Broken Wings (44 page)

Nearly another hour went by before she returned.

“Okay. For now you’ve been released back to your uncle and aunt’s supervision,” she announced.

I looked up, surprised.

“I am?”

“Yes. It’s not like you’re on bail, but your uncle has vouched for you and promised he would make sure you came to the court when you have to come. He could get into trouble if you don’t listen or try to run away. He’s going to take you home now,” she said.

“What about the charges against me and such?” I asked.

“They’ll decide about all this in court later,” she explained. “For now, go home, listen to your uncle and aunt, and keep your nose clean.”

When I walked out, Uncle Buster was sitting with his head down in the lobby. He looked up at me and then rose.

“This wasn’t all my fault,” I told him in a hoarse voice.

“Let’s just get home and get some sleep, Phoebe. It’s been a long, long night,” he said, looking almost as exhausted as I felt. “Your aunt’s sick over worrying about you.”

“I’ll bet she’s worrying about me,” I said.

I followed him out to the car.

“You can’t go anywhere but to school and back,” he told me when we got in. “Otherwise, you could end up right back here and things will go very bad for you when we do go to court, Phoebe. It might be a lot different here than where you lived. They don’t see as much of this sort of thing, and they might be a lot sterner.”

“I don’t know why I’m the one who has to go to court. They’re the ones who tried to rape me!”

“Let’s not talk about it anymore,” he said.

“Let’s not.”

I fell asleep again with my head against the side of the car and woke up when we pulled into the driveway and then into the garage. Wrapping her bathrobe around herself, Aunt Mae Louise came out of her bedroom when we entered the house.

“Don’t say anything more now, Mae,” Uncle Buster begged her before she could begin. “Let’s all just get some rest. You want to be up early for church and make those corn muffins for Dad.”

“Seems we all oughta be up early for church,” she muttered, her eyes fixed stone-coldly on me.

I didn’t reply. I went into my room and without even taking off my clothes, went to sleep. Collapsed was more like it, because I didn’t even take off my muddied shoes.

I heard my door opening in the morning, but I kept my eyes closed.

“She doesn’t even have sense enough to get undressed for bed,” Aunt Mae Louise said.

“Just let her rest, Mae,” I heard Uncle Buster tell her. “She’d only fall asleep in church and embarrass us both and you’d be more upset.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” she replied, and the door was closed.

I lay there listening to them move about the house, Aunt Mae Louise snapping orders at Barbara Ann and Jake and even Uncle Buster until they were ready to leave. When the door closed and the house grew silent and I was absolutely sure they were gone, I rose.

I took off my clothes and had a hot shower. Then I dressed in a pair of jeans, a blouse, and a light leather jacket. I slipped on some running shoes, ran a brush through my hair, and then packed my suitcase, taking only the things I absolutely wanted. I dug out the hundred and fifty dollars I had taken from Grog in school. I had buried it in a drawer under my panties. I scooped up my purse and put the money in it along with the fifty I had kept from the night before.

On the way out, I drank a glass of orange juice. I wasn’t very hungry, but I thought I had better take a piece of bread anyway. I paused in the doorway.

“Good riddance to you all,” I told the house. “I’m not hanging around here to see whether or not I get put in jail or something.”

I closed the door and walked out of the housing development. First, I thought I would just go back to our apartment in Atlanta, hoping it was still ours and the landlord hadn’t moved Daddy’s things out yet. But as I rode the bus toward the city, another thought entered my mind. When we reached the bus station, I stood considering for a while before deciding to take the next bus to Macon.

I decided I was going to see Mama. Maybe if I went to see her, she would be encouraged and want to start her life anew. Maybe we could be together after all, just up and go somewhere we had never been and be a mother and a daughter for once and for all. She can’t want to stay in a detox ward, and she might be disgusted enough with her choices to see the light and want to be with me.

For all I knew, she didn’t know about Daddy, too. Perhaps that would affect her. She would realize I had no one now and she would care, especially when I complained about her sister, my aunt Mae Louise. Mama never liked her own sister. She’d understand why I was so determined to get away.

Sure she would. She would have to, I thought. The more I thought about it all, the more excited I became, so excited, I wished the bus would go faster. When we pulled into the station in Macon, I practically knocked people out of my way to get off. Then I found a taxi stand and had the driver take me to the place I knew Mama was being kept.

After I spoke with the receptionist, she made me wait in a small lobby, but I didn’t wait long before a tall, thin African-American woman in a lab coat came out to see me. Her hair was a thin reddish brown, and she had freckles on her caramel cheeks, a long but nicely shaped nose, and lips that were almost orange.

“I’m Doctor Young,” she said, extending her long arm and thin fingers at me.

I took her hand and stood.

“I want to see my mother,” I replied.

“You’re Charlene Elder’s daughter?” she asked as if she didn’t believe Mama had a daughter.

“Yes.”

“We’ve been trying to locate her husband. Where is your father?”

“He’s dead,” I said. “He was killed in a car accident recently.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. We actually tried contacting…” She paused to look at her clipboard. “Contacting a Mrs. Mae Louise Howard, but she hasn’t returned any calls. That is your mother’s sister, isn’t it?”

“She’s probably trying to forget she’s related,” I said dryly.

“Well, who do you live with?”

“Nobody,” I said, not hiding my impatience. “I just want to see my mother. Can I see her?”

“Yes, yes. I think it might do some good. Come along,” she said eagerly. “What do you know about your mother’s condition?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. What was I going to do, tell her my life story?

“Your mother has been suffering from serious substance abuse and is still in a period of withdrawal.”

“How did she get here?” I asked as we continued down the corridor.

“As far as I know, she was dropped off at the emergency room, but whoever did that didn’t hang around. It’s quite common,” she added quickly as if she thought I would get hysterical over it.

“Is she going to be all right?”

“These things take a lot of time,” she replied. “They require a great deal of therapy and a willingness on the part of the patient.”

She stopped and touched my arm.

“I don’t know how much you know about what happened here.”

“I don’t know much. She left my daddy and me and ran off with someone.”

“I see.”

She hesitated and then, from the look I saw in her eyes, decided she had to be truthful, even to someone as young as I was.

“Your mother tried to commit suicide,” she told me.

“Suicide? We didn’t know that.”

“I did leave a message for your aunt.”

I shook my head.

“She never told me,” I said more to myself than Doctor Young.

“It’s not uncommon to see patients with problems like this get this depressed and try to take their own lives.”

“What did she do?”

“She cut her wrists with a ballpoint pen, but fortunately, an attendant was nearby and we were able to prevent serious consequences. At the moment she’s quite withdrawn. It’s not uncommon, given the drugs, the alcohol.”

“Nothing seems to be uncommon,” I commented.

She stared at me a moment and then nodded.

“I’m just trying to prepare you. You don’t look that old,” she said as we continued. “With whom do you live now?”

“I was living with my aunt.”

“Your aunt? But I thought… I mean, as I said, we’ve tried to get her to call us. Does she know you’ve come here?”

“I’m making other living arrangements,” I said quickly, hoping she would stop asking so many questions.

She widened her eyes.

“I see. Okay. We have your mother under twenty-four-hour observation in here,” she said, taking me through another door. We paused in the hallway. “She’s in this room. Don’t be alarmed about how stark it is. With cases like this, we have to limit the patient’s ability to find ways to harm him- or herself.”

A tall black man in an attendant’s uniform peered out of a doorway, holding a cup of coffee.

“How is Mrs. Elder doing?” Doctor Young asked.

“No different. No problem,” he said.

She reached into her pocket and produced a key chain. Then she unlocked the door of Mama’s room and opened it. Mama, in a patient’s light blue gown, was sitting on a bare bed looking at a bare wall. There was no other furniture, not even a chair.

“Charlene?” Doctor Young said. “I have a visitor for you. Someone’s come to see you.”

Mama didn’t turn. She didn’t look as if she had heard.

Doctor Young nodded to me, and I stepped forward.

“Hello, Mama,” I said.

Mama’s eyes fluttered, and then she turned and looked at me, but her expression didn’t change. I saw the bandages on her wrists, but shifted my eyes away quickly. Just the sight of that made my heart thump hard and fast.

“Your daughter has come to see you, Charlene. Isn’t that nice?”

Mama looked at Doctor Young.

“I want a cigarette,” she said as if I came to see her every day and it was nothing unusual.

“Now you know you can’t have cigarettes yet, Charlene. Why don’t you just visit with your daughter now. Have a nice visit, and we’ll be talking again this afternoon.”

Mama pursed her lips the way I knew her to do when she had an angry or unpleasant thought. Then she grunted and turned back to the wall. I looked at Doctor Young, who nodded some encouragement.

“I’ll be right outside,” she said, and left the room, but leaving the door slightly open.

“Hi, Mama,” I said.

“What are you doin‘ here?” she snapped back at me. “This ain’t no place for you, girl.”

“I came to see you. I had to see you, Mama. I was hoping you’d be better and—”

“You got any cigarettes?”

“No, Mama.”

“They keep me from having cigarettes. I’m dying for a drink. It’s like prison. I get outta here, I’m gonna get even with Sammy for dumpin‘ me like that.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and then looked at me sharply. “Your daddy send you here hopin‘ I’d come back?”

“Didn’t anyone tell you about Daddy, Mama?”

“They don’t tell me nothin‘ ’bout nobody. All they tell me is what I can eat and drink, when I should sleep, and how I should try to care more about myself. That doctor drives me crazy with all her talk. Makes my head spin. If you got a cigarette and you’re not givin‘ it to me, Phoebe…”

“I don’t have any cigarettes, Mama. Aunt Mae Louise won’t let a cigarette ten feet near her.”

“Mae Louise?” She blew some air between her lips. “She only let that man of hers near her twice, to have those brats, and that was that. I can see it in his face when he looks at me. Man’s starving for some lovin‘,” she said, smiling. “Mae hates it when I’m around.”

She looked at me again, angrily.

“Why didn’t your daddy come here himself? Man has no spine, sending a girl to do his work.”

“Daddy can’t come here even if he wants to, Mama. Daddy’s dead,” I said.

She tilted her head a bit and narrowed her eyes.

“I don’t know why no one has told you that. Maybe they have and you forgot,” I added, more for my own thinking than hers.

“Dead? How’s he dead?”

“He was killed in a car accident, Mama. I’ve been living with Aunt Mae Louise and Uncle Buster since you ran away with Sammy Bitters. Daddy thought it was better than my being alone in the city, only it’s been worse,” I continued, since she looked like she was really listening to what I had to say now. “It’s a snobby place and—”

“You say Horace is gone?”

“Yes, Mama. Daddy’s gone.”

She nodded and then rocked herself.

“He was like dead anyway,” she told herself. Then she stopped rocking and looked at me.

“So who you living with now?”

“I just told you, Mama. I’m living with Aunt Mae Louise and Uncle Buster, but I can’t stand it there so I ran away.”

“Ran away?” She smiled and then chuckled. “I wasn’t much older than you when I first ran away. Runnin‘ is in the blood, I guess.”

“Mama, I want you to get better and come out of here. We could go off together, start a new life somewhere, far away from people like Aunt Mae Louise.”

“You can’t ever get away from people like your aunt Mae Louise. They’re everywhere, like locusts,” she said angrily, and started rocking herself again.

“We can, Mama. Just you and me.”

She looked at me with a smirk.

“You and me? Girl, you don’t even have a cigarette,” she said. “You come here and you don’t even have a cigarette for me.”

“Mama, you can get all the cigarettes you want when you come out of here and we’re together. We’ll get jobs together, maybe even in the same restaurant or something, and we’ll have a nice apartment and take care of each other.”

“Who told you to say all that? Your daddy tell you? He’d try anything to get me to come back.”

“No, Mama.” I squinted at her. “Daddy’s gone. I told you. He was killed in a car accident. Don’t you understand? We don’t have anyone but ourselves now.”

She stared at me, looking like the things I was saying were finally taking hold.

“We can’t go off, Phoebe. I gotta wait here for Sammy. We’re goin‘ to California. His cousin owns a beauty parlor in Encino and there’ll be a job for me. I always used to talk about goin’ to California,” she said, smiling. Then she stopped. “He shouldn’t have left me here so long.” She leaned toward me. “Those people, that doctor, they ain’t nice at all. They want to keep you here because they get more money that way from the state.” She smiled and nodded. “They don’t think I know about such things, but I do.”