Between Lovers (30 page)

She asks, “How much this room cost?”

“Four hundred.”

“A day?”

“Yes, ma‘am.”

“Lord, Lord, Lord.”

The phone rings. I answer on the first ring. It's Nicole. She's downstairs.

Nicole asks, “I called Memphis and they said it was no joke. I'm still hoping this is some prank. A very unfunny prank. Is my mother really up there?”

“She's here.”

She falls silent. “I'm not afraid of her. I can do this.”

She hangs up.

“Was that her?”

“Yes, ma‘am.” I rub left palm over right palm. “She's on the way up.”

“My terms,” she says. “Remember my terms.”

I turn the lights off. Turn the television off. Close my laptop so the screen saver doesn't give any unwanted illumination. Close the shutters. She sits on the sofa, puts her back to me and faces the waters; this time she sees nothing but shadows and multicolored curtains.

We wait.

 

There is a soft knock on the door. I look through the peephole, then open the door.

Nicole comes inside, each step so slow, as if she is thinking about turning around, or waiting to be told to turn around. Her eyes go to me, then across the room. She knows that her mother is on the other side of those closed shutters.

Nicole rushes back to the door, hurries out into the hallway.

I race out behind her.

Looks like she's about to run away, but she leans against the wall, forehead first, her left hand on her chest, trying to control her breathing.

“I feel her energy. Her perfume is in the hallway, on the elevator, right here. I should've wrapped my hair.” Nicole says all that, then chuckles as she shakes her head. “At home, Momma used to put curtains up between her and whoever. So childish.”

“Where did she get that from?”

“Big Momma. Her momma. Something passed down from generation to generation. Satan has to be at her back at all times.”

I take her hands. “Be yourself. Stand up to her.”

Nicole closes her eyes. She's a child being sent to the principal's office.

But we are not children. We don't have to go to the office.

“You up for this? I've got your back either way. It's your call.”

“I have to. She's still my mother.”

She gets herself together and we go back inside. The moment the door closes, as if she senses her daughter's life force the same way Nicole senses hers, she asks me, “She has arrived?”

I answer, “Yes, ma‘am.”

“Tell her to be seated. Give this to her.”

I hurry to our southern-fried diva and she opens her luggage, hands me a big black Bible, one that is tattered, dog-eared, has seen better days and better nights. She tells me to give it to Nicole.

When I do, Nicole says, “This was my father's Bible. The one he preached from.”

Her mother says, “Tell her to keep her hands on the Word. To keep her hand close to her father. To keep her hand with the Father.”

Nicole nods.

“Ask my child if she believes in God.”

Nicole holds the timeworn Bible in her right hand for a moment. Stares at it. Then pulls it to her chest, holds it close to her heart. Her left hand comes up to her locks, drags across her face to her temples, her eyes squeezed shut.

I want to hold her, but I stay where I am.

Nicole sits at the foot of my rented bed, here in my den of sin, here in my fuckville, with her back to her mother as her mother's back is to her, and she answers, “You know I believe in a supreme being.”

I sit in a red-cushioned chair in the bedroom area, between them, but closer to Nicole.

With clenched teeth her mother retorts, “Ask her.”

I ask Nicole, “Do you believe in God?”

Nicole sighs, rocks herself like a little old lady. Her answer is “Yes.”

I tell her mother, “Yes.”

Her mother tells me, “Ask her if she believes in sin.”

I do. Nicole's answer is yes, she believes in sin. And when that question passes through me, I feel pain. My own personal pain starts to bloom, it swells like skin branded with iron.

Her mother hums. “Ask her if she thinks that what she is doing is a sin.”

Nicole's answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no.

“Tell her that she is either with God, or divorced from God. There is no sometimes. In between yes and no is only confusion.”

Nicole's irritation rises. “Why is it so important that we have to think the same things, feel the same way? Can't we just be allowed to be individuals, and in the middle of that, still find a way to be mother and daughter?”

“Listen to her, Lord, listen. My daughter has lost her soul. Her soul is waiting for her body.”

“Don't say it, please don't say it again, Momma, please—”

“Nicole is dead.”

“I am not dead. I'm right here. You hear me. I know you hear me. Then I am not dead.”

“My daughter is—”

“I am not dead!” Nicole pretty much shouts. She stands, moves by me, and breaks the rules.

When she sees her mother, she slows, maybe taken aback by the new age that rests in her mother's flesh, the aging that tells Nicole that her mother is getting closer to the ground every day.

Nicole kneels. “I am right here. You can hear me, you can smell me, look Momma, that's my hand on your hand, I know you can feel me, and if you open your eyes, if you please open your eyes, you can see me. I am not dead, Momma. I am right here.”

“I will open my eyes.”

“Please.”

“I will open my eyes.” She speaks with difficulty, like an old woman. “If when I open my eyes you can show me in your father's Bible, show me where it is written that what you're doing is alright with my Lord and Savior.”

“You know I can't do that.”

“If you can show me that, I will open my eyes. If you cain‘t, you are dead.”

“Momma, please. Don't be silly.”

Her mother addresses me. “Tell her to get behind me.”

With a mixture of intrigue and anger, I play this stupid game and I tell Nicole. Have to remind myself that my role is about observation, not confrontation.

I say, “Nicole. Come back over here.”

With reluctance, Nicole stands, eyes watering, touching my hand with love as she passes me, then moves back to the bed, puts her back to her mother once again.

“Aren't you the least bit shamed?” her mother asks, not filtering the question through me, as if she's forgotten her own rules. “You grew up in a Christian home, you weren't abused in any way, shape, form, or fashion. We sent you to the best schools, surrounded you with the best people. How do you decide to be the way you are?”

“This is who I am.”

“So, you've turned your back on all we taught you?”

“No. I'll always embrace what you and Daddy gave me. I have spiritual practices.”

“So do devil-worshippers.”

“I'm not a devil-worshipper.”

Her mother huffs. “You come over here, get up under me smelling like voodoo-oil—”

“It's herbal.”

“As in marijuana?”

“Not herbs, herbal. Natural. Of this earth.”

“Voodoo,” she says, shaking her head. “Nothing but voodoo. Where is your belief?”

“My beliefs are strong. I believe in good, in tolerance, in empathy, in love, in—”

“In foolishness. You cannot shape God to fit your own image, you cain't modify what is written to fit your life. You have to go to God. He does not have to come to you.”

“What's the point of you coming here? To torture me? To make me feel bad?”

Her mother doesn't answer, just makes a rugged sound.

I get back to the rules, repeat Nicole's question: “Nicole wants to know why you came here.”

Her mother takes a deep breath. She whispers, “Everything happens in threes. Good or bad, it all comes in threes. Momma always told me to look out for threes. Those were signs from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's how He taps you on your shoulder, three times.”

She hums a while. We wait.

When she's ready, she says, “There were three signs.”

She says that my father calling out of the blue was the first sign. Then Denzel's movie was on.
Philadelphia.
The story about a gay man who had a big disease with a little name. Watching Tom Hanks die, feeling herself being pulled into what she considers to be a homosexual movie, was her second sign. The moment that drama went off HBO, Imitation of Life came on TNT.

She leaves that right there. Nicole asks me to ask her how was
Imitation of Life
the third sign.

Her mother says, “The funeral. When the daughter was crying over her mother's coffin. That was my third sign.”

Nicole lets out a low moan.

I don't really understand, but that doesn't stop her mother's thought process from chilling me. Every word puts a bag of ice in my stomach. I'm not superstitious, not afraid of black cats, or ladders or broken mirrors, not afraid to go to the thirteenth floor of any building, but the way she says it, the way she believes it, that frightens me, damn near makes me accept the power of threes.

Nicole says, “And you believe that what you interpreted as three signs is holy and righteous?”

“He works in mysterious ways.”

Silence.

With unexpected calmness Nicole says, “I can't be who you want me to be. Accept me.”

“If I accept you as you are, then I accept homosexuality. If I accept homosexuality, I go against my God. If I go against God, then I am with the devil. You have to come to me. I cain't go to you.”

More silence. I rub my hands back and forth until my flesh is dry.

Nicole speaks in a low tone. “Are you done?”

No response.

I repeat Nicole's question. “Are you done?”

Her mother responds, “No.”

I'm pissed, but at the same time I admire Nicole's mother. She's wounded, a parent who expected something different for her Little Nikki, but she stays so firm in her faith.

I thought Nicole would crumble when confronted, but even with her head down, even with teary eyes, even with a strained voice, she is not running away from her mother. She seems stronger, more sure of who she is, of how the rest of the world operates. I'm proud of her.

And at the same time, I want her mother to win. Her victory will be my victory. Her victory will drag us all from this place that has no exit.

But when I glance at Nicole, I don't want her to lose. Because what I admire about Nicole is the same thing I admire about her mother. Her strength, her conviction. Her refusal to compromise.

“Will you please tell my momma I'm an individual. I'm not her. Will never be her. That she has to accept me as I am. Just as I am. She has to look at me for who I am and not who she wants me to be.”

I tell her. It's the same thing Nicole has been telling me and Ayanna.

Then her mother gets her second wind, her strength doubles like Popeye after a can of spinach, and the questions come nonstop, they come hard and strong, a hurricane confined to this room.

“Maybe you just ain't found the right man,” her mother says.

Felt like she stabbed me in my chest.

“Just gotta find the right man.” She rocks, hums. “That girl left Ellen Degenerate and went back to a man, now she's back in her right mind. I want to know if this is a phase. I read that this is another one of those trends for your generation.”

I repeat that the best I can.

Nicole says, “Tell her I love both a man and a woman. One man. One woman.”

“You either this way or that way,” her mother responds. “Like your grandmomma used to say, either you is or you ain't.”

“Well, I'm in love with a man and a woman.”

“Hear my words: no such thing. One or the other.”

“I was with both of my lovers yesterday, and for a while, even if it was only for a few moments, I was where I wanted to be.”

“All of you were together?”

“Yes.”

“All three of you together. Lord, Lord, Lord.”

I swallow. My own saliva goes down like castor oil mixed with Buckleys.

Nicole says, “If you want the truth, I will give you just that. But don't ask any questions that you don't want answered, Momma, because I will answer them all.”

“You should be ashamed. Animals in the zoo don't behave like that.”

“I'm not an animal.”

“You're below animals.”

“Well, don't ask anything that you can't handle.”

It's takes me a moment, but I find enough air to breathe again.

Nicole's mother never stops shaking her head as she opens her bag, pulls out a white tissue, dabs her eyes, blows her nose. Across the room Nicole does the same thing, the same motions, same movements and rhythms that are inherited, the idiosyncrasies that are passed down from generation to generation.

Nicole says, “Can you see this from my perspective for one moment?”

“You need to get a rubber room at Poplar and Dun-lap,” her mother snaps. “You need to be psychologically evaluated.”

“Free thinking never is rational to the narrow-minded.”

Her mother retorts, “It's free because it ain't worth a dime.”

There is a pause, and silence returns to visit us, touches us with power and force, the way silence touches people in those moments my father pauses in one of his sermons.