Once she was out of sight, Aunt Toe asked Yolanda, “Is that Joyce Ann smellin’ like that?”
“Yes, Aunt Toe.” Yolanda bugged her eyes, glad she wasn’t the only one to notice that there was something seriously wrong.
“Gloria May!” Aunt Toe yelled toward the kitchen.
“Yes?”
“Could you come here, please?”
“What?” she answered again, walking into the living room. “What is it that can’t wait?”
Aunt Toe poked her lips out, closed her eyes, and, with a point of her finger, directed Gloria’s attention to Yolanda.
“Somebody needs to be taking care of Aunt Joyce Ann. This is getting out of control. She’s not even bathing anymore,” Yolanda whispered.
“I’ll talk to her.” Gloria looked back toward the kitchen, making sure that Joyce Ann was out of hearing distance.
“You betta listen to this girl,” Aunt Toe reiterated. “Joyce Ann just came through here smellin’ like an armpit factory.”
“Aunt Toe, ain’t no such thing as an armpit factory,” Gloria rerouted the comment.
“Well, we got the first one on the map right in this house. Didn’t you smell her?” Aunt Toe asked.
“She just needs a bath,” Gloria said between clenched teeth.
“She’s sick.” Yolanda matched Gloria’s anger. “You can’t keep walking around the elephants in your life, Momma. She’s not getting any better.”
“What do you want me to do, treat her like a baby? She’s got her pride, you know,” Gloria argued.
“But she ain’t got her head on straight, Gloria. Anybody can see that.” Aunt Toe spoke the truth far more candidly than Yolanda could.
“People said I was crazy, too, when Willie died.”
“You was.” Aunt Toe bobbed her head up and down. “Grief and hurt and pain can do that to anybody—for a little while. But most peoples learn to move on. Joyce Ann ain’t doin’ movin’ on. She been down for too long now.”
“Aunt Toe, I’ve committed her before, and every time she comes out crazier than when she went in, I think.” Gloria put her hand over her mouth.
“Maybe she could get some outpatient treatment,” Yolanda suggested even as she wondered exactly when Joyce Ann had been committed. “That way she could live at the rent house and still get help. Face it, Momma, Aunt Joyce Ann needs help—the kind of help that you can’t give her. The kind of help God sends through professionals who routinely help people sort through their grief. Something has to be done.”
“Can we talk about this after dinner?” Gloria asked.
“Yes,” Yolanda said. “We need to make some concrete arrangements—today.”
“And I’ve got a plan of my own that needs to be put into effect, too,” Aunt Toe added.
Gloria nodded her head and went back toward the kitchen. She stopped in mid step, making a U-turn and catching Aunt Toe and Yolanda up to speed on a few things. “Richard is busy... doing some things. Orlando and the baby aren’t here. He and Regina are having a little problem. Don’t ask no questions.”
“Not even questions about my father?” Yolanda looked her mother squarely in the eyes.
“What else do you want to know, Yo-yo? I told you everything I could. I tried my best to do right by you girls.”
“This is coo-coo! You think it’s that easy? I have a father out there, Momma. Doesn’t that mean something to you?”
Gloria thought about the current affair of her life. Her husband was gone. One daughter sick, one daughter angry with her. “I can’t talk about this today.” Gloria clutched the towel harder and left the room.
“When can you talk about it?” Yolanda yelled.
“Y’all quit all this hollerin’!” Aunt Toe thundered. “Sit down and let me bless the table!” She prayed an angry prayer. Angry with the enemy.
They assembled around the table—Yolanda, Regina, Gloria, Joyce Ann, and Aunt Toe—and ate without a word except for the “amen” uttered after the prayer.
“Is anybody going to say something?” Aunt Toe asked after her second helping of dessert.
“I got something to say.” Aunt Joyce Ann stood as though she were giving a speech. That’s when they all noticed her breasts, braless, barely sheathed beneath her sheer white blouse. Joyce Ann looked like a contestant in a wet T-shirt contest. Sweat poured down her neck as she became more and more unglued with every breath she took. “I’m not going to no funny farm!”
“Joyce Ann?” Gloria stroked her arm.
“Don’t Joyce Ann me.” She jerked her arm from Gloria’s reach. “I heard y’all talking just a few minutes ago. Y’all must think I’m deaf, too, huh?”
“Joyce Ann, we’re just trying to do what’s best for you,” said Gloria, trying to calm Joyce Ann.
“We’ve been doing what’s best for you since we were kids! It’s all about Princess Gloria!”
Aunt Toe was tired of this foolishness. “Joyce Ann, you—”
“Shut up!” Joyce Ann screamed at her aunt.
“Oh, no. Now I know you crazy.” Aunt Toe unlocked the wheels of her wheelchair and began rolling toward Joyce Ann.
Regina grabbed the handles on the back of the wheelchair.
“Naw, let me go! This child got enough nerve to tell me to shut up, she must got somethin’ over there to back it up. Let me go, Regina.”
“Aunt Toe, just calm down. How you gon’ fight somebody in a wheelchair?” Gloria stood up, walked behind Joyce Ann, and locked Aunt Toe’s wheels again.
“Joyce Ann,” Gloria continued, “I know it’s been hard for you living all alone. And I know it’s been very isolating. But I think it’s time we—”
Joyce Ann plopped back into her seat with her mouth wide open and a look of amusement on her face. “Well, ain’t that a pickle! That sounds like exactly what I told you before you went off and slept with that... what was his name—Bernard? Hmph.”
Gloria squinted her eyes and drew her lips in tightly. “This is not the same situation. This is on another level and you know it.”
“Oh, so if I just go out and get pregnant and then lie to everybody about it, will that make everything okay? You got a habit of doing that, you know.” She cocked her head and splashed a sinister smile across her face.
“Get out of here.” Regina pointed a butter knife at Joyce Ann, speaking as though she were the authority. “I’ve been wanting to kick you out of our lives since the moment you brought your sorry behind to the wedding. Too sorry to even call your own daughter and say ‘Hello, Dianne—just wanted to speak to you. Hello, Dianne, just wanted to make sure you were alive.’ Anything! She would do anything to hear from you! How can you sit here and ridicule the woman who took over your job and raised your child for you? Just get out!”
Yolanda jumped in. “Regina, wait. We do need to talk with Aunt Joyce Ann about the arrangements.”
“You... just... don’t even worry about this.” Regina directed her anger toward Yolanda now. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of other stuff on your plate, with your new daddy and family and all.”
“Look, I don’t know what Orlando did to you, but—”
“How could you?” Regina stamped her foot, looking straight at Gloria.
“I haven’t said anything.” Gloria looked back at Yolanda and shook her head. “Ooh, you got a big mouth.”
“Me? She’s the one who’s bringing up irrelevant issues,” Yolanda argued like a teenager caught in battle with a sibling.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Aunt Joyce Ann said, cutting herself a healthy slice of double chocolate cake. “This is my sister’s house, and I’m gonna stay here until she tells me to leave.”
“Right now I want you all to leave.” Gloria wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin and began collecting dishes for the sink. In unison, Regina and Yolanda gladly rose to their feet.
“Ain’t nobody goin’ nowhere!” Aunt Toe finally spoke. “Every last one of y’all has lost your ever-lovin’ minds! Everybody s
it down, and shut up! Lord, help me.”
One by one, they sat down and scraped their chairs back into place. Eyes rollin’, nostrils flaring. Gloria’s hands shaking like a leaf.
“Gloria, you’ve been right about a lot of things over the years, but you were wrong about this one. When you gave birth to this child thirty-something-odd years ago, I told you she would find out. You made us all promise we wouldn’t tell her, and we respected your wishes, but the good Lord saw different.”
Gloria looked at her lap.
“Regina, I don’t know exactly what your problem is, but I do know you need to deal with it, because you gonna fool around and single-handedly ruin your entire family. You think you’re so much better than Joyce Ann—well, you’re about to do the same thing to your child, tearin’ up a home.”
Regina traced her hairline and wondered, What if I were too ill to raise my own child?
“And as for you,” she laid into Yolanda, “I know it came as a shock to you to find out that your daddy wasn’t Willie Jordan. But you got to understand the situation Gloria was in at the time. Put yourself in her shoes for a minute. Maybe it wasn’t the best choice she made; I’ll give you that. But the bottom line is, you grew up in a home where you were loved. That’s more than what a lot of folks had.
“And as for that nappy-headed boyfriend of yours, you got a lot of book sense, but you’d be an educated fool if you don’t give him the chance to love you. I know your momma didn’t have many men around you, but that was to keep you from perversion. I can’t half-blame her. It was the seventies—people were coming down off their sixties high, and we had those murders in Atlanta. It was a crazy time to be a single black mother. But you done made a mountain out of a molehill. You better let somebody love you, gal. Long as you goin’ around lookin’ for you in suspenders, it ain’t gonna happen.”
Yolanda looked away from Aunt Toe.
“And, Joyce Ann, don’t even get me started on you. You are going to somebody’s hospital, I don’t care what you say. You ain’t runnin’ nothin’ here but your mouth.
“Now, we’re all here together ‘cause we’re family. And we’re gonna stay family till the end of time. I’m calling a prayer chain right here right now. I don’t care what comes our way, the Rucker women have always stuck together and we have always been prayerful. I blame myself for letting this go on so long. Yeah, I’m wrong, too. We’re all wrong. But it’s time we dusted ourselves off, got up, and kept going. Yo-yo, get Dianne on the phone. She needs to be in on it, too. I’ll start the prayer chain at five o’clock. Who’ll pray at six?”
“I’m not prayin’,” Joyce Ann declared.
“Since when do you turn down prayer?” Aunt Toe asked, a look of horror crossing her face.
“Since it stopped working.” Joyce Ann loaded her fork with cake and shoved the mass into her mouth.
“How can you say that, Joyce Ann? God listening to my prayers is what’s kept you alive this long,” Aunt Toe acknowledged.
Joyce Ann licked the tines of her fork. “So it’s your fault I’m still alive?”
“Call Dianne,” Aunt Toe ordered Yolanda. “Jesus said he stands at the door and knocks, but He can’t get in until we unlock it from the inside. If Joyce Ann wants to sit here and act a fool, that’s on her. She can’t stop us from praying for her, and she is gonna get some help some kind of way.”
Yolanda dialed Dianne’s number, and Joyce Ann left the room. She plopped herself down on the couch in the living room and turned up the volume on the television.
One by one, they obliged Aunt Toe’s wishes and signed up for the prayer chain. Dianne took the last slot. Both Gloria and Regina signed their husbands up for half an hour. Aunt Toe asked Yolanda if she thought Kelan would take a time slot. “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him in a while.”
“Well, talk to him,” she instructed, bugging her eyes at Yolanda.
Once again, Yolanda felt the conviction of Aunt Toe’s words. The question now was whether Kelan would give her another chance.
Despite the fact that the chain links had been assigned, everyone was still angry and ready to leave. Gloria hastily assisted them all in making to-go plates and rushed them out of her kitchen.
Yolanda was the first one out of the kitchen, and almost immediately upon crossing the threshold, she felt the air lose its rigidity.
Until she saw Joyce Ann bent over the couch, rummaging through something like a cat digging through trash. “What are you doing?”
Joyce Ann looked over her shoulder, scampering to put the contents of Yolanda’s purse back inside. “I... I just needed something.”
“Why were you going through my purse, Aunt Joyce Ann?” Yolanda’s voice went up an octave.
“I wasn’t even in your purse!” she cried.
“Yes, you were!”
“Y’all need to quit lyin’ on me! Been lying to me since I was seventeen years old!” Joyce Ann wailed, as though she’d been falsely accused. Real, live tears streamed down her face.
Where did those come from?
“I wasn’t in her purse—I swear to God!” Joyce Ann plummeted into Gloria’s chest, sobbing like a child. “I swear to God! Y’all been trickin’ me since I was seventeen.”
“I know, I know,” Gloria shushed Joyce Ann.
Yolanda grabbed her bag and checked her wallet. All forty dollars present. Nothing else was missing, as far as she could tell. “It’s all here.”
“That’s ‘cause I wasn’t in your stupid old purse.” Joyce Ann rose off Gloria’s shoulder long enough to lie, then resumed her childlike tantrum, complete with snot dripping down between her quivering lips.
“I’ll call you first thing in the morning about this,” Yolanda said, pointing toward Joyce Ann’s back. “I mean first thing in the morning.”
“I’ll keep her here tonight,” Gloria said, rubbing Joyce Ann’s back, comforting her as she heaved from her endless crying.
Gloria’s eyes, too, filled with tears and fears. She understood, finally, the severity of Joyce Ann’s condition. Even beyond that, she had agreed to partner with Yolanda and get help for Joyce Ann. It was the second good thing to come of today’s horrible meal.
Yolanda took the short route home and decided Kelan’s call would have to wait. She needed some time with the Lord and with herself. She hurt for the angry, ugly blows that had flown across her mother’s kitchen table in the form of words. They had all been blindsided, fueled to rage by flames flickering before they ever sat down to eat.
Father, forgive me for neglecting to meet with You every day. Time away from You is time away from my source. I need You, Lord. Especially now. Help. As she went through the motions of straightening up her bedroom, Yolanda began to feel the love of God envelop her again. He had always been faithful to forgive her for these times when she went about living her life without Him. And always, when she’d finished making a complete mess of things, He was there to pick up the pieces and put her back together again. How unfair it was. But that was love.
After she dusted, Yolanda pulled out her Bible study notes again and revisited those verses in Philippians. This time she got it. She understood that the past she needed to leave behind wasn’t Kelan. It wasn’t even a person. It was a feeling, a fear—a spiritual stronghold that had hooked on to her soul long, long ago and caused her to shut out anything that didn’t align to the neat little plans she’d laid out for her life. Yolanda laughed at herself now as she realized the elephant woman sermon had been meant for her after all.
Gloria called later that evening to clear up the purse fiasco. “Yo-yo, I just want you to know, Joyce Ann wasn’t trying to steal anything from you. She was looking for Dianne’s phone number.”
“Mmm. You didn’t let her call Dianne, did you?” Joyce Ann was in no shape to be calling anybody, let alone Dianne.
“I haven’t let her do anything but take a bath and lie down in the front bedroom. I haven’t heard anything else from her tonight,” Gloria said sof
tly. “Have you got some kind of a treatment facility in mind we can call tomorrow?”
“I know a few reputable doctors just outside of Dallas. I’ll put in a few calls, but we don’t have too much time to spend looking into things. We’re checking her in someplace tomorrow, and she needs to stay there until they can get her stabilized, on medication, in treatment, and determine that she’s not a threat to herself or society.”
“Yeah,” Gloria sniffled, “I know. We’re checking her in tomorrow,” she said with a sadness in her voice.
“And Yo-yo, I’m so sorry, baby. I never meant to hurt you. I never meant for you to find out about your father this way. It’s just that sometimes you have these intentions, but then time goes on and on, and the lie almost turns into the truth in your head, and you never get around to fixing it. And—”
“It’s not okay, Momma, but I’ve decided to forgive you anyway because there’s nothing we can do to change the past.” Yolanda surprised herself with these words. But after all the good her mother had done, Yolanda knew that the last thing Gloria owed her was an explanation for the things she hadn’t done. “I don’t agree with your decision, but I know you have always been in my corner.”
“Are you going to get in touch with your father?” Gloria wanted to know.
“I might. Would you have a problem with that?”
“I guess not. It’s up to you.”
Yolanda searched her mother’s voice for a trace of antipathy. There was none. “What about Regina?”
“She says she’s happy for you, about your father and all.”
“I don’t think she means it.”
“It’s too hard for her right now, Yo-yo. You know your sister better than anybody. Just give her some time. She’s got a lot on her mind right now.”
“I feel bad for her. I feel like I have something that she’ll never have. It’s never been like that between us. You always made sure we were treated the same—it was all or nothing,” Yolanda tried to explain herself to Gloria, but the more she talked, the more she realized her excuses sounded a lot like Gloria’s reasons for keeping Bernard a secret.
“Regina is strong. She’s got things you don’t have. It’ll all be even in her mind after a while.”
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