“Oh, God,” First Lady called out. She clapped her hands together loudly and turned away from them. As if she was warring in her own spirit, she put her hands up in surrender.
Pill attempted to walk away, but Corey pulled her into his chest headfirst and hugged her tightly. He didn’t expect embracing her to touch him as deeply as it did. He kissed the top of her head before lifting her chin. Their tears mixed together, their pain intertwined. She wouldn’t let him kiss her though.
“None of this is easy for me,” he whispered to her.
She nudged him, not accepting his explanation. “Get off me, Corey.”
First Lady stepped in between them with an apparent revelation from God hot off the newswire. “I want to see you both in nothing less than a battle stance. I’m talking, putting on the whole armor. Any opportunity you get to pray, you should be on your knees. I’m not talking these one-sided conversations you all call prayers, either. Listen for God—listen to Him. I can’t see a blessing in living separate from your spouse, but all right,” she resigned. “I’m sure you will continue to be the man of your household and handle the bills you were covering before residing elsewhere. Miss Thing will get you the loan agreement, and you’ll look into the terms of that loan for her. Let me know if there are legal ramifications because we’ve got lawyers in the congregation that may be able to help.”
Corey nodded his head. He looked at his watch. It was one fifteen. They had started at eleven. They hadn’t eaten or thought about breaking. Their only thoughts were on each other, like now, and what it might mean if their relationship was to truly come to an end.
Chapter 33
Pill did not wake up to the smells of her sister’s rosemary roasted turkey. Neither did she make her customary string bean casserole, nor did she salivate over her best friend’s sweet potato soufflé. Instead, she dined on a cheddar bratwurst and tater tots.
She thought about entertaining a few clients who, like her, were alone and saw getting their hair done on Thanksgiving as a perfect way to avoid the crowds. She had signed a rental agreement on a suite in a salon plaza in Fountain Square. She would have saved money and done hair out of her kitchen, but she held out hope that her husband would return.
She had no doubt her regular customers would follow her despite Carmen’s invitation to personally service them. She had been successful, thanks to her ex-coworkers who alerted all her former clients that she worked alone. She was technically her own boss, but she missed the gang. In her opinion, salons were meant to be communal with a variety of style options and varying opinions on what looks good and what doesn’t.
Pill had set an agenda to be charitable starting early that morning by loading up three bags of her things with her favorite ivory boots on top to donate to the local collection center. Before she could take them there, she thought of the one person who might need and appreciate some of her most special things more.
She found an empty Oldsmobile tucked away on a cross street just past the shopping center that housed the Lend It loan store. Two practically new pair of work boots sat on the curb next to the rear tire. Pill was hesitant to leave her goods there. Realizing that Martin and his teenage daughter didn’t have much storage space, she rebagged three pairs of designer jeans, two sweaters, a pair of ballerina flats, and the alpine boots and poncho set she just had to have from Ahmad, the hustle man.
She hoped the things would reach her intended recipient. Pill said a prayer that the saints would continue to do their part so that one day she’d ride past this corner and not see Martin panhandling there.
Now she found herself en route to Mecklenburg Correctional Center. She knew if she ever went to see her mother it would be on a whim. It was a crazy drive, almost two hours toward the North Carolina border. She’d wake up and take off without giving herself much time to think about how inconvenient the whole visit would be.
In actuality, she had thought about taking a trip like this for the last eight years of her life. It never felt like the right time until now.
It was a bit of a shock to see her mother shackled as they escorted her into the prisoners’ side of the room. She thought the Plexiglas partitions and phone receivers were a Hollywood interpretation of what a prison really looks like. This was maximum security. She couldn’t even hug her mother if she wanted too. Her mom was doing some serious time.
Sheree Jones was shorter than Pill remembered her, shrouded in the orange prison-issued jumpsuit. Her dark chocolate complexion, much like Pill’s, was clear and smooth. She could have been a beautiful woman if she cared enough about her appearance. But she had eyes so big and wide they haunted her. Pill noticed her already-thinning hair was pulled back tightly in a knot at the back of her head. Fond recollections of brushing her mother’s hair when Pill was younger came rushing to mind and the ongoing joke that Pill was snatching her bald, as her mother would put it. She shrugged off the memory, feeling that warmhearted memories gave her mom too much credit.
Her mom waited until her hands were unshackled by the guard before picking up the receiver. “Hey, baby girl, where’s your sister? Did she come with you?”
Pill looked around. She wasn’t alone on her side of the room. An older man sat next to her, waiting for his loved one to be brought from the cell block.
“I came alone. I don’t know if you noticed, but I am all grown-up. I’m not in Sheena’s care anymore. I’m married,” Pill shared, not knowing what her mother knew of the outside world—her world.
She smirked. “I know that, baby girl. Your sister brought in your wedding pictures. Don’t think I don’t keep up with you. You were a beautiful bride. Look at you now; you’re gorgeous like I knew you’d turn out to be. No longer are you my little string bean.”
Pill put up her hand to stop the pleasantries. This trip was not about that to her. “I’m not here for all that.”
“Okay, okay, tell me, to what do I owe the pleasure after eight years,” her mother half-mumbled to herself.
“This trip is about me facing the fact that my mom is serving a life sentence, and me, feeling like I’m doing the same all this time.” Pill used the hand she gestured with to wipe her eyes just in case a tear dared to form or fall.
Pill looked at the man next to her as if to apologize for what she was about to say. She lowered her voice, talking purposefully into the mouthpiece. “I want to keep this short and sweet. I just want to know why Sheena and I were never good enough. Why we were always put last. You chose my father, who was no good. You chose to turn to drugs and alcohol, and that was no good for you. Your absences. Your shoplifting. You never chose us, and we were in need.”
She noticed her mother squirm. Sheree cradled the phone between her neck and shoulder and began to play with a scab on the back of her hand before answering. “I was sick, baby girl. Addictions had me doing things I wouldn’t do otherwise.”
“That’s a lie,” Pill fired back. She kept a loaded arsenal of memories that had plagued her existence to back her up. “You’d come out of the treatment center clean. You had lived without drugs for months before the incident. When you had that miscarriage, you even put the bottle down too.” Is she addicted to being addicted? “You never gave up the boosting, though. The one thing I can’t get over was that you were sober when you robbed that store. Why couldn’t you leave the shoplifting alone?”
Pill realized she was not the only one who played with her hair when she was put on the spot. She watched her mother use her forefingers to scratch the crown of her head before using the palm of her hand to smooth back down the wisps of hair she upset. Pill wondered when the last time was that she had a good wash and conditioner.
“Risk taking and thrill seeking are actually addictions. Adrenaline is as potent as any drug. It was my drug of choice, or at least that is what the counselors in here seem to think. Apparently my need to risk and win out over my conscience and the overall odds will continue to put me in dangerous situations.”
Pill thought her
mother sounded like a textbook. She wondered whether she truly believed in that root cause or if they had indoctrinated her in prison. What about her own risky behavior of the past? How many times had she just made it while other people had to bail her out?
“They got me seeing a therapist for Emotional Release Therapy,” she cackled and coughed, making Pill wonder whether she had a stint with nicotine as well. “Sounds like a bunch of bunk, don’t it?”
“No, Mom, it doesn’t.” Pill stared at her incredulously through the plate glass. “You killed a person. Daniel Rodriguez, a man who can’t go home to his family, and for what? Two hundred sixty-three dollars out of the register.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Sheree Jones said in a way that scared Pill. Her eyes intensified, and her teeth clenched. Pill didn’t remember her mom being a big disciplinarian, but she did remember her anger. It was that anger toward others or their circumstances that usually led to her irrational behavior.
They brought in another inmate, which gave her mom cause to calm down. She didn’t acknowledge the woman with stringy blond hair, but turned immediately back to her daughter.
“It’s the shame and the guilt we are trying to numb when we risk,” her mom continued.
Pill wondered if her mom was referring to her when she spoke of we. Was she a textbook risker too?
“I’ll go along with anything if it can get me out of here; the therapy, the medication, all of it, just so I can get back to my family.” Her mom licked her lips at the prospect. “Therapy is the road to early release, and with two loving daughters willing to write a few letters on my behalf and help me get acclimated to the world on the outside, I might get time served in less than two years.”
“Why? So one day we can wonder where you are, and you end up robbing a bank? What good would that do to come out if you’re not ready? You are not fully healed, and to me, that means you haven’t paid your debt to society. You owe it to that man’s family to be better.”
Pill felt a huge knot in her chest. She kept telling herself it didn’t happen to her. She didn’t lose a family member like that man’s family.
“You act like you don’t want me home, baby girl,” her mother said, leaning toward the glass.
Pill pulled the straps of her purse that was sitting on her lap up on her shoulder. “And you act like nothing has changed, like this is all a game or something.”
Pill looked over at the older man next to her, looking adoringly through the glass at his wife who, she could see, was speaking enthusiastically through the receiver. Whatever she had done to be put down obviously had been forgotten. It was not a love fest at all on Pill and her mother’s side. As much as she imagined melting in this woman’s maternal love or the thought that she’d despise her for her despicable deeds, she felt neither.
“That hurts,” her mom smirked. “You’ve always held a grudge. You can’t forgive me, but my Sheena can.”
Pill stood, hovering over the phone’s cradle. “You’re right, Ma. I pray, one day soon, that God can bring me to a point of forgiveness. In the meantime, I hope no one asks my opinion on the early release thing, because to me, letting you out early sounds too risky.”
Chapter 34
Pill stared at her surroundings as if they were unfamiliar. Cars and huge trucks whizzed past her at enormous speeds that made the interior of her car shake. She knew she had been on I-85 and had taken the ramp back to I-95 North. She was driving until tears clouded her vision. She barely got her car over to the shoulder of the highway before the floodgates opened up.
She looked over her shoulder at the oncoming traffic in an attempt to get back on the highway—to get back home. Her mom wanted to come home, but not necessarily to build a relationship with her or mend their family, she thought. Corey, on the other hand, wasn’t sure he wanted to come back and restore what they had when they first got married.
Can I forgive my mother? How can I expect to be forgiven by Corey if I can’t forgive myself?
She cried for her broken marriage and the family that was broken at the hands of her mother. She cried for herself. Every time she thought she had herself together and could successfully navigate back on to the highway, she began shaking. With unsteady hands, she put her signal on and proceeded over. A loud blare of a truck’s horn told her it wasn’t safe. Her vision was still blurred. She couldn’t start again. She couldn’t pretend her past didn’t exist, that it didn’t affect her.
Pill was shaking. How would she get home if she couldn’t drive straight—if she couldn’t get her heart rate back to normal? She was nearly an hour and a half from her home. She was afraid to try to access the highway again, fearing that her emotional distress could only end in an accident.
Jesus, help me, she called out.
Instantly she remembered something her husband told her. I want to be the one you call when you are broke down on the side of the road because you know no tow truck can get to you quicker. Although her car was in working order, she needed Corey more than ever in that moment. She needed to release all the ilk of her past, and Corey was the one that introduced her to the notion of dumping it all before the Lord. She needed to tell her husband all that she had been holding in for so long in hopes of releasing it. He was at his parents’ house just about forty-five minutes away.
Pill found her cell phone in her coat pocket and dialed. Through her despair and the clamor of holiday activity on the receiver’s end, she managed to ask for her husband.
“Corey?” she asked when he finally came to the phone.
“Yeah, was sup? What’s wrong?” he asked urgently.
“Corey?” she asked again. She didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t told him much about her mother and even less about her conflicting feelings toward her.
“Talk to me, baby,” he urged. “Tell me what’s going on.”
She decided to tell him about her present predicament now, but explain her entire sordid past later. “I went to see my mom and was on my way home. Corey, she’s—Corey, I can’t—I can’t move.”
“Tell me where you are. Don’t worry, I’ll come for you,” Corey said without hesitation as if he had enough information to access the situation, like he knew. She got off the phone with him after she gave him her general location.
Pill took refuge in her prayers and the devotion of her husband. Thinking about him made her shed more tears and whisper words of gratitude. She couldn’t help herself. She now realized that she had risked her marriage countless times over nothing, and just like she did with her mom, Corey had been ready to bail on her. Now he was coming to her rescue. She didn’t understand that kind of love, but vowed if given the chance, she would appreciate it.
In what seemed like record time, Pill saw a car with two people pull up behind her. Corey stepped out of the driver’s side and waited for his dad to come around. He waved to his father, indicating that he should go and that he would be all right. Then he got in Pill’s car and held her as she cried and poured her heart out.
Chapter 35
The first time Corey saw his mother’s balding head was the day he returned to his parents’ home after rescuing his wife from the side of the highway.
He’d spent the entire rest of the weekend at his home with Pill. They talked like never before. He outlined the plan for dealing with her loan. As advised by an attorney in their congregation, they withdrew money from Corey’s personal account and tried to repay the debt well within the thirty days. When her car title wasn’t returned because of outstanding interest payments totaling close to the entire amount of the initial loan, they had their names added to a class action suit ready to begin proceedings before the court. In the meantime, their attorney filed a temporary lien so the loan company wouldn’t try to confiscate Pill’s vehicle.
Corey and Pill knew they would only be compounding their confusion by having sex while he was home. He had to admit he loved lying next to his wife each night anyway and waking with her each morning. He tried to conv
ince Pill that it wasn’t his depleted savings account or the hassle of being in litigation that made him return to his parents’ house. Now he was trying to convince himself that it wasn’t his mother’s mortality that would make him stay away.
He caught his mom unaware in the guest bathroom positioning her scarf on her head. He could not conceal his horror at seeing sparse patches and matted clumps where luxurious locks use to hang. She could not conceal her horror of being seen.
“Corey? I didn’t know you were coming back. Where’s Pam?” she asked, tying the scarf quickly and tightly around her balding head.
“At home.” He hid his eyes from their reflection in the mirror in front of him.
“Then why are you here if she is there?” his mother said, turning to take a good look at him.
“Dad said you start another round of chemotherapy after the surgery,” Corey replied, talking in general terms about the offensive drug that was supposed to heal her but was making her more ill, and the mastectomy that would strip away more of her femininity. “I guess I feel I had so little time with you already. I need to be here to help.”
She smiled and hugged him as if she finally understood. “Of course you do. I’m going to be so spoiled. Now, come make me a grilled cheese sandwich.”
In the days that followed, it seemed as if Corey spent more time with his dad than his mom. If his mom coughed, he couldn’t get to the kitchen fast enough to beat his father who already had a glass of water waiting. Then there were those afternoons where his mom spent hours in her room, leaving him watching television in the living room with his dad. When she finally emerged, she’d have a whole new look that neither he nor his father knew whether to comment about or not.
On the third day after being back with his parents, his mother asked him to take her to a new salon on West Broad Street after he got off from work. She was ready to try on some wigs to ease her mind about her appearance, and she needed his opinion. Corey reasoned this was a process she preferred her father not take part in. He really didn’t want to take part in it himself, but this is what he was there for.
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