Her Secret Life

by Tiffany L. Warren

  Graham gagged. Earlene laughed.

  “You ain’t never smelled chitlins before, have you? Well, I’m cooking up fifteen buckets of them. We’ve got family coming to town.”

  “Why is family coming?” Onika asked.

  “Didn’t you get my message? You ain’t been to the hospital yet, have you? Your mama is about to leave this world. She ain’t got but a few more days, maybe hours. Doctors think she’s waiting on you.”

  “I can’t believe you invited the family to start coming while she’s still alive.”

  “Shole did. Who in the hell else is gonna help me pay to bury her? She ain’t got no life insurance.”

  Graham could see Onika’s anger rising. He’d never seen her angry, so this was new.

  “Come on. Let me take you to the hospital,” Graham said. “You’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t get to say good-bye.”

  “Oh, she said good-bye when she left for college. Never did come back and visit for a holiday or nothing. She started running with those rich people at that college, and we never heard from her again. Exceptin’ that one time . . .”

  Onika gave the woman a look that would freeze a boiling pot of water. “Come on, Graham.”

  “When y’all come back, bring a bucket of chicken or something to eat. I shole hope y’all don’t plan on staying here, too. Only got one spare bed, and no man and woman lay up together under my roof without being married.”

  Graham opened his mouth to respond, but Onika shook her head. He followed her lead. When they got into the car, he punched the address of the hospital into his GPS.

  “I came to see her on the worst day of my life,” Onika said.

  “When Aaron put you out?”

  “No. The day I had an abortion, I got on the road and drove here. She turned me away and said she didn’t have a granddaughter.”

  “You had an abortion. Wow.”

  “It was Aaron’s baby, of course. I wasn’t ready, because he wasn’t committed.”

  Even though Graham was fiercely opposed to abortion because of his faith, he remembered what Onika had said earlier. He tried not to view this through his experiences. He refused to judge her.

  “Maybe your grandmother was hurt that you didn’t visit her while you were in college.”

  Onika shrugged. “Maybe she was. Or maybe she’s just mean and evil.”

  “She raised you, though. Got you to adulthood in one piece. You could’ve starved. Could’ve been left outside.”

  Onika glared at Graham as he started the car, but he didn’t care.

  “I get she’s not going to win the best grandmother award,” Graham said, “but you need to show some respect.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, just for that you get a whole big bowl of chitlins with your weak stomach having self.”

  They both laughed, although the sounds Onika made were louder and more obnoxious than they needed to be. It sounded forced.

  “It’s okay for you to feel sad about your mother dying,” Graham said in a quiet voice after the laughter stopped. “You don’t have to laugh and joke for my benefit.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  Now the only voice in the car was the GPS, and Graham was okay with that. Even though he knew Onika would never let him if she knew he was doing it, he sent up a prayer for her. She’d need the power of God to handle what awaited her at the hospital.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Onika stared at Judy in the hospital bed. Graham had offered to come upstairs with her, and now she was glad she had declined his offer. Judy looked like something out of a horror movie. It was worse than Onika had expected.

  She remembered her mother being big, with hair that was kinky but groomed. She was never ashy, no matter how many days she went without moisturizing.

  But this Judy was another person. She was so small. She couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds. If the nurse hadn’t told Onika that this was her mother, Onika would not have believed it. All of her mother’s kinky hair that she’d always been ashamed of was gone, save for a few patches.

  “She’s been waiting for you,” the nurse said. “She asks about you every time she’s conscious.”

  “Is she conscious now?” Onika asked. She couldn’t tell if Judy’s eyes were shut or not due to the swelling and puffiness around her eyes. “Why are her lips so dry? Is she dehydrated?”

  The nurse walked over from the side of the bed and touched Onika’s arm. “Baby, her lips are dry because she doesn’t eat or drink anything anymore. Not even water. I rub ice and Vaseline on her lips when she lets me.”

  “What do you mean she doesn’t eat or drink anymore? Can’t y’all give her an IV? Isn’t this a hospital? Y’all in here letting her kill herself.”

  All of Onika’s refinement, etiquette, and proper speech went out the window when she saw the shell of a woman lying in the hospital bed. She looked like a brisk wind would blow her away, while Earlene looked as hearty as ever, even with her cane.

  “Her organs are shutting down, sweetheart. She doesn’t need food. That’s how we know when someone isn’t going to be much longer on this side.”

  In spite of making a million promises to herself not to cry, Onika broke down. She cried because Judy had never really lived. She’d been on drugs since she was a teenager and probably hadn’t gone more than a few feet from her mother’s house since she got addicted. She’d never traveled the world, worn an expensive gown, or even gone to the beach. Judy’s was a life wasted. There was no salvaging it.

  Suddenly the eyes flickered open. The scary figure on the bed grabbed the nurse’s arm. “Ah . . . ni . . . ka.”

  Judy slowly pronounced Onika’s name twice.

  “I think she wants to talk to you,” the nurse said.

  Onika stood next to the bed and touched her mother’s hand. It felt like a collection of bones.

  “Tae . . . mah . . . bayyy . . . guh,” Judy said in a gravelly, unintelligible voice.

  Onika looked at the nurse and shook her head. She didn’t understand what Judy was saying.

  “T-tae mah . . . bayyy guh.” This time the nurse shook her head. “She had two strokes last week. After that, I couldn’t understand anything she said.”

  Judy touched her lower abdomen and rubbed slightly. “Mah . . . bayyy beeee.”

  Onika’s mouth fell open and then clamped shut again. Judy had another baby?

  “Your baby? A baby girl?” Onika asked.

  Judy’s hand slumped to the side, and she relaxed. Her head slightly nodded.

  “My mother has a baby?”

  “I don’t know,” the nurse said. “I just started taking care of her a month ago.”

  Suddenly, one of machines that Judy was attached to started making loud beeping noises. The nurse pushed Onika out of the room, to make room for the doctors and nurses who swarmed the area. Onika tried to see what was happening but could not.

  Then she heard one of the doctors say, “Time of death . . .”

  Onika fainted in the hospital hallway.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Graham tried to make himself useful by helping Onika plan her mother’s funeral. The smell of the chitlins wasn’t as bad once they were cooked, but every now and then he had a wave of nausea. When Earlene had offered him a plate, he’d politely declined.

  He’d brought Onika home from the hospital after her mother died. Apparently, her mother had been waiting for her, because Judy died only a few minutes after Onika arrived. Onika had chosen to sit a few hours with the body before going back down to the waiting area. Maybe she’d gotten all of her tears out then, but when she came back to Graham, she wasn’t crying at all. She didn’t say a word on the way back to Earlene’s house, but she seemed okay.

  Graham sat with Onika at Earlene’s dining room table going through a box of photographs.

  “This is a good one. Is that you when you were little?” Graham asked as he handed a picture to Onika.

  She shook her head and han
ded him the picture back. “Judy was on her way to the corner on that one. That was her favorite man-catching outfit. We can’t put a picture of her in her prostitute outfit on the cover of her obituary.”

  “There’s no such thing as a prostitute outfit. These look like regular clothes to me,” Graham said.

  “Body ain’t even cold yet, and you already planning the funeral,” Earlene said. “It ain’t proper.”

  Onika put the picture that was in her hand down and stared at Earlene. “This coming from the woman who already started inviting family. I’m doing this to keep from going crazy.”

  “Ain’t even shed a tear for your mama!” Earlene hissed. “I know why you don’t believe in the Lord our Savior. It’s because of your devil daddy. He killed my baby and left me with the spawn.”

  Onika rose from the table. “Graham. Let’s go. We can finish this later.”

  Graham quickly jumped up from his seat before Onika made a sudden move. She was quickly out the door, though, as if she was just as aware of herself being on edge and needing to escape from that house.

  “I can’t go back there,” Onika said when they were in the car. “Just drive. I wanna show you something.”

  Graham followed Onika’s directions until they were at a huge lake. There were well-used picnic tables and a huge brick barbeque pit. Onika didn’t wait for Graham to get out of the car or barely even put it in park. She jumped out and ran across the grass, then sat on one of the benches and stared out over the water.

  “Did you come here when you were little?” Graham asked.

  “This is where I almost died.”

  “Where you nearly drowned?”

  Onika nodded. “Yep. My grandmother was sitting right where I’m sitting now, and my mother was standing next to her. They sat, this close to the edge of the water, and almost let me die.”

  “Maybe they thought you’d start swimming.”

  “To this day, I think I remember my mother being high at that church picnic and my grandmother being embarrassed about it. But my grandmother was good and sober. She didn’t try to save me, though.”

  “Country people have some strange ways sometimes.”

  Onika stared at the ground. “Before my mother died, she said something about having a baby girl. I think she had another baby.”

  “She did? Did you ask your grandmother about it?”

  Onika shook her head. “For some reason, I get the feeling that she doesn’t know. No matter how evil my grandmother is, she believes in being obligated to family. If my mother had another baby it would be living at her house.”

  “Is she really evil, though?”

  “What grandmother takes in their grandchild and then raises that child without so much as a hug or a kiss. Definitely not an ‘I love you.’ She told me Jesus loved me, and that was supposed to be enough.”

  “It wasn’t enough,” Graham said sadly.

  “Of course it wasn’t.”

  Graham walked over and sat next to Onika on the bench. He put his arm around her and hugged her. He didn’t kiss her or do anything that she might think was sexual. This was purely affection, because she needed it, even if she didn’t know how to ask for it.

  “Let’s get a hotel room. We have to go a ways down the road to find any decent ones,” Onika finally said.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to stay over at your grandmother’s house? I’m okay with driving you back there and going to get a hotel room for myself.”

  “You trying to leave me in the chitlin house?” Onika asked.

  “Does the smell get on you? It felt heavy enough to get on me.”

  Onika sniffed him. “You do smell a little bit like raw chitlins.”

  “Oh my goodness. You’re right.”

  “You know, I think my mother wants me to take her daughter. She said ‘tae mah bay guh.’ Doesn’t that sound like ‘take my baby girl’?”

  Graham nodded. “It does, but if your grandmother doesn’t know about her, how in the world are you gonna find her? Do you know how old she is?”

  “She can’t be no more than nine or ten.”

  “We can start looking for her tonight if you want.”

  Onika kissed Graham full on the lips, letting her tongue trace the inside of his mouth. This kiss was more than affectionate.

  “We can start looking tomorrow,” she said.

  Graham knew that Onika’s kiss was a promise of a night of pleasure, but he refused to accept the offer. Even though he wanted it just as badly as she did, he didn’t want the first time they made love to be right smack in the middle of her pain.

  There would be another chance. There would be joy attached to their moment instead of sorrow.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Judy’s funeral was a circus, and Onika hated every second of it. Earlene had wanted to cremate the body, still embarrassed for anyone to see how Judy had wasted away. But Onika refused to allow it. She paid for everything out of her money from Aaron. Spent seven thousand dollars of her apartment fund for a nice casket, dress, wig, and makeup.

  Judy’s body looked nothing like any memory Onika had of her, and it definitely didn’t look like the poster-sized photo on the easel next to the casket. She’d decided on a rare picture of Judy going to church. She was very young, probably nineteen, and she was holding Onika in her arms. Onika’d never seen that picture before. Earlene had put it away.

  It would’ve been nice to know what Judy had been like before she was on drugs.

  Even though Onika had paid for everything, Earlene insisted on being in charge of the funeral program. Judy had been baptized COGIC, and even though they probably wouldn’t have let her have communion while she was alive, they were going to give her a good send-off in death.

  After the first soloist sang “Order My Steps,” Earlene stood from her seat on the front row and wobbled up to the microphone.

  “Most of y’all here knew my Judy her whole life. She had a lot of demons. She suffered all her days. From the time she was in the cradle ’til they stretched her out on that hospital bed. I know God coulda saved her if He wanted to, but I do believe that my Judy went into that hospital tired. She held on until that prodigal daughter showed her face in town again. And then, my God, my God, Jesus gave her the rest she desired. But before she took leave of this earthly realm, I did hear her repent from her sins and call on the name of Jesus, the name above all other names, the sweetest name I know. Hey glory! Me and Onika used to pray for Judy, right here on this altar. You remember?”

  Onika stared straight ahead. She refused to get caught up in Earlene’s frenzy.

  “She might not remember, but I do. Jesus be a balm, a balm in Gilead. That’s what we prayed, and my God, sweet Jesus, He is comforting my Judy right now. Hallelujah!”

  Earlene’s speech had the majority of her fellow church-goers on their feet. Even though it was a funeral, if folk started to shout in this church, shouting music was played.

  Onika didn’t lift her hands, she didn’t stand, she didn’t dance. She sat unmoving in her seat, unless you counted the tear trickling down her face.

  Earlene, though, hobbled up and down in front of the church, trying to do a little dance. When her knees started to buckle, Onika gasped.

  She nudged Graham in the ribs. “Go help her before I have to bury her, too.”

  The funeral service went on, but the shouting didn’t stop. They sang, preached, sang, testified, read resolutions, sang, and preached.

  Onika was over it. She got up, walked down the center aisle, unnoticed, because the performance was happening straight ahead.

  Onika walked outside to the parking lot. She was headed to the car but wasn’t sure what she was going to do after that.

  A short distance away, at the edge of the parking lot, stood an older woman and a little girl who, judging from her size, was about five years old.

  As the woman got closer, Onika squinted, thinking she saw something familiar about the woman. She couldn’t get a goo
d look at her, because she had on a huge hat.

  The duo stopped in front of Onika. The little girl smiled up at her and handed her the flower she was clutching in her hands.

  “Can you put this in my mama’s casket? She dead, right?”

  Onika cleared her throat. “That’s my mama in there, and yes she’s dead.”

  The little girl looked up at the woman with a mask of confusion on her face.

  “It’s her mama, too,” the woman said.

  Onika looked hard at the little girl. This must be her little sister, Judy’s other daughter. The little girl looked just like Judy. Dark skin, thick kinky hair, and huge expressive eyes. She was beautiful.

  Onika stooped down and hugged the girl. “I think we might have the same mama.”

  “We do? You’re pretty.”

  Onika looked back up at the woman. The recognition hit her like a sack of boulders. It was Joyce, the woman from the Metro station with the flyer for Safe Harbor. She was cleaner, and dressed well, for a funeral.

  “How are you here?” Onika asked.

  Joyce, or whatever her name was, only smiled.

  “She’s always here,” the little girl said.

  Onika turned her attention back to the child. “What’s your name?”

  “Seraiah.”

  “Where were you before you came here? Where do you live?”

  Seraiah looked up at Joyce, perhaps for an answer. When she got none, she gazed into Onika’s eyes.

  “I was nowhere, and then here, but I was safe before. Now I’m not so sure.”

  Onika hugged the little girl tightly. She kissed her little face until it was covered in her lipstick.

  “She’s coming with me,” Onika said, but when she looked up for Joyce to confirm her request, Joyce was gone.

  “Where’d she go?” Onika asked.

  “Sometimes she disappears, but she always comes back.”

  Onika glanced back over her shoulder at the church. This scene outside was too spooky for her liking. A mystery child, and a big old woman who appeared and disappeared at will.

  Onika took Seraiah’s hand and led her back to the church.