Delia sat in front of the halfway house in Baltimore where her mother resided. It looked like a normal two-story single family home painted tan with cream shutters and didn’t give any indication that it housed former felons. For some reason, this comforted Delia. She liked the idea that, though her mother had possibly made some bad decisions in life, now she enjoyed a bit of normalcy.
She wondered what Wanda Renner would look like. Did she have the same green eyes as her? She wondered under what circumstances
would she
leave a four-month-old baby in the trash. Delia realized she should probably hate her mother. She should hate both her parents. A part of her did, but curiosity ate away at her. She wanted to know the truth. She wanted to know where she came from.
She wasn’t completely ready to face reality. When she called to set up a visitation, she didn’t mention that she believed Wanda was her mother. Instead, she claimed she was a reporter doing an investigative report about life for women after prison. Apparently, her mother had just completed her eighth stint in prison for drug possession, armed assault, and a slew of other things.
She sat down in the living room on a beat-up brown couch that completely clashed with the red and pink floral love seat. She chuckled to herself thinking how just months ago she sat on a ten thousand dollar couch waiting to break up with her husband and now she waited on what was probably a ten dollar couch waiting to meet the woman who had abandoned her 25 years ago. She was really beginning to hate the idea of couches.
Moments later, a short, black Hispanic woman wearing too-tight jeans and a yellow tank top shuffled over the green shag carpeting into the living room. Delia knew immediately that it was her.
Her mother.
Her complexion was similar to Delia’s, only a shade or two darker. Delia’s eyes watered at how beautiful her mother’s skin looked in contrast to the yellow. It was the same reason why Delia often wore yellow. She sat down across from Delia on the loveseat and folded her arms waiting for Delia to make the first attempt at conversation.
Delia studied every detail of her mother, from her frizzy hair styled into a lush afro to the hot pink toe nail polish with white birds painted on each toe. She had a hard time guessing her age. Her beautiful features, wide brown eyes, high cheek bones, and perfectly sculpted lips put her around late thirties or early forties in Delia’s mind. But the extra weight in her thighs, the defensive nature of her body language and the pissed off attitude she exuded made her seem much older and life weary. But then again, Delia was not very good at judging ages.
“You
gonna
talk?” Wanda said after giving Delia the once over.
“Hi, I’m … um Delia. Delia Clark.” Her voice shook. She didn’t know if she would be able to go through with this farce of an interview. Now that she had laid eyes on her birth mother, she wondered if she could just call off the whole thing and run away.
“And I’m Wanda. So, what you
wanna
talk about?”
Delia paused and considered just bolting off the couch and leaving. But a part of her wanted to know this woman. She wanted to know if they had anything in common besides looking good in yellow.
“Like I said, um I’m Delia. I’m writing an article … about you. Well, not only you, but a lot of women. Um, why don’t we start with a little background? What can you tell me about your parents?” Delia took a notebook and pen out of her purse and pretended to write things down. She thought she should at least look like a reporter.
“Well, my mother was Cuban and my father was Jamaican,” Wanda began, spilling her guts easily as if she just wanted to talk and didn’t care to whom. “I was raised by my grandmother though. She was a good woman who tried the best she could with me, but I was just no good. I was in jail by the time I was fifteen.”
“So you’re saying you think you were predisposed to a life of crime?”
“What? What does that mean?”
“Never mind.”
So Delia was part black and part Spanish. She wondered about her father. She must have gotten the green eyes from him since Wanda’s eyes were brown. “So you were in jail at fifteen? What about after that? Were you ever married?”
“Married?
God, no.”
“Well, what about children? Did you ever have any children?”
Wanda’s eyes widened. “What does that have to do with my time in jail?”
“Um, I just want an overview of your entire life.
Every aspect of your life.”
“I don’t have
no
kids.”
Delia’s heartbeat quickened. What if Chase was wrong and this wasn’t her mother after all? She could’ve just gone through a week of emotional agony for no reason. But after looking into Wanda’s eyes again, she knew the truth. She was hiding something. Delia decided to try a different approach. “Were you ever in love?”
Wanda seemed to have ended the conversation. Her arms were crossed and she stared out of the window.
After several moments of silence, Delia thought she would gather her things and go.
“I was in love once.
A kid from the neighborhood.
He was so smart they actually let him skip a grade in school. He was real cute, too.
Had eyes like yours.”
She turned and looked at Delia.
“What happened?”
“Got shot.
Drive by. After that, I really didn’t see
no
point in life.
Got addicted to drugs.
Been in and out of jail ever since.”
“And you never had any children?”
Wanda stared at Delia again. Then she looked down at her hot pink toes and wiggled them a bit before saying, “I knew this girl a long time ago. Like twenty-something years ago and she had this little baby girl. Cutest little thing you ever did see. She was such a good baby, too.
Hardly ever cried, even when her mother had nothing to feed her.”
Wanda paused and began chewing her thumb nail.
“What was the baby’s name?” Delia asked, understanding the true meaning behind Wanda’s words.
“Gabriella. She was named after her father Gabriel.”
“So what happened to her?
To Gabriella?”
Wanda chewed her left thumbnail to a nub,
then
started on the right before saying, “Her mother owed this man a lot of money. He kept threatening to kill her. So she’d move from one apartment to the next trying to hide from him. But one day, he found her. And she just grabbed her baby and ran. He chased her. He chased her into this alley and she had no way out. So she hid in one of those big trashcans. She and the baby lay in that trashcan hoping he wouldn’t find them. Gabriella didn’t even cry. She was such a good baby. It was like she knew her mama needed her to be quiet.” She paused again and placed the palm of her hand over her mouth. She suddenly looked sick to her stomach.
“Then what?”
Delia didn’t mean to push her. She just really wanted to know what happened.
“He found her hiding in the trashcan. He pointed a gun at her head and made her get out. She thought she was going to die. All she could think to do was cover up the baby and hide her to protect her. He never found the baby, but he took the girl back to his place at gunpoint and beat her and raped her until he felt he got his money’s worth. Two days later, she finally made it back to the trashcan and the baby was gone.”
Delia didn’t realize she was crying until Wanda had finished the story and sat waiting for the next question. She cried tears of pain for what her mother must have gone through, yet she also cried tears of relief knowing that she wasn’t willingly abandoned. Her mother
did
want her and had done everything she could to protect her. Not thinking to bring tissues, Delia wiped her face with the bottom of her rose colored sweater.
“You got anymore questions?” Wanda asked, suddenly cold and defensive again. Any anxiety she had felt during the story vanished.
After controlling her breathing somewhat, Delia asked, “Did you ever find out what happened to Gabriella?”
Wanda looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “I heard the police found her and that some white lady adopted her. It was probably better that way. Otherwise, she would’ve probably ended up on the streets and in and out of jail like the rest of the women here.”
“Do you ever wonder where your daughter is now?”
“My daughter?
I told you I
ain’t
got
no
kids. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t raped.” Wanda yelled as she stood up and pointed to herself.
Delia’s eyes expanded at this drastic change in demeanor. She tried to remain calm and not get too frightened realizing that Wanda had severe emotional scars and needed serious counseling. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean —”
“I think you should go now,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. Delia grabbed her purse and started towards the door. Before she left, Wanda said, “If I ever did have a child, I’d hope she’d be as pretty and smart as you.”
After her meeting with Wanda, Delia paced her small studio apartment, unable to contain her energy. So many emotions danced inside her mind: excitement, joy, delight. She had just spoken to her mother for the first time.
Her mother actually did love her. She wasn’t abandoned. But then she couldn’t shake a menacing guilt that also plagued her. She felt guilty for being happy after learning what a difficult life her mother had endured. A part of her felt that she should have been there for Wanda instead of enjoying a secure suburban life with her adoptive mother.
“You’re being ridiculous, Delia,” she said to empty space, plopping onto the bed. “You couldn’t control what happened to you at four months old. And you certainly couldn’t have stopped a rapist at that age.”
A feeling of relief washed over her as a realization illuminated in her mind. “None of this is my fault.” Suddenly, all the pep talks Donna Lee had given her over the years clicked into gear. She wasn’t a worthless dumpster baby unfit for love.
A freeness
elevated her spirits as years of depression and low self-esteem began to melt away. It might take a few years to completely undo the damage she herself had done to her self-image, but she had already started to feel like a new woman.
She had to call her sister. Donna Lee would be so proud of her. After calling three times and getting automatically sent to voice mail, Delia threw her phone onto the bed in frustration. After years of fighting a war with inner demons, she had finally won a battle and she desperately wanted to share it with someone. Reaching for her phone again, she thought of someone else she wanted to talk to. She opened the Saxon Arms directory and searched for Chase’s number.
A tinge of doubt befell her as she was still unsure if he had anything to do with the attacks. She shook off the doubt. What would be his motivation? He claimed to love her. And the amount of work he must have had to go through to find her birth mother really showed that he loved her. She decided it was ridiculous for her to suspect him and dialed his number.
He answered on the first ring. “Delia? Are you okay?”
“Yes, Chase, I’m fine.” She smiled inside, touched that he’d be so concerned about her.
He sighed.
“Oh, good.
It’s just that, you’ve never called me before and when I saw your number … I thought … never mind. What’s up?”