“You and Joyce Ann and Shannon came over almost every day, and life went on. You got so attached to Shannon, God knows we would have had to adopt her, too. And Willie was fine with that except, by the time we got ready to go to the courts, Joyce Ann had started doing drugs and she was getting food stamps for having both you and Shannon in the house, and she was using you to raise Shannon. Everything just spiraled out of control so quickly. Before I knew it, it was all a big mess.
“I fixed things the best I could. I made Joyce Ann move into the rent house down the street so I could watch over you like a hawk.
“But I must have blinked.” Gloria paused. Though she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, the tears broke through and made shiny streaks down her face.
“When Shannon died, I wanted to crawl in the casket with her, but I couldn’t, because you needed me then more than ever. I always blamed myself for that.”
“Why?” Dianne wondered aloud.
“Because if I had been there, it wouldn’t have happened.” Gloria smacked an open palm on her forehead. “Shannon wouldn’t have died, and you wouldn’t have had to go through a lifetime of pain if I hadn’t been so busy worrying about one child over the other one. And all I put Joyce Ann through, everybody thinking she was the one with all the problems. God, help me! Help me!” she repeated, now beating her brow with closed fists.
Dianne grabbed Gloria’s hand and stopped her. “Mother.” The term caught Dianne off guard. She hadn’t called anyone by that name since the day her beloved Shannon died. “You did your best.” Dianne let her mother cry into her shirt, and in turn, Dianne cried her own tears. She did have a mother, and that mother had loved her all along. These lies that had been nothing but smoke before her eyes all these years suddenly dissipated. The bitter-sweetness of the moment would, hopefully, lean more toward sweetness as time went on.
“I do have another question.” Dianne wondered if she really wanted to know the answer, but she asked anyway. “Where is my father?”
“He passed away about ten years ago. Cancer. I read about it in the alumni news.”
Dianne’s gaze landed on the floor.
“You know,” Gloria confessed, “your father really was a good person. I think if we hadn’t been professor and student, things might have worked out differently. I don’t know. It was a very complicated situation.”
“Let’s tell Regina and Yo-yo.” Dianne took another step toward restoration.
Gloria nodded in submission. Two shameful secrets down, none to go.
Back in the living room, Regina and Yolanda listened to Gloria’s confession with a mix of bewilderment and satisfaction. Dianne always did belong to them.
“Momma, you’re a mess.” Regina shook her head. “This is ridiculous.”
“I know,” Gloria replied. “I know. I never wanted you girls to end up messes, too.”
Aunt Toe sighed, “They ain’t ended up yet, Gloria, and neither have you. You still breathin’, there’s still time for y’all to work through.”
“Are there any more secrets or skeletons you need to tell us?” Yolanda felt a twinge of sarcasm. “I mean, we got any other brothers or sisters you put up for adoption?”
“Okay, I deserved that. But no. I do not,” Gloria said.
“No more secrets. No more,” Aunt Toe confirmed.
Orlando and Richard came through the front door, their hands blackened from soot. “There’s nothing left, Gloria.” Richard shook his head. “It’s all gone.”
Gloria sniffed and wiped her nose. “I didn’t think there was anything left, but I couldn’t see much with the firemen everywhere. Are the last flames out?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Orlando assured her, “they put them all out.”
The men stood around helplessly, uncomfortable. “I’m gonna go put on a pot of coffee,” Richard said. Orlando and Kelan followed him to the kitchen.
Aunt Toe started wiggling her foot, rocking her whole body back and forth from the bottom up. “Joyce Ann would have had a birthday next week. Hmph. She sure was a pretty little girl. Had all that long hair—till you cut off her ponytail.”
Gloria blinked back her tears and put a hand on Aunt Toe’s knee. “She told me to.”
“Since when did you ever listen to Joyce Ann?” Aunt Toe laughed through a sob. “The two of you got into more trouble together than that Nancy Drew and the Hardy boys. I swear, I could have wrote a book about the two of you—Joyce Ann, Gloria, and the whippin’s.”
“You mean the beatings.” Gloria lowered her chin and looked at Aunt Toe.
They spent the next two hours crying and laughing over old pictures. Regina, Dianne, and Shannon in matching plaid bell-bottom outfits that Joyce Ann made for them. She was a wonderful seamstress. Gloria and Joyce Ann as young adults Hula Hoop-ing with Afro puffs. Joyce Ann’s smile was contagious. She was beautiful. A picture of Joyce Ann with Dianne on one hip and Shannon on the other, all of them dressed in pink skirts and halter tops. Finally, a picture of Joyce Ann and Gloria holding Dianne up to the table so that she could blow out the candle on her first birthday cake. All of them bearing smiles that showed no hint of the pain to come. Gently, Dianne asked Gloria for that priceless photo.
Gloria peeled back the clear film, releasing years of pent- up secrets into the hands of her oldest daughter, her beloved Sugarbee.
They had lunch, spent some time at the funeral home, contacted church officials, and then made dozens of phone calls to get out the word about Joyce Ann’s funeral.
Gloria stole some time with Richard to make her final confession to her new husband, hoping he wouldn’t regret the vows he’d made.
For the time being all he could do was echo Yolanda’s sentiment. “Is there anything else, Gloria, ‘cause I really don’t know how many more surprises I can take.”
“No. Can’t get much worse than this anyway.” She sat on their bed, too ashamed to look up at him. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“Me, too,” he agreed, sitting down beside her. “But I’d like to work past this. I mean, it was more than thirty years ago that it happened.”
“Yeah, but it was only weeks ago when you asked if I had any more secrets. And I lied to you, by omission. I’m sorry, Richard. I wouldn’t blame you if you—”
“Don’t even say it,” he cut her off. He took her chin in his hand. “Gloria, you’ve got to learn to trust me. I’m a man. I’ve got thick skin.”
She laughed slightly. “Yeah. You are. I should have known better. I love you.”
“I love you, too. We’ve got the rest of our lives to work on this relationship. Let’s get through losing Joyce Ann right now, okay?”
“Agreed.”
Yolanda was weak, exhausted from the past twenty-four hours. Under the circumstances, she could have called in to work, but she didn’t want to. Monday was always a busy day at the pharmacy— people having been to the emergency rooms over the weekends and gotten prescriptions, along with a myriad of other scenarios that caused people to handle much of their business on the first business day. With that kind of rush, the hours passed quickly. She worked her eight hours and came straight home.
Dianne met her at the door and made sandwiches while Yolanda ran bathwater and got undressed. There was no need to cook anything. If the church folk were still up to their old traditions, the family would have enough food to last a week by the time they got finished burying Joyce Ann.
“You want mayonnaise?” Dianne called from the kitchen.
“Mustard,” Yolanda answered. It was nice to have someone to talk to when she came in.
Yolanda devoured the sandwich Dianne made for her, took a bath, and lay down on the couch across from her while they switched channels between old Happy Days reruns and the BET network. Yolanda planned on taking a little catnap but ended up crashing for the night in the living room.
The next morning, they dressed and went to Gloria’s house, greeting other family members and talking out funeral plans. It was odd
, laughing one minute, crying the next, eating all the while. So much goodness in the pain.
Regina, Dianne, and Yolanda took a walk down to the rent house late Tuesday afternoon. It was the first time the sisters had seen it since the morning of the fire—yellow tape surrounding the property as if it were some kind of crime scene. The three of them held hands like kindergartners assigned to buddies on a field trip, not wanting to get lost or separated. It wasn’t safe to go inside the house; that was for sure. But just standing there, with the smell of burned wood still fresh in the air, was therapeutic. Smelled like a fireplace almost, as though, if you closed your eyes, you might be in a cozy living room snuggled up under a warm blanket.
They walked around to the backyard and took in the view from behind. “Remember when we used to sit on this back porch and eat orange push-ups?” Regina asked.
Dianne wiped her cheek on her shoulder, still holding their hands, and nodded. “Me, you, and Yo-yo.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Joyce Ann called me,” Dianne uttered.
“When?” Yolanda asked, not looking away from the porch.
“I guess just before she started the fire. She said she loved me. Loved all of us,” Dianne sighed a deep, cleansing sigh. “Said she just couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Well...“ Regina bit her unsteady lip. “I know I wasn’t much help to her. I was too busy kicking her while she was down. I didn’t realize she was already at the bottom.”
“Stop blaming yourself, Regina,” Dianne said sternly with the same conviction she’d exhibited at the airport with Yolanda. “What’s done is done. You were angry, you were hurt, and you didn’t know what to do. I’m sure every one of us would have done things differently if we’d known then what we know now. But that’s not the way life works. You have to move on with what you understand now, and ask God to give you more wisdom and keep you from making the same mistakes twice. That’s all anybody can do.”
They stood there for a little while longer, letting the reality of the situation sink in.
The evening’s chill crept from the shadows of the house. “We’d better get on back to Momma’s house,” Yolanda said. Their feet made soft, simple noises as they carefully tiptoed around the house. The ground, with its new spring buds amid soot-laden debris, seemed awkwardly sacred. At the side of the house, they stopped and let Dianne close the gate. In more ways than one.
As the three walked back to Gloria’s house, they mentally prepared themselves to greet the host of family and friends who would come by after getting off work.
What Yolanda really wanted, above all else, was to be left alone. To go to a room and sit down and have herself a good cry. “I... I think I’m gonna go on home,” she voiced her preference.
“Why?” Dianne inquired.
Why is she asking me why? “I just... I just want to go home.”
“To be alone?” Dianne took the words right out of Yolanda’s mouth.
“Yeah. I just feel like squeezing into a small space, curling up into a ball, and crying,” she explained.
“That’s how it all starts, you know?” Dianne nodded and threw her head back, giving the laugh of a wiser, much older person talking to a young heart. “You think you’re doing the right thing by isolating yourself. But you know what?”
“What?” Regina asked.
“When you’re going through, that’s when you need other people the most. Your family. Your friends. Whew! I wish I had known all this twenty years ago.” She shook her head. “I wish Joyce Ann had known all this. When you’re hurting, it seems like the most natural thing to do—go off to yourself. Gather your thoughts. But once you get there, the longer you stay, the harder it is to get back to who you were before.”
Regina pulled Dianne’s hand close to her heart. “Dianne, you have come a long way, my sister.”
“Bless God.” Dianne gave Him the glory. “Bless God.”
Miss Doublin sat in the living room, giving everyone an account of Joyce Ann’s death from the moment the first flame flickered to the time the last firefighter left.
Yolanda sat down for a moment, not really wanting to hear all the horrid details, but needing to rest her feet. Yolanda thought about getting up, but the tone of Miss Doublin’s voice drew her into the conversation.
She spoke in a low whisper. “I heard her.” Miss Doublin’s third chin wiggled with her recounting of the night’s events. “She ran out of that house just hollerin’. I looked out my window—she was almost back up to this here house when she turned back around and ran back to the other house. She was screamin’ somethin’ ‘bout a sewing machine. ‘Two thousand dollars,’ she said. She ran back into that house screamin’ ‘bout the sewing machine. Next thing I knew, the firetruck and the policemens pulled up.”
She went back to save the sewing machine? “Miss Doublin, have you told my mother what you told us all just now?”
“I...I told the firemen, but I haven’t told your momma,” she whispered. “Bad enough your aunt died. Worse that she could have made it out alive but went back inside for a silly old sewing machine.”
Yolanda pulled herself up from the chair and went to the kitchen to gather Gloria, Aunt Toe, Regina, and Dianne and tell them what Miss Doublin had revealed. Aunt Toe didn’t quite understand the significance of the events. “Aunt Joyce Ann went back for the sewing machine because Momma was liable for what happened to it while it was in Aunt Joyce Ann’s care. She went back for it so that Momma wouldn’t have to pay for it.”
“Insurance would have replaced the machine,” Gloria cried. “She didn’t have to go back in and try to save it for me.”
“Aunt Gloria,” Dianne said, “she wasn’t in her right mind.”
“That’s one thing about Joyce Ann,” Aunt Toe said, “she loved her some Gloria.”
Chapter 33
Regina woke in the afternoon, wondering if it all had really happened. For a moment she thought it might have been a horrible dream. But one look around her old bedroom confirmed that the horror was reality. Joyce Ann is dead.
With the exception of Orlando, everyone else had gone to the funeral home while Regina crashed from the sheer exhaustion of it all. How she managed to sleep at a time like this could only be attributed to the fact that she wasn’t eating much.
She could have gone home, but she needed to be with the women in her family. Separately they might fall. But standing back to back, they could hold each other up.
Regina imagined it must have been the same when her father died. She couldn’t remember exactly what happened following Willie’s death, but she did remember the way everyone banded together when Aunt Toe’s husband died. Gloria had helped Aunt Toe with the arrangements and saw to it that the memorial was a fitting homegoing celebration for a man who had suffered from diabetes for many, many years. Yolanda conducted the flow of traffic in Aunt Toe’s house, greeting the mourners, insulating Aunt Toe. Dianne made arrangements for an automatic transfer of funds from her Bank of America account to Aunt Toe’s once a month, something she still did. Regina herself handled the legalities of death, though she’d already crossed the “T’s” and dotted the “I’s” in the years leading up to Uncle Albert’s death.
And always, there was prayer.
Regina remembered what it was like to pray; the feeling that God was watching over her, the peace that enveloped her when she knelt beside her bed, closed her eyes, and pushed the “pause” button on her life. In this hour, Regina wished that she could push “rewind” and go back twenty-four hours. She wouldn’t yell at Joyce Ann. She wouldn’t be disgusted with her presence. She would hold Joyce Ann and assure her that things would work out.
Too late now.
Regina lay in bed with her thoughts. If she got up, Orlando would surely come in the room, asking if there was anything he could do. He was, after all, a good man. So why am I pushing him away? Regina wondered exactly where she’d gone wrong. She was an attorney, a member of a loving family, and married to
a wonderful man. Yet happiness seemed to slip through her fingers like water sometimes. She might have it in her grip for a little while, but never for long, because the minute she tried to enjoy her happiness—wash her face in it, spread it all over herself—it flew away.
She wondered if this was how the rest of her life would be. Will I always have to be thin and in control in order to have happiness? Certainly, the events of the past several months had taken her weight and her entire life out of her control. It was a sad understanding: that her life wasn’t in her control. Never had been, she realized now. No, she hadn’t taken the time to call a time-out in her life. So, evidently, God had.
Orlando peeked into her room and saw the reflection of the hallway light on her eyes. “You okay?” he asked as he tiptoed across the eggshells, approaching her bedside.
“No. I’m not okay.”
“You need something to drink? Eat?” he asked.
“I mean I’m not okay. Something is wrong with me and I don’t know what it is, but I don’t want to keep belittling everyone around me because I can’t cope with life on God’s terms. I don’t want to end up like Joyce Ann, and I don’t want to hurt anyone else the way I hurt her yesterday.” Regina spoke as though she were reading a philosophical essay out loud.
Orlando hugged his wife and silently thanked God for the revelation. He expected her to go into one of her dramatic crying spells, but she didn’t this time.
Gloria, Yolanda, Aunt Toe, Richard, and Kelan returned from the funeral home in utter and complete fatigue. Regina and Orlando joined them in the family living room. Someone turned on the lamp to combat the darkness, and they all draped themselves throughout the room, coupled on the sectional sofa with Aunt Toe pulled up next to Gloria’s side. The ceiling fan’s blades beat a steady whisk above. Five women, three men. And for a moment they deliberated in silence.
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