'Til I Want No More

by Robin W. Pearson

  “I’m tired,” Maxine announced to anyone who would listen on the seemingly interminable ride home.

  First John met his stepdaughter’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Then why don’t you take a quick nap? We’re almost there.”

  Maxine knew her exhaustion was emotional, not merely physical, but she didn’t have the strength to explain. She leaned against the headrest and closed her eyes.

  The boom-boom-boom from downstairs forced her eyes open. She realized someone was pounding on the front door, even though it was the middle of the night. Maxine stumbled out of bed and down the stairs just as the door crashed open and a large shadowy figure squeezed under the frame. It had to bend nearly in half to make it inside. She froze—but only for a minute. Then she hightailed it through the family room, around the kitchen island, and out the back door, which mercifully, gaped open.

  Hearing the footsteps thunder after her, she looked this way and that for a hideaway. Spying a U-Haul parked in her driveway, she scrambled under it. And just in the nick of time. Heavy breathing sounded from everywhere—in front of the trailer, behind it, under it! Then . . . was that the moon? With a whoosh, something—someone—had lifted the end of the U-Haul and exposed her crouching there. Maxine rolled to her feet and sprinted into the woods.

  In her mad dash, she nearly careened into the contorted limbs of a humongous oak tree. She held up an arm to cover her face and protect her eyes. An outstretched root sent her tumbling to the ground. But she had to keep moving. She bear-crawled to a hollowed-out log. “Here. I can hide in here.”

  Maxine tried to stem her harsh panting by focusing on an owl’s distant screech. Seconds later, all she heard were footsteps crashing through the undergrowth and her own “Aiiaa!” when an eye peeked through a knothole. As she backed out, splinters and thorns stabbed her hands and knees. Once her feet found purchase, she scrambled upright and took off.

  But she was tired. So tired. Each time she found a place to hide, the giant discovered her. He remained just a heart-stopping step away. If she could only make it to the creek . . . but even though she could see it glimmering ahead, she couldn’t reach it. It seemed a mirage. “He-e-l-p,” she panted. “H-h-e-l-p . . .”

  Just when she felt she couldn’t run any longer, that she had to give up, a familiar outline stepped from behind a pine tree. He held out a hand. “Maxine, Maxine, here. Run this way.”

  Her heart obeyed the voice even though her mind warned her of danger. “But wh-what about the giant?” Sure enough, the ground shook with his hot pursuit. Limbs and needles rained down as he snapped off treetops.

  “Don’t worry. It is well, Maxine. Shh.” When she reached him, he pulled her close and tucked her behind him.

  “It’s well? How can it be? Don’t you hear that?” She pointed around him, her chest heaving. “Every . . . time . . . I try . . . to hide, the . . . giant . . . finds me.”

  He said nothing as he reached down and plucked a smooth stone from the five at his feet. Each had a letter etched into it. As the figure burst through the trees, he nodded at her and reassured, “Don’t worry. I’m a man after God’s own heart,” and he took aim.

  “Truth!” Maxine exclaimed, rearing up. The belt scratched her neck.

  “Girl, what’s wrong with you?” Vivienne eyeballed her daughter from the front passenger seat.

  Maxine panted, still picturing the letters on the stones. Then she took in the shocked faces of her family sitting around her as a line from an old Jurassic Park movie struck her. “Well . . . we’re back in the car again.”

  “Yes, we’re still in the car. You liked to scare us to death!”

  “As tired as I am, it wouldn’t take much,” First John sighed. “I say we unpack what’s necessary and get inside. It’s been a long day.” The overhead light flicked on as First John climbed from the truck.

  “Indeed,” Vivienne murmured.

  “I have a feeling the next few days will feel even longer because I think First John’s right. It’s time for a family meeting.” Maxine reached into the backseat and squeezed Celeste’s knee. “Starting with you. Want to sleep over?”

  “Not tonight. I’m pretty tired.” The girl shifted her knee, pushed the middle seat forward, and stepped into the garage.

  “Since she won’t, we will.” Second John clambered out the truck after his twin. Zander used the cooler he was toting to nudge his brothers toward the steps leading into the house.

  First John patted Maxine’s shoulder and followed the rest of his family as they shuffled toward the back door. He paused on the top step, one finger on the garage door opener, and looked over his shoulder at Maxine. “Give her some time. We’re all worn-out.”

  Maxine nodded and headed up to her apartment. The garage door whirred closed behind her.

  At home, she collapsed on the sofa in the dark, her mind clogged with the day’s events, faces, and voices. Before she could free her thoughts and drag herself to bed, she heard a light tap-tap-tap at her door. Hopeful, she walked to the door and flung it open.

  Indeed, Celeste stood there on Maxine’s stoop. And she did have a bag looped over her shoulder, a frayed, army-green duffel Maxine hadn’t seen since Celeste was so small, she could’ve tucked the girl inside it. Before Maxine could speak, Celeste slowly extracted a worn, yet familiar thin blanket speckled with green and yellow flowers and held it out.

  Maxine reached for the cotton cloth and clutched it to her chest, much as her mother had held her daughter and granddaughter thirteen years ago. But instead of coming in and staying put, as Maxine and baby Celeste had, the teen turned on her heel and quickly descended the wooden steps.

  Celeste’s feet didn’t stop moving until they’d carried her back home.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “ANYBODY CAN SEE THAT CHILD IS YOURS!”

  Maxine couldn’t stop thinking about Annie Lester and her vituperative words. Confused or not, she’d spoken truth, however harshly. Maxine jabbed a pin into her topknot, trying to recoup some of the damage from last night’s humidity. Not that it mattered. Celeste certainly wouldn’t give a whit about her hair, and neither would anyone else. “But who told you to go to bed without your silk cap?” she asked her reflection.

  Out of sorts, Maxine opened her bathroom door and walked into the main living space. In the middle of the sofa was the blanket. Maxine had curled up with it, crying on the sofa most of the night. Emotionally wrung out, Maxine padded to the window. She pulled back the curtains to let in the sunlight and caught sight of a small figure in gray down by the water. She squared her shoulders. “Time to face the music.”

  Suddenly energized, Maxine threw on clothes. She only stopped to respond to a buzz from her phone before taking the steps to the driveway two at a time. She had to force herself not to run down the path to the creek, to slowly take in the moments leading up to this meeting with Celeste. To savor the time before their relationship changed forever, before trust was irrevocably broken, before doubt and blame replaced confidence and love. So she focused on the crunch of the nettles and acorns under her feet and the spiky needles and wavy leaves that brushed her. By the time she reached the water, her heartbeat had sufficiently slowed and she could speak.

  “Celeste.”

  The girl was crouched by the water’s edge, dragging a stick in the mud. Straightening, she turned and brushed her hands on the back of her denim shorts. She met Maxine’s gaze unflinchingly.

  Maxine’s breath hitched. For a second, she considered running back to her apartment, drawing the curtains, and hiding under the nethermost part of the bed with the blanket. She took a deep whiff of air through her nose.

  “Obviously I know what you’re going to say, Maxine. That’s what I was trying to tell you last night. It’s okay.”

  And Celeste did look okay, despite the huge tear running from the corner of one eye. She brushed it away as if it were a pesky gnat she couldn’t be bothered with. Maxine parted her lips to speak again.

  B
ut the teen’s dirt-streaked, outstretched hand stayed her. “I know you love me. Otherwise, why would you have stayed here all this time, living in Mama and Daddy’s garage apartment, working at some dinky, small-town magazine? You could have traveled the world, writing columns for big-time newspapers like Daddy. Had a bestseller on the shelves in your own big house, been married. Had kids of your own.”

  Of my own? Maxine gaped at the woman-child in her shorts that showed entirely too much leg, limbs that were too skinny for their own good. If she were my daughter . . .

  She blinked.

  “But you didn’t,” Celeste said. “You stayed here. With me. You gave up all that to be here with me. You’ve sat through every concert, corrected every double negative, shooed away the boys, braided my hair. You sat beside me in church, convinced Mama to let me go to the spring formal even though I’m not in high school yet, and showed me how much fun grandparents can be. So I know you love me.

  “You’ve given me the best of both worlds—a sister who loves me like a mama. Like a mama. You’re not, though. You’re not, Maxine. Because a mother would have told me a long time ago. And you know what? She did. Mama did.”

  Maxine’s tears seemed to dry on her face from the rush of heat to her cheeks. “Is that how you had the duffel bag and the blanket?”

  “Yes, Mama told me.”

  Maxine tried to calm down. She’d agonized over telling her sister—her daughter—the truth, and she already knew. What right did Vivienne have to tell her?

  Every right, a voice whispered. Maxine struggled between embracing or rejecting her anger. She knelt and untied her sneakers. “Let’s walk.”

  After a moment, Celeste unstrapped her sandals. She fell into step beside Maxine in the shallows, their hands brushing each other’s as they waded into the creek.

  “Teddy’s proposal triggered something. For so long, I hid my hurt and ugliness behind my faith. Did and said what I thought I should. I told people what I thought they needed to hear. But then I got engaged, and the dreams started. And it got harder and harder to hide the truth. From you and from myself.”

  “What dreams?”

  “I thought they were about the wedding, but God was showing me something. I’m still working on figuring them out. But I struggled with marrying someone who didn’t know everything about me—the most important part about me. You. Only I was afraid. Petrified.”

  Maxine moved deeper into the water. “I guess Mother got tired of waiting on me to get it together. When did she tell you? After your concert?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Maxine turned around and found Celeste had stooped to pick up a stone. She watched her turn it over in her hand. She splashed back to her. “‘Exactly’ when?”

  Celeste dug out another from the mud. She seemed to compare their smoothness as she rubbed them. “When I was eight years old.”

  Maxine burrowed her feet deep into the creek bed to keep from running back to the house to shake Vivienne and implore, “Why? Why?” She squinted hard at the water, following the current’s gentle twists and turns away from them, and wished she could burn the image into her brain.

  “I was making a family tree for co-op. And we had a guest historian teaching that semester. You could tell she thought she was somethin’ else. This expert had planned a project she said would be something easy for third graders, a way we could practice our interview skills and learn about the past. Homeschoolers make a two-in-one lesson out of everything.” Celeste threw one of the rocks.

  “It turns out it wasn’t so easy for me. I’d always known I was adopted, but when I stared at the blank branches of that big tree, I felt empty. Sure, I could’ve picked up the Sharpie and written John and Vivienne and then Ruby and Lerenzo on that poster paper, but those names felt like lies. Maybe if I’d used pencil, but permanent marker . . . ? Nope. Couldn’t do it.”

  Maxine couldn’t watch her sister relive that day, so she focused on the trees and the brush bordering the other side of the water. Part of her wished she could make a leaf boat and race after it until both she and the vessel were swept into the ocean. Anywhere but there.

  “So I tore up my paper. I had a fit right there in class. And you know Vivienne Owens’s children do not cut up in public, especially not when there are only ten black children total at co-op. We have to—”

  “‘Set an example,’” Maxine mumbled the words with Celeste, for she’d heard them time and again. Snatched back from her imaginary waterfall, she knelt in the creek and fished out a leaf.

  Celeste crouched beside her. “So the teacher took me into the hall and she got someone to run for Mama. When Mama got there, you should’ve seen her face when she saw us.”

  Maxine felt her own hair frizz from the steam that must have blown from Vivienne’s ears, though she knew it was the moisture from the creek. “Mother hates to draw that kind of attention.”

  “Especially when it comes to Annie Lester.”

  Maxine had been searching for a small stick to make a mast for her boat. Her hands froze as she stared at the girl. “What did you say?”

  “Mrs. Lester was the guest historian that day. She told Mama about the project we were working on and how I’d behaved in class. How I’d torn up that paper. And you thought I’d flipped out! When Mama heard from Mrs. Lester’s own lips the assignment she’d given, I thought she was going to slap her right then and there. But that was neither the time nor the place, as she told me later. Mama just took my hand and we went home. She asked Uncle Roy to pick up Zander and the twins, and she took me out for ice cream.”

  Celeste rose. Water dripped from her legs and her shorts were damp. “Mama started by explaining that Mrs. Lester was punishing me for something she thought Mama did. It seems Annie was dating your biological father.”

  “That’s why she accused Mother of taking Henry!”

  Celeste nodded absently. She didn’t seem invested in this part of the story, her history. “Then he met Mama, and as they say, ‘That’s all she wrote.’ Mama and Henry fell in love and got married. Annie married Mr. Lester on the rebound, and they fought like cats and dogs until they eventually divorced. Sounds like Mrs. Lester took your dad’s death as hard as Mama did.”

  My dad. Your grandfather. I took it hard too. Maxine blinked away tears and focused on the moment, for Celeste had more to say.

  “Mama went on to tell me how I was born, that you were my mother and that my father had left us. You were in high school when it had happened, and you’d run away. When you came back home, you brought me with you, and Mama and Daddy wanted to raise both of us. So that’s what they did. That’s how much you loved me and they loved us.”

  “But it’s not that simple, Celeste!” Dropping the materials for her boat, Maxine sloshed to the shore. She felt Celeste follow. “Please forgive me for telling you your father died. He didn’t. And he didn’t just leave you. We tried to do the right thing by getting married first. We did love each other, but there was a lot more we needed to understand to make it work.” Maxine looked around before retrieving something from the ground.

  She held up an acorn. “See this? Inside is everything you need to grow an oak tree. Maybe even a mighty one like that one up there.” She pointed up the hill. “But if I set it aside instead of planting it and giving it time to grow, it won’t mature and strengthen. This—” she pinched the seed between her index finger and thumb—“was me. Immature in my faith, how I saw myself and life. I sought my value in who I loved and who I thought loved me back. But I didn’t realize God had given me everything I needed, all I could have ever wanted. And not in my parents or in my husband, but inside. In Him.”

  Maxine stuffed the acorn into the front pocket of her shorts. “What we felt for each other was real, even if I had a lot of other emotions tied up in it. But we acted too fast. We didn’t give it time to mature. When I found out I was pregnant, I freaked out. Yet at the same time, I grew up a little. I realized that acting out and getting married hadn’t s
olved anything. Then I made everything worse by lying to him and telling him I’d had a miscarriage. I didn’t want anything else to do with him.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  Maxine reached for her hair but stopped herself. She tucked her hands in her front pockets and rolled the acorn between her fingers. “I don’t know exactly. Maybe because I wanted somebody to love me for me, to be there for me. But once I got pregnant, I had to grow up fast to be there for somebody else. In some misguided effort to make up for my mistakes—of which there were plenty—I sent him away so he could finish school and get over me. If only I’d stayed and trusted my family, but I ran away.”

  Maxine started walking again toward the water. Her legs had miles of walking in them though her heart felt like it would give out.

  “You keep saying ‘him,’ but we’re talking about Mr. Lester, aren’t we?” Celeste’s voice was quiet at her shoulder.

  Maxine was too spent to be shocked. “Yes, of course you know that, too.”

  “Don’t worry; Mama didn’t tell me that part. She hated him.”

  “Don’t say hate, Celeste.”

  “But it’s true. Or close enough. I just put two and two together. The way she acted with Annie Lester all those years ago. How you flipped your wig when he came back to town. I knew my biological father wasn’t dead or missing, despite what you’d said. While I didn’t know why he’d given me up, I knew it was him.”

  “And that’s why you didn’t seem surprised last night after the concert.”

  “Right. I was just tired of it all, Maxine. Watching you run from the truth is exhausting.” Celeste sighed. “Should we head back? Mama’s going to wonder what’s keeping us. And I’m really tired. I need food.”