Man Enough For Me (12 page)

“Amen,” they all chorused in agreement.

“Well, then,” Momma Jackson said, clearly satisfied with Germaine’s blessing on the food. “Let’s eat.”

A quiet hum of gently clanking dishes and easy conversation surrounded the table as they ate. Germaine easily held Momma Jackson’s attention, and she seemed to be delighted with most of what he was saying. Jules narrowed her eyes curiously at him. She wasn’t surprised at how easily he fit into his mother’s upper middle-class environment. From the beginning she had figured he was one of those guys who could go from street to suave in a second. She was surprised, however, at how easily he seemed to charm her mother. Momma Jackson was no pushover.

“So tell me, Germaine, how did you meet my Jules?”

Jules’s head snapped up, and she looked worriedly across at Germaine. There was no way he could tell her mother that he met her at a club. Momma Jackson was one of those old-fashioned Christians who believed God’s children shouldn’t be anywhere where people might be dancing to music. So it wouldn’t matter that Jules had been at the Sound Lounge for business, or that it wasn’t your typical club. To Momma Jackson it was still the devil’s playground.

Despite her best efforts Jules couldn’t seem to catch Germaine’s eye. She needn’t have worried though, for Germaine had clearly sized up Momma Jackson and determined what would and wouldn’t fly with her.

“Well, she’s actually friends with my cousin, but I really met her several months ago when her company was doing some business with my store,” Germaine said.

“Oh, is that so,” Momma Jackson said, looking pleased and interested all at the same time. “Tell me about this store of yours.”

Jules relaxed as she realized that Germaine didn’t need any coaching from her. In fact, so far the evening had been going better than expected. They had made it all the way to the end of the main course without even a minor confrontation between Jules and her mother. Jules shot up a small prayer of thanks to God for that small mercy.

It seemed, however, that the minute she opened her eyes, everything began to fall apart.

It all started with the cheesecake.

“Now, sugar, I know you are not taking a slice of that cheesecake,” Momma Jackson said loudly. “That’s going to go straight to your thighs, and you know you have a weight problem.”

All eyes at the table turned to stare at Jules, and she prayed that the ground beneath her chair would open and swallow her up. If there was a better way for Momma Jackson to completely humiliate her, she didn’t know what it was.

Jules couldn’t understand where her mother came up with this stuff. It wasn’t like Jules had ever been one of those girls who complained about her weight. She had been happy with her size eight figure for the past ten years she’d had it.

But just like always, Jules would never confront her mother. To do so would be to prolong the argument, which would somehow end up being more embarrassing for Jules than for Momma Jackson.

“I think I’ll be fine, Mother,” Jules said, stabbing at her slice of cheesecake with her fork. She did not have the nerve to look up at Germaine and see what she knew would be a look of pity. Maybe it was a bad idea for her to have invited him here after all.

“Oh, no,” said Momma Jackson. “She’s calling me ‘mother.’ That means she’s mad at me. I can’t ever get anything right with you, can I, Jules,” Momma Jackson said, shaking her head. “I try to look out for you because I care, because I don’t want you to end up fat like me, but you act like I’m trying to hurt you.”

Jules chewed slowly and continued to cut her cheesecake into small bite-size pieces with her fork. Maybe if she stayed
quiet, and acted like the outburst wasn’t happening, it would go away. But the less Jules spoke, the more annoyed her mother seemed to get.

“You know, Jules, you’re the only one in this family who treats me like I’m stupid,” Momma Jackson said. “Davis always takes my advice. He knows his momma is only looking out for him because she loves him. But you, you act like I’m the enemy.”

From the corner of her eye Jules could see that Davis had assumed his normal position for when their mother started her tirades. His head was so deep in his plate that in a few moments his nose would be able to tell them how good the cheesecake really was. Jules knew that nothing short of divine intervention would get him to say a word in her defense.

In fact none of them ever stood up to Momma Jackson for her. Keisha somehow melted into the background, and Aunt Sharon, for all her kindness, believed that she was not family enough to get between her sister and her niece when they got started. So she just sat at the other end of the table, silently spooning cantaloupe slices onto her plate like nothing was happening.

When Jules finally gained the courage to look up at Germaine, she found his eyes watching her carefully. But there was no pity there, just curiosity. Jules was almost sure she knew what he was thinking:
Was all that Momma Jackson was saying true? And if not, why doesn’t Jules stand up to her mother?

Jules laughed inwardly. If only he knew.

“It’s just like when I talk to you about work,” Momma Jackson continued.

Jules resisted the urge to laugh at the predictability of her mother. She had wondered when they would get to that topic. No matter how the argument started, it somehow always managed to end up being about how Jules worked too hard.

“You kill yourself working all hours at that job of yours. So much that you can’t even take some time off to spend with your momma,” she complained. “And for what? I don’t see you getting any richer. You still paying rent for that shoe-box apartment
in Scarborough. If you had just stayed here then maybe you could have saved up enough to put down a mortgage on a house of your own by now. But no, you had to move, had to have it your way. I don’t know which was more important to you, being closer to that job of yours or getting away from me.”

Jules closed out her mother’s voice and began to do that thing she did whenever her mother’s words started hitting too close to her heart. She started making lists. Lists of things she needed to do, grocery lists, work activity lists, anything to take her focus away from her mother. Today it was a “things to do when I get home” list.

1. Check my bank account balance …
   

2. Pay my credit card bill online …
   

3. Sort the laundry so I can wash tomorrow …
   

4. Get out my clothes for work tomorrow …
   

She was so far away that she almost missed Germaine’s comment to her mother.

“You know, Mrs. Jackson, Jules has actually been helping my cousin Truuth promote his gospel album,” Germaine slipped in casually when Momma Jackson stopped to take a breath.

Jules and everyone else at the table turned to look at him as if he was crazy. He was the only one who had dared to interrupt Momma Jackson. They all assumed it was because he didn’t know better. They expected her to turn on him at any minute. But the shock of being disrupted seemed to pacify Momma Jackson for a moment.

“Oh?” she managed to squeak out.

“Oh, yeah,” Germaine said casually, piling grapes and kiwi slices onto his plate like nothing unusual was happening. “She’s been really supportive, helping him book performances getting his music out to places where it can really reach people who need it. Like last week he sang at the YMCA’s youth empowerment concert in Scarborough, and got the chance to talk to a lot of the kids there. None of that would have happened without Jules.”

“I didn’t know you were at the concert, Jules,” Keisha said suddenly. “I was there!” Keisha looked across at Germaine.

“Truuth is your cousin? Wow, he’s really good. I heard him a couple times at church, but I didn’t know he was one of the artists Jules was working with.”

“You been doing all of that, Jewel?” Davis asked, surprised. “I’m really proud of you.”

“Yeah, Mrs. Jackson, she works that hard ‘cause she really cares about letting people know that there’s Someone out there who can change their lives,” Germaine said. His eyes shifted to Jules and stayed there. “You should really be proud of her.”

Jules’s eyes met his, and she felt something stir in her chest.

“So that’s what you’re busy doing,” Momma Jackson finally said, tilting her head and looking at Jules carefully. Jules tore her eyes away from Germaine to meet her mother’s gaze. She braced herself for whatever might come next.

“Well, I guess I can’t be mad at you for being on God’s business, now can I,” she said with a half smile. “Good for you, sugar, good for you,” she said, patting Jules’s hand.

And just like that, it was over.

“Davis, when were you gonna tell me about that internship of yours …?”

As the conversation shifted around her, Jules shot Germaine a grateful look. He nodded slightly and smiled in understanding.

Okay.

Maybe bringing him here wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

“Y
ou get an A+ for this evening’s performance,” Jules said, stretching her legs, which were resting across Germaine’s lap. After escaping Momma Jackson’s unscathed, they had ended up back at her apartment on the couch, with the TV, and two bowls of Very Berry Strawberry ice cream.

“Well, I do have a way with mothers,” Germaine said, chuckling as Jules stole a spoonful of ice cream from his bowl.

“So I see,” she said, after swallowing. “Seems like you’ve had a lot of practice over your twenty-eight years.”

“I’m not even gonna go there with you tonight,” Germaine said. He moved his bowl away before Jules could swipe another scoop.

“Okay,” she conceded, dropping her spoon into her own empty bowl.

“It was just nice to have someone stand up for me for a change,” she said, shivering slightly.

Germaine put down his ice cream and wrapped the blanket, resting on the back of the couch, around her shoulders.

“You know I’m always here for you,” he said, rubbing her calves gently. “But if it bothers you so much, why don’t you talk to her about it?”

Jules sighed heavily. “Because my mother and I have a strange
relationship. Every time I try to talk to her about the things she says to me, she somehow makes herself out to be the victim. You saw how she was tonight. I can never win with her.”

“Have you ever tried to talk to her when she’s not mad?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Germaine began, “if you’re trying to talk to her about how you feel in the middle of an argument, then she probably won’t hear you. But if you try reaching her when she’s in a good mood, then it just might make a difference.”

“Hmm,” Jules murmured. “I never thought of that.”

Germaine watched her quietly as she mulled over the concept in her mind.

“I think I’m gonna try that,” Jules said. “That’s if I can ever catch her in a good mood.” She sighed. “I just wish I could have a normal relationship with my mother, like everyone else.”

Germaine chuckled. “Baby, no one has a normal relationship with his or his parents. I don’t think there is such a thing.”

“Really?” Jules said. “The way you talk about your mom, you guys seem pretty cool. I wouldn’t mind having a relationship like that.”

“Don’t be too sure.”

Even though he said the words casually, Jules didn’t miss the grimace that quickly crossed his face.

“Why not?” Jules asked, her curiosity now piqued.

But instead of answering, Germaine continued rubbing Jules’s feet silently.

“Come on, babe,” she said, scooting closer to him. “You’ve seen my mother in all her glory. I can’t think of anything worse than that.” Jules looked at him questioningly. She could see him wrestle with the thoughts in his head, and she hoped that for once he would share them, instead of keeping everything hidden. As if hearing her, he began to speak.

“Remember I told you I used to live in Vancouver?” he asked quietly. He had leaned back in the couch but he was gazing absently at some spot on the carpet in front of them.

“Uh-huh.”

“I actually moved there when I was about sixteen,” he said.
“Dad had been … gone … for about a year. And my mom had started seeing this other dude. It wasn’t serious. Or at least I thought it wasn’t, until she told me that she was gonna marry him.”

Jules raised her eyebrows in surprise but said nothing.

“Obviously I was mad as hell. My dad’s body wasn’t even cold yet, and she was selling his house and moving me and her into some stranger’s place to live. I didn’t even know this dude. It was like one morning I woke up and he was there all the time.

“Anyway. We weren’t there a couple months before it became clear that one of us would have to go. It would either be me or him. My mom decided it would be me.”

Jules’s heart grew heavy with sorrow as she saw the barely hidden sadness on Germaine’s face. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have her mother pick someone else over her or Davis. Momma Jackson had always had a lot of things going on in her life, but Jules knew that when it came down to the crunch, Momma Jackson would have given everything up in an instant to make sure Jules and Davis were taken care of.

Jules grabbed both his hands as he continued.

“She sent me to this boarding school in Vancouver, and that’s where I finished high school. From there I went straight to UBC, did business, and that’s where I was living and working afterward.”

Jules looked at Germaine bewildered. “What about summers? Christmas? Thanksgiving?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I worked. Or stayed on campus,” he said. “After I graduated from UBC, I got my own place, and Vancouver became home for me.”

He grimaced. “I never even really knew my little sister until about two years ago. When she was born, my mom wanted me to come visit and see her. But I couldn’t. Wouldn’t.”

“I’m sorry, Germaine,” Jules said quietly. She wanted to wrap her arms around him. But with him so deeply involved in his own memories, it felt like an intrusion. So she opted for squeezing his hand instead.

“She used to write me. All the time.”

“Your sister?”

He nodded.

“She’d never met me. But here was this little seven-year-old girl, writing to me about her science project, and her pet frog, and Anwar, the boy next door who would chase her around with worms,” he said, chuckling.