The Untelling (19 page)

“You know what I mean.”

I did know what she meant, but there are some words that I just don’t care for. If it were up to me, people would not be allowed to use the word “sterile” at all, not just when talking to me. The two syllables just hung in the air, like a mist of cheap perfume.

“But he doesn’t know?” my sister persisted. “You’re getting
married
and he doesn’t
know
?”

I shrugged and looked at the debris on the floor of the minivan. Saltines ground to powder, stray napkins, ketchup packets. “If this doctor is everything she is supposed to be, there may be nothing to tell him.”

“Aria,” she said, “have you ever heard of honesty?”

“Why are you even asking?” I mumbled. “It’s not like we are close.”

“Would you believe me if I told you I feel terrible about that?”

“No,” I said, softening my voice. “Not really.”

I turned my face toward the tinted glass and watched a little boy swipe a granola bar out of the lunch cooler while his mother laughed with another lady. It was a beautiful Saturday morning and it made me want to cry. More than cry, weep. What would it be like to roll in the grass, beat my fists against earth, and just cry, scream, howl even? I’d been crying dainty tears for nearly three months now, but I didn’t feel any better. It was like my emotions were constipated, caught in my gut and making me ill.

“Living at home was just too much,” Hermione said. “You and Mama act like you were the only ones in the car that day. I was there too. Fifteen years old. Not as young as you. I respect that it must have been tough being in the car with Daddy all that time. But I was a child too. I was there when they took Genevieve. I was the oldest, but I was a kid too.”

“You never talked to me after you got married. Never took me anywhere.”

“I just wanted to escape,” she said. “I love Earl and I am so happy with my life and with Little Link. But when I was eighteen and he said he would marry me, all I was thinking about was getting out. Getting away.”

“Getting away from Mama? She was never mean to you. Not like she was with me.”

“Please,” Hermione said. “What do you know? You were just thirteen.” She took a pack of cigarettes out of the glove compartment.

“You smoke?”

“There’s so much that you don’t know about me.”

She opened the car door. “Let’s walk. Earl doesn’t like me to smoke in the van.”

I got out and followed her to the far side of the park, where the bleachers stood empty. I plunked down beside her on the third row. She shook a dainty Capri cigarette out of the box and offered it to me. I took one, though I didn’t smoke.

She lit hers and inhaled, then she took mine and held it to the red tip of her own until it caught. I took it from her, held it between my fingers, and took a foul-tasting breath.

“When I started seeing Earl, I was almost seventeen. Remember how he used to take us out right after Daddy died? I think he was trying to impress Mama, show her how good he was with the kids.” She sucked hard on her cigarette, contracting her jaws. She blew rings. “See?” she said. “Bet you didn’t know I could do that.”

I shook my head and tried to remember the days she spoke about. Mr. Phinazee used to pick Hermione and me up and take us to the movies. He’d ask Mama to go, but she’d say, “I don’t care for films.” He had been old even then.

“Then he started taking me out by myself. Remember? You must have been thirteen? Colette was the first one to figure it out. I was hanging out in the barbershop more and more. One day she pulled me aside and said, ‘You need to stay away from my motherfucking daddy.’ Just like that. I’m
sixteen
and she’s cussing me like that. This was right after she finished college.

“Anyway, I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about and she started crying, talking about how her mama was spinning in her grave. I told her that I can’t live my life worrying about offending the dead.”

I was shocked. “You said that to her?”

“You goddamn right.” Hermione pulled on her cigarette.

“What’d Coco do?”

“Slapped the shit out of me.”

“What’d you do?”

“Nothing. Just stood there, hating her. I think she was the one who told Mama. Remember when Mama started going through our stuff, making us take our baths with the door unlocked? Don’t you remember all of this?”

I nodded. I did remember our room in disarray when we came home from school. That was when Mama kept asking us,
Why is it that you girls are determined to be sluts? I tried so hard to raise you right. I had to do it by myself but I tried so hard. Look at you. A slut and a slut’s apprentice
.

“She really went apeshit.”

“And even before that. Remember when you got caught messing around with your gym teacher?” Hermione said.

“It wasn’t really like that. I didn’t sleep with him.”

“That’s because you got caught.”

“That wasn’t my fault. I was just in the ninth grade.”

She blew out a mouthful of smoke and waved it away. “I’m not trying to say anything about that. I’m trying to tell you what happened. Remember that dinner Mama fixed for us that night? The bloody chicken and the burnt potatoes?”

Of course I remembered this. We had been sitting at the glass table and Mama put out a platter of chicken and the bowl of potatoes. I could see that the potatoes were crusted dark brown and the carbon smell filled the dining room.

“Eat,” my mother commanded us. “I cooked for you. I’ve been in the kitchen all evening. Eat.”

I had cut my eyes at Hermione. She had grown into her plumpness by now and looked like a ripe peach. She’d tightened her face on one side, a “hell no” expression.

Mama looked at me and said, “Are you hungry, Ariadne?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I had said, and spooned the potatoes on my plate and took a chicken thigh.

“And you ate it,” Hermione said. “I watched you. You ate it. You bit that chicken and the blood ran out. The meat was sort of see-through and slimy. I watched you chew it, swallow it, and when it started to come back up, you swallowed it again.”

“But I had to,” I said. “She was so mad about what had happened with Coach Roberts. And I felt guilty.”

“I knew right then that I had to get out. Get away from Mama, get away from you. All this craziness. I called Earl that night and told him he was going to have to marry me right away because I was pregnant.”

I tapped the ash of the slender cigarette into an empty Coke can. “You were pregnant?”

“No,” she said. “But I had to tell him
something
. I got the idea from soap operas.”

“So you lied too.”

“That was different,” she said, exhaling smoke.

“Different how?”

“Aria, Earl was our
play uncle.
It was sort of a bad situation from the jump. But where you’re at is different. You and Dwayne can be like regular people. Don’t screw it up playing these games. This is your chance to be
normal.
Don’t you just want to be normal, finally?”

Looking into the pink tip of the smoldering cigarette, I said, “I’ll never be normal.”

My sister took it from my hand and took a deep drag. “Look, Aria. I’m sorry. I
am
. I had to get away from Mama. Crazy is contagious. How could I live my life if I had to stay in that house, stuck like flypaper?”

“So you just left me there with her?”

“I had to save myself,” she said.

“You just left me.”

“I had to.”

“I hate you,” I whispered.

“No, you don’t.”

Hermione was right in calling my bluff. I didn’t hate her. Could I blame her, really? Would I have done the same thing if I had been her, offered a get-out-of-jail-free card from a most unlikely source?

“You still didn’t tell me what you are going to do about Dwayne.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I am sort of hoping that things will work themselves out.”

“Well,” Hermione said, “you better hope this doctor is as good as everyone says she is.”

We rode to Willow Street making easy, meaningless conversation about the personal lives of celebrities. I didn’t share Hermione’s breadth of knowledge on the subject, but I did my best to keep up with her. Mostly I smiled, pretending to be emotionally invested in the lives of the stars.

When we pulled up into the driveway, she looked at me and said, “Ready, Freddy?”

I smiled. This was what she’d say when we were kids after school. She’d say, “Ready, Freddy?” just before we’d open the front door and see what Mama had in store for us.

“Ready,” I said.

“Okay.” Hermione honked the horn twice. I climbed into the backseat, sitting on a blanket of crushed Goldfish crackers.

Mama bounded out of the house in an excellent mood, lipsticked and smiling. She was well dressed as always, in a smart linen pantsuit. Lilac.

“It seems like Dwayne should be here with us,” Mama said over her shoulder as Hermione merged onto I-85. “If he’s going to be your husband, he should be involved with this.”

I was in the backseat, beside Little Link’s empty car seat. My mouth tasted burned from the cigarette in the park. I sifted through the debris for gum or a mint.

“Well, this is just a consultation,” Hermione said. “There’s plenty of time for him to get involved.”

“I told you that the doctor is a black lady, right?” Mama said, talking loud over the air rushing in the windows. “She’s supposed to be the best.”

“That’s good,” said Hermione.

“Well, she’s got to be better than that old man you went to at first.”

I didn’t appreciate her potshot at Dr. Blackwelder. He was a nice enough man and I appreciated his empathy. But Mama was probably right. Dr. Blackwelder was seventy if he was a day. Although he’d had decades of experience, I questioned his mastery of the latest technology.

Still, it had seemed disloyal to ask him for my records.

“Getting a second opinion, are you?”

“My mother’s making me.”

“Where you going?”

“Emory,” I mumbled.

He brightened. “Emory? Oh, yes. That’s a fine idea. They really know what they’re doing out there. Pricey, though.” He looked at me through his oval spectacles.

“Dr. Blackwelder, why is this happening to me?”

He crossed his arms over his chest; his yellow-dotted bow tie bobbed as he spoke. “The human body is so delicate. When anything goes wrong, hormones, enzymes, just the slightest thing, everything starts to malfunction. Ariadne, the miracle is that people are able to live at all.”

As I was leaving, he had taken my hand and spoken quietly. I worried that he would cry. “Come back after they’ve had a look at you. Come back here and tell me some good news.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Good,” he said before releasing me. “Chin up, young lady. Don’t count yourself out just yet.”

Regular people’s lives are different than rich people’s lives. This is something that everyone knows, either from watching TV or just from plain common sense. People who have things have things, and people who don’t, don’t. But short visits to the other side really let a person see what this means in a daily sort of way.

Reproductive endocrinology must pay pretty well; the doctor’s office was well appointed, to say the least. It wasn’t so extravagant that the nurses offered you cappuccino or anything like that, but it was nice. Paintings hung on the wall, the real thing, not just framed prints. The whole place smelled sweet like a high-end gift shop.

Mama, Hermoine, and I sank into comfortable chairs in the waiting room, where a white couple sat, heads bent over a shiny brochure. The woman was about Hermione’s size, but she didn’t carry it as well. Where Hermione favored close-fitting V-necks, the woman in the waiting room wore a beige cotton tunic, expensive but shapeless, and a faded pair of leggings. Red acne dotted her forehead. Her husband, thin and rangy, seemed to be taking better care of himself. His chinos and polo shirt looked pert and fresh from the dry cleaners.

A framed poster on the wall asked “What is infertility?”

“This is nice,” Mama said.

“Nicer than my house,” I said.

The couple looked over at us and the woman gave an uneasy smile, a look people give you when they think they are better than you are, but are too nice to show it. My mother gave Hermione a stern look, warning her to keep quiet. Had the rich couple not been within earshot, Mama would have said,
Hermione. Don’t act like you have never been anywhere before. This is not what Dr. King died for.

Hermione caught the glance and then picked up a magazine,
Fit Pregnancy.
A pregnant supermodel on the cover was credited with saying, “I love my new curves.” Hermione rolled her eyes and put the magazine down. “When I was pregnant, I looked pregnant.”

The couple looked over at us now, with interest and maybe even a touch of envy. I am sure that they thought that my sister was the patient, the one who had been given some sort of miracle cure. Hermione jiggled her key chain with the photo of Link frowning in a small plastic frame.

I picked up a copy of
Managing Menopause
and Mama gently slid it out of my hands, handing me
Modern Motherhood.

As it turned out, Dr. Ruby Morrison gave us no reason to doubt her knowledge of all the latest technologies, but she didn’t give us much reason to like her either. Tallish and blade thin, she was about the same age as my mother but smaller. Mama prides herself on wearing the same size eight she wore as a bride, but Dr. Morrison was a six. Her black pantsuit pinched in at the waist.

When she walked into the examination room, she seemed a little taken aback to see so many of us wedged onto the love seat.

“Oh!” she said before acknowledging us with a nod each. “Which of you is Ariadne?”

I raised my hand.

Dr. Morrison nodded. “And these are your . . . friends?”

“I’m her mother, Mrs. Eloise Jackson.”

“They’re here for moral support,” I said.

“That’s fine,” said the doctor, easing her slim self past us to a small desk. She pressed a few keys on her computer and frowned. Mama stared at the doctor, taking in her hair—cornrows that fed an austere French twist down the back of her head. Even her braids were thin. I saw Mama scrutinize the doctor’s jewelry, a chunky amber pendant and matching earrings. No wedding ring on the fingers moving rapidly over the keyboard.