Made of Honor (15 page)

Usually I have the fast comeback, but Lynn stumped me this time. Sure I’d cut myself off since I got saved, but that was what you were supposed to do, wasn’t it? Sanctification and all that stuff. I lowered my tone. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. And don’t worry about Dahlia. I’m not. I’ve got other troubles, like this wedding I’m in—”

Page dropped back onto the barstool. “What wedding? Ooh, is it the basketball player’s girlfriend?”

I nodded. These people were so predictable. The “she might get a man” shuffle was coming next.

A shiny smile appeared on Lynn’s face. “Hostess?”

Even my aunt looked with anticipation for my answer.

“Maid of honor,” I said, trying not to think about how crazy it sounded. I’d met Tangela four times in my life and that had been four times too many. Being her maid of honor was like giving a eulogy for the butcher—awkward at best.

“Yes!” Aunt Cheryl pulled her little arm down like a fan at a football game. Only it was my life and to hear them tell it, I was losing. “See, girls, I told you prayer works. I may not be a Holy Roller like Dana here, but we’re going to get this girl married—”

Would anything ever change? Ever? “I don’t want a man, and it’s just another wedding, something I’ve been in many times before. Don’t get too excited. It’s no big deal.” I pulled the tops off the strawberry and banana and dumped a scoop of each along with a spoon of mask mix into the blender labeled “mask 2.” I tossed a couple gift packs at Page and Lynn.

They were too excited to comment on the products, staring at me in that crazy what-are-we-going-to-do-with-her look. “What’s the dress look like?”

I shrugged and hit blend. “Ridiculous. It’s in here somewhere.” I fumbled for the handbook behind the register. As if playing Barbie for one madwoman wasn’t enough.

Lynn stared at the cover. “A handbook? And I thought I was crazy.”

Aunt Cheryl snatched it from Lynn. “You are. Don’t try it when you get married again, either.” She flipped to the table of contents. “Dress basics, page twenty-three. This child needs help. Major help.”

I poured Page’s mask into a container and capped it with a bow. “We all need some help, don’t we?”

No one responded. I guess that was a nice way of saying I should speak for myself.

“Shooo…” My aunt whistled and turned the book around for us to see. A strapless Mermaid gown—the long, tight kind. My eyes widened in horror, though I had the real thing in my closet. Those two words weren’t in my vocabulary anymore. Strapless and tight.

“Oh, yeah. It’s on.” Lynn reached up for my shaggy bob of braids, picking her fingers through my tousled mop. “Page, you’re on hair and nails. I’ll do shoes and makeup. Wait, are the shoes in the book, too?”

Aunt Cheryl shook her head. “Uh-huh. Stilettos. And a list of preferred stylists.”

We all looked at each other.

Over the top. Way over.

“Well, I’d love to sit here with you all and chat about this crazy wedding, but I’m late for choir rehearsal. Lock up when you leave.” I handed Lynn the keys.

She handed them back and reached over and gave me a squeeze. “We’re going now, cuz. I’ll call you later. And if your daddy comes by…”

I rolled my eyes. “I know, I know, don’t give him any money.”

She smiled. “I was just going to say don’t treat him like you treat us.”

Ouch. What had I done to them so terrible? Torture them with free stuff? “Gotcha.”

Page kissed my cheek. “Thanks for the goodies, Dane. And congrats on the nailing the wedding.” She tugged the bell sleeves of her blouse. “I guess we worried about Dahlia and Trevor’s wedding for nothing—”

I dropped my keys. “Wedding? Is that why they’re here?”

Lynn punched Page’s shoulder. “You have a big mouth, you know that?”

“His mother sent over an invitation. I thought you knew.” Aunt Cheryl dug in her purse and pulled out a piece of parchment, pausing to interject a diplomatic smile. I scanned the cover and handed it back to her, breathing easier than minutes before. Though I knew anything I’d felt for Trev was dead, this still hurt.

“What did his mother say when you said you couldn’t come?”

Aunt Cheryl squinted. My cousins looked away.

They were traitors, all of them. “You’re not.”

Lynn groaned. “She’s our cousin, too. It’s been a long time—”

Page cut in. “I’m just going for the food. Them Ice’s can cook up a meal now. I’ll probably just go to the reception.”

Aunt Cheryl cleared her throat. “I’m just going so no one will get the wrong idea. I wouldn’t want it to hurt your business. Rumors, you know.” Ever the diplomat, my aunt. Who cared?

I forced back my tears. As if Trevor hadn’t humiliated me enough. Now my whole family was going to his wedding. And hers. Would their pretty little daughter be the flower girl? Why did that hurt worse? I didn’t want kids, did I?

Not until I saw my beautiful little niece. What was her name? Sierra. A cough choked in my throat. “At least I don’t have to worry about Daddy going.”

Lynn gave me that sickening “uh-oh” look.

“You’ve got to be kidding. Dad, too?”

Aunt Cheryl wrung her hands. “Well, even your father thought it’d be best if we showed a united front on this one, considering—”

“Considering what? That this guy made a fool out of both his daughters? Did you think I was going to go the wedding and do a cheesy ’80s Vesta video?” I cringed at the thought of myself crooning sadly outside the church while the once love of my life ambled toward the altar with my little sister. They needn’t have worried. Sure Trev had driven me to do some stupid things, but those days were over.

Lynn grabbed my arm. “It wasn’t like that. We just thought—”

“You didn’t think at all. Y’all never do.” I pushed the door open and waited while they left the store, ignoring my aunt’s pleading eyes. With my back to them, I turned the lock, determined not to let them see my tears.

“For this I have Jesus,” I whispered to myself.

Y
ou can tell a lot about a person from their furniture. Mama said that. Who could argue with a thirty-year-old living room set? I’d reupholstered our living room set, but it was all still there, even the three-leaf table everyone used to crowd around on Sunday afternoons after church, when the real service started. When people cried into their coleslaw and huddled in clumps of prayer over ribs and potato salad. It was our living room where secrets were whispered, babies announced, trouble exposed.

The way our pastor led the morning service, Daddy had once served as our dinnertime priest. It was during these hours of the week that he had shined—cooking hush puppies crispy and sweet, fried fish and cheese grits, his tribute to the Georgia he’d left behind at age fifteen. Mama would sit beside him and peel potatoes, her bitterness draining away with each slice. Then somehow, as if by magic, a laugh would ring out of her mouth, followed by the low rumbling of Daddy’s trash-talking voice.

“Don’t make me have to stop cooking and come over there and get some sugar from you.” When he talked like that it was bet
ter than hummingbird cake. Sweet. Airy. And Mama ate it right up, all the while playing hard-to-get.

“Don’t you come over here. You’re burning that food as it is….”

I would stop just short of the kitchen, soaking in their once-a-week love ritual of bartered kisses and flirty words. “Honey,” he’d call her. “Baby,” she’d answered. “Sweetheart.” Daddy usually whispered that one. All those nicknames choked out by everyday life. For me, it tasted better than the food, their love talk. And considering the offered fare, that was saying a lot.

The doorbell would start singing then, each note filling our home with friends and family. Even my father’s sister, Aunt Cheryl, and her horrid daughters would come, though they’d never speak to us on the street during the week. Stuck-up though they were, nobody with good sense could turn down Daddy’s fish. And those ribs? I get dizzy just thinking about them.

Right before we’d line up with our plates, there would come a knock at the door. Adrian’s mother. She said only strangers rang the bell. She always tumbled in like a bouquet of daisies, laughing and swaying with those spidery lashes spilling onto her cheeks. When we were small, Jordan swore they were fake. I dared him to prove it. He tried to pull them off and almost blinded the woman. Took him months to look her way again.

I always gawked at her when she came in, knowing I’d get a licking for it later. I couldn’t help myself though. Her face called to me and so I went, looking over every inch of it, memorizing every pore, wondering how someone so perfect-looking could walk around like normal people and let barbeque sauce drip on her dress. Even after I realized she wasn’t perfect, I couldn’t stop looking at her. Her smile was like a slow song after a long day. It just hit the spot.

Adrian didn’t mind me looking at his mother. He was used to people staring. She wasn’t. She’d always turn to me and say, “Baby, is my slip showing?” Adrian was proud of her beauty because it meant so much to me.

I was proud, too. Of Daddy, who never stared at Adrian’s mother like all the other men. It would have been easy and nobody would have thought bad of him for it—Mama stared at her, too—but he kept his eyes glued on Mama until the last dish was washed and the last chair emptied. Only when we took the middle leaf out of the table and shoved it back to its normal size, did his heart scamper away from us.

I sometimes wondered if Daddy didn’t stick around because of those Sundays, if he didn’t swallow each Sabbath evening like a pill, gulping every second, hoping that some morsel of that love would protect him from the war to be fought in the same kitchen over the next week. If Jordan hadn’t left, the Sundays may have kept things going. Tided us all over with a little hope.

But Jordan did leave, and when he did, Mama took the middle leaf out of the table and covered it with a white plastic cloth and stuffed letters under it. Letters marked “Return to Sender.” I’d tied them all up and set them in a box in case Jericho ever wanted them. Until today, the table had graced my foyer, cherry wood gleaming under a burgundy linen cloth and mats of forest green. I never found the middle leaf. That Daddy had known where it was all along had never occurred to me.

Until now.

The scent of hot fish caught me on the stairs. I’d stopped at first, my heart galloping, trying to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. The coconut oil Daddy used to cook it—his secret ingredient—floated into the hall and lingered around my head. I stepped cautiously to my door. Laughter and music greeted me from the other side.

He didn’t. Surely not.

Before I could turn the knob, the door swung open. Jordan’s girlfriend, whatever her name was, opened the door. “It’s her!” she squealed, her makeup bunching up into a blur of beiges, greens and blues.

“Yes, it’s me. At my own house. What a surprise,” I mumbled.

Licking his fingers, Jordan appeared behind MissTammy Faye. “Surprise!” he shouted as I stumbled into the foyer. The spot where the leaf table used to be, waiting quietly, burdened with flowers, too afraid to remember what wonders it had once beheld, was now bare. The old table, bold and full of memories adorned the living room. All twelve original chairs circled the oval of cherry wood.

I swallowed hard and forced my feet toward the smell of hush puppies rolling in a vat of olive oil, taken from my soap supplies, no doubt. He’d probably borrowed the coconut oil, too. I ignored Trevor and Dahlia, intertwined on the couch. My couch.

It’s her house, too. Let it go.

Sure she’d grown up here, but I’d redone the place, helped Mom buy it from the co-op. And here Daddy had gone and done this? Just as I was about to melt down, my niece bounded out of the bathroom with those antenna pigtails and Trevor’s chocolate-drop eyes. She was beautiful, like Adrian’s mother. I could hardly take my eyes off her.

The little girl matched my steps and took my hand. “Hey,” is all she said, as if she’d been waiting for me.

“Hey yourself.” I saddled her on my hip—though I hadn’t planned on it—and considered how I’d fix her hair so that gravity could do its work. We shuffled past Rochelle and her driver friend. I tried to smile, but I’m sure it came out more like one of those Gary Payton smirks from the NBA finals. You know, the “How you doing? Well, I hope you’re well because I’m about to kick your behind” look? That one.

Sierra clung to my neck. “You have a pretty house,” she said. “It’s happy.”

Happy? My house? What kind of life was this child living? “Thank you. You have pretty hair. Will you let me do it for you?”

We’d reached the kitchen now and were leaning up against the door frame, watching as Adrian dropped the balls of cornmeal into the oil and my father fished them out. At the sight of them together, I took a sharp breath.

If my niece noticed my alarm, she didn’t show it.

“Would you do my hair?” she whispered. “Mommy makes it scary. I want happy hair. Like this house.”

A tear trailed my cheek and wet her braid, standing on end like a curly exclamation point. She felt my tears. I knew because she squeezed me tighter, but she didn’t say a word. I cried harder, sorry that someone so young was so accustomed to being cried on. “I’ll make your hair as happy as I can,” I said in a creaking voice.

She nodded and the hush puppy team turned at the sound of my voice. Adrian smiled. Daddy turned away.

“So what’s all this about?” I reached for a hush puppy and blew on it before handing it to Sierra. From another heaping plate of fried fish fillets, catfish from the looks of it, I pinched off a piece.

Daddy shoved the mustard down the counter. “This is about family. About the family we were and the family we can still be. It ain’t nothing easy, but good food can make it go down a whole lot better.”

“Yum-mo,” Sierra said, her face bright as the sun. “Does it have twansfat? I can’t eat that.”

All three of us paused and stared at the little girl. Dahlia surely hadn’t changed. “No transfats, baby. Here.” I blew off another and turned back to Daddy. “But did you have to do it here? Bring them…here?”

Adrian straightened, rolling a grainy ball between his palms. Another smile. “Chill,” he mouthed without making a sound.

He’d been away far too long. For me, this was chill, as chill as I could be on a day I’d come home and found the whole block partying in my living room. I stared at the layout—paper plates, cups, condiments, food. At least they hadn’t used any of my stuff.

Watching my expression, Daddy let out a hearty laugh. “No, I didn’t use nothing of yours besides the oil. Wasn’t nothing to use. No wonder you so evil, living on old cereal.”

More like the drive-thru. The cereal was just for Monday mornings when I started my “program” for the nth time only to quit by the end of the day. I decided not to explain.

“As for the ‘them,’ where else could I bring ’em? You ain’t paid my rent.” He tasted a hush puppy and licked his lips.

The heel of my free hand smacked my forehead. Dad’s rent. Hadn’t I paid that? I’d called…. “I’m so sorry, Dad.”

Daddy shrugged. “Sorry? Don’t be. I’m a grown man. It’s about time I started acting like one again.”

Wow. “Where are you staying?”

His eyes bore into me. “With my son.”

Jordan? Talk about two who deserved each other. How long would that arrangement last? I clamped my mouth shut.

He frowned and motioned to Adrian. “Put another egg in that, son.” He took another bite. “And a splash of milk.” Nodding as if agreeing with himself, he turned back to me. “What was I saying?”

Sierra looked up from licking every finger. “Had to bring ’em here.”

Daddy wiped his hands on his apron and kissed her chubby cheek. “That’s right, baby. Thank you.”

She smiled at me and whispered, “He’s nice. My gwanpa.” I nodded in agreement. No sense confusing her by explaining that he was my Daddy, too. When I’d finally figured out that my grandmother was my mother’s mother, I had a headache for days. I was four, but they told the story forever. I hoped Daddy wouldn’t make the connection and recite the tale now.

He opened the oven and checked something delicious-smelling but blocked my view so I couldn’t see. I closed my eyes. I didn’t need to see. I could smell. Carrots, raisins, butter, eggs…Hummingbird cake. My favorite.

“Stop peeking, girl. Anyway, the child is right. I had to bring them here. You had the table.”

My eye started leaking again, remembering Mama standing here, laughing and teasing as they took the platters out to sit them on the table. “You knew where the middle leaf was? I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

Daddy scowled a little. Well, he tried anyway. “You never asked me. It was in the attic where Nella wrapped it. You know we kept it. Your mother made me keep it.”

“For this?” My eyes stared over the bar in the kitchen at the people singing, talking, laughing…They shot up out of my floor like thirsty plants and this place was the oasis. Even I had forgotten how wonderful it was.

“No, honey, not for this.” He nodded toward Adrian. “For your wedding.”

I hung my head. For my wedding. Even in her pain, Mama had hoped for it. How had she felt when Adrian married someone else? Better yet, why hadn’t she told Daddy to do something else with that stupid piece of the table? I smiled down at Sierra, snoring like a little haystack, her head against my shoulder. I would have thought that Dahlia might have come for her by now—I would have if it were my kid—but no doubt she was still plastered to the couch, looking beautiful. “Well, at least Dahlia can use it for her reception.”

Patting Adrian on the back, Daddy moved to the sink and washed his hands. “Never know. You might use it first. These folks are just warming it up for you.”

Adrian’s eyed me with a glance of caution. He didn’t need to say it this time. I got the message. Chill.

I tried. “I guess it’s okay. But just for today. Don’t ever do this again.”

A squiggly line eased across Daddy’s forehead. His white hairline lowered an inch. “Never?”

I glared at him. “Never.”

He clanged the bottom of my Wolfgang Puck pasta pot with a wooden spoon. “Your attention, please!”

The clamor subsided and everyone turned toward the kitchen.

“Dana has been so gracious as to extend her house to us for the rest of the year. So be here next Sunday and every Sunday after that.”

He kissed my cheek and gave me a stern look as everyone cheered. “Don’t ever tell me never, girl. That’s where your Mama went wrong.”

I stood there with my mouth open, wondering if Mama hadn’t gone wrong a few other times, like on the day she said, “I do.” I didn’t mean that of course, but I thought it. I turned and walked to my bedroom, to lay Sierra down between the mountains of coats and jackets. When I tried to get up, she clutched my neck. “Sleep wif me?” she asked in a desperate voice.

An explanation of why I couldn’t rose to my mouth, but suddenly none of it made sense. The slow sleepiness of the old Sundays settled over me and I sank down next her, throwing Aunt Cheryl’s mink over both of us. Something told me we could both use a few hugs and a bit of shut-eye. “I’ll sleep with you, Sierra.”

“Fank you…” she said, drifting off to sleep. My heart echoed her words, sending off one last prayer before sliding off to the land of dreams.

Red satin stilettos. My eyes bulged as Tangela held them up in one hand, all the while referring to the proper page in her handbook with the other. I knuckled the sleep from my eyes. Though I’d been awake since 4:00 a.m., this little “chat” was putting me to sleep.

“Boring, isn’t it?”

I turned toward the voice, to find a pudgy brown face, with maroon smudged over each eye and an immaculate layer of blue fingernail polish on every finger. I looked down. And toe. Shemika, was it? She looked a little different, cuter actually, but it was definitely Mother Holly’s granddaughter. How had she managed to become part of Tangela’s wedding party?

Tangela’s voice broke in again, just as the shrimp cocktail was served. “Now be sure you have the right bra for your dress.” She stared at me, before rolling her eyes at Shemika. “And a girdle if you need one. I don’t want anything hanging out. That’s nasty.”