In fact, maybe she’d just tell them that. Em marched down the neat pathway of her childhood home, with its cobblestone pavers and its perfectly aligned boxwoods, the breath coming from her lungs in cloudy huffs.
She planted herself just at the edge of the lawn and raised a fist in the air. “Y’all listen up, you nosy bunch o’ biddies, and yes, that means you, too, Kitty Palmer!” She shot an accusatory finger in Kitty’s direction. “You leave me and my children alone—you understand? One more foul word from your daughter’s forked tongue, and I’ll punch her in the nose even harder than Dixie did! While y’all are talkin’, why don’t you talk about that!”
She wiped the spit from the side of her mouth and stomped back along the path to the steps of her mother’s wide front porch, prepared to knock Clora’s door down with just her rage alone.
She’d had two days to figure out how to handle this, but the longer she’d thought about it, the angrier she became. Maybe it was because she’d dropped her resignation off today like some kind o’ thief in the night. Maybe it was because she resented feeling forced to leave a place she loved, despite the cruelty that abounded in Plum Orchard.
Or maybe it was just the very idea that her own mother didn’t have her back. And as she got past the tears and began to focus on what hurt the most, it all came down to her mother and what she’d said to Clifton Junior.
“Mama!” she bellowed. “Open this door!”
The front door popped open and Clora stuck her head out—the first thing she did was scan the street to see if anyone was watching her daughter’s bad behavior.
In that second, Em realized something. Her entire life had been based on Clora’s fear everyone was talking about them. Why was that?
“Emmaline Amos! You get in here right now!” she demanded, her lips tight. “Do you want the whole neighborhood to hear you?”
You bet your tail she did. And she said as much. “You bet I do, Mama! I want them all to hear the horrible things you’ve been saying about me to my son.” Em leaned over the porch railing and yelled out into the street. “I want them to hear it from me so they don’t have to talk about it behind my back like the yellow-bellied cowards they are!”
Clora stamped her foot and pointed inside the door. “Get in here this instant, Emmaline!”
“Or you’ll what, Mama?” She heard the whispers now, out in the dim vestiges of the oncoming night. Everyone talkin’ about Emmaline Amos gone crazy.
“Emmaline!” her mother hissed.
Em decided to take her mother’s advice; pushing past her, she flew into the living room. It was as cold as it had always been. As cold as her mother had always been.
“What on earth has gotten into you, Emmaline? How dare you come to my door in a fit!”
“Oh, I dare, Mama. I dare because you involved my children! I don’t know why you are the way you are, Mama. I don’t know why you can’t enjoy anything, not even your grandsons, but I will not tolerate you speakin’ ill of me to them. You hear me?” she bellowed loud enough to make the lone picture of Jesus on the wall shake from her fury.
Clora paled, but only a little before she rallied and railed at the idea Em would speak so disrespectfully to her elder. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Emmaline, but you will not speak to me like that.”
Em hiked her purse over her shoulder, her emotions seesawing in wide, crazy-ish arcs. “Oh, yes I will! When it comes to my boys, I most certainly will. You’re always so concerned about everyone talkin’ about me—about Clifton—about you—why is it you’re not concerned when you’re talking out of turn and telling my boys their father left because of me? How dare you say something like that to them? How dare you plant one of your bitter seeds? Isn’t it bad enough that you made my entire life miserable with your Bible thumping and your bitterness, but you want to do it again with my sons? Not. In. This. Lifetime!”
Clora’s hard mask of a face cracked for a moment before she turned on her heel and headed into her equally cold kitchen. “I spoke nothing but the truth.”
Em raced after her, cutting her off at the pass, spilling the contents of her purse all over the yellowing linoleum. “What?”
Clora’s eyes flashed as she stooped to pick up Em’s purse. “I said, I spoke nothing but the truth. If you’d been a better wife, Clifton wouldn’t need to wear women’s clothes.”
Em couldn’t breathe from the accusation. She reached blindly behind her for something to hold on to. “Have you plum lost your mind? How does my being a better wife have anything to do with Clifton wearing high heels?”
“If you’d been a better wife, he wouldn’t have strayed.”
“So what’s your excuse, Mama? Why did my father leave? Because you weren’t a better wife?”
But Clora wasn’t hearing Em, she was staring at the ridiculous birth certificate she’d gotten in the mail, sprawled across the kitchen floor in a heap of makeup and loose change. “Where did this come from, Emmaline?”