The Seventh Mother (5 page)

I
didn’t like Campbellsville much at first. The town was okay, but I hated the campground. It was gray and dusty and there was nothing to do; it didn’t even have a swing set. I guess they didn’t get a lot of kids staying there.

Daddy worked the night shift, ten hours at a time, four nights a week—unless there was overtime. Then he worked five nights. When he came home we had breakfast together, and after breakfast he went to bed.

Emma usually took me to the library to do my schoolwork. I loved the library in Campbellsville. It was in an old church and still had stained-glass windows. I brought my laptop and did my work while Emma read books or looked at magazines. At lunchtime we walked to Main Street and ate, sometimes pizza at the Snappy Tomato, but more often at Happy Days. I loved their onion rings and Emma liked the salads. After lunch, we went back to the library until two o’clock. Then we’d go home, where Daddy would just be getting up.

On a sunny, warm afternoon in early November, we walked home from the library, each carrying a book.

“There are my two favorite girls!” Daddy sat at the table in his sweatpants and a T-shirt, drinking coffee. “How was your morning?”

“Okay.” I plopped down beside him. “Just the usual.”

“Did you finish your lesson?”

I nodded, reaching for a cookie. “Emma checked it for me.”

Daddy raised his eyes to Emma. She smiled and nodded.

“It’s just English today,” she said. “I figure I can handle that.”

Daddy laughed. “So, what’s the plan for today?”

“Well, since the weather’s so nice, I thought we could go to the lake,” Emma said. “Maybe take a picnic?”

“Sounds good,” he said. “Let me just grab a shower first.” Outside, we heard the rumbling of a motor. I opened the door to watch a big RV maneuver itself into the lot next to ours, a Coleman with bright stickers from around the country covering its door. An old VW Bug was hitched behind it. I watched as a woman climbed out of the RV.

“Daddy!” I hollered after him as he closed the bathroom door. “The Johnsons are here!”

I opened the door, hopped down the step, and ran toward the truck. “Hi, Mrs. Johnson! It’s me, Jenny, from last winter.”

The woman turned and grinned. “Well, hey there, Jenny. We didn’t know you’d be here. How’ve you been?”

“I’m good,” I said. “Where’s Lashaundra?”

Before the woman could answer, I saw Lashaundra running around from behind the RV.

“Hey, Jenny!” She threw her arms around me and hugged me tight. “Are you staying here, too?”

I nodded, feeling a flood of relief. It was so good to have a friend, someone I’d met before.

“How’s your daddy?” Mrs. Johnson asked.

“He’s okay. He’s taking a shower.”

“How’s Jackie? Is she inside?” Mrs. Johnson took a step toward our trailer, then stopped suddenly. I turned to see Emma standing in the doorway, watching us.

“Oh,” Mrs. Johnson said. “Um, hello.”

Emma opened the door and stepped down. “Hi,” she said. Her voice sounded stiff.

“I’m Angel, Angel Johnson. And this is my daughter, Lashaundra. We camped beside Brannon and Jenny last winter, in Georgia.”

She extended her hand. After a slight pause, Emma shook it.

“I’m Emma,” she said.

A man walked around the RV carrying a small boy.

“And this here is Michael,” Mrs. Johnson said, waving toward the man. “And our boy, Malcolm.”

“Nice to meet you.” Mr. Johnson put the boy down and extended his hand. Again another pause before Emma finally took his hand.

“Well, hey, you guys!” Daddy appeared on the step, grinning. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Good work, good pay,” said Mr. Johnson, shaking Daddy’s hand. “How’re you doing? Where you been working?”

“We’ve been out west, working at a campground in Idaho. How about you?”

“Dollywood,” Mr. Johnson said, shaking his head.

“We did that a few years back. When was that, Jenny?” Daddy turned to me.

“That was when I was seven,” I said. “Cara was there.”

There was a sudden silence. I saw Mrs. Johnson raise an eyebrow slightly at Mr. Johnson, who said kind of loudly, “Well, we won’t be going back there anytime soon.”

“Yeah,” Daddy agreed. “Not much of a setup.”

“Still, it paid pretty well.”

“Let me give you a hand, Michael.” Daddy and Mr. Johnson began unhooking the car from the RV.

“Well,” Emma said, stepping back toward our trailer. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Can Lashaundra come with us to the lake?” I asked.

“I . . . um, I don’t know, Jenny. She probably has to stay and help her mom.”

“Can I go, Mom?” Lashaundra grabbed her mom’s hand. “Please?”

Mrs. Johnson stood quietly for a minute. Then she said softly, “I don’t think so, honey. We just got here. We’ve got a lot to do.”

“Please?” Lashaundra repeated.

“Maybe I could stay and help you set up,” I said. “Is that okay, Daddy?”

Daddy turned from the hitch and wiped his forehead. “It’s okay with me if it’s okay with Mrs. Johnson.”

She smiled at me. “Well, that would be fine, Jenny. More hands, fewer chores.”

She turned to look at Emma. “I hope that’s all right with you?”

Emma looked from Brannon to me to Mrs. Johnson and finally said, “If Brannon thinks it’s okay then I’m good with it.”

She turned and walked into our trailer, the door clanging shut behind her.

Mrs. Johnson put her hand on my shoulder and smiled. “It sure is good to see you and your daddy again.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said. “I missed you guys.”

With Daddy helping, it didn’t take long for Mr. Johnson to hook up the RV. Then Lashaundra and I helped Mrs. Johnson set up inside. Soon, the place looked just like I remembered it from the year before.

Daddy and Emma climbed into her SUV with a picnic packed in a brown paper bag.

“You sure you don’t want to come with us?” Emma asked.

“No, I’m gonna stay here with Lashaundra,” I said.

“It’s all good, babe.” Daddy put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s good for her to have a friend. And it’s good to have a little time, just us.”

He winked and waved at me and they drove up the dusty road, Emma watching me through the back window.

“Is she your new mom?” Lashaundra asked, waving at them.

“Yeah.”

“She’s prettier than Jackie.”

“She’s okay.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I like her all right.”

I could see Mrs. Johnson in the window of their RV, and I knew she could hear us. I wasn’t sure if I should talk about Emma or not. Daddy always said what happened in our family was our family’s business and no one else’s. But the Johnsons were friends. Last year, Daddy and Jackie had spent a lot of time with Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, playing cards and drinking beer. We even celebrated New Year’s Eve together.

“Where’s the playground?” Lashaundra asked, looking around.

“There isn’t one,” I said. “There isn’t anything, really, at least not here. But downtown is nice. There’s a great restaurant called Happy Days. You’ll love it.”

Mrs. Johnson called out the window. “You girls want to come with me to the store?”

We piled into the Bug. Malcolm stayed at the RV with Mr. Johnson, but he wasn’t happy about it. He wriggled in Mr. Johnson’s arms, trying to climb into the car with us.

“You stay here, baby. You stay with Daddy. Mama will be back after a little while.” Mrs. Johnson kissed Malcolm through the window. He was hollering like crazy when we drove off.

Mrs. Johnson wheeled a cart through the Kroger, pointing to things for us to pick off the shelves. I found the creamed corn and Lashaundra got the whole-kernel corn. Then we ran in search of corn muffin mix and cheddar cheese. Mrs. Johnson made the best corn casserole ever.

When the cart was full, we stood in the checkout line behind a lady who seemed to have a coupon for everything in her cart.

“Can we get some gum, Mama?”

“No, baby. It’s bad for your teeth.”

“Even sugarless?” Lashaundra smiled at her mother, her dark eyes wide.

“All right.” Mrs. Johnson sighed and put a package of gum in our cart.

“So,” she said, not looking at me, “what happened to Jackie? I’m surprised she’s not with you.”

“She left,” I said. “When we went to Idaho, she didn’t come with us.”

“Is that where you guys got Emma?” Lashaundra asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, that explains that,” Mrs. Johnson said so softly I could barely hear her.

I watched her move items from the cart to the checkout counter and thought of the woman in Walmart, the one who’d bumped into Emma.

“She’s not racist,” I said. “She’s just not used to being around black people. There aren’t any black people in Idaho.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Her back was to me.

“Honest, Mrs. Johnson, Emma’s really nice. She’s just shy, I guess.”

She turned to look at me then, cupped my chin in her hand, and smiled. “I’m sure she’s nice, honey. Is she nice to you?”

I nodded. “She worked with the horses at the campground we were at, and she let me help. I know all about taking care of horses now.”

“Well, that’s good, Jenny. That’s just fine.”

I slept that night in the Johnsons’ RV, sharing Lashaundra’s bed like I had so often the winter before. Daddy kissed me good night, while Emma watched from the trailer doorway. They must have been tired from their picnic, because they turned out the lights even before Lashaundra and I went to bed.

“Did you like Idaho?” she whispered to me under the covers.

“Yeah,” I whispered back. “It was really pretty and there were mountains and a river. And we saw lots of deer and ducks and stuff, even a moose one time.”

She sighed. “I wish we could have gone there instead of stupid Tennessee. That campground was awful . . . worse than this one.”

We giggled for a minute.

“The campground in Idaho was nice. Lots of grass, and they had bonfires at night, and we swam in the river.”

“How come there aren’t any blacks there?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I didn’t see anybody but white people the whole time we were there.”

“Maybe that’s why we didn’t go, too.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you miss Jackie?”

I nodded. “Sometimes. She was funny.”

“I liked her. She told the best jokes.” Lashaundra yawned. “Why did she leave?”

“I don’t know. She just left, like they all do.”

“Do you think Emma will leave?”

I nodded again. “They all do.”

Long after Lashaundra fell asleep I lay awake, listening to Malcolm snore in the bunk below. Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson turned off the television and the light.

“So, what do you think about Brannon and that woman?” Mrs. Johnson’s voice carried softly across the RV.

“She’s a looker, all right.”

I heard a slap and a laugh. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

The bedsprings creaked.

“I don’t know, Angel. Brannon says she’s real good with Jenny.”

“Jackie was good with Jenny.” Mrs. Johnson’s voice was sharp.

“And she left.” Mr. Johnson sounded tired.

“Well, this new one sure has issues.”

“Brannon says she grew up in some weird town in Arizona and never has been anywhere except there and Idaho.”

“Hmmph.” Mrs. Johnson sounded unconvinced.

“She can’t be too bad, honey. She let Jenny spend the night.”

“That wasn’t her choice. That was Brannon.”

“Well, we’re stuck with her for a few months. So we might as well make the best of it.”

There was a long silence. At last, Mrs. Johnson said quietly, “I’ll be nice. You know me, I’m always nice. But if she says anything to hurt my baby . . .”

“Go to sleep, Angel. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

“Michael?”

“Hmm?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, honey.”

I lay in bed awake for a long time, wondering what it would be like to have two parents who both stayed.

“Y
a’ll want the usual?” Resa called out as we walked into the diner.

“I think I’ll have a chef’s salad today,” I said.

“You want dressing, or are you eating it naked?” She pulled her pad from her apron pocket.

“Italian,” I said, sliding into our usual booth.

“How ’bout you, hon?” She smiled at Jenny. “The usual?”

Jenny nodded and smiled back. It was impossible not to smile when Resa was around.

She took our ticket to the kitchen and returned with our drinks.

“So, what are ya’ll up to?”

“We’ve been at the library,” I said, taking my iced tea. “Jenny’s working on a big science paper.”

“Good girl,” she said, placing Jenny’s milk on the table. “Study hard, get good grades, go to college, and get yourself a real job that pays real money.”

“What do you think I pay you?” Harlan yelled from the kitchen. “Monopoly money?”

Resa laughed and rolled her eyes. “You don’t pay jack shit, and you know it,” she called back to him. “If you did, maybe Carol Sue wouldn’t have quit.”

“Carol Sue quit?”

“Yeah,” Resa said, leaning against our table. “Last night she walked out in the middle of the dinner shift. Told the old man to take the job and shove it.”

She sighed. “So now we’re shorthanded for the evening shift. You know anyone looking for a job?”

“Actually,” I said, “I might be interested.”

Jenny stared at me. “But who will take me to the library?” she asked.

“I will,” I said. “If it’s the dinner shift, I can work while you’re with your dad.”

“You got any experience?” Resa asked.

“Yeah, I’ve waited tables before. Did a couple years at a truck stop in Utah. It would only be until we leave in January, but it’ll give you some time to find someone permanent.”

“Well, let me get you an application,” she said. “Like I said, it don’t pay much, but it’s better than nothing. And of course, you’ll get all the pleasure of working with me!”

I guess I thought Brannon would be happy when I told him about the job. But he wasn’t, not at all. That night, before he left for his shift, he let me know just how unhappy he was. Thankfully, Jenny was at the Johnsons’.

“I can’t believe you took a job without even talking to me about it first!”

“It’s just the dinner shift, and it’s only three nights a week. We can use the money.”

“Damn it, Emma! I am the man in this family, and I can take care of the money.”

“But I thought . . .”

“I don’t care what you thought. I’m telling you I don’t want you working at that goddamned diner!”

He slammed his fist on the table so hard the whole trailer shook. I stared at him in disbelief. I’d never seen him so mad.

I took a long breath and said as calmly as I could, “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you first. I didn’t know you’d be so upset. I just thought the money would be helpful with Christmas coming up. We can use it to get Jenny some nice things, maybe a new coat. Her old one is getting too small for her.”

He stared at me for a long minute, his face red. Then he, too, took a long, deep breath and seemed to deflate.

“Oh, Emma,” he said finally, “that’s sweet, honey, that you want to buy stuff for Jenny. I’m sorry I lost it, babe. Really, I’m so sorry.”

He drew me into a hug and held me until both of us were breathing normally again.

“Why would you get so mad about me working?” I asked, easing away. “I worked when we were in Idaho. I’ve always worked. I like working. I like pulling my own weight.”

He took my hands and was quiet for a minute. Then he said, “Last year, I met a woman named Jackie. You probably already knew that, right?”

I nodded, still holding his hands. “She lived with you,” I whispered.

“Yeah, she did. And I thought it was going to work out. We got along great; we had fun. She seemed to love Jenny. I thought maybe she was the one, that maybe we’d even get married.”

“So what happened?”

“She took a job at a gas station in the town where we were. Said she wanted to make some extra money. And then, boom, she decides she’s in love with the guy she works for. He owned the station. A real loser, if you ask me. But she left me, she left without even telling Jenny good-bye.”

He sat down at the table and dropped his head into his hands. “I was pretty hurt, but Jenny . . . God, Jenny was just devastated to lose her. They’d gotten really close.”

I sat down across from him and put my hands on his. “That’s not going to happen to us,” I said firmly. “I promise you, Brannon, I’m not going to leave you for anyone else.”

He raised his head and I saw a tear slide down his cheek. My heart nearly broke.

“I love you, Brannon,” I said, brushing away that tear. “I love you and I love Jenny, and I’m not going anywhere without you.”

He rose and pulled me to my feet, then wrapped me in a tight embrace.

“I love you, too, babe.” He kissed my forehead, my cheek, my nose. He drew me into a long, deep kiss.

“Ewww!”

Jenny stood in the doorway, Lashaundra beside her. Both girls looked pretty much horrified.

I stepped back, feeling my cheeks redden. We didn’t kiss like that in front of Jenny.

“Can Lashaundra sleep here tonight?”

“I have to work tonight, honey,” Brannon said. “So I guess it’s up to Emma.”

He looked down at me and smiled. “Is that okay with you?”

“Sure,” I said, returning his smile. “That’s fine with me.”

After Brannon left for work, Jenny and Lashaundra ran to the Johnsons’ to get her overnight things. A short time later, I heard a knock at the door.

“Come on in, silly!” I was washing dishes in the sink.

“Excuse me?”

“Oh!” I said, turning toward the door. “I’m sorry . . . I thought you were Jenny.”

Mrs. Johnson stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, frowning at me.

“She’s at our place,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you before I let Lashaundra spend the night here.”

“Okay.” I wiped my hands on a dish towel. “Have a seat.” We sat at the table.

“Can I get you some tea?”

“No, thank you. I just . . . I want to be upfront about some things before my little girl stays here with you.”

She cleared her throat and looked directly into my eyes.

“It’s pretty obvious you’re a racist,” she said. “And that’s your problem, it’s not mine. But you’d better be damned certain that you are
not
going to do anything or say anything to hurt my child. You got that?”

I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. Her words took my breath away. I stared at her, feeling her anger wash over me like a cold wave. Her dark eyes never even blinked as she stared back at me. At last, I found my voice.

“Look, I’m not . . . I mean, I don’t think I’m a racist. I don’t want to be, anyway.”

She said nothing, simply watching me.

“Where I was raised, we were taught some pretty weird things. Awful things, actually. And . . .”

“I know what it’s like to be raised to hate,” she said softly.

I stared at her, my mouth hanging open.

“What, you think white folks are the only ones who can hate? My daddy hated white people. He grew up in the South under Jim Crow. He took a whole lot of crap from the police, got beat up, even went to jail once. And it made him hate anyone who wasn’t like him. He disowned me when I married Michael.”

She must have seen my confusion.

“Michael’s mother is white,” she explained. “My daddy couldn’t handle that. So, I know about being raised that way. But that doesn’t mean
I
have to be that way. And it doesn’t excuse you, either.”

“But I’m not . . .”

“I saw you the day we got here,” she continued. “I saw your face when you looked at my daughter. And I could hear the word screaming in your head.
Nigger
. That’s what you thought when you saw my Lashaundra. That’s what you thought when you saw Malcolm. I know the look when I see it.”

I felt my cheeks beginning to burn. “I . . . I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to look like that. I didn’t mean to even think it.”

“But you did.”

The words hung between us, heavy in the air. I rose and began pacing the aisle of the trailer. My head was aching from too many thoughts. Finally, I sat back down and took a deep breath, trying to exhale all the fear and vitriol and garbage from my head.

“I grew up in the FLDS,” I said. I hadn’t told anyone that in a long time. I hadn’t even told Brannon yet.

She simply looked at me.

“Fundamentalist Mormon,” I said. “The kind you see on that television show,
Big Love
.”

“You mean the one with that man and all his wives?”

Now it was her turn to stare at me with her mouth open.

I nodded.

“Where I was raised, we were completely cut off from the rest of the world. We were told that everyone outside our church was going to hell, and that people with dark skin were the children of the devil. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what I was taught when I was a little girl. And you and Lashaundra . . . well, you’re the first black people I’ve ever actually talked to. There were no blacks where I came from. After I was four, we didn’t even have a television. The prophet, I mean the guy in charge of the whole town, he made us get rid of our TV. He said it was full of evil influences. So the only thing I knew about blacks was what I was taught in school. And the school was run by the church, so I got a pretty biased education.”

I rose and poured water into the teakettle. I needed something to do.

“Are you for real?” She sounded skeptical.

“Honest to God, that’s the truth.”

I put the kettle on the stove and lit the flame. Then I sat back down across from her, a black woman at my kitchen table. My mother would have died!

“I ran away when I was seventeen. I left and I never looked back. And I set out to learn everything I could about the outside world. But even after I left, I didn’t meet any black people. There just aren’t very many out there.

“When I lived in Utah, a friend of mine took me to see
The Pursuit of Happyness
. Did you see that movie? It starred Will Smith, and my God, it blew my mind! I mean, here he was, this good guy, this good father who was trying so hard to make a better life for his son. After I saw it, I went home and cried for at least an hour, because I realized I had spent so much of my life being afraid of black people and thinking they were evil, when they really are just like us. I am . . . I’m sorry, I mean that you are just like me.”

The teakettle began whistling, so I got up and poured water into two cups.

“Herbal okay?”

She nodded, still staring at me like I was from Mars.

I put the cups on the table between us and sat back down.

“After that, I watched lots of reruns of
The Cosby Show
. It was on at eleven every night. And I always ended up crying, thinking how I’d been so stupid. I mean, my family was a nightmare. Really, just a nightmare. But oh, they put on a show like they were just the best family in the world. And here was this
black
family with a great mom and dad, and the kids were all happy and got along. I felt like I’d been lied to my whole life. I
was
lied to my whole life.”

I stirred sugar into my tea and sipped it.

“So, yeah . . . I don’t know how to be around black people. And I
hate
that I still have all that stuff in my head. But I’m trying, I’m really trying, Mrs. Johnson. I’m trying to learn it all over, or to unlearn it, or . . . whatever.”

I looked at her and tried to smile. “Does that make sense?”

She nodded and smiled back. It was the first time she’d really smiled at me, and it was a beautiful smile.

“It’s Angel,” she said. “Mrs. Johnson is my mother-in-law.”

We both sipped our tea quietly for a minute. Then I said, “I promise you, Angel, that I will never say or do anything on purpose to hurt your daughter. I’m really glad that Jenny has a friend. I hope you believe me.”

She nodded again. “I believe you, Emma.”

“Thank you.”

We drank our tea in silence. When her cup was empty, Angel rose and said, “Well, you’ve signed on for some chaos tonight. I hope you know that.”

I smiled at her, so grateful that I almost cried.

“Thank you,” I said again. “I think we’ll be fine.”