The Mothers (23 page)

“Please,” he said.

Her calmness scared him. He would understand if she had screamed and yelled or cried and cursed. He expected her to, but she was eerily calm and that was how he knew she would leave him.
Maybe not right away but someday, he would return home and find her shelf cleared in the bathroom, her half of the closet empty. He'd be lonelier than he had been at the rehab center before she'd brought him a donut wrapped carefully in crinkly paper, a small gift he hadn't imagined himself capable of receiving. He stood in the doorway while she folded his sweaters across her chest, her arms holding his arms and crossing them into her
heart.

I
just don't know that girl's problem,” Betty said.

We all peeked out the blinds, watching Nadia Turner pull out of the church parking lot. For weeks, she'd been silent and rude; she hardly spoke when she pulled up to our houses, answering in one word when we tried to be friendly. With that type of company, we would've been better off hiring a taxi. When she picked us up from church, she always paced outside of her truck, like she was late or something. Where she got to go? Who she got waiting for her but her daddy, and not like he was going anywhere.

“Maybe she worried about her friend,” Flora said.

“What she got to worry about? They married. Married folk got problems.”

“Y'all heard Aubrey moved out?”

“Oh, who hadn't done that once or twice?” Agnes said.

“Y'all know how many times I packed me a suitcase and left
Ernest?” Betty said. “Went running to my mama's house and after a few days, I was right back. That ain't nothin'. That's what married folk do.”

“I heard that Sheppard boy got a wandering eye.”

“He a man, ain't he?” Hattie said. “What these girls expect?”

Agnes said, “See, that's the problem with colored girls these days. They too hard. Soft things can take a beating. But you push somethin' hard a little bit and it shatters. You gotta be a soft thing in love. Hard love don't last.”

“I still don't see what none of this got to do with Nadia Turner.” Betty shook her head, staring back out the window. “Don't say hello to nobody, don't speak. And why she always walking back and forth like that? Like she got so many other places to be?”

What we didn't understand then was that when Nadia dropped us off at Upper Room, she paced in front of her daddy's truck so she could watch cars pass on the road. Sometimes she sat on the steps in front of the church for an hour or two, hoping that she might see a green Jeep pull into the parking lot. She never did. No one had seen Aubrey Evans for weeks.

—

F
OR MONTHS
, Nadia replayed in her mind the day her lies had collapsed into one another. A normal day, a day so unremarkable that she wouldn't appreciate, until weeks later, those early nondescript hours when her life had been intact. Those hours had passed quickly and then it was evening and she was stepping out of the shower, towel-drying her hair, when she saw a light flash outside the house. She'd gone to the door and when she'd switched on the porch light
and stood on her tiptoes to look out the peephole, she'd found Aubrey sitting on the porch.

“Why're you sitting out here in the dark?” she'd asked, stepping outside. “Why didn't you ring the doorbell?”

She hadn't been puzzled by Aubrey's unexpected visit—they were long past the point of calling before they stopped by—but she hadn't understood why Aubrey was sitting unannounced in front of her house. What if Nadia hadn't noticed her headlights from the shower window? Was she just going to sit there forever without letting Nadia know she'd come by? Aubrey hadn't turned around, and for weeks, when Nadia thought about her, she remembered staring at her back, the delicate curve of her neck. Maybe, if Aubrey had never turned around, they would've remained suspended in that moment forever, between knowing and not knowing, that final strained pull of a friendship fraying at the seams.

“How?” Aubrey said.

She knew the what. She could guess the why. But the how of it all had been what eluded her. The how of any betrayal was the hardest part to justify, how the lies could be assembled and stacked and maintained until the truth was completely hidden behind them. Nadia had frozen, her mind numb and slow, like she was trying to form words in a different language. Then Aubrey had pushed herself up from the steps and started down the driveway, Nadia stumbling after her.

“Aubrey,” she said. “I'm so fucking sorry—”

“Funny how sorry you both are now.”

“I swear to God, I was sorry as soon as it happened—”

“Well, that's nice of you.”

“Please. Please. Just talk to me.”

She had banged on Aubrey's car door, tugging at the handle. She would wake the neighbors soon, her father peeking out the window and wondering why she was crying and pleading, why she'd hung on to the door even after Aubrey had started her engine.

“Move,” Aubrey had said. Her voice was cold, metallic. “I don't want to run over your foot.”

For months, Nadia tried everything she could think. She texted, e-mailed, left voice mails, and called, each layer of technology becoming more antiquated until she finally sent a letter in the mail. Three handwritten pages of begging, each request diminishing as if they were in some unspoken negotiation: first, for her forgiveness; then for a moment to explain; until she was only asking that Aubrey read her e-mails or listen to her voice mails, even if she never spoke to her again. The three-page letter returned unopened. She began driving by Monique's house in the afternoon, crawling up the street and peering out the window, but she never saw Aubrey come or go. She knew she should stop—someone might notice her car circling the block and call the cops, thinking she was a deranged stalker or a crazy ex-girlfriend—but she drove by every day for three weeks. In a final act of desperation, she parked one evening and rang the doorbell.

“You can't come by here no more,” Kasey said, “you know that.”

She leaned against the doorframe, her arms folded across her chest. She didn't look angry, just annoyed, as if she were staring at a cat she kept tossing out the back door who'd managed to claw his way back inside.

“Is Aubrey here?” Nadia asked softly, staring down at the welcome mat.

“Can't you understand that she don't want to talk to you? Jesus, between you and him . . .”

Nadia toed the loose gravel, blinking back tears. The crying started suddenly these days, like a nosebleed. She could imagine how Aubrey must have reported the betrayal, how horrified Monique and Kasey had been, because who wouldn't be? A girl who had lived in their very home, a girl they'd treated like family, a girl they'd whispered about late at night, wondering, did she seem quiet at dinner? Do you think something's wrong with her? Her mother had killed herself—how could something not be wrong with her?—but do you think she seemed sad today?

Kasey sighed, stepping out onto the porch. “Don't think this means we're friends again,” she said. “I just can't stand to see you cry.”

On the porch step, Kasey rubbed Nadia's back while she wiped her eyes.

“Jesus,” Kasey said. “What were you thinkin'?”

“I fucked up.”

“Well, no kidding.”

“She won't let me apologize—”

“What do you expect? She's still hurting, honey.”

“But what can I do? What am I supposed to do?”

“It just takes time. You gotta let it alone.”

But she couldn't. She couldn't stop calling or writing or driving past the house. That was what it meant to love someone, right? You couldn't leave them, even if they hated you. You could never let them go. She tried calling the house phone once or twice, until Monique answered one evening.

“You've got some goddamn nerve,” she said.

“Please,” Nadia said. That was the only word she seemed to say now. “I just want to talk to her. Please.”

“I don't think it matters what you want anymore,” Monique said.

—

S
OON
,
A MONTH
, then two months passed. She brewed her father's coffee in the morning—half regular, half decaf, the way he liked it. She drove the Mothers to Upper Room and she cooked dinner for her father in the evening. She thought about leaving—but then the holiday season arrived, announced only by twinkling lights strewn in palm trees and thick cotton rolled on lawns like snow. She had not spent a single Christmas at home since her mother died. She'd imagined them, eight years with no traditions, eight holidays where she was emptied with loneliness. No one to hang the stockings or press silver cookie-cutters into dough or wrap garland around the mantel. No one to root through the garage for the boxes her mother had carefully labeled
wrapping paper
or
porch decorations.
Just a California Christmas with none of the trimmings, an ordinary sunny day. But this Christmas, she knelt in the garage with a pair of scissors, gently opening the sealed boxes. She hung two stockings, not three, and popped red and green bulbs into the post lights along the walkway. She bought a fake tree from Walmart, nothing like the seven-foot Douglas firs her father used to haul through the door, and assembled it in the living room, pushing the wiry branches into place. She clutched handfuls of the felt tree skirt, lush and green between her fingers, and sniffed it, hoping to catch a wisp of her mother. She only smelled dust and pine.

After Christmas, she thought about leaving again—this time, she'd even bookmarked flights—but each time, she felt something
hold her back. Not yet. She couldn't leave her father again, not yet. In the evenings, she lugged a kitchen chair to the coat closet so she could reach the photo albums her father had stored on the top shelf. The album resting on her knees, she turned each page slowly, staring at pictures of herself as a newborn, pale, wrinkly with beady eyes, bundled in a yellow blanket. Her mother holding her in the hospital bed, hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. She looked exhausted but she was smiling. Her body had split open, and she was smiling. Nadia turned the page. Now she was a baby, crawling near anonymous feet; she was a chubby toddler, chasing ducks at the park; she was a preschooler, laughing and missing teeth. She passed the photo of herself curled in her father's lap, the one she'd studied when he was overseas, as distant and foreign as war itself. He was smiling into the camera, a tired smile like the one her mother had worn, but he still looked satisfied—happy, even.

Sometimes, on his way to walk his slow laps in the backyard, her father leaned over the couch to take a look at the albums. She turned pages chronicling her first birthday, past photos of her in a high chair, a party hat cocked to the side of her head. One night, she reached a new page at the end of the album that held pictures of her mother as a girl, in a dress and frilly socks, standing in front of a house with the flatness of Texas stretching behind her. In another photo, her mother was a baby, fists buried in a birthday cake, red and green icing smeared on her face. A taller boy hugged her, grinning into the camera. He'd smeared icing on his face to match hers.

When her father bent over the couch, she almost shut the photo album. But he stuck a finger on the page, next to the picture of the smiling baby who would become her mother and then his wife.

“Who's this?” she asked, pointing at the boy.

“That's your uncle Clarence,” he said. “Crazy as can be. I wish you could've known him. But those drugs got to him.” He shook his head. “I always thought the war would kill us. Then we get back and Clarence does it to himself. He introduced me to your mother and now it's just me. I'm the only one left.”

She and her father were survivors, abandoned by everyone but each other. She watched television with him after dinner and drove him to church every Sunday morning. He could drive himself now but he still climbed in on the passenger's side and she wondered if he worried that she might leave if she no longer felt needed. One Sunday, she followed him into the lobby, glancing around, as she always did, hoping she might see Aubrey. Instead, Mrs. Sheppard pulled her aside.

“You heard from Aubrey?” she asked.

“Not lately,” Nadia said.

Mrs. Sheppard cocked her head to the side a little, unsure of whether to believe her. Then she folded her arms across her chest.

“She won't talk to me,” Mrs. Sheppard said. “I don't understand it. I went down there the other day and rang the doorbell, but she pretended she wasn't home. And that white woman told me Aubrey's not receiving visitors. Since when have I been just a visitor?”

A familiar jealousy wedged between her ribs. “I'm sorry about that,” she said.

“She's pregnant, you know.”

Nadia's breath caught. “She is?”

“She's carrying my first grandbaby and she won't even talk to me.” Mrs. Sheppard straightened her shoulders. “Luke won't tell me what happened, but I know you had something to do with it. I tried to tell
her. I tried to warn her about you—girls don't listen to their mothers, they never do.”

That Sunday morning, the pastor dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief as he delivered his invitation, calling all who wanted to welcome Jesus into their hearts to step forward, and she watched as people knelt at the altar, their palms lifted to the skies. Their shiny faces, heads tilted back, hands raised as they swayed and sang. During prayer, Nadia would always peek at the others who bowed their heads and closed their eyes, their hands floating toward the rafters, while she stood motionless, her arms pressed against her sides. She felt it then and she felt it every time during praise sessions, when she glanced around the room of believers—the starkness of her own loneliness.

As the choir sang “I Surrender All,” she hunched over the pew, unable to stop her tears. Her father shifted beside her, and then she felt his hand on her back. His other hand reached for hers, his rough palm against her smooth skin.

“Do you want me to pray with you?” he whispered.

He lived in prayers and sermons, in scriptures she didn't understand, and even though it had always made her feel so far from him, she nodded. She closed her eyes and bowed her head.

—

T
HE MORNING SHE THOUGHT
about returning home, Aubrey lay in bed, fumbling with the lid on her prenatal vitamins. She should be up by now—she'd set her alarm for a half hour ago—but pregnancy made her sleepier than she'd ever imagined. When she first moved back to her sister's house, she'd slept endlessly, so many long, unaccounted
hours that Monique thought she was depressed. She'd laughed at the suggestion—couldn't she just be sad? Couldn't she be devastated without there being some physical, chemical explanation?—but when she'd seen Dr. Toby, he asked if she might be pregnant. She did the backward math in her head and flushed, remembering that sloppy night on the living room couch. The doctor had been right, after all. She'd just needed a glass, or four, of wine.