Should Have Known Better

by Grace Octavia

  I looked at my watch and saw that it was getting late. Maybe she’d gotten stuck in traffic, I thought: we were in Atlanta. Maybe she’d canceled though, I thought, after realizing that she was about to meet a woman for lunch whom she hardly knew. I scanned the room and somehow I kept going back to the woman with the short Afro.

  This time, she looked up from her book and toward the front of the room. She took off these black spectacles and there was Kerry.

  I looked for a second to make sure it was her and then I made my way to the table.

  “Kerry?” I said, ambling through the maze. “It’s me, Dawn. I was waiting up front.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Kerry got up and hugged me. She was wearing a loose pea green yoga set and when she moved, her top seemed to flow over her skin.

  “You look so different,” I announced almost involuntarily.

  “Oh, everyone says that.” Kerry laughed as the waiter pulled out my seat. “I can’t be that different. Really? Come on.”

  “No, you’ve changed. Changed a lot,” I said. “You look beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “So what’s up with you, Ms. Lady? How have you been?”

  “Alive. I’m sure my mother gave you an earful. She told me she spoke to you and your mother.”

  “Oh, thank God you know.” Kerry exhaled. “I was thinking I’d have to sit through this lunch and get you to tell me what’s going on yourself. You know she swore me to secrecy.”

  “Yeah, after she told all of my business,” I said.

  “Well, join the club!” She picked up her glass of water and clinked mine. “Look, you don’t have to feel any pressure. If you don’t want to talk about what’s going on, we don’t have to. I was just hoping to get you out of the house. I remember when I was where you are at. I’d go days in the dark.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “So what were you reading?” I pointed to the book she’d stashed in the chair beside her. “I’m just being nosy. I’m a librarian.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful.” She reached for the book and put it back on the table. “It’s just a textbook. I’m finishing my Master’s in Public Health.”

  “That’s . . . wonderful,” I said, laughing at repeating her word.

  “One more class and I’m done! This one is killing me.”

  “What are you going to do with it—the degree?”

  “I’m going to open a clinic for handicapped mothers,” Kerry explained. “A place where they can come and get special services and see doctors who are experienced with their needs. I’ve already got a location, start-up money, and interested physicians.”

  Kerry and I had a long conversation over lunch. We didn’t talk about Reginald or Sasha. I told her about the library and Sharika going back to school. Mr. Lawrence and Mrs. Harris. The teenagers. The twins. Cheyenne’s attitude. How it felt when I learned about R. J.’s autism.

  She listened and cheered me on. And while I still felt like I was half dead, she gave me hope without offering it.

  She told me a little about her divorce. How her husband had cheated on her, and twice with the same woman. She said she’d slept on a floor, too. Had to be dragged out of bed. But she was OK. And knowing she’d been where I was at made it seem like some kind of change was possible.

  She was so together. She wore her victory over her divorce like a piece of armor. I didn’t know if I’d ever get there, but it was nice to be reminded that maybe I could.

  “I cut my hair,” Kerry said, digging into the bowl of warm peaches with cobbler crust and vanilla bean ice cream we’d agreed to share for dessert. “That’s when I knew I was ready to move on. I got up and went into the bathroom and just cut it all off.”

  “Why?”

  “I still don’t really know. I think I was tired. Tired of all of those years of my life I’d wasted trying to be someone’s wife, and someone’s mother, and someone’s daughter—it was all too much.”

  “But what did your hair have to do with that?”

  “It was just what I thought made me beautiful. What I thought made people like me. It was everything they’d talk about: ‘Kerry’s hair is so long. . . . Kerry’s so dark, but she has that pretty, long hair!’ But when Jamison was gone and I was left sitting in that big house with just myself and my son, I was like, ‘Fuck it! I’m tired of doing this hair!’ So I cut it off and I haven’t let it grow back since. I’ve cut a lot of things.” She spooned the last scoop of ice cream onto my saucer. “What are you going to cut?”

  “Cut?”

  “Yeah, cut from your life? You can’t get a whole new life unless you let some of the old things go.”

  “I don’t know if I need to go cutting things just yet,” I said. “Seems like right now people are busy cutting things for me.” I stopped and let the waiter place our bill on the table and waited until he’d walked away and I was sure he couldn’t hear me. “That woman took him. She came into my house. She took my husband. And every time I think about that, I have to think that maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she didn’t take anything. Maybe I never had it.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I want my kids back. I want my house. My mother thinks I need a divorce.”

  “And you?”

  “I’d be a liar if I said yes,” I said. “I feel yes. Of course. I’m furious. But it’s been a long time. And I keep thinking maybe Reginald’s confused. Maybe he’ll wake up and see Sasha for what she is. Maybe . . .” I stopped. “I’m too embarrassed.”

  Kerry insisted that she pay for lunch. She said I needed to be treated—formally.

  “How’d you do it?” I asked as we walked out of the restaurant. Kerry had agreed to drive me home, so my mother didn’t have to drive all the way back downtown to get me. “How’d you get through all of that stuff and come out like this?”

  Kerry was quiet. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a card that was so yellow it was almost neon. She handed it to me.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “It’s what healed me.”

  HHNFH was spelled out in sparkling diamonds that were perfectly placed in the center of the card above a phone number.

  “Hell Hath No Fury House,” she said.

  I laughed at the name.

  “Are you serious? What’s that?”

  “I wasn’t going to tell you about it unless you asked,” Kerry answered. “It’s a special treatment and counseling center for women thinking about, going through, and those who have been through divorce. It’s where I went after I cut off all of my hair and people thought I was crazy. They help.”

  “Hell Hath No Fury House,” I repeated, still laughing. “You can’t be serious.” I looked at Kerry. “You’re joking. A counseling program for divorcing women? No offense, but I don’t need that. I’m OK. Is this why my mother put you up to meeting me? I told her I don’t want a counselor.”

  “She doesn’t know anything about it,” Kerry said.

  “Well, I’m sorry. Just meeting with you was cool. I already feel better than I did this morning. Got some air. I’m just not feeling like being around a bunch of angry women all day.” I tried to hand the card back to Kerry, but she stepped back.

  “You’re not angry?” Kerry asked flatly.

  “I’m depressed,” I said. “I’m . . . angry. But I don’t need this kind of help. I can get through this myself.” I held the card out, but Kerry folded it back up in my hand.

  “Just keep it,” she said. “Just keep it.”

  When Kerry and I got to my mother’s house, there was a compact car with one of those magnetic signs over the top that said PIZZA sitting right out front.

  “Looks like someone’s having pizza for dinner tonight,” Kerry joked as I got out of her car.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, noticing that there was a man, a black man, sitting in the front seat. I thought it was odd for my mother to be ordering pizza; I didn’t remember her being a pizza eater and I was confident she was going to try to serve
those lima beans again, but there were no other cars out in the street and the car was parked right in front of her house. Her car wasn’t in the driveway. “Hey, thanks for lunch. It was a great idea.” I closed the door and bent down to talk to Kerry through the open window.

  “I enjoyed it, too. Maybe we can do it again.”

  “That sounds great.”

  “And don’t forget about HHNFH.”

  “Got it right here in my back pocket,” I pointed out, tapping my pocket.

  I waved at Kerry driving off and turned to see the man getting out of the pizza delivery car.

  He had a pizza box in one hand and an envelope in the other.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  “Hope so,” he answered, smiling kindly. “Are you Dawn Johnson?”

  “Yes,” I said, surprised that he knew my name. “But I didn’t order pizza.”

  The man tossed the pizza box onto the hood of his car and it slid over a little bit like it was just an empty cardboard box.

  He handed me the envelope.

  “You’ve been served.”

  “I what?” I asked with the envelope in my hand. “Served? But I . . .” I read for the first time a name that would stay with me for a very long time: Terri D. Loomis Law. “What’s this?” I looked back up to talk to the pizza deliveryman, but he was already pulling off, leaving me in the street holding the envelope.

  I went into the house and sat down at the dining room table to read the letter inside of the envelope. I didn’t even close the front door. My purse was still on my shoulder. I read.

  It was a petition for divorce. Reginald was citing “irreconcilable differences.” Somewhere in the pages it said there was a “conflict of personality” and “constant bickering.” He wanted to split our possessions, excluding the house, which was in his name, down the middle and full custody of the children—Cheyenne Loren and Reginald Brian. He cited that I was losing my job and had recently been arrested for a DUI and failed a drug test.

  I dropped the paper. My head was spinning. My neck felt clammy.

  These words, these ideas had been floating around for days, but everyone made it seem like a “divorce” would be my idea. I wasn’t prepared for it to be Reginald’s. His estrangement was obvious. I didn’t think he’d want a paper to prove it. And not so fast. This was happening too fast. How could he be sure? Not sure that he wanted to be with Sasha, but that he wanted to leave me? And take my children? I couldn’t let him take my children. If he left, it had to be alone. He couldn’t have them.

  I looked at the papers. Let my arms fall to my sides and just sat there and looked at them. The silence in the empty house became deafening. My ears rang. I felt the pain, the burning, empty, tiring pain rushing back to me. I looked at the china cabinet.

  “Nothing? Nothing in here?” I cried, shuffling around my mother’s old carafes in the bottom cabinet. There were no bottles left. My mother must’ve thrown them out. One of the carafes rolled out to the floor and then another as I rummaged through. “Nothing. Nothing!”

  I saw sunlight rolling in across the living room floor. The front door was open.

  A carafe rolled and hit my mother’s foot.

  “What’s this?” She walked quickly into the dining room. “What are you doing?”

  “I can’t find it!” I explained, but I don’t know what I was talking about. Right then it was the liquor, but there was something else.

  “No, not a drink. You don’t need that,” she said. “I threw it all out. No more. I should’ve done it before when your father died. It’s gone now. It’s all gone now.”

  “But I need it,” I cried.

  “No, you don’t.” She came over to the table. “What’s this letter? Who’s it—” She started reading.

  I kept looking around in the cabinet for something I couldn’t find.

  “He wants a divorce?” my mother read.

  I got up and looked through the drawers, but I couldn’t find it there either. I ran into the living room. It wasn’t in any of the drawers in the end tables.

  I looked at the staircase and thought maybe it was upstairs. Maybe it was upstairs.

  “What are you looking for?” my mother asked, coming up behind me.

  “Something to stop this. Something to stop everything. The pain. And Reginald. Sasha. Me. I need something to stop this,” something in me said. I ran up the stairs and went straight to my parents’ room.

  “What? What’s in here?” my mother asked. She was crying then. Puddles of tears were gathering in the sides of her eyes.

  I went to the closet and started pulling stacks of hat boxes from the top shelf.

  “What are you looking for? What is it, baby? Tell me!”

  At the back of the closet was a rusty green lockbox. I snatched it.

  “Your father’s old gun? What are you doing with that? No . . . no . . . you don’t need that!”

  I opened the box. He never once locked it. I pulled out the gun and dropped the box.

  “Dawn, please stop! Please! In the name of Jesus, please stop this right now!”

  “Give me the keys,” I said.

  “I can’t. You’re not supposed to drive.”

  “Give me the keys!”

  “No, I can’t.”

  I grabbed my mother’s purse and tried to find the keys, but I was shaking so badly I could hardly see anything.

  “Give me the keys, Mama! I need them. I need to stop this!” I tried to sound reasonable. But I was screaming at her and she shook.

  “I can’t,” she cried. “I can’t.”

  I pushed past her and started walking toward my room.

  “What are you going to do with that gun?” she asked, following behind me. “You’ll hurt yourself. Give it to me. Please!”

  I didn’t say anything. I just kept walking. I was seeing fire. Seeing flames. Literally in my eyes.

  “You want me to call the police? You want me to call the police and have them lock you up? I’ll do it. I’ll do it to protect you. I can’t have you out here like this. You’ll kill yourself!”

  My mother reached for the gun, but I pulled away. She got on my back and tried to get her arms around me, but I shook her off and ran down the hallway into the bathroom.

  I went inside and turned to see her coming down the hall to me.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “What are you doing?”

  I slammed the door closed before she could reach me. I held it closed and locked it.

  She pounded so hard on the wood it sounded like it would split.

  “Lord Jesus, please help my child!” she cried again and again.

  I put the gun on the floor and sat on the toilet. I looked at it and thought of how it could make everything stop. I could get away. I could be free. I was so angry at myself. I felt like I’d done this. I’d done everything wrong and now here I was. Me and a gun in the bathroom.

  My mother’s screaming got louder. She was wailing. Past weeping. Wailing.

  I finally began to cry.

  I hadn’t noticed it before, but the whole time, after I read that letter and saw that Reginald was petitioning for child support, I hadn’t cried.

  I looked up at the ceiling at something I couldn’t see, but needed to know was there.

  “My God!” I cried, and the heat in me boiled out of my mouth so fast that I lurched forward to my knees, falling to the floor beside the gun.

  “My God!” I cried. “God, help me!”

  10

  I’m a grown woman now and I was a grown woman then, but I have to say, thank God for mamas. I thought I knew something about being a mother from having my own children. From staying up late at night cleaning up vomit from stomach viruses and rubbing lotion on chicken pox. I thought I understood the power of a mother and how the strength in that role alone can make miracles happen even when I thought God himself couldn’t care less. But when I heard that bathroom door come crashing down and I thought my mother had called the poli
ce, but really it was just her with a chair in her hands, I realized that the strength of a mother is God. It has no limits. It has no apologies. It has no order. It’s a bail of water coming to put the fire out.

  When I cried out for God, my mother came kicking in. She pulled me off the floor and held me in her arms and promised she’d never let me go again. She wasn’t going to let me kill or be killed. She was going to fight with me and we were going to win.

  And then it was like a little bit of the sun was in the room with us. Lying in my mother’s arms, I saw a glowing in the corner of my eyes on the floor beside the gun. We looked at it at the same time. It was the little yellow card from my pocket.

  “You call me when you’re done. I’ll be right out here waiting in the parking lot,” my mother said the very next Monday outside of the Hell Hath No Fury House. “I won’t leave you.”

  “I know, Mama,” I said. She’d stayed with me in my bedroom the night before and we’d called HHNFH in the morning to see what I needed to do to get more information. This came after a long talk where we agreed that I needed help if I was going to get the twins back and feel any sense of normalcy in my life. The woman on the phone said I was lucky because there was an orientation that night. All I needed was a pen and a pad. Be there at 7:00 p.m. It was free.

  The House was really a house. A little red and white craftsman in the middle of a swarm of gray buildings. There was a mailbox. A white picket fence. A porch with a row of rocking chairs.

  “I’m proud of you for doing this.”

  “You’ve said that a hundred times,” I said.

  “Well, you said you weren’t going to get counseling and now you agreed. I think that’s a lot to be proud of.”

  “Hold on,” I started. “I agreed to get help. We don’t know if this is all counseling or what.” The woman had been very vague on the phone. “I’m just going to see what it is. If it helped Kerry, maybe it can help me.”

  “Good words,” my mother said.