Unbeweaveable (17 page)

Stillborn

“Why'd you leave like that? Why didn't you want to see the baby?”

We were back in our hotel. After going back to say good bye to Norma and her family, and promising that I would see her tomorrow, Renee and I rode back to the hotel in silence. Her mood was off ever since we went to the hospital and I wanted to know why.

“Have you forgotten already?”

In all the craziness, I had. “I'm sorry. I didn't realize—”

“It doesn't matter.”

“It does matter. I should have remembered that you have kids—”

She blanched and her face crumpled in like a fist in pie dough.

“Sorry,
had
kids.”

“People think getting over a miscarriage is easy. But three? That's impossible. Kids I can deal with, but babies? It's too hard.”

“I'm really sorry.”

“It's fine,” she said as she pulled the comforter off her bed and laid down.

“Really, Renee, why didn't you—”

“Call you? Tell you? Get real, Mariah, you wouldn't have cared. The times I did call you with news, you rushed me off the phone like I was a bill collector.”

“I didn't—”

She gave me a look and I quieted.

Well, maybe I had.

“You were in school and starting your big career. You couldn't be bothered by your younger sister. You always looked down on my choices in life, like being a wife was such a bad thing. I made my choice to marry young. I wanted to have a big family.”

“
You
didn't make that choice. Beverly made that choice for you.”

“Mama has been a big influence on my life, but I didn't marry Peter just because Mama said so.”

“Since we were little girls Beverly groomed you to be a wife. She knew that your light skin and long hair afforded you certain privileges—”

“Privileges? You think being light-skinned and having long hair is a privilege?”

I patted my hair and looked down at my hands, the color of freshly stained ebony. “Well, it certainly makes your life easier.”

“You think Mama pushed me to marry him? I
wanted
to marry him. I wanted to be a wife and mother more than anything.”

Tears sprung into her eyes and she blinked them back. “You think you have all the answers about everything, Mariah. But I
chose
my life. And I'd do it all over again.”

I was too mad at Beverly to let the matter drop. “Just admit that Beverly
made
you want that. Just like she trained me to be career-oriented because she felt I was too ugly to get a man.”

“That's not true.”

“Yes, it is. It's not fair, but it's the truth.”

“You never understood me. It was always about you growing up. You never could look past yourself and see that I had problems, too. Yes, a light-skinned girl can have problems.”

“Not like me,” I muttered.

“You want to keep acting like you got the short end of the stick all the time. You like playing the victim. Yes, Mama took me shopping with her and taught me all about fashion, but not once did she read to me at night, or check over my homework. Growing up I wanted that, and she didn't give it to me. But I finally had to let that go.”

“I can't,” I said through clenched teeth. “I'm so angry it hurts.”

“Your anger is only hurting yourself.” She sighed. “I know these have been a tough couple of days for you, but did you ever stop to think how I felt about all this? If Mama lied to you, she lied to me. I'm hurting, too.”

“Sorry,” I said again.

“Stop saying you're sorry all the time. You're not sorry. You just feel bad. And that's fine. But you're not the only one dealing with stuff, Mariah. The world doesn't revolve around you.”

She clicked her lamp off near her bed, and the room was flooded with darkness. I could hear her turning over, her back to me.

“The babies I lost? The first two were boys, and the last one was a girl. I was going to name her Mariah,” she said.

* * *

The next morning I woke up before Renee. I showered and was getting dressed when she rolled over and looked at me.

“You're heading to Norma's?”

“Yes. You want to go?”

She shook her head and yawned. “No. I'll just stay here.”

“You're going to stay inside all day? You don't want to walk around and see this beautiful city of mine?”

“Not by myself. How long will you be gone?”

I shrugged. “Don't know. You never know. When I hang out with Norma I tend to lose track of time. But I'll try to be back by this evening. We'll have dinner together, okay?”

She nodded. “That sounds great.”

I grabbed my purse. “Try to get outside. It really is a nice day.”

“I'll try,” she said.

I left the room eager to walk around my old city, eager for fresh air. The wind hit my face and I took in a deep breath of car fumes and dirt.

Oh, to be home.

I saw a reflection of myself in the shiny window I passed by and stopped. I was different now. Not just physically, but mentally as well.
I
have
a
father
, I thought. I held my stomach in anticipation of pain, but nothing happened.

* * *

Norma's house was loud and crowded, filled with three generations of women all telling her the best ways to be a mother. I walked in and greeted everyone, giving her mother and grandmother a hug.

“Where's the new mom?” I asked Chris as he cooked what looked like pancakes on the stove.

“She's in the nursery feeding Elizabeth.”

“A little late for pancakes, huh?”

He shrugged. “That's what everyone wanted. It gives me a chance to be away from all the estrogen in the house.”

I laughed and headed to my old room, which was now decorated in pastel shades of pink and green for the baby. Norma was sitting in a wooden rocking chair with celadon green padding, a quilt thrown over her bare feet. She was still wearing her robe, and her hair looked greasy and limp over her swollen face.

“Well, there you are,” I whispered, walking in to give her a kiss on the cheek. She was switching the baby from one breast to the other, and I got an eyeful of her swollen breasts. Her nipples had taken the size and shape of dinner plates, with blue and green veins coursing through.

“Thanks for the peep show,” I said, sitting down on the ottoman near her. I made fake gagging noises and she slapped me on the knee.

“Let's see what your breasts look like when you have a baby tugging and pulling on them.”

“That's why I'm bottle feeding.”

“That's what they all say,” she said, finally getting her daughter to suckle. She swiped her hair behind her ear and looked at me. “So, how are you doing?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but quickly closed it. My lip trembled and I burst into tears.

“Hey, hey, what's going on?”

I wiped tears that had crept down my chin. “My whole life has been a lie.
Is
a lie.”

“What do you mean?”

“Beverly lied. My father is alive. She lied about the whole thing.”

“Whoa, slow down, cowboy. Start from the beginning.”

I did. I caught her up to the part where I broke Beverly's pearl necklace.

“Wow.”

“Wow? I tell you my father's alive and all you can say is, Wow?”

“I'm sorry. All this took me by surprise. It's pretty unbelievable.”

“Tell me about it.”

She sighed and looked down at Elizabeth. “When I look at her, all I think about is how I hope I don't screw her up. But in the end, we all do. One way or another we say something that will hurt our children. I know Beverly is wrong—”

“Of course she's wrong—”

Norma put her hand up. “But your grandfather was wrong, too. She had a partner in all this. The hormones your body releases can make you do some crazy things.”

I got up. “Why is everyone on her side? I'm the one that's messed up here. I'm the one who missed out on getting to know her father. Me, not her. I'm sick of hearing about what she went through.”

“Sit down, okay? I just brought that up so you could get some clarity, to see her side of things. If you did, maybe you could move on.”

I sat back down, my foot tapping on her hardwood floor. After a warning glance I stopped tapping and dug my heels into the floor.

“Chris is in your kitchen right now, making everybody pancakes. Pancakes. What if my father wanted to make me pancakes? What if he wanted to read to me at night? What if he could have told me not to pay attention to what people say about my hair, that I'm beautiful anyway?”

“But he didn't. He wasn't there. I know that's a crappy thing to say, but he wasn't. Yes, you were cheated. Yes, you were wronged. But what does that change? You can't rewind time and become five years old again. You're an adult, and adults make hard decisions about their lives all the time. I know you're not ready yet, but soon you're going to have to let that go.”

Swiping tears from my eyes, I whispered, “I don't know if I can.”

Norma gently slipped Elizabeth off her breast and placed her over her shoulder to burp her. After a few seconds she put her back in her arms. “Here,” she said, reaching over to hand me her beautiful baby. I reached out and grabbed her and nestled her in my arms.

“What if your father is out there somewhere, wishing he could have held you like that? What if he's thinking about all the missed chances with you, and how he wasn't there for you? Too much regret can make you bitter, Mariah.”

I stroked Elizabeth's face.

“Think about the bright future you have ahead of you—”

“Oh, let me see, the one where I have no job, no man, I'm bald as an eagle, and my mother is a compulsive liar? That bright future?”

“No, I was thinking of the future where you have the time to think about what you really want to do with your life instead of working yourself so hard that you have a hole in your stomach. The future where you have time for a man, and can stop hiding behind all that weave and let people see the real you. The future where you realize your mother is flawed and imperfect like all mothers. I'm talking about
that
future.”

I nodded and continued to cry as I held Elizabeth. She yawned and stretched and opened her eyes for a sliver of a moment. In that tiny second I saw my future. And dark as I was, it looked bright.

“I'm going to find my father.”

 

Beauty draws us with a single hair.

—
Alexander Pope

Different, but Beautiful

I felt numb on my walk back to the hotel. Norma's baby girl, Renee's miscarriages, Beverly's lies were like wet ink on my mind. Renee's family wanted me to stay for dinner, but the house was congested enough as it was. One more person might make it explode. When I entered our hotel room Renee was sitting in front of the TV Indian-style.

“It's on commercial, so you can talk.”

“What's on commercial?”

“Only the best show in the world,
Iron
Chef
. So how was she?”

“Norma seemed great. Her family was over there, so it was a little crowded, but it was nice.”

“Did you tell her?”

I nodded.

“What did she say?”

“I want to meet him.”

“Your father? Whoa,” she said, standing up and clicking off the TV.

“Your show—”

“It was a rerun. Come on, you promised me dinner. Show me around this fabulous city that you call home.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere. I've been stuck in this hotel room for hours. I need to see the sun, what's left of it, anyway.”

“All right, I know a couple places. Let's go.”

She was already dressed in a cornflower blue cardigan and dark designer jeans. She slipped on a pair of silver ballet flats and announced she was ready.

“Sorry I couldn't see the baby,” she said as we walked to the elevator.

“You made the best decision for you.”

We remained quiet as we walked into the elevator and waited for it to descend into the lobby.

“Where are we going?” Renee asked, following me outside, the setting sun giving her light skin an amber glow.

“It's a surprise,” I said, grabbing her hand, taking her back to the days when we were small children.

We strolled through Manhattan, me pointing to my old apartment building, my old job, my old life. She pointed at all the boutiques and shops that she wanted to cruise in the next day. After an hour we both were hungry, and I found one of my favorite cafés for us to eat in.

“It feels weird to eat outside this time of year. In Houston we would be sweating and slapping at mosquitoes.”

“I remember.”

Our waiter approached, a pale-skinned, redheaded young man with the aura of Conan O'Brien.

“What would you beautiful ladies like to drink?” he asked, handing both of us menus.

“I'll just have a glass of water. With lemon.”

“I'll have a glass of white wine,” I said. I looked at Renee. “Is that okay? That won't—”

She waved her hand. “Have whatever you want. I'll be fine.”

“I'll change that to water.”

“Good choice,” he said, walking away.

“You didn't have to do that. I can handle being around alcohol.”

“I know. Still.” I shrugged. “Don't want to tempt you. How have you been doing with that?”

“My alcohol addiction?” She laughed. “You can say it out loud, Mariah, it's okay. Fine. Some days the urge is really strong, and some days not.”

“I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you.”

“Stop apologizing! I feel like you've been doing that ever since you came home. I'm fine. Now anyway.”

The waiter came and brought our water and we ordered. A chicken Caesar salad for me, a gourmet hamburger for Renee.

A soft breeze blew, and Renee's hair fluttered in the wind. A pang of loss hit me so hard I had to look away.

“I can see why you didn't want to come home,”

Renee said. “New York is a beautiful city. Different, but beautiful.”

“I want to talk to you about that. I stayed here, in New York, because it was easier for me not to see you. I think you know how jealous I am of you. Of the way you look.”

“Why?”

“Why? I can't believe you're asking me that. Look around.”

A dozen or more men were eyeing her.

“You're beautiful. You're loved. Your hair is long, your skin is light. You have everything I want. Everyone looks at you, they notice you.” I looked around again at the men staring at her. “Even now, people are drooling over your beauty.”

“You're beautiful, too,” she said. Because she had to, not because it was true.

“Not like you. I'll never be pretty like you.”

“We're two different people; our beauty is different. You have a long graceful neck, glowing skin—”

“Dark skin,” I added.

“What is so wrong with having dark skin?”

I laughed. “You can't be that ignorant, Renee. Beverly praised your light skin and long hair. I got called Midnight and Burnt Cookie—”

“Those were kids at school. Not Mama.”

“I know. It's just that growing up I felt that Mama was ashamed of me. She always asked your opinion on outfits, like my opinion didn't matter. She always took you shopping with her, never me. Me, she told to read a book.”

“And look at how your life turned out. You went to college. You made something of yourself. All my accomplishments were tied into Peter. You have a great life, Mariah.”

I shook my head. “It ain't so great.”

“Well, maybe not now. You're in a weird place now, but still overall, you have a pretty good life. I wish I could go back and start over. I wouldn't have started drinking; I wouldn't have gotten married so young…” She sighed. “I would have done a lot of things differently. I'll probably always go through life going through this ‘what if?' stage. But then I would be wasting my life now. No, I'm not a mother—” Her throat caught, and I reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “In the back of my mind, I always will think that I poisoned my body with alcohol, so no life can survive in my womb.”

“That's not true, you don't know that.”

“Some things you just know, okay?” She blew out a ragged breath. “You can't go back, Mariah. You can't live like that. You won't be living at all.”

Our food arrived and I dropped her hand. We didn't talk; the only noise was the scrape of my fork against my plate and Renee's chewing. The silence was like antiseptic on our wounds, healing us from past grievances. For the first time, Renee felt like my sister.

“What did you do all day?”

“Nothing really, talked to Mama—”

I dropped my fork.
I
had
spoken
too
soon
. “Her? Why did you have to call her?”

“She wanted to know where we were.”

“And you told her?”

She nodded.

“Why would you do that?”

“Look, I know Mama is wrong. She is. She hurt me, too, with all her deceit, and I needed to clear the air with her.”

I rolled my eyes.

“She's worried about you.”

“She should be.”

“She wanted to know how you were handling things.”

I picked up my fork and moved the Romaine lettuce around on my plate. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her that you were devastated, but were coping okay.”

“Devastated is right. Why do you need to call her all the time?”

“She's my friend. My only friend. Do you know how sad that is? That your mother is your only friend? I cherish her and resent her at the same time. But like it or not, she's all I've got.”

This time she grabbed my hand. “But now that's changed. Now I have my big sister looking out for me.”