by Tayari Jones
Her living room seemed to be set up to honor Dana and Swarovski crystal. On every flat surface rested glass figures atop mirrored coasters. The wal s were crowded with photos of Dana. Some were school portraits and these seemed to be arranged chronological y and there were others that looked like Uncle Raleigh’s work. She waved her arm and I sat down on a leather couch. Although a chenil e throw covered the cushions, I could feel the cracks in the leather against my thighs.
“May I get you something to drink?” Gwen asked.
“No,” I said.
“No?” she said with a question at the end like I was being prompted to remember my manners. Something in me almost corrected myself and said “No, ma’am,” but I instead said, “No, I don’t want anything to drink.”
“Very wel ,” Gwen said. “Did you mother caution you not to drink from my glasses? Does she think I am going to put some root on you? Is that what she thinks happened?” Gwen laughed a little. “It’s warm in here. Should I turn on the fan, or did she warn you against breathing my air, too?”
“My mother doesn’t even know I’m here,” I said. “And I would appreciate it if you would stop talking about her.”
“You and your sister are so much alike,” Gwen said. “I had no idea that my daughter was spending her time with you. Someone should write a book on the secret lives of girls.”
“You should know about secret lives,” I said.
Gwen turned in my direction. “Al this back talk. You and Dana real y are sisters.”
Every time she said the word sister, it felt like a tease. I shifted on the couch.
“Would you rather sit here?” Gwen said, rising. “This is your father’s chair.”
“No,” I said.
“So,” Gwen said, “what can I help you with? I’m on my way to work, but I can make time for you.”
“Don’t cal the police on my father,” I said.
She smiled, a little. “Come again?”
I took the card out of my purse. I wanted to keep my tone level, like woman to woman. “You sent this to my mother. Don’t you think my mother has suffered enough?”
Gwendolyn picked the card up and held it away from her like she didn’t want it to stain her white uniform. “Little girl,” she said, “while this card does make a good point, I did not send this.” She flipped the card over to the smiling peanut on the front. “Jimmy Carter?”
“You’re lying,” I said. “You and Dana just lie and lie and lie.”
Gwen’s mood shifted and she leaned forward. “Do not speak il of my daughter. She has done more for you than you wil ever know. Both of us have lived our entire lives in order for you to be comfortable. Nobody that lives in this house ever lied to you.”
“You’re not al that innocent.”
“You are not, either,” Gwen said. “Everything you have, you have at the expense of my daughter. Just because you were ignorant doesn’t make you innocent.”
I stood up from the raggedy couch and Gwen stood up, too. It was as though we were either going to fight or embrace. “Stay away from my mother,” I said. “And my father.”
Gwendolyn said, “Listen to me. Sit back down. You came here because you want to know something, so let me tel you something.”
I sat back down, because Gwen was right. Wasn’t whole point to find things out?
“First, what you are asking of me is unreasonable. I exist; Dana exists. You can’t ask us to pretend that we don’t. When I came to the Pink Fox that day, I did not ask Laverne to leave her husband. I did not ask you to live without your father. I just came to the shop and showed myself. You have been showing yourself to me for every day of your life. I can’t believe how arrogant you are, Chaurisse. I have been good to you your entire life, so give me some respect.”
Gwen crossed her white-stockinged legs and bounced her shoe up and down. “Don’t cry,” she said.
I wasn’t crying. I felt my face to make sure. She spoke with a grand tone, like there was someone watching. I swiveled to see the whole room, but there was no one else there except the pictures of Dana.
“Now I want to ask you something,” Gwen said. “Okay? We’re civilized here.”
“I’m not tel ing you anything,” I said.
“Oh,” Gwen said. “I know everything already. You are the one who needs to know things. I want to ask you for a smal favor.”
“A favor?”
“Yes,” Gwen said. “I want to ask you to give Dana back her grandmother’s brooch. It’s al she had.”
“Hel no,” I said.
“Why not?” Gwen wanted to know. “You have everything. My Dana has fed herself on your crumbs her whole life. Why can’t you just share this one thing?”
“Sorry,” I said standing up, feeling a bit prideful. “It’s mine. She was my grandmother. My daddy stole the brooch from her dress when she was in the casket.”
“Don’t be so selfish. My daughter has never asked for anything. I never asked for anything. You see me in this uniform? I work every day. I pay my own bil s.”
“I don’t care,” I said.
Gwen stood up. “I asked you nicely. I tried to talk to you like an adult. You have forced me to tel you this. Listen here, young lady. When you go home, look at the marriage license. Look at it careful y. Dana, your sister, the one who you think you hate so much, she changed it with a bal point pen. I didn’t marry your father one year after you were born. He married me when you were three days old, stil in the hospital, stil in the incubator.
Dana changed the date because she didn’t want to hurt your little feelings. How about that?”
“That’s not true,” I said.
She shook her head.
“You are such a liar,” I said.
“No,” Gwen said. “The devil is a lie, just like your Daddy.”
She led me to the door, as though I was just a normal guest. I squinted across the room at a photo of my mother preparing Grandma Bunny for the grave. I was stunned to see it there, as though we were part of her family. Gwen fol owed my eyes and looked into my astonished face. “It was a gift.”
SINCE I WAS the one who cal ed my father and told him to come to the house, it would have made sense for me to unlock the door and let him in.
Maybe I would have been more cooperative if he had rung the door like a guest, instead of trying to use his key like he stil lived here, like everything was okay, like my mother was his only wife and I was his only daughter. His key slid in the lock but wouldn’t turn. I stood on the other side of the door and let him try three times until it dawned on him that the locks had been changed. My mother had done it on the first day, before she turned into a sodden mess, when she was stil singing “I Wil Survive.” Before she started wishing he would come home.
When he rang the bel , I opened the wood door, undid the bolt, but I left the glass door locked. He wore his dress uniform, clutching his hat under his arm. If the outfit was red, he would have looked like an organ grinder’s monkey.
“Ch-chaurisse,” he said. “Thank you for cal ing me. Is your Mama al right?”
“How can she be al right?” I said.
“None of us is al right,” he said. “This has been hard on everybody.”
“Daddy,” I said, “how could you do this to us?”
“Open the d-d-door.”
My mother was asleep on the couch, dead from Tylenol PM. I didn’t think she would wake up, but I kept my voice low. “Explain it to me.”
“Don’t make me talk through the door.” My father was so close to the glass that I could make out his chapped lips. I took a smal step away; it wasn’t much of a move, but he saw it.
“That’s how it is, Chaurisse?” he said. “You are afraid of your father? Your mama being mad at me, I can see. What I did was a sin against her.
Look at me and see I’ve been laid low. But I never did you nothing, Chaurisse. I’m stil your daddy, nothing can change that.”
“You did do me something,” I said.
“What have I done you?” he said, like he real y wanted to know.
It was hard to explain this thing I felt. It wasn’t like daughters are supposed to expect some sort of exclusive relationship from their fathers, but what he had with Dana was an infidelity. “We didn’t even know you,” I said.
“You know me, Chaurisse. How can you say you don’t know me. When have you ever needed a daddy and I wasn’t there? Half of your friends don’t even have a daddy. Tel me if I’m lying.”
He wasn’t.
“Now open the door, Buttercup. Don’t leave me standing out here in the street. You said your mama wanted to talk to me.”
“No, I said I wanted you to talk to her. She didn’t tel me to cal you.”
“I want to talk to her, too. I’ve talked to your mama every day of my life since I was sixteen years old. Two weeks away from her liked to kil me.”
“What about two weeks away from me?” I said. “You talk to me every day, too.”
“Oh, Buttercup,” he said, “Don’t be like that. Of course I miss you.”
“Do you love me?” I asked him.
“Of c-c-ourse, I love you. Your uncle Raleigh loves you, too.”
“But do you love me better?”
“Better than your Mama? What kind of question is that?”
“No,” I said. “Do you love me better than Dana?”
Now, it was his turn to back away from the glass. “What’s the p-p-point of asking that?”
I didn’t want him to leave. Not yet. I needed to ask him when exactly he had taken Gwendolyn Yarboro to be his “lawful y wedded wife.” Had he real y done it when I was in the hospital, underweight, and stuck through with al those tubes? I’d snuck into my mother’s drawer and looked at the marriage license, but I wasn’t quite sure. If Gwen was tel ing the truth, I had a problem because I could never tel my mother and I didn’t want to join the party of people who loved my mother and lied to her.
“Y-you know, Chaurisse,” he said. “Open up this door. You are trying my patience. When you act like this, people grow cal uses on their heart. I don’t want any cal uses on my heart when it comes to you.”
Hearing the threat in his voice, I put my hand on the knob to let him in. “Do you love me?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then why did you marry Gwen when I was stil in the incubator?”
“Who said I d-d-did that?”
“Gwen,” I said.
“I wouldn’t do that,” my father said, “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
It was easy to take him at his word, as easy as taking off a heavy pack, as easy as fal ing down a flight of stairs, as easy as shutting my eyes at bedtime.
26
EPITHALAMIUM
SHE TOOK HIM BACK. Was there ever any question? Of course I had doubt at the time, but I wasn’t old enough to know anything about the how the world works. When my mother asked me to join her at the kitchen table, she looked like herself again. She wore a green spangled warm-up suit and her hairpiece hung over her shoulders in optimistic ribbon twists. When she spoke, I concentrated on her mouth, her teeth stained by her lipstick.
“Your father never meant for this to happen. He is a good man at his very heart. When we got married, he came forward on his own. There were a dozen wrong things he could have done and only one right thing. We were just children. Chaurisse, when I was your age, I was three years married, had buried a child. Wel , that’s not ful y true. There’s nothing under that headstone in the churchyard next to your Grandma Bunny. By the time I got two feet on the floor, the people at the hospital had already put his little body through the furnace. Nothing was left. No ashes, no nothing. He was so teensy that he just evaporated. Al this happened before I was your age now, and your daddy wasn’t much older. And that was his baby, too, turned into nothing but smoke and air.
“Nobody turned me away. No matter what is happening in this house today, I can’t forget that. Your daddy married me because I was having his baby, and even when I didn’t have no baby to show for myself, he al owed me to stay and be part of his family. That’s history. That’s solid, and there is no changing that. No matter how mad I am, how hurt, no matter what may be going on in your head, there’s no undoing that kindness.”
“But what about me,” I asked her, feeling smal even to ask.
“What about you, honey?”
“What about what I want?”
“This is al about you, baby. We are a family. This is about making our family whole. Isn’t that what everybody wants?” She smiled at me. “This is the third time the world tried to make an orphan of me. The first was when I got pregnant and my mama put me out. But then Miss Bunny saved me.
After that, your brother died, but you saved my marriage. This is the third time. God didn’t mean for us to be alone. Can’t you see that?”
I crossed my arms and made a nest for my head on the kitchen table. I breathed in my own smel . Life was turning into a quiz show, ful of trick questions, and wagers. “I don’t know what I see,” I said to her.
“You just have to trust,” my mother said. “Trust and believe.”
EPILOGUE
Dana Lynn Yarboro
MY DAUGHTER, FLORA, looks just like me and I am sorry for this. It’s not that I have any quarrel with my own appearance, but I would have liked to give her a face of her own. In so many ways, you can’t choose what you give to your daughter, you just give her what you have.
Flora is four years old, born in 1996, the year that Atlanta hosted the Olympics and the whole world came to our country town. I was in labor during the opening ceremonies, but I heard the fireworks as my bones shifted to make way for this new life. My mother was beside me, speaking my name. Flora’s father was there, too, but we are not together as couple. He’s not married to me, but he’s not married to anyone else, either, so I suppose that counts as progress. She doesn’t have his last name, but he picks her up on some Sundays and he loves her in public.
She and I live in a town house on Cascade Road, across from John A. White Park. You can’t say it’s a far cry from Continental Colony, but it’s my own home. I pay the mortgage each month and it feels good even without covered parking. It also feels good to send her to the same kindergarten where I first saw Chaurisse so many years ago. My daughter is smart. The teachers love her.
THIS IS THE YEAR 2000. In high school, Ronalda and I were convinced that the world was going to end at the start of the new mil ennium. Part of it was the round number, 2000, and the other part of it was that I couldn’t imagine having survived to be thirty-one, but here I am. I don’t have much hair these days, I keep it Caesar shorn and brushed flat, but there are silver strands there. I’m not aging as beautiful y as my mother, but she works a lot harder at it than I do.
On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Flora’s school lets the children out early. I was there even earlier — I never want her to wonder where I am. She and I were headed toward the car, when I noticed a blue Lincoln in the space beside mine. I held Flora’s hand tighter and ignored the itching in my throat. My mother and I joke that there should be a medical term for the condition we have, the irrational fear of Town Cars.
As I got closer to my car, the driver’s door of the Lincoln opened, and Chaurisse Witherspoon stepped out wearing a uniform that was tailored for a man. It had been twelve years, but I would have known my sister anywhere. She looked like her mother from her dul figure to the sil y mop of fake hair.
“Hey, Dana,” she said.
I suppose the real question was what was she doing here, but I have always known I would see her again.
“Hey, Chaurisse,” I said. “What’s up?”
She shrugged. “I just wanted to see you. I was driving by the other day and I saw your daughter playing outside. She looks just like you.”
Flora liked it when people talked abut her, so she smiled.
“What’s her name,” Chaurisse wanted to know.
“Flora,” my daughter pipe
d up.
The smal parking lot was busy with parents and little children. Al the kids carried cardboard cutouts of their hands decorated to look like turkeys.
I waved at some of the mothers. I hoped I looked normal, wel adjusted, and happy. I leaned against the side of my car. “Wel ? Is somebody dying?” I said it with a sort of flippant attitude, but I real y wanted to know. Al these years later my mother stil scanned the obituary page every Sunday. If James Witherspoon died, she would be there in widow’s black.
“Nobody’s dying,” she said. “I just saw your girl and I wanted to say hel o and see how you are.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “How are you?”
She sighed and leaned on the car next to me. As we talked, we watched the cars fly down Cascade Road. “I’m okay.”
“How are your parents?” I asked.
“Stil together,” she said.
“Figures.”
She shifted her weight to her other side and took a real y deliberate breath. “You ever see him?”
I could have laughed at her. After al these years, she couldn’t quite believe that she and her mother had won.
I hadn’t seen my father since the day he and Laverne renewed their vows at the big party at the Hilton twelve years ago. I had gone on my own and spent most of my time riding the glass elevator al the way to the twenty-third floor and then back down again. Looking at the city lights, I wondered if James had other children like me. I had gone to the soiree, not looking for my father, not trying to spoil anything, but hoping to see Chaurisse. I was going to ask her if maybe we could be sisters. It wasn’t our fault what our parents had done to each other.
THEY CALLED IT a “recommitment ceremony” and held it in the Magnolia Room, the same space where Ruth Nicole Elizabeth had her Sweet Sixteen. When the elevator stopped at the twenty-third floor, I was too afraid to step out. The ceremony was under way behind a pair of closed doors decorated with bunting. I could imagine Mrs. Grant, silently applauding with her satin gloved hands as Chaurisse pranced down the aisle clutching a bouquet of cal a lilies. Behind her would be Raleigh and Laverne in her almond-meat dress. I could see Raleigh bending to kiss her cheek before handing her over to James.