Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime
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One day her friends ask her, “Why you cryin so much? It’s been most a year now. You makin yourself sick. Why you still cryin so much. Cryin ain’t gonna bring Uniqua back.”
“That’s why I’m cryin,” she said.
Grieving and staring at Uniqua’s pictures and turning her love into hate for the killers, Abby was getting sick inside. She didn’t eat. Had lost weight. Was going to get really sick. She didn’t know which way to go. Somehow, somewhere in that fog that stayed in her head, she remembered how Uniqua and she would read the Bible when they had a problem. Uniqua went to church more than Abby, but Abby believed in God and used to act like it.
One morning when the fog in her head was clearer than usual and Abby could see the dirty sheets and the sinkful of dirty dishes and the empty icebox, Abby was bout ready to cry again for what she had come to without her baby. She sat down to cry, but she sat near a table with the Bible on it. Abby, snifflin, picked up the Bible and before she read a word, she heard in her mind, “Don’t bury it, use it. Don’t keep it in, give it away. Don’t turn that love in, turn that love out.” She closed the book and held it to her breast as she kept repeating the last line. “Don’t turn that love inside, turn that love outside.” She thought about that as she finally cleaned up her neglected home. Cleaned out Uniqua’s room. Packing things up to give away. It hurt again. She had to leave and shut the door to Uniqua’s room. Sat down, tears coming again. She took up the Bible again. She heard the same words. “Don’t turn that love in, turn that love out.” She thought about those words all that week.
Another week later, Abby talked to the doctor she worked for. Then she went to a foster child agency. She applied for one child. One whose parents might not come back to get it. One that needed a real home they could stay in til they graduated from college or til they were grown. The foster service lady looked at Abby like she was crazy. She laughed about it in the lunchroom later. “Imagine thinking any of these kids will get through grammar school, much less college! Ha ha.”
But another social worker, Ms. Trye, who was a realistic dreamer, later asked for the case, which the first worker was glad to get rid of since she felt overworked anyway.
Ms. Trye called on Abby, went by her job, did all the usual things and when all the paperwork was almost completed, Abby said, “I’ve changed my mind, I want two of them. A little boy and a little girl. I don’t care what their age is, I just want them to need me, or somebody.”
In two weeks Abby had a little girl, age thirteen, named Patricia. Patricia needed a home badly, needed love greatly. Needed care all the way. Couldn’t read, couldn’t write and hated baths. “Just my meat!” Abby smiled and pulled the girl into her home. In another two weeks she had another one. A boy four years old, named Joey. He had been abused a great deal, even as young as he was. Abby pulled him into her arms, smothered him in her breast as she waved the social worker, Ms. Trye, away.
As she gathered her new family to her breast and her life, her love poured out. An emptiness filled up. There were three, Abby, Patricia and Joey, all feeling empty, but who were filling up the emptiness in each other. Until, now, they are full.
Sometimes, when Abby gets home from work (she has a very good baby-sitter for the days), she fixes dinner, clears up after, then takes baby Joey on her lap as she leans over to help Patricia with her homework. She puts her hand out to smooth Patricia’s hair, which always needs combing, and looks over the children to Uniqua’s picture. Uniqua seems to be smiling so bright, her eyes lighted up. Abby cries a little, but these times it is from joy. She couldn’t hold Uniqua anymore, but she was holding love. Not burying it inside. Letting it out. Using it.
She tells the children, “It ain’t always going to be easy, but we will make it! You’re gonna be all right. We are a family now. We’re gonna be all right … together. Where there is a will, there is a way. For us, we only need a way. There will always be a way.” She hugged her new family. “Because we have love. There will always be a way.”
About the Author
J. California Cooper is the author of the novels Family and In Search of Satisfaction, and four collections of short stories: Homemade Love, the winner of the 1989 American Book Award; Some Soul to Keep; A Piece of Mine; and The Matter Is Life. She is also the author of seventeen plays and has been honored as Black Playwright of the Year (1978). She received the James Baldwin Writing Award (1988) and the Literary Lion Award from the American Library Association (1988). Ms. Cooper lives in California.