Granny had us in stitches describing a cousin of hers whose father was an undertaker and who actually took a nap in a coffin His father brought in some customers and when they looked in and he opened his eyes, there was bedlam.
My stomach hurt from laughing. Rodney had tears streaming down his face and Star was radiant with happiness, too. Suddenly, in the middle of all that, there was a loud rap at the door. We all stopped. Granny looked at Star.
"Who would that be?" she asked.
"I'll go see," Rodney said, taking the reins of his budding manhood before anyone else could rise.
We all waited as he went to the door and opened it. "My God Almighty!" I heard a woman exclaim. "Is that you? Look how you've gown!"
"Oh, no," Star said, looking at Granny and then at me. "It's her."
"Who?" I asked.
"My mother," she said, and we all looked up at the doorway with anticipation.
I didn't expect a woman as pretty nor with as nice a figure as the woman who entered. Her hair looked recently trimmed and styled and she wore what at first looked like a new and expensive skirt and jacket outfit. On closer inspection, I saw the stains in the material. She wore matching two inch square heel shoes that were scuffed and worn down.
Star's mother carried a small suitcase that looked like it had been tossed from an airplane.
"Well, look here, I'm just in time for dinner," she declared.
Both Granny and Star just stared at her.
"Doesn't anybody want to say hello and tell me how happy they are to see me?"
"We didn't know you were coming," Granny said with the corners of her mouth dipping into a frown. "We're surprised."
"Neither did I till yesterday." She laughed. "What a trip!"
"We thought you were with Aaron's cousin Lamar. Where's he?" Star demanded. It was the first thing she had said to her mother, no hello, no smile, nothing
"I don't know and I don't care. That fool is a loser, and I don't invest my time in losers. I'm starving, Ma'ama," she added to change the subject, and moved quickly to the table. "Aren't you going to get me a plate?" she asked Star. Star glanced at me and then rose with reluctance. "Who are you?" she asked me.
"She's my friend," Star said from the kitchen doorway.
"I guessed that much."
"My name is Cathy," I said.
"What happened to you?" she asked, pointing at my leg.
"I had a bad fall and fractured my ankle I'm okay," I said.
"Hmm. I suppose my daughter told you all sorts of bad things about me," she said, throwing a look toward the kitchen door.
"Are you back for good?" Granny asked, changing the subject.
"Of course I'm back, Ma'ama. I'm here, aren't I?" She grimaced and looked like she was going to cry. "I had a very bad time, too."
"Uh-huh," Granny said, nodding with her round eyes growing smaller.
"I did. I tried my best to do good and make a home so I could send for my kids, but people lied to me. Promises were made and then broken minutes later, but still, I tried:'
Star returned with a dish and her mother began to serve herself.
"Thank you, honey. You look pretty. I guess your granny's been taking good care of you two,"
"Better than you did," Star said sullenly.
"Now there, go on," her mother said, sitting back, "jump all over me when I'm down and out."
"You've always been down and out, Ma'ama."
"You hear that and in front of her friend, too. You talk this way to your ma'ama?" she asked me.
"Leave her be," Star ordered.
"What am I doing to her?" She gazed at me and I looked down.
"I'll start on the dishes," Star said abruptly, and started to clear off the table.
"You could wait until I'm finished," her mother said.
"Leave them, Star, honey. Go on with your friend. Me and your ma'ama have some catching up to do. Rodney, you're excused. Go watch television with the girls," Granny said.
"C' mon," Star told me, and we went to her room. As soon as she closed the door, she apologized. "I had no idea she would pop in on us like that."
"It's okay."
"The problem is she'll be sleeping in here with us."
"Oh," I said. "Well, then, maybe I should go home." She stood there thinking a moment.
"We'll both go. If I was left alone in this room with her, I don't know what I'd do. Maybe I'd smother her in the middle of the night." Her words were angry, but she just looked sad. "I'm sorry about all this."
"It's okay. I had a great time with your grandmother," I said.
She nodded.
"Do you have money for a cab on you?"
"Yes."
"All right. call one for us. I don't like leaving Granny with the dishes so I'll try to help her clean up," she said. "You want to stay here a moment or go join Rodney in the living room?"
"I'll wait here, but I would like to help, too."
"She won't let you. You're our guest," Star said, and slipped out.
I sat on her bed and gazed around the small, dark room. How hard it has to be for her, I thought. No wonder she seems so angry all the time. I guess I would be too, I concluded. She wasn't gone long.
"I called us a cab," she said. "Ma'ama's not upset about having the room to herself. It's best we leave."
"What about Rodney?"
"He'll be all right sleeping in the living room. The way it looks, that's going to turn into his bedroom. I don't hold out much hope of my mother getting any sort of decent job and finding us a place to live. I'm too mad to think about it all right now. Let's just get out of here."
"Is your grandmother upset?"
"She'll be fine. Ma'ama's still afraid of her," Star said. She smiled. "Misty will be happy. You and I are going back to sleep with the ghost. We'll call her and Jade when we get to your house," she added. "Sorry this turned out this way."
"I'm fine with it," I said. "Don't worry about me."
When we emerged, I saw how Star's mother looked small and remorseful. Granny Anthony had been quietly taking her to task and bawling her out for her lifestyle, I imagined.
"I'm sorry you had to go to some mental doctor," her mother told Star when we appeared. "Ma'ama just told me some of it."
"I'm not sorry," Star said. "At least I learned how to deal with you."
"I was hoping you and I could be friends again, honey," her mother said.
"When were we ever friends, Ma'ama? I was only a bur- den to you."
"Well, I've changed, honey. I'm different. You'll see." "Right," Star said. She kissed Granny.
"It was a wonderful dinner, Mrs. Anthony. Thanks again," I said.
"You're welcome, honey. Be careful out there, hear?"
"Yes, ma'am."
I stopped at the living room door to say goodbye to Rodney. He suddenly looked his age. His mother's shocking appearance had turned him back into a little boy.
"Just stay out of her way tonight," Star told him, "and be a help to Granny."
He nodded and looked at the television set, but I didn't think he heard or saw anything. His eyes were glassy and full of fear.
The cab was waiting for us outside. Star hurried me to it and we gave the driver my address.
"The faster I get away from her, the better I'll feel," Star muttered.
Minutes later, we were out of her
neighborhood, but what she was trying to leave behind, was still wrapped around her, making her stiff and quiet. All the memories and pain could be resurrected in seconds, I thought, and nothing prevented it from washing over her and leaving her like someone drowning in a sea of nightmares.
All the way back to my house, she muttered about her mother, reliving some of the events she had revealed in our group therapy sessions. I sat silently, waiting for her temper to cool. Just before we reached my house, she stopped talking and pressed her forehead to the window.
"I'm sorry, Star," I said, and touched her arm. She reached back to take my hand.
The house was pitch dark when we arrived. I had forgotten to leave on a light, even in the hallway. The whole house reeked of the paint we'd used. We should have left a few windows open, I thought.
"I need something cold to drink," Star declared when I turned on the hall lights. "Then we'll call Jade and Misty and tell them that we're here."
"Okay."
I followed her down the hallway to the kitchen. As soon as I turned on the light, we both stopped dead in our tracks and stared. The rear door was wide open and it was obvious from the chips of wood on the floor that it had been forced. Star turned to me and shook her head.
"It can't be. No," she said.
My heart was pounding so hard, I thought my chest might just explode. I actually couldn't speak. My throat was that tight and my feet felt nailed to the floor.
Star moved first, slowly, glancing back at me, and then reaching the door and opening it further.
"Get that flashlight," she ordered. "Cat, c'mon." I think I whimpered like a mouse.
"Cat!"
I moved as quickly as I could to the drawer, seized the flashlight, and thrust it at her. She took it quickly and aimed the beam outside, running the light quickly toward Geraldine's grave. I inched up beside her and, leaning on my crutch, gazed out. Nothing had been disturbed. I think we both released a lung full of boiling hot air.
"For a minute I thought we were in a Stephen King movie," Star said, and then turned to the door with more scrutinizing eyes. She ran her fingers along the jamb. "Whoever did it just pried it out without concern. You've been burglarized, girl."
"What did they take?" I wondered aloud.
We looked at each other and both thought about the safe.
"Jade closed it and locked it again, but we took the money and the jewelry out," I reminded her. "And I took it with us to your house in my purse. All we left inside the safe were the documents."
Star led the way through the house, up the stairs, and into what had been Geraldine's room. We paused in the closet doorway and I pulled the chain to turn on the over- head fixture. Again, we both gasped.
The safe was gone.
"Whoever it was couldn't get it open and decided to just carry it off and maybe blow it open someplace else," Star imagined aloud.
"It was heavy."
"Yeah, but not that heavy." She gazed around the empty room and freshly painted black walls. "What else could they take?"
"I don't know. There isn't much that's worth a lot," I said.
Nevertheless, we went to check my room. This time I gasped aloud when I opened the door. My room had been torn apart: dresser drawers opened and emptied, my bedspread pulled down and cast on the floor, the mattress pushed off the bedsprings, the closet open and clothing tossed about.
"Who would pull a bed apart like that? No burglar I know," Star remarked. She stared at me as my eyes widened with a terrifying thought. Then she nodded. It was as if she could read my mind. "You think it was him?"
I couldn't keep the tears from escaping my lids. They were cold tears, tears of fear rather than tears of sorrow.
"He must have come by, seen the house was dark and tried to get in. Geraldine changed the locks after she threw him out because she was worried he had an extra key somewhere."
"So he broke in the back and came up here because he knew about the money, probably," Star continued. "When he couldn't get into the safe, he just carried it off." She gazed around my room. "Why did he tear your room apart? What else was he looking for?" she wondered.
I started to shake my head and stopped, shifting my eyes guiltily away.
"What?" she cried. "Damn, girl, don't be keeping secrets from me now, not after all this!"
I nodded, fighting to get the breath to speak. She waited, impatiently.
"Remember when I told you all about the trip he took me on, that time up in Santa Barbara?"
"Yeah, sure," she said. "So?"
"I was ashamed to talk about the pictures. It was so hard telling about it as it was. I thought it wasn't necessary to give all the details."
"What pictures?"
"Of me. He made me pose. He had one of those instant cameras. Then, he... he didn't want to keep the pictures on him or anywhere he thought Geraldine might find them, so he made me hide them in my room and promise to let him have them whenever he wanted to look at them. He told me they were beautiful pictures and he was proud of them."
I shook my head so vigorously, the tears flew off my cheeks.
"Okay, okay, don't go crazy on me," Star pleaded. "Where are they? Did he find them?" she asked, gazing at the room.
"I don't know," I said. "They're in the bathroom in the cabinet under the sink. Geraldine cleaned this room after I went to school, but I knew one place she would never go, one thing she would never touch," I said, walking to the bathroom.
The cabinet doors were opened.
"Did he find them?" Star asked when she stepped up behind me.
Resting my crutches against the cabinet, I bent down and reached in, bringing out a box of sanitary napkins. Star smiled.
"Geraldine never would look in there, huh?"
I shook my head and pulled out the napkins. Between the third and fourth were the pictures. I held them up and smiled
"Serves him right for not thinking like a woman," she said. Her smile faded quickly. "Now get rid of them. Tear them up and flush them down the toilet where they belong."
"Yes," I said, and did exactly what she said. "I guess even after Geraldine threw him out and everything, I was still afraid and just pretended these didn't exist," I said as I tore them to shreds.
"He's got to be one sick man to come in here and tear this place apart just for those." She thought a moment. "Maybe he was afraid they might be used as some kind of evidence against him. That's probably what Jade will tell us," she concluded.
"Do we have to tell the others about them?"
"Not if you don't want to," Star said, "but, Cat, I'm beginning to really believe we should trust each other. Completely," she added.
"Yes, you're right," I said. "It's good to stop lying, at least to each other."
I rose and gazed around my room.
"I better start fixing this up. We have to sleep here tonight," I said.
Star laughed.
"I'll go call the girls and then we'll do what we can with the rear door."
She started out.
"Star?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you think he'll be back?" I asked. "I mean, he's got to be wondering why Geraldine's room is painted black, why all her furniture is out in the hall." She thought a moment and nodded.
"Yeah. He'll be back," she said. "We'll have to talk about it and decide what to do, but for now," she said, looking up at me, "he's not about to talk to anyone. After all, he wasn't supposed to be here, and he broke in and stole the safe. I'm sure he's really confused and doesn't know what to do himself. For the time being, that's good for us."
"Yes, but I'm worrying about
after
the time being," I said. "I mean, we can't call the police or anything now, right?"