Bebe Moore Campbell

by 72 Hour Hold

  A child’s death isn’t always necessary for a mother to grieve.

  Ma Missy mourned her baby girl for years. My mother. Emma. Such a beautiful alcoholic. She reserved weekends for her binges, sitting by the window after work on Fridays, sipping scotch and milk or scotch and soda. Sometimes she drank gin, Tanqueray, or wine. Ma Missy would watch her ominously, waiting for fireworks or tears, which were always preceded by voluptuous laughter. There was a tipping point. One extra swallow could turn a good time into something too ugly for a kid to see. Ma Missy knew the timing. Maybe it was something in my mother’s eyes that alerted her, the curl of her bottom lip. One minute Emma was chuckling and the next a snarl would break from her pretty mouth, and my grandmother would snatch me away, direct me upstairs, where I would creep to the landing and listen to Ma Missy, pleading with her daughter to stop drinking, to get herself together, to change her life.

  I can’t remember how long Ma Missy begged, but I do remember that there came a point where she simply stopped, accompanied me upstairs on Friday and Saturday nights, closed her bedroom door, and watched television with me. With my brain clouded, I wondered why she had given up and how many years had passed before she did. Maybe there was some sort of epiphany. Maybe it was just precise arithmetic: subtraction. Years to go from years lived. Or maybe her craving for peace of mind overcame her maternal instinct.

  After one Saturday night not too much different from the others, she lifted my chin in her hands and spoke directly. I won’t give her my life, and I won’t give her yours.

  “Keri will stay with me,” Ma Missy told Emma.

  “She’s my child,” my mother said, her voice trump-card sure and petulant.

  “If you want to fight me,” Ma Missy said, “one of us will not be alive when it’s over.”

  My mother packed her bags the next day.

  I remember the shock in Emma’s eyes and the pain and rage in my heart, because, drunk or sober, I wanted her around. If she was around, I could tell myself that she loved me more than the bottle. It took a long time for me to understand Ma Missy, let alone forgive her. Maybe I was forgiving her now.

  THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS WERE ENDLESS. THE Y segued into semicomatose afternoons and evenings. Orlando provided respite. I didn’t hear from Clyde, except on the radio.

  I was the last one to leave the shop on Tuesday night. Maybe I lagged behind because I didn’t want to go home, to call the police and remind them that seventy-two hours had passed and they could officially begin looking for my lost kid. Suppose they didn’t find her? Most of the cars in the parking lot were gone. The night was clear and scented with jasmine. It was dark and quiet until a white Ford suddenly turned in from the street, picking up speed as it drove straight toward me. Somebody was leaning on the horn. There was no time to be afraid, to cry out, to move. The car stopped inches from my feet. The horn faded away and horrible laughter split the air.

  Trina jumped out of the car. Boy Man remained in the passenger’s seat. Reefer scented the air as the door opened.

  Trina swaggered toward me. “Been looking for me?”

  She had on the same T-shirt and jeans she’d been wearing when I’d last seen her, only now the T was torn, a deliberate tear to create cleavage. Trina’s breasts swelled above her shirt.

  I spoke very carefully. “Trina, I want you to come home.”

  “If I come home, you’ll call the cops and get me locked up.”

  “No. Just come home and start taking your medication again.”

  “I’ve been taking it.”

  “Trina—”

  “Trina what?”

  Her voice rose, and she stepped closer to me. It was too dark to see the pupils of her eyes, but I didn’t have to.

  “Come home with me.”

  “Fuck you!” Her rage splattered the air. “Are you my mother? Tell me the truth. Are you my mother?”

  “Trina, what are you talking about? Of course, I’m your mother.”

  “No, you’re not.” She turned to the boy in the car. “She’s not even my real mother!” she screamed. She turned back to me. “Bitch, you stole me from my real mother, and now you want to lock me up!”

  “Trina, calm down.”

  She was so far beyond any possibility of tranquillity. Trina raised her hands. The blows were rapid, like a sparring boxer’s: bap, bap, bap. Too quick for pain. No sound except retreating footsteps, a slammed car door, a fast getaway. She left behind air that dripped with perfume.

  “Trina!”

  I stood in the parking lot, rubbed my shoulder, picked up my purse, turned around toward a rustling sound. My body buckled toward the woman standing in the doorway, clutching a briefcase, watching me. What was on her face that wasn’t discernible in the shadows, horror? Disgust? Did she feel anything as she stood in the dark, judging my life? Rage and shame fought for space in my mind. The woman was still standing in the doorway, looking straight ahead as I drove away.

  When we spoke by conference call that evening, Gloria and Mattie assured me that Trina would come home. We talked strategy. Milton got on the phone and said I should alert the Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Team, SMART, the county department of mental health’s mobile response unit, even before Trina returned, so that if she showed up within the next few hours I could use the attack as a criterion for another seventy-two-hour hold. I asked about Wellington and Nona. I don’t remember what they said. After we hung up, I realized that the roles had switched. They were fanning flies in the big house; I was sweating in the field. At least for now, they were the lucky ones.

  The lucky ones are never a comfort.

  I looked up Bethany’s name on the support group’s roster. When she answered the telephone, her voice sounded as though the mouth it was coming out of was bruised. A swollen slash, not a mouth. Each word a unique wound, painful to hear. Did I sound like that?

  We didn’t talk long, not more than a few minutes. Really, we were just checking in with each other, the way the poorest Africans in Zimbabwe do. They ask in their language, How are you? and the answer is always, I am suffering peacefully.

  Bethany’s renegade spirit surged forward right before she said good-bye. “I will not live like this,” she said.

  TRINA ARRIVED AT MY DOOR LATE THAT NIGHT. THE WILDness in her eyes was a tide that hadn’t ebbed.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mommee. Let me come home. I just want to come home.” She threw herself against me. Her head against my chest felt warm, familiar. My fingers were in her hair before I even closed the door. She pulled away, stepped back, and the light from the ceiling highlighted the fresh bruises on her face. Trina must have liked my look of horror. She began smiling.

  “Mommee, that boy I was with started hitting me for no reason.”

  This was probably a lie, at least the no-reason part. In the kitchen, Trina couldn’t sit still long enough for me to press ice against her eye, against her forehead. She squirmed after about ten seconds and then got up.

  “You have to go to the hospital.”

  She clung to me, her hands around my waist. “No, Mommee. Let me stay here. I’ll get back on the meds, I promise.”

  She was manic and high. None of her words meant anything.

  “I’ll go back to the program tomorrow,” she said.

  “You have to take your medication right now,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  While I was getting the medicine, I called SMART. In twelve minutes they had arrived, with two officers from the sheriff’s department. The counselors, a man and a woman, asked me a few questions as we stood in the entryway. Had Trina tried to hurt herself? Had she tried to hurt anyone else? I told them about the attack in the parking lot. The officers appraised me silently.

  No blood. Damn.

  “Well, ma’am, there’s no evidence that she hurt you. Did anyone see her hitting you?”

  The woman’s face flitted across my mind. “No. But she’s been fighting with someone else. When she gets manic,
she’ll pick fights.”

  “Did you see her fighting?” the woman asked.

  “Her face is bruised. I saw her a few hours ago, and she didn’t look like that.”

  “Is there the possibility that someone beat her up?”

  “She probably started the fight.”

  “But you didn’t see her fighting?”

  “Look, my daughter just got out of the psych ward three days ago. They should have kept her. She’s supposed to take medication, and she hasn’t been taking it. She needs to—”

  “Ma’am,” the man said, “where is your daughter now?”

  Their expressions revealed nothing. I was afraid of what they were thinking.

  When Trina saw the police officers and the pair from SMART, she glared at me. Mom had betrayed her again. One of the counselors asked how she was feeling, and she didn’t respond. She knew they needed a reason to send her back to the hospital, and the quieter she was the less likely they’d find one. But silence can’t live where mania resides.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” Trina said finally, her words hot and loud. “She just calls you guys for attention.”

  “What happened to your face? Were you fighting today, Trina?”

  “My mother pushed me, and I fell.”

  “Trina, ” I said, “that’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is. Ever since I was a little girl, she’s been hitting me. She hates me. That’s why she’s always trying to send me away.”

  “Do you want to hurt yourself, Trina?” the man asked.

  “No. My mother hurts me. She hurts me all the time. Why don’t you lock her up?”

  “Trina—” I began, and then stopped.

  The woman from SMART closed the notebook she’d been using. “Ma’am,” she said, “may we have a word with you?”

  As we walked to the front door, she placed a card in my hand. “I can see that she’s ill,” the woman said. “If she decompensates further, please give us a call. Take care of yourself. I’m sorry we can’t help you now, but our hands are tied.”

  “Fucking bitch!” Trina screamed as soon as the door closed.

  It was useless to protest the tone, the language, the disrespect. I didn’t have the energy. Too busy drowning in what-ifs: What if she hits me? What if she takes the car in the middle of the night? What if her mania kills us both?

  “You have to take your medication if you want to stay here,” I said during the first lull.

  “Fuck you!” Her eyes dared me to respond. The strong desire to draw blood was in her eyes. “You’re not my mother. You killed my mother, and you killed my dad.”

  “Right. You need to get out of my house. Go back where you stayed last night.”

  Her eyes moved fast, from corner to corner, settled on mine, then looked away again.

  “I don’t have to go anywhere.”

  “Yes, you do.” My head started throbbing, which was how I knew that I was shouting. “This is my house, and you’re eighteen. Get out.”

  She walked away from me, climbed the back stairs to her room, and slammed the door.

  An hour later I offered her a glass of water and three tablets. “Take this or you have to go,” I said when I opened the bedroom door.

  She measured my will with her eyes and then took the pills from my hand. But Trina wasn’t hollering uncle. I watched her put the medicine in her mouth and take a swallow of water. The antipsychotic was a knockout punch and I’d given Trina a double dose, but by 3 a.m. she was still awake. Noise from the television and her CD player drifted throughout the house. The light on the telephone didn’t go off. Trina stayed awake all that night, talking, laughing, singing, dancing, smoking cigarettes and weed. I was awake too: locking up the wine and champagne, hiding the sharp knives, writing my things-to-do list:

  Turn off long-distance service.

  Turn off DIRECTV service.

  Make sure batteries in fire detectors are working.

  I was busy. Listening. Anticipating. This will go on and on and on.

  11

  THE CALLS BEGAN TO COME THE NEXT DAY AND CONTINUED unabated for nearly a week. Aunt Celia. Cousin Bobby. My gynecologist. A former neighbor. They could have formed their own little support group: Alliance of the Harassed. Brett, Marie’s daughter and Trina’s old friend, was among them. Hearing her plaintive “Mama Keri,” I raked my scalp with my fingernails until I drew blood. Brett and Trina had played together as girls, and the sound of my name in her mouth rendered me a trespasser in a world where I no longer belonged. I could lay claim to her cheerleader past, but the spirit of the fresh clean start in the world of adulthood that she evoked was something I could only covet. Her tentative tone, hesitant hello, and useless chitchat, her stammering tongue as she tried to ease into the reason for the call, made my shame as palpable as the trickle of blood dripping down my head, the stinging in its wake.

  What she wanted—no, what she expected—was what they all expected: Mama magic. They might as well have said, “Make her stop.” They wanted protection from Trina’s ranting and raving and 4 a.m. calls. Listening to people describe—some with glee—the extent of my child’s madness gave me the sensation of being trapped in a tiny airless room. In a spate of twenty-four hours she’d cussed them out and threatened them. Make her stop! She had called dozens of times in one day. Make her stop! I was her mother, and they believed in the inherent and absolute power of a mother’s role. Brett gasped a little when I said, “There’s nothing I can do. She’s been very upset recently. I advise you to hang up on her and take your phone off the hook after midnight.”

  Delivering my calm, rational statement, I felt as though I were speaking of someone in the abstract, not my child.

  “Oh, Mama Keri, I’m going to pray for her,” Brett said.

  It was what the old Trina would have said, the one who went to church, sang in the choir, and was kind and unfailingly polite to seniors and children.

  Trina’s old boyfriend from high school called. With him, there had been no screaming, just pure seduction that had continued unabated. Telephone stalking. He’d heard that she was—well, kinda whacked-out. He’d seen her earlier in the day, acting real strange.

  How strange was she?

  Walking-down-the-street-telling-people-her-mother-was-a-demon strange. Wearing-enough-makeup-for-three-circuses strange.

  He assured me that he could turn everything around. Trina was still a good person. Maybe if he hadn’t broken up with her the way he had, her mind would be okay. When I assured him that Trina’s recent troubles had nothing to do with his breaking up with her, he sounded dejected. In subsequent calls, his concern gave way to annoyance and then disgust as Trina stepped up her campaign. She wouldn’t leave him alone. Couldn’t I control her?

  No.

  After the fourth conversation, I asked him not to call again.

  Practical measure against mania number one: No long distance! I switched to calling cards, which I kept in a secret place so Trina couldn’t dial people all over the country. She made the most of what was available locally. My friends, of course, were the most fun. I was her only topic: “Did you know my mother used to beat me? Did you know she hates me? All she cares about is her shop. She’s not really my mother. She slept with all my boyfriends.”

  I was afraid to leave Trina alone when I went to work but more afraid to take her with me. She plucked those fears like a reincarnation of Jimi Hendrix, wearing out his guitar strings with his agile fingers. “I’m taking my meds” became a daily refrain that she’d sing even when the scent of a noonday joint still hung in the air. When I came home at night and stepped over the dirty clothes she’d thrown on the stairs, when I wiped off the butter smeared on the kitchen table and counter, discovered that the chicken I’d set out for dinner had been doused with ammonia, when Trina yelled and menaced, slammed doors, blasted music, couldn’t sleep, cursed me, threatened my life, threatened suicide, wave after wave of fierce trembling would work its way up and down my body. />
  God, you must have me confused with somebody else. You couldn’t possibly mean this for me.

  “YOU CAN’T TAKE CARE OF TRINA ALL BY YOURSELF,” FRANCES told me one afternoon. Trina had been home for a week. “She’s wearing you out. I can see it in your eyes.” The store was empty. Adriana was at lunch, and we were standing by the register.

  “I’ve told you I can’t find any place to put her. The hospital won’t take her. Her old program won’t take her. What am I supposed to do?”

  “She has a father. Send her over there, at least for a while. Let him figure out something.”

  At the thought of Trina living with Clyde, even temporarily, I instantly registered a veto. Who would supervise her medication, make sure she ate, didn’t have caffeine, didn’t sneak off at night? Only a mother’s vigilance could keep Trina’s demons at bay. Even though Trina’s behavior was beyond my control, the thought of her being with Clyde gave me a strange, empty feeling, as though I’d been thrown away. I wanted to take care of Trina. When she got better, I wanted it to be on my watch.

  “Clyde can’t handle Trina,” I said, with what I hoped was an air of authority. Frances just rolled her eyes.

  We were both momentarily distracted by the sound of laughter. Adriana’s smile was so big she could barely fit through the door, and the man walking next to her seemed just as happy.

  I looked at Frances.

  “She met him at her meeting.”

  I didn’t voice my sentiments, but Frances read them anyway. “Don’t get so excited.”

  Adriana introduced me to her lunch date. The four of us chatted briefly. He was from Oklahoma, had served in the Gulf War, was renting an apartment in Mar Vista, and worked as a computer programmer. I thought my questions were subtle, but when he left Frances said, “Did you forget to ask him his blood type?”

  “He’s just a friend,” Adriana said.

  All that grinning? Just a friend?

  “Seriously, I’ve known Jason ever since I started the program. He already has a girlfriend,” Adriana said.

  “You want everything to be perfect, don’t you?” Frances said to me later.