Patsy

by Patsy (retail) (epub)

  She looks around the room, her eyes sweeping out through the window, where the evening sky glows red-orange. She thinks about Tru harming herself, remembering her mother’s gaze toward Heaven when Patsy was just a girl. How she felt a deep sense of loss then, watching her mother’s eyes move away from her, toward twilight. How she had looked around the clutter and the empty cupboards her mother left behind inside the house crowded with Jesus figurines. Patsy was reduced from a child to one of the things her mother left behind. Maybe that’s why her tears are unrelenting now, spilling from a hidden reservoir. “Di Bible seh children are di heritage from di Lord. Di fruit of di womb. Yuh reward!” Mama G had once said to Patsy. “Ah hope yuh not t’inking ’bout leaving di chile God bless yuh wid.” Patsy lowers her head. She wonders now if that was her mother’s attempt at an apology, an acknowledgment that Patsy was worth more than those damn figurines and her God. She searches her memory, desperate now to see the remorse in her mother’s eyes. How she stood there on the outskirts of Patsy’s girlhood and watch things happen to her, how her back was always turned as if she had given permission to the night to swallow Patsy, to touch her with coarse hands.

  The memories come back in a scale of colors. Before they were merely just black-and-white. They now coalesce into a prism of clarity—a light that reflects the shadows that have always been there. Patsy always thought they were hers alone, but as she remembers the frail hope that died in her mother’s eyes and emptied all the rooms of her presence, Patsy realizes that the shadows were her mother’s too. And Patsy, unaware, gave Tru every reason to believe she too had no worth. Be a good, obedient girl, an’ ah promise I’ll be back fah yuh. It was a lie. A trap. How is Patsy different from her own mother?

  “Oh, Tru . . .” she whispers, choked. Slowly, she raises her head toward the sky again, which is now a brilliant violet and silvery blue. “Oh, Tru, forgive me. I didn’t know how to be a mother to you . . .” Her voice is a whimper. How powerless she feels now. “Oh, Tru, forgive me! Ah wasn’t there for you.”

  “We both failed Tru, Birdie,” Roy says now, softening. It’s not like Roy to do this, to absolve Patsy of her crime. “Don’t take all di blame.” It also dawns on Patsy that Roy now calls their daughter Tru. How the years have made a difference. The name has taken on new meaning, a purpose.

  The door unlocks. Claudette walks in with a bag of groceries and bouquet of fresh flowers. Patsy meets her lover’s gaze. She appears like the sun itself, shining on Patsy’s left, and on Patsy’s right is a large black cloud of uncertainty, threatening rain in the distance. No rainbow on the horizon. “Is it too late?” she asks Roy. The tearful question hangs in the air, unanswered.

  55

  SINCE THE INCIDENT, TRU EXISTS ON THE PERIPHERY OF EVERYTHING. She feels like she’s looking down at herself—a puppet on a string, going through motions with antidepressants, as the doctors call them. Tru has to take them like vitamins each day. At times she feels like an exotic fish inside an aquarium under constant surveillance at home and at school, where everyone—Marva, Roy, Kenny, Mama G, the teachers, and her classmates—gawks at her every move. It’s as though they are holding their breath.

  Her mandatory meetings with the school guidance counselor, Miss Fairweather, are a waste of time. She sits and doodles—Miss Fairweather’s voice muted by the clamoring of Tru’s thoughts. Tru feels no obligation to fill the silences. Surely the young, hip, half-black, half-Chinese counselor with her wild curly Afro, the flowy linen African print dresses and conch-shell earrings, and her fancy foreign degrees in psychology, probably deems Tru a lost cause. The psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital probably thought the same, too, when she asked Tru how she was feeling, and Tru’s only complaint was that she could no longer masturbate. Maybe that’s the reason why they decided to release her back to her father’s care, though they never thought to take her off the numbing meds. Though Tru is even more alone than before, she avoids Saskia and refuses to answer Sore-Foot Marlon and Albino Ricky’s text messages. Her mother has tried calling, and Tru refuses to speak to her. How ironic. After all these years in America, she finally acknowledges the existence of telephones. She sends Tru a letter that Tru refuses to open. The white envelope with Statue of Liberty stamps is still sitting on Tru’s nightstand, collecting dust in the same position where Roy placed it last week.

  TONIGHT, THE HOUSE IS QUIET. TRU FINISHES HER HOMEWORK and is now pretending to read the Bible Mama G gifted her. “Fah comfort,” Mama G said when she placed it at Tru’s bedside. She has pestered Tru ever since about reading a few chapters a night. When she caught Tru taking the pills that the psychiatrist prescribed, she snatched them and handed Tru the Bible. “Dere’s nuttin’ more powerful fi cure whatevah dey claim wrong wid yuh than prayer an’ di Good Word.” Mama G’s doting is more than Tru can handle. Mama G has come to stay with Roy and Marva after Tru got out of the hospital—an arrangement made so that Tru is never by herself. The door to Tru’s room has been removed, which means she has absolutely no privacy.

  “Mine yuh strain yuh eye,” Mama G says to Tru now in that gentle voice she has taken to using since Tru’s release from the hospital. Tru is sitting at the dining table. She watches as Mama G hauls herself to the kitchen on her bad leg to make her tea.

  “Ah don’t want any, Grandma,” Tru says.

  “But yuh haven’t eaten. Yuh g’wan get gas in yuh belly if yuh nuh drink somet’ing warm.”

  Tru is too tired to protest. Too tired to do much these days. With both her wrists still bandaged, she doesn’t like to look at her hands. They’re just reminders of her failed attempt, and, subsequently, a source of pity.

  Marva, like Mama G, acts like Tru is a baby again. It’s Marva who wakes Tru in the mornings, coaxes her out of bed, walks her to the bathroom. Marva stands there by the bathroom door and waits until Tru finishes her bath. Tru senses that Marva would bathe her herself if she could. Tru remembers how Marva reverentially washed her back, her head, her face on the first day of Tru’s arrival to her father’s house. She turned away to give Tru some privacy to wash between her legs. They did this in comfortable silence with just the sound of the water slushing around in the bathtub. There was such tenderness in Marva’s touch—a tenderness Tru would welcome now. Each caress expressed to Tru that Marva was handling something of great value, something she regarded as her own.

  The outside sounds of crickets give way to the patter of the water heating up on the stove. The smell of peppermint leaves floats up into the dining room, blown by the electric ceiling fan. Soon there is the tinkering of the spoon as Mama G mixes condensed milk into the tea. She places the cup with steam rising from it on the table, then pats Tru on the shoulder with her bony hand. “Mek sure to turn out di light when yuh finish.”

  “I’m not supposed to be alone, remember?” Tru says with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. This rule is so stupid, since everyone is asleep at night anyway. If Tru really wanted to hurt herself again, she would’ve done so by now.

  “Then yuh need to finish up yuh reading before ah leave,” Mama G replies.

  Mama G takes her time to pour her nightly glass of water that she keeps by her bedside in case she gets into one of her coughing fits. She’s now sleeping in Iris’s old shed. She hums as she fetches the water jug herself from the refrigerator. Her housedress sweeps the floor, whimsical-like, as she moves. Tru listens to Mama G’s humming and her movements without raising her head, the crickets outside getting louder and louder with the amicable—though slightly off-putting—silence between them. Tru closes the Bible.

  “Grandma, can I ask you something?”

  “Anyt’ing m’dear.” Mama G pulls out one of the chairs at the table and sits, seemingly glad to be engaged by Tru, who has been quiet with everyone else. Would you love me this way if I didn’t almost die? she wants to ask. But when she gets her grandmother’s undivided attention, Tru opens and closes her mouth, the words turning back to settle inside her gut. Instead, she asks, “At what age did
you get saved?”

  Mama G lets out a big sigh like she intends to blow down the whole house and straightens her back. “Is thirty-t’ree years now since God delivah me.”

  “From what?” Tru asks.

  Mama G makes a face. “How yuh mean, from what? Di Devil himself. Ah was a very misguided young woman.”

  Tru can’t imagine her grandmother as a young person. There was never a time in Tru’s life that her grandmother alluded to her past.

  “What did you struggle with?” Tru asks, her eyes trying to search for the young woman behind the scowling mask. Mama G looks at Tru, but Tru can tell by her eyes’ glossy veil that they’ve looked past her, beyond the dining room. She doesn’t know how far her grandmother’s gaze stretches, but it’s definitely not here.

  “T’ings was hard raising yuh mother by me self wid di chump change ah was getting as ah helper,” Mama G says. “Har father left me for ah ole wench him used to cut grass fah up Stony Hill. Di stupid brute thought a high-class woman like dat would want him fah more than him—” She clears her throat, though it is obvious from the way she does it that it does not need clearing at all. “Di woman husband found out about di affair an’ shot him dead two months before yuh mother was born. Ah used to seh serve him right. But dat was before ah got saved. God took care of it.” Her head bobs up and down despite the words of forgiveness she speaks. “Anwyay, only God was keeping me from going mad, raising a chile by me self. Di only other time ah felt suh powerless an’ weak was when me daddy, Papa Joe, die.” She pauses and shakes her head, her face darkened by the memory. “Ah neva found peace till ah surrendered it all to God. Once ah started looking to Heaven, everyt’ing else became easy. Nuttin’ else mattah aftah dat, because di good Lawd let us know dat Him will come in di night like ah t’ief an’ tek di worthy ones back to Heaven wid Him. Dat we mus’ prepare we self fah di day of salvation. Di Devil taunted me even more. Tell me all sorta t’ings to discourage me. Him even tempt me a few times. But ah was ready fah him. Ah prayed an’ fasted. One time it got suh bad dat ah had to fast fah forty days an’ forty nights like Jesus in di desert. Yuh mother was small, but she knew we had to work hard fi keep di Devil away. When ah die, ah know my Almighty God is waiting to congratulate me.”

  Tru frowns. “Soun’ like yuh waiting to die, Grandma.”

  “Di good Lawd say to wait faithfully. Everyt’ing shall come to ah end. Dere’s ah bettah place than here, my chile,” Mama G says, looking off again beyond the patch of blackness by the window.

  “What if dat place don’t exist?” Tru asks.

  “How yuh mean? Dere’s a place fah people like us. It’s definitely not ’ere on earth. Earth is fah di sinners—di ones who get dem riches in ways di Lawd condemn. Yuh don’t know? Well, mek me tell yuh—we might be piss-poor, but God done promise we paradise in di sky, way above those hills weh di rich people live. Dey t’ink dem looking down on us, but we are di chosen ones—di ones God pick to carry di weight of mankind ’pon we back ’cause we black an’ strong. Our reward is in Heaven. God choose di poor to be heirs to di Kingdom, ’cause we rich in faith.”

  “Yuh don’t think we deserve our reward here too?” Tru asks, remembering her conversation with Pope. “What if—what if while we busy looking to di sky, people steal from us?”

  “What we got fah dem to steal?” Mama G asks, her eyes boring into Tru’s. “Tell me.”

  Tru shrugs. “Ras Norbert say we sitting on gold.”

  “Screw what dat ole dutty mop-head brute seh. What him know ’bout anyt’ing? Since him ’ooman lef’ him, all him do is sit an’ smoke him ganja all day. Gold? Which pa’at? If we ’ave gold we woulda been rich by now as a people, as a country. Black people don’t got nuh gold fi claim, ’less we sell we organ dem. As me seh, our riches is in Heaven. Not here. Yuh must not question God,” Mama G says. “In fact, yuh should be grateful dat Him spare yuh life. I’m happy you survive because yuh wouldn’t get to Heaven by killing yuhself. Dat woulda been a path straight to Hell. Suh give t’anks.”

  The memory of the darkness that had skipped through Tru’s veins moments before she smashed the mirror with her bare hands and dug into her flesh returns. She realized then, as she does now, that the darkness lives with her; crouches in certain corners of her room; lingers well after the rain stops on an overcast day; persists in the silences when she doesn’t have music blasting through headphones to drown it out. She wishes she hadn’t survived. Her heart laps fiercely in her throat as she sits at the table with her grandmother, listening to her go on about Heaven. Tru swallows, barely able to suppress her anger. She balls her fists tightly. Mama G doesn’t care about her at all. It’s clear now that all Mama G is concerned about is getting to a place that may not exist.

  “Was Mama saved too?” Tru asks. She doesn’t know what prompted her to ask this. Maybe it’s Tru’s failure to imagine herself as a young girl being forced to fast for forty days and forty nights, trapped in her mother’s fears of going to Hell. Was Mama told she’d go to Hell too?

  Mama G is shaking her head. She turns the water jug, which by now has formed a large puddle on the wooden dining table. She has a pained look on her face as if Tru has asked the wrong question. In the room’s dim quiescence, Tru hears her grandmother catch her breath as though to speak, but she says nothing. Tru waits patiently. Suddenly Mama G’s voice comes, so quiet that it seems distant.

  “Some people jus’ can’t be saved,” she says. “But not ah soul can say me neva try. Di war between God an’ di Devil is not fah us to undah-stand.”

  UNDER THE WEIGHT OF THE DARKNESS FLUNG LIKE A CLOAK wide over Rochester, the lights inside the house glower as Tru opens the letter that arrived from her mother a week ago. “She’s still yuh mother, Tru.” Perhaps Roy knew that her anger would eventually drop. He was right. Now, after speaking to Mama G and realizing that her mother might have been escaping something more than just Tru, Tru picks up the envelope.

  Dear Tru,

  i hope this letter finds you well. i know it’s well after many birthdays and Christmases. There’s a lot to say . . . a lot i don’t know if i can put into words. i’m not much of a writer, which is why i always liked numbers. But here i am, relying on words, hoping they will get through to you. i can’t leave America to come see you, because my papers not straight here. But Tru, if i could travel, i’d be there in a heartbeat. i know you’re probably wondering why it took me so long, after all these years, to reach out. i’m writing you now because it’s long overdue. Truth is, i didn’t know what i would have done with myself if you died, god know. i know i didn’t make the best decision, leaving you like that when you was young, but i wouldn’t forgive myself to know i could hurt you even more. i wasn’t a woman when i had you. Although i was twenty-two years old, i was still a young girl who wanted so much more. i was terrified of raising another human being, feeling complete responsibility for how you’d end up. Not everyone can handle that pressure so young. Speaking for myself, i could not handle it. i also didn’t think it would’ve been fair to raise you and end up putting all my dreams and aspirations on your back. i’ve seen way too much children crushed that way, too. When you was a little girl, i didn’t have the heart to tell you how sad i was. It was a sadness i never knew how to explain—one that made me feel like i was being buried alive. i felt stuck, believing a black ghetto girl like me would never mount to anything.

  Then you came. A beautiful baby whose beauty i couldn’t see, because you looked so much like me. i was afraid to look you in the face, knowing there wasn’t much i could do to save you. My biggest regret is that i didn’t figure out how to love you sooner. i couldn’t even love myself. i was guilty, because i had brought you into a world i could not change—a world i feared would break you, too. i also could not bear to pretend that motherhood was for me.

  A wise woman told me that you’d respect me more for my honesty. This is why i am baring my soul to you. When you were born, they called you a miracle, because doctors thought i
couldn’t get pregnant again after a miscarriage i had when i was young. You were a miracle i was reckless enough to take for granted. A miracle i was too broken to appreciate. You’re alive for a reason, Tru. You’re here to prove people, including myself, wrong. You can be the one to change things. i know i’ve scarred you with my absence. And for that, i am truly sorry. However, life scars make us warriors. You’re a warrior, Tru. i know this, because i left you with the best person, your father. He’s a good man. And Marva is a better woman than i am.

  i know i may not be qualified to call myself your mother at this stage, or even try to pretend that i know what’s best for you or what you like, but i can only hope that one day you will find it in your heart to forgive me. i also may not be the best at shopping for gifts, but i will leave you with these words that i wish someone had told me when i was your age: Never let anyone define you. Always know that you matter. Your thoughts, feelings, and your desires matter. Your happiness matters. As your mother-in-training, the least i can do is set you free.

  i’ll always be here if there ever come a time when you need me.

  Love always, Patsy

  Book VI

  WHAT IS TRUE

  56

  TRU CROSSES THE PARKING LOT OF THE NATIONAL STADIUM, breathing in air thick with the smell of ripening mangoes. Her teammates have just emerged from the school bus with their gear. She spots Saskia, who waves at her. She’s standing by a big lignum vitae tree not too far from a cluster of palm trees. Tru slows down. Saskia’s smile broadens when Tru comes closer, squinting in the Saturday morning sunshine.

  “Look at you,” Saskia says, appraising Tru’s athletic gear with Wilhampton blue and white elephant logo on the jersey.