Chapter 58
EVERYTHING SEEMED to be in perpetual motion and chaos, but especially my relationship to the original investigation and the trial. After court that day, I did the one thing that made total sense to me: I played flag-football with the kids.
Damon and Janelle were whirlwinds of activity, competing for my attention throughout the afternoon, smothering me with their need. They distracted me from unpleasant prospects that would stretch on for the next few weeks.
After dinner that night, Nana and I stayed at the table over a second cup of chicory coffee. I wanted to hear her thoughts. I knew they were coming, anyway. All during the meal, her arms and hands had been twirling like Satchel Paige about to deliver a screwball.
“Alex, I believe we need to talk,” she finally said. When Nana Mama has something to say, she gets quiet first. Then she talks a lot, sometimes for hours.
The kids were busy watching Wheel of Fortune in the other room. The game-show cheers and chants made for good domestic background noise.
“What shall we talk about?” I asked her. “Hey, did you hear that one in four kids in the U.S. now lives in poverty? We’re going to be the moral majority soon.”
Nana was real composed and thoughtful about whatever was coming. She had been preparing this speech. I could tell that much. The pupils in her eyes had become brown pinpoints.
“Alex,” she said now, “you know that I’m always on your side when something is important.”
“Ever since I arrived in Washington with a duffel bag and, I think, seventy-five cents,” I said to her. I could still vividly remember being sent “up North” to live with my grandmother; the very day I’d arrived in Union Station on the train from Winston-Salem. My mother had just died of lung cancer; my father had died the year before. Nana bought me lunch at Morrison’s cafeteria. It was the first time I ever ate in a restaurant.
Regina Hope took me in when I was nine. Nana Mama was called “The Queen of Hope,” back then. She was a schoolteacher here in Washington. She was already in her late forties, and my grandfather was dead. My three brothers came to the Washington area at the same time that I did. They stayed with one relative or another until they were around eighteen. I stayed with Nana the whole time.
I was the lucky one. At times Nana Mama was a super queen bitch because she knew what was good for me. She had seen my type before. She knew my father, for good and bad. She had loved my mother. Nana Mama was, and is, a talented psychologist. I named her Nana Mama when I was ten. By then, she was both my nana and my mama.
Her arms were folded across her chest now. Iron will. “Alex, I believe I have some bad feelings about this relationship you’re involved in,” she said.
“Can you tell me why?” I asked her.
“Yes, I can. First, because Jezzie is a white woman, and I do not trust most white people. I would like to, but I can’t. Most of them have no respect for us. They lie to our faces. That’s their way, at least with people they don’t believe are their equals.”
“You sound like a street revolutionary. Farrakhan or Sonny Carson,” I said to her. I started to clear the table, carting plates and silverware to stack in our old porcelain sink.
“I’m not proud of these feelings I have, but I can’t help them, either.” Nana Mama’s eyes followed me.
“Is that Jezzie’s crime, then? That she’s a white woman?”
Nana fidgeted in her chair. She adjusted her eyeglasses, which were hung around her neck by twine. “Her crime is that she goes with you. She seems willing to let you throw away your police career, everything you do here in Southeast. All the good that’s been in your life. Damon and Jannie.”
“Damon and Janelle don’t seem hurt or concerned,” I told Nana Mama. My voice was rising some. I stood there with a stack of dirty dishes in my arms.
Nana’s palm slammed down on the wooden armrest of her chair. “Well dammit, that’s because you have blinders on, Alex. You are the sun and the sky for them. Damon is afraid you’ll just leave him.”
“Those kids are upset only if you get them upset.” I said what I was feeling, what I believed to be the truth.
Nana Mama sat all the way back in her chair. The tiniest sound escaped from her mouth. It was pure hurt.
“That is so wrong for you to say. I protect those two children just like I protected you. I’ve spent my life caring for other people, looking out for others. I don’t hurt anyone, Alex.”
“You just hurt me,” I said to her. “And you know you did. You know what those two kids mean to me.”
There were tears in Nana’s eyes, but she held her ground. She kept her eyes locked tightly onto mine. Our love is a tough, uncompromising love. It’s always been that way.
“I don’t want you to apologize to me later on, Alex. It doesn’t matter to me that you’ll feel guilty about what you just said to me. What matters is that you are guilty. You are giving up everything for a relationship that just can’t work.”
Nana Mama left the kitchen table, and she went upstairs. End of conversation. Just like that. She’d made up her mind.
Was I giving up everything to be with Jezzie? Was it a relationship that could never work? I had no way of knowing yet. I had to find that out for myself.