Lana came back swinging her plastic bag from her wrist. “Nothing happier to a black woman than a bag full of ham,” she said.
Sylvia pulled onto the road past Teague’s. She cracked her window for a little breeze. The stores became much more spread apart, the parking lots turned to fields with crooked old houses peeling toxic paint set up right next to the road. One of the houses had become a thrift store Sylvia always meant to visit, though she couldn’t image what she would do with a butter churn, dangerous-looking wooden chairs, or a rusted wheelbarrow with a flower pot sitting in the middle. Save them for her own yard sale probably. She should turn around and go buy a knickknack to make her apartment feel like someone lived there rather than like someone forgot a few things on her hasty move out. But Sylvia couldn’t stop and let the town be still around her, her thoughts darting like gnats.
She had gotten up in a bad state of mind. Something was wrong with Ava. Something was happening and she didn’t know why. Sylvia had checked her e-mail and wandered the Web. She could enlarge her penis, meet for a discreet affair, get to know some horny Russian girls who were already hot for her. All this technology and that’s the best people could come up with was passing dirty notes to each other. She knew she shouldn’t but she began to search the Web to read about the families of the children killed at the school up north. She navigated through pages and pages of links, memorials, the parents’ memories, the notes of surviving children. She couldn’t stop the flood of thoughts of her son: Devon found a story in his schoolbook I Heard the Owl Call My Name and said the title fifty times if he said it once, an incantation they both found strangely soothing. In the mornings, Devon always a large boy, hovered over her in the kitchen, his cereal bowl close up to his lips, the shadow of his bulk on the table. Can’t you sit down? Stop hovering. A flash of giant shoes in the hall. Legs hung over the shabby couch, slow swinging as the blue flicker of the television lit his face. Ordinary things. Days and years of the everyday, ordinary thing. Every passing day was more empty of the living proof of him, the sounds of his voice and movement, the sweaty funky boy smell of him.
Sylvia turned the car around at the Run In convenience store. “You want a snack?”
“No, I want to do what we set out to do.” Lana pulled out her phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“Harriet Tubman. I am being kidnapped ain’t I? Who you think? Ava,” Lana said into the receiver, “your mama has finally gone off the deep end.”
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Tell her I’m fine,” Sylvia said.
“I’m just saying hey. Are you okay, honey? Talk to your mama, hear? Okay, don’t let me interrupt high finance. Okay. See you.”
“What did you call her for?” Sylvia asked.
“You need to talk to her.”
“What do you know, Lana? I’m not playing with you.”
“I know you need to talk to her. Don’t put me in the middle. You need to talk to her. Right now or sooner,” Lana said.
Sylvia turned the car to home. Charlotte. All these young people with old-timey names. Sylvia would not go see that woman like she was some kind of fixer, like she’d ever solved a single problem in her own life. That woman was not her business.
23
Ava was twelve when James Martin came into their lives. Some people are constants like the soil, always with you, never an arrival date or a beginning to recount. But with James she knew the second he became part of them. In the parking lot of the Winn-Dixie grocery store, Sylvia pushed a rusted cart, Ava trailed behind her mother, her attention shifted from the quaking wheel on the buggy and her mother’s swaying hips in her polyester maxi. James materialized from the thick, humid air.
“Ree Ree,” they heard behind them, her mother’s nickname. Nobody but family and people Sylvia knew when she was a child knew to call her Renee, and only a very few had any idea that once upon a time she had been called Ree Ree—a nickname, a name from Sylvia’s girlhood—a country name Sylvia resented for being what it was.
Sylvia jerked her head up, recognition on her face. “James Martin?” A question, though she was sure her mother knew the sound.
Her mother was lonely. Even she could see that. But she wore alone poorly, always hoped that the buffer of people would save her from having to navigate the world with just her own counsel.
“Little Ree. Is that you?”
“Yeah, every bit of it.” Sylvia smoothed the front of her top to hide the bulges her fat belly made, hoping to look a little slimmer, but only emphasizing her bulk.
“You look good, girl. Real good. Let me see you,” James said, pulling her mother’s body into his. I can’t believe I just run into you like this.”
Sylvia grinned. Ava could tell she wanted to believe James. Believe that she looked real good, even if she knew it had to be a lie. Her mother thought her days of looking good were over and she’d entered into the phase that women fear, of sinking into the background, becoming the silent feature while the young women and girls took center stage, had their babies, wore their high heels, laughed too loud because men liked to hear them. Ava thought her mother was a pretty woman. She was also fat. Ava wasn’t blind.
“You been in town long?” Her mother said softly like she was shy. Sylvia Ross was nobody’s shy. Nobody who knew her would ever think so.
“I just got out. Two days. And here you are.”
Her mother giggled, sounded younger than Ava liked. Ava got in the car and didn’t hear the rest of their conversation, but she was sure that her mother was pleased. If she’d had the keys she would’ve turned on the radio. If she’d had a notebook, she would have written something witty or drawn high-heeled shoes, her newest drawing project. But there she was by herself and unprepared.
Sylvia and James put the groceries in the trunk.
“I’m gonna call you, girl,” James said as he opened the car door for Sylvia.
Sylvia positioned herself into the plush seat, arranged herself behind the wheel.
“Good to see you. Don’t be a stranger.”
James waved to her mother from the other side of the glass. Ava waved back to him from the backseat until he finally looked in her direction.
“Don’t mention Jamie to your daddy, hear?”
“Who is Jamie?”
“You know what I’m talking about,” her mother said as she pulled the car out of the parking lot. “Just keep this to ourselves.”
Ava nodded. She had no intention of saying anything to her daddy and it wasn’t until that very minute that she thought she had anything to tell.
Ava’s grandmother’s house was too small for a Sunday dinner with everybody, children of her own, and their many children, so everyone showed up throughout the day, in shifts with one group coming just as the last left. Usually Ava and her father came together, but today Don stayed in bed.