“Tandi, I never meant to hurt you.”
“Of course not. Why would you, my dear mother, intentionally hurt me, your own flesh and blood? So you are my real mother, huh?”
Carline pursed her lips as her eyes filled with fresh tears.
“Then tell me, Mrs. Hughes. How is it that I ended up in this house without you?”
Carline rubbed Sporty’s hand as if for good luck. “When I found myself pregnant with you, I went back to the apartment in Los Angeles but Sporty had already gone back to New York. I didn’t blame him for leaving—he had every right to hate me.”
“But, I didn’t hate you,” Sporty said.
“I know that now,” Carline said, patting his hand. “I wanted so badly to get in touch with you, but I thought you would hate me even more for having another man’s baby on top of leaving you.”
“Lorraine, I told you, I would’ve taken you back.”
“I didn’t deserve you.”
“Spare me!” Tandi wanted to scream to relieve the tension in her chest. “I don’t care to hear what you felt for each other, I need to know how I got in this goddamn house.”
“Tandida, take it easy.”
“Did you ever take it easy on me, Daddy?”
Sporty could hold Tandi’s angry glare but a mere second. He dropped his eyes.
“It’s all right,” Carline said, assuring Sporty. “Tandi’s anger belongs on my shoulders.”
“No truer words,” Tandi said.
This time, Carline wasn’t fazed. “After I had you, I didn’t have a place to live. I didn’t have any real friends, and there were times when I wasn’t lucky enough to shack up with acquaintances or get a cot in a shelter. Many a night I slept on the street or in an alley on a cardboard box with you in my arms. It wasn’t a good life for you. I thought of giving you up for adoption but I was afraid I’d never know anything about you. I couldn’t go back to my family, so I took a chance that Sporty wouldn’t turn his back on me. You were three years old when I made my way back to New York. I knew where Sporty was because he had sent the address to our old neighbor, and I kept that address with me always. It was one of the hardest things I ever did, but I got up the courage to show up at Sporty’s apartment. I waited outside for hours for him to come home. All the while, I was praying he wouldn’t turn me away. When he came home, he had Glynn with him, and I wanted so badly to go up to him, to beg him to take me back, but I knew it was asking too much. I—”
“Excuse me,” Tandi interrupted. “Let me understand this. You say that asking him to take you back would have been asking too much?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, but asking him to take me, another man’s child, was a breeze?”
“No-no, it wasn’t easy, but Sporty was the only person on earth that I could turn to. I knew he wouldn’t turn his back on my child. He always had a kind heart.”
Tandi turned her back on both of them.
“Tandida,” Sporty said softly, “I know what you’re thinking.”
It struck Tandi that she had never heard Sporty say her name so softly before. She fought hard against the urge to cry.
“I know I was never kind to you. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry just isn’t enough.” Tandi began to feel a soreness in her shoulders. She began kneading the hard, tight muscle in her left shoulder. “Sorry can’t erase thirty-four years of sadness.”
“Please, don’t blame your father. He—”
Tandi whipped around. “My father? I thought you just said he wasn’t my father.”
“He’s the only father you’ve ever known, Tandi. Don’t blame him for what I did.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I have enough blame for you, too. I’ve always blamed you for leaving me, for dying. Oh, but you’re alive, aren’t you? Well, I—”
“Tandi, I hated that I couldn’t keep you with me,” Carline said quickly. “The first years of your life, I tried dragging you behind me, leaving you in places with people I didn’t know, but there were too many occasions when I had to run out in the middle of the night because someone had reported me to some child protective agency.
“Tandi, your life with me was hell on earth. I couldn’t raise you on the street never knowing if and when you would eat; not knowing where you would sleep, sometimes, from day to day. When I was in the gutter, used up and on drugs, I was afraid in my desperate hours I would sell you for a hit. A stupid hit, damnit!” Carline sobbed hard while Sporty tried to console her.
Tandi didn’t feel her heart beating; she didn’t feel herself breathing. She felt nothing, yet she knew she was wide awake because why else would such words shock her? She remembered none of those horrors of her early years, which was, perhaps, fortunate; it might have been one more scar on her psyche to contend with.
“Tandi, you can’t begin to imagine how low a life I was living. I didn’t want that life for you. Every day I was amazed that, somehow, with God’s help, I survived to see another morning. Every day I thanked God he gave me presence of mind to bring you to Sporty, and I thank God, too, that no matter how angry Sporty was at me for walking away without even the courtesy of a good-bye, he loved me enough to save your life.”
Carline gave up trying to dry her face.
“God knows, if Sporty didn’t take you, Tandi, you might have died on the streets; or if you had survived, you never would have grown up to be the woman you are today. And you are a strong woman, Tandi. I’ve seen that.”
“You don’t know anything about me!” Tandi’s stomach was as tight as a drum. She felt like she had to go to the bathroom. She sat again because she didn’t have the strength to stand. “I just can’t believe all these years of lies.”
“Tandida,” Sporty said, barely above a whisper, “when Lorraine left the first time, I was scared because I was alone with a baby to raise. When she left the second time, I was angry. I was really angry. I was angry because she wouldn’t stay, I was angry because now I had two children to take care of, and I was angry because I didn’t think I could do it alone. I had thought about getting with a woman, any woman, just so she could help me take care of you and Glynn, but I couldn’t be with anyone long enough to want to marry her or wake up with her every morning. I was so damn mad, I hated the world. I wanted Lorraine back, but she was too ashamed to be with me. I was even angrier with her for that. She was supposed to stand by me. She never called or sent a single postcard. I couldn’t forgive her for walking away and began to feel resentful. And, yes, every time I looked at you, I got even madder. I was wrong to make you the brunt of my anger.”
Tandi wouldn’t look at Sporty. With all her might she willed a shield of iron around her heart. She did not want to warm up to him. She did not want to be grateful to him for saving her life. She wanted to keep her anger with him burning like brilliant embers. She did not want his apology or his tears to mean anything to her, and mostly, she wasn’t comfortable with him being this humble. She preferred him bitter and mean. It was easier to hate him and Carline.
“Sporty,” Carline said sadly, “I’m so sorry.”
Although his chin was quivering, Sporty went on. “I grew more angry as each year you grew to look more and more like your mother. You were always a reminder that I still loved her, but couldn’t be with her. My life wasn’t any easier having to live with the secret of who my children were. That’s why I said Lorraine was dead. Her death was easier to explain. Tandida, I hope you can forgive us for the lies.”
Tandi made herself look at Sporty. With all that he put her through, she never would have imagined he had taken her in and raised her when she wasn’t even his own child. And no way would she have ever comprehended the depth of his suffering.
Sporty and Carline watched and waited for Tandi to say something, anything.
Rubbing her forehead in a slow circular motion, Tandi closed her eyes. If only when she opened them, she was sitting on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean with the sun and nothing else beating down on her head.
“Can I get you something?” Carline offered, starting to get up, snapping Tandi out of her wishful thoughts.
“No,” she said, looking at the sad, anxious faces in front of her. “So tell me. What am I supposed to do now?” She wasn’t expecting an answer. “Should I be thanking you for taking me in, or should I be thanking you for giving me up, or should I be saying ‘I hate you’ to both of you for doing what you did?” Tandi shrugged hopelessly. “Damn, I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” Carline said. “I’m the one who needs to ask your forgiveness.”
“That goes for me, too,” Sporty said.
The tears came again, betraying Tandi. “Forgiveness can only go so far,” she said. “It doesn’t erase the hurt. It only makes it bearable. Right now, I don’t know if I can forgive either of you. I mean, Dad . . . Sporty, you could’ve told me this years ago when I was ten years old and first questioned you as to whether you were my father. Who knows what a conversation like that could’ve done for our relationship?”
“I didn’t know how to tell you. I was afraid.”
“You? Afraid?”
“Yes, me! I’ve been afraid for years that you and Glynn would find out about me and your mother. I didn’t want you running away and ending up on the street.”
“Like I did,” Carline added.
Tandi went to pacing again. “I still can’t believe this.”
“After my stroke, and certainly before Lorraine came through that door, while I was scared you’d see right through me, I was terrified I’d die and you’d never know the truth.”
“You’re a coward! You should have told me and Glynn anyway!”
“I know, but I didn’t want you to know that you and your brother were all I had in the whole damn world. All I had to live for.”
Tandi drew her hand to her heart and let it lay there. “Don’t talk to me like that,” she cried. “I don’t wanna know about your fears, and I damn well don’t wanna know how you supposedly needed me. I know it’s all a lie.”
“It’s not. I should have shown you how much I really loved you, but—”
“Stop it!” she shrieked, slamming her hand down on the table. “I don’t wanna hear this!”
“Don’t blame Sporty for—”
“I’m not talking to you! I’m talking to him,” she said, pointing an accusatory finger at Sporty.
Carline clamped her mouth shut.
Tandi continued her attack. “Do you have any idea how badly I felt all of my life because you were so mean to me, or how much of an outsider I felt I was with you and Glynn?”
“Tandida, it’s not like I set out—”
“Mrs. Hughes,” she said, dismissing Sporty’s lame attempt to exorcise himself of any blame, “I have a question for you.” She waited until Carline looked at her.
“Who is my real father?”
Carline’s mouth started to move but it closed without a word being spoken.
Sporty tightened his hold on Carline’s hand.
“Do you even know? Can you venture a guess?”
Quiet tears eased over Carline’s lids and slipped down her cheeks. She whispered, “I don’t know.”
Tandi shook her head in despair. “This is such a cruel joke, but I don’t get the punch line. Aren’t I supposed to be laughing about now?”
Neither Carline nor Sporty had the courage to answer Tandi.
Tandi felt like her heart was caught in a vise, squeezing it, keeping it from pumping. “Oh, but I shouldn’t be so upset. I’m no one special. I’m not the first, and I certainly won’t be the last person born who will never know the identity of the man who donated his sperm.”
“I’m sorry, Tandi. I made some very bad choices that—”
“We both did,” Sporty said. “It’s not all your fault. I should have stayed in California and waited for you.”
“No, I—”
“Lorraine, I knew the stress you were under. I should have been there for you when you came back. I deserted you.”
Tandi was nauseated by their magnanimous gesture to shoulder the blame for each other. From her perspective, they were equally at fault.
“Sporty, I deserted you. I should have been stronger.”
“I wasn’t that strong myself or—”
“Oh, please!” Tandi shouted irritably. “Do this on your own time.”
Carline and Sporty both hushed up instantly.
“The truth is, neither of you did what you should have. Fine, you were pregnant before you learned that you were cousins, and fine, you didn’t want to abort Glynn, but you should have kept your commitment to raise him together, no matter the consequences. And when you saw that you couldn’t stand united and strong, you should have given him away.”
“We couldn’t,” Carline said while Sporty agreed with her by shaking his head.
“Oh, yes, you could’ve. You defied your parents, you defied the world, but neither of you honored your so-called commitment to each other. And look at you, both of you ended up alone—one as a bitter old man and the other, a woman hiding in the shadows, stealing peeks at the family she threw away. You know what you should have done when you realized you couldn’t raise me, Mrs. Hughes? You should have given me up to strangers. I would have been treated better.”
“Please, Tandi, don’t say that. I just didn’t know what else to do. I was—”
“Tandida, your mother was hurt when she—”
“She gave up her right to be called my mother. Glynn and I—Oh, Lord. Glynn. How will he take this God-awful revelation?”
Carline and Sporty looked fearfully into each other’s eyes.
Struck by the look that passed between them, Tandi gasped. “You hadn’t planned on telling him or me, had you? If I hadn’t happened upon the scene in the bedroom and questioned it, you would have never told me a damn thing.”
“We were waiting for the right time,” Carline said.
“Wasn’t that more than thirty years ago?”
Neither answered her.
“You people are heartless. Hasn’t the festering of your sordid secret tale taught you anything? Don’t you understand that all of what we’re dealing with now could have been avoided?”
When her eyes were awash with tears, Carline closed them.
“Tandida, please, you have to understand—”
“No, I don’t, but I have a big question for you both.”
They both looked like they were waiting for an earthquake to open up a gaping hole under them.
“Now that you’ve supposedly spoken your truth, what are you expecting from me? From Glynn? And, tell me, please, with our skeletons rattling out in the open, are we supposed to be the happy family that we never were and have picnics in the park and sing carols around the Christmas tree?”
Carline and Sporty looked to each other to answer. Tandi waited while they seemed to be searching for the answer in each other’s face.
“Can’t answer that, can you? I didn’t think so. This is all the more reason why you should have thought about me and Glynn, and not just about what you wanted for yourselves. And, dare I ask, what is the relationship between the two of you supposed to be now?”
Carline and Sporty continued holding each other’s gaze and in that gaze, they saw the answer, and so did Tandi.
57
Tandi could only guess that Carline had stayed the night in Sporty’s bedroom, the two of them—cousins, distant relatives/distant lovers—whispering about their past and speaking with high hopes and mild trepidations about their future. They were old and couldn’t care less anymore about what people would think—that is if people ever knew. Perhaps, years ago they had been too young to anticipate the consequences of their actions, but Tandi didn’t see where their maturity was working to their advantage. Their coming together would solve nothing. If anything, it would complicate her and Glynn’s lives more, that is if Glynn was ever told. She had decided against calling him the previous night. Such ho
rrific news of his parentage should come from Carline and Sporty—they owed him that. However, if they didn’t voluntarily tell him real soon, like within the next forty-eight hours, she would force their hand and have Glynn come over and introduce Carline to him as his mother. He hadn’t even laid eyes on her yet.
The night before, she left Carline and Sporty in the kitchen without a backward glance. She went up to her childhood bedroom. It was where she needed to be—alone with the childhood doubts and memories that she could finally put to rest. After a sleepless night, she had left the house early without saying good-bye, without having seen or heard either Carline or Sporty stir on the other side of the bedroom door. God, how strange to know that her mother was alive and just on the other side of a piece of wood an inch and a half thick. All her life she had craved to know her mother, and now that she did, she wished she didn’t. God, how awful it was to feel that way. Tandi never imagined she could feel such anger or be in such pain, such confusion.
With nothing else on her mind, being at work was the last place she should have been but she had nowhere else to go, which was the story of her life, which was why she was in the quandary she was in in the first place. She felt like she would burst wide open if she didn’t tell someone about Sporty and Carline. She didn’t want their secret to fester in her mind and destroy her and make her bitter like it did Sporty. She needed to talk to someone. The problem was to whom? At another time, right away, she would have called Evonne with such juicy gossip, especially if it was about someone else, but she was no longer speaking to Evonne, and this juicy gossip wasn’t about someone else. It was about her, and she was brimming with shame. She couldn’t confide in Daina as confiding in Daina was like confiding in Jared, and she just wasn’t ready to tell him about the mess of a family he had married into. The irony of it all wasn’t lost on her. By the time her date with Jared ended last night, she was no longer eager to end their marriage, but once he found out about Carline, he might want to end it himself, and without him and Michael Jared, she had no family. Suddenly the possibility of losing Jared scared her. Then again, if she went back to him now and never told him about Carline and Sporty and he later learned about them, he might not believe that she came back to him because she loved him. Oh, God, what was she supposed to do? The pain of discovery and potential loss was rendering her helpless as well as hopeless. Why did she have to demand the truth? Why was she so bullheaded? She didn’t see a glimmer of a way out of this black hole of deceit and confusion.
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