Mama B - A Time to Mend (Book 4) (13 page)

“Don’t talk about my
brother,” she warned with her tone and her eyes. “If you wouldn’t have stole
him from the family, we would have all been better off.”

And she started walking
toward me, with her finger pointing, like she want a piece of me.
Lord, we
done already had one scuffle in here today. Please don’t let us have another
one. I ain’t had a fist fight since 1958, when I was in high school.

“Ida Mae, you need to back
up.”

She rolled her neck. “What
you gon’ do if I don’t?”

“It ain’t what
I’m
gon’ do, it’s what the
Lord’s
gon’ do ‘cause I already asked Him to
fight my battles. You don’t want none of Him.”

Y’all already know I’m
well-versed in orderin’ the enemy around. Like always, he dropped back ‘cause
He ain’t got much choice when somebody sic the Lord on Him like that.

“Well, you took Albert from
the family, especially my Momma. Her health went down the minute y’all married,
and it was all on account of you she died so early, too.” Ida Mae’s tears
returned. She flopped down on the couch and cried like it was just yesterday that
my mother-in-law passed away.

As one who already lost my
own Momma, I know how one memory can be overwhelmin’. I certainly didn’t want
to make Ida Mae’s pain any worse, but I had to know. “What makes you think I
had something to do with Momma Jackson’s death?”

I sat two cushions down from
her in case she got a notion to try and smack me in the middle of this
heart-to-heart.

“The night Momma died, Tannie
told me, Momma had called Albert to come pick her up and take her to emergency.
And he said he was on his way. But then you called back to the house and said
Albert wasn’t coming. Said you didn't want him to come. He’d been working too
late, and he was tired. He would take her to the doctor in the morning. But
Momma didn’t make it to the morning.”

I could have stopped her back
at the point where she said I called back and told them Albert wasn’t coming
‘cause everything she Tannie said was a boldface lie. “Albert did no such
thing, and neither did I.”

Ida Mae’s face was painted
with confusion. “But Tannie said—”

“Tannie wasn’t even at Momma
Jackson’s house that week. Me and Albert was there
every
night leading
up to the night your mother passed. We had been to the doctor three times
already that week, and Albert insisted on her going again, but Momma Jackson
said
she
was tired. She didn’t feel like going to see no more doctors
except Jesus.”

My sister-in-law heaved up
and down again, in tears. At the risk of her rejecting me, I scooted closer.
The power of God rose up inside of me and put my arm across her shoulder. “She
was ready to go, Ida Mae.”

“Why would Tannie lie to me?”
Ida Mae cried. “It was
you
. It
had
to be you.”

“It wasn’t me. It wasn't
Albert. It was just time.”

Her body went limp and she
fell into my embrace.

Lord, help her. She off,
Jesus. She just off.

I knew Albert, being the prize of his
family, was sorely missed by his baby sister. So me and Ida Mae was set up at
odds from the get-go. But this extra misunderstanding added on top of the
general jealousy was the most ridiculous lie I’d ever heard in my lifetime.
This woman been bitter at me for decades about something that flat didn’t even
happen!

After she caught her breath, she lifted
off of me and squared her eyes on mine. “So, you didn’t keep Albert from saving
our mother?”

“No! I’d already lost my own mother by
then, I wouldn’t have wished that pain on nobody.”

“Why didn’t y’all make her go?”

“Ida Mae, you
knew
your mother.”

She chuckled slightly. “Momma was a
stubborn one. Me and her was always at odds.”

For once, Ida Mae spoke the truth. Momma
Jackson didn't like Ida Mae’s lifestyle, in and out of relationships. Clubbin’
four or five years, then goin’ to church, then back to the streets. I didn’t
bring up the fact that Tannie had fussed most of the week about Ida Mae
not
being
there when their mother passed, being out somewhere chasing some man.

 “Why would Tannie lie about this,
though?”

Tannie, their first cousin, was as much a
liar as Ida Mae. Loved to keep up mess. Love to be the one to deliver bad news,
even if she had to make it up. She was the original Fox News Reporter, if you
ask me—reportin’ on speculation, but don’t never come back to clear up
her mistakes once the truth come out. Of course, I couldn’t tell the whole
truth about Tannie ‘cause she was practically missing. No one had seen or heard
from her in years.  I gave a respectful answer, “Must have been a misunderstanding.”

I focused on Ida Mae’s part in all this.
“I’m glad we got to the bottom of why you been double-mad at me, but the truth
is, Ida Mae, you didn’t like me from the first time Albert brought me home. Tell
the truth, now, and shame the devil. What
do
you have against me?”

She tilted her head to the side and
nodded. “Well…we were trying to keep the family line from getting too dark.”

“That’s ridiculous! Too dark? Y’all ain’t
no high-yellow family!”

“I know, but you remember how it was, B.
Light-skinned folk always got treated better. We was just thinkin’ about how to
make it better for the next generation,” Ida Mae reasoned. “No different than
people wanting their kids to get a good education or hang with the right crowd.
Everybody wants to do whatever they can go give their kids an edge, even if it
is ridiculous.”

“Well, I know me and Albert blew your
theory wide open. He wasn’t but a shade lighter than me, and we still was
successful because of the Lord. So you can let that color-struck lie die,” I
lectured.

She looked around at our living room,
which hadn’t suffered the same damage as the den. Our fine draperies and
furniture set could have just as easily been in the home of a politician or a
movie star. The Bible says the home of the righteous is filled with good
treasure, and ours sure was, thanks to His faithfulness.

“So we gonna let this end here and now or
what?” I asked Ida Mae.

She blinked a few times. “I don’t wanna
be best friends.”

“Me neither. But you ain’t got to be ugly
to me.”

She shrugged. “I’ll try.”

“I need you to do more than
try
.
You gone have to
succeed
if you plan on staying in this house,” I said.

Ida Mae’s eyes lit up. “You mean, I can
stay? Son said—”

“Son aint’ runnin’ nothin’ but his
mouth.” I waved her off.

She got a smile on her face from
California to Georgia. But before she got too happy, I laid some new rules.
“Now, if you gon’ stay, there will be no shacking of any kind. You want to live
with a man, you go move with him. I got pictures in my phone to show what all everything
looked like before Earl bashed up my house. We’ll show them to a judge and get
a restraining order against him so he can’t come back in here.

“Another thing, we can change the rent
day to the fifteenth, but I’m hirin’ a company to handle all the finances. If
you don’t pay them on time, they’ll tack on late charges, and they
will
evict you after so many days. You got that?”

“Got it. Thank you, B. My brother might
have had good taste after all,” she got in one last word.

I gave her the side-eye before I realized
she was joking, and we both busted out laughing.

Monday morning, Frank helped
me get everything set up with the rental management company. I wasn’t trying to
be funny, but I told Frank bluntly, “They gon’ have to be white.”

Frank bristled. “Why?”

“’Cause Ida Mae still got plantation
thinkin’ in her mind. She see a white person coming to collect the rent, trust
me, she
will
have it ready quick fast and in a hurry.”

“If you say so, honey.”

“I say so.” Sometimes, you
got to work with the mentality people bring.

Chapter 18

Knock, knock, knock.

My heart leapt at the sound
of the rap on the front door, but then it quickly sank down. Jeffrey always
knocked on the door like the house was on fire, so it couldn’t be him. I hadn’t
seen him for a whole week, and on account of Frank, I didn’t venture down to
the Allen’s to find out what happened to my little friend.

He might have been in state
custody, for all I knew, which hurt me dearly because, in a way, it would have
been my fault for trying to make their household better.

“Who is it?” I said.

“Michael Allen.”

I looked through the peephole
and confirmed it was him, then opened the door.

I tried hard to contain my
excitement—to no avail. “How’s Jeffrey? Where is he?”

Michael’s plastic, professional
smile preceded his words. “He’s fine. Staying with my parents temporarily.”

“Oh, good. I’m so glad to
know he’s okay. I sure do miss him coming by for breakfast and a little Bible
study every morning. And how is Julia, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“She’s fine, too. Moved back
to her parents’ for the time being at least.” Michael nodded like he didn’t
have time for all this small-talk. “I’m sure he misses you, too, but um…I’ve
got something I’d like to ask.”

“Sure. Come on in,” I said,
unlocking the screen and pushing the door open.

“No. I’d rather not.”

“All righty, then, I’ll step
outside. I don’t like talking to folk through glass.”

“That’s funny,” he laughed,
“I speak to half of my clients through a glass window.”

I laughed at his quick wit
and, suddenly, Mr. Michael Allen was starting to make sense to me. If he made
his business defending the accused, I figured every once in a while he probably
had to override his conscious to do his job. Do it enough times and you’ll end
up with no conscious all.

I stepped out into the cool
morning air. “How can I help you?”

His face turned a light pink.
“Now that Julia’s gone, I don’t have anyone to homeschool Jeffrey. I was
wondering if you could, for just a few hours a week, be his teacher”—he
held up the air quotation signs—“for the rest of the semester to keep
social services off my back. I’m willing to pay whatever you ask. I hope to
find someone else, a Nanny who’ll sign off for teaching him, by January, but
the state has to approve since I’m kind of on their watch list now.”

“Michael, Jeffrey doesn’t
need a fake teacher”—I mimicked his gesture—“he needs a
real
teacher. Why don’t you send him to school?”

He laughed. “Are you kidding
me? They call ten times a day when I send him to school. He has restroom
accidents, he freaks out with other kids, he throws tantrums when the teacher
doesn’t call on him to answer a question…I don’t know what you’ve done to him,
but he really likes you.”

“I show him the love of Christ,
that’s what I do.”

“Yeah, that’s good.
But—”

“Have
you
ever met
Jesus?”

Michael squinted his eyes as
his body froze, like he wasn’t expecting that question. “Uuuuuh, no. Can’t say
I have.”

“Too bad. If you knew Him,
you’d understand how His love changes people. Gives people peace. People like
Jeffrey, who ain’t got no pretense, can feel it even quicker, I think,” I
ministered.

A sudden wind blew, and my
neighbor’s wind chimes clanked out a beautiful song.

Chile, the way Michael jumped
you would have thought he’d seen a ghost. “Okay, yeah, that was weird. But, um,
okay. I’m glad Jeffrey found Jesus. And thanks for doing whatever you do,” he
fumbled through. “I’ll try some other plan if you can’t be his temporary
teacher.”

“Let’s try this,” I said.
“You put Jeffrey in school for the next few weeks. Let him try it again. And
you can put me down as an emergency contact if they need something. I’ll watch
him for a few hours after school until you get home from work. By the time you
hire his Nanny, he’ll be familiar with his routine already. You know, you can’t
throw a bunch of new stuff on Jeffrey at once.”

Michael scratched his head.
“Makes a lot of sense. Jeffrey’s been through a lot.”

“So have you,” I reminded
him.

He rolled his eyes. “To say
the least.”

“Well, it’ll all work out.
Now I got a question for you.”

“Go right ahead,” he opened
up.

Frank probably wouldn’t
appreciate me asking, but since, technically, I wasn’t
at
the Allen’s
house, I took the liberty to ask, “When you gonna get that house cleaned out?
Jeffrey’ll have a hard time keeping up with his schoolwork and such in all that
mess.”

“Yeah. My first wife’s
stuff.”

“She long gone, Michael. You
got to let her stuff go, too.”