabel shoved a huge forkful of bok choy into her mouth. I couldn’t believe she was still able to eat like a hog and at the same time talk to me like I was about to be embalmed. “That doesn’t mean anything. Nobody in my family ever had cancer either before my mother. You know us black folks. With all the greasy pork and cow parts our ancestors ate, we are bound to inherit some of the ailments that killed them.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. I was glad I had ordered a huge glass of wine. The buzz I had made it easier for me to listen to Mabel’s morbid comments without going into panic mode. “Like I said, my doctor will tell me what’s wrong with me.” I couldn’t eat anything else, but I ordered another glass of wine.

  After we left the restaurant, Mabel hugged me like it was for the last time.

  It was the middle of July and the weather was so nice I walked the four blocks to Dr. Parker’s office.

  I was extremely nervous throughout the exam. When it was over, I got dressed so fast, I put my pantyhose on inside out. Dr. Parker entered the room and he was not smiling. But he didn’t have the typical grim look you’d expect to see on a doctor’s face when he was about to give you a death sentence. I didn’t know what to expect.

  “Congratulations, Mrs. Harper!” he said, rubbing his hands together. “You’re going to be a mother.” A huge smile formed on his weather-beaten, fake tan face.

  I was so elated I almost kissed him.

  I regretted drinking the wine with my lunch. I didn’t want to do anything that might hurt the baby inside my belly. I was even afraid to walk the six blocks back to the lot where I’d parked, so I took a taxi.

  I couldn’t wait until everybody was in the house. I wanted to tell Bo the good news first, but getting him alone was not easy. I had called him at his office from my cell phone before I left the parking lot. And even though I had left a message that I had something very important to tell him, he hadn’t returned my call by the time I decided to head for home. I’d left the same message on Daddy’s voice mail and he had not returned my call either.

  The closer I got to home, the more I didn’t want to be in the house alone with Vera. I was afraid I’d break down and tell her I was pregnant. And I certainly didn’t want to tell her before I told Bo and Daddy. I was too excited to go shopping, so I just drove around for a while.

  After about an hour, I reluctantly headed home. Costa was in the driveway waxing our rarely used town car. I parked beside him. When I got out of my car, he nodded and tipped his black chauffeur’s cap. “Costa, we may be using the car this evening,” I told him.

  “As well, Senora Harper,” he replied with another nod.

  I was hoping that we’d all pile into the town car and go out to dinner to celebrate.

  When I got inside the house, I stopped in the foyer and took a deep breath. I moved quietly toward the entrance to the living room. I peeped in before entering, expecting to see Vera slumped on the couch or on a bar stool with a drink in her hand. She was not in the living room, but before I could breathe a sigh of relief, she came swishing in from the kitchen.

  Her eyes got wide as soon as she saw me standing in the middle of the living room floor. “How was your visit to the doctor?” she asked. She had her purse and car keys in her hand, so it was obvious she was on her way out. That made me happy. I wanted to savor my feeling of elation about the baby. That would have been hard to do with Vera lurking about the house. “Is everything all right?”

  “I’m just fine,” I answered with a smile I couldn’t hold back.

  “Hmmm. That’s nice. But that pinched look that’s been on your face for the past few days is still there. You look constipated.”

  “Uh, I am constipated, but Dr. Parker gave me a prescription to take care of that.”

  “Good! Now I have to run. I will be back in time for dinner. I told Delia to cook lamb. I’m looking forward to it.” It didn’t look like the family was going out to dinner tonight. Vera ran out of the room like a dog was chasing her. I prayed that Bo and Daddy would get home before I went to bed.

  Dinner was served at 7:00 p.m. I was glad Daddy and Bo had come home early enough to eat with the rest of us. Moving like robots, we seated ourselves and began to fill our plates with some of the lamb concoction Delia had prepared.

  “Sarah, how did your appointment go today?” Daddy asked, using both of his hands to break a roll in two.

  “I tried to call you this afternoon,” I told him. Then I looked at Bo. “I tried to call you too.”

  Bo opened his mouth to speak, but Daddy beat him to it. “Oh? Is there something we need to know?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, deliberately taking my time now. I could feel the sudden tension and anxiety in the room. And I enjoyed watching Collette and Vera shift in their seats. I looked from one face to the other. I didn’t speak again until I was looking directly into Bo’s worried eyes. “I found out something today that you all need to know,” I announced, looking around the table some more.

  Collette glanced at me with her eyes narrowed. Vera’s face froze. Cash didn’t even look up from his plate. Bo began to blink rapidly. His lips curled up into a smile that seemed like it had been waiting all day to form on his face. He reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “Baby, are you . . .” He didn’t even finish his sentence. I nodded.

  “What is it, honey?” Daddy asked, looking from me to Bo and back.

  “I’m going to have a baby,” I gushed. My eyes were still on Bo, but I heard Daddy let out a gasp. When I looked at him, he was beaming like a flashlight. “My doctor confirmed it this afternoon. If it’s a boy, I’m going to name him Kenneth Bohannon Harper.”

  Bo dropped his fork and reared back in his seat. Then he looked at me with his eyes bugged out and his mouth hanging open.

  Daddy choked on his wine. Bo slapped him on the back a few times. After Daddy stopped coughing, he wobbled up out of his seat and stumbled over to me, leaning on the table like a man with one leg.

  “You could name my grandchild Donald Duck for all I care, and I’d be just as happy,” he managed, looking so overjoyed you would have thought that he was the one pregnant.

  “When are you
due?” Collette asked stiffly, giving me a look I couldn’t describe. After all these years, we tolerated each other at best. I was convinced that she resented me because she still thought my presence was a threat to the sweet position she and Cash occupied. Now that I was pregnant, my child and I would be a double threat.

  “According to Dr. Parker, I’m due the twenty-third of February—that is, if I don’t have any complications.” Daddy was still standing by my side with his hand on my shoulder.

  “What kind of complications?” Cash asked. “You look as healthy as a new mule to me. And as long as you lighten up on that wine and don’t do nothing too extreme, having a baby ought to be a piece of cake for a young woman like you.”

  “Sometimes things happen to the healthiest and youngest women when it comes to having a baby. If I gain too much weight, or lose too much weight, I could have some problems. My mama and my grandmama told me they had all kinds of problems when they were pregnant. That’s why they each had had only one child.”

  Daddy started sweating and coughing again. Vera jumped up and guided him back down into his seat. “Well, we are pleased to hear this wonderful news, baby. I’m sure everything is going to be just fine,” he wheezed.

  After a few more comments about my condition, we finished dinner. Cash and Collette rushed off to go bowling. Vera told Daddy he looked like a wreck, so she escorted him to their bedroom, where he could lie down for a while.

  Bo and I headed to the living room, holding hands all the way. “I’m going to start working on the nursery tomorrow,” I told him as soon as we sat down on the couch, still holding hands. “And I think we should move into your old bedroom. We’ll put the baby in the one we’re in now. I’ll have fun turning it into a nursery.”

  “But the room we’re in now is the largest one on the second floor. A baby won’t need that much room.”

  “Bo, I know that, but I would like a change of scenery too.”

  “Do you want to move into one of the rooms on the third floor? I’m sure Vera and Kenneth won’t mind us occupying a room that close to them.”

  “I’d rather stay on the second floor. But I do want to make our current bedroom into a nursery,” I insisted.

  “Suit yourself, honey. It’s not that big of a deal,” Bo said with a shrug.

  I was glad Bo didn’t seem too interested in my sudden desire to change bedrooms. But I had a valid reason—and it wasn’t only because I wanted to turn the room into a nursery. I wanted to make sure nobody else discovered the fact that if you got close enough to the air duct and opened the vent, you could hear everything going on in the kitchen. Last night when Bo dropped one of his cuff links, he squatted down on the floor to retrieve it. It was just my luck that it had rolled dangerously close to the air duct—which I had forgotten to close after my last eavesdropping mission earlier that day. I scurried across the floor like a frightened cat and grabbed the cuff link before Bo could crawl too close to my secret “intercom system.” I knew that if he could hear people talking downstairs, he’d say something about it. And there was no way that Vera, Cash, and Collette would continue to run their mouths so freely then.

  Bo and I moved into his old bedroom a few hours later.

  The next morning I was standing in front of Macy’s when they opened. I purchased over a thousand dollars’ worth of baby clothes and items for the nursery.

  CHAPTER 36

  VERA

  NOW THAT SARAH WAS PREGNANT, SHE WAS DOWNRIGHT GIDDY. BUT she was not any more annoying to me than she usually was. However, because her head was in the clouds, she was a whole lot easier to tolerate. I was convinced that I could make her putty in my hands as long as I kept my wits about me.

  But Sarah’s pregnancy was not all peaches and cream. She quickly gained a lot of weight and didn’t like the way she looked. I didn’t like the way she looked either for that matter. Her skin glowed and her eyes sparkled like jewels. Everybody, even strangers on the street, commented on how beautiful she looked. When I was with her, it was like I was invisible. Nobody noticed how beautiful I looked, so I didn’t get the compliments that I had grown accustomed to. Sarah didn’t know how to take compliments. She always said something stupid like, “I’m so blessed—even with all this extra weight!”

  I gloated in silence when she began to experience some of the discomforts of being pregnant. She had backaches, strange food cravings, and some days she would just bust out crying for no reason at all.

  By her sixth month, Sarah didn’t feel so blessed. “I’ll be glad when I drop this load. I feel miserable and I’ve been eating like a cow,” she complained, gnawing on a smoked turkey leg. “And I must look like one by now.” That was true. She had already gained over sixty pounds. Most of the weight was in her stomach and ass, but her ankles and legs looked like tree stumps.

  I thought it was to my advantage to convince her that she was as beautiful as ever. “No, you don’t! You look just fine, honey. I wouldn’t worry about gaining a few pounds if I were you. Besides, you’re young. After you have the baby, you’ll lose the weight and get your figure back in no time,” I told her, rubbing her back as she sat humped over like a bear in hibernation next to me on the living room couch.

  “I miss not being able to have a glass of wine or a margarita,” she whined, poking her bottom lip out so far it looked like a second nose on her bloated face. “I hate all of these aches and pains that go along with being pregnant! Yesterday it was my neck. Today it’s my back.”

  “Honey, you are still so blessed. In the long run, all of the discomforts you’re experiencing now will be worth it. But I can’t imagine how uncomfortable being pregnant must be! I’m so glad I never had to experience it.”

  Sarah sat up straight and looked me in the eye. There was a look of sorrow on her face. I wasn’t sure if it was meant for her or me until she spoke again. “Is that why you never had any kids?”

  Her question caught me completely off guard. I had to think hard because I wanted to make sure that what I told her was consistent with what I’d told Kenneth and everybody else. “I tried for years, though,” I said hoarsely. “Unfortunately, the good Lord hasn’t blessed Kenneth and me with a child of our own . . . yet.”

  “Oh. Maybe you can’t have kids, huh?”

  I gave Sarah a hopeless look. “I’ve been to several doctors and they’ve all told me there is no reason I can’t get pregnant.”

  “Hmmm. Poor Daddy. He loves kids and I know he wanted more than one. He’s told me so several times.”

  “Tell me about it,” I muttered, staring at the wall. I was being sarcastic, but she was too dense to realize that.

  “Oh well. It’s way too late for you now anyway.”

  I whirled my head around so fast to look at Sarah that my neck felt like somebody had just tried to twist it off my shoulders. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Aren’t you like, uh, in your forties or fifties?”

  “I’m sixty. That’s like the new forty,” I insisted.

  “Sixty? You’re that old?” Sarah asked with a sharp gasp. You would have thought that I had just told her I’d sprouted a dick. “Yikes!”

  “As much TV as you watch and with all the reading you do, you should know that women my age—even though it is extremely rare—can still get pregnant. Medicine has come a long way. They’ve come up with some interesting new ways for older women to have babies.” My voice was stiff and detached. It was a struggle for me to restrain myself because I wanted to slap the smug look off Sarah’s face. “So me getting pregnant is not impossible in this day and age.”

  “Oh yeah. I saw something in the Enquirer or one of those other tabloids that run weird stories, about this real old woman that got pregnant. She was fifty-five, I think. But she went through something like that in vitro thing. Or that artificial insemination thing. Whatever it was, she didn’t get pregnant the normal way.” Sarah paused and yawned. Then she gave me a look of such extreme pity I wanted to slap that off her face too. I w
as the last woman in the world who wanted to be pitied. “Well, I would not want to be walking around pregnant if I was even close to forty. An older woman has to deal with a lot of aches and pains and arthritis and shit anyway, so dealing with pregnancy pains would be too much. I’m glad I didn’t wait too long to get pregnant with my first baby.”

  I’m glad you didn’t either, I thought.

  I had to remind myself that I was partially responsible for Sarah getting pregnant and that it was all part of my plan. The thought of all the benefits I would eventually reap made it easy for me to smile at her now. “Well, to me, being a grandmother to your baby is almost as good as being a mother myself,” I told her. “Now, let’s go out and get some lunch. Barbecued ribs sound good.”

  Sarah had been complaining a lot about how little time Bo spent with her. Like Kenneth, he had begun to spend even more time at the store. The fact that I had tolerated that from Kenneth for so many years was one thing. I didn’t want to be around him too much anyway. But I felt sorry for Sarah. She really loved Bo and wanted to be with him as much as possible. Every time she complained about it to me, I gave her my undivided attention because I didn’t want her to take her complaints to her daddy. It was a major sacrifice for me not to spend as much time indulging myself with my usual activities so I could spend more time with Sarah. But that’s just what I did. I had too much of a vested interest in her not to. Every chance I got to talk to Bo in private, I let him know in no uncertain terms how I felt about him being away from her so much.

  “The girl is your wife now and she’s about to have your baby. The least you can do is spend more time with her. We have to keep her happy,” I told him. We occupied the same table in the same neighborhood coffee shop I took him to when we needed to talk. It was a Saturday morning in mid-December.

  “I know, I know. After the holidays are over, things will slow down and I can spend more time with her. But she knows how demanding my job is and how important it is to keep her daddy happy,” Bo told me.