Bebe Moore Campbell (34 page)

He handed me a bag of French fries as he walked through my door. The bag said Jerry’s Deli. I got him a soda, and we sat in the kitchen. The fries were hot and crispy, with just enough salt. I put them into one bowl, as though they were chips. Our fingers touched as we reached for them. When the bowl was empty, Orlando leaned back in his chair. “I needed some space,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I had just found out that my son is gay, and I needed to sit with that by myself.” His lip trembled, and he wiped his eyes. “I know what you’re going to say: He’s still PJ. I know that. But—”

“It wasn’t what you were expecting.”

We didn’t say anything for a long while.

“You know, I was trying to give you some space too,” Orlando said.

“Why?”

“Because I thought you needed it.” He paused. “I saw the way Clyde was looking at you in Sacramento.”

“What way was that?”

“The way a man looks at a woman when he realizes he made a mistake in letting her go.”

“He did make a mistake.”

“Did you?”

“Maybe. But that was a long time ago, Orlando. Clyde can’t give me what I need now.”

“What do you need?”

Somebody strong. Somebody who will be there. Somebody who’ll stay. I couldn’t say anything aloud. I was trembling too hard.

“Not some guy who’s chasing the next sitcom, huh?”

Somebody who’ll stay. Stay. Stay.

“Let me decide when the party’s over. Don’t try to fix my life. Fix yours.”

So then we got quiet again. After a while we started talking about PJ and Jibari and Trina. We laughed about them, about nothing at all. Orlando said he was thinking about selling real estate. I told him I was getting back into massage. Then, without even taking a breath, he said he was up for an audition for a pilot. “With the producers,” he said. I congratulated him, as I always do. And then I told him about talking with my mother and how strange that felt. He looked at me and smiled. Later we ran in the dark, with the wind on our faces. And we kept pace with each other.

32

THE HOSPITAL TRANSPORTED TRINA TO THE LIGHT HOUSE by ambulance. Clyde and I were waiting for her when she arrived. We had come early to fill out the paperwork that one of the admissions administrators gave us. We walked alongside the assistant who escorted Trina to her room, which was clean but cramped, with two single beds, two dressers, and two nightstands in a space as large as a prison cell. At least there was an adjoining bathroom, as opposed to one on the hall.

Trina’s roommate, a Latina in her fifties or sixties, was lying in one of the beds. It was nearly three in the afternoon, and she was still in her pajamas. She opened her eyes and looked at us but didn’t say anything. After a little while she turned to face the wall.

“I don’t want to stay here,” Trina whispered. “Please, please, please don’t leave me here. I’ll die in here.” She grabbed Clyde’s hand. “Daddy, why can’t I stay with you?”

“Trina,” I said, “you have to stay here for a while. You can come home once you get stable.”

She began crying, encircling Clyde’s waist with her arms. “Please don’t leave me here. I don’t belong here. I don’t.”

“You’re going to be fine, Trina,” the assistant said. He was a black man with an accent and a weary face.

Trina glared at him. He turned to us. “Maybe you folks might want to leave now. You can come visit tomorrow. She’ll be fine.”

What did
fine
mean? Did it mean she wouldn’t scream in the hallway, try to scale the wall, or attempt to slit her wrist with a pilfered butter knife? Was
fine
just low-level survival at an institution forever, or did it mean eventual reentry into the world?

I was crying by the time I reached the car. Clyde’s face was stoic. We didn’t speak for the entire ride. When he dropped me off at the store, he drove off quickly.

MY MOTHER CALLED THAT NIGHT. SHE HAD STARTED calling me almost every day, usually around seven in the evening, LA time. We both tried not to bring up the past, but sometimes Emma would say something that would trigger a memory of her maternal betrayal and my pain, and I would lash out and then hang up on her. But tonight she’d called to find out about Trina.

“How did it go?” she asked.

I told her.

“You’re doing the right thing. Sometimes you have to be hard. Trina needs for you to be hard right now.”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do know. This place will help her. It will give her structure, teach her to take the medication. The rest is up to her.”

“I never thought her life would—”

“Things happen in life. You have to keep going. How is the other one doing? Your saleslady.”

“Adriana? I haven’t heard from her. I’m sure she’s back on drugs.”

“It sounds like it, from what you told me.”

“How could she be clean for three years and then go back on drugs? I just don’t get it.”

“It’s a struggle. Every day. You can’t imagine it because you’re not an addict, thank God. She might get clean again.”

“Well, I hope so. Such a sweet girl.”

“Meanwhile, you’re shorthanded.”

“I’m going to hire someone as soon as I have time to interview.”

“Why not me?”

She spoke quietly, almost as though she were thinking aloud.

“No,” I said, and got off the phone in a hurry.

But she asked me again. Every night when she called, she’d ask me if she could work for me. She wanted to help me, she said, to try to make up for all the bad times.

“WHERE WOULD YOU STAY?” I ASKED HER ONE NIGHT AFTER Trina had been at the Light House for nearly two months.

She didn’t respond.

“She probably thought I’d invite her to live with me,” I told Orlando later that night. We’d just finished eating. Since Trina had been institutionalized, we ate together every night. He’d practically moved in.

“Why wouldn’t you?” he asked.

“I don’t want her here,” I said.

“Hold on, baby. Your mother can help you in the store, and she can help you with Trina.”

“She just wants to stay here because she thinks I won’t charge her anything. She’s on a fixed income.”

Orlando shrugged. “You can figure out the money later. You need her.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Keri . . .”

“I thought you were going to be here.”

“I’m here already, baby.”

“You wouldn’t mind if my mother stayed with us? Temporarily, I mean.”

“If it doesn’t work out, she can go back home.”

I mulled over his words, then pushed them away.

Emma kept calling and asking if she could come. After a while I stopped saying no. But I couldn’t say yes. Maybe she knew that.

ONE SATURDAY IN NOVEMBER, TWO WEEKS BEFORE TRINA was scheduled to leave the Light House, the door of As Good as New opened. It was early afternoon, and the shop was crowded. Frances and I were both with customers, and several women were waiting to be helped. I heard her before I saw her. “That’s very nice; you look good in that. You need something to go with it.” The voice could have belonged to anyone, somebody’s girlfriend. But I excused myself and walked toward the voice. And there was Emma.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” I was too shocked to be angry.

She moved toward me. I backed up and then stopped. “I took a chance,” she said. She didn’t have any bags with her. “I’m at a motel.”

I nodded.

A woman was standing near her, peering at herself in an adjacent mirror. “Don’t those pants fit perfectly!” Emma said. “She needs a top and a jacket, so she’ll have an outfit.”

“Over there,” I said, pointing to some racks behind us.

“I’ll be right back, honey,” Emma told the woman. I watched her for a moment, collecting items.

“Keri.”

“Oh, my God!” I said. I stopped and looked at the woman in front of me. Her face was just slightly fuller, and her hair was at least an inch long all over her scalp. “Rona! You look great!”

She smiled. “I’m getting well.

“Did you go to the reunion?”

“No. Next year, I’ll go.”

I took her hand and squeezed it, ran my fingers across her palm. There was strength in that resilient hand. “I’ll go with you,” I said.

I went back to my customer, but from time to time I glanced over at Rona and my mother. They were smiling, then laughing. At the register, Rona said she was buying more than she had planned.

Later, when there was a lull, I introduced Frances to Emma. “This is my—this is . . .”

Frances grabbed her in a big hug. “You don’t have to tell me who this is. You look just like her.”

“She’s going to be working with us,” I said.

My mother’s eyes met mine. We’d escaped from a terrible land, thrown off our shackles, and crossed borders. What we acknowledged to each other in that swift, silent glance was that from now on it was all about and only about time—maddening, exhilarating time—passing, doing its job, setting us free.

33

“DON’T BE NERVOUS, MOMMY,” TRINA TOLD ME, RIGHT BEfore the play began. Outside, a February rain was soaking the ground. It was the kind of rain I liked, just hard enough to hear. It reminded me of Georgia.

We were standing behind the “stage” in the basement of Crenshaw Baptist Church, located two blocks away from the biggest liquor store in the city and only minutes from the highest-quality incense on the planet. The church had been home to the newest branch of the support group for about five months. The founders, Mattie, Gloria, and Milton, had enlisted me as an able-bodied volunteer as soon as Trina was placed in the Light House. Now the basement was filled with newly liberated black folks, free to seek help for and own up to loving people who had brain diseases.

The curtains were drawn. Standing behind them, we could hear the din the small audience was making, smell the commingled colognes in the air. There was a hubbub backstage as well, as performers old and young walked around, practicing their parts. There were other parents alongside me, some trying to soothe and calm down the adult children who were about to perform, others needing comfort themselves.

“Go sit outside,” Trina said, effectively banishing me.

I gave her hair a pat.

Trina ducked her head. “Mommee!”

Fourteen again.

“Okay. Good-bye. Break a leg!”

“Go!”

The support group for “consumers,” those suffering with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, or schizoaffective disorder, met on the first Friday of the month in the choir room. Unlike the group for family members, the one for consumers was “activities-based.” Their meetings might consist of talking and sharing, but more often than not they involved going to a movie or to the mall. It was billed as a “life-skills enhancing” group. Writing and performing plays was one of their activities.

Trina had been practicing, that I knew. For weeks I’d pass her room and see her sitting in the middle of her bed, poring over the script, saying her lines with so much expression and intensity that I was alarmed, fearful that she was talking to people who weren’t there, which, of course, she was. Only now it was a good thing. Another good thing.

THE FIRST FEW WEEKS AFTER SHE LEFT THE LIGHT HOUSE, being at home with Trina had been difficult, and I was glad Clyde was around. The institution had contained her; it hadn’t, of course, cured her. Although the doctor at the facility had said she was quiet, when Trina returned home she began ranting at the least provocation. Sleeping through the night was a problem. But gradually her outbursts began to diminish. Mattie told me about a new psychiatrist, and I took Trina to see him. He stopped her old medications and introduced two new ones, slowly titrating the dosage until it reached optimal therapeutic level. By the six-week mark, she was sleeping through the night, she’d lost ten pounds, and her mood had improved. The longer she was on the new medication, the more compliant she became.

Trina was housebound in the beginning. But as the new meds kicked in, we began to go on brief outings. I took her to the grocery store and to get her hair done. We went shopping. Sometimes I brought her to the store and let her wait on customers for an hour or so.

Emma moved in with Orlando and me a few weeks after she arrived. Sometimes, when I woke up, she’d be in the kitchen. I’d smell coffee and food. When Orlando and I went downstairs, everything would be ready: eggs, toast, grits, bacon, and juice. PJ had begun spending a lot of time with us. Sometimes I’d listen as Emma and PJ chatted. Both his grandmothers were dead. He was fascinated by this grandma-come-lately who’d suddenly taken root in his life.

By the time we brought Trina home, the gym had been transformed into a bedroom for PJ and Emma was ensconced in what had once been my office.

“Does everybody live here now?” Trina asked.

She was smiling.

“Yes,” I said.

I didn’t know how long Trina’s smile would last. We were all embarking upon a grand experiment. Trina and Orlando had always gotten along, except when she was manic. She adored PJ but had never shared a house with him. As for Emma, she was completely unknown. All of us were in the midst of a major adjustment. We snapped at one another, fussed, stopped speaking, and said “I’m sorry” a lot. We laughed often and tried to be kind.

Once, when I was upstairs, I heard my mother talking with Trina. “How are you getting on?” she asked.

“I’m doing better, Grandma,” Trina said.

“Sometimes it takes a while to get better. I was sick for a long time. Did your mother ever tell you that?”

“No.”

“I’m an alcoholic, Trina. When I go out in the evenings, I’m going to my AA meetings. They keep me from drinking.”

“I go to meetings too.”

“I know.”

“What do you do at your meetings?”

“Talk, mostly.”

“Mine too. But you don’t take medicine.”

“Not for being an alcoholic. I take high-blood-pressure medicine. If I don’t, I’ll get sick.”

“If I don’t take my medication
I’ll
get sick. There’s something wrong with my brain.”

Emma laughed. “Mine too.”

BETHANY WAS BACK IN TOWN TWO WEEKS AFTER I LEFT THE program, before my house was filled with people. My doorbell rang and there she was, blowing out the last bit of smoke from a cigarette she was stepping on. When I saw her standing at my door, it was like finding a war buddy, one you’d left behind in the trenches and never expected to see again. She handed me a bean pie.

“Let’s party,” she said.

We sat in my kitchen, eating pie and drinking wine and talking about our girls. Angelica was at the site and making slow progress, trying to learn how not to crave meth and pain and to be responsible for taking her medication. Trina, I told her, was coming along. She was still at the hospital then, and I was awaiting the court date.

“You’re smiling,” Bethany said.

“I feel happy. Our girls are alive. We’re not in jail. We’ve got bean pie and wine. I’m not scared anymore. I feel strong.”

“I feel fucking great,” Bethany said.

THE NIGHT OF THE PLAY, I WORE THE GREEN PANTSUIT, THE one we couldn’t sell. A silk flower covered the stain. Below it my heart beat fast. Orlando was sitting next to me and PJ was next to him. Bethany was on my other side. Frances and her new boyfriend, Mattie and Roger, and Gloria and Milton were seated in the same row. Marie, my patient and forgiving old friend, sat behind me. Emma was next to Bethany. Clyde, of course, was out of town. He’d sent flowers, enough to fill five vases. Orlando squeezed my hand.

Bethany leaned over toward me, just as the lights went down and the pianist began to play. She looked good. Her hair was loose, freshly cut and colored. It touched my face. “Honey,” she whispered, “this is what they call a breather.”

Long ago I sat on the top step with Ma Missy, watching my mother pass out on the living room floor from too much scotch. It was a bad time. Ma Missy held me close as I wriggled and writhed. She rocked me and hummed something that made me still, made me smile. Our song.

Maybe, after the devastation, what you’re supposed to do is rebuild the space in your mind that’s been blown away, but never fool yourself into thinking that it’s stronger, that you’ve erected some impenetrable fortress that won’t be hit again and again and again. Things fall down, people too. Crazy men wander the land, crashing and crumbling, and nobody gets a warning. There is always another swamp to cross. Passengers are both lost and found. Ol’ Harriet learned that the hard way, the first time she retraced her path, erased her scent, outwitted the dogs, and followed the only star that lit the way, only to discover that when she got where she was going, new hounds were waiting. But there was that cool space on the bank of the murky water where she lay on fragrant moss, undisturbed for hours, and there was no barking, no sound of twigs snapping. A breather.