Letting Go

by Pamela Morsi

  “We like the Baptist church,” Ellen pointed out evenly.

  “Catholics, Episcopals, even Methodists always manage to get out of church on time,” Amber pointed out. “Those Baptists would keep you in the pew all day if they could.”

  “Jet loves this church,” Ellen pointed out. “They have been very welcoming to her.”

  Amber snorted in disbelief.

  “It’s true,” Ellen said. “Everybody smiles and waves at Jet. As one of the biracial children in the church she’s a semicelebrity.”

  “And you think that’s a good thing?” Amber asked.

  Ellen wasn’t honestly sure. Was it better to blend in and feel ordinary or to believe from the outset that you are unique?

  “At least she’s meeting other children,” Ellen said.

  “Yeah, and being accepted by them as a token,” Amber replied. “All those nice little white children are going home and being patted on the head for their racial tolerance. How good they are to forgive her for the color of her skin. How nice they are to be friends with her, even if she’s a child of color.”

  Ellen set her jaw tightly and tried to hold on to her temper. “Why do you persist in believing the worst of people?”

  “Because it’s most likely to be true,” Amber answered with a sarcastic chuckle. “Baptist is a synonym for bigot, look it up in your thesaurus.”

  Ellen rolled her eyes before responding. “It’s one of those weird inexplicably skewed perceptions that Baptists who happen to be African-American are considered fine, upstanding people, leaders in their communities. But white people with exactly the same beliefs are narrow-minded, ignorant, rednecks. What is that about?”

  Amber didn’t even attempt to justify her prejudice. “So you’re going to raise Jet among the ignorant rednecks in the hope that she’ll end up a leader in a black community.”

  “I’m just trying to give her a religious experience that isn’t race based,” Ellen said.

  “Not race based?” Amber asked. “I’d say that race is pretty much all that congregation is based on.”

  “This is the best that I can figure out. What would you do?” Ellen challenged. “What’s your plan to make a way for your daughter in this world?”

  Amber’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t have a plan and Jet doesn’t need a plan,” she said. “Unlike you, I don’t see field trips to the hood and instruction on homeboy culture as necessary. You’re living in the past, Mother. By the time Jet grows up, half the country will be as multiracial as Tiger Woods.”

  “Well unless she turns out to be really good at golf, I doubt the other half will be all that accepting,” Ellen said. “She’s going to need to know who she is. She’s going to need to know where she fits in.”

  “She fits in as my daughter,” Amber insisted angrily. “She’s not black. She’s not white. She’s not even biracial. I hate these stupid terms. She’s just mine and that will be e-goddamned-nough!”

  “It might be enough if you took any thought or interest whatsoever in her upbringing,” Ellen said.

  “Screw you.”

  “Don’t you use that kind of talk in this house.”

  “It’s not your house!”

  “Stop it, both of you,” Wilma intervened with a scolding whisper. “Do you think the child is deaf or that the kitchen is in the next building?”

  Amber shrugged in that tough, I don’t care manner that she effected so well. At least nothing more was said.

  Ellen was genuinely contrite. She’d known when they’d walked in that Amber was itching for a fight. She should have avoided any kind of discussion at all. Certainly not one concerning Jet.

  Wilma changed the subject.

  “I hope while you were busy praying all morning you got around to asking God to find us a place to live.”

  “We don’t need a place to live,” Ellen said. “We’re all settled in right here. I’m not letting anyone take this place away from you. I’ll figure out a way to get around your stepchildren. This is Texas. People don’t get thrown out on the street here.”

  Amber chuckled. “Yeah, they don’t get thrown out, they just sort of ride off into the sunset.”

  Wilma thought that was pretty funny.

  8

  Amber was on the phone when, unexpectedly, Carly showed up at work. She considered pretending it was a business call, but decided she could never pull it off and why bother anyway.

  “The place is dead this afternoon, but I’ve got to close so I won’t be able to meet you until after eight.”

  “After eight is good,” Gwen answered. “It’s just going to be us.”

  “What’s with Kayla?”

  “You know she actually heard from Brian, that little shrimpy flyboy that she did a couple of weeks ago.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Yeah,” Gwen answered. “He like e-mailed her at work and now she hears from him every day.”

  “That’s great,” Amber said.

  “Well, yeah, I guess,” Gwen said. “But she is just totally into it and she doesn’t want to do nothing. I go, ‘hanging around your apartment waiting for him to come back this way, will get you nada and make you fat.’ But she goes, ‘I like him and he likes me. I just can’t get psyched for going out.’”

  “I get that,” Amber said. “I mean I totally get it. Going out every night gets as boring as anything else.”

  “Yeah, well, her thing with this guy will just come to nothing,” Gwen said. “Kayla will never see that loser again. He’s just going to string her. And when she finally realizes that she’s been played, you and I will have moved on and she’ll have nobody to party with at all.”

  Amber hoped very much that Gwen was wrong.

  She caught Carly’s censoring glance from across the room and spoke more quietly into the telephone.

  “The evil boss is giving me the eye,” Amber whispered into the receiver.

  “Oh, screw her,” Gwen responded.

  “She has no reason to get snippy with me,” Amber said. “I’m completely caught up and, with Metsy and I both here, she doesn’t even need to hang around.”

  “You should quit,” Gwen told her. “Why waste your time selling panties. You hardly ever meet any guys there. And never any guys who are unattached. I’m sure I could get you a job here at the hotel. Wouldn’t that be, like, so cool. We could work together.”

  Amber refrained from commenting. She didn’t share her friend’s enthusiasm. She liked retail and was not even slightly tempted by a hotel job. Deftly she changed the subject.

  “What’s happening with the apartment?” she asked Gwen.

  “It’s ready, and they are ready,” her friend answered. “I can’t keep stalling them forever. We’ve got to come up with the cleaning deposit. I think I can get that this weekend.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, there’s like a national dry cleaners convention at the hotel. Lots of old guys on the loose. I’ll get somebody to party with and easily pick up a couple of hundred.”

  Amber hesitated momentarily. “You’re joking, right?”

  Gwen chuckled. “Oh, puh-leeze, Amber. Talk about your mother being an escapee from Goody-Two-shoes land. Get a grip, girl. When the weekend rolls around I’m going to end up having sex with some loser. It happens almost every weekend. I might as well know that up front. And if, once in a while, I bring home a few bucks instead of a broken heart, what-the-hell.”

  Amber had to admit, it sounded reasonable. But it was troubling, just the same.

  “Have you told your mother about the apartment yet?” Gwen asked.

  “No,” Amber answered. “I was going to tell her yesterday, but she was late getting home from church and I was pissed off and started a fight. Stupid really, I don’t know why I’ve got to fight over the same old things again and again.”

  “You just need to lose that woman. She’s bringing you down,” Gwen said, impatiently. “We’ve got to get going on this.”

  “I know,” Ambe
r agreed. “I just…I don’t know…I hate to do it.”

  “Yeah, I know, there’ll be a big blow up and lots of threats,” Gwen said. “It was the same with my mother. She told me if I walked out now not to ever expect to get Dwight back.”

  “She said that.”

  “Yeah, but I just blew it off,” Gwen said. “I told her she could have him. If I get to wanting a kid, I can always have another one.”

  “Oh, my God, you said that?”

  “It’s all bluff, Amber,” Gwen said. “She doesn’t want to be stuck with that flaky little brat any more than I do. She’s just trying to control things. But I run my own life now. So she can just go screw herself.”

  Amber felt nauseated.

  “I’m not sure I really want to give Jet up,” she said.

  “You’re doing the best thing for her,” Gwen insisted. “She’ll have your mother and grandmother. She doesn’t need you. And, for damn sure, you don’t need her.”

  Carly walked by, her tone acerbic. “There are customers in the front, if you’re not too busy.”

  Amber felt like making some rude comeback, but she didn’t.

  “I’ve got to go, Gwen,” Amber said.

  “Okay, see you at Durty Nellys a little after eight.”

  “Make it The Tunnel,” Amber suggested. “If I’m going to be surrounded by tourists at least they won’t be singing.”

  Gwen laughed and agreed.

  Amber hung up the phone. She didn’t so much as glance in Carly’s direction, but she dutifully headed toward the front of the store. She heard the customers before she saw them. There was the tap of little feet and a delighted childish giggle.

  Carly hated having kids in the store. They weren’t really customers and they routinely made a mess of things.

  Amber’s perspective on it was a little different. The accompanying adult would not have darkened the door unless he/she was serious about buying something. And rather than dallying over the choice, a decision about what to purchase would be made before the child had time to become bored, restless or out of control. A quick no muss, no fuss sale. Amber liked it that way.

  The man, facing away from her, was young but well dressed in a well-cut, expensive Italian suit. Probably could afford the best, she thought.

  “May I help you?”

  Before he had a chance to respond, her own little Jet came charging out from underneath a rack of lace teddies. She was wearing a see-through, sparkle-fringed thong upon her head.

  “Hi, Mama!” she said, excitedly. “We came to see you at work.”

  “Jet? What are you doing here?” she asked the child as she removed the fancy panties from her head.

  “I came with Mr. Brent,” she said. “We’re having lunch here and we come to ’vite you.”

  Amber glanced up, surprised. The young man she had failed to recognize from the back was her former friend from high school.

  “I didn’t recognize you without a ball cap and T-shirt,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Hey, I clean up pretty well.”

  She nodded. “So then why aren’t you across town? No justice today at the Justice Center?”

  “Lunch,” he replied. “Jet and I are having lunch.”

  Amber looked incredulously at first one and then the other. “You and Brent are having lunch together?” she asked Jet.

  The little girl nodded affirmatively. “We have lunch together every day,” she said. “Just today, we come to ’vite you.”

  Brent was grinning at her. “Have you already eaten?”

  “Ah, no,” Amber answered. “But I usually don’t take a lunch break until later.”

  “Oh, please, Mama, please come with us,” Jet said.

  Amber looked down in the little girl’s eyes and her heart melted. She didn’t want to deny this child anything. And the way things always worked out, it seemed like she denied her everything.

  “I brought a sandwich with me,” she told Jet. “And besides, I don’t know if my boss will go for it.”

  The child’s smile faded and she nodded accepting.

  “Let’s go ask her,” Brent suggested, butting in.

  Jet looked up at him, immediately hopeful.

  “Will she say ‘yes’?” she asked.

  Brent shrugged. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.”

  Sometimes, Amber thought, it did hurt to ask. And she was pretty sure this was going to be one of those times. Amber would have to lower herself to even make such a request. And Carly would take great delight in demonstrating her authority by forbidding it.

  “No,” Amber said. “I’m sure that I can’t go. Maybe another time.”

  “Come on, Amber,” Brent said. “At least ask.”

  “I’d rather not. We’re not having a good day.”

  “It’s as dead as Elvis in this mall today,” Brent said. “She doesn’t need you.”

  “It’s not a case of need.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s called a job, Brent. A real job,” Amber said, snidely. “A preppy, college boy like you wouldn’t understand.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “If you won’t ask her, I will.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “Let me! Let me!” Jet called out and was racing toward the back before Amber could stop her.

  “No wait,” she called out. Amber managed to catch up with her, but not before they had attracted Carly’s attention.

  “Are you my mama’s boss?” Jet asked.

  Carly came walking across the room toward them. She was eyeing Jet critically. Amber felt almost as if she should step in front of the child to protect her.

  “Who is your mama?” Carly asked, missing the obvious connection.

  Jet clasped her mother’s hand in her own.

  “Amber Nicole Jameson,” she answered.

  Carly looked at the child, then at Amber. Her jaw actually dropped open.

  “This is your little girl?”

  “Yes, she is,” Amber tried to keep her tone neutral, but there was a hint of the defensiveness in it.

  “She is…” Carly hesitated. And then in a change so abrupt and drastic, Amber was almost at a loss, Carly’s face brightened into a smile and she leaned down to get a closer look. “She is as cute as a button. Amber, you didn’t tell us that she’s as cute as a button.”

  Jet wrinkled her nose. “I’m not a button, I’m a girl,” she explained.

  Brent stepped up and offered his hand. “Hi, I’m Brent.”

  “Hi,” Carly took his hand politely, glancing quickly at Amber and Jet as if trying to make some kind of connection.

  “I’m Jet’s lunch date,” Brent explained. “But she’s under age. Way under age, actually. And she thinks she needs a chaperon. We came to see if her mother might be available.”

  “I told them that I’ve got way too much to do,” Amber said, wanting to decline before Carly had a chance to refuse her.

  “Don’t be silly,” Carly said. “The store’s at a standstill and you’re going to be here until closing. Go ahead. Have a nice lunch with your daughter.”

  Jet squealed with delight and jumped up and down.

  Amber shot a glance at Brent. His grin felt like a challenge. She could hardly insist that she not go.

  “Let me get my purse,” she said and headed toward the back.

  She was annoyed. Not at Jet. She was glad to see Jet. But what on earth was her daughter doing with Brent Velasco.

  By the time she returned Metsy had joined the little confab. She and Carly were chatting with Brent and Jet as if they were all old friends.

  When the child saw Amber, however, she hurried over and grabbed her hand.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” Amber told Carly.

  “Take your time,” she said. “Metsy and I can surely handle anything that comes up on a slow day like this one.”

  “Are you sure we can’t bring you ladies something?” Brent asked. “Tortellini? Manicotti?
A liter of wine?”

  The two laughed and waved them off. Amber was smiling, but she didn’t feel like it.

  They walked through the mall toward Freddie’s Fast Italian. Jet was still holding Amber’s hand and swinging her arm up and back. She was telling her mother about her adventures in the parking garage.

  “And when you go around the corner,” she explained. “You honk the horn so the other cars will know that you’re there. ’Cause we don’t want them running into us and smashing up Mr. Brent’s car.”

  “No, we wouldn’t want that,” Amber agreed. She glanced over at Brent. “Mr. Brent?”

  He shrugged. “It was her own idea. She told me that she’s supposed to call grown-ups mister or missus.”

  Amber rolled her eyes.

  “My mother’s idea no doubt.”

  Brent nodded, agreeing. “I kind of like it,” he said.

  The restaurant, mirroring the mall itself, wasn’t particularly crowded. They were seated right away in a corner overlooking the bend in the river, two flights below. The table’s one inch square tiles of red and white mimicked the traditional Italian restaurant tablecloth. The food was also a quick and easy imitation of Neapolitan cuisine.

  “I want spaghetti,” Jet announced. “But no garly bread, just regular bread.”

  “Okay,” Brent said. “Same for me, except I like garlic bread. It keeps vampires away.”

  “It does not,” Jet challenged. “There aren’t any vampires.”

  “My point exactly,” he joked.

  “Can Mr. Brent come to my birthday party?” Jet asked.

  “What birthday party?”

  “Wilma says I’m having a cake and candles and everything,” Jet told her. “Can I ’vite Mr. Brent?”

  Amber shrugged. “Hey, it’s okay by me.”

  Since Brent was apparently buying lunch, Amber didn’t scrimp on her order. She rarely had the luxury of a sit-down restaurant. And money she spent on food was cash she wouldn’t have for partying. If Brent was paying, she was going to scarf down as much as she could manage.

  “So what’s this about you and Jet having lunch together every day?” Amber asked.

  The two looked at each other.

  Jet cupped her hands in front of her mouth as if whispering. “It’s a secret,” she said.