His Last Wife

This history was followed by similar scenes—boys Kerry wanted to love, friends Kerry wanted to make, places Kerry wanted to go, things Kerry wanted to know—all squashed with the heavy hand of a mother who did the honors in the name of love.

“I love him, Mama. And he loves me.” This was Kerry speaking more than ten years after the situation in the Bluffs. Then she was graduating from Spelman and she’d met some boy who was on scholarship at Morehouse. Thirjane had met the boy a few times. He was rather dark. Didn’t know which forks to use and spit in her begonias.

“I can’t believe you said yes to this man and accepted this ring—without speaking to me first.” Thirjane looked at the sad little ring and decided that there was no way she’d let her child go showing that thing to her people around town.

“What is there to talk about? We’re getting married.”

“He’s not good enough for you, Kerry Ann. And you don’t understand what I’m talking about now, but someday you will. He’s going to bring you down. This man is going to ruin you; ruin us—this family—our legacy. You’re my only child. Please!”

Kerry rolled her eyes like her mother didn’t know anything about anything.

“Mama, please stop. You’ve been telling me that since you forbade me to talk to Zachary Fullerton when I was eight years old. And he’s on his way to medical school.”

“Well, why don’t you call him up then? This Jamison isn’t going to medical school.”

“That’s because he’s staying here with me until I can get into school. And he wants to marry me.”

“This is going to be the biggest mistake of your life, girl. I’m telling you. Listen to your mother. I know best. That boy

isn’t from anything and he’s never going to have anything. You’re going to struggle and struggle just to have a little bit, just to keep up. You will have to work. You will have to clean. You will have to pretend it’s all okay, but it won’t be. It’s going to be hard as hell because you married down and you married the wrong man. And I am not going to help,” Thirjane said so nastily her words dug into Kerry’s tear ducts and produced the crying Thirjane was seeking. “I will not let that nigga have a dime of my husband’s money!”

If the situation in the Bluffs with the Fullertons set the tempo for the dream, then this later scene about Jamison was the chorus and so many other similar situations filled in the rest of the brain noise that had Thirjane tossing and turning in bed. Soon she was sweating and popped up in the bed like a mummy waking during the zombie apocalypse. She looked around, surprised at her surroundings. It was like she’d been returned to the waking world, with all of her worries packed on her shoulders ten times heavier.

When her feet hit the floor on the side of her bed, Tyrian was about to get up and run back to his bed, but he sat for a minute and kept his recording going.

In the bedroom, his grandmother was walking around, talking to herself. He held the iPad to the door to capture the angry mumbles and fear-tinged declarations.

“He was ruining everything! Everything! I worked so hard. Gave her everything! What was I supposed to do, just sit by and watch him hurt my baby? Not again! Not my baby!”

Tyrian dropped the iPad and pressed his ear against the door. He couldn’t tell if the sounds were coming from his grandmother or the television, which she sometimes left on at night when she’d gone to bed.

But then there was: “Jamison was never right for her. I told her. Why couldn’t she listen to me? Why? If she’d listened to me, none of this would’ve happened. I never would’ve done this!”

What had she done? What? Tyrian pressed his head closer to the door and wondered this. Why was she talking about his father? She never liked him. Tyrian knew that and quickly learned when he was just a baby and noticed just by watching the two that whenever his father walked into a room, his grandmother walked out. And if she stayed, soon there would be arguing.

On the other side of the door, Thirjane was standing in the middle of her bedroom beneath an antique Tiffany light fixture. She was wearing a simple, white cotton nightgown and her long, silver hair had slipped from beneath her nightcap and was hanging down her back. She wrapped her arms around her waist like she was holding some agony down in the lower part of body and was afraid to let go, or else it would rise and rise and drown her as it filled the rest of her.

“Why, God? Why?” She shook and looked up at the ceiling. She kept imagining Kerry’s sad eyes that afternoon in the Bluffs. “No! No! No!”

Something got into her and she rushed to the little baby blue bathroom in her bedroom, flipped the light switch, and planted herself in front of the mirror.

She squinted at her reflection. At the drama of the years in lines beneath her eyes and sagging cheeks. Where was the tight chin and piercing eyes that used to send people into fear and trembling? That chief of chiefs, who’d walk into a room and put everyone into a corner? She’d lost her power day by day when she wasn’t looking. Every ounce of it. And her child was sitting in jail and there was nothing she could do about it. All she ever wanted for that little girl was for Kerry to be better than her. Happier, maybe. Softer. To have everything and not have to fight. Not to have to enter into the world with boxing gloves on every single day.

“Kerry!” Thirjane cried at her reflection. “Kerry!”

And then seconds later she was sitting on the edge of her bed with an ivory house phone pressed to her ear.

“In the morning, I’m going to turn myself in,” she got out through sniffles. “I’m going to turn myself in, so my child can go free. I did this. I can’t stand by and watch Kerry suffer because of it.”

“No need, Mrs. Jackson,” an ominous male voice said on the other end. “The DA is making a statement in the morning. He’s releasing her.”

“What? What? Why?”

“Change of heart, it seems.”

Thirjane hung up the phone and fell to her knees in prayer.

In the morning, she’d find Tyrian asleep on the floor, cradling his iPad in front of her bedroom door.