A Kind of Freedom

by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

  “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

  By habit Jackie did as she was told, though the truth was she should have made up an excuse, any excuse, as to why she couldn’t be hospitable. Terry would be home any minute.

  “You want some Kool-Aid or something like that?” Jackie asked.

  “I’ll take a Coke, diet if you have it,” Sybil called out, and Jackie moved to the kitchen as though she were on autopilot.

  “It’s looking good in here, Jackie Marie. I expected a cyclone like the last few times. Mama said you were getting it together, but I had to see for myself.” Jackie was back now with the drink. Sybil took a sip before adding. “It’s good to see that you’re everything she said you were.”

  Jackie sat opposite her sister. In a minute she would get herself together enough to ask her to leave. She would be polite about it, but assertive, and she wouldn’t let up until Sybil was out the door. Any minute now she would figure out how to do that very thing.

  “I was just in the neighborhood,” Sybil went on. “I have a client out here. I don’t usually make house calls of course, they come to me, but this one”—she shook her head—“I can’t trust him to lead himself to the bathroom on time, much less make it downtown to my office.”

  “What’d he do?” Jackie asked to extend the time between the present and the moment she’d act.

  Sybil shook her head again. “Selling. It’s a favor for one of

  Mama’s friends’ sons. You know I don’t represent those lowlifes anymore. But any day now, I’m going to get that contract, and all of this is going to be behind me, favor or not. See, these corporations don’t want to go to trial, they can’t risk a bad reputation, they’d rather just write a big check and forget somebody ever slipped in their bathroom, or that a whole class of kids got food poisoning from their meat. It’s easy money with them, not like this nigger mess.” She took another sip from her can, a sip so dainty Jackie couldn’t even see her swallow. “Like for instance, this man today said he was done, right, but in the few minutes I was at his house, five crackheads knocked at the door, skinny as light poles, eyes darting everywhere, no teeth. I don’t know how these people start this junk, don’t they see what it does to everybody around them?” She shook her head again. “And I damn sure don’t know how you do it, Jackie, living next door to these clowns. My client might as well be your neighbor, he’s just a few blocks away, been dealing for a full year, just got caught for the first time, and wants to tell me it’s not fair. He didn’t have a choice. He’s listing off the people who depend on him. Of course he’s got two kids. He’s barely twenty. His mama’s in a wheelchair, his daddy’s in jail, blah blah blah. I should carry a harp around in my briefcase.”

  Sybil kept going, oblivious to the fact Jackie had tuned her out. Jackie heard the baby stir, and she jumped up.

  “Sybil, I’ve got to take T.C. to the doctor,” she said. “That’s why I’m home today, he woke up sick, so I made an appointment”—she checked her watch—“for four thirty, so I need to get him dressed.”

  “Oh, I know, Mama told me; my poor baby, let me see him,” Sybil stood with her and headed to the back of the house where he slept.

  Jackie passed the window on the way to her bedroom, peered out to see if her car was pulling into the lot, but no, not yet. By the time she reached the baby, Sybil had scooped him up, was petting his back, and he’d resettled on her shoulder.

  “It was good to see you but—” Jackie started.

  “Let me help you get ready, Jackie,” Sybil said.

  Usually when Sybil talked she carried an air of authority, and what could Jackie say to refute it, because it had been earned? But now she sounded more desperate than assertive, as though holding this child was the best thing that would happen to her all day, all week even, and she wasn’t going to push her way in, but that didn’t mean she didn’t need it.

  “Okay,” Jackie said. “Okay,” she repeated.

  Jackie changed the baby’s diaper, and Sybil peered over her shoulder. Jackie found with her sister watching, her hands shook; she had changed thousands of diapers in the past seven months, but she tore the tape off the first one and had to start again. In the meantime the baby peed in the air, sprinkling them both. Jackie was mortified—ordinarily, she never left his penis uncovered—but with her sister there, she’d forgotten. Sybil just laughed though, a deep guttural sound that seemed genuine.

  When they were done, they walked back to the living room. Sybil held the baby while Jackie packed her diaper bag. Jackie began to relax; it seemed as if she just might have enough time to push her sister out before Terry came home. Of course there was no doctor’s appointment, but Jackie could drive in that direction then veer off to the grocery store or the park. She hitched her bag on her shoulder, reached out for the baby.

  “I can carry him to the car,” Sybil said. “Give you a break.”

  Jackie nodded. What was the use in fighting now? She had made it. She was a few feet from the door when she heard keys jingling in the lock, saw the knob turning. Jackie stopped where she was. She wasn’t surprised, nor angry, nor disappointed even, just resigned. She had been expecting it all along she saw now, and maybe it was ordained. Sybil turned to her but Jackie just looked straight ahead, waiting.

  The door swung open and Terry started to walk in, then stopped.

  They all stood in silence, even the baby, who seemed to sense the tension of the moment.

  Finally, Terry walked over and hugged Sybil.

  “You’re looking good, girl,” he said. “Looking real good. Jackie tells me you’re big-time now.”

  Sybil nodded, speechless, but unwilling to ignore a compliment.

  “I don’t know how much you know,” he went on, “but”—he walked over to Jackie and grabbed her hand—“I’ve been clean and sober for going on three months now; I’m getting myself together. It’s a process, but I’m taking it day by day.”

  Moment by moment, Jackie thought to add but stayed silent. He was explaining enough for both of them, and she couldn’t help but notice that all the extra talk weakened his case. Still, she grabbed his hand.

  “And then, Jackie,” he turned to her, smiling, then glanced back at Sybil, “Jackie doesn’t know this yet, but I got a job today.”

  “Where?” Sybil asked. It was the first thing she’d said, and it came out cold.

  “At a mail-order specialty pharmacy,” he paused, “in the Lower Ninth Ward. Not at the Walgreens or anything like that.” He looked down. “It’s going to take time to get back to that level.”

  Sybil nodded, smug, seeming to smirk. She had been holding the baby but she passed him over to his father.

  “Well, you have a lot of motivation in this one.” She smacked a kiss on the baby’s face, didn’t bother to wipe the lipstick lingering on his chin.

  T.C. cried when his father took him, and Jackie had to console him.

  “He never does that,” Jackie said to no one in particular but loud enough for her sister to hear. “He’s so crazy about his daddy, he never does that,” she repeated.

  Sybil smiled that smug smile again, then headed for the door. A few minutes later Jackie heard her sister’s BMW engine start, but it was as if Sybil were still there. Her doubt had rubbed off on Jackie, and she stood in the hallway for a while after the door closed, feeling dashed. It was only after a few minutes that she remembered she should congratulate her husband.

  She smiled the way she would before he’d come back and she needed to convince the world she was handling his absence okay. She spoke in staccato, her volume rising and falling in big loops.

  “I’m so proud of you,” she said, and she supposed she was, or she would have been if her sister hadn’t come over and transplanted her mind into Jackie’s, if Jackie had time to just sit with the news and process it according to her own values and dreams.

  “
You don’t seem excited,” Terry said over dinner. “What is it?”

  Jackie didn’t know how to respond, so she focused on her plate, fumbled with the napkin in her lap. She had added too much salt to the greens, but the chicken was tender and the rice wasn’t overcooked.

  “What is it?” he repeated. “I know it’s not what we’re used to, but the pay is all right, it’s something, and it’ll get me started. My sponsor says it’s important for me to have a routine. It’ll help set me back where I was before all this.” He waved his hand in a broad swoop, seeming to indicate the apartment, the neighborhood beyond it.

  Hearing him express so much pride over a job he wouldn’t have considered a year earlier filled Jackie with a guilt that she didn’t think she’d be able to discard, it wrapped so thoroughly around her insides. Still she tried.

  “No, baby,” she said, grabbing his hand, “it’s not you, it’s me; well, it’s my goddamn sister.” She heard her voice stretch, rise. “I didn’t invite her over here, you know; she just came. She just let herself in, she just took over like always, and now—well, we’d decided we’d wait to tell my family, that it would just add another layer of pressure, a group of people waiting on you to fail.”

  “I don’t think they’re waiting on me to fail,” Terry said softly.

  Jackie didn’t respond.

  “I don’t think that,” he repeated. “I think they want me to do well, I think they want us to do well, but they feel like they can’t trust me, understandably so.” He paused. “Sometimes I think I can’t trust myself.” He dropped her hand.

  “She didn’t seem upset though,” Jackie went on, not noticing Terry had turned away from her. “Maybe she won’t even mention it to my parents.” Jackie had barely got the thought out before she realized how ludicrous it sounded. Sybil had told on her for smoking a cigarette outside the mall when she was fourteen. She had told on her for scamming the liquor store into delivering beer by ordering it alongside her pizza. She had told on her when she found a condom wrapper in her wastebasket when she was seventeen. So there was no way Sybil was keeping this to herself. “Maybe my parents won’t care.”

  “Goddamn it, Jackie,” Terry shouted. He threw his napkin against the table with such force Jackie expected it to make a sound, but it just fell flat. “You’re not fourteen years old anymore, girl. It doesn’t matter what they think; this is about us.”

  She was startled by his outburst, but it leveled her, brought her back to where she was sitting, the man she was sitting beside.

  She shook her head. She knew he was right, but it wouldn’t have occurred to her if he hadn’t mentioned it. She had always been young-minded, leaned too hard on her family’s opinion of her, but there was more to it now. She had a reason to rely on them, to care what they thought. For the last few months, they’d been all that she had.

  “What do you want me to say?” she belted out. “I have to think about what they want, what they care about, because if this doesn’t go well, they’re all I have to depend on.” She paused. She wondered if she should have let him into her worry, if it would infect him, send him back on those streets. She kept going. “I’m afraid, Terry. I’m terrified. I’m trying to stay in the moment, but I told myself I’d never let you in again, and here I am, looking forward to you coming home, letting the baby warm up to you.” She started crying when she thought about her son. “I didn’t think it would be this easy to fall back into where we were.”

  “I didn’t think so either,” he said. He reached for her hand again. “I’m scared too,” he added. “I’m scared too.”

  The next morning Jackie woke up with a new resolve. Nothing had happened in the night. She and Terry hadn’t said much after their conversation at dinner, just drifted off into sleep at different times in front of MacGyver. But she woke up as if they’d had a healing discussion, as if she’d been shown a reel from their future, a future she’d designed with her decision to accept him, and in it they were impenetrable to threat.

  “I’m so sorry about yesterday,” she said as she dressed.

  “Don’t be sorry.” He was still waking up and he grunted more than spoke. “I get it. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

  “No, really, listen.” She hobbled over to him, her legs only halfway inside her pantyhose, hot rollers clipped in her hair. “I want to celebrate you. You deserve to be celebrated. Two months without—” she couldn’t even say the word crack, she didn’t think she would need to say it again. “That’s something. I don’t know how hard it is, but I can imagine, and then you got this new job too.”

  She looked for him to smile but there was nothing. He seemed to still be waking up.

  “Will you be home tonight?” she asked.

  “Nowhere else I’d be.”

  “Okay, I’m going to come up with a plan at work then, and I’ll give you a call.” She said it as if it were a question.

  He propped himself up on his elbows, seeming more engaged now, trying to pull her back to bed. They still hadn’t had sex, and she wanted to, now more than ever, but she was running late.

  “Tonight,” she said, kissing his forehead. “I promise, tonight.”

  When she got to work, her excitement diminished only a little at the thought that her parents might have spoken to Sybil. She told herself she didn’t care if they did, and she believed it. She didn’t have anything to be ashamed of; she was taking a chance on her family. Anyway, when she’d said those vows, she had meant them. In sickness and in health, and wasn’t this a form of sickness? There were people like Sybil who believed his behavior was willful, but she’d seen him battle those cravings in the beginning. Sometimes it was all he could do to sit on his hands to keep them from shaking. She’d seen him stand up, head to the door, place his hand on the knob dozens of times, then force himself back to the sofa before finally acquiescing and slamming the door behind him. And now he had come so far.

  Jackie’s mama spoke in a normal bouncy voice, all, “Hey, baby, sleep okay? You look rested. How do you feel?”

  Jackie hesitated before responding, but her mama just picked up her slack, answered her own questions, filled her in on the babies who were sick, and the mamas who’d be late.

  “That Bradley boy has wet himself five times today. Five times and it’s barely nine. I told his mama he’s not ready but she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get it. She said her daughter was potty trained at three. I said boys are different than girls and she accused me of being sexist.” She shook her head. “These modern parents, I’ll never understand them. And I don’t want to,” she added.

  Jackie shook her head as if to say me neither. She set her purse in her cubby, looked through her sign-in sheet—all her kids had already arrived. They were still scattered throughout the room, a handful at the Play-Doh table, some at the art station, and a couple outside on the trampoline. For a moment she just watched them, suspended from the day’s requirements, from the previous night’s tension. Terry was satisfied; her mother still approved of her choices; and more than that, Jackie believed in her own decision. Normally she couldn’t order a meal without questioning herself. Even deciding which movie to watch pained her; suddenly each future minute would feel too worthy to undermine with an imperfect choice. But now she was at peace; something close to surrender settled inside her, more fulfilling than surrender because she was certain of the outcome.

  She called Terry during her break to tell him to meet her at City Park. She left the baby with her mama, then drove home to change. She picked over what to wear for too long before she decided on a red scarf, tight blue jeans, a black-and-white striped shirt, and tall boots. Her appetite had eased up since Terry’s return, and she liked the way her shirt lay flat all the way to her waist even when she sat down. She wavered between red and pink lipstick. She didn’t usually wear any on outings with T.C., but the red looked so good against the scarf and this was going out with h
er husband. How often had she spent time with an adult who wasn’t her mama lately?

  They had agreed to meet at the parking lot north of Big Lake. Terry was always early, but Jackie ran on time, and just like old times, when she got out of the car he was already there in his navy-blue down jacket, his hands in the pockets of the jeans she’d given him last Christmas. She marveled at the sight of him right where he was supposed to be, where she had been expecting him, and she couldn’t imagine anything brighter, him waiting for her on the edge of the lake, beside an oak tree strung up with wind chimes ringing out a five-note scale.

  “You look good,” Jackie said. She was nervous and she looked down when she reached him.

  “You too.”

  He didn’t move his hands from his pockets, and she wondered if he was nervous too. It felt funny being here without the baby, like a first date with someone she’d spoken to only on the phone a few times, and even though those calls had been comfortable, the new context unnerved them.

  He reached out suddenly and they hugged with just one arm; when their heads collided, they laughed.

  “This is nice,” he said, seeming more comfortable, looking around at the women hustling down the path with strollers, the water rippling in the breeze. “Real nice. What do you do here though?”

  They laughed again.

  “I normally come out with the baby,” she said. “We walk a few loops around the water.” She pointed to the lake, the ducks swimming along its shiny top. “Then find a bench and relax. We could do that now, if it’s all right with you.”

  He nodded, and they started. They passed cyclists with babies behind their seats, picnickers sharing sliced oranges with their children, and Jackie felt comfortable enough to smile at them; most times she was alone at this park with T.C., flashing her wedding ring to whomever might be looking, as if it meant anything if there was no one beside her.