“Yeah, I know what that is,” she said. “I had one, too. But then my child ran off a
nd—”
“Mama, I don’t have time to go through all this. I shouldn’t have come here. I knew you’d—”
“Knew I’d what? Bring up the past? Bring up how you just run up out of here like it was the worst place in the world and then marry the first man who ties your shoe? Didn’t ask your daddy for permission or nothing?”
“Oh, no, this was a mistake,” I said, hearing the kids trampling up the stairs with our bags.
“Don’t you dare walk out of here,” she said to my back as I turned to walk out, “like you got someplace else to go. Ain’t no other reason you’d be here anyway. So what you need me for? You could’ve gone to a hotel. Need me to look after them? Is that it? Do you even know where he’s at?”
“Just the street,” I said, turning around.
“Ohh,” she heaved.
“Lover’s Lane,” I said, hearing Reginald say it to me in my memory.
“Lover’s Lane? Where’s that?”
“Buckhead, up north somewhere.”
“Buckhead? So, you going up to see them white folks to find your husband in some house you ain’t never seen? Is she white?”
“No, Mama,” I said. “I told you she went to school with me. You met her before—”
“Who cares if I met her before?”
“Look, I don’t want to get into all of that. I just need you to watch the kids for a little bit.”
“Yeah, I’ll watch them. But who’s gonna watch you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You going up there all upset and what you gonna do? Fight somebody? Get hauled off to jail? That’s what you gonna do?”
“I just need to talk to him.”
“And what if he don’t want to talk? You think you going to be able to just leave? No. Your heart ain’t gonna let you do that. I’ve seen women burn down houses. Kill. Kill themselves. Thinking they were just gonna go and talk to someone. You ain’t heard from him, and that’s because he don’t want to be heard. What make you think he wants to talk?”
“Well, that’s fine, Mama, but what am I supposed to do then?”
“Pray.”
I just stood there and looked at her.
Even in my anger, there were so many things I’d wanted to say to my mother over the years. To pick up the phone and laugh and tell her what it was like being married. Having children. Learning to deal with life as it came to me. Things that made me a woman. So many things she’d missed. So many things she needed to know. How clean my house was. How I never let my children go to bed hungry or dirty or cold. How everything she’d taught me about making beds and cleaning staircases, washing dishes and warming bread had somehow snuck into my life. But there was something I’d left out of the things I’d wanted to tell her. One thing I’d given up over all those years. And on purpose. One thing I never wanted to say to anyone, especially not her. I didn’t pray anymore.
My father always said that your desire for light keeps the devil busy. And just as surely as you’ll see the sun, he’ll make sure darkness comes right behind it.
I always thought it was rather sad to look at life like that. Like saying a glass is half empty rather than half full, and fully expecting it to be empty soon. His way of thinking made happiness seem so temporary, so flimsy and inconsistent. He expected sadness. He expected darkness. He waited for darkness to take the light. And if it didn’t, he took it himself.
The sun went down and my mother sat at the dining room table playing some card game with the twins. They were betting with pennies and nickels she’d found around the house and R. J. and Cheyenne were laughing.
They seemed so natural with her. And I had to keep reminding myself that I shouldn’t have expected less. They’d asked about her so many times when they were very little, and when Reginald’s mother died, Cheyenne buried her face into my lap and cried that she only had one grandmother left.
I’d guessed that over the years their hearts had become as hardened as mine, but I was wrong. Maybe they needed to see her. To snap beans and play cards with her. Maybe I’d been wrong to keep them away because I wanted to stay away. But after one year, the second year got easier, and then I didn’t have to explain anything anymore.
I sat on the couch watching TV in the living room, listening to them argue over nickels like I had with my mother when I was ten. Only then, when we heard my father’s key in the door, we’d flush the cards and coins into my mother’s purse and pretend we were praying. He’d warn my mother that playing cards was a sin and go for his bottle in the china cabinet.