“Mama Dee, we’re home.”
“How was your trip?” she asked.
“It was good.”
“Great, well, don’t worry about coming to get the girls. We are already here.”
“You’re already where?” I asked as I sat up in my chair.
“In Maryland. I knew you were tired so I drove them home. I’ll bring them past in the morning.”
“In the morning . . . um. No, I’ll meet you, Mama Dee,” I said as I looked over at Dwight. He was still asleep. I tapped him and woke him.
“Dwight, your mother is in Maryland,” I whispered. His eyes popped open.
“Oh my God.”
“What are you going to tell her?” Dwight asked.
“I don’t know.” I just knew that Mama Dee was not going to know about Alicia or DJ, not right now. The time was not right.
He woke Alicia and she still looked at him like he was a god. As we exited the plane, Alicia announced she had to go to the bathroom. She could judge by the expression on my face that something was wrong, so she asked me, “Are you okay?” I said yes, then she turned to Dwight and asked him the same question.
“She’s fine, Alicia,” he said, snapping at her. “We will meet you at baggage claim.”
Dwight tried to get our luggage off the ramp. I walked over to him to act like I was helping him.
“What are you going to do with her?”
“We are going to drop her off at her mother’s. Go get us a taxi.”
I walked away and went out and got in the taxi line. Dwight entered the cab and gave Alicia’s mom’s address. Alicia entered last, still oblivious to what was going on. She was still on cloud nine, saying she couldn’t wait to get the pictures printed and talking about how much fun she had. I remained quiet, looking out the window.
“We can leave DJ there until the morning—he is probably asleep anyway,” she said as the cab pulled in front of her mother’s house.
“No, um, we have to talk. Pop the trunk,” Dwight said, instructing the cab driver. He pulled Alicia’s luggage out.
“My mom is in town and you can’t be there when she comes over.” The look on her face was priceless. She was so taken by surprise she couldn’t get what she wanted to say out of her mouth.
“What? Why not? I’m your wife, too! Your son is a Wilson. This is not right, Dwight. So you want me to just stay away? Your son doesn’t get to meet your mother?”
“Alicia, there is no discussion. That’s not going to happen,” Dwight said. I turned my head in the other direction. They could duke it out. I don’t know what he told her, but she ran in the house and began crying. I felt a little bit of satisfaction seeing her in tears.
When I arrived home I went into her room and took down her pictures, and I moved all of DJ’s belongings to the basement. I looked in every room to make sure there wasn’t a trace of another woman. I felt like I erased all evidence of Alicia.
Mama Dee was at the door bright and early. Jordan ran up to me and held my legs.
“I missed you, Mommy,” Destiny said.
“I missed you, too, Des.”
“Where is DJ? I missed him so much!” Jordan asked.
“He went to his house. They will be back. Take your things upstairs,” Dwight said sternly, probably mad that she had mentioned her brother’s name in the presence of her grandmother.
“Mom, thank you for bringing them home. I have to get out of here and get to work,” he said as he gave her a kiss on the cheek. She damn near wiped his kiss off. Mama Dee was looking all around.
“Have a seat. You want me to make you some coffee?”
“No, because I’m not staying that long.”
“Where are you in a rush to?” I asked.
“Nowhere, I’m just not staying here. Not with all this foolishness going on.”
“What foolishness?” I asked, perplexed.
“You know what I’m talking about, Tracey. I’ve known you since you were a girl and I want to tell you that I have never been more disappointed in you in my life.”
“What are you talking about, Mama Dee?” I said as if I were clueless and she was a senile old lady.
“All I have to say is, you need to clean house and close the back door you open, and don’t ever let it swing open again.”
“Mama Dee, I don’t know what impression you got. But there is nothing going on.”
Mama Dee stood up and looked me directly in my face and said, “Your children know that Daddy kisses Alicia like he kisses Mommy. They also told me that Auntie Alicia went on vacation with you, too! Tracey, one thing about children is that they are very perceptive and notice everything you don’t. Your secret is not secret. Besides, how does the housekeeper work and you watch her baby? The only winner is Dwight—he is getting over big time. And your children. I can’t believe you with this Auntie Alicia business. Wait until they are old enough to realize what’s going on. They probably will say my mother was a weak-ass woman. She’d rather let her man walk over her than leave him. I pray you get yourself together, Tracey,” she said as she left me on the sofa, stunned. How did she know? How did Jordan and Destiny know? Her words crept in my mind all day. I lay in my bed alone. Alicia had been calling Dwight all morning and I didn’t feel like talking to her.
Mama Dee is right—if I don’t stop this soon, my children won’t have respect for me. In the past few weeks I’ve been losing control. Alicia has us going on a vacation that I didn’t plan.
This is insanity and I can’t take it anymore. What if Dwight wakes up one day and we are not enough and he wants to add to the stable? And he asks for a third and fourth wife? One minute I was happily married. The next my husband has a son by this random woman who I didn’t know anything about. I sat and looked at the girls swinging back and forth on the swings in the backyard. How much did my girls know? What did they see? I had to talk to someone. Mama Dee already said she was disgusted with me, but I still called her. Before she picked up, I was hysterically crying.
“Stop crying.”
“I don’t know what to do. I’m ready to leave him. But I don’t want to leave him, I want to leave her. How do I get him to leave her? Mama Dee I didn’t want to lose him. I wanted to tell him to choose me or her, but I was so scared. . . .”
“And you thought he would pick her, huh?”
“I wasn’t sure, Mama Dee. I just wanted him to be happy and us to be a family again. I caught him in the bathroom one night, crying like a baby, and I thought it would be best if we had an open marriage.”
“Tracey Yvette Wilson, I would have never thought you would stoop so low.”
“I know it was wrong. I was dumb, but how can I get out of it now? I mean, I just wanna be back home and have a normal life.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. You got to plan this one out. Get that hussy out of your house, by any means necessary. If you got to, lie on the bitch and say she stole some money from you.”
“You’re right, I got to think of something. I’ll do my best.”
“Now, I taught you better than that. All good women know how to plot and scheme.”
Mama Dee was right. Alicia had to go, and I had to get her out of my house. My mind began to wander and I thought of a bunch of things. I knew the job situation would be a problem. Dwight was making a lot more money in Maryland. Not only that, what would make him hate her as much as I did? And what could I do to make sure he never wanted to see her again?
I wanted a normal family. Me and my husband and my two children. I couldn’t even remember what normal family life is like. It wasn’t this arrangement that had my neighbors looking at me sideways. I was getting my man back—this sharing shit was not working out. We were good before her and we would be good after her. I had to prove to Dwight that this was not going to work out.
Alicia
Y
ou better become an active participant in your son’s life
. I thought somehow those words were just my imagination running away from me. But when I glanced at my mother, her expression confirmed they came directly from her mouth. Why did she feel the need to ridicule me on my son’s first birthday? I said, “What did you say?”
She didn’t back down. In fact, she appeared irritated with me and ready for war. She repeated, “You better become an active participant in your son’s life.”
“Ma, I know what I’m doing!”
I scurried around the house getting things together for the party. Tracey had gone out to pick up the cake. The girls and Dwight were in the yard decorating. The moon bounce would be delivered any minute. Why did she pick this moment to start a fight?
“You have no clue. Do you hear him?”
DJ was whining for no reason in his playpen. In fact, he was driving me up a wall. Now, because he was crying in vain, I’m not an active participant.
I put the baked beans in the oven and said, “Why don’t you get him?”
She chuckled. “I should get him?”
“Yes, you get him. It’s not going to kill him to cry a little. I have to finish getting things together. I fed him. I changed him. He’s fine.”
She slammed her cup on the island. “Girl, he’s crying for his mother.”
“I had him on my hip all morning. And he’s still crying. What am I supposed to do?”
She shook her head. “Alicia, he thinks Tracey is his mother.”
She took a deep breath and her eyes dimmed. She pitied me. My heart sank and I thought for a second before I spoke, “Ma, I work. Tracey is with him more than I am. What can I say?”
“It doesn’t even bother you.”
“You’re not here every day. He knows I’m his mother.”
She huffed. “You’re just a hardhead. Why did I think you’d start listening now?”
I sucked my teeth and continued getting things together. When she noticed my irritation, she sighed. “I’m not trying to hurt you. You’re my baby and I only want the best for you.”
“What are you trying to do? You pick his birthday to tell me I’m a bad mother.”
“I never said you were a bad mother—”
She was interrupted by Tracey coming through the entrance from the garage. We stopped abruptly. It was obvious that we were discussing something we didn’t want her to know about. She looked offended. I tried to play it off.
“Is it hot out there?”
“Yeah.”
She dropped the cake on the table and didn’t say much to my mother or me. DJ babbled with excitement as she entered the family room. She stood in front of his playpen. “What are you talking about?”
He laughed hard. She asked again, “I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”
He bounced his knees and screamed with joy. I suddenly hated how she related to the child that I gave birth to. My eyes connected with my mother’s. Her smirk was slightly arrogant, insinuating that she told me so.
What could I do now? Why did it matter? We were in a different situation. DJ was lucky enough to have two mothers. As I tried to rationalize my emotions in my mind, my mother got up and said, “I’m going outside for a smoke.”
Tracey came back into the kitchen. She seemed to be responding with one-word answers. There was an unspoken dispute between us. Unfortunately, we fought over two separate things. She thought my mother and I were talking about her. And I wondered if she was strategically being a better mother to my son than me.
When the moon bounce guy arrived, my mother came in to let me know. “He’s on his way to the backyard. One of you needs to let him know where to put it.”
We spoke at the same time. “Dwight is out there.”
She shrugged. “Okay.”
Her smoke break lightened her mood. Why was I pissed at her for forcing me to recognize the truth? I smirked at her and she knew I’d forgiven her. She gave me a quick hug and said, “You okay, baby. Everything’s coming together.”
Tracey said, “Did you give the girls something to eat?”
“Shit! I forgot.”
She didn’t acknowledge my negligence and walked out on the deck. She called the girls into the house. They came reluctantly. After they finished eating, they all went upstairs to get ready for the party.
My mother took DJ to get ready and I finished the goody bags. I stepped out on the deck and watched Dwight in the yard. He obviously felt me staring at him and waved for me to come closer.
I slouched toward him. He smiled. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“Do you think I’m a good mother?”
“Of course you’re a good mother.”
“Who do you think is a better mother?”
His chin sagged. “Don’t do that. You know we keep competition out of this relationship.”
I curled my lips. “You’re right. Don’t you have to get ready?”
“Yeah. When are you getting ready?”
He intertwined his fingers with mine. It was a blessing that I didn’t doubt his love. I looked into his eyes. He asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“You still look sad.”
“I’m not sad. C’mon, let’s get ready.”
He smiled. “Let’s play in the moon bounce first.”
I guess my huge smile said okay. He started running to the moon bounce and I felt that was a summons to race. I chased him and finally caught up. He was really trying to win. He reached his hand out like he was crashing through a finish line. We wheezed as we attempted to catch our breath. I laughed and he laughed harder. “I won.”
As I slipped my shoes off, I looked up at him. “I thought there was no competition in this family.”
He tilted his head. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing. Take your shoes off.”
He kicked his shoes off and jumped in. I dove in behind him. We rolled around and jumped up and down like this was our party. We giggled uncontrollably until Tracey’s voice pierced through us. He looked at me. I looked at him. It was as if we’d been caught stealing money from our mother’s purse. He peeped out first.
“What’s up?”
“People will be here in thirty minutes. What are you guys doing?”
“Just making sure everything is fine.”
She stormed back into the house and we laughed. I said, “C’mon. Let’s go.”
“Give me a kiss first.”
I rolled over and kissed him. He said, “I’m going to get dressed in your room.”
I smiled and slid out of the tent. He climbed out and began to jog. “I was trying to give you a head start.”
I began to sprint. The slight slope heading to the house propelled me ahead of him. I reached the deck seconds before he did. My hands pumped in the air. “I won! I won!”