by B. M. Hardin
I wanted to punch him in the face, but I closed my eyes instead and prayed.
Praying was the only thing that I could do being that I wanted to snap!
Everything had been going so darn good.
We had been doing just fine.
I guess it’s true what they say:
If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
I guess I just didn’t see why they both would be keeping a secret from me.
What could it possibly be?
And what about my poor Daddy?
I hadn’t told him about the issue or the fact that Mama was carrying a cell phone around that apparently only her and Jasper had the number to because I didn’t want him to worry.
In all honesty, I was worried enough for the both of us.
He didn’t need to know a thing until I knew what was going on.
It was all somewhat disappointing for me.
Being that I was an only child, Mama was my number one stop for problem solving, questions, and answer seeking or just to share something personal or intimate. And maybe I’m wrong, but once I was of age, I thought I was the first stop for Mama.
She’d always shared everything with me, even things that I didn’t want or need to know.
So I just didn’t understand what the big secret was now.
“Storm?”
“Get out of my face Jasper.” I said to him, calmly, still with my eyes close.
I could hear him get up and exit the room.
I was so furious with the secrecy and it seemed that no matter what I tried, he just wouldn’t break.
It was as if his loyalty was to Mama and not to me.
But he didn’t have long to figure out just who’s side he was really on.
The whole thing was really quite simple.
Either he was going to start talking…or he was going to start packing.
The choice was his.
***
Weeks continued to pass and I still hadn’t spoken to or heard from Mama.
Daddy had called a few times, but I didn’t ask anything other than the basics about her so that I didn’t raise an alarm.
He hadn’t mention anything strange or even that there was anything different going on with her, so I figured that he was still over there in the dark about things.
Jasper still hadn’t broken his silence or uttered one word about what was really going on with him and Mama.
I know that it may sound a bit extreme, but I was to the point to where I was ready to walk out on our marriage because of it.
We’d already been through so much and whether it was something that he felt like I needed to know or not, we didn’t need any additional strain on our relationship.
But Jasper didn’t see it that way.
I’d become consumed with finding out the truth.
So much that I was hardly sleeping at night.
If Jasper was at work, I was looking for clues and searching through his things, hoping that I would find something that might so much as hint to what was going on but so far, I hadn’t found a thing.
Since I’d had the baby, I decided that it was time to find an office manager for the daycare.
I would simply just be the owner.
I would no longer go in every day for work.
I had my hands full with three kids now, and all though the twins still regularly went to the daycare and even the baby on some days, there still barely seemed to be enough hours in a day to get everything done.
It looked as though I had the full life that I’d always wanted, despite what was going on with the situation with my husband and my Mama.
At that moment, an enormous amount of guilt set in. What if all along I had made a terrible mistake?
What if I was supposed to have married Simon instead?
He would have still been alive that was for sure and not only that, I’m sure that I wouldn’t have had to endure even half of the heartache that I had been through with Jasper.
I missed Simon and not to mention Zara, so much and it was situations like this that made me wish that I had either one of them around to help me get through it.
I definitely had taken their friendships for granted.
Since it was one of the days that all three of the kids were at the day care, I decided that I would clean the house from top to bottom.
There were toys in every room or leftover cereal or some kind of snack around every corner.
The house was one big complete mess, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
A house full of kids was what I’d always wanted and for that, I would clean up day and night. As long as I had them, that was all that mattered.
I cleaned every bedroom first and then I worked my way to all of the other rooms of the house. With the kitchen being the last room to go, I moved a few things around and as I sweep the floor in preparation to mop it, I spotted a tiny folded up white card underneath the cabinets.
At first, I simply swept it in the pile and thought nothing of it but out of fear that the twins had gotten their hands on something that could have been important, I opened it just in case.
It was a card to a psychiatrist.
Hmm, where did this come from?
The wheels inside of my head began to turn and I began to wonder.
The business card surely wasn’t mine, so why was Jasper going to see a therapist or at least considering seeking therapy?
For what?
Automatically, I knew or at least felt like the card was tied into whatever it was that he and Mama were hiding from me, but still yet I just didn’t know what.
I thought about calling the number but of course they wouldn’t tell me anything.
So, for now, I just stuck the card in my pocket, until I could figure out my next move.
Finally, I had a clue.
“Storm, I haven’t touched you in weeks,” Jasper whined as he tried to get close to me but I moved to the edge of the bed.
“So, what does that mean?” I asked him with an attitude. Jasper simply groaned and turned his back to me.
I felt bad for him, in a way, but if he was going to hold out on information, I was going to hold out on my good stuff.
But the fact that it had gone on so long and that he refused to break no matter the circumstances told me that whatever it was, it was serious.
I thought about the card that I’d found and wanted to know what I could do to find out something, if there was even anything there.
While Jasper filled the air with his snores, I thought long and hard until finally it hit me.
I was going to go to the therapy office and have a look around. Hell, I might even sign myself up for a visit or two.
I wasn’t exactly sure, yet, but I knew that it had something to do with something and I was going to find it out.
***
I was on my third visit.
I still hadn’t found out anything pertaining to Jasper or Mama, but I was actually enjoying going.
Come to find out, I needed some therapy a long time ago.
It was just something about talking to someone that wouldn’t judge you and that didn’t really know you, yet they were willing to listen to everything that came out of your mouth. And actually respond and give you some insight on the problem and maybe even a solution.
There was power in talking to someone that you could be totally and completely honest with about everything in your life and not feel guilty or shameful about it. I had even shared the secret of being raped with him, something that I had never told a soul.
It’s amazing the hold that something can have on you if you never actually face it or deal with it but finally I was free from so much dead weight and it felt so good. I’d even discussed Simon, Zara, and my Jasper issues. And of course I discussed Mama.
He was helping me see things in a whole new light and I was actually glad that I had come across the card.
Finally, the session was over and I headed out the door. We smiled and
chatted for a second and then I heard the assistant call the name of his next client…
Mama?
When she noticed that it was me standing there, she literally almost passed out.
I could see her knees begin to shake as she struggled to keep her balance.
So the card had been Mama’s?
Mama was the one in therapy?
But why?
I opened my mouth to speak to her, but when Mama walked past me without so much as acknowledging me or uttering a single word, I was thrown off and didn’t know how to take it.
Dr. Thomas moved aside for her to enter his office and closed the door behind her.
Confused, I headed out the main entrance.
Once I reached my car, I felt as though I wanted to cry.
Nothing was making sense.
Nothing was normal anymore.
What was going on with my Mama?
And the way she’d looked at me and the fact that she didn’t even speak to me made me feel…
I didn’t quite know how it’d made me feel but it wasn’t good.
I’d decided to wait an hour until her session was up for her to come out, but after a little over two hours, Mama still hadn’t come out of the building and I sat there even more confused.
Something was going on here.
But what?
Mama had some explaining to do.
***
“Can we talk?”
It was the day after seeing Mama at the therapist office when she didn’t acknowledge me.
I was dying to ask her so many things and on top of that I hadn’t seen her in weeks since the day before.
I missed her.
I was sure that the kids missed her too.
So, I was amped about the opportunity to finally get to the bottom of what was going on.
At least that’s what I’d hoped that she wanted to talk about.
Mama took a seat and let out a deep breath.
“How have you been?”
“Fine Mama. What’s going on?”
“Well, it’s complicated.”
If one more person said that it was “complicated” I was going to scream!
I just looked at Mama and waited on her to say something else.
“Well for starters, he’s your brother,” Mama said.
What?
Who was my brother?
I don’t have a brother.
I know damn well she wasn’t telling me that Jasper, my husband, was my brother?
Please Lord, that had better not been what she was saying or somebody was dying…today!
Hell everybody was dying today if that was the case!
“Mama what are you talking about? I don’t have a brother.”
“Yes, Storm, you do.”
I felt so uneasy. In a way, I also felt sick to my stomach because I knew that something was about to be said that was going to change my life forever.
“I had a child before you Storm.”
What?
What did she mean that she’d had a child before me?
I was so confused.
“Dr. Thomas…is your brother. I dropped the card for you to find on purpose. I told myself if you found it and questioned me about it, I was going to tell you the truth.”
So, let me get this straight.
Mama was telling me that our therapist, the one that I’d been telling all of my personal business, feelings and thoughts to, the one that knew all of my deepest, darkest secrets, was actually my brother?
How can that be?
“What are you talking about Mama?”
Mama looked at me for only a second, dead in the eyes and then stood up and headed toward the window.
“I got pregnant before I met your father. I was only sixteen. I was fooling around with an older fellow and ended up getting myself pregnant. Now, you know back then, our folks permitted us to marry young, so without knowing the big news yet, I was supposed to marry him, but the day before, he died. He just dropped dead. Just like that he was gone.”
Mama took a moment to breath.
I just sat still and quiet, with my mouth hanging open.
I’d always been told that Daddy was her first and only love, her first everything and I was shocked at the truth.
“Anyway, I didn’t tell anyone that I was pregnant, except his oldest sister. No one else knew the news, not even my own folks. I had a feeling that my Big Mama knew but she’d never said anything or even questioned me about it. Thankfully, I was always a little healthy, but after a while, not even that could cover it up. So, when it was becoming harder and harder to hide, summer came in, and she asked my mother if I could come work for her all summer and she would pay me a good bit of money to help out with our household. Now, we didn’t have much and since their family had more than most colored folk back then, my mother agreed. Pearl, that was her name, helped me and took care of me, and even delivered the baby boy. Our summers were long so I had him just before it was time for me to go back home. I couldn’t take the baby back home with me. Eventually that would be another mouth to feed and we barely had enough as it was. So, I gave him, my son, to Pearl.”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
I was in shock but I didn’t want to ask any questions. I just wanted to finish hearing the truth.
“Pearl stayed a ways from us, and since George had died, she really had no reason to come around our family, so it all worked out. I was young and at the time it was for the best. But somehow, he found out and he found me a little while ago. He wanted answers that I couldn’t give him. He’d said that Pearl had written the entire ordeal in an old journal decades ago that he’d found in the attic while preparing to restore her old house. He wanted explanations but I knew that explaining certain things to him would mean also explaining other things to your father. And I just couldn’t do that. Your father thought that he was my one and only. He’d married me under the assumption that I had been untouched. I simply couldn’t tell him that everything had been a lie. So, I lied to my new son instead. I told him that I was long since divorced and that I didn’t have any other children. It was for the best.”
Wow, was all I could repeat over and over again aloud. I didn’t know what else to say.
It explained why Mama had ignored me yesterday. But I couldn’t believe that I actually had a sibling after all this time.
I was speechless.
“He doesn’t know about you, unless at some point you mentioned my name to him and that’s if he caught on to it. But I’ve been keeping in touch with him, and I go to visit him there from time to time. I’m not sure how he ended up here being that Pearl lived hours away, but surely one day the house phone ranged and it was him. I don’t ever plan to tell your father Storm. And I don’t ever plan to tell your brother the truth either.”
Mama looked at me sympathetic, but I knew that she’d meant just what she’d said and that she expected me to keep her secret.
But how was I supposed to keep something like this?
I had a brother who I’d seen pictures of his beautiful family on his desk that I would love to know. I had two nieces that I would love to meet and now I’m being told that meeting them was out of the question.
It was all too much.
But what a minute, what did this have to do with Jasper?
Something was still missing.
But Mama spoke as if she’d read my mind.
“No, Jasper doesn’t know about him, your brother. You see, your brother, Percy or Dr. Thomas, which ever you prefer to call him, was also your friend Zara’s therapist for about two years.”
What a coincidence I thought but something told me that there was more to the story.
“On one of my visits, I ran into her. I’d lied and told her that I had some personal issues and suggested that she not inform you that she saw me. She completely understood, but when Percy saw me talking to her, he inquired about how I knew her. I told him that I used to watch her when she was a litt
le girl and he took it for what it was but that day he’d left me in his office for a while to run and pick up our lunch. So, of course, I started to be nosey. I started looking through his notes and files and I found a few things in Zara’s that caught my attention. I found out that Zara had been sleeping with your father. Or well, at least that she was madly in love with him.”
Really?
Daddy and Zara?
It just didn’t make sense…not to mention that it was gross!
I couldn’t imagine my parents having sex, let along him having sex with Zara.
How is that possible?
Daddy wouldn’t do that.
Mama was lying!
“It started after her husband died. They ran into each other, your father gave her a few kind words and somehow I guess it turned into something very inappropriate. There were notes on how she was in love with him and how he made her feel when he touched her. Maybe I’m wrong, but touched in my book equals sex.”
Mama talked regretfully.
I still couldn’t believe my ears. I was in shock.
I was disgusted.
“She said that she couldn’t find a mature man to compare to him. She even mentioned that she’d turned to women hoping to find the same type of intimacy that she and your father shared. I didn’t even know she went that way. Though it’s still up in the air as to if they actually ever slept together, her comments had said enough. And from his notes about what she’d said that your father said, it appeared that his feelings about her were mutual.”
No, Mama was wrong.
I wasn’t going to believe it.
Daddy wouldn’t do anything like that. He loved Mama with all of his heart.
Surely Zara would have told me if she was so called in love with my Daddy. She’d been one of my best friends. She just couldn’t possibly been secretly screwing my father.
But still, what does all of this have to do with Jasper?
Why was he calling Mama on a secret phone?
“Mama, all of this sounds crazy. Are you sure about all of this? I mean you’re telling me that I have a brother and that my best friend could have possibly had an affair with my Daddy? I don’t believe you.”
“It’s all true Storm.”
The assurance that was in Mama’s voice told me that she’d seen exactly what she’d said that she saw. Although she hadn’t physically seen any unfaithfulness, Zara’s testimonies had her convinced that something had absolutely taken place.