“He’s hitting you?” my mother said. “He’s hitting you, Dana? Oh baby, come here.”
She opened her arms to me, but I didn’t walk into them.
“I said he’s not hitting me.”
“Dana, I am your mother. You can’t lie to me.”
“You can’t read my mind.”
“Baby, I made your mind.”
“He’s not hitting me.”
“Yes, he is.”
It was wrong the way she could browse among my secret thoughts. She says that it was motherly intuition, but this is not true. She and I have a connection. Today, the link is rusty, the current erratic, but there wil always be something between us.
“So?” I said. “James hit you one time. When I was a baby. I heard you tel Wil ie Mae about it.”
“That was one time, it was a long time ago, and he was under a lot of stress.”
“Wel , Marcus is under stress, too. He wants to apply to col ege.”
“Yes, your father hit me, but I had a baby. I just had to make it work. And your father is not a violent man. Dana, you don’t have chick nor child. Why stay with some boyfriend that can’t keep his hands to himself?”
“You just don’t want me to have my own life.”
“You are not seeing this boy anymore. End of discussion. I wil go up to the school and tel the principal that he is harassing my daughter. James tel s me he has faced charges already for statutory rape.”
“Sixteen is the age of consent!”
“You have only been sixteen for a little while. I wil have him put in jail, Dana. Don’t make me do it.”
“Mother,” I said, “you’re just siding with James. He just doesn’t want us around his real family. Can’t you see that this is al there is to it?”
My mother said, “I don’t care what is in it for James. Your safety is what’s in it for me. I am not going to let you ruin your life while you are living under my roof. So that’s it. You are not seeing this boy again, ever. If I ever suspect you are, he’s going to jail.”
“Mother, don’t do that.”
“It’s over. This relationship is over. It’s not healthy.”
I cried myself to sleep. What teenager hasn’t? I woke up with a headache, and I remembered the lost jel y beans and cried some more. My mother tapped on my door at 10 a.m.
“Get up and get dressed. Let’s go surveil ing.”
“No,” I said, just for the satisfaction of denying her. “I never want to do that again.”
9
NO QUARREL
I AM POOR when it comes to grandparents. Flora, the wild woman, didn’t have use for her own child, let alone a granddaughter. Although I saw my mother’s father each spring, I spoke to him only once in my life. My mother believed in rituals, and on the first warm Saturday in April she took me to see him as he groomed the hedges in front of his house. We were accustomed to covert endeavors, but we were different when we surveil ed my grandfather. When we shadowed Chaurisse and her mother, we were nervous and excited, like rookie cops. These adventures left us stimulated and hungry, like we’d been swimming. But our yearly visits to my grandfather made us nervous and unsure. On the day of our visit in 1986, my mother drove without the radio, wearing down her nails against the edges of her teeth. I picked at the skin on my lower lip until my smile was sore and raw.
Things between my mother and me had been tense since she and my father had forbidden me to see Marcus. Making matters worse, James initiated some sort of man-to-man conversation with Marcus’s father and Marcus cut me off completely. I don’t know what passed between our fathers, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t the truth. I asked my mother if she found this al to be at least a little bit hypocritical. No, she said. She found it to be ironic. The conflict was between us, as tangible and opaque as drywal .
At my mother’s request, I wore Flora’s gold earrings because she hoped that my grandfather would look up from his weeding and pruning to see me there, looking like my mother and her mother. In her fantasy, he’d pause, look closer, and see the gold hoops, the proof that I was Gwendolyn’s girl. She hoped the sight of me would inspire him to love me in his old age, to open his door. I would be the needle and my mother would be the thread looped through its eye.
Maybe I shared al my mother’s fantasies. Her cravings were so straightforward, honest, and universal. Who doesn’t want to be loved? Anyone who has been cast off knows the pain of it. Who doesn’t know what it’s like to just want to go home, to sleep in a bed that is your own, lying on a pil ow that smel s of your own hair?
And then there were the daydreams of my own. Maybe Grandfather would look up from the hydrangeas, fal in love with me, and not even think of my mother. My strict orders were not to identify myself. I was just to say “Good afternoon, sir” as I walked by. I could maybe compliment the flowers, but I couldn’t give him any hint that I was his kin. We were not trying to force anything on anyone. We were merely providing an opportunity, nudging fate along.
MY GRANDFATHER, LUSTER Lee Abernathy, was a narrow man, with white hair so fine his brown scalp showed through. Clipping the hedges with a manual clipper, his thin arms, ropy with muscles, flexed as he whacked the plants into spheres. I can’t say what made this year different from the others, but when he saw me advancing in his direction, he stopped the busy shears and removed his cap as though giving me a chance to declare myself.
“Good afternoon, sir,” I said.
“Afternoon,” he said.
“Your yard is sure pretty.”
“Thank you,” he said, looking hard at my face. “Where you walking to?”
“Oh, just taking a walk.” I gestured in the direction of Boulevard Avenue. “Just stretching my legs.”
“Be careful,” he said. “It’s not like it used to be. Don’t walk too far in that direction. They al using that crack up there. Gone crazy.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
The hedge between us was only half-groomed. One side was smooth and round, but the rest was wild with new growth and buds. My grandfather squinted at me. “How long you been walking?”
“A little while,” I said. “Just looking around.”
“You from around here?”
“No,” I said. “I’m from North Carolina.” The spontaneity of lies was always a mystery to me, as much a miracle as geysers or flash floods.
“You walked over here from the King Center?”
I nodded.
“You must be looking for MLK’s childhood home. You need to go over a couple of blocks. You walked too far to the east. You could easily miss it.
It looks just like al the other houses around here. But go see it. I hear they give a tour.”
“You’ve never seen it?”
“Got no need to,” he said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Please excuse my clothes and such,” he said. “I was just doing yard work. I didn’t figure on meeting you.”
I put my hand to my cheek, and I could feel myself smiling.
“You know who I am?”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “I never seen you before.”
“I’m Gwen’s daughter.”
“I don’t know any Gwen,” he said. “I did a long time ago, but it’s too far gone. I don’t even know what I would say to her. It’s done.”
“It’s not,” I said. “I could run and get her.”
“No,” he said. “Don’t do that. You’re a pretty girl. Seems like she did a good job of bringing you up. Don’t throw your life away like your mama did.”
“Do you want me to run and get her?”
“Naw,” he said. “I got my life the way I want it. Hold stil .”
My grandfather turned and walked toward the front door of the bungalow. As the lock clunked in place behind him, I ran my hand over the trimmed half of the hedge, letting the fresh-cut stems prick the pads of my fingers. I imagined my mother sitting in the car looking at her watch. Maybe she