Leota's Garden (12 page)

“Only when the situation calls for it, which is every time she comes over for a visit with the folks.” Susan grinned. “Daddy says the only reason married women with children are working is because people are so greedy they want too much. Of course, Mom is working, but that doesn’t count because she has a calling. You never know who will throw the bait first. Maggie’ll come right back at him and say some people would like to have a nice house and live in a decent neighborhood that’s safe for their children, and the only way to afford it is to have two people working. Then Daddy’ll come back and say the neighborhoods would be a lot nicer if the mothers were all home taking care of their children like they’re supposed to. They go round and round about it.” She laughed. “They can get pretty steamed up sometimes.”

“Do they stay mad at each other?”

“Not for more than an hour. Funny thing is Maggie told me she and Andy have already decided that when they get pregnant, she’ll stay home. Listening to her talk, you’d think she was for zero population control and government-run day care centers. Truth is she takes after Daddy. They both like nothing better than a good, rousing debate. Daddy loves to play devil’s advocate at the dinner table. Whatever side you’re on, he’ll take the opposite. He says it’s a good way to learn to think. Mental fencing, he calls it.” Susan took a long swig of her soda. “No one gets hurt.”

Annie couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to debate with her mother just for the fun of it. The combatants would have to wear emotional body armor because any verbal fencing around her house would be done without the safety guards. Two minutes into it, and her mother would turn it into blood sport.
“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
Whoever came up with that little cliché didn’t know her mother. Nora Gaines could dismember people with her tongue.

Annie felt almost sick with guilt. What sort of a daughter was she?

Susan got up. “I’d better put the rest of the stuff away.” She opened the refrigerator, took out a container, and opened it. “Gross! I should take this home for my little brother and let him turn it in as a science project.”

Distracted, Annie wasn’t listening.

It was a relatively short distance between Blackhawk on the east side of the hills and Oakland on the San Francisco Bay. There was a tunnel right through the hills at one point. Easy driving, easy distance. Thirty minutes max? Yet Grandmother Leota might as well have lived in New York State for all the time the family had spent together.

Susan’s voice came from behind the door of the fridge. “What did you do today?”

“I called my mother.” Annie was embarrassed the minute she said it. She made it sound like it was the biggest chore of the year.

Susan paused in her hunt for food. “And?”

And her mother had had a fit.
“Have you come to your senses yet, Anne? Do you have any idea how much you’ve hurt and disappointed me?”

Annie didn’t look up at Susan. “I told her I have a job. I started to tell her about my art classes, but she hung up.”

“Oh, Annie . . .” A glint of anger stirred in her friend’s dark eyes. “Anytime you want to be adopted, just let me know. My parents love you.”

Annie blinked back tears and looked down at the map. She adored Susan’s parents, but no one could replace her mother. She wished things were different. She wished her mother could love her as unconditionally as the Carters loved their children. None of them were perfect. Two had been in and out of trouble through their teen years. Susan’s older brother, Sam, had even spent a couple of months in juvenile hall. Tough love and patience had turned him around. Susan had been talking about him yesterday.

“He’s graduating this June. Can you believe it? He was such a reprobate! We’d all given up on him, but Mom and Dad said he’d come around in God’s own time. And he sure did. Not that he doesn’t still like to rock the boat. . . .” Sam. The wild one. “James Dean’s reincarnation,” Susan had once said. “The raging bull of the family, and full of it, too. . . .”

Annie looked at the map again, going over the route she had traced with her highlighter. “My mother’s all right, Suzie. She just wants what she thinks is best for me.” But did her mother
love
her? Annie realized part of her own drive to do well had been the hope that she would please her mother. What if she hadn’t gotten a 4.0 GPA? What if she hadn’t played piano for the Ladies’ Guild as her mother had promised she would?

And yet every time she did well at something, there was always another task set before her, something a little higher, a little harder. High school honors classes. Peer counseling. Summers of community service. SAT tests. The first scores hadn’t been high enough, so her mother had her tutored before retaking them. Finally scholarship and college applications. And then the pot at the end of the rainbow her mother had been chasing for her: Wellesley.
“All those rich girls from all those important families. Think of what your future could be, Annie!”

Annie knew she had panicked. Just the thought of what lay ahead had scared her enough to make her run. She felt she couldn’t breathe anymore. The pressure of her mother’s expectations had been crushing her. Each time she pleased her mother, the situation had grown worse, not better. Her mother would view the success with pride and see “the possibilities,” leading to further demands and expectations.

“Think how much more you could’ve done, Annie, if only you’d tried a little harder. If I’d had your opportunities . . .”

Annie knew no matter what she did, it would never be enough.

Or was she just trying to excuse herself for running out?

Dropping her highlighter, she rested her head on her crossed arms.
Lord, am I a quitter like my mother said? Am I a coward? Am I afraid I wouldn’t be able to make it at a
real
college?

“You’re just like your grandma Leota!”

She could still see the look in her mother’s eyes when she had said it.

“Annie?” Susan said softly. “You okay?”

“I’m okay.” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m just trying to put all the pieces together.”

“Maybe you should just walk away. Give her time.”

Annie looked up, stricken. She knew Susan didn’t care much for her mother. Nora Gaines had never done anything to make Susan feel welcome. Sometimes she wouldn’t even take the message when Susan called. “
That
girl,” she always said in that certain tone she could take on, as though Susan carried some kind of social disease.
“Why don’t you cultivate a friendship with Laura Danvers. She comes from a good family.”
Which, of course, meant a family with wealth and social standing . . . someone else who lived inside the gates.

Her mother didn’t understand. Things had probably changed a lot since her days in high school. Maybe then things were the way they appeared. Not anymore. Laura Danvers was pretty and dressed nicely, but she also had a cocaine addiction.

“Her mother says Laura goes to parties all the time and has a wonderful time. Why won’t you go when you’re invited?”

Because Annie knew what went on at the parties. She wasn’t into that scene. She didn’t want to fit in when it meant smoking pot, drinking, or having sex. Sure, Laura was popular. When she was high, she went along with any guy who happened to be with her. Everyone in school knew she had had two abortions before she was seventeen. And just before graduation practice had started, one of the girls in the gym said Laura had tested positive for HIV.

Annie’s mother knew none of that, and Annie didn’t feel it was her place to talk about Laura’s private life. She also didn’t want to get involved with Laura’s crowd. They all thought they were being so cool, but all they were doing was throwing away their lives with both hands.

Besides, even if Annie told her mother everything that went on in
the corridors of the high school or at the parties, it wouldn’t matter. Her mother probably wouldn’t believe her. Nora saw only what she wanted to see. She looked at Susan with her long, black-dyed hair and nose ring and saw trouble. She looked at Laura Danvers with her eighty-dollar haircut and Saks Fifth Avenue clothes and saw class. And that was that. Her mind was set.

I’m guilty, too, Lord. I’m not what people see. I’ve worn a mask. I’ve pretended everything was fine because I haven’t wanted to witness to my mother. I’ve just obeyed her, Lord. I’ve tried so hard. And I was afraid, too. I admit it. I’ve been afraid to face my mother’s wrath. And now that I’ve left home, I’m afraid if I go one step further and see my grandmother, my mother will never forgive me.

“Love the Lord your God . . .”

“Annie?”

She felt Susan’s hand on her back. She let out a shaky sigh and sat up. Raking a hand through her hair, she crossed her legs Indian fashion and looked at her dearest friend. “Suzie, I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.”

Susan sat down on the rug with her. “What can be wrong with seeing your grandmother?”

“You don’t understand. My family isn’t like yours. Everything’s complicated.” So complicated she couldn’t see the beginning, middle, or end of the mess. Just a thread, that’s all she wanted—just a slender thread so she could grasp what had happened to make her mother so bitter. Maybe then she could begin the process of untangling some small part of the jumble of knots.

Oh, Lord, I want to understand my mother. I don’t want to end up hating her the way she hates her mother. “Love one another,” You said. Help me do that. Please help me.

“I’m so nervous.” Annie held out her hands. They were shaking.

Susan reached out and took hold of them. “It’ll be okay.”

“Suzie, I don’t even know where to start. What do you talk about with your grandparents?”

“Everything! They love talking about the past. Granny Addie talks about her father all the time. I never met my great-grandfather, but I feel as though I know him because she’s told me so much about him. He jumped ship in San Francisco in 1905 and was there during the 1906
earthquake. And he was still alive when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Isn’t that cool? Grandma and Grandpa both grew up during the Great Depression and lived through World War II. You just ask a couple of questions and they’re off and running with a dozen stories. Some I’ve heard a hundred times, but it’s still fun. Especially when they’re telling us tidbits about the folks when they were little and into things. It’s a kick.”

“My mother says all my grandmother cared about was her job.”

Susan frowned. “What did she do?”

Annie shrugged. “I don’t know. My mother’s never said.”

“Well, that’s a start right there, Annie. Ask your grandmother about her work.”

“There are so many things I want to ask her.” She looked down at the map and the yellow line tracing the route to the neighborhood in Oakland. Leota Reinhardt lived a couple of blocks off the MacArthur Freeway. The house should be easy enough to find.

“Do you want me to go with you? I could call and see if Hank could switch me with one of the other girls.”

“Thanks, Suzie, but I’ll go by myself this time.”

“Call 911,” Barnaby squawked.

Annie and Susan laughed.

Chapter 5

Annie took the Fruitvale exit off MacArthur Freeway. She turned right at the bottom of the hill, drove another block, and turned left. An old brick church stood majestically on the corner at the base of a hilly, tree-lined avenue. The street was narrow and lined with charming little wood-and-stucco cottages. Each one had a front porch, and though some of the homes looked run down, with yard work and a fresh coat of paint they would be enchanting. Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa Reinhardt had probably lived here during a time when people sat outside in the fading evening light, visiting with their neighbors and watching their children play together.

Annie made a U-turn at the end of the block, in front of an old brick elementary school. She drove back slowly and pulled up in front of the house that bore the numbers of her grandmother’s address. Two little black girls were playing hopscotch on the sidewalk next door. They were dressed alike in blue jeans and bright-pink sweaters, their hair in beaded cornrows. As Annie got out of her car, the girls paused in their game to watch her warily.

She smiled. “Hello!”

They smiled back, though they didn’t say anything. Their parents had probably told them never to talk to strangers.

Leaning back inside her car, Annie reached for her purse and the present she had brought for her grandmother. She looped her purse strap onto her shoulder and pushed the door shut. Studying the small house before her, she thought it must at one time have been one of the prettiest on the street. Rhododendrons and azaleas grew along the front of the house. There were no blooms now, but in a few months, the bushes would be covered. The lawn was in poor shape, but proper mowing, a weed treatment, and some fertilizing would bring it back in no time. The barren tree in front looked like it could be a winter-dormant flowering plum, beautiful in blossom. There were several such trees in her mother and stepfather’s backyard, all carefully tended by Marvin Tikado’s gardening service.