DATE: 10/25/07
TIME: 11:22 AM
Coreen, where are you? I just called you. I don’t like the way your e-mail sounded. I didn’t mean to make you so upset. I don’t know where your head is, but you’re scaring me. Look, just call me when you get this.
E-MAIL TRANSMISSION
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
DATE: 10/25/07
TIME: 8:15 PM
I’ve been calling you all day and I can’t get you on the phone. I even tried your job and they said you didn’t come in today. What’s going on? Look, I’m going to come by later. I just want to check on you. Just answer the door if you’re there. I don’t know what else to do.
Giving Thanks
After spending most of the night making and remaking Aunt Luchie’s sweet potato pie, I was up at 9:30 AM, walking into the church Jamison grew up. We were attending a prayer service the church held every Thanksgiving morning to send up prayers of thanks. It wasn’t exactly my idea of a way to spend Thanksgiving morning—with Jamison and his mother in a church—but I did it as part of my agreement to try to communicate better with Jamison. We’d been doing great so far. Planning the dinner had actually given us something to focus on other than what we’d been going through. It also helped us to talk and communicate in ways we hadn’t been able to for various reasons in years. We were laughing and singing, sitting up late at night chatting after Tyrian had gone to sleep
.
“Don’t mention what happened,” Jamison said as we stood in the waiting area of the church, preparing to go. He was holding Tyrian in his arms and I was carrying the baby seat. “I didn’t tell my mother.”
“You didn’t tell her?”
“Well, I just didn’t want to give her another reason to . . . you know, be against you.”
He had a point. It probably would actually make his mother happy to hear that he’d cheated.
“Fine,” I said.
“Don’t be mad,” he whispered. “I was trying to protect you.”
The choir stopped singing their opening hymn and an usher opened the door, so we could walk into the sanctuary. I hadn’t been to church, or even out of the house much since Tyrian was born, so I was feeling a bit nervous about wearing what was once my favorite navy blue church suit, and how my less-than-fabulous after-the-baby body looked in a pre-baby-body outfit. It had been three weeks since my special delivery, so I was determined that I wasn’t going to wear another maternity outfit, but my stomach—and oh GOD my thighs—weren’t in agreement with this plan. I’d spread out in ways I didn’t even realize in those nine months and nothing seemed to fit quite right.
I didn’t expect the church to be packed; I figured most people would be at home preparing for company or be out of town, but this little church was near capacity. It almost looked like Sunday morning, the way folks were packed into the pews, piled on top of one another. The choir was up in the loft, the preacher was sitting in his seat at the altar, and someone was reading announcements. With all of this ritual, I wouldn’t feel a need to go to church on Sunday. Jamison and I had been raised in very different churches. Or, should I say, had different church lives. While Jamison was a “holiday” churchgoer now, he attended the same small Baptist church for most of his young life. His uncle was the pastor and he’d spent nearly every night of the week sitting in the pews beside his mother. From Sunday service to Saturday Bible study, he said his mother kept him close to the good house. She seemed to blame me for Jamison’s lack of attendance, but I never told him not to go to church; I just never made it part of my regular regimen. I’d been raised in the same church as my mother and grandmother. I went to service weekly as a child, but our attendance was more a matter of form. Not to say my mother wasn’t a true Christian, but for her, church was an event, a social occasion where she got to see and say hello to old friends and need-to-know acquaintances. Our church was like an attendance sheet for lineage—no big hats, no holy ghosts, no tear-jerking gospel. Just an organ, spirituals, and lots of handshakes.
Jamison’s mother was sitting toward the front of the church. I was sure the pews were about to go up in smoke at any moment with her there, but God saw fit not to kill us all because of one bad seed. In ten years, she’d proven to be the antagonist she’d threatened the day we met. Dottie knew not one kind word to say to me, and even when she came to see Tyrian in the hospital, she managed to rub me the wrong way. “He does look like Jamison did when he was born,” she said, holding him. Only it wasn’t the way most other people would connect a baby’s looks with a parent’s. She purposely emphasized the word “does,” like I’d been cheating.
“Oh,” she said surprised when Jamison tapped her on the shoulder. She slid down in the pew to make room for us, but I noticed that she kept her eye on me. “I didn’t expect all of you,” she whispered, with an uncomfortable smile.
“Yeah, Kerry wanted to come out,” Jamison said, grabbing my hand as we sat down.
“Oh . . .” she said, looking around the church. She seemed rather nervous.
The service was quite moving, and I had to admit that I was glad I’d gone. As the preacher drew his prayer of thankfulness to a close, I sat, holding Jamison’s hand, thinking of how thankful I was for everything I had. I thought of McKenzie and all of the things she didn’t have—the basic things she probably had to worry about on a daily basis. I had the option as to whether I wanted to breast-feed. I didn’t have to worry about where the formula would come from if I didn’t. I wasn’t exactly on great terms with my husband when Tyrian was born, but unlike McKenzie, I knew he could and would take care of us and never even think of trying to make me have sex with another man for money. My life had been in turmoil, but I knew I was blessed anyway. And for that I was thankful to God. Jamison had hurt me. But I could try to forgive him in time. I was willing to move on and try to save my family. I did hear the things Jamison said about our marriage and that we needed to talk more. I was willing to give it everything I had to make it work.
When the prayer was over and the choir began to sing a soothing song, I was in tears.
“You okay?” Jamison whispered in my ear. Dottie was still holding Tyrian, who’d gone to sleep, even with all of the noise.
“Just thinking,” I said, reaching into my purse for a tissue, but I’d left them in my other bag.
“Need something?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m going to go to the bathroom,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the car.”