Should Have Known Better

When we got back into the car I must’ve called Sasha every foul word I ever learned. I was sitting beside my mother, but I didn’t apologize. I was just that angry. Just that pissed off.

“When did you lose your faith?” my mother said after I ran out of nasty things to say.

“What?” I thought I heard her incorrectly.

“Your faith . . . when did you lose it? Because how you were acting in there, it was clear you didn’t have any.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with me or how I acted. Did you see her? Did you see how she was acting?”

“How she was acting has nothing to do with you. She’s obviously not walking with the Lord, but you, you weren’t raised like that. You know the Word.”

“Now we get to it. I guess the Good Reverend still has his power. But you know what?” I looked at her. “I haven’t exactly seen you running off to church. When was the last time you went and sat in a pew? Or did that get too old when God called Herbert George home?”

“You keep pushing this off on everyone else. It’s Sasha. It’s me. It’s your father. How I worship God has nothing to do with you. And the relationship your father had with his maker is none of your business.”

“Relationship? Please. He used God. And as far as I’m concerned, if there was a God, he would’ve struck Dad dead the day he choked you in the dining room,” I said. “Maybe you forgot that I was there. Maybe you forgot that I was in the closet. But I’ll never forget that. And I’ll never forgive him or God.” I turned to the street. “I don’t need to have faith. I have myself.”

“One day, you ain’t gonna be enough,” she said solemnly. “And when that day comes, I hope you lay these burdens down and do what I taught you to do. Prayer changes things. Faith is the most powerful thing in the world. Not you.”

9

It is a fact that I slept on the floor that night. I sat on the bed for a little while. I listened to my mother walking through the house praying and scrubbing every surface she could find. We were tired. Just tired. And if I tried to explain that to you, I’d say you’d have to have experienced something so excruciatingly painful that all you want to do is feel something more deep and dark than that. What I learned that night with my face to the floor, like it had been in the closet when I was too young to imagine my life becoming such a tragedy, is that some people try to fight that feeling of exhaustion with drugs. Some with alcohol. Some even with sex. Some with things and pleasure. Some death. I wanted to feel more pain. I wanted to feel my bones splitting and aching on the wood as I held my eyes closed and pretended to sleep. I wanted for my back to sink into the floor and hurt so bad so I could let this pain go and move on.

When we’d gotten home, my mother had told me about her parents. The grandparents she always said were dead and buried in Mississippi. Now she admitted she didn’t know if they were dead or alive. She said her father was a bad drunk. And one night he was so liquored up, he tried to drown her mother in a lake. All three of them almost went under as my mother tried to save her. My mother slit the wrist on her father’s left hand that night as he slept. He woke up and chased her off of the farm. She ran and never went back, but she said she had two younger sisters in the house and they said he never hit her mother again—he never really slept again either. She got a bus ticket to Atlanta. Didn’t know a soul. Hardly knew how to read. But she could clean.

“I only wanted three things when I got married: to have someone who could give me and my children a life,” she said, holding her arms straight out toward the steering wheel, “and that he would not beat on me, and never drink. That was it. When I met your daddy, I knew I was safe. He was a preacher. He never drank and he said he’d never hurt me. If I worked, he’d work. But then I saw he was drinking some days and then every night. See, back then working men didn’t use drugs . . . they drank. That’s what they did. He’d say one thing on the pulpit, but come home and be just like one of them souls he tried to save. I insisted he stop. But it had a hold on him. Just like it did my father. I was going to leave. I wanted to leave. But then I had you and I thought I could save him. I’d fought that demon before and I’d risen to the top. I could do it again this time. I could fix him. I could survive him. You could survive him. When you left I was angry and I was mad that I never saw you. Mad that you never came around. But I understood. And a little part of me was kind of glad. I thought maybe you’d survive. Maybe you were off living a good life and having everything I didn’t have. You hated your father. Hated me. But you had love. And that meant someone floated to the top that time. When you showed up at the house, I knew we were both still drowning.”

When I woke up, my mother was sitting on the bed. The sun was up. I could tell she’d left the house by the shoes she was wearing.

“I went to see Mrs. Jackson,” she said.

“What? Why would you go see Mrs. Jackson?” I asked, referring to the woman she worked for. While she was full time until my father died, her aches and pains were too much to continue full time, so she only worked once a week now and mostly went to keep Mrs. Thirjane Jackson, a black woman who thought being a Southern belle was all a woman should do with her life, company.

“I thought she could help. Maybe give us some tips. She knows everyone. Has connections.”

“Why would you do that? No. We don’t need her help,” I said annoyed. Not only was Mrs. Jackson a chatty, judgmental royal, but she was also the mother of Kerry Jackson, someone I went to school with who knew many of my sorority sisters. “She’s going to tell Kerry and I know Kerry will tell Marcy.”

“So?”

“So I don’t want all of Atlanta to know my business,” I said. “They gossip about stuff like that.”

“I don’t think that will happen. Kerry’s a nice girl. She wouldn’t gossip about you.”

“Oh, no! You told Kerry?”

“She was there when I was talking to Mrs. Jackson.”

I slapped the floor in disgust.

“No,” she went on. “She’s not like that. She’s been through a divorce. She’s been through this. Her husband—”

“So now I’m getting a divorce?”

“I hope so.”

“I don’t even know Kerry.” I got up from the floor and heard both of my knees crack.

“That’s not true. She remembers you from Spelman. She wants to have lunch with you,” I heard this after I’d already turned to look at my swollen face in the mirror.