The Interruption of Everything

by Terry McMillan

  “Maybe she was just confused.”

  “But these are her plants. Not mine.”

  “Did you ask her about it?”

  “Ask her what? ‘Lovey, are you losing your mind?’ How do you ask your mama some shit like that?”

  “I’ll drive out there to see her by the end of the week.”

  “Don’t tell her I told you this, please. Her temper is something else and she might just hit me.”

  “Get the hell outta here, Joy. Lovey wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

  “Then that must make me a tick ’cause she’s already done it!”

  I suddenly feel like throwing up for three reasons: 1) The thought of Lovey doing any of these things and with Joy and her kids in the house is quite unsettling; 2) Leon is still gunning that damn motorcycle; and 3) Last night’s meal is stuck in my esophagus. “I’ve gotta go, Joy. I’m feeling sick.”

  “Wait a minute! Can you lend me a couple of hundred bucks till I get on my feet, or not?”

  “Are your kids hungry?”

  “They will be.”

  “Go to Western Union in a few hours. If I get down there and it looks like those kids are being neglected on any level, Joy, I swear to God, first, I’m going to kick your ass myself, and then I’m calling Social Services on you. How’s that sound?”

  “Thanks M and M. But my kids ain’t want for nothing. You been watching too many episodes of Special Victims’ Unit of Law & Order. Three whole hours?”

  I drop the phone on the floor and run into the bathroom and barf into the toilet until my ears are ringing and my head feels like it’s expanding then shrinking. As soon as I stand up and walk over to the sink to get this awful taste out of my mouth, here it comes again. This time I don’t make it to the toilet and as I’m crouched over, holding myself up with both elbows on the sink, I feel Leon hovering above me.

  “What’s wrong, Marilyn? Are you okay? What did you eat? This looks like it could be food poisoning.”

  “I’m okay, now. I hope.” I stand upright.

  “Can I get you something?” His fingers are spread out, grazing back and forth across my back like a slow windshield wiper. “What did you eat last night?”

  “The shrimp pasta. Didn’t you have some, too?”

  “Just a few bites. I wasn’t very hungry when I came in.”

  Lying son of a bitch. It was chicken, but I don’t want to add to my nausea, which feels like it’s subsiding. “That’s not what’s making me barf. I’m pregnant.”

  The weight of his hand now feels like he’s pushing me away. He must realize it, because it falls off my back and now he’s shoveling both hands inside the pockets of his dark green Dockers. He takes a few steps back and then looks at me like I’m some alien. “Did you just say you’re pregnant, Marilyn?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “How in the world did this happen?”

  “Well, let me think for a minute.”

  “When did you find out?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Is this your surprise?”

  I just nod.

  He looks disappointed. But who can blame him? I’m not exactly ecstatic about the idea of going through this again either. “A baby,” he sighs, and sits down on the edge of the bathtub. The skylight is making his skin look olive green, putrid.

  Here it comes again. I thought I was finished. What could possibly be left in there? This time, Leon stays put. By the time I start dry heaving, my thoughts get ugly, and I’m hoping that there’s nothing left inside my belly for the seed that will grow into a baby to survive on.

  Leon just sits there like he can’t move. Like he wants to but can’t. I understand. I rinse my mouth out with Listerine and then turn to face him. I feel light-headed but this I can handle. “I guess I’ll have it,” I hear myself say.

  “Well, why wouldn’t you?” he asks. It sounds more like a statement than a question.

  “Can you handle this?” I ask.

  “Can you?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “In all honesty, I’m stunned. Do we have any time to think if this is something we really want to do?”

  “Leon, the thought of having an abortion at my age is too scary.”

  “I know. And I’m not suggesting it. But good Lord, Marilyn, have you thought about what this is going to mean for both of us?”

  “It’s spinning around in my head, but maybe you’d like to think about it on your motorcycle?”

  He stands up. “Come on, cut me a little slack here, would you? It’s not just you having a baby, Marilyn. I’m going to be forty-six in a few months. I’ve just recently started giving serious thought to making some changes in my professional life and…”

  “What are you talking about, Leon?”

  “I don’t really know. All I know is that this is adding a variable that I hadn’t considered, not to mention being unprepared for. But the thought of starting all over again…I mean we’ve already raised three beautiful children. I thought we were finished.”

  “I did, too, Leon.”

  “I mean we’ve spent most of our best years being parents, don’t you think?”

  “Our best years? I hadn’t quite thought of it that way.”

  “It’s just that I thought our household load was finally getting lighter. That we’d be able to try some new things. I always thought that this part of our lives would be filled with new experiences and excitement.”

  I do not believe my ears. These words are coming out of Mr. Predictable’s mouth? “Such as?”

  “Well, my mind is more on the present right this minute so it’s hard to be specific about the future.”

  “Just name one new experience and one thing that might excite us both that a child might prevent.”

  He’s wracking his brain trying to come up with something. He isn’t good with quick responses when it’s something he worries could be misinterpreted or makes him look bad. He’s always been overly cautious, which is one of the reasons why spontaneity has been such a major issue. “What difference does it make, Marilyn?”

  “I’m missing your point?”

  “We have a situation here that we have to face. Yesterday I was excited about the idea of riding my Harley, and today I feel like I should’ve probably just stuck with the SUV.”

  “Ga’ma,” Sage says, appearing in the doorway, “will you come pray with me?”

  She means play. But praying sounds about right.

  Chapter 6

  Girl, did you see Janet’s boob during Super Bowl halftime?” Paulette asks, while she picks out all the pecans from the wild rice salad she’s nibbling on. We’re sitting outside at a café to keep an eye on her grandkids. They are asleep in the backseat of her truck, which is parked right in front of us. It’s fifty-nine degrees out here.

  “No I didn’t. But I think Leon’s seen it on the Internet at least a trillion times. I heard it was money well spent. Anyway, I didn’t ask you to meet me here to make small talk. I’m seven weeks pregnant.”

  “You have got to be kidding!”

  I roll my eyes at her.

  “I guess not. Pregnant? Damn, Marilyn. How in the world did you get yourself knocked up, being a senior citizen and all?”

  “My sentiments exactly. I go to the doctor knowing I’ve been off-kilter for a while and you can just close your mouth right now, Paulette, and here I am thinking she’s probably going to give me a prescription for hormones so I can get my brain back in operation and what do I end up with? Fucking prenatal vitamins.”

  “I thought you said you were trying to quit swearing?”

  “Go to hell, Paulette. I will. As soon I can have a whole week where no crazy or ridiculous or unbelievable shit happens and my mind is calm long enough to remember how to think. And don’t you dare say anything about how wonderful this is when you and I both know how we make fun of all the over-forty mothers we see sitting in the parks on organized play dates marveling at their little miracles for hours
and leaping up from the bench to convince the little farts to eat a spoonful of blueberry yogurt or an apple slice or carrot stick from the Ziploc bags—none of which they are remotely interested in and then they’ll try to push that little straw from the juice carton into their closed mouth and finally accept that no means no and praise the Lord if they cough more than twice they must be choking or if the kid so much as sniffles or scrapes a knee—at the mere sight of blood it’s off to the nearest emergency room they go where they will be asked if they are the child’s grandmother, and now here I am in the same boat.”

  “So you’re gonna have it, then?”

  I roll my eyes at her.

  “You mean you really want another kid?”

  I roll my eyes at her again.

  “What about Leon? Is he up for this?”

  My eyes roll on their own.

  “What about the kids?”

  “I haven’t told anybody. The twins’ll be home for spring break in a couple of weeks and that’s when I go back to hear the heartbeat so I figured I’d wait and tell them after. And ironically enough, Sabrina just told me she’s pregnant, too.”

  “Get the hell out of here, Marilyn.”

  “Seriously. She probably would’ve freaked out if I’d told her. I can wait. I think I just saw movement in the backseat.”

  She and I peer into the tinted glass, but the slumping silhouettes strapped into their car seats are still. “Girl, I took them to Mickey D’s and after turning a few corners, they were down for the count. But I don’t have to tell you this, now do I?”

  “No, you don’t. I’m actually thrilled about replaying the entire miniseries of baby bottles and ballet or baseball and basketball and those boring soccer tournaments and begging for everything and thousands of birthday parties and sleepover after sleepover and bad plays and puberty and—Lord help me—not another period if it’s a girl, and of course prescriptions for pimples, okay?”

  “Okay,” she says, as she leans back in the metal chair and starts twirling a group of braids. “A baby? Wow. Whoa. Damn. Okay, I’m shutting up right now.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Okay,” she whispers and gets up, gives me a sympathetic kiss on my forehead and after rolling down the window, says to her two grandchildren who are now awake: “Grandma’s getting in the truck and we are going home and have ice cream but only if you don’t cry.”

  I see them both smiling. They are so cute! They are the products of her oldest son and his Asian wife. Of course now I’m suddenly ashamed for thinking of an innocent child as a burden. No child asks to come into this world and once it gets here, should be entitled to as much love and joy as it can get. In fact it is often we, the parents, who are ill-equipped to give it what it needs, so in effect, we are really the burden, the albatross around its little neck. I loved mothering my children and I love being their mother. I just thought I was finished giving birth. I wave as Paulette speeds off and try to finish this tuna melt.

  My new daily ritual: I get up around eight and throw up from the smell of Leon’s shaving cream or aftershave or shower gel or his new cologne. I brush my teeth with baking soda because toothpaste makes me cringe. I force myself to eat something and then throw up again. I eat crackers for lunch and once they settle, chase them with soup. I go into my hobby room and look around because there’s not much I can do in here that doesn’t involve chemicals, except sew, but I haven’t been in the mood for it.

  Leon’s acting like I never told him. He hasn’t mentioned it at all. It’s almost as if he’s pretending that it’s not real or that I’m stewing it over, and any minute will change my mind and he’ll drive me to a clinic and I’ll get it suctioned out. When I come out, he won’t be in the waiting area. He’ll be sitting in the car in the parking lot with the windows rolled down reading the latest issue of Golfing or Black Enterprise that he brought just in case he got bored. “All finished?” he’ll ask.

  But it’s still in me. And Leon is lying next to me, much closer to the edge on his side of the bed. I slide over and try to pull him against me. He knows I need him. To cushion me. To be my shelter. To drown in his arms. He has always known when I need to sink. But he pretends he’s asleep. I take my left hand and slip it inside his boxers, massaging him slowly, sliding my palm up and down, hoping to feel him rise, but he stays flaccid. This has always worked. “Leon,” I finally whisper. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Just tired,” he says, and rolls away from me. He curls up like a snail and locks his body and heart so my key doesn’t work.

  I am driving to Fresno because I got Trudy to cover for me, which she was more than happy to do. I was considering telling her what happened, but before I had a chance, she said, “I know this probably means you’re having personal problems, Marilyn. We all do. So take as much time as you need. I’m here.” And before I got a chance to ask how Maureen was doing, Trudy told me that she had pulled the kids out of school and had already moved back to Sacramento. “She is getting so divorced, it’s not funny.”

  I also got my hair twisted so I wouldn’t have to think about what to do with it for a while. And finally, after being tested for the third time, it has been confirmed that Arthurine does not have cataracts and will not have to have surgery of any kind. At first, she seemed disappointed to learn that all she needed was a new prescription. But then of course she knew why her eyesight had been spared: “So if your eye—even if it is your good eye—causes you to lust, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” Matthew 5:29. Once again, I didn’t bother to explain that this reference was about adultery. What she really was trying to say about healing one’s sight was in Matthew 9:27–31. But at least she can see. The next step is to get her to at least try on some smaller glasses. This will probably be a battle since she as well as most of her aging compatriots seem to think that oversize glasses are a sign of sophistication or that they’re able to see more at once. I don’t know.

  When I hit the Fresno city limits, I cross East California Avenue, passing alley after alley, where torn trash bags and garbage lie at the base of giant bins like dead animals. There are rainbows of graffiti sprayed in English and Spanish across the entire lengths of over- and underpass walls. When I was growing up this area wasn’t called the Dog Pound. There were no SWAT teams or helicopters with infrared scopes prowling our neighborhoods. Dogs were pets. We had never seen or heard what an automatic assault rifle sounded like, except on TV. Nobody got killed. People died of natural causes. It was safe here. It was pretty.

  Before I turn down Lovey’s street, it breaks my heart to see what used to be vibrant yellow, pink, and proud peach stucco bungalows now cracked and crumbling. Our house used to be mint green and white. The street is now lined with a small array of mesh fences in varying condition. Behind most of them are barking dogs: mostly pit bulls and rottweilers. Occasionally, there are the white wrought-iron gates that look like thick lace. I think these are meant to make a number of different statements, namely that they spent a little extra; they’ve got more class and pride than their neighbors, but mostly, they’re saying, Keep Out. Behind each fence is a tiny patch of grass that is the front yard, many of which display an assortment of things that they feel requires protection: an old mattress that won’t fit inside the blue recycle bin; a car parked directly on the grass or blocking the front door into the house itself; steel barbecue drums; and an awful lot of machinery.

  When I pull into the driveway the garage door is up and Lovey’s ’89 Taurus isn’t inside it. I called before I left home and told her the approximate time to expect me, but because my cell phone didn’t work way out in farm country, I figured an hour wouldn’t make much difference. But I suppose it does.

  I honk and wait and realize that some of the flowers in the yard are real but some are also plastic. What has Lovey been out here doing? I honk again, but still nobody comes to the door or pulls back the gold drapes that a
re bunched up in spots where the hooks are probably missing. I used to have a key, but they’ve had the locks changed so many times I never know which one works. Burglars love this neighborhood even though most of these folks don’t have much worth stealing.

  The houses seem to shrink each time I visit. The living rooms are not much bigger than my walk-in closet and yet they’re always full of the same furniture I have in mine: sofa, coffee table, two chairs, side tables. Lamps. The dining room is usually cramped with a table that’s too big, and barely enough space for the chifforobe full of real or fake china, crystal goblets full of dust, and torn boxes of flatware posing as silver. The bedrooms have just enough room to walk around two sides of the bed before your foot will kick the dresser or chest of drawers. There could be a chair, but it will most likely be covered with clothes that need laundering or just never got put away. If you’re lucky, the window has a giant air-conditioning unit taking up its bottom half, and sunlight may sneak into this room for hours at a time.

  I get out of the car, open the aluminum screen, and knock on the front door. No answer. I try peeking in through a small opening in the drapes, but all I see is a cracked reflection of me in the wall of mirrored tiles with gold veins going through them. To the right is the fireplace, whose mantle is light pink tiles encased with one big wooden piece Lovey got at Home Depot a few years ago. It’s also where she bought the self-adhesive wallpaper with brown and beige river rocks on it. The back of the green velour sofa is thinning in spots, thanks to the kids. This is where my mother lives.

  I get my cell out and dial inside. I can hear the phone ring and then Joy’s voice. “What is it?”

  “Joy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Open the front door, would you. It’s me. Marilyn.”

  “What are you doing here?”