Should Have Known Better

“And you came all the way to the HHNFH and didn’t tell me?”

“You were the first person I wanted to see.”

I was doing the funky chicken dance through my mother’s doorway. I hadn’t been able to feel my excitement about Sasha’s dismissal in the car with A. J.—I’d been stunned and had too many questions—but once I got in the door and he waved before driving off, I felt my arms springing up and my legs kicking out. And somewhere in my head Kool and the Gang were singing “Celebration.” It was a petty party in my body, but I let it loose.

“What you dancing around down here for?” my mother asked, tiptoeing down the steps to see me walk into the house.

“Oh, nothing. Just doing what I was told to do in therapy! ‘Celebrate good times, come on!’ ” I sang and pulled my mother into a two step.

“They told you to dance?” she asked, stepping back from me.

“They told me to accept my emotions. And right now, I’m glad the wicked witch is going down, so I’m going to dance. ‘Celebrate good times, come on!’ ”

“You are so crazy, girl,” my mother said, laughing, and I could tell she was a little excited to see me so happy. “I thought this was about that man. You sure it’s not about him?” She grinned and went to sit on the couch.

“Is that why you’re still up, Mama?” I asked. “About a man.” I stopped dancing and looked at my mother sitting on the couch. It was 3:00 a.m. and she was still fully clothed. Her eyes were wide open. “You’ve been waiting for me? Waiting up for me to come home?”

“No . . .” She hesitated. “OK. I was. Who is he? Where’d you two go?”

“He’s A. J. and that’s none of your business,” I said, sitting down next to her. “Why do you care anyway? I thought you would be all upset about me making new friends. I am still married. And the church looks down on that.”

“You can’t live your life by all of those old rules those fuddy-duddies make up,” she said. “This is your life. As long as you check in with your God, I am all right with that.”

“Mama!” I looked at her surprised. “I can’t believe I’m hearing all of this. From you? I’m so proud.”

“There’s a lot about me you wouldn’t believe. Spare me the drama, little girl,” she said, getting up from the couch. “Now, let’s go in the kitchen. I got you some ice cream and I want to hear all about this man. And who’s the wicked witch?”

12

“We deserve love. We give love. We offer it freely. We open our arms and we love everyone, but we must continue to be open to getting it, to receiving it, because we deserve it,” we all read from cards in a circle at the HHNFH. We were dressed in white. Had taken off our shoes and gone into the backyard of the house. Lit torches gathered us into a circle. We had no name tags.

“You have to believe this,” the ringleader said. “To know that you are worthy. You’ve always been worthy of an infinite love. The kind you dreamed of. The kind you deserve.”

We read the cards again aloud. It was love day. What the ringleader said was us making a sincere decision that we wouldn’t let our fury, our anger at our current situations bar us from accepting love into our lives.

Some women cried. Some hadn’t yet responded to the idea of opening themselves to loving again. There was still a lot of anger and resentment.

I’d gone out with A. J. a few times and even held his hand once, but I knew I was closer in my feelings to these weeping women than I was to fully opening up myself to him. I still saw Reginald in my dreams. Still wondered what he was doing and how he was doing. And although I hadn’t said more than, “When are you coming to get the twins?” and “Don’t be late,” I still loved him. What I needed, A. J. couldn’t offer me. I had to find it myself.

But I agreed. Or rather, I knew that love wasn’t something I’d never see again. It would all come in time. I was focusing on understanding and embracing the new love I’d discovered in my life. My relationship with my mother was blooming so independently and effortlessly I wondered where she’d been all of my life. She was amazing. An open heart that bled for me after I’d left her for so long. And I had to make up for that lost time.

We enrolled R. J. and Cheyenne in a school a few blocks away from my parents’ house. I was surprised that there was more classroom support and assistance available for R. J. He loved his new school. There was a special bus that came and picked him up from my mother’s doorstep every morning and while I was ready for him to cry and hold my hand, he ran off proudly down the walkway every morning. He had friends. A group of boys his age, who took guard at the back of the bus and even started knocking on our door every day after school. I tried to follow behind him. Tried to take him to find a new park to play at. A new sandbox. But he laughed at me. “I’m too old for that now, Mama,” he said. And I’d forgotten that, but he was right.

Cheyenne wasn’t so easy about the transition. She wanted her old friends. She wanted her old room and seemed nervous about every little move I made. She was still watching me and I knew she was afraid of whatever was to come. I tried every day to connect with her. But I couldn’t give her certainty about something I was so uncertain about.

The dissolution of my marriage, of our lives was something I never saw coming. And although I saw myself as the mother who had to have all of the answers for my little girl, I couldn’t answer her, because I wasn’t able to answer why myself.

“Big day coming up,” the ringleader said, sitting beside me in one of the rocking chairs outside of the house when the meeting was over.

“Yeah, we have our mediation next week.”

“Nervous?”

“Numb is more like it,” I said. “I don’t know what to feel right now. I’m so tired of fighting. I was so blind about everything.” Reginald and I were set to meet with our attorneys to discuss the possibility of dividing our only asset. “The house was in his name; I never bothered to mention having myself added on after his parents died. I didn’t think I needed to watch my back like that.”

“A lot of women think that way. Don’t feel guilty about that. You just have to put measures in place now to change that.”

“I don’t want anything from him. I just want to make sure my children get what they’re owed. You know?” I said. “He’s not the kind of father who’d stop taking care of them, but if anything happened to him, I need to know they’ll be OK.”