The Mothers

by Brit Bennett

  “No,” her mother had said.

  “That’s all right. You’ll learn.”

  She did, over time. Basic phrases, like How are you or Can you pass me that and all the swear words. Sometimes, when her child care fell through, she brought Nadia to work with her and the other ladies cooed over her, singing Spanish lullabies as they rocked her on balconies overlooking the beach. Her mother could barely understand the songs herself but she had heard on Oprah that it was good to expose a baby’s brain to different languages. That, she would later say, was how Nadia got to be so smart. How she’d read her first book before kindergarten, stumping the other parents so much that one mother had brought in her own book to test her, convinced she had just memorized the story. But Nadia’s mother remembered the Mexican women circling around her, cocooning her in Spanish, her brain sopping up words until it hung heavy and full.

  Her own patchy Spanish only took her so far. Her husband had been deployed to the Persian Gulf, and even though she had lived in Oceanside for a year, she had not made a true friend. So in her loneliness, she’d sought out a church home. She hadn’t been sure where to begin looking. Besides the Catholic churches, dutifully named after saints, most of the San Diego churches bore nautical names like Coastline Baptist or Seacoast Community Church. With names like that, she imagined congregations filing into pews wearing swim trunks, a minister who climbed the altar with a surfboard under his arm. She tried Calvary Chapel and Emmanuel Faith, but neither felt right. Emmanuel Faith had a woman pastor who had gone to Harvard, which she’d mentioned three times in the sermon. At Calvary Chapel, a woman behind her had gotten filled with the spirit and started flailing, nearly knocking everyone in the head. For years, she bounced from church to church, each one too small or too big, too modern or too traditional. Then one afternoon, she was emptying a room’s trash can when a bulletin from Upper Room Chapel fluttered onto her foot.

  “It was my Goldilocks church,” she used to tell Nadia. “I knew it as soon as I walked in. Everything about it, just right.”

  On Sunday mornings, Upper Room Chapel crowded and bustled, men in suits pulling each other into rough hugs, ladies planting cheek kisses before scribbling brunch dates on scrap paper sticking out of Bibles, toddlers skirting around flowerpots in makeshift games of tag, and the Mothers, strutting past in colorful hats crowned with feathered plumes. Her first time in Upper Room, Nadia had watched from behind her mother’s knee, mystified, as their feathers bobbed up and down past her. White gloves were pulled up to their elbows, their tambourines jingled as they walked, and she’d wondered if jingling came with age, if one day, when she was wrinkled and gray, her own steps would make music. Her mother had laughed at the question.

  “Oh, your body’ll make some sounds all right,” she’d said, wrapping her hand around Nadia’s.

  That first Sunday, her father had not been with them. Her mother had apologized for his absence to the pastor after service when she shook his hand in the receiving line.

  “My husband, he just got back from overseas,” she’d said. “And he’s not much the churchly type.”

  Nadia’s father had arrived home a week ago. She was four then and she barely remembered him, although she was old enough to understand that was a shameful thing to admit. In the months counting down to his return, her mother had gathered Nadia into her lap and pulled out a photo album, flipping slowly past pictures of her father holding her as a baby. In one, she was curled up like a kitten against his chest and her father, young and strapping in dress blues, smiled into the camera. He had a mole by his nose and short dark hair that looked plushy, like the bristles on her mother’s makeup brush. She studied his face, searching for features that were also hers. People had always said she looked exactly like her mother.

  She had been wary around him at first, shy even. He’d knelt to hug her outside of the terminal and she had drawn back, startled by this man in camouflage hefting a giant duffel bag, his face darkened by desert sun. The time she’d spent studying his photographs had not prepared her for the reality of him, his size and smell. He frowned.

  “She don’t remember me?” he said to her mother.

  “Well, she was nothin’ but a baby when you left.” Her mother gave her a little push. “Go on and hug your daddy. Go on.”

  She took a few steps forward and her father pulled her into a hug. His chest felt hard. She smiled at him, even though the hug hurt. Her father held her in his lap on the drive back home, while her mother complained that she ought to be in a car seat.

  “She ought to be getting used to me,” he said.

  “It just takes a little time, Robert,” her mother said.

  “I don’t care,” he’d said. “I don’t care how long it takes. She’s gonna love me.”

  Now her father paused at an intersection, before turning onto the road that led to the church. She hadn’t been on this ride since the morning of her mother’s funeral. That drive had been a blur—she’d felt like she’d been cast in a play she hadn’t tried out for and was suddenly expected to know all the lines. Would she have to speak at the service? What did anyone expect her to say? That one day, she’d had a mother, and the next, she didn’t? That the only tragic circumstance that had befallen her mother was her own self? In the backseat of the hearse, she’d found a run in her panty hose and quietly picked at it until it became a gaping hole, finding peace in the unraveling.

  “I need you to take this seriously,” her father said. “Nice thing Mrs. Sheppard is doing for you.”

  Maybe, but she didn’t understand why the first lady had felt inclined to help her at all. Luke’s mother hated her, ever since the seventh grade when she’d caught Nadia kissing Deacon Lou’s nephew behind the church. He was the type of boy she’d liked then—tall and rangy, draped in a T-shirt three times too big—and she’d traced his zigzag cornrows, pressing him against the side of the church as they panted into each other’s mouths. She’d never kissed a boy before, really kissed him. Earlier that year she’d dated a boy for three weeks, but they’d only kissed once after a circle of their friends dared them, so it didn’t really count. But this kiss was a real kiss. She felt it burning through her as he slipped his hand up her shirt and rubbed her through her training bra, and she thought he might have felt it too when he suddenly pulled away, as if he’d touched something hot. Then she followed his gaze over her shoulder to where the first lady stood. She’d snatched Nadia by the arm and dragged her back into the church, shaking her wrist as she fussed at her.

  “I’ve never seen such a thing in my life! Carrying on like that behind the church!” Mrs. Sheppard gave her wrist another good shaking, leaning her face close to hers. “Don’t you know nice girls don’t do that? Don’t you know that?”

  She still remembered the way the first lady’s face had suddenly loomed close to hers. She had one brown eye and one blue eye, and in that moment, both became a disorienting blur. She’d dragged Nadia back to Sister Willis’s class. For the rest of Sunday School, Sister Willis made Nadia sit in the back of the room by herself, writing My body is a temple of God a hundred times before she could be dismissed. Her mother hadn’t said much on the ride home, but when they pulled into the garage, she’d quietly shut off the engine and sat in the car a minute, still holding the steering wheel.

  “My mama tried to keep me away from boys,” she said. “Obviously it didn’t work, so I won’t tell you that. You just gotta be smart and you gotta be careful. Boys, they can go around careless their whole lives. But you can either be careful now or careful later. That’s your only choice, really. You got big things ahead of you. Don’t you give that up for nobody.”

  “But it’s just kissing,” Nadia said.

  “Don’t let it be more than that,” her mother said. “Don’t end up like I did. That’s the only thing you could do that would break your daddy’s heart.”

  Her father was a Marine, stoic and tough with
a chest so hardened with muscle that his hugs even hurt. She’d never thought herself capable of breaking anyone’s heart, let alone his. But her mother was seventeen when she’d gotten pregnant. She must’ve known from experience how that had hurt her own parents. And if getting pregnant was the most harmful thing Nadia could do, then how much pain had her unexpected arrival caused? How much had she ruined her mother’s life, if her mother told her that a baby was the worst thing that could happen to her?

  Nadia had told Luke the kissing story once and he’d laughed into his pillow.

  “It’s not funny,” she said.

  “Aw, come on,” he said. “That shit was so long ago. And how you think she hates you? You never even talk to her.”

  “I can tell by the way she looks at me.”

  “She looks at everyone like that. That’s just how she looks.”

  He’d rolled over in bed, burying his face in her neck, but she twisted out of his arms, feeling under the covers for her panties. She never stayed long when she visited him. It was thrilling at first—fucking in a pastor’s house—but after, the thrill faded into panic and she imagined footsteps outside the door, keys jingling, cars pulling into the driveway. Luke’s mother dragging her naked out of the bed, shaking her wrist. Luke thought her paranoia was funny but she didn’t want to give his mother another reason to hate her. She had hoped someday that Luke might bring her home, not sneak her in his bedroom when his parents were gone, but invite her to dinner. He would introduce her as his girlfriend and his mother would drape an arm across her shoulders and guide her to the table.

  Her father turned the silver Chevy Malibu into the parking lot, cruising toward the church entrance. She felt her stomach thrum.

  “I could find another job,” she said. “If you just give me a little time—”

  “Go on,” her father said, unlocking the door. “You don’t want to be late.”

  She had never been in Upper Room during the week, and as soon as she pushed open the heavy double doors, she felt like she was trespassing. The church, crowded and bustling on Sunday morning, was now wrapped in quiet, the halls darkened, the main foyer, with its sprawling blue carpet, empty. She felt almost disappointed by how plain the unoccupied building seemed, like how once at Disneyland, Space Mountain had stopped mid-ride and the lights flashed on, revealing that she was only in a gray warehouse, riding along a track with tiny drops that had only seemed exciting in the haze of special effects. She followed a dark corridor toward the back of the building, past the Sunday School room where she had reported, dutifully, from kindergarten to the eighth grade, past the choir room and the pastor’s office, down to the first lady’s office at the end of the hall. The room spread regally in front of her, mahogany furniture gleaming under the sunlight, tiny potted palm trees sprouting out of every corner. Mrs. Sheppard leaned against the desk, her arms folded. She was tall—at least six feet—and in her red skirt suit and matching high heels, she towered over Nadia.

  “Well, come on in,” she said. “Don’t just stand there.”

  She had always seemed intimidating, if not because of her height or her title or the way she walked slowly as she talked, like a panther stalking its prey, then because of her odd eyes. One brown and one blue, the coldness of that blue eye forcing Nadia to stare at the ground whenever the first lady passed her in the church lobby.

  “How old are you, honey?” Mrs. Sheppard asked.

  “Seventeen,” Nadia said softly.

  “Seventeen.” Mrs. Sheppard paused, glancing in the doorway as if she expected a better girl to walk through it. “And you going off to school somewhere in the fall?”

  “Michigan,” she said, but her response felt bare, so she added, “ma’am.”

  “Studying what?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I want to go to law school.”

  “Well, college girl like you must be smart. You ever work in an office?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “But you worked before. Right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I was a cashier once, in the mall. And I also worked at Jojo’s Juicery.”

  “Jojo’s Juicery.” Mrs. Sheppard pursed her lips. “Well, look. I never had an assistant and I never needed one. But my husband seems to think I could use some help. So let’s find you something to do, okay?”

  She sent Nadia to bring her a cup of coffee from the pastor’s office. As she headed down the hall, Nadia glanced out the window overlooking the parking lot. On the lawn in front of the church, little children played tag in the grass. Summer day camp, she figured, but she still paused, squinting, as she spotted, in the midst of the chaos, Aubrey Evans. Of course Aubrey would spend her summer at church—of course she had nothing better to do. She was wearing a stupid safari hat and baggy cargo shorts, and she loped slowly toward kids who scattered as soon as she drew near. She let most escape her grasp, but in the end, she caught a slow one, sweeping him into her arms as he squealed, kicking his little legs in the air. In another life, maybe, Nadia could have been like her. Playing in the summer morning, scooping up a child who smiled, grateful to be caught by her.

  —

  HER FIRST WEEKS working at Upper Room, Nadia and her father fell into a routine: wake early, eat silently, and climb into the loaner car. He would drop her off on his way to work. On the drive over, her father would complain about the different steering or how he hated sitting this low in traffic, but she knew he only missed his truck because while it was in the shop, he couldn’t serve Upper Room. After work, he lingered in the kitchen, patting his pockets like he’d stepped inside a stranger’s house and didn’t know what to do with himself. Should he leave his shoes by the door? Where was the bathroom? He eventually filed outside to lift weights in the backyard, like a prisoner quietly biding his time.

  At work, Nadia did the tasks Mrs. Sheppard assigned her: calling caterers for the Ladies Auxiliary luncheon, proofreading the church bulletin, scheduling toy donations at the children’s hospital, photocopying registration forms for the summer day camp. She tried to do everything perfectly because when she made a mistake, Mrs. Sheppard gave her a look. Eyes narrowed, lips pursed somewhere between a frown and a smirk, as if to say, look what I have to put up with.

  “Honey, you need to do this again,” she would say, waving Nadia over. Or, “Come on, now, pay attention. Isn’t that what we hired you for?”

  To be honest, Nadia wasn’t exactly sure why the pastor and his wife had hired her. They pitied her, she knew, but who didn’t? At her mother’s funeral, in the front pew, she’d felt pity radiating toward her, along with a quiet anger that everyone was too polite to express, though she’d felt its heat tickling the back of her neck. “Who is in a position to condemn? Only God,” the pastor had said, opening his eulogy. But the fact that he’d led with that scripture only meant that the congregation had already condemned her mother, or worse, that he felt her mother had done something deserving of condemnation. At the repast, Sister Willis had pulled her into a hug and said, “I just can’t believe she did that to you,” as if her mother had shot Nadia, not herself.

  On the Sunday mornings that followed, her father never gave up knocking on her door but Nadia always turned away in bed, pretending to be asleep. He wouldn’t force her to go to church with him. He didn’t force her to do anything. Asking her already required enough energy. Sometimes she thought that she ought to join him; it would make him happy if she did. But then she remembered Sister Willis whispering into her ear and her stomach turned cold. How dare anyone at that church judge her mother? No one knew why she’d wanted to die. The worst part was that Upper Room’s judgment had made Nadia start to judge her mother too. Sometimes when she heard Sister Willis’s voice in her head, a part of her thought, I can’t believe she did that to me either.

  At Upper Room, Nadia tried not to think about the funeral. Ins
tead, she focused on the little jobs assigned to her. And they were all little because Mrs. Sheppard, brusque and businesslike, was the type of person who’d rather do something herself than show you how. (The type who would prefer to give a man a fish not only because she could catch a better one herself, but because she felt important being the only thing standing between that man and starvation.) Nadia hated how much time she spent studying Mrs. Sheppard and anticipating her desires. In the mornings, Nadia stood in front of her closet, searching for an outfit the older woman would like. No jeans, no shorts, no tank tops. Only slacks and blouses and modest dresses. As a California girl who rarely wore anything that didn’t show her legs or shoulders, Nadia didn’t own many outfits that met Mrs. Sheppard’s standards. But she hadn’t been paid yet and she couldn’t bring herself to ask her father for money, so a few nights a week she hunched over the bathroom sink, dabbing at the deodorant stains on the armpits with a wet towel. If Mrs. Sheppard noticed the repeated outfits, she didn’t say anything. Most days, she barely acknowledged Nadia at all, and Nadia couldn’t decide which was worse, the criticism or the indifference. She saw the way the first lady looked at Aubrey Evans—softly, as if a hard look might break her. What made that other girl so special?

  Nadia had run into Aubrey one morning outside the bathroom, both girls jolting at the sight of each other. “Hi,” Aubrey said. “What’re you doing here?” She was still wearing that floppy hat and baggy cargo shorts that made her look like a mailman.

  “Working,” Nadia said. “For Mrs. Sheppard. I do her bitch work, basically.”

  “Oh.” Aubrey had smiled but she seemed skittish, like a delicate bird landing on your knee. Too loud a motion, too wild a gesture, and she’d be sent flapping back into the trees. Her yellow flip-flops had sunflowers in the center, as if they were blooming from between her toes. Watching her flounce around in them, Nadia wanted to rip the flowers off. How dare she enjoy something so stupid? She imagined Aubrey Evans in the shoe store, passing rows of sensible black sandals and plucking that sunflower pair off the shelf instead. As if she believed herself deserving of every flourish.