Should Have Known Better Read online

  “Mama, don’t say that to me,” I said. “He might be scared, but it ain’t about me losing nothing. He just wants to control me—the same way he controls you.”

  “Girl, I suppose it is time for you to leave this house. Your mouth is getting bigger than your fist.” She came in close to me. “Now, you’re getting older and you are getting smart. But I’m still your mother and there’re some things I know about this world and how it works that you don’t yet understand. You may be moving out of my house, but you’re still going to live by my rules. And if I tell you to do something, I expect it to get done—and quickly. Now, you carry your narrow tail in that house and you tell him—”

  “But he ain’t even care enough to take me to school. He hates me. And I hate—”

  “You stop that talk and go in that house,” she whispered harshly, pointing at the house.

  “Mama, I’m not—”

  “You want to get out of here?” she asked. “You want to go to that school? Who you think gonna pay for it? Who? Me? On my knees? Scrubbing walls and begging for weekend work? I can’t do it. I can’t. You need him. You need him!”

  He prayed, one hand pressed against my forehead, the other holding his Bible with the curled edges, until my feet were swelling over the edges of my shoes and Mama slid a chair up behind me in the middle of the living room floor.

  But he wouldn’t let me sit down.

  Told her to move the chair and turned to some other curled page to pray for some other thing I hadn’t yet done, but he was sure I’d do.

  A word against greed. Lust. Against dishonoring my family. Lying. Stealing. Cities burning. God coming with a wrath so horrid I’d be burned alive. And, for this, I should be grateful. Should love this God in curled pages who’d sent a man with liquor on his breath to warn me not to grow up.

  His hand got more heavy on my head. I pushed up on my heels and told myself not to cry. I couldn’t, not now. This was almost over. I was leaving. I was never coming back. Not to this God.

  His voice got louder and turned to rain clouds in my ears. I rolled my fingers into balls and felt that I wanted to hurt him. To slap him to the floor and kick him into the kitchen sink. Make him pray not to be a whore.

  I felt Mama holding me then. She held my fists to my sides.

  “She don’t need no mercy, Edith,” Daddy said. “She got demons in her. Going to that school to be a whore. To leave my house and turn her back on the Lord.”

  He slapped my head with his hand and pushed me back into my mother.

  “I see you, devil. Come in my house and ruin my family,” he said. “Get out of this child. I see you, devil. I see you. I see you!”

  He whipped the Bible up over my head and began beating me with it.

  “I see you, devil! I see you!”

  He pushed me and Mama down to the floor and began beating both of us, first with his book and then with his belt. Heavy and hard and angry.

  “No, Herbert,” Mama cried. “She ain’t done nothing wrong!”

  “What you know about what she done wrong? She following you! She’s a whore like her mother. A whore!”

  The belt came down on my head so many times I stopped feeling and started thinking. This was it. This was enough. The last moment had come.

  The belt came down on my face.

  And I grabbed it.

  “I’m hungry, Mama!” R. J. groaned with his hand pressing into my shoulder.

  Pulled from the burning memory of my father’s belt wrapping around my bare arm, I saw the sun lowered over the front of the car. We were just thirty minutes east of Atlanta and cars in a desperate race through traffic were piling up on either side of us.

  I peeked back at R. J.

  “Get back in your seat,” I said wistfully.

  “Can we get something to eat?” he whined. “I need something to eat. I don’t feel good.”

  “We’ll stop in a minute,” I answered, watching him in the rearview mirror as he buckled himself back up. I looked over at Cheyenne. Her eyes were closed, but she was only playing sleep. I could tell because her head was straight up and pointed toward the sunlight coming in through the window.

  Slowly, she crept her hand off of her lap and slid it over to R. J. She clasped his hand and squeezed it tightly like she used to do when they were very small and just walking and she, through some knowing intelligence, could feel that her brother was about to cry.

  And this is where I actually have to stop telling this tale for just a second. Because it wasn’t until that moment when I saw my babies sitting in the backseat, clutching hands like they were still toddlers, that I realized what was really going on. I’d been hurt by Reginald’s odd behavior, angered by Sasha’s clear betrayal, and even silently mad at myself for being so blind and ignorant for so long. And I’m not slow or stupid. I know that about myself. I know I have faults, but I’m smarter than some simple woman who’s dumb enough to let another woman come in and drag her husband off into space. That’s not me. I’m a lot of things, but that’s not me.

  There was something else. Something that was keeping me from seeing things as they were. Seeing things the way I saw them at that moment in the car. Clear as day. It was like I was waking up. I was starting to feel like, up until that moment, each and everything that was happening to me seemed like it was just an echo of my life. I don’t even know if that makes any sense. But it was like, after that first night that Sasha came into the house, everything was fuzzy, not real, and kind of like a dream, even that night in the backyard, even that night in my bedroom, even that morning when Reginald left. It was like I’d been railroaded or run over or robbed in my own house, while I was awake.

  And that, well, just the idea of that, infuriated me. Put a loud fire in my heart. Do you know what that’s like? When you can feel anger rumbling inside of you. And not some sense or emotion. A real fire. Fury. My life, my completely imperfect, clichéd, and tedious life, was under some kind of siege. And I was furious at the idea of that. Because it was mine.

  Even looking back on it now that I’m on the other side and can see things as they were, I don’t know if I can actually put into words the kind of sudden panic I flipped into at that moment. It wasn’t about me getting into a car to go and get Reginald. That was just a part of a drama that failed to have meaning just yet. It was about me losing myself. About me being tossed into a situation where my children could now lose themselves, or what they thought they were. And that was unacceptable. Sharika was right. I couldn’t let this just be. I had to do something.

  Something got into my head and that old and shaky car managed to skate over three lanes and snake off of the highway where I sat and watched the kids eat chicken nuggets and French fries as I made a plan. I couldn’t just show up at Sasha’s house with R. J. and Cheyenne. I couldn’t put them through that. I had no idea what Reginald would say or if he was even still there. I needed to protect them.

  “Are we in Atlanta?” R. J. asked, licking ketchup off of a French fry.

  I nodded and smiled at another woman across the restaurant, who was sitting with two small babies.

  “Isn’t this where you’re from?” he added.

  I nodded again.

  “You’re lucky I’m home.” There was no smile. No hugs or kisses. This was just the sound of my mother’s voice as she opened her front door and disappeared into the house before we got to see her.

  R. J. and Cheyenne looked up at me.

  “Go inside,” I offered as pleasantly as I could and smiled. I reached for the screen door.

  The three of us filed into the foyer and I could hear my mother still talking to us, though she’d walked into the kitchen.

  “Been meaning to get dinner started,” she said distantly. “But no sense rushing to cook when it’s just me. Didn’t know I was expecting company.”

  “Oh, we won’t be needing anything to eat, Mama,” I said loudly and my voice just echoed through the silent staleness of the house.

  We wal
ked into the living room and I sat in the middle of the twins on my mother’s clumpy, floral-print couch that was so old it had sunk so close to the floor my backside nearly touched the heels of my shoes.

  “That’s Grandma?” R. J. asked and Cheyenne nodded to him.

  An old Girl Scouts picture of me with braces and tight pin curls sat on a wooden table beside the couch. There were pictures of the twins when they were just six months old on the mantel above the fireplace. No pictures of my father.

  “Of course you can eat,” she said, her voice getting closer. “Long drive from Augusta.”

  “We already stopped for lunch.”

  “What? Fast food?”

  She appeared in the hallway leading into the living room and stood right in front of the old closet door. Her eyes were saggy and stale. Her hair was all gray, all gray.

  I told myself I wouldn’t do it—that I wouldn’t reach out for her unless she reached for me. But looking at her, seeing her standing in that old house, in that old place, I saw less of why I wanted to keep my distance and thought of how long it had actually been since I’d seen her. It had been a long time.

  “Hey, Mama,” I called, getting up from the couch and walking toward her.

  If this was some family reunion movie where the estranged daughter returns home to a loving family waiting with open arms, I would’ve been smiling and holding my arms up and out toward someone who was doing the same. But there was no family reunion here and all I had to act on was what I knew.

  She stood frozen in front of the hallway closet as I kissed her on the cheek, held her hand like we were old classmates.

  “Dawn,” she said, smiling a little. “You’re looking thin.”

  I turned to the twins, who’d nervously moved in toward each another to fill my empty space on the couch.

  “What ya’ll waiting for?” I asked. “Come say hello to your grandmother.”

  R. J. looked to Cheyenne and she looked at me.

  “It’s OK,” I mouthed to her.

  She got up and walked slowly toward us as if she were approaching a stranger and really that was what my mother was to her, and probably more so to R. J. I tried quickly to remember the last time they’d seen her. I hadn’t taken them to my father’s funeral. That was the last time I’d seen her. It had been three years ago.

  Cheyenne poked out her hand toward my mother.

  “Hi, I’m—”

  “Child, I know who you are,” my mother said so sweetly it sounded as if I was ten years old again. “You’re my grandbaby!”

  Cheyenne’s face warmed so quickly. She smiled and R. J. came running up behind her.

  “And I’m your grandbaby, too,” he said.

  “You ain’t no baby,” my mother said. “You’re a big boy, a little man.”

  She outstretched her arms and pulled both of the twins into her chest as I watched.

  “Ya’ll so big,” she said and her eyes turned glassy and sad. “Grown up so fast. I don’t think your mama was this big when she was ten.”

  The twins looked at me slyly.

  “She wasn’t?” R. J. asked.

  “No,” my mother answered. “She was a tiny thing. Bigger than a dime, but smaller than a penny.”

  They all laughed and R. J. said the oddest thing I think I ever heard him say.

  “I don’t know you, Grandma. But I miss you.”

  My mother found something in the kitchen and even though I’d refused a need to eat five or six times, food was in the pots and she was standing by the stove.

  She’d given R. J. and Cheyenne a bag of green beans she’d picked out of her garden in the backyard and they were sitting at the kitchen table snapping and laughing like two kids who’d had this as a responsibility all of their lives.

  My mother and I made small talk by the stove. I asked about people on the street. She mentioned people from the church. We said everything that we weren’t thinking and the worst part was that we both knew what we were doing. We didn’t look into each other’s eyes. We didn’t ask anything about each other. What was there to say? To ask. After I’d left for college, scarred in welts from the bottoms of my ears to my ankles, the little relationship we’d had dwindled to nothing. Campus was just a jog of miles away, but we hardly saw each other and spoke even less. She was stuck in my father’s shadow, and soon, to me, she became him.

  There was nothing I could say about that. And what I’ve learned is that when you can’t talk about the past, talking about the present is almost impossible.

  My mother should’ve been asking why and how the daughter she hadn’t seen in three years had shown up on her doorstep in the middle of the day with her grandchildren and no husband. Why my eyes were so puffy and it seemed like something was on my mind. She should’ve been asking where Reginald was.

  But she couldn’t.

  “I only got four pork chops,” she said after an awkwardly long break in our conversation.

  “Four’s fine,” I said. “I told you we’re not too hungry. Maybe they’ll eat a little later.”

  “Four’s fine? That’s just enough for us and the twins. That’s all the company I’m expecting?” she asked, and in that question was a heap of expectation.

  “Yes.”

  “You all will be staying the night?” She turned to the dish of pork chops she’d been turning in raw eggs and milk.

  “I think so,” I said with my voice cracking.

  She looked up at me for the first time. She dropped the pork chop she was turning into the dish and wiped her hands on her apron slowly, keeping her eyes on me.

  “Hey, ya’ll,” I called to the table. “You two go out to the car and get our bags.”

  “We’re staying here?” R. J. asked.

  “For tonight,” I said. “Now, get the key from my purse and bring the bags inside.”

  “You can take them up to the room next to your mama’s old room,” my mother said. “The one with her name on the door.”

  “That’s Daddy’s old study,” I said to my mother after R. J. and Cheyenne left the room.

  “Turned it into a guest room. Don’t have a lot of guests, but don’t have a lot of need for a study either. Gave the books to Goodwill. You sure we don’t need an extra pork chop for your husband?” she listed quickly and it was clear the only statement she really meant to make was the last.

  “Mama, I know what you’re thinking. You probably want to know where Reginald is, and it’s cool, everything is—” I swear I was about to say “OK,” but I couldn’t. It seemed a silver dollar was caught in my throat and any lie I wanted to force out got stuck. I felt my body sigh.

  “Don’t you even try to finish that sentence, honey,” my mother said, pulling her apron off. “Insult my intelligence. Even a maid knows something’s wrong when the daughter she hasn’t seen since they buried her father in the earth shows up at her front door with two kids and no husband. Even a maid.”

  I laughed uneasily.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Where’s Reginald?”

  My mother’s face stayed solid as I told her only half of what I knew about where Reginald was. I couldn’t take hearing the truth again. And I couldn’t handle thinking what she might think of me if she heard what the truth really was. All that was necessary was that he was somewhere on Lover’s Lane and I needed to get to him. I’d brought the twins there because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

  “You told them? You told them kids their daddy’s gone?”

  “Not directly, no. They know something’s up. But I just . . . I don’t know if he’s gone, really.” I tried to sound convincing. “And I don’t want them to feel bad. Like they did anything. And what happens when he comes back?”

  “You still banking on that?”

  “Banking on it? Mama, you make it sound like we’re talking about a sale at the mall. This is my husband. My marriage. My family.”

  “Yeah, I know what that is,” she said. “I had one, too. But then my child ran off a
nd—”

  “Mama, I don’t have time to go through all this. I shouldn’t have come here. I knew you’d—”

  “Knew I’d what? Bring up the past? Bring up how you just run up out of here like it was the worst place in the world and then marry the first man who ties your shoe? Didn’t ask your daddy for permission or nothing?”

  “Oh, no, this was a mistake,” I said, hearing the kids trampling up the stairs with our bags.

  “Don’t you dare walk out of here,” she said to my back as I turned to walk out, “like you got someplace else to go. Ain’t no other reason you’d be here anyway. So what you need me for? You could’ve gone to a hotel. Need me to look after them? Is that it? Do you even know where he’s at?”

  “Just the street,” I said, turning around.

  “Ohh,” she heaved.

  “Lover’s Lane,” I said, hearing Reginald say it to me in my memory.

  “Lover’s Lane? Where’s that?”

  “Buckhead, up north somewhere.”

  “Buckhead? So, you going up to see them white folks to find your husband in some house you ain’t never seen? Is she white?”

  “No, Mama,” I said. “I told you she went to school with me. You met her before—”

  “Who cares if I met her before?”

  “Look, I don’t want to get into all of that. I just need you to watch the kids for a little bit.”

  “Yeah, I’ll watch them. But who’s gonna watch you?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You going up there all upset and what you gonna do? Fight somebody? Get hauled off to jail? That’s what you gonna do?”

  “I just need to talk to him.”

  “And what if he don’t want to talk? You think you going to be able to just leave? No. Your heart ain’t gonna let you do that. I’ve seen women burn down houses. Kill. Kill themselves. Thinking they were just gonna go and talk to someone. You ain’t heard from him, and that’s because he don’t want to be heard. What make you think he wants to talk?”

  “Well, that’s fine, Mama, but what am I supposed to do then?”