“That lil’ Jennifer seemed to be doing better, don’t you think?” Mama asked now.
“Umhmm,” Jackie nodded, though she thought the child whined more than normal. She flipped through Ebony for pictures of Whitney Houston. People had told her she looked like a light-skinned version of that woman, and Jackie had come to agree.
“I think it’s ’cause her mama’s putting her to bed earlier,” Mama went on. “That’s important, you know. With you girls I kept you on a schedule.”
“It was too much,” Aunt Ruby interrupted, shaking her head. “I couldn’t get Evelyn to do a thing unless I went to her house and sat up on her porch. She couldn’t go shop, she couldn’t eat out. All that and she only had two kids. What did she need to schedule them for? You blink and you forget they’re even there. Now, me, I didn’t keep a schedule but I still had my seven under strict control.”
“No, I guess I didn’t need to,” Mama cut in. “Jackie and Sybil were nine years apart; by the time Jackie came along, Sybil had been in school for years, could run the house by herself if I needed her to, but children need structure, and if you don’t give it to them, they act a fool seeking it elsewhere. Then before you know it, there’s a crazy boyfriend in the picture, or worse, drugs . . .” She trailed off.
Jackie knew she hadn’t meant to use that example.
Then Mama turned to Jackie as if she were seeing her for the first time that day. “What’s the matter, Jackie Marie? You seem a little down.”
Jackie shook her head. “Nothing, Mama.” She plastered a smile on her face. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“The baby kept you up?” Mama asked. “Well, that’s normal for his age,” she answered before Jackie could. “But in a few months he’ll be sleeping through the night, you watch. Both my kids did by nine months.”
“My jokers still don’t sleep through the night, and the oldest will be twenty-nine tomorrow.” Aunt Ruby cut her head back and laughed, a shrill tinkly number.
Jackie and Mama just smiled.
“Well, you’d have them out all hours, then wonder why the feel of their mattress didn’t put them in the mind for rest,” Mama said.
“Well, I had to work.” Aunt Ruby’s voice began to rise. “I had to provide a steady home. Must be nice to have a—”
“Chasing men,” Mama muttered.
“What?” Aunt Ruby jerked her head up.
Jackie didn’t even look up from her magazine. When it came to her sister, Mama couldn’t be without her, but she couldn’t say a positive thing about her either. Times like these it was best for Jackie to just nod.
Her daddy walked in the room then, wearing the same tracksuit as Mama, only its stripes were blue instead of pale green. Sometimes her parents were so in sync it made her sick. He squeezed Jackie’s arm. “You okay, princess? You seem a little down.”
“I said the same thing, Renard, but it’s just that she’s tired. You didn’t get up with those babies, so you don’t remember, but I remember. Oh, I remember,” Mama added.
Then they began to bicker in their sweet way about who got up when, and Jackie shut out their sounds, asked herself the same questions they had. What was it that had come over her, a darkness of some manner? Of course she’d been this way when Terry first left, but she’d been steadily improving, and she didn’t know what it was about the day that made her feel like every evenness she’d regained was being snatched back, that she was doomed to a certain and dark fate, that that fate was upon her even now and she could barely walk through it, it clung to her so thickly.
The door to the nursery opened, and Jackie heard her sister’s heels clacking against the hardwood floor, smelled her Armani perfume before she saw her. Since Jackie had started working at the nursery a few months earlier, she and her parents and sometimes Aunt Ruby ate dinner together every night. Nothing fancy, whatever Mama had prepared for the kids’ lunch, spaghetti with sausage and meatballs, red beans, beef stew or cabbage and rice. Jackie had dreaded those meals at first. Her depression wanted to extend itself, wanted to strap her to her couch at home eating TV dinners in front of Murder, She Wrote, but it was those meals with her parents that had brought her back to her own. They didn’t talk about much: layoffs, what the Saints might do next season, but it was more the chemistry of them together, the soft rhythm of it that reminded her so thoroughly of her time as a child that she could convince herself her biggest problem was whether she’d learn to fishtail her doll baby’s hair before her playdate with Lucita McConduit.
Now her sister was here with her waxed eyebrows, red blush, and pink lipstick, her shoulders pushing through the top of her business suit, and her pumps making such a racket Jackie was certain she’d wake the baby. Jackie looked down at her own washed-out sweatshirt and faded jeans. She was still looking down when Sybil kissed her on the cheek, which in itself felt condescending. They didn’t do that with each other. It was likely something she learned from one of her law school friends, and it was all well and good when Jackie had her man beside her, certain Sybil would study herself into a lonely oblivion, but now they were both alone, and Sybil’s alligator bag probably cost Jackie’s rent.
“Where’s my baby?” Sybil scanned the room looking for T.C. and Mama had to shush her. “He just went down. Let Jackie Marie have a break.”
“He’ll be up after dinner, wanting to eat what I eat,” Jackie chuckled, and Sybil wrinkled her nose as if Jackie had told a tasteless joke, or farted.
“What a nice surprise.” Daddy walked back in from washing up and hugged his oldest daughter.
Sybil’s face lit up when she saw him. “I got off early and knew you’d be here,” she said.
“Good. You deserve a break. Well, stay for dinner, darling. Mama made some butter beans and salad, didn’t you, Mother?”
Mama just nodded. She had already laid the plates out in the kitchen and added another setting before they said a quick grace. By the time Jackie was halfway through her meal, Sybil still hadn’t spoken, and Jackie prayed the rest of the dinner would pass that way. She knew Mama had made Jackie’s favorite that morning, bread pudding, but she was willing to forego it to skip out on a conversation with her sister.
Sybil cleared her throat. “I have some news.”
“Oh, Lord, are you pregnant?” Aunt Ruby asked.
“God, no, Aunt Ruby.” Sybil shook her head.
“Well, is there a man at least?” Aunt Ruby went on.