Should Have Known Better

by Grace Octavia

  A moon-shaped pool provided the center for the sunroom. It was pink with S. B. painted into the floor in black.

  “That’s not a pool for children,” R. J. explained cautiously. “It’s for adults. Daddy and Sasha use it at night and—”

  “Come on, son, let’s sit down,” Reginald stopped him. “I know your mother wants to talk to you guys. Not hear about that little pool.”

  R. J. stopped talking about the pool, but after we took seats around a glass table that was nice enough to be in someone’s living room, Cheyenne made sure we heard about everything else in the house. There was “her” room. She was painting it “lavender.” There was the game room. She couldn’t wait to show her friends. And Sasha had already told her she could have a slumber party in the movie room.

  “I don’t think your friends can come this far,” I said. “Maybe we can have a slumber party at our house. Don’t you miss our house?”

  “Sometimes,” she mumbled.

  “We don’t have a movie room, but we have our living room with the big pillows on the floor. The purple beanbag from your room. Don’t you think they’d like that, too?” I asked.

  “Maybe.”

  Elka, whom I identified by a name stitched in red into the white dress she was wearing, set a platter of sandwiches on the table.

  “Salad for you?” she asked me.

  “No, I won’t be eating,” I said.

  “Salad for—” She’d turned to my mother.

  “She won’t be eating either,” I said.

  Reginald was the only one who reached for one of the sandwiches. He insisted that the twins eat and when they didn’t fill their plates, he did it for them.

  “Don’t be shy because your mama’s here,” he said before biting into his sandwich. He looked at my mother. “They’ve been eating up a storm since I got them,” he explained with his food in his mouth.

  “Oh, I’m happy they’re healthy,” she responded awkwardly.

  His cell phone started ringing on the table. Still chewing his food like a horse, he picked up the phone and looked like he was reading a text message.

  “It’s Sasha,” he said anxiously and I’m certain I was looking at him like he was crazy. “She’s just pulling up and wants my help with bags.” He jumped up from his seat like it was on fire. “I’ll be right back.”

  Reginald hurried out, leaving his cell phone and half-eaten sandwich behind.

  “So,” my mother opened, trying to fill the hush at the table, “you two having fun in this place?” She smiled at R. J. adoringly, but I did sense a little agitation in her voice and it surprised me.

  “Well, we can’t play on the couches in the living room,” R. J. admitted. “Auntie Sasha let us do it on the first day, but then she told us not to go in there.”

  “Don’t call her your aunt,” I ordered. “She’s not your aunt.”

  “She’s Daddy’s girlfriend,” Cheyenne said, cutting me in half.

  I was about to correct her, but my mother slid her hand on to my knee beneath the table.

  “Your father is married to your mother,” she said, “so he can’t have a girlfriend. In God’s eyes, that’s a sin.”

  “So?” Cheyenne muttered. She rolled her eyes and looked away from the table.

  “You don’t believe sin is wrong, baby?” my mother went on.

  “What’s a sin?” R. J. asked me.

  “You don’t know what a sin is?” My mother stared at me, but my eyes were hung on Cheyenne and her coldness. She went on to describe the Ten Commandments and tell the story of Moses and Sinai.

  “I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” I said to Cheyenne beneath my mother’s telling. “I would never try to hurt you. You know that? You and R. J. are the most important people in the world to me. I love you.”

  I reached across the table to touch her, but she moved away.

  “I promise nothing like that will ever happen again,” I added. “I promise that to you and R. J.” I looked at R. J. “Mommy made a bad mistake. And I swear it will never happen again. Can you forgive me?”

  “Yes—” R. J. answered.

  Cheyenne got up from her seat and started running out of the room.

  “I’ll never forgive you,” she hollered. “I wish you would die!”

  I got up to follow her, but she was stopped by Reginald and Sasha walking into the room laughing and talking. She ran right into Reginald.

  “What’s wrong, Chey?” Reginald asked, leaning low to her.

  “I want to go to my room,” Cheyenne cried, wiping tears.

  “But your mama is here to see you, sweetie,” my mother said.

  “I want to go to my room,” Cheyenne cried frantically.

  “Let her go,” I said, feeling bad that she was hurting so much. Cheyenne was born distant from me. But even in her cutting words and swipes at my head, I never wanted to see her upset. I never wanted to be the person who made her upset.

  Reginald released Cheyenne and she ran from the room.

  “Can I go, too?” R. J. asked his father and then looked at me confused.

  “Sure you can,” I said as sweetly as I could. “Can you give me a kiss first?”

  “Yes!”

  R. J. kissed me on the cheek and I kissed him on the forehead, holding him close to my chest for as long as I could. I wouldn’t look right at Sasha, but I could tell from the dark lens of her sunglasses that her eyes were on me.

  “See you again next time,” I said to R. J.

  “When, Mama? When can we go home?”

  “Sooner than you think,” I said to him. “Sooner than you can blink your eyes.” I kissed him on the forehead again and he scattered out of the room.

  “Mrs. George,” Sasha called to my mother, “it’s so nice to see you.”

  She and Reginald walked over to the table where my mother and I were both now standing. She was wearing shorts the same color as Reginald’s and a tight cream tube top that pushed her breasts up to her neck. Her huge sunglasses were tucked beneath a tan floppy hat that seemed more appropriate for June than early May.

  “Oh,” was all my mother could spare.

  “Well, for sure the circumstances leave much to be desired, but it’s a pleasure.”

  “Oh, thank you.”

  “Dawn, how have you been?” Sasha’s voice was slow and pandering. She spoke like I was a mental patient.

  “How do you think?” I asked.

  “Well, I haven’t seen you since the incident at my job, and I wanted to make sure you were doing OK. You seemed a little off.” She took off her shades and grinned this grin at me. It was psychotic. Crazy. Nearly diabolical. Just the way she’d spoken to Landon’s wife at the nail salon. Suddenly, I heard everything she’d said in a new way.

  “Cut the bullshit,” I said. “I know you lied to the cops and told them I was using drugs.”

  “I didn’t say that,” she said with marked fake concern. She slapped her hand over her chest with surprise and looked at my mother. “I just said that she’d been acting strangely. And that maybe something was going on. Maybe it could be drugs. I was just acting in your best interest. Being a friend.” Her voice cracked and she leaned over to Reginald. “See, I told you she can’t ever say anything good.”

  “Oh, I have some good things to say,” I said. “Some good things to say to both of you and maybe it’s time for me to get started right now.”

  “Oh no, let’s just go,” my mother came in. “We’ve seen the children. Let’s just go.”

  “No, I’m not leaving,” I shouted.

  “Don’t make a scene,” Reginald said. “You’ll only make yourself look bad.”

  “I’ll look bad? No, you look bad! Running up behind this phony like you don’t have half a bit of sense to see that she’s just using you.”

  “I’m not using him,” Sasha said.

  “Oh, you save your act for Reginald. He’s just as weak and simple as you.”

  “Now, hold on, Dawn,” Reginald said. “
Let’s not do this name-calling. I haven’t said anything about you.”

  “Well, try!” I demanded. “Try. Say something wrong about how I was your wife for ten years. How I cared for your parents and your children and kept your house clean. Loved you. Even when it wasn’t convenient! Even when you made me turn away from every person in this world who loved me! Tell me!”

  My mother was pulling me out of the room.

  “And this is how you do me? This is how you repay me?” I asked. “This is what you do to your family?”

  “Let’s go,” my mother said to me as we neared the door.

  Sasha sauntered behind Reginald and his stupid-looking face. Elka walked out of the kitchen holding a tray of drinks, but then turned back around.

  “You’re not a man. You’re not even half of a man. And I’m going to prove it to you. I swear if there’s nothing I do before I leave this earth,” I said, pulling away from my mother, “I’ll prove that to your weak ass!”

  I tried to charge Reginald, but my mother caught me at my stomach and swung me out of the door.

  “Nice visit,” I heard Sasha call from the other side and I tried to get through the door, but I was still in my mother’s arms.

  “Stop it,” Reginald said to Sasha. “Just let her go.”

  When we got back into the car I must’ve called Sasha every foul word I ever learned. I was sitting beside my mother, but I didn’t apologize. I was just that angry. Just that pissed off.

  “When did you lose your faith?” my mother said after I ran out of nasty things to say.

  “What?” I thought I heard her incorrectly.

  “Your faith . . . when did you lose it? Because how you were acting in there, it was clear you didn’t have any.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with me or how I acted. Did you see her? Did you see how she was acting?”

  “How she was acting has nothing to do with you. She’s obviously not walking with the Lord, but you, you weren’t raised like that. You know the Word.”

  “Now we get to it. I guess the Good Reverend still has his power. But you know what?” I looked at her. “I haven’t exactly seen you running off to church. When was the last time you went and sat in a pew? Or did that get too old when God called Herbert George home?”

  “You keep pushing this off on everyone else. It’s Sasha. It’s me. It’s your father. How I worship God has nothing to do with you. And the relationship your father had with his maker is none of your business.”

  “Relationship? Please. He used God. And as far as I’m concerned, if there was a God, he would’ve struck Dad dead the day he choked you in the dining room,” I said. “Maybe you forgot that I was there. Maybe you forgot that I was in the closet. But I’ll never forget that. And I’ll never forgive him or God.” I turned to the street. “I don’t need to have faith. I have myself.”

  “One day, you ain’t gonna be enough,” she said solemnly. “And when that day comes, I hope you lay these burdens down and do what I taught you to do. Prayer changes things. Faith is the most powerful thing in the world. Not you.”

  9

  It is a fact that I slept on the floor that night. I sat on the bed for a little while. I listened to my mother walking through the house praying and scrubbing every surface she could find. We were tired. Just tired. And if I tried to explain that to you, I’d say you’d have to have experienced something so excruciatingly painful that all you want to do is feel something more deep and dark than that. What I learned that night with my face to the floor, like it had been in the closet when I was too young to imagine my life becoming such a tragedy, is that some people try to fight that feeling of exhaustion with drugs. Some with alcohol. Some even with sex. Some with things and pleasure. Some death. I wanted to feel more pain. I wanted to feel my bones splitting and aching on the wood as I held my eyes closed and pretended to sleep. I wanted for my back to sink into the floor and hurt so bad so I could let this pain go and move on.

  When we’d gotten home, my mother had told me about her parents. The grandparents she always said were dead and buried in Mississippi. Now she admitted she didn’t know if they were dead or alive. She said her father was a bad drunk. And one night he was so liquored up, he tried to drown her mother in a lake. All three of them almost went under as my mother tried to save her. My mother slit the wrist on her father’s left hand that night as he slept. He woke up and chased her off of the farm. She ran and never went back, but she said she had two younger sisters in the house and they said he never hit her mother again—he never really slept again either. She got a bus ticket to Atlanta. Didn’t know a soul. Hardly knew how to read. But she could clean.

  “I only wanted three things when I got married: to have someone who could give me and my children a life,” she said, holding her arms straight out toward the steering wheel, “and that he would not beat on me, and never drink. That was it. When I met your daddy, I knew I was safe. He was a preacher. He never drank and he said he’d never hurt me. If I worked, he’d work. But then I saw he was drinking some days and then every night. See, back then working men didn’t use drugs . . . they drank. That’s what they did. He’d say one thing on the pulpit, but come home and be just like one of them souls he tried to save. I insisted he stop. But it had a hold on him. Just like it did my father. I was going to leave. I wanted to leave. But then I had you and I thought I could save him. I’d fought that demon before and I’d risen to the top. I could do it again this time. I could fix him. I could survive him. You could survive him. When you left I was angry and I was mad that I never saw you. Mad that you never came around. But I understood. And a little part of me was kind of glad. I thought maybe you’d survive. Maybe you were off living a good life and having everything I didn’t have. You hated your father. Hated me. But you had love. And that meant someone floated to the top that time. When you showed up at the house, I knew we were both still drowning.”

  When I woke up, my mother was sitting on the bed. The sun was up. I could tell she’d left the house by the shoes she was wearing.

  “I went to see Mrs. Jackson,” she said.

  “What? Why would you go see Mrs. Jackson?” I asked, referring to the woman she worked for. While she was full time until my father died, her aches and pains were too much to continue full time, so she only worked once a week now and mostly went to keep Mrs. Thirjane Jackson, a black woman who thought being a Southern belle was all a woman should do with her life, company.

  “I thought she could help. Maybe give us some tips. She knows everyone. Has connections.”

  “Why would you do that? No. We don’t need her help,” I said annoyed. Not only was Mrs. Jackson a chatty, judgmental royal, but she was also the mother of Kerry Jackson, someone I went to school with who knew many of my sorority sisters. “She’s going to tell Kerry and I know Kerry will tell Marcy.”

  “So?”

  “So I don’t want all of Atlanta to know my business,” I said. “They gossip about stuff like that.”

  “I don’t think that will happen. Kerry’s a nice girl. She wouldn’t gossip about you.”

  “Oh, no! You told Kerry?”

  “She was there when I was talking to Mrs. Jackson.”

  I slapped the floor in disgust.

  “No,” she went on. “She’s not like that. She’s been through a divorce. She’s been through this. Her husband—”

  “So now I’m getting a divorce?”

  “I hope so.”

  “I don’t even know Kerry.” I got up from the floor and heard both of my knees crack.

  “That’s not true. She remembers you from Spelman. She wants to have lunch with you,” I heard this after I’d already turned to look at my swollen face in the mirror.

  “She what? No! No, you didn’t—” I turned back to her.

  “No, I didn’t ask. She asked. She said she wants to talk to you. Catch up.” My mother sounded like I was five years old and she was convincing me to make friends on my firs
t bus ride to school.

  “I can’t believe you,” I said. “And I’m not doing it. I am not going to lunch with Kerry because she feels sorry for me.”

  “I can’t cancel. I already set it up.”

  “You set it up? For when?”

  “Today.”

  I walked out of the room.

  Kerry Jackson was Spelman’s Black Barbie. She was the kind of girl who, when other girls were around her, they couldn’t help but look. She was beautiful. Dark and had long black hair. And she came from a good family. Had money. Got good grades. Had a great reputation. Her mother went to Spelman and pledged our chapter. But Kerry didn’t join. Some people said it was because she didn’t like that the chapter wasn’t “taking in” girls her color and it was clear that they’d only take her because she was a legacy since her mother was a member, too. That made a lot of people hate her. I remember the day after Sasha and I crossed into the sorority, we were with our sisters in the cafeteria, wearing our jackets and singing and Kerry walked in. She was alone, dressed in all black with a single strand of thick aqua pearls around her neck and right wrist. We kept singing and dancing, but when she came in, eyes left us and went to her. They couldn’t stop looking at her. And I was with them. What she did—that she wasn’t trying to be a part of the crowd—made her stand out to me. And add the fact that my mother worked for her mother. I watched her from behind for the next two years and prayed she’d never turn around. And when she did, I’d wave and smile. Never speak. That would acknowledge something we both knew and didn’t want to talk about.

  When I reluctantly walked into the restaurant later that afternoon after talking to my mother, I was looking for the beautiful girl I saw in the black dress and aqua pearls. My mother drove me across town to Murphy’s where I was supposed to meet Kerry at 1:00 p.m.

  I looked around the restaurant after telling the maître d’ I was meeting a friend. She mentioned a woman sitting toward the back at a table and I peeked, but I was sure the woman with the short Afro reading a book wasn’t her. I said I’d wait. I stood around for ten minutes watching a couple share pictures on their phones at the bar.