James’s arms were crossed across the front of his uniform. When half a year had gone by after I’d dared my father to save me from Marcus, I’d been foolish enough to think that I had won something. Of course, six months is a long time on the calendar of a sixteen-year-old girl. For James, it was just enough time to col ect his thoughts and get his game together. His round face, squished under his hat and hidden behind his glasses, shone with satisfaction.
“I was out,” I said.
“You see, Gwen. This is what I was talking about.”
When I was a girl, I would have been thril ed to know they had been discussing me, but now, I was just annoyed. Who was he to act like he knew me? From his righteous posture, I knew he hadn’t told my mother about the time he’d let me leave the house half-naked at midnight, al because he’d been afraid to show his face. I would bet anything that he claimed to have found out through his connections, al the people he knows in such high places al over the city.
I moved toward the couch, wanting them now to smel me. I wedged myself into the thick of them. The couch was plenty big enough for three people, but neither of my parents moved as I forced myself in the space between them.
My mother sniffed my hair. “Have you been smoking grass?”
I laughed at her term,
grass.
I knew it wasn’t funny, but at same time it was sort of funny.
“So now Marcus McCready has you using drugs?” my father said.
I giggled again, as Marcus stayed away from weed. It would violate his probation. The whole thing was funny, my parents sitting here waiting for me at six in the evening as though it were three o’clock in the morning, as if they were regular parents, as if I were an ordinary girl.
“Gwen,” James said, “if you can’t control her —”
“If she can’t control me, what?”
“She doesn’t need control ing,” my mother said. “She needs something else.”
“Legitimacy,” I said.
“You are legitimate,” my mother said.
“What’s in the paper sack?” James asked, reaching for it.
I clamped the bag down between my knees. “It’s not your business. It’s a present.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” James said. “Give it to me.”
My mother was stricken. “What is it, Dana? Dana, honey, what is it?”
“It’s mine.” I felt like I was watching this whole scene happen, that I wasn’t real y me and these weren’t real y my parents.
“You used to like me,” I said to James. “When I was little, you liked me.”
“What are you talking about?” he said. “I like you now. I just need to know what’s in the bag.”
I looked to my mother. “Tel him to leave me alone. There is nothing in the bag. Tel him to trust me. Please. Make him leave me alone.”
My mother looked at the bag. “What has happened to you, Dana? What happened to my little girl? We used to do everything together.”
“It’s not fair,” I said.
“James,” my mother said, “why don’t you run on home? I need to talk to Dana in private.”
“You can’t send me away,” James said. “You can’t send me away like I don’t belong here. She’s my daughter. You’re my family. I need to see what’s in the bag.”
“There’s nothing in the bag,” I said.
“There’s something in the bag,” James said. “Let me see it.”
“Mother,” I said, “tel him to leave me alone.”
Her eyes flickered between the two of us. She looked a long time at the bag, trying to make a guess as to its contents. She took a deep breath, no doubt taking in the smel of the weed, my anger, and my sweat. She knew I had been up to something; I had no argument, no reasonable cover story, but I wanted her to stand up for me anyway. Isn’t love when you defend someone when you know she’s wrong? I didn’t want her to stand up for what was
right,
I wanted my mother to stand up for
me.
“Mama,” I said.
“Dana —”
“Mommy?”
“Dana, baby, just show him what’s in the bag. If it’s nothing, show him that it’s nothing. What has happened to you, Dana? What are you doing?
You come home smel ing like grass. You have this boyfriend, a delinquent. Don’t ruin your life, baby. Just show your father what’s in the bag.”
Keeping my eyes on Mother, I opened the bag, turned it upside down, and poured the jel y beans and peanuts on the floor. They made a beautiful mess. Ronalda had gotten these jel y beans special, from Lenox Square. They were al colors, pink with brown flecks, purple, orange. The flavors had exotic names like Piña Colada and Fig Leaf. The sight of them there on the ugly brown carpet made me want to cry.
“Are you happy?” I said, not knowing for sure if I was talking to my mother or my father. I wondered if weed could make me emotional after al . I couldn’t care this much about a bag of candy and nuts.
My parents looked at the mess on the carpet, and then they looked at each other. My mother worried her rings and my father bucked his head as he tried to free the words stuck in his throat.
“I told you there was nothing in the bag,” I said. “You didn’t believe me.”
“From who?” James snapped. “F-f-f-from M-Marcus McCready?”
What right did my father have to the details of my life? He squandered his chance to be the protective father. You can’t come rushing to the rescue six months later. I wasn’t a person to be saved only when it was a convenient time to swoop in.
My mother said, “This boy isn’t good for you. He’s not going to give you anything but a reputation.”
James said, “I-i-if a-al you end up with is a reputation, you’l be lucky.”
“Do you talk to Chaurisse like this?” I said. “I’ve seen her. She walks around looking like a streetwalker. I don’t see you saying anything to her.”
My mother looked at me sharply. We had gone surveil ing at the JCPenney outlet the week before. Chaurisse was wearing a halter top that was too smal for her.
“Don’t talk about my d-d-daughter,” James said. “You don’t know anything about her.”
“That’s it,” my mother said. “This is enough and getting out of hand. Dana, you go on to your room. You wil not see the boyfriend anymore. That’s that. And James, you need to go home and cool off.”
We each did as she said. My father went to his car and blew the horn twice as he was pul ing away, as though this day were like any other. My mother busied herself in the kitchen; I heard the dishes moving around in the cupboard as I lay on my bed, staring at the water spots on the ceiling.
My mother cal ed my name, but I didn’t answer her.
“Dana,” she said, “I know you are not asleep. Come here.”
I made my way to the den, where she sat on the couch James had just vacated.
“Tel me what you’re thinking,” she said.
“You know what I’m thinking,” I said.
“No, I don’t. I don’t know what’s on your mind; you didn’t even tel me about the boyfriend.”
“Don’t I have the right to some privacy?” I said. “Can’t I have my own life?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Dana. This is the time in your life when you need your mother most. You’re sixteen. One wrong move and you can ruin your life forever. Talk to me, Dana. Tel me what’s on your mind.”
“You took his word for what’s happening, and he doesn’t even live here.”
“Tel me about the boy,” my mother said.
“His name is Marcus, and James doesn’t like him because Marcus’s dad does James’s taxes.”
My mother’s face bent to let me know that James had left out this detail. “Your father said he was a hoodlum.”
“He lives on Lynn Circle,” I said. “Nearby to Ronalda.”
“Your father said that he’s twenty years old. That he isn’t al owed around underage girls.”
“Marcus isn’t like that. And he’s just nineteen.”
My mother looked at me with her tired face. “Dana. I need you to tel me the truth here. Are you being intimate with him?”
“No,” I said. “Nothing like that. We’re waiting until we get married.”
“I find it hard to believe that you two are just playing pinochle.”
I was seized with a desperate need for her trust. “You can take me to the doctor. A doctor can look at me and see I haven’t been doing anything.”
“Is he a good guy, Dana?”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s so nice to me. He’s so good to me. He doesn’t cheat on me. A lot of girls like him, but I am the only one he goes out with. He loves me. He doesn’t have a temper. He has never raised his hand to me.” I could hear my own voice, shril with lies.
“He’s hitting you?” my mother said. “He’s hitting you, Dana? Oh baby, come here.”
She opened her arms to me, but I didn’t walk into them.
“I said he’s
not
hitting me.”
“Dana, I am your mother. You can’t lie to me.”
“You can’t read my mind.”
“Baby, I made your mind.”
“He’s not hitting me.”
“Yes, he is.”
It was wrong the way she could browse among my secret thoughts. She says that it was motherly intuition, but this is not true. She and I have a connection. Today, the link is rusty, the current erratic, but there wil always be something between us.
“So?” I said. “James hit you one time. When I was a baby. I heard you tel Wil ie Mae about it.”
“That was one time, it was a long time ago, and he was under a lot of stress.”
“Wel , Marcus is under stress, too. He wants to apply to col ege.”
“Yes, your father hit me, but I had a baby. I just had to make it work. And your father is not a violent man. Dana, you don’t have chick nor child. Why stay with some boyfriend that can’t keep his hands to himself?”
“You just don’t want me to have my own life.”
“You are not seeing this boy anymore. End of discussion. I wil go up to the school and tel the principal that he is harassing my daughter. James tel s me he has faced charges already for statutory rape.”
“Sixteen is the age of consent!”
“You have only been sixteen for a little while. I wil have him put in jail, Dana. Don’t make me do it.”
“Mother,” I said, “you’re just siding with James. He just doesn’t want us around his real family. Can’t you see that this is al there is to it?”
My mother said, “I don’t care what is in it for James. Your safety is what’s in it for me. I am not going to let you ruin your life while you are living under my roof. So that’s it. You are not seeing this boy again, ever. If I ever suspect you are, he’s going to jail.”
“Mother, don’t do that.”
“It’s over. This relationship is over. It’s not healthy.”
I cried myself to sleep. What teenager hasn’t? I woke up with a headache, and I remembered the lost jel y beans and cried some more. My mother tapped on my door at 10 a.m.
“Get up and get dressed. Let’s go surveil ing.”
“No,” I said, just for the satisfaction of denying her. “I never want to do that again.”
9
NO QUARREL
I AM POOR when it comes to grandparents. Flora, the wild woman, didn’t have use for her own child, let alone a granddaughter. Although I saw my mother’s father each spring, I spoke to him only once in my life. My mother believed in rituals, and on the first warm Saturday in April she took me to see him as he groomed the hedges in front of his house. We were accustomed to covert endeavors, but we were different when we surveil ed my grandfather. When we shadowed Chaurisse and her mother, we were nervous and excited, like rookie cops. These adventures left us stimulated and hungry, like we’d been swimming. But our yearly visits to my grandfather made us nervous and unsure. On the day of our visit in 1986, my mother drove without the radio, wearing down her nails against the edges of her teeth. I picked at the skin on my lower lip until my smile was sore and raw.
Things between my mother and me had been tense since she and my father had forbidden me to see Marcus. Making matters worse, James initiated some sort of man-to-man conversation with Marcus’s father and Marcus cut me off completely. I don’t know what passed between our fathers, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t the truth. I asked my mother if she found this al to be at least a little bit hypocritical. No, she said. She found it to be
ironic.
The conflict was between us, as tangible and opaque as drywal .
At my mother’s request, I wore Flora’s gold earrings because she hoped that my grandfather would look up from his weeding and pruning to see me there, looking like my mother and her mother. In her fantasy, he’d pause, look closer, and see the gold hoops, the proof that I was Gwendolyn’s girl. She hoped the sight of me would inspire him to love me in his old age, to open his door. I would be the needle and my mother would be the thread looped through its eye.
Maybe I shared al my mother’s fantasies. Her cravings were so straightforward, honest, and universal. Who doesn’t want to be loved? Anyone who has been cast off knows the pain of it. Who doesn’t know what it’s like to just want to go home, to sleep in a bed that is your own, lying on a pil ow that smel s of your own hair?
And then there were the daydreams of my own. Maybe Grandfather would look up from the hydrangeas, fal in love with me, and not even think of my mother. My strict orders were not to identify myself. I was just to say “Good afternoon, sir” as I walked by. I could maybe compliment the flowers, but I couldn’t give him any hint that I was his kin. We were not trying to force anything on anyone. We were merely providing an opportunity, nudging fate along.
MY GRANDFATHER, LUSTER Lee Abernathy, was a narrow man, with white hair so fine his brown scalp showed through. Clipping the hedges with a manual clipper, his thin arms, ropy with muscles, flexed as he whacked the plants into spheres. I can’t say what made this year different from the others, but when he saw me advancing in his direction, he stopped the busy shears and removed his cap as though giving me a chance to declare myself.
“Good afternoon, sir,” I said.
“Afternoon,” he said.
“Your yard is sure pretty.”
“Thank you,” he said, looking hard at my face. “Where you walking to?”
“Oh, just taking a walk.” I gestured in the direction of Boulevard Avenue. “Just stretching my legs.”
“Be careful,” he said. “It’s not like it used to be. Don’t walk too far in that direction. They al using that crack up there. Gone crazy.”