The Sometimes Daughter

by Sherri Wood Emmons

  My friendship with Vernita cost me some grief with other kids, of course. But I didn’t care much. Lee Ann, Susan, Vernita, and I formed a world unto ourselves. Vernita was the only other kid I knew whose parents were divorced. She lived with her mother and two older brothers in an apartment in the projects—that’s what the kids called the apartment complex where she lived. Vernita said her family’s apartment was nice, but lots of the others weren’t. Her mother worked in a bakery, and her oldest brother had an after-school job. They were saving money to buy a house someday.

  I had not seen Mama since the final disastrous visit with the social worker, but I got letters from her and sometimes phone calls. At first the letters upset me, because I missed her so much. In that first year after she left, sometimes I missed her so much I thought I might just die of sadness. Some nights Grandma had to lie in my bed with her arms around me while I cried myself to sleep. Other nights Daddy sat on the bed strumming his guitar and singing softly the songs that Mama used to sing.

  After the first year it got better. I still missed Mama, but the pain wasn’t so sharp and new. Mostly, that is. Some days were still hard, even now, especially on holidays or at school pageants when all the other kids had their mothers with them. One time I saw Lee Ann and her mom sitting on the porch swing at their house. Mrs. Dawson was brushing Lee Ann’s hair and they were both smiling, and it hurt so much I felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of me. Then Mrs. Dawson saw me standing there, watching them. She smiled and patted the seat beside her. When I sat down, she put an arm around me and one around Lee Ann, and for a minute I almost felt like I was hers.

  Mama had left the farm in Kentucky and moved to California with a man named Noah. She seemed happy, painting pictures with words of her new life in a big house with lots of other people.

  And, as it turned out, Mama was thinking a lot about race relations, too. She had joined a church in San Francisco, which surprised Daddy. Mama had never been interested in church when she lived with us. But this church was different, she explained. White people and black people all lived and worked together to build a better world. And, she explained, the pastor had helped her to quit using drugs. Daddy seemed happy about that.

  “Someday I want you to come out here,” Mama had written in March. “I want you to meet my new friends. I know you would love them. There are lots of kids. And we are doing amazing things—feeding hungry people and getting kids off the street.”

  Daddy shook his head and smiled when I read him Mama’s letter. “At least she’s off the drugs,” he said. “I hope to God she’s finally happy.”

  I hoped so, too.

  That summer was glorious. Lee Ann, Susan, and I practically lived outside, riding bikes, climbing trees, playing kickball and kick the can with other kids in the neighborhood. Vernita wasn’t part of the fun. She lived too far away to come over and play. I talked to her on the phone sometimes. In August, Vernita’s older brother drove her to our house for my ninth birthday party. Mama sent me a beautiful skirt with all the colors of the rainbow and a funny card. Daddy bought me a record player of my own.

  Mama’s letters came regularly now. She wrote of weekend bus trips to Los Angeles, where her church had another temple—that’s what she called it, Peoples Temple. She wrote of the church’s leader, calling him Father and sometimes Dad. And then she began writing about a trip she had planned to a country in South America called Guyana. The church had built a farm there, and Mama was going to visit in the fall.

  Daddy’s brow furrowed when I told him about the farm in Guyana. “Oh Lord,” he said, wringing his hands. “What has she gotten into now?”

  He seemed relieved when he read in Mama’s letter that the church was affiliated with the Disciples of Christ. We knew lots of people who were Disciples, and they weren’t crazy or anything.

  That fall, I started the fourth grade at School 57. I felt very grown up, moving to the older kids’ wing of the building. Sometimes after school, Lee Ann or Susan came to my grandparents’ house with me and we sat in Grandma’s kitchen, eating pretzels, drinking Cokes, and telling Grandma about school.

  Some days we rode our bikes to the drug store for ice cream, other days we rode to the park. One day we stopped at the railroad tracks to stare at bloodstains on the ground. A girl had run in front of the train the spring before and been killed.

  “What do you think it’s like to die?” Lee Ann wondered.

  “Well, if you’re a Christian you go to Heaven,” Susan said.

  “What if you’re not a Christian?” I asked.

  “Then you go to hell.” She said it with such certainty, I believed her.

  “Do you think that girl was a Christian?” I stared at the dark stain on the sidewalk.

  “I know her family goes to church, so I’m sure she’s in Heaven.”

  “Are we Christian?” I asked Daddy that night at dinner. His fork stopped midway to his mouth and he looked at me for a long minute before answering.

  “Well, I was raised a Christian. So, I guess that makes me a Christian.”

  “What about me?”

  “Well, if I’m a Christian that makes you a Christian, too.”

  I nodded, hoping he was right.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Susan says if you’re not a Christian, you go to hell when you die.”

  Daddy ran his hand through his hair before answering. “I’ll tell you what I think, Judy. I think if you try your best to be a good person, then that’s enough for God. I don’t think God cares if a person is a Christian or a Jew or a Buddhist, as long as you try to do the right thing.”

  “But what if you’re nothing?”

  “What?”

  “Like, what if you’re not a Christian or a Jew or a Buddhist or anything?”

  Daddy smiled. “I still think as long as you’re trying to be a good person, you’re okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “And, Judy, don’t ever say that you’re nothing, honey. Because you are the opposite of nothing. You, Sweet Judy, are everything.”

  10

  Daddy and I were sitting on the front porch one evening in October. I was eating ice cream while he strummed his guitar. The fall breeze was warm, the leaves on the trees a symphony of reds, yellows, and golds.

  Inside, the phone rang. I ran to answer it.

  “Judy? Is that my Sweet Judy?”

  “Mama!” I cried out, excited to hear her voice. I hadn’t spoken to her since June.

  Outside, Daddy stopped playing the guitar.

  “How are you, baby?”

  “I’m okay. How are you?”

  “I’m better than okay. I’m great.”

  She sounded happy.

  “How come you didn’t call on my birthday?” I asked.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I’ve been working so much the last few months, sometimes I don’t know if I’m coming or going. Honestly, I meant to call. I just didn’t get a chance to.”

  “Oh,” I said. I felt a familiar knot forming in my stomach.

  “Did you have a birthday party?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Was it fun?”

  “It was okay.”

  In reality, the party had been wonderful. The whole day had been wonderful. Until I went to bed and realized Mama hadn’t called to wish me a happy birthday.

  “Did you get the skirt I sent?”

  “Yes, Mama. It’s pretty, thank you.”

  “I have one just like it, so when you wear it you can think of me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She asked me about school and my friends, and told me what she’d done that day. Then, abruptly, she asked, “Is your daddy there? I need to talk to him.”

  I called Daddy in from the porch and sat down as he picked up the phone.

  “Hey, Cassie. What’s up?”

  He listened for a minute, his brow creasing. Then he motioned me to go outside.

  I sat on the porch by the screen door, listening.


  “Absolutely not! There is no way, Cassie. No way.”

  Silence. Then, “I mean it. No. You are not taking her out of the country. Don’t even think about it.”

  Another pause, then Daddy said, “Seriously, you can’t take her. And, Cassie, I don’t think you should be going, either. It sounds crazy.”

  A long pause, and then Daddy yelled into the phone, “God damn it, Cassie! I said no, and that’s final. I have custody, and I will not let you take Judy to some godforsaken commune in Guyana.”

  He slammed the receiver down and stood still a moment. I could see his fists clenching from where I sat on the porch. Finally, he shook his shoulders and turned to see me watching him.

  He sat down beside me on the porch step and drew me into his arms. “I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t have yelled.”

  I leaned against him for a minute, and then put my hand on his cheek.

  “Daddy? Don’t let her take me, okay? I don’t want to go away again.”

  I began to shake then, like I was freezing, even though it was warm outside. What if Mama came and took me away? Would Daddy be able to find me again? Or would I be gone forever?

  I began crying then, my head buried in his chest. What would I do without Daddy? Without Grandma and Lee Ann? Would Mama know how to take care of me, now that I was nine? Would she help me with my homework, like Daddy? Would she make me mint cocoa like Grandma? Would she leave me again?

  Daddy wrapped his arms around me tight while I cried.

  “I don’t want to go,” I said, over and over again. “Don’t let her take me away.”

  “I’m so sorry, baby,” he crooned. “I’m sorry she took you before. I’m sorry I didn’t stop her. I just didn’t know she would do it. I really didn’t think she would do it.”

  He lifted my chin to look straight in my eyes. “I promise you, Judy. I promise you that I will not let her take you again. I messed up last time. I won’t do that again.”

  We sat on the porch like that for a long time. When it was time for bed, Daddy sat in the rocking chair in my room, playing his guitar until I fell asleep.

  She was there on the porch, her arms opened wide, beautiful just like before. She smiled as she pulled me into a hug that was too tight. I struggled to breathe, to scream, but I couldn’t make a noise. I jerked my head back to stare into her face, but now she didn’t look like Mama at all. She had Mama’s hair, but her eyes were huge and black, and her mouth a violent slash of red as she grinned at me.

  “Away,” she yelled, laughing hysterically. “Away we go.”

  I tried to scream again, to call for Daddy. But no sound came from my throat as Mama carried me down the sidewalk, away from home.

  I woke to find Daddy still sitting in the rocking chair, the guitar on the floor beside him. His head rested in his hands. I thought at first he was sleeping, but then I heard low sobs. I climbed out of bed and into his lap and cried with him for a while. Then he carried me into his room and lay me on the bed, curled around me, and I fell asleep again.

  The next day Daddy walked to school with me, left me at my classroom door, and went to talk to the principal.

  “What’s going on?” Susan asked. Daddy usually let me walk to school with her and Lee Ann.

  “Mama called last night. She wants to take me away with her.”

  Susan took my hand and held it tightly. “Don’t worry,” she said, “your daddy won’t let her do that again.”

  For the next few weeks, Daddy walked me to school every morning, and Grandma walked me home every afternoon. I did not go to recess with the rest of my class. Instead, I sat in the library under the watchful eye of Miss McInerny, the librarian. I did not go to the park or ride my bike with Lee Ann and Susan. I sat in Grandma’s house, watching TV or reading. And outside my classroom, a security guard stood each day, scanning the hallway with his eyes.

  The other kids in my class looked at me differently now. I’d become a freak ... again. The girl with the crazy mom. The one whose parents were divorced. The one who’d been kidnapped and taken to a commune. For a year after Mama left, kids pointed at me, whispered behind my back. It seemed like no one else in the world had a mother who’d left. No one else made Mother’s Day gifts for their grandma instead of their mom. No one else lived with their grandparents.

  When we moved into our new house, I felt like I had turned a corner. I still didn’t have a mother, but I did live in a house with my dad. I invited friends over sometimes for dinner and even for overnights, just like other girls in my class. I was normal, inconspicuous even. Now I was the oddball, again. All the normalcy I’d worked so hard to build was crumbling around me.

  Susan and Lee Ann stuck up for me, of course. And after I told her about Mama, Vernita became my fiercest defender. One day in the lunchroom, a boy from another class started tiptoeing behind me with his hands raised, as if to snatch me. Other kids were laughing, and I fought the tears that were stinging my eyes. In a flash, Vernita was out of her chair and in front of the boy. Before I could even see what was happening, she had punched him squarely in the stomach.

  Teachers came running, and Vernita, the boy, and I were all called to the principal’s office. In the end, Vernita had to write I will not use my fists to solve my problems a hundred times. But the boy got paddled.

  11

  On the Sunday afternoon before Thanksgiving, Lee Ann and I sat in my bedroom, cutting out turkeys and pumpkins from construction paper to make place settings. The sun was setting outside on a gray and cold day. When the phone rang, I ran out to the hallway to answer it, picking it up just as Daddy picked up the receiver downstairs.

  “Kirk?” It was Grandpa. “That church Cassie joined, the one that moved to Guyana, is it Peoples Temple?”

  “Yeah, I think that’s it,” Daddy answered. “Why?”

  “I just heard on the news that some people in that church shot a congressman yesterday who went down there to check on them.”

  “What? Are you sure?”

  “It was on the news just now. A congressman from California went down there with some reporters, and they shot him.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Is Cassie down there?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. I know she wanted to go. Oh, God.”

  “Daddy?” My voice caught in my throat. “Is Mama okay?”

  “Hang up the phone, Judy. I’m sure your mother is okay. Come on downstairs and let’s find out what’s going on.”

  I ran downstairs, Lee Ann trailing behind me.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, pulling at my arm.

  Daddy stood in front of the television set, dialing from one channel to the next until he found a news broadcast. A reporter sitting at a desk was talking about Peoples Temple and a U.S. congressman named Leo Ryan.

  “The footage you are about to see is graphic,” he warned solemnly. Then the scene cut away to an airstrip in a jungle. A cameraman was recording a group of men in a truck firing guns at some other people, who were running and screaming. Then, suddenly, the picture went to black fuzz.

  “Daddy?” I whispered.

  “Oh, baby.” He flipped off the set and pulled me into his lap, cradling me there.

  “Is Mama okay? Did those people shoot her?”

  “No, baby,” he crooned. “She wasn’t shot. She wasn’t there. I’m sure she’s okay.”

  Behind him, Lee Ann stood staring, her eyes wide.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “I just know,” he said. “If your mama was dead, I would know.” He sounded sure.

  “Why were those people shooting?”

  “I don’t know, baby. But don’t you worry. It’s going to be okay. Do you hear me?” He pulled back to look straight into my eyes. “It’s going to be okay.”

  We walked Lee Ann home and stayed a few minutes while Daddy explained to Lee Ann’s parents what we’d just seen. Mrs. Dawson looked frightened and pulled Lee Ann to her in a tight embrace.

  �
�Let us know if we can do anything, Kirk,” Mr. Dawson said, shaking Daddy’s hand. “Anything at all. I still have friends in the army. Maybe they can find out something.”

  “Thanks, Dave. If you hear anything, will you give me a call?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Lee Ann’s family stood on their porch, watching us walk back to our house. Mrs. Dawson kept her arm wrapped tightly around her daughter.

  “Daddy, is that where Mama wanted to take me?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure, baby. I’m not sure of anything right now. But you’re safe. You don’t have to be afraid. You’re safe here with me.”

  But I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t feel safe at all. I thought about the nightmare I’d had about Mama coming to take me away, and I felt vaguely guilty. What if she was dead, and I’d had that dream about her? I held Daddy’s hand tightly, my eyes darting from bush to bush, afraid at any minute that someone might appear with a gun, just like in the TV report.

  When we got home, Grandma and Grandpa were waiting on the front porch. Grandma hugged me, telling me everything was okay.

  All afternoon, the telephone rang. People called, asking what we knew, what they could do to help. Daddy called information to get the telephone number of the Peoples Temple church in San Francisco, but nobody answered the phone there.