For a moment I couldn't speak. Mama had been planning all this? Could she really leave me? Leave Roy?
"You're just saying that," I said smiling. "You know you wouldn't get up and go somewhere else."
"Yes, I would, Rain. Yes," she said firmly. "I'm tired of all this, tired of the battling and the hardships. I'm tired of worrying myself to death. I told you before. I'm not losing you to the streets, too."
I started to shake my head.
"You want to be a burden to me all my life, the little I have left of it?" she asked.
Tears burned my eyes.
"I'll never be a burden to you, Mama," I wailed.
"Yes, you would. Yes," she said. "If we stayed here and I had to worry myself sick every day you went off to that school and walked these streets, yes, yes you would."
"I'll get a job. I'll quit school."
"Oh, that would be just fine. I'd really feel good about that," she said smirking. "My one great contribution to your life is to make you someone's waitress or maid or maybe you'd get a job alongside me in the grocery, huh? Maybe you could stack cans, too, and mop up when some child knocks a bottle of sauce off the shelf?"
"We could move, Mama. We could go somewhere else and I'll start school in a better neighborhood," I suggested.
"Move? Where? How? Aunt Sylvia's barely got enough room for me. You know how silly you sound, girl, and you aren't a silly girl. You have a real head on yo
ur shoulders, Rain. You just sit there a moment and you give all this a real think and I'm sure you'll agree I made the best decision I could."
"What do you expect will happen at lunch, Mama?"
"I expect the right thing will happen," she replied. "Finally, I expect the right thing. Now, after you have some breakfast, you pick out your Sunday best, Rain, and you make yourself look the prettiest you can. We're meeting her in Georgetown and you know that's the ritzy area. Lots of well-to-do folks will be around us and we aren't going to be embarrassed for ourselves. No ma'am, no sir, hear?"
I looked down at the table. I could feel the tears filling behind my eyelids.
"Some day maybe, you'll thank me," she said sadly.
Then she rose and with her shoulders slumped, she went into the bathroom to shower and make herself as presentable as she could.
What did it take more of, I wondered, a great deal of strength or a great deal of fear to hope someone else will become the mother of your child?
I was her child, blood or no blood. There was no way I could love the woman who gave birth to me the way I loved Mama, but Mama had a deep faith in the power of heritage and family. She thought blood would overtake everything.
I thought it would do nothing more than drown me in my greatest sorrow.
Mama put on her Sunday church dress and I put on a dark-blue cotton skirt and blouse. I didn't really have a nice jacket so I put on a cardigan sweater. My nicest shoes were flats, but they were a little scratched and scuffed.
As I sat before the mirror brushing out my hair, I felt a little steel ball of nervousness begin to roll around the bottom of my stomach. I was hurt and angry and very anxious, but I couldn't keep back the rush of curiosity either. What was my real mother like? What did she look like? What would she say? What would she think of me?
How could I face her or speak to her knowing she had been willing to give me away? Mama had too much hope, I thought and it wasn't like her. She wasn't a dreamer. Maybe there was a time when she was just like the rest of us, but the disappointments and the tragedies had soured all the cotton candy fantasies and put clouds forever and ever in her blue skies. What did she really think would happen? Why was she doing this?
"You ready, Rain?" she asked from my bedroom doorway.
Getting to Georgetown wasn't going to be easy. We were going to walk and take the metro.
I looked up at her. She tried to smile and when she did there was a flash of what once had been her youth and beauty in her eyes.
"You look very nice," she told me, but when I stood up and finished buttoning my blouse, she gasped. "Rain, where's your chain and cross?"
I hesitated. With all that had happened since Beni and I had gone to the pawnbroker, I had forgotten.
"Oh, Mama," I said.