The Dear One (2 page)

But now when I come home at the end of the day, the house doesn't smell like anything but maybe a little bit of something we had for dinner last night or one of Marion's cigarettes.

Last August I went to visit him and his new wife, Joanne. Joanne is about a foot shorter than my dad and as round as a Thanksgiving turkey. She was constantly nibbling on something or sitting down to a three-course meal, claiming the baby she was three months pregnant with kept her eating. She had stopped working after she married Dad.

“I always wanted to be barefoot and pregnant.” She would laugh, winking at me like we were in on some secret together.

Dad rushed around helping her from one chair to another, from the bedroom to the bathroom, as though she were an invalid. They walked the streets holding hands.

I stayed two weeks. And although Dad and I played chess, took walks full of long silences through Denver, and kissed each other hello and good-bye, the smell of his pipe was all that was familiar about him now. We talked around things the way strangers did.

 

When Ma woke me up again later, I had nearly forgotten about the call.

“Happy birthday, baby.”

Ma was sitting at the foot of my bed. On her lap was a box wrapped with a yellow bow. On top of that sat a smaller box wrapped with a green one. Ma smiled. Sun streamed through a slit in the curtain and settled on her face. Her skin is dark brown and smooth everywhere but on her forehead, where wrinkles creep across. Her eyes are so dark, they look black beneath her lashes. There is a small pink spot at the center of her bottom lip. She says the spot was left by vodka. Every time she sees it, she tells herself,
I don't need a drink today.
Ma stopped drinking right after Dad left and says the spot will keep her from ever drinking again. A beauty mark on her right cheek becomes the head of an arrow when she smiles.

“Happy birthday,” she said again, and reached to give me a hug. She smelled like sandalwood soap.

I opened the small box first and found a square of silver. Pressing my nails into the small split on the side, I opened it and it became a framed picture of Grandma. In the picture she was about my age. Her eyes looked right at me and smiled. I swallowed. She was holding a small dog. The dog was looking at Grandma. I held the picture close to me. “Where did you get it?”

“It was with a lot of pictures in the attic. I found it a while back and knew it would be perfect. Do you like it?”

I nodded and looked at the picture again. Grandma was still looking at me.

“Open this one,” Ma said. “Happy birthday to you . . . ,” she sang, her voice soft and clear. “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Afeni . . .”

There must have been a hundred sheets of tissue paper in the second box. At the bottom was a smaller box the color of cement. I opened it slowly. Inside was a pewter mountain with an amethyst moon sitting on top. I touched the stone. It was dark purple in some places, nearly transparent in others. “It's beautiful, Ma . . . ,” I said, holding the stone up toward the window. Purple rays shot through it onto my hand. “Beautiful.”

Ma gave me another hug before she rose. We looked at each other for a moment. Her eyes were proud. “Get up now, birthday girl. I'm going to have to drive you to school before I go to work.”

When I got out of the shower, the phone was ringing again. This time I knew who it was.

“Happy birthday to you,” Dad sang through the distance, static muffling the words.

“Hi,” I said.

“Did you get my present?”

“The mailman hasn't passed.”

“I miss you, Feni. When are you coming out to Colorado again?”

“I don't know. Sometime . . . I guess.”

“Are you having a good birthday?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I can't believe you're thirteen today.”

“I'm not. I'm twelve.”

He laughed nervously. “Of course you're twelve. What else would you be? How's your mama?”

“Fine. How's your Joanne?”

“She's fine. Your mama tell you you have a new little sister? Her name's Charisse.”

“Yes.”

“She'll be a month on the eighteenth. She's something else!”

“That's nice.”

“Well, I guess I'll let you go enjoy your birthday. Eat some cake for me, sweetheart. I miss you.”

“Bye, Dad.” I held on to the phone after we'd said good-bye.

“Feni!” Ma yelled from the kitchen. I jumped. “Is that Bernard on the phone?”

“It was.”

“Did he hang up already?”

“Yes.”

“My goodness, that was quick. Well . . . come on downstairs so I can fix you up a little before we leave.”

The soft click-clack of her heels faded as she passed through the kitchen into the den.

In the kitchen I poured Cheerios into a yellow bowl with blue flowers dancing around it and carried it into the den.

Ma was sitting at her desk, wearing a dark blue suit and glasses. The glasses were stylish, but thick. Sometimes she wore contact lenses, but most of the time she didn't want to deal with them. Her briefcase was spilled out over everything.

“Hey, honey,” she said, not looking up from a page of figures.

I sat on the edge of the leather chair she'd bought for herself on her thirty-fifth birthday, careful not to spill my breakfast. Ma and her best friend, Marion, had the exact same birthday—August 11, 1960. It was fun celebrating two birthdays at one time, but it left me pretty broke. Marion's girlfriend, Bernadette, had the same complaint.

“Why'd someone call so early?” I asked, shoveling a spoonful of cereal into my mouth.

“That was Clair. You remember her, don't you? Me and Marion's friend from college?”

“Yeah, I remember her. But why'd she call?”

Ma scribbled some figures onto her pad, checked them on a calculator, and scribbled something else. She frowned, lifted her glasses to rub her eyes. For the past six years she has been the vice president of a public-relations firm—working sixty to seventy hours a week.

“I'll tell you about it on the way to school,” Ma said, looking up. “Don't you want to iron that shirt, Feni? After all, it is your birthday.”

The wrinkled shirt I was wearing had a button missing at the bottom. The head of the alligator emblem on the chest pocket was half gone.

“No.”

“What about that nice skirt I bought you, the long one with the stripes?”

“I don't want to wear a skirt today.”

Ma frowned, and the wrinkles buckling across her forehead made her look old. “You have to start caring a little more about the way you look,” she said. “You're getting too old to dress like that.”

I bent down to tie my worn hiking boots. “I'm ready,” I said quickly, holding the brush out to her. She closed her briefcase and I sat on the floor with my head leaning against her leg. She pulled the brush through my hair a few times before wrapping it into a tight French braid down the back of my head. But when I looked into the mirror, my hair was already starting to frizz out around my forehead.

“Are you coming straight home?” Ma asked, following me into the hall and pulling on her coat.

“Yeah. You said I didn't have to go to Jack and Jill, since it's my birthday.” I zipped up my ski jacket and wrapped a scarf around my head.

“I know, I know.”

“That club's such a pain, Ma. The only cool person in it is Caesar.”

“What's wrong with the rest of the kids?”

“All the girls want to do is talk about boys, and all the boys want to do is bother the girls. Everybody thinks they're so special because their parents have good jobs.”

“Black professionals are special, Feni. The kids should be proud of who they are.”

“Yeah, being proud is one thing, but being out-and-out snobs is a pain. They sit around and talk about how they're going to run the world. I don't have any interest in running anybody's world. I don't care about what shades of makeup go with my skin or what sorority I'm pledging when I get to college. I'm not even in high school!”

“But black kids need a place to meet other black kids. And Jack and Jill was founded to do just that—bring black kids together.”

“You mean a place to meet other
rich
black kids! I'm not like that, Ma. I don't care about what other kids' parents do for a living or how fancy their house is.”

Ma smiled. “That's what I like about you,” she said, kissing my forehead. “Anything special you want for dinner?”

“Chicken.”

“Should have guessed.”

 

In the car I took a deep breath and asked, “Why'd Clair call so early?”

“She called about her daughter. I don't know if you remember her. Rebecca?”

I shook my head.

“Well, I know you remember me telling you about Clair's nervous breakdown a few years back. . . .”

“Yeah, I remember that.”

“Seems Clair's been having a hard time since then. First she and her husband split up. Then she lost her teaching position because she was taking so much time off since she wasn't well. Now, it seems, her oldest daughter, Rebecca, is pregnant and Clair wants to know if she can come stay with us until the baby comes. She thinks Rebecca needs a quieter place. All of the other children put too much stress on her.” Ma sighed, then frowned. “Seems like history repeating itself. First Clair getting pregnant before she had a chance to finish college. Now Rebecca . . .”

“Why can't Rebecca stay with her husband?”

“She's not married, Feni. She's fifteen.”

“Fifteen? Ma, are you playing a joke on me or something?”

Ma pulled the car up in front of Roper Academy, but I didn't budge. “I would never joke about something like this, Feni,” she said firmly.

We stared at each other for a moment, her eyes worried behind her glasses.

“I don't want a pregnant girl in our house, Ma,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.

“Feni”—Ma reached to touch my face but I pulled away—“don't be judgmental. Give her a chance. . . . ”

“I don't want her here!”

Ma put her hands on her lap. “I don't know if I'm going to say yes or what. I feel like I owe Clair. We were so tight at Spelman. Then we lost touch. I always swore I'd do anything for her. I still want to believe that.”

“What about me?” I wasn't yelling, but my voice sounded too loud in the small car.

“We can talk about it all tonight. But I think it would be nice to have some company in the house. It's been such a long time. We have all this space, and Bernadette could tutor Rebecca—”

“What's to talk about? I said I don't want a pregnant girl in our house!”

“And
I
said we'd talk later! This is about more than what
you
want for once, Afeni! If you can't understand what being close to somebody means and wanting to help them when they ask for help, then you have a lot of growing to do! You don't even know Rebecca, so how can you know whether or not you want her in our house?”

“Who's going to look after her?” I asked. “You? You work all the time, and Marion is not much better! I know it'll all fall on me. I'll be the one stuck in the house cleaning up after her. And I know she'll end up in my room, because I'm not about to let anyone stay in Grandma's room, and you'll say the guest room is too drafty. So I'll be the one who'll have to hear her crying herself to sleep at night because she misses her mommy! Not you, Ma! So don't tell me it's
our
decision because it's not! I don't care how tight you and Clair were at Spelman, our house isn't some home for pregnant girls! This is my life too, now, and I'm going to decide who I do and don't want in it!”

“Look, Feni,” Ma said, “you're twelve today, not thirty. Now, when you're old enough to be taking care of me, you can tell me what to do.”

“I never had to take care of you?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow in her direction.

Ma swallowed and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Before the words were out, I regretted it. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to throw it in your face all the time,” I nearly whispered.

“Well, it's in my face, Feni. Again.”

Gathering my books together, I took one last look at her before I climbed out of the car.

“Have a happy birthday today,” she said, looking straight ahead as I turned to slam the door.

ROPER ACADEMY WAS FOUNDED BY QUAKERS AND IS private but not snobby private. We don't have to wear uniforms or remember the biography of some ancient-looking founder. And because it's in the middle of town, we aren't secluded from other kids who aren't students here. It starts at kindergarten and goes to twelfth grade, so we're all supposed to be super close by the time we graduate. Caesar is my only friend.

In the warm crowded halls, students clumped together like oatmeal, wearing wool and flannel. Each outfit looked like it took a lifetime to put together.

I stood against the wall, waiting for Caesar, watching kids stuff rubber boots into their bright red lockers and put on leather shoes. The girls were giggly. The boys passing walked with their shoulders thrown back, their eyes hooded. Some kids screamed out, “Hey, Feni,” and “Happy birthday, Feni Beanie.” A few kids looked at me and smiled. I smiled back and tried not to look inviting.

“You think too much,” Bernadette says to me sometimes. “You're like me in that way,” she adds, smiling. She was my teacher in the fifth grade. She and Marion have been together for a long time. Now they're like aunts to me. Sometimes Bernadette and I stare at each other for a long time without saying anything. And when Ma or Marion asks us why we stare like that, Bernadette smirks, saying, “We're the same person somewhere inside. We have souls that are small, dark, and quiet as nuns.”