Darlene told TT how good he look and he goes, It’s like the Delicious Cotillion up in here—and he wouldn’t let go her forearm until she had to turn around and excuse herself, saying that she ain’t talked to Eddie yet and they ain’t seened each other in a quite a while. TT put on a face that said Why you hasn’t seen your son? but she ain’t want to explain nothing, so she told him that there be more time to catch up later and she pushed past a couple people to get out the courtroom.
In the hallway I start getting tired of Miss D and I wanted to mess with her, dance her brain around a little, do a little mental foxtrot and shit. It’s darker in that hallway than inside the courtroom and her eyes gone screwy and she couldn’t tell who was who. She turnt in circles a couple time to get set, but she couldn’t see her son nowheres. Then she spot a lady looked like the woman she seen with Eddie, but she ain’t see Eddie or the kid they was with, and the woman had her back to Darlene. Darlene grabbed the lady by her upper arm and she spun around; you could tell she made a judgment on Darlene and her missing teeth on account a her face got tight and her shoulders squinched together.
At first Darlene ain’t notice that the lady kinda flipped out, ’cause she still on a mission to find Eddie, so she grip on the woman arm even more, probably too tight, and goes, Are you the woman?
The woman yank her whole torso away from Darlene hand and go, What woman? I’m a woman, but I don’t know if I’m the woman. Are you searching for a particular woman?
Darlene did not get to answer ’cause then she saw Eddie coming to em, leading the wobbly boy by the hand with his claw, and her attention gone over there immediately. Eddie looked up from the child face at Darlene and handed him off to the woman, who he called Ruth. The child climbed up on her and she balanced him on her hip.
Ma, Eddie said.
Darlene extended her arms for a hug—she feeling ready to forgive his betrayal and all that hardheadedness, ’cause she recognize how much he like her in a way. But he ain’t extended his arms. Then she seen his claws and was like, Maybe that’s why he won’t hug me? She thinking ’bout not hugging, but changed her mind and hugged his non-hug so that at least one motherfucker be hugging somebody.
I thought you might come, he said. You didn’t have to.
Oh my chicken-fried goodness, Ruth gasped. Mrs. Hardison! Ruth’s attitude went poof and she got all sweet. I am so sorry! she said.
You look a lot different, Ma, Eddie said.
I told Darlene I thought he pretending not to say worse.
You mean better or worse? she asked, hoping to laugh off his comment.
Ruth broke up that weird moment by saying, Mrs. Hardison, I’m sorry, I did not recognize you.
Why would you, since we’ve never met? Darlene shot back while she still staring at Eddie so there wouldn’t be no doubt she blaming his ass for keeping his life a secret from her. I only just heard your name for the first time. Did he even tell you he had a mother?
So Ruth introduce herself as Eddie wife, and Darlene start giving Eddie a bunch of outraged grimaces behind all the shit she never heard from him ’bout Ruth and ’bout they life together. Every new piece of information be dropping like a brick on Darlene big toe. They ain’t even get to the boy for a while, and it seem like Eddie start to guess that Darlene ain’t gonna have a good reaction to meeting him, so he kinda stepped between Darlene and Ruth, who still got the child in her arms to hide him. But the kid so outgoing and everything that he lean around Eddie arm at one point and goes, I’m Nathaniel! Totally innocent of course ’bout what that name gonna mean to this lady he ain’t even know be his grandma.
Soon as Darlene heard that name she grab Eddie by the arm of his suit so hard that it done made a li’l ripping noise and some strings done popped out the shoulder. Her face be quivering, she trying so hard to stomp down the agony she experienced when Nat said Nathaniel. She screamed, Eddie, you—how could you name—! And not tell me! She grabbing his suit jacket anywhere to shake him back and forth.
Eddie said, Ma, I didn’t want you to know. The butt-naked honesty of that shit made Darlene close her mouth and flop her hands to her sides.
Ruth put Nat down and changed her stance like she gon have to escort Darlene out the building in a hot minute.
But then Darlene looked at me again, and she caught herself and stepped back from the three of em. She wiped her teary, mucusy face with a sleeve and covered her mouth with her fingers on either side, almost like she praying. Suddenly they was a trinity to her, some sacred folks who had managed to turn they rotten life into something got value, and she blamed herself for failing to do that shit in her own life. And when she understood that they was prepared never to let her into they life, she took a gaspy breath like she ’bout to drown.
It ain’t too often that the mother look at the child and get schooled, and that brung on a whole nother tornado of shame to Darlene. She seen how spiderwebby and delicate that connection be between any two people, even when they blood, and how bad she had fucked with it far as Eddie concerned, like it ain’t meant nothing to her. For one second she could truly see his side of things, and it be like everything inside her turnt to mud and slid from her head to her foot and she become a monster to her own self. She seen the fear and disgust and judgment in the eyes of her unknown family, this woman and child and the son she ain’t really knowed no more, and them feelings done filled up the hole where love and respect and trust oughta gone. By that point, li’l Nat don’t understand what the hell he done wrong and he start wailing.
Scotty, Darlene said to me, it’s over.
And I knowed her ass wasn’t kidding, neither. But I am a badass drug with a reputation for keeping the loyalty of my friends and lovers in a very tight grip, so I laughed at her—a long, nasty, spiteful, smoky laugh—praying that all my ridicule gonna keep her from knowing that without her, I would lose all my strength. She was in my head, too, though, and this time couldn’t nobody fool her no more, not even me.
28.
Almost Home