She pounded so hard on the wood it sounded like it would split.
“Lord Jesus, please help my child!” she cried again and again.
I put the gun on the floor and sat on the toilet. I looked at it and thought of how it could make everything stop. I could get away. I could be free. I was so angry at myself. I felt like I’d done this. I’d done everything wrong and now here I was. Me and a gun in the bathroom.
My mother’s screaming got louder. She was wailing. Past weeping. Wailing.
I finally began to cry.
I hadn’t noticed it before, but the whole time, after I read that letter and saw that Reginald was petitioning for child support, I hadn’t cried.
I looked up at the ceiling at something I couldn’t see, but needed to know was there.
“My God!” I cried, and the heat in me boiled out of my mouth so fast that I lurched forward to my knees, falling to the floor beside the gun.
“My God!” I cried. “God, help me!”
10
I’m a grown woman now and I was a grown woman then, but I have to say, thank God for mamas. I thought I knew something about being a mother from having my own children. From staying up late at night cleaning up vomit from stomach viruses and rubbing lotion on chicken pox. I thought I understood the power of a mother and how the strength in that role alone can make miracles happen even when I thought God himself couldn’t care less. But when I heard that bathroom door come crashing down and I thought my mother had called the poli
ce, but really it was just her with a chair in her hands, I realized that the strength of a mother is God. It has no limits. It has no apologies. It has no order. It’s a bail of water coming to put the fire out.
When I cried out for God, my mother came kicking in. She pulled me off the floor and held me in her arms and promised she’d never let me go again. She wasn’t going to let me kill or be killed. She was going to fight with me and we were going to win.
And then it was like a little bit of the sun was in the room with us. Lying in my mother’s arms, I saw a glowing in the corner of my eyes on the floor beside the gun. We looked at it at the same time. It was the little yellow card from my pocket.
“You call me when you’re done. I’ll be right out here waiting in the parking lot,” my mother said the very next Monday outside of the Hell Hath No Fury House. “I won’t leave you.”
“I know, Mama,” I said. She’d stayed with me in my bedroom the night before and we’d called HHNFH in the morning to see what I needed to do to get more information. This came after a long talk where we agreed that I needed help if I was going to get the twins back and feel any sense of normalcy in my life. The woman on the phone said I was lucky because there was an orientation that night. All I needed was a pen and a pad. Be there at 7:00 p.m. It was free.
The House was really a house. A little red and white craftsman in the middle of a swarm of gray buildings. There was a mailbox. A white picket fence. A porch with a row of rocking chairs.
“I’m proud of you for doing this.”
“You’ve said that a hundred times,” I said.
“Well, you said you weren’t going to get counseling and now you agreed. I think that’s a lot to be proud of.”
“Hold on,” I started. “I agreed to get help. We don’t know if this is all counseling or what.” The woman had been very vague on the phone. “I’m just going to see what it is. If it helped Kerry, maybe it can help me.”
“Good words,” my mother said.
The house was furnished in a mix of dainty Victorian antiques and country whimsy. There were pictures of women from aged black and white photos to color all over the walls in different kinds of antique frames. Some I recognized—Princess Diana and Juanita Jordan—but others looked like women who were just from around the area.
There was a woman sitting at a desk in the foyer. She smiled at me. Introduced herself as Sarah Ferguson and asked if I could sign in. There was a spiral notebook with REGISTRY written on the cover.
“I wanted more information,” I said.
“Don’t worry. They’ll cover everything in the meeting,” she replied. “Just relax.” She bent over and picked up a dramatic champagne bucket with little cards in it. “And take a name tag.”
I picked out a card and then another.
“But these already have names on them,” I said.
“Yeah, we don’t go by real names in the meeting. Some members are very private. Just pick whichever name you like. It won’t matter. We’re all going through the same thing.” She held the bucket out to me. “Go on.”
I pulled out another card. Jennifer Aniston.