The Dear One (4 page)

“Feni . . . ,” Ma began.

“Why does she have to come here? Why do you always have to ruin my birthday?”

I glared at Ma.

“How do I ‘always ruin your birthday,' Feni?”

“There's always something happening. First you stopped drinking and it had to be on my birthday.”

“Aren't you happy I stopped?”

“I'm happy
now,
but before, all I wanted you to do was drink something so you'd stop shaking and being crabby and tearing up paper all over the place. I hated that birthday. And you and Dad had to go and break up.”

“That was after your birthday.”

“That's only because you all didn't want to do it right
on
my birthday, but I knew he was leaving, and you weren't even speaking to each other. For all it mattered, he might as well have been gone already.”

“Listen. Clair and I were close—always there for each other. And a tightness like that doesn't go away. Now she's having her troubles—”

“You're always saying I have to understand something. Well, I don't! I don't understand why that girl has to come here. I don't understand why she can't stay with Marion.” I was yelling now and didn't care. Ma sat with her back straight at the other end of the bed and stared at me.

“Clair and Marion and I were close,” Ma began again. She looked out the window like she was thinking about something far away from here. Her head tilted slightly, her hands still. “Back then it seemed like nothing could ever come between us.”

“I've heard those stories a hundred times.”

“You haven't heard everything, Feni. You'll never know everything that happened between us.”

“The stuff I don't know about, I don't care about.”

Ma continued as though she hadn't heard me. “When Clair got pregnant, she tried to hide it from everyone. But we were too close for secrets.” Ma looked down at her hands, her voice dropping. “I think it hurt Marion the most. Marion had these big dreams for all of us. We were all going to live in Seton. Be neighbors. Then, it seemed like everything started happening at once. Clair left and Marion came out. We started growing apart. Marion had her women and I had my men.”

“You think that's wrong?”

Ma shook her head. “No. I think a long time ago I did. Before Marion came out, I used to think that two people of the same sex together wasn't right. Back then I didn't know that there were so many ways people loved each other.” Ma looked at me. “When I met Marion, she was a radical feminist out to save the whales and the world and anything else that might have needed saving at the time. I saw her power and her drive. Then I got to know her and knew that my mind had been closed for so long! I
did
have a hard time with it at first. I mean, I didn't know anything about lesbians and I was scared of them!” Ma smiled. “But Marion and I had been friends. Nothing had changed, really. Clair had the hardest time with it. She wasn't there when Marion was struggling. Clair still has a hard time. She doesn't really understand that it's not up to us to decide how people live.”

“Other people decide how
I
live.”

“They won't when you're grown,” Ma said.

“That's not true. You said so yourself. There's always going to be someone deciding what I can and can't do. If it's not because I'm a kid, it'll be because I'm a woman. If it's not because I'm a woman, it'll be because I'm black.”

Ma stared at me, surprised for a moment. Then something like fear took over the surprise. “Don't ever feel like you don't have power, Feni.”

“I don't have the power to keep that girl from coming—”

“Her name is
Rebecca.
No more ‘that girl.' Understand?”

“Yeah.”

“You don't have to be her friend. But she is going to stay with us.”

“I guess she can't sleep in the guest room?”

Ma shook her head. “It's way too cold in there for anybody this time of year.”

“I
knew
it!” I said, folding my arms. “And now comes the part about Grandma's room . . . .”

“I was thinking that would be a good place for her. It's warm and near the bathroom.”

“It's out of the question,” I said firmly.

“What do you mean, ‘It's out of the question'?”

“Not Grandma's room, Ma.”

Ma touched my cheek and instantly, water welled up in my eyes. “Feni . . .”

“Don't do this to me, Ma. Don't give her Grandma's room.”

“You have to start letting go, Feni.”

“Don't make me, Ma,” I cried. “Don't make me. Not now. Please not yet, Ma.”

MA WAITED UNTIL SHE THOUGHT I HAD CRIED MYSELF to sleep before she left. When I heard her go downstairs and close the den door, I tiptoed down the hall to Grandma's room and pushed the door open. It was bare now except for a double bed against the window and a wooden rocking chair. Ma had taken down the pictures on the wall years ago. Some of them were in the photo albums downstairs. Dad had taken some.

“When you die,” I whispered into the emptiness, “the pieces of you get all separated.”

Sitting on Grandma's bed, I cracked open the window.

My grandmother had been my best friend. I was eight when she was dragged four blocks by a city bus while visiting San Francisco.

Grandma's friend Reese had been traveling with her and said the bus driver didn't see Grandma step off the curb and came around the corner of Market Street without stopping. Grandma's dress sleeve got caught on the front fender, and it was one of the dresses Grandma had made herself, so it was double-stitched at every seam.

When Grandma died, I didn't speak for two months. There was a fire in my head threatening to burn me alive. But I sat by my window, letting the hot summer sun burn it to ashes.

They buried her beside my grandfather, whom I never knew, in a small plot that said CALEB.

“A long time ago,” Grandma had said, when we visited my grandfather and put white lilies on his grave, “colored folks weren't allowed to be buried here. Your granddaddy is probably rolling over and over, knowing that he is buried in Shepherd Cemetery. Lord, I can just see him smiling from ear to ear.” Grandma grinned then, at some little secret she and Grandpa shared. When she sat me down beside her husband's grave, her face grew calm. The silence of the graveyard scared me. Shivering, I moved closer to her.

“The day your granddaddy died, me and your mama had just come back from her checkup at the hospital. She was pregnant with you, and she was staying with us then, since she and Bernard had decided she needed some country air. So when we got back, I made her a nice bed, told her to climb in it, and went to tell your granddaddy that everything was fine. I walked as slow as I could over to where he was working, because I had this feeling in the back of my throat like something wasn't right somewhere. When I got there, couldn't have been more than a hundred feet from the house, your granddaddy still had the pinking shears in his hands. He was sitting against that tree like he was waiting for me. Had his eyes wide open and sweat dripping down his pretty brown face.”

Grandma looked around the graveyard. “Now, the birds had been making noise all morning, but when I got to where your granddaddy was sitting, everything became as quiet as it is now.” Grandma picked up one of the lilies and held it to my nose. I inhaled and it tickled my nostrils. “I took a quarter from my apron pocket and closed your granddaddy's eyes.”

We were silent for a long time. I stared at the dark gray stone, wishing I had known the man who lay beneath it. RANDALL CALEB, the stone said, 1919-1989. MAY HE REST IN PEACE. Underneath that was a poem, engraved in tiny letters. I had memorized it a long time ago:

As I read the poem silently, I felt Grandma watching me. When I'd finished, I looked at her and waited.

“Your mother and father are good people, Feni. They love you very much.”

I nodded. Grandma continued and it seemed almost as if she were talking to someone else—someone miles and miles away.

“Women are strong, Feni. Survivors. The Bible says we were made from the rib of Adam, but that may not be true.”

“But Grandma,” I interrupted, “you said the Bible is Truth!”

“Yeah. Yeah. I know what I said, sweetheart. That was a long time ago.”

“Before you stopped going to church, Grandma?”

She nodded. “Long before I stopped going to church.”

“But why did you stop going?”

“I stopped going because I didn't believe anymore, Feni. Can you understand that?”

I nodded. “It's like when I didn't believe in Santa anymore.”

Grandma smiled. “Exactly. I stopped believing in waiting, Afeni. If something is going to happen to me after I die, then it will. No use worrying and praying while I still have plenty of this life to live. It's easier this way. But that's not what I'm trying to tell you. What I want to say is that in this world, there are all types of women. Some of us make mistakes and some of us seem weak sometimes and others seem full of strength. Some don't want to bear children, others can't. Some women marry once, or eight and nine times, and others never do.”

“Like Marion?”

A frown flickered across Grandma's face. She didn't like Marion. “Sometimes. But we're not talking about Marion, sweetheart. We're talking about your mother. She's a strong woman. She makes mistakes sometimes. Sometimes it seems like she doesn't love you, but I want to tell you this—”

“Sometimes it seems like Ma doesn't care about me.”

“But she does, Feni. That's my point. Your mother, she has a big problem now. A very big one. And she's going to have to get through it on her own. You have to bear with her, Feni. Don't be stubborn. Don't be angry.”

“But sometimes she makes me so mad, Grandma. When she drinks . . .”

“That liquor makes your mama weak.”

“And it makes Dad mad. Then they fight. They fight so much.”

Grandma looked down at me. “People come together sometimes and it isn't a bit more meant to be than I don't know what. It just doesn't make sense to anybody.”

“Like Ma and Dad. I don't think they love each other. And when Ma drinks, I get scared.”

“Someday your mama's going to realize that drinking doesn't heal any wounds,” Grandma said softly. “I look at her and I see she's all broken up inside. She wants something she isn't getting.”

“What does she want?”

Grandma squeezed my hand and pulled me to my feet. “She's the only one who knows, Feni.” Her voice was soft and rich against the quiet. Together we made our way past the silent tombstones, toward home.

Walking back from my grandmother's funeral in the white dress I vowed never to wear again, I was silent. Ma and my father walked far apart from each other. I stopped a little away from where the car waited for us and turned toward the grave.

“Are you okay?” Ma asked, bending down to wipe my eyes. “Blow,” she said, holding a white handkerchief firmly to my nose.

Hundreds of people were around us. The women patted Ma and stared sadly down at me. All of them wore black. Only Ma looked strong.

Now, leaning back against the firm pillows, I sighed. Grandma had been dead a long time. Soon, I knew, I'd have to begin to let go.

NEAR DAWN I MADE MY WAY TO MA'S ROOM AND climbed into bed beside her. Sleepily, she reached over to hug me and slowly realized I was there.

“Did you have a bad dream?” she asked groggily.

“I dreamed about Rebecca. I dreamed she was having the baby in the house and nobody was home but me. I was scared, Ma.”

Ma pulled me closer to her. “Are you worried, Feni?”

I nodded into the darkness. “I'm scared to have a pregnant girl here. She's only three years older than me!”

“I know, sweetheart,” Ma said, her voice growing clearer. “I wanted to talk to you about that tonight, but we got so lost in everything else.”

“You wanted to talk about Rebecca's baby?”

“Uh-uh. I wanted to talk about boys and love and getting pregnant so young.”

I felt my face grow hot. “I don't even have a boyfriend.”

“Thank God you don't. I'd have to go upside his head with a frying pan!”

“Boys are so dumb sometimes.”

“I'm glad you still think that way.”

“But Ma . . . ?”

“Hmmm . . . ?”

“Why do you think that happened to Rebecca? I mean, she's so young and everything.”

Ma groaned into sitting position. “It scares me a little how much Rebecca's life is following Clair's. It's not exactly the same, Clair having some college behind her and all, but I'm sure Rebecca didn't want this to happen. I don't know Rebecca anymore. The Rebecca I knew was small and shy.”

“The one I remember was mean and bossy. You sure we're talking about the same person?”