The Mothers

by Brit Bennett

  So the morning of the protest, the congregation gathered in front of the unbuilt clinic. Second John, who had driven the carless in the church van, and Sister Willis, who had instructed her Sunday School students to help color in the protest signs, and even Magdalena Price, who could hardly be bothered to do anything around Upper Room that required her to step out from behind her piano bench, had come down to the protest to, as she put it, see what all the fuss was about. All of us had circled around the pastor and the first lady and their son—a boy then, kicking dirt clods onto the sidewalk—while the pastor prayed for the souls of innocents.

  Our protest only lasted three days. (Not because of our wavering convictions but because of the militants who joined us, the type of crazed white people who would end up on the news someday for bombing clinics or stabbing doctors. The last place any of us wanted to be was near the scene when one went off the deep end.) All three days, Robert Turner drove downtown at six a.m. to deliver a new batch of picket signs from the church. He and his wife were not the protesting type, he told the pastor, but he’d figured that transporting the signs was the least he could do, truck and all.

  This was ten years before he would be known around Upper Room as the man with the truck, a black Chevy pickup that had become Upper Room’s truck because of how often Robert was seen driving from church, an arm hanging out the window, the truck bed filled with food baskets or donated clothes or metal chairs. He wasn’t the only member with a truck, of course, but he was the only one willing to lend his at any moment. He kept a calendar by the phone and whenever anyone from Upper Room called, he carefully scheduled them in with a tiny golf pencil. Sometimes he joked that he should add the truck to his answering machine greeting because the truck would earn more messages than he did anyway. A joke, although he wondered if it was true, if the truck was the only reason he was invited to picnics and potlucks, if the true guest was the truck, needed to haul speakers and tables and folding chairs, but no one minded if he tagged along too. Why else would he receive such warm greetings when he stepped into Upper Room each Sunday? The ushers clapping his back and the ladies at the welcome table smiling at him and the pastor mentioning, once, in passing, that he wouldn’t be shocked if Robert’s good stewardship landed him on the elders board one day.

  The truck, Robert believed, had turned things around for him. But there was also his daughter. People are always tenderhearted toward single fathers, especially single fathers raising girls, and folks would have cared for Robert Turner still, even if that terrible thing hadn’t happened with his wife, even if she had just packed a suitcase and left, which to some, it seemed like she did anyway.

  —

  THAT EVENING, when her father pulled his truck into the garage, Nadia was curled in bed, clutching her twisting stomach. “The cramps might be bad,” the dreadlocked nurse had told her. “Expect them a few hours or so. Call the emergency number if they’re severe.” The nurse didn’t explain the difference between bad cramps and severe ones, but she’d handed Nadia a white bag curled at the top like a sack lunch. “For the pain. Two every four hours.” A clinic volunteer offered to drive Nadia home, and when she climbed into the white girl’s dusty Sentra, she glanced out the window at the nurse, who watched them drive off. The volunteer—blonde, twentyish, earnest—chatted nervously the whole drive, fiddling with the radio dials. She was a junior at Cal State San Marcos, she said, volunteering at the clinic as part of her feminist studies major. She looked like the type of girl who could go to college, major in something like feminist studies, and still expect to be taken seriously. She asked if Nadia planned to go to college and seemed surprised by her response. “Oh, Michigan’s a good school,” she said, as if Nadia didn’t already know this.

  That was two hours ago. Nadia clenched her eyes, passing through the cold center of the pain into its warmer edges. She wanted to take another pill even though she knew she should wait, but when she heard the garage door rumble, she shoved the orange vial into the white bag, everything inside her nightstand drawer. Anything unusual might tip her father off, even that nondescript bag. Since she discovered that she was pregnant, she’d been sure that her father would notice something was wrong with her. Her mother had been able to tell when she’d had a bad day at school moments after she climbed into the car. What happened? her mother used to ask, even before Nadia had said hello. Her father had never been that perceptive, but a pregnancy wasn’t a bad day at school—he would notice that she was panicking, he would have to. She was grateful so far that he hadn’t, but it scared her, how you could return home in a different body, how something big could be happening inside you and no one even knew it.

  Her father knocked three times and nudged her bedroom door open. He wore his service khakis today, which seemed like a second skin, how naturally he fit within sharp pleats, a row of badges across his chest. Her friends used to be surprised that her father was a Marine. He didn’t seem like the boys they’d grown up seeing around town, cocky and buff and horsing around in front of the Regal, flirting with passing girls. Maybe her father had been like that when he was younger but she couldn’t imagine it. He was quiet and intense, a tall, wiry man who never seemed to relax, like a guard dog on his haunches, his ears always perked up. He leaned in her doorway, bending to unlace his shiny black boots.

  “You don’t look so good,” he said. “You sick?”

  “Just cramps,” she said.

  “Oh. Your . . .” He gestured to his stomach. “Need anything?”

  “No,” she said. “Wait. Can I use your truck later?”

  “For what?”

  “To drive.”

  “Where are you going, I mean.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Ask where I’m going. I’m almost eighteen.”

  “I can’t ask where you’re taking my truck?”

  “Where do you think I’m taking it?” she said. “The border?”

  Her father never cared about where she went, except when she asked to borrow his precious truck. He spent evenings circling the truck in the driveway, dipping a red velvet square into a tub of wax until the paint shone like glass. Then as soon as someone from Upper Room called for a favor, he jogged out the door, always running to his truck, as if it were the only child, needy and demanding of his love. Her father sighed, running a hand over the graying hair she cut every two weeks, the way her mother used to, her father sitting in the backyard with a towel draped around his neck, her hands guiding the clippers. Cutting his hair was the only time she felt close to him.

  “Downtown, okay?” she said. “Can I borrow your truck, please?”

  Another wave of cramps gripped her, and she flinched, pulling her blanket tighter around herself. Her father lingered in the doorway a moment before dropping his keys on her dresser.

  “I can make you some tea,” he said. “It’s supposed to—your aunts, they’d drink it, you know, when—”

  “You can just leave the keys,” she said.

  —

  THE DAY AFTER she was accepted into Michigan, Luke brought Nadia to the Wave Waterpark, where they rode inner tubes down the Slide Tower and the Flow Rider until they were soaked and tired. At first, she’d worried that he’d suggested a water park because he thought she was childish. But he had as much fun as she did, yelping as they splashed into pools, or dragging her to the next ride, water beads clinging to his chest, his wet sideburns glinting in the sun. After, they ate corn dogs and churros at the tables outside Rippity’s Rainforest, where kids too small for the slides padded in floaties. She licked cinnamon sugar off her fingers, sun-heavy and happy, the type of happiness that before might have felt ordinary, but now seemed fragile, like if she stood too quickly, it might slide off her shoulders and break.

  She hadn’t expected a gift from Luke, not when her father had barely congratulated her. Look at that, he’d said when she showed
him the e-mail, offering her a side hug. Then he’d passed her in the kitchen later that night, eyes glazing over her as if she were a once-interesting piece of furniture he’d since tired of. She tried not to take it personally—he wasn’t happy about anything these days—but she still teared up in the bathroom while brushing her teeth. The next morning, she awoke to a congratulations card on her nightstand with twenty dollars folded inside. I’m sorry, her father had written, I’m trying. Trying what? Trying to love her?

  She stretched her legs across Luke’s lap and he kneaded the smooth skin near her ankles while he finished his corn dog. He’d never seen her like this before—hair wet and kinky, her face clean of makeup—but she felt pretty as he smiled at her across the table, touching her ankle, and she wondered if his gentle touch meant more, if he might even be in love with her a little bit. Before they left, she tried to take a picture of the two of them but Luke cupped his hand around her phone. He wanted to keep their relationship a secret.

  “Not a secret,” he said. “Just private.”

  “‘That’s the same thing,” she said.

  “It’s not. I just think we should be low-key about this. That’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “I mean, the age thing.”

  “I’m almost eighteen.”

  “‘Almost’ ain’t eighteen.”

  “I wouldn’t get you in trouble. Don’t you know that?”

  “It’s not just that,” he said. “You don’t know how it is. You’re not a pastor’s kid. The whole church in my business all the time. They’ll be up in your business too. Let’s just be smart, that’s all I’m saying.”

  Maybe there was a difference. You hid a secret relationship out of shame, but you might keep a relationship private for any number of reasons. All relationships, in some way, were private—why did anyone else need to know as long as you were happy? So she learned how to be private. She didn’t reach for his hand in public or post photos of them online. She even stopped going to Fat Charlie’s after school every day, in case one of his coworkers began to wonder about them. But after Luke had left her at the abortion clinic, she forgot about being private and drove her father’s truck to Fat Charlie’s. She knew he closed on Thursday nights, but when she arrived, she didn’t see him on the floor. At the bar, she waved down Pepe, a burly Mexican bartender with a graying ponytail. He glanced up from drying a glass with a brown rag.

  “Go ahead and put that cheap-ass fake away,” he said. “You know I ain’t serving you.”

  “Where’s Luke?” she asked.

  “Hell if I know.”

  “Doesn’t he get off soon?”

  “I ain’t in charge of his schedule.”

  “Well, have you seen him?”

  “You okay?”

  “Did you see him earlier?”

  “Why don’t you just call him?”

  “He’s not answering,” she said. “I’m worried.”

  It wasn’t like Luke to disappear like this, to not answer his phone, to promise he’d be somewhere, then not show. Especially on a day like today when she needed him, when he knew she needed him. She was worried that something bad had happened to him, or even worse, that nothing had. What if he had abandoned her at that clinic because he’d simply chosen to? No, he would never do that—but she thought about him at the water park, clamping his hand over her phone, that brief moment when she had felt safe and loved right before Luke had pulled away.

  Pepe sighed, setting the glass on the bar. He had four daughters, Luke had told her once, and she wondered if this was why Pepe always refused her fake ID, always shooed away men who hit on her, always asked her how she was getting home.

  “Look, hon,” he said. “You know Sheppard. Probably just wanted to go out with his buddies. I’m sure he’ll call you tomorrow. Just go home, won’t you?”

  —

  IN THE END, she found Luke at a party.

  Not just any party but a high school party, although Cody Richardson would’ve been offended to hear his parties referred to as such. He had graduated ten years ago, after all, but his parties would always be high school parties because Nadia, and everyone else at Oceanside High, had spent countless weekends partying at his house. He was a sandy-haired skater, the type of white boy she had nothing in common with. But even though she normally hated white boy parties—the repetitive techno music, the smothering Abercrombie and Fitch cologne, the terrible dancing—she had gone to Cody Richardson’s parties because everyone did. She had piled inside his beach bungalow every weekend, where you never worried about anyone’s parents coming back to town early or the cops shutting the party down, and now his floor plan read like a map of her teenage firsts: the balcony where she’d first smoked weed, hacking into the beach air; the corner of the kitchen where she’d broken up with her first boyfriend; the hallway in front of the bathroom where she had drunk-cried the weekend after they buried her mother.

  She hadn’t been back to Cody’s since. The yellow house already felt like something she’d outgrown and once she’d graduated, she promised herself that she would never return. She had always been bothered by how many people did, how everyone seemed stuck in time, the years since high school collapsing as soon as they stepped through the door. Still, Cody’s house was the only place she could think to find Luke after she’d driven past his parents’ house and seen his truck missing from the driveway. Somehow, she knew he would be at Cody’s. She felt him as she walked, lovesick and angry, across the damp beach sand. She followed the footprint trail leading to the beach house, wondering if she might find the footprints that belonged to Luke, her feet stepping inside his the entire time.

  Techno pulsed through the open door in green waves as she padded up the lopsided driftwood steps. Bass rumbled through wooden floors sticky with beer, and she paused in the doorway, her eyes adjusting to the dimness. She wouldn’t have noticed Luke at first if it weren’t for his walk. Past the crowd of white kids thrashing together, past kitchen counters covered in half-empty bottles of liquor and two triangles of cups from an abandoned game of beer pong, she caught Luke’s silhouette crossing the darkened room. That slight limp, subtle enough for most to ignore it but as familiar to her as his voice. He looked drunk, a near-empty pint of Jim Beam dangling from his hand. When she neared, he swayed a little, as if the sight of her was enough to knock him off balance.

  “Nadia,” he said. “What’re you doing here?”

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” she said. “I called you a hundred fucking times.”

  “You shouldn’t be here. You should be in bed or something—”

  “Where were you?” she said. “I waited for hours.”

  “Some shit came up, okay? I knew you were gonna find a way home.”

  But he stared at the ground when he said it and she knew he was lying.

  “You left me,” she said.

  He finally looked up at her, and it startled her, how he looked the same as he always had. Shouldn’t someone look different once you’ve caught them in a lie, once you’ve seen them truthfully for the first time?

  “Look, this shit was supposed to be fun,” he said, “not all this fucking drama. I got you the money. What else do you want from me?”

  Then he brushed past her, pushing through the crowd and lurching unevenly toward the door. She should’ve known. She should’ve known when he’d brought her an envelope with six hundred dollars that the money was his part, the rest hers. He’d slipped her the money, and now she was a problem that he’d already dealt with. In a way, she had known this—or at least suspected it—but she’d wanted to believe in Luke, in love, in people who did not leave. She squeezed into the kitchen, past a group of giddy high schoolers playing flip cup, and reached for a bottle of Jose Cuervo on the counter. The dreadlocked nurse had told her no alcohol for forty-eight hours—thins the blood, increases the bleeding—but she p
oured a shot of tequila anyway. She felt a hand on her waist and when she turned, Devon Jackson lingered behind her, a joint pressed between his fingertips. She hadn’t spoken to him since they fooled around once her freshman year; he looked the same, almost delicate, tall and lean with long eyelashes except his skin was now covered in tattoos. Even his neck was darkened with ink, a fleur-de-lis stretching up his throat.

  “Jesus,” she said. “You’re stained now.”

  He laughed. “Where the fuck you been?”

  Nowhere. Everywhere. He passed her the joint and she felt fifteen again, smoking with a boy who had fingered her once at the top of a Ferris wheel, gently, the car swaying like it was rocking them to sleep. The last she’d heard, Devon was modeling now, mostly on gay websites. Two years ago, a friend had sent her a link to a photo spread where Devon stretched out along white sheets in nothing but his briefs, a blond man’s face inches from his crotch.

  “I heard you’re famous now,” she said, passing the joint.

  She didn’t mean to get drunk. She poured herself another drink because Devon asked why her cup was empty, what, did she become a nun or something? She poured a shot of tequila into a cup of lemonade, then another shot, then another, then she let Devon pull her onto the dance floor. Not because she wanted to dance but because dancing was an excuse to be close, to touch, to be comforted by the press and pull of Devon’s body against hers without having to talk. And the drinks made her feel nice, although the room was warm and she felt disgusted by Devon’s swampy T-shirt as she draped an arm around his waist. Her blood was probably thinning as she danced, but how nice it was to feel drunk and relaxed and warm and touched and touching.

  Devon kissed her neck, squeezing her ass with both hands.

  “You’re so fuckin’ fine,” he said, breath hot against her ear.