by Lori Titus
Huh. Yeah.
I crushed my cigarette with my boot and walked up the grassy slope through the crowd of mourners as they began to disperse. Jenna is like a black bird, her eyes lost behind dark glasses, the ruffle of her black dress falling flat against her knees. Her skin is red-brown like my own, and I think that it’s the only trait from our father that we share.
We both look like our respective mothers, and Travis Bell loved two very different women. Or so the story goes. Jenna’s mother, Louise, was Travis’ wife. I always say that if he loved that bitch, what was he doing with my mama? They had an affair. He always acknowledged us, but when he moved out to Texas, he left us here. There were Christmas cards and birthday gifts, the occasional phone calls to see how me and my mother were doing, but that was it. Louise and Jenna were living the good life while my mama continued to come apart at the seams.
Jenna lifted her eyes just as I approached, as if she felt me there.
I reached out to hug her, and I was surprised at how hard she hugged me back. “Thanks for coming, Diana,” she said, her hands trembling. “I’m glad you made it.”
“Well, I wanted to pay my respects, but I didn’t want to intrude,” I said.
She shook her head. “Intrude? No, of course not. You’re my sister. Are you coming to the repast?”
“Maybe Henry and I will stop by.”
“Please do,” she said. Jenna talks so proper, like she went to all the best schools. She claims that she went to all public schools as a kid, but you’d never know it.
Fake, fake, fake.
I reach into my bag and hand her the letter. This is my real reason for coming.
“I know we have talked about it before and that there were reasons you didn’t want to make a change,” I say carefully, “but since all this has happened, I think you should reconsider coming out to stay by us. Daddy left you that property on the other side of the land. It seems only right you come back now that you lost your house.”
Once, she’d had a copy of the deed, but who knew if it had been destroyed in the fire or not? Instead of asking her, I’d come all the way down to see her. She took the envelope and folded it into her jacket pocket like it was nothing. The way you’d shove away a used tissue. That was a legal document—to something that she never deserved to own in the first place. All these tears for her old man, but where the fuck was Jenna when Daddy was dying?
I had seen a lawyer about it. He said that Daddy’s will was very specific. The two houses were built on what was originally one plot of land, and though there was not a gate or privacy wall separating the two houses, the end of the creek cut through the back of the yard, leaving a narrow strip of land that divided the area.
Daddy had said that, to him, it seemed very fair: one daughter had one house, and the other got the second, which was willed to Jenna. He’d known that he was dying, and though his contact with Jenna had been sporadic after he divorced her mother, he expressly stated that he wanted her provided for in this way. The lawyer said it would be next to impossible to fight in court as there was no reasonable objection to her being there.
And now, with the death of Jenna’s husband, it would look plain petty to keep it from her. Despite the fact that I had taken care of that second house, it was not mine to hold onto.
My lawyer suggested that I be the one to bring up the question of Jenna staying in the guesthouse before she up and got the idea to rent or, worse yet, sell it to some total strangers. I didn’t want some strange people that close to my house and my kids.
“Thanks, Diana. I will think about it,” Jenna said, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.
She turned away from me, staring at the coffin piled high with red roses.
I walked away.
FURTHER DOWN THE HILL in the same cemetery where my sister’s husband was put to rest, our daddy was buried. After leaving Jenna to thank the last of her departing guests from Stephen’s memorial, I decided that I would stop at Daddy’s gravesite.
Travis Bell had been a veteran, but he-requested to be buried in his family’s plot, away from other enlisted men. Both his wife and his woman were still alive when he passed, so maybe Louise and Mama both had the last laugh on that score.
On this day when Jenna was remembering her husband, I stood outside the crypt and thought for a while about days gone by and people lost to me. I felt like I should pray or something. I hadn’t been to the crypt since the old man died twelve years before. Prayer is something that I haven’t done in a long time, because I don’t understand Him. Not that I don’t believe in God. I just don’t understand how he allows such suffering in the lives of good people.
On the mausoleum—a bank of marble walls stacked at least five deep all the way across—I see twenty-five names. Ancestors all, but few of the names are familiar. I know Daddy’s mama was named Kamila.
Travis was the youngest, and all his siblings preceded him into their resting places. I tried to remember their names despite the fact I never met them: Jeremiah, Helena, Morgan.
I stood with my hands in my coat pockets. The quiet was different here, thicker. It felt like a holy place.
I don’t know why, after all these years, but my eyes started to fill up with tears. All this family. All this flesh and blood had never been a spit’s worth to me. My mama didn’t have a ring or a name and I- the other woman’s child- was never recognized by any of my Father’s family.
Sometimes things were different for other people, but that’s how my family raised me.
Back when Daddy first died, I used to think about him a lot. Sometimes I remembered things that he said to me. You need to draw closer to your sister. Neither one of you are at fault for what happened between some grown folks when you all were kids. I’d like you to know each other.
That’s what he told me when I went to see him in the hospital. I shrugged it off. I told him I’d think about it.
Bugaboo, you bring me what I need, baby.
His voice was in my head, so clear it stopped my blood. No one- called me by that pet name except for my father.
“Daddy?” I said. The walls bounced my own voice back at me. Of course, there was just emptiness.
I turned and left that place, my heels making too much noise. I went back out into the sunlight, the cold air filling my lungs. I swiped at my eyes and headed towards my car, where Henry would be waiting.
He must have wondered what the hell was keeping me.
“WELL, WHAT DID SHE say?” Henry asked when I got in the car.
I rolled my eyes. “What do you think she said? Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“She said she’d think about it.”
He nodded and started the ignition. “Well, babe, maybe this wasn’t the best time to bring this all up anyway. I mean with her husband and all. That’s got to throw her for a loop.”
“Whatever,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road while he drove. I didn’t want him to see how upset I really was right then.
As we turned onto a gray strip of highway, I could hear my father’s voice, true and clear.
Your man might be fooled, but I always know what you’re up to, Bugaboo.
Chapter Two
Jenna barely remembered the phone call. She had spent the night at a hotel up in Arizona, attending a conference for work. She’d been gone for three days, but on the last day of her stay, something was bugging her.
She called the house and spoke briefly with her husband, Stephen. “How are you feeling today?”
He laughed, a humorless sound. She wondered if his throat hurt, because he still sounded hoarse.
“I’ll be okay, baby. It’s just a cold.”
“What are you taking for it?”
“Pseudoephedrine,” he said. “You know, the stuff in the white and red package. I just took a couple of them, so I figure I’ll be out like a light in a minute.”
“I really should have stayed home,” Jenna muttered.
“No way,” Ste
phen countered, still cheerful despite his discomfort. “You registered for this thing last year, and you were going to lose your money on it. Besides, I’m sure you’re learning all kinds of new things.”
“I guess,” Jenna said. “Listen, it looks like they are about to start up again. Do you mind if I call you back later?”
“You don’t have to bother. Frankly, I really just want to sleep through tonight if I can. We’ll talk again in the morning.”
“Alright, babe. I love you. Get some rest.”
“Sure thing. Love you too.”
He hung up first, and Jenna held the cell phone to her ear a little longer. She had a feeling, a flutter of panic in her chest. She thought about calling him back right then, but he’d think she was crazy. She held onto the memory of his voice, the warmth of his casual tone.
She could not have known that was the last time the she’d ever speak to her husband.
“MRS. MCBRIDE, THERE has been an accident.”
Jenna thought that she might drop the phone, but she held onto the receiver tight, unable to move.
The voice was flat and official. Funny how you can analyze so few words. It seemed as if this line was intended to be the icebreaker of the conversation.
The next words flowed with more compassion. She remembered the feeling, though not the actual words. Somehow, Jenna was made to understand that there had been a fire and that there was a lone deceased person in the house.
They pointedly asked if her husband was at home that evening.
Jenna took the first flight out. She arrived at the airport with a wad of cash and briefly explained that she needed the next direct flight to South Carolina if there was one. It took some doing, but they were able to find a flight for her, and within an hour she was in the air headed back towards the East Coast.
Even on the crowded flight, she remained in her own world, where the walls were closing in on her. Sometime after takeoff, she got hold of Stephen’s mother and spoke to her through a cloud of tears. The woman didn’t know much more than she had been told, though the details she found out were from a family friend who worked for the fire department. It was then that she realized that the body was only being identified through dental records because it was burned beyond recognition.
Other passengers on the plane overheard, and she realized that people around her were speaking in hushed tones. A flight attendant came by and, with a gentle squeeze to her shoulder, asked if she would like a drink. Jenna said that she would.
When she took her first gulp of whiskey, she realized her throat was sore. It burned going down, but it blurred the edges of her pain, just enough to make her want to sleep. As she gave into her weariness, she thought about the cold pills and how Stephen always slept like a rock. She wondered if he dreamed as he entered that last sleep and hoped that he wasn’t cognizant when the fire licked into his flesh.
HOW ODD THE ORDER OF things, that when she lost her husband in the fire she almost forgot that the house was gone too.
Jenna had thought of it in the back of her mind. Her wedding photos and those from her honeymoon in Barbados - those were things that she would miss. They made a rare decision to have a modest wedding but a top-notch honeymoon. Given the choice between the two, Jenna always believed they had chosen a wisely.
Once she did come to grips with the idea that her house was gone, she tried to envision it—windows busted out, walls sagging, and a huge hole where the roof used to be.
Her imagination could not have begun to envision- the totality of the damage. Standing on the sidewalk, hands in pockets, she gaped in shock. There wasn’t enough of a frame to even distinguish one room from another. Scattered brick, charred wood, and ash were all that remained—the smoldering wreckage of what used to be their life
My husband was in there, what could be left of him? Was there a body, or had he been reduced to fragments?
Jenna wanted to scream, but she couldn’t seem to pull enough air into her chest to do it.
THE DAYS BETWEEN THE fire and the funeral passed in a sunny haze.
The arrangements were difficult to make, but Jenna managed it. Phone calls and decisions were something that she was accustomed to handling. Her mother’s death the previous year had made her aware of all the small things that she would need to do. It had become a familiar ritual.
Dealing with the house was another thing. They had insurance, and she could rebuild if she chose. She laughed when the adjuster told her this. Rebuild? What could possibly be worth rebuilding in the place where her husband died?
Jenna’s friend Amanda put together a photo album for her. She’d copied some pictures off an old Facebook account. Other shots, mutual friends had saved here and there, and to Jenna’s surprise, she found a few choice shots of Stephen she’d never seen before. One, from a co-worker at the clinic where Stephen worked as a physical therapist, was a shot of him with two of his colleagues and a patient, an elderly woman who smiled at him like he was her own son.
He grinned, his eyes staring directly at the camera.
He seemed to look past her, through her, to a place that she could not reach.
The wedding pictures were the hardest to look at. Thank God Amanda kept these, she thought. Amanda had even saved the cache of fourteen photos taken at the ceremony.
The best of the candid shots had been taken at an angle slightly behind Jenna so that her face was caught beneath her veil in profile. Stephen’s face was framed as he looked down on her with one hand on her shoulder and the other gripping her right hand. She did not remember the touch on her shoulder, but she remembered well how warm his hands were and how tightly he clutched hers. She had seen that look in his eyes many times again through the years, the gaze that made her feel loved.
Now, Jenna cried, but it did nothing to ease the pain constricting her chest.
ON THE SECOND DAY AFTER Stephen died, Jenna took a call from her half- sister, Diana.
Exhausted from the steady stream of friends and family who were calling, she’d turned off the ringer on her phone and crawled into bed mid-afternoon, attempting to get some sleep. She lay in bed, fully dressed, with the comforter pulled over her and the television droning in the background.
She was going through the emails on her cell phone when she saw Diana’s name light up the screen. Incoming call. Jenna sighed and picked up.
“How are you?” Diana asked, her voice low and heavy as always. There was a smokiness to Diana’s voice that reminded her very much of their grandmother. She would know it anywhere.
“Here,” Jenna replied. “Can’t really say much more than that.”
“Where is here exactly? I mean where are you staying?”
Jenna gave her the name of the hotel, a place where she had stayed briefly before.
“Are you going to get an apartment? I mean, I’m sure you don’t want to think about this right now, but you can’t just stay in a hotel forever. That’s a waste of your money.”
“Sure,” Jenna replied. “It’s just until the memorial. Then I’ll think about where I want to go.”
An uneasy silence elapsed between them. Jenna had a feeling that Diana was edging around the subject rather than asking a direct question, something highly unlike her.
Diana had always been blunt to the point of being cruel at times, but Jenna rather appreciated that quality.
They talked a while longer. She could hear Diana’s four-year-old granddaughter in the background playing with the family dog.
“I told you to take him outside,” Diana admonished.
Jenna heard the sound of footsteps, barking, and more chatter, then Diana came back on the line.
“Sorry about that. How are you holding up?” Diana pressed. “I mean really.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m devastated. But I’m not going to jump off of anything or cut anything open if that’s what you mean.”
“Alright then.”
They talked a while longer, though later Jenna
would not recall much of the conversation.
At the end of their call, she turned the phone off and burrowed deeper under the covers. When sleep came, she dreamed again of her wedding day and Stephen’s eyes fixed upon her with a loving, patient stare.
MELVA, STEPHEN’S MOTHER, invited Jenna over to her house to talk, or more accurately, to commiserate in their sadness over a meal. A month had elapsed since the funeral, and Jenna had kept to herself. Melva’s invitation was a pleasant surprise.
“Are you sure that you’re not making a hasty decision?” Melva asked. “You know that you’re welcome to come stay with me if you like.”
“It’s so sweet of you to even think that way, but I couldn’t,” Jenna said. She hated seeing the sadness in the older woman’s eyes.
“I know we had a bit of a rough start when you and Stephen first got married, but I think of you as my daughter now. That’s not going to change just because he’s gone. So if you need anything, honey, I hope you’ll come to me.”
Jenna squeezed her hand. “Thank you. I am going to go live at my father’s old place. I own it, and it’s been sitting vacant for a lot of years. It will be a different place. New memories to be made.”
She didn’t go on to say that she felt staying with Melva would not be healthy for either of them.
“How do you and Diana get along?”
“Okay. We have only really gotten to know each other over these last few years, but we keep in touch. She has made a real effort to get closer.”
“You think she was jealous of you and your mother?” she asked. “Since Diana was an outside child?”
Jenna shrugged. “I’ve told her before that I don’t care about that. After all, it was a bad situation all around, and it’s not like she asked to be brought into that circumstance. Now, to be honest, I didn’t appreciate her mama. But she’s been gone a lot of years. Not like we have a huge family on my dad’s side anyway.”
