What Mother Never Told Me (20 page)

“I can drive you back to town.”

She smiled softly. “I think I’ll walk.” She leaned down and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.” She turned to leave.

“This is always your home, Emma.”

She nodded once and began her walk.

As David watched her walk away he prayed that the dark secret that haunted this family for generations would finally see its long overdue end.

L
eslie finished up in the kitchen and turned out the lights. It had been a long day. Her mother was more cranky than usual, which had totally drained Leslie, emotionally and physically. All she wanted to do was catch the last of the news and crawl into bed. She shuffled out to the living room and turned on the television. Taking her favorite spot on the couch she caught up with the events of the day.

Another dateless Saturday night, she mused as the broadcaster talked about the grand opening of another night spot in Manhattan. At least it was over on the East Side, she thought, as she watched the stars emerge from their cars, pose for the cameras and stroll in under the pop and flash of lights. She nearly leaped out of her chair when she spotted Clinton with Allison glued tightly to his arm walking down the red carpet. They both smiled and waved as if Celeste never existed.

“Well, I’ll be damned. He sure didn’t waste any time.” She wondered if Celeste was watching, and started to reach for the phone to call her, but knowing Celeste she had better things to do on a Saturday night than watch other people have a good time, especially her ex. She pointed the remote at the screen and watched it go black.

Sighing heavily, she heaved herself off the couch, stuck her feet in her slippers and headed for her bedroom. She stopped, as always, at her mother’s door for the last bed check.

Her mother’s frail body was silhouetted by the night-light that glowed like a halo above Theresa’s head. The blanket that covered her slowly rose and fell in time to the soft snores. Leslie stood there for a moment in the quiet, in the dark, thinking of the times when she was a little girl and she’d come to her mother’s door eager to tell her about her day, and Theresa would say,
not now Leslie, I’m exhausted. Go to bed, it’s late
. And she’d leave brokenhearted with so many things on her mind. Day after day, night after night, until one day she didn’t try anymore. And over the years, the stories, the questions, the hurts, the need to know things—girl things, mother/daughter things—congealed into this tight ball that sat in the center of her stomach growing day by day until it erupted that night in her mother’s apartment.

Leslie wrapped her arms tightly around her body, her lips squeezed shut as she fought back the cry that battled to escape. It began like any other time she and her mother got together. She’d stopped by that Friday night as she always did—the daughterly thing—to check on Theresa. She was never sure why she made it her Friday night ritual. Theresa never seemed to appreciate it, but Leslie couldn’t stop herself, as if she hoped that maybe “this Friday” things would be different.

She’d called ahead as usual to find out if Theresa needed anything. After stopping at the local grocer for the usual fixings for a salad and some Italian bread, Leslie arrived at her mother’s apartment on Lenox Avenue. She’d lived in the same apartment for Leslie’s entire life. The building was rent-stabilized, and in today’s economy, Theresa was barely paying five hundred dollars for a two-bedroom apartment in the heart of Harlem. She would proudly tell anyone who asked that they would have to “sandblast me out of here, ’cause I ain’t never leaving.”

Leslie smiled to herself, thinking of her mother’s favorite line as she stuck her key in the door. The mouthwatering aroma of homemade spaghetti sauce greeted her just like every Friday night at her mother’s. It had turned into an unspoken tradition between them.

She found Theresa in the kitchen, stirring the sauce with one hand and sprinkling in the ingredients with the other.

“Just put the stuff on the table,” she said without turning around, without a hello. “Then you can butter that bread.”

Leslie sighed, shrugged out of her coat and took it to the hallway closet, stopped off in the bathroom to wash her hands then returned to the kitchen.

To the casual observer, mother and daughter working side by side, preparing their traditional Friday night dinner, would evoke the perfect scene of domesticity. It wasn’t.

Leslie jammed the knife into the bread, slicing through it. Her breathing for a moment was short and tense until she forced herself to relax as she listened to her mother remind her that she looked like she was gaining more weight and she really needed to make an appointment with her hairdresser for a touch-up.

“I’m never having kids,” she suddenly blurted out.

“Probably a good thing.”

“Is that how you feel about me, you wish you hadn’t?”

Theresa held up her spoon in warning. “Don’t start with me tonight, Leslie. I’m not in the mood for another one of your ‘woe is me’ pity parties.”

Leslie gripped the knife, her rage boiling in concert with the pot of sauce. “I always wondered what man could find a woman as cold as you warm enough to sleep with.”

It happened so fast she couldn’t have reacted in time to ward off the powerful slap that sent her reeling back against the refrigerator.

Theresa’s dark eyes bored into Leslie, the muscles of her face twitched as they stood facing each other in a silent war that had gone on for decades and finally the first drop of blood was spilled.

“I despise you,” she said from a place so deep and dark inside herself that the voice was unrecognizable. “You’ve spent your entire life making mine miserable, belittling me, ignoring me. I may as well have grown up alone for all the good you ever were to me! Why did you have me if hate me so much? Whhhyyy?” she screamed. “Do I remind you of him, some horrible time in your life that you’d rather forget so you spend your life punishing me?” She pounded her chest as tears streamed down her face. “Do you know what you have done to me, you selfish, evil bitch!” She lunged toward her, wanting to smash her face in, when suddenly Theresa’s eyes widened in alarm. Her mouth opened but there was no sound. Her body stiffened before she collapsed on the kitchen floor.

For several moments Leslie stood there with the knife still in her hand, not able to put together what she was seeing. She stared at the knife. There was no blood. The pot boiled over as thick red sauce ran unchecked down the stove.

“Ma…” She stepped closer. Theresa didn’t move. Leslie’s heart was beating out of her chest. She dropped to the floor beside her mother. “Ma!” She shook her. Nothing. She pressed her head to her chest. She was still breathing. Leslie leaped up. She needed to call someone. Emergency. Her mind went blank and for a moment she turned in a circle, not remembering where the phone was in a house that she knew like the back of her hand. Finally, her wild gaze landed on the phone. She snapped up the phone on the wall and with shaky fingers she pressed in 911, all the while staring at her mother lying motionless on her kitchen floor.

And all she could think about on the way to the hospital that night, with the shrilling sirens crashing through the night, was that if Theresa died they’d never have their Friday night dinners and she would never have the chance again to get her mother to love her.

“I’m sorry, Ma,” she whispered over her tears as she held her mother’s thin fingers between her own, pressing her head against the side of the bed, not even remembering walking fully into the bedroom.

Under the protection of dark, in the security of her own home and understanding that retaliation was not possible, she began to talk to her mother, pour out all of the things she’d wanted to say since she was a little girl about her best friend Lynn from sixth grade, when she got her first training bra, how much she hated going to gym because her uniform was too small and all the kids teased her, how she always tried to wait up for her at night just so she could smell her perfume. She told her about Uncle Frank and what he did to her, how his kind of love had damaged her spirit and she blamed herself. “All I’ve ever wanted was your love, Ma. Just wanted you to
look at me and smile sometime, that’s all, like maybe you were proud of me and that I wasn’t a mistake. ’Cause that’s how you always made me feel, Ma, like I’m a mistake. A night you wish you could take back. A night so bad you don’t want to remember it or him. So you simply erase him from your mind, from your vocabulary, like he doesn’t exist.” Her body shook as she cried and talked and cried. “But that makes part of me not exist, either. A part that’s been missing all my life. For thirty-two years only half of me has been living.”

She wiped the tears away as quickly as they fell. She sighed heavily as she watched the slow rise and fall of her mother’s chest. When she glanced toward the window, she was surprised to see that day was breaking over the horizon. She’d sat there all night. She’d cried and talked until there was nothing left to give.

Slowly, painfully, she stood. Her joints were stiff from sitting in the chair for so many hours. She glanced at the bedside clock. It was nearly six-thirty. If she went to bed now, she thought as she adjusted the blanket, she could get in a couple of good hours before her mother awoke and their day began. Leslie eased out of the room, leaving the door cracked.

Theresa opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. A single tear trailed down her sunken cheek.

Gracie had agreed to come by for a couple of hours even though it was a Sunday so that Leslie could run a few errands outside of the house. It was going to cost Leslie more than she could reasonably afford at the moment, but she didn’t have much of a choice. More and more lately, when she compared her bills to the money that came in, she thought about Celeste’s offer to help.

She wasn’t sure what it was that kept her turning down her friend’s offer of help. She did know that part of it was her own stubborn pride, but more of it was the shackle of guilt. Every day when she helped her mother to the bathroom, to get dressed, to eat, it assuaged the guilt of that night. As much as the doctors told her that the aneurism that had devastated her mother had more than likely been brewing for months, it didn’t take away Leslie’s belief that it was her fault, and it was her responsibility alone to carry that shackle around.

She’d gotten her mother up, washed and dressed and she was comfortably camped out in the living room in her recliner watching television when Gracie arrived, right on time as usual.

“Thank you so much, Gracie,” Leslie said as she put on her coat and grabbed her purse. “I promise I won’t be more than a couple of hours. I need to run over to Seventh Avenue to pick up some material that I ordered and stop by the supermarket. We’re low on everything.”

“Of course.” She waved her hand. “Take your time.” She settled down next to Theresa. “And how is my favorite patient today?” She patted her hand.

“I’ll see you both soon.” She opened the door.

“Wait.”

The one word was weak and raspy but infinitely clear. Leslie froze with her hand still on the doorknob. Slowly she turned around, her heart pounding.

Gracie was staring at Theresa, and Theresa was looking right at her daughter. Leslie watched the muscles in her throat move up and down. “Please…”

Leslie’s purse slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor with a dull thud. “Ma?” She moved slowly toward her until she was kneeling at her side. She took her hand. “Ma?”

“I…I’m so sor-ry.”

Leslie squeezed her mother’s hand tighter. “It’s okay, Ma. It’s okay.”

Theresa vigorously shook her head. “No,” she managed to reply. “Need…to tell you.” She waved Gracie away, so she got up and quietly left the room. Theresa turned to Leslie. In fits and starts, some words not making sense, she told Leslie how wrong she had been for so long. That she’d pushed her own insecurities onto Leslie in the hopes that she would be hardened enough not to succumb to the pain that she’d endured from her father.

Leslie held her breath when, for the first time in thirty-two years, her father’s name was uttered from Theresa’s lips.

“Thomas Manning. Tommy.” Theresa’s eyes clouded over as she went to a place in her heart that only she could see. “I loved him with…everything in me. I would have done anything for him. I was so happy to find out I was pregnant with you. I couldn’t wait to tell him,” she said, struggling and reaching for every word. “When I went to his apartment—” she paused “—he was there with someone else. His best friend, Lloyd.” Her laugh sounded like a strangled bird. “He took me to the back room and told me he couldn’t see me anymore. That he didn’t love me, couldn’t love any woman.”

She frowned and shook her head slowly. “I told him I didn’t understand what he was telling me. ‘What are you saying?’ I asked him. He told me how all his life he’d fought back his urges, tried to live a ‘normal’ life, but he couldn’t do it anymore. He didn’t want to hurt me.”

Leslie’s stomach began to churn. She felt sick.

Theresa focused on her daughter. “I never got to tell him about you. I was so hurt, so stunned, so humiliated. I couldn’t
tell anyone. Back then it was hard. So I moved away, found a new place to live so I wouldn’t have to face anyone. I never looked back.” She swallowed. “The only way I could get through my life was to pretend that a part of it didn’t exist.” She squeezed Leslie’s hand. “I thought I was doing the right thing by you. I thought I was.” She hung her head and began to weep.

Leslie struggled to gather her racing thoughts. Put the pieces together to what her mother had confessed. All these years, her mother had lived with the doubt of her own womanhood, a secret that had grown and festered through the years, eating them both alive, and like an infant nursing at her mother’s breast, Leslie had been nurtured and fed on that fear, doubt and shame.

She wanted to blame her, but she couldn’t. How could she, when her mother was just as much a victim of deceit as she had been.

Maybe now, after all these years, after all the hurt and harsh words, they could start at a new place. With trepidation she gently rested her head on her mother’s lap, and her heart nearly burst from her chest when she felt the gentle touch that she’d so longed for, stroke her hair.

“I…love…you,” Theresa whispered.

“I love you, too, Ma.”

Gracie stood in the doorway, took her coat from the hook and quietly slipped out, thinking that as soon as she got home she was going to call her daughter in Philadelphia and remind her how much she mattered.