The Turner House (37 page)

“You're not even afraid to die?” she asked.

Viola scrunched up her nose and shifted her torso as if trying to get away from Lelah. Without the upper-body strength required for a full scoot, she ended up rocking from side to side for a moment and resettling. She opened one reproachful eye.

“You smell like smoke. Like a pool hall or someplace. When you start
that?
”

“You know I don't smoke, Mama. I was around some smokers yesterday. I need to take a shower.”

“I don't know what's worse, smokin or drinkin. Your daddy used to drink, you know.”

“Everybody knows that.”

“Your daddy was always
worried
, worried himself drunk. So worried about what
didn't
happen at his job, with the house, on the street. Worried about heaven and hell. Waste of time.”

“Let's talk about something else,” Lelah said. “When's the last time you seen Marlene?”

“Marlene came by and gave me some lace gloves. Lace! They was pretty, but where I'm goin with lace on? I threw them under the bed. Troy been by too. He get your fingerprints yet? He came by for mine, but I
know
he was lyin about something, I don't know what. He can't lie to save his life.”

Lelah looked. No gloves under the bed. A good thing. It would have been cruel of her sister. Viola's hands were too knotted and her nails too thick for lace. She had no idea what she meant about Troy, but she hoped Viola was mistaken about him too.

“Now, your daddy,” Viola said. “Maybe if he didn't buy so much liquor, he'd of had less to be worryin about in the first place.”

“Yeah, well, he stopped drinking eventually, didn't he?” Lelah said. “Plenty of people never stop, Mama. It's hard.”

“Shit,” Viola said. She looked to the left and right of her, and whispered, “Your daddy ain't stop nothin. That doctor told your daddy his liver was about to up and quit on him. And you think he wanted to stop?
No.
”

Viola made a clucking noise in an attempt to scratch the back of her throat.

“I made Cha-Cha follow your daddy around, and sure enough he was drinkin still. Got to the point I told him if he had another drink, I would kill him dead myself. I'da done it, too.”

Lelah propped herself up on an elbow.

“What are you saying, Mama? You know that's not true. Daddy quit cause he wanted to. I remember he used to carry his flask around for show, but he never—”

“He didn't quit nothin!” She shot Lelah an impatient look. “He just chose to stay alive is all. And lucky for him his liver held on. Mmm-hmm. That's why you need to quit that smokin now, girl. Fore you mess around and get sick.”

And just like that, Lelah's last illusion died.

Viola muttered to herself about tobacco pipes and beer money and something Lelah couldn't decipher about ham hocks. Other Turner children would have forced Viola to remain alert, ply her with questions aimed at sharpening her focus and fighting the morphine- induced confusion, but Lelah saw no point in making her mother work hard at anything anymore. Soon Viola fell asleep, heralded by a soft whirring from her nose. Lelah turned over in the bed and grabbed her phone out of her purse on the floor. No missed calls. She wanted to call someone up and tell them the truth about Francis Turner and his drinking, but really, who cared but her? Better to let the myth of the man who beat his demons live on. She called Brianne instead. The phone went straight to voicemail, and Lelah wasn't sure what message to leave. She hung up.

In the living room Cha-Cha sat with his head in his hands. Lelah came and sat on the arm of the couch next to him.

“Tina's gonna be fine,” she said.

Cha-Cha shrugged. “I don't wanna talk about it.”

“Okay,” Lelah said. She stood up to leave, but Cha-Cha grabbed her arm. Even with his red-rimmed eyes as proof, Lelah couldn't imagine him crying.

“You can't tell anyone about Mama. I'm not ready,” he said.

“Huh? You mean don't tell her other eleven children that she's dying? That's not fair, Cha.”

“Now hold on a minute. Nobody said she was dying. Just give her some time. We can get her to do the chemo, I know we can. She just likes to be dramatic.”

Lelah sat back down. She pictured her mother, wide awake once more, straining to sit back up and eavesdrop on them. She lowered her voice.

“She's
dying
, Cha. Sooner than you realize, I bet. Go ask her and she'll tell you herself. It's not even about the cancer as much as it's about her being ready to go. You know once somebody her age decides to stop fighting, it's pretty much over.”

Cha-Cha slapped his leg and Lelah flinched.

“Gotdamnit, regardless of that, I'm asking
you
not to tell anybody, alright? Not until we have some sort of plan. Can I trust you to keep this between us?”

Seeing as how she was staying under his roof, Lelah did not consider herself in a position to disagree.

He wanted to tell her that every second she stayed away he felt bereft. But Chucky, his own son, was playing bouncer. His shorter, stout body was planted on the threshold, his arms crossed. His face—more Tina than Cha-Cha, with small eyes and narrow nose—was veiled in artificial indifference. Cha-Cha would have punched him if he didn't love him.

“I know you think you're doing the right thing,” Cha-Cha said. “But you need to go on and let me in so me and your mom can work this out.”

“Just let her have a couple days to herself, Pop,” Chucky said. “She just needs a couple days.”

“It's already been a day and half! She just ran off and didn't tell me or your grandma or anybody where she was going.”

“You knew she'd be here.”

“Doesn't matter! She knows I don't know nothin about the pills Mama's got to take, or what appointments she has or—”

“She obviously called Auntie Lelah and told her everything, or Grandma would already be in trouble.”

Was he talking smart? Cha-Cha thought so. He really could have punched him.

“So what, if I try to come in, you're gonna
hit
me? Is that it? You shouldn't be choosing sides, Chucky. Especially since you haven't even heard my side.”

Chucky uncrossed his arms and put a hand on Cha-Cha's shoulder. Cha-Cha stifled the impulse to flinch.

“She's not trying to see you right now, Pop. That's huge. In all the years y'all been married, she ever stay mad at you longer than a day?”

“I know it's huge! I don't need you to tell me about my own wife. Why do you think I'm here? We
made
you, remember that. If she wants to stay here for a while longer, fine. But we at least gotta talk.”

Inside the house, Chucky's son, Isaiah, yelled, and someone immediately appeased him. Having been publicly cuckolded by his ex-wife made Chucky think he had a right to moral superiority when it came to relationships. If Todd were here, he would have cooperated, Cha-Cha thought. Todd, his spitting image, would remind Tina that she'd invited folks to a party that was supposed to be happening in two days, and that the person who really suffered by her staying away was Viola. Too bad Todd was stationed in a faraway desert, getting ready for a second tour in an even more dangerous desert.

“You're worried about her forgiving you,” Chucky said. “But you need to be worrying about why you're acting up in the first place, Pop.” He stepped back into the entryway and gently closed the door on his father. He might as well have slammed it.

A smashed silver Lexus sat in the middle of Cha-Cha's driveway. Oil leaked from underneath and trickled toward the gutter. A diagonal gash across the passenger side revealed a mangle of folded metal and plastic. California plates, all four cheaply tinted windows rolled down to different levels. Cha-Cha parked on the street and stuck his head through the driver's window on the way to his front door. A film of grease-dappled burger wrappers obscured the backseat and floor, some from fast food joints not found on this side of the Mississippi. The front passenger seat held a heap of tape cassettes. The chemical-sweet stink of Luster's Pink lotion crowded Cha-Cha's nostrils. The sum of this detritus was Lonnie.

In the kitchen Lelah beamed as she made breakfast for dinner. She put down her spatula, hugged Cha-Cha round the neck.

“He's been here an hour and Mama's already
so
happy,” she whispered. “I think he's a little drunk, though, which is why I'm making breakfast.”

“You didn't tell him nothing about Mama's, uh,
new
news, did you?”

“God, Cha-Cha, no. Just go in there and say hi.”

“I dreammmed of a city called Glor-rry, / So bright and so fair. / As I entered the gates I crieeed ho-ly, / And the angels met me there.”

Someone had used every pillow in the room to prop Viola up. Her dressy black sequin turban perched on her head. She squinted in rapture, and tears shimmied down her mole-flecked cheeks. Her right hand rested lightly in her sixth child's upturned palm.

Lonnie's bony limbs folded into the armchair. His black leather baseball cap sloped low over his brow. Mustache: a scraggly broom; eyebrows: two inverted checks. Legs possessed by their trademark jitter inside navy blue track pants. Baby-sized teeth chipped here and there. But his voice? His voice did much to make up for all that mess.

“They carr-rried me from mansion to man-sion, /And oh, the sights that I saw. / Then I said I want to see Je-sus, / The man who diiieed for us all.”

They froze in time, Cha-Cha silent at the door, his mother closed-eyed, and his brother looking out the window, stalling before he started the chorus. Lonnie and Viola communing in a way Cha-Cha could hardly imagine. Lelah walked in, breaking the spell.

“I've got eggs, Mama. Just a little bit, and some bacon. Lonnie, yours is on the stove. What're you lurking in the doorway for, Cha?”

“Big brother Charles!” Lonnie stood up and flung his right hand to his forehead in sloppy salute. “You're lookin desk-job sharp in your business-casual slacks.”

“Oh, Cha-Cha's home!” Viola said. She tried to straighten up on her pillows and wiped her face with her hand. “Where you been, Cha? You ain't came to sit with me in a long time.”

She held out her hand to him, so Cha-Cha had no choice but to take it, lean in, and give her a peck on the forehead. He wondered whether his mother even remembered forsaking him in his time of need.

In four swift steps Lonnie crossed the room and clapped Cha-Cha on the back. Lelah shooed them into the hallway.

“Your car looks terrible, and it's leaking,” Cha-Cha said.

“Hit somethin in Ohio. Fell asleep. Don't worry about that. How are
you
doing?”

Lonnie walked into the kitchen. He shoveled eggs into his mouth with a wooden serving spoon.

“I'm fine. You drove here?”

“Yahp,” Lonnie said. He broke a piece of bacon in half and put that into his mouth too. “After we talked, Tina called and said Mama wasn't doing so great. That combined with your own predicament made me hop in the car. I borrowed some money from Lily, the girl from Hawthorne I was tellin you about? We back together, I think.”

Cha-Cha remembered that he'd promised Lonnie a hundred dollars on the phone. Those desperate calls seemed so long ago.

“Miles and the girls flyin in Friday,” Lonnie said. “My girls is flyin with em, too. Didn't wanna drive cross-country with me, I guess. Duke's flyin out from Oakland, but it's just gonna be him I think.”

A Turner invasion and Cha-Cha had nowhere to hide. Soon they would be hitting him with judgment and unsolicited advice from all sides. A room full of funhouse reflections of himself, distorting what he knew to be true.

Lonnie washed down his bacon with a cup of coffee from Tina's favorite mug. He wiped his hands on the front of his track pants.

“So, what you got goin on right now? It's still light out. You know what
I
always wanna do first thing I get in town.”

Cha-Cha knew: head to Yarrow Street and see what was going on.

“You remember Courtney the man? He used to wear that lime-green jumpsuit, runnin around the east side lookin like a bolt of lightning?”

“I don't remember any men named Courtney.”

“Sure you do. He started the Yarrow Gang, but he didn't run it for too long cause he tried to hold up that liquor store with a hammer. Remember? He was high out his mind. A gotdamn
hammer.
Clerk shot him in the face.”

“Oh.”

“Remember Terry Randolph? Had a twin named Tyrone? Tyrone owed some people some money, but they killed Terry instead. Slit his throat, I think, right on the basketball courts. This was around '73.”

“No, I had Chucky by then. Working too much.”

“I
know
you remember how Lydia Osage got shot by the police. They were chasing down somebody who robbed somebody on Fischer and shot her when she came around the corner with her groceries?”

“Can we just ride, Lonnie? Can we just ride and not talk about who's dead and who all got shot?”

“Sure. I'm sorry. You know I like to reminisce.”

Lonnie drummed his fingers on his knees and stared out the window. The streets were alive to him, Cha-Cha did know. Lonnie—the hallway pisser, the brick scavenger, the lead singer—had been more social, mischievous, and curious than Cha-Cha, and as such spent his teenage years making friends and enemies on blocks, dance floors, and basketball courts throughout the city. To him listing the too-soon-dead was paying homage; to Cha-Cha it was depressing.

“So you worked out the haint situation, huh?”

“What makes you think that?” Cha-Cha asked.

“Lelah said y'all had some sort of ‘experience.' And that you're snoring up a storm in the house.”

“I don't know what happened, but I got too much going on to worry right now. I'm sleeping again, that's true.”