Lost Daughters (33 page)

J
AY DROVE MAUREEN HOME A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER. THE
first
THING
she did when she got inside was check her answering machine for messages. She was pleased to see that she didn't have any.

Jay didn't stay long and when he left, Maureen went from room to room looking for things to do to keep herself busy. She cleaned out and reorganized her kitchen cabinets, she did two loads of laundry, and she rearranged the living room furniture. Every time she walked past Loretta's room, her heart skipped a beat. She knew that she would have to enter the room again sooner or later, if for no other reason than to open the windows to let in some fresh air. Eventually, she would have to decide what she was going to do about the room, either use it to store things or make it into a guest room. She even thought about moving to a new apartment so she wouldn't have to deal with the room at all.

She finally crawled into bed around midnight, but she tossed and turned for two hours before she went to sleep.

The next day around 6:00 p.m., Big Maureen called, but Maureen let the answering machine take a message. She still wasn't ready to talk to her big sister again. A few minutes later, without giving it much thought, Maureen dialed Loretta's number.

A man answered and Maureen promptly hung up, thinking that it might be Mel. He was the last man in the universe she wanted to talk to. When she thought about it a little more, though, she realized that the voice had sounded too young to be Mel's. She dialed the number again.

“Hello, is this the number for Lo'retta Montgomery?” she asked when the same voice answered.

“Who's calling?”

“Uh, her mother.”

Maureen heard some shuffling around in the background and then the next voice she heard belonged to Loretta. “Yeah, Mama.”

“I just called to say hello.”

“Hello. Well, is that all you called for?” Loretta sounded impatient, so Maureen planned to make her call very brief.

“Lo'retta, I know you have company, so I won't talk long, but I wish that you will reconsider . . .”

“Reconsider what?”

“Uh, you know . . .”

“I know what? Look, Mama, I don't have time for games. If you called to talk to me about somethin', please do it so I can go on about my business.”

“Lo'retta, you don't have to be so surly. I am your mother, girl.”

“Mama, what did you call me for?”

“I wanted to talk to you about your problem.”

“Problem? What problem? I don't have no problems right now. Except for . . . oh that. You mean that baby.”

“Yeah. I mean ‘that baby.' I wanted to talk to you about what you told me you plan to do about your . . . condition.”

“I am not goin' to reconsider that. Please don't bring up this subject again,” Loretta snarled.

“I won't, but I do wish that you would give it a little more thought, Lo'retta. Please think about that poor, desperate, childless couple in Canada.”

“Think about me waddlin' around lookin' like Humpty Dumpty—which I almost look like now. I'm thinkin' about how long it would take me to lose the weight if I went through with this pregnancy. Now please stay out of my business!”

“You will always be my business—”

“Mama, please get off my back and let me live my life the way I want to. I'm eighteen now, so I don't have to listen to anything you have to say anymore.”

“Lo'retta, what is the matter with you? I can't stand it when you sass me! I'm still your mother. For that reason alone, you should have a little more respect for me. If I had even thought about sassin' Mama Ruby the way you do me, she would have laid me out like a log—Hello? Loretta? Hello?” Loretta had hung up. Maureen cursed, gritted her teeth and slammed the telephone back into its cradle.

As if on cue, Jay called a few seconds later. That was probably the only thing that kept Maureen from ripping the telephone out of the wall.

“Hello, sweetheart. You were on my mind so I thought I'd call to see if you'd like some company,” Jay chirped.

“Yeah. I would like some company,” Maureen decided, sounding like a wounded kitten.

“Oh-oh. Which one of your patients died this time?” Jay asked, holding his breath.

“Nobody. I just had a telephone conversation with my daughter, Jay. She was so mean and nasty to me.”

“Again?”

“Again.”

“Why don't you let her cool off for a day or two and then call her up and apologize.”

“Apologize? I don't have anything to apologize to her for!” Maureen snarled.

“It doesn't matter if you do or not, sweetheart.”

“Jay, HELLO? I'm the victim here,” Maureen said firmly.

“I know that, baby—”

“She is puttin' me through hell, but I'm still tryin' to have a relationship with her. She won't even meet me halfway!” Maureen yelled.

“But you should apologize to her if you want to resume a decent relationship with her. The thing is, Maureen, Loretta needs you more than you need her. She's too immature and self-centered to realize that. She's not going to meet you halfway. She's not even going to take one step in your direction.”

“So you think that I should grovel and kiss my own daughter's behind just so we can be on good terms again?”

“Baby, that's just the way it is. If you don't, you might lose her forever.”

Maureen didn't want to agree or argue with Jay, but she knew he was right.

The following evening, she dialed Loretta's number again. Maureen was nervous and angry at the same time. She wasn't sure what she was going to say to Loretta. She decided that it would be better if she could leave a message on her answering machine, so she hoped to get a recorded outgoing message. And she did.

The crisp and pleasant-sounding message recorded by an anonymous telephone operator informed Maureen that the telephone number she had just dialed had been changed to an unlisted number.

M
AUREEN LIKED TO RECALL SOME OF THE OFF-THE-WALL REMARKS,
comments, and statements that Mama Ruby had made to her when she was growing up. One that still danced around in her head from time to time was, “Mo'reen, don't kiss
nobody's
ass. If anything, bite the hell out of it and if that don't straighten 'em out, bite it again!” Maureen couldn't remember one single ass that Mama Ruby had kissed, except hers.

Loretta still had not given Maureen her mailing address. Now that she had changed her telephone number and had it unlisted, Maureen had no way to get in touch with her. Even if she wanted to kiss her spoiled rotten daughter's ass, how would she do that now?

What would Mama Ruby do? Maureen wondered. She didn't have to wonder about that for long. She
knew
what Mama Ruby would do. Mama Ruby would do whatever it took to resolve this issue. Even though Maureen had exercised her right to be independent and in control of her own life in a totally different way than Loretta, Mama Ruby had come after her with both guns blasting so to speak. Not only had she pestered and stalked Maureen after she had moved into her own apartment, but Mama Ruby had also paid a visit to the lobster factory personnel office and told just enough lies about Maureen to get her fired.

But that didn't make Maureen move back home. One night while she was asleep, Mama Ruby stormed her apartment and ripped a telephone book in two with her bare hands. She had chased away most of Maureen's potential lovers and even broke into her apartment and vandalized some of her property. She had begged, pleaded, and then ordered Maureen to move back home. She had even threatened to kill herself if Maureen didn't comply. Maureen was about to give in, but she waited too long. Mama Ruby carried out her most serious threat of all: she died.

Well, Maureen wasn't about to die if Loretta wanted to be hardheaded and mean. As much as she loved her daughter, she was not going to make a sacrifice of that magnitude.

An hour after Maureen had attempted to call Loretta, she let out a loud breath and leaped out of her seat. She scurried across the floor like a mouse and down the hall to Loretta's bedroom. She pushed open the door so fast and hard, the doorknob hit the wall, leaving a hole the size of a man's fist.

In less than an hour, Maureen had stripped Loretta's bed and stuffed all of the bedding and everything else that was left in the room into boxes. Then she called Goodwill and scheduled a pickup. The next day, she drove the car that Loretta had purchased for her to a used car dealership and eagerly traded it for the first car that a stunned but happy salesman showed to her—a four-year-old Camry. She got screwed out of a lot of money, but she didn't care. Driving a car that had been paid for with Loretta's ill-gotten wealth had begun to increase Maureen's pain.

 

A week after Maureen had disposed of Loretta's belongings, she called Big Maureen. “I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to you,” she began. “I got real busy.”

“Uh-huh. But tell me the truth—the real reason you ain't called me is because you don't have no good news for me about Lo'retta's baby, right?” Big Maureen said, her voice trembling.

Maureen sighed. “That's right. I tried. I tried real hard, but Lo'retta is determined to get rid of her baby.”

“I didn't get my hopes up too high no way. If the adoption people don't come through neither, I guess it wasn't meant for me to be blessed with another child. I still got a lot to be thankful for anyway, praise the Lord.”

“You and Lukas still comin' for another visit soon?”

“If God's willin'.”

After a few more moments of mundane conversation, Maureen hung up. Virgil arrived a few minutes later, and Maureen was glad to see him.

“What's up with Lo'retta?” he asked, easing down onto the living room couch. “You talked to her lately?”

“Yeah. I called her up last week, but that girl sure wasn't too happy to hear from me,” Maureen replied with a puppy-dog face, handing Virgil a can of beer. “She even changed her telephone number so now I can't call her at all.” Maureen popped open a can of beer for herself and sat down on the other end of the couch.

“My goodness.”

“I'm so glad Mama Ruby didn't live long enough to see the mess our family turned into.” Maureen sniffed and blinked back a tear.

“Me too, I guess.” Virgil took a long drink; then he set his beer can on the coffee table. He turned to Maureen with a frightened look on his face. “Mo'reen, how do you feel about . . . what I told you?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, wiping beer off her lips with the back of her hand.

“I mean, how do you feel about what I told you now that it's had a lot of time to sink in? You still glad I told you about what Mama Ruby done to you?”

Maureen set her beer can on the table and shrugged. “I still think that kidnappin' is a sin and a shame, but I'm still glad you told me what you told me. Just like Jay, I had a right to know the whole truth about my real mother and my background.”

“Uh-huh. Now, I don't like to get in your business with Jay, but do you still think it's better not to tell him?”

Maureen gave Virgil a long, hard look. “I still don't think it would do any good for him to know about me. I still don't think we should tell anybody else. Never. So you don't need to ask me again.”

“That's probably the best thing for us to do.” Virgil shook his head and blinked mysteriously, looking at Maureen like she had just entered the room.

“What's wrong? You lookin' at me like I just sprouted horns,” Maureen said, forcing herself to chuckle.

“Mo'reen, I hope
you
ain't keepin' no deep dark secrets from me. Somethin' you might want to get off your chest.”

Without giving it much thought, Maureen nodded. “Yeah, I got a deep dark secret,” she told Virgil. “Somethin' I wanted to tell somebody since I was a teenager . . .”

Virgil shifted in his seat, turning his head so he could see Maureen's face better.

Maureen glanced toward the door, then around her living room. When she looked back at Virgil, there was an anxious and puzzled look on his face. “What is it?”

“I told Mama Ruby and everybody else that that albino we called Snowball was the one that took advantage of me after he got me drunk one night and got me pregnant. I didn't tell anybody until after he died from that drug overdose so he couldn't deny it.”

“You told me the same thing, remember? So was Snowball the real daddy or not?”

Maureen cocked her head and shook it. “You remember John French?”

Virgil nodded. “Old Man French's boy? The one that got hisself killed tryin' to rob that gas station? Yeah, I remember that boy. He was real cool, the blackest white boy I ever knew. You had a crush on him, and he had a crush on you when y'all was little kids. Why?”

“He was the one that got me pregnant.”

“Lord have mercy.” Virgil scratched the side of his neck. The puzzled look was still on his face. “Well, if he was the one that did it, why didn't you say so? He died too.”

“He didn't die in time. I was runnin' out of time and I had to blame it on somebody. It had to be a man with real light skin in case my baby came out with light skin. Which she did. I mean,
they
did. Loraine and Loretta came out lookin' so white there was no way I could have blamed them on any of the tar-baby black boys I knew back then.”

“Excuse me for sayin' this, but didn't you think John would have been a better choice than Snowball? John's folks had money, and Mama Ruby doted on him. That albino didn't have a pot to piss in, and he was a drug addict.”

“John caught me in the blackberry patch and raped me. When I told him I was pregnant, he got real mad.” Maureen shivered and swallowed hard, hoping to dislodge the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. The bad memories left a nasty taste in her mouth, so she finished her beer before continuing. “Anyway, I asked John for five hundred dollars so I could go to that abortion doctor in Miami that all the girls in trouble went to. He slapped the daylights out of me and took off, so I assumed he wasn't goin' to help me get out of the mess he'd gotten me into. Then when I heard that he got killed tryin' to rob that gas station and that he had asked the gas station attendant for just five hundred dollars, I knew he had been tryin' to get the money for my abortion. Since he was dead, and Mama Ruby had been like a mammy to him, I didn't want to ruin his memory. That's why I told everybody that the albino was the one.”

“Damn! Did you tell Catty or Fast Black?”

“Oh goodness gracious no! They would have blabbed my business all over the state by now. I ain't told nobody else until today.”

Virgil dropped his head. “Not even Lo'retta?”

“I'll
never
tell her!” Maureen said quickly.

She moved closer to Virgil and rubbed his arm. He laid his head on her shoulder. “Virgil, I hope you can keep this a secret too.”

Virgil let out a strange laugh. Then he looked up at Maureen and told her, “If I could keep that great big secret about you for thirty-six years, I think I can keep this one.”

Maureen had finally removed a beast off her back that had been holding her hostage like a wrongly convicted prisoner. She felt better than she had felt in a long time. She felt like she was finally
free.

And so did Virgil.