“I know you did. I might not send them, but I can read. Don’t mess around and lose your job.” Sylvia went to the closet and moved the hangers one by one. Ava’s pants and blouses hung on padded hangers like in a showroom. “Everything reminds me of something else. I can’t help it. Seeing you there in bed not sleeping, reminded me of when you were a baby and not sleeping.”
“I know, I know, I wasn’t a good sleeper.” Ava closed her eyes.
“I had to hold you on my chest, rub your back. Every night. For years. I think you were seven before you grew out of it.”
“I wasn’t seven, Mama.” Ava smiled.
“Maybe not seven.” Sylvia scooted her backside more comfortably on Ava’s bed, rubbed her daughter’s leg. “I’m leaving don’t worry. Just a minute.” The nurses told her to let her babies touch her skin to skin, it comforted them, they’d said. What did she know of comfort? Sylvia held her daughter’s baby-smooth leg.
“Mama.” Ava began speaking with her eyes closed. “Henry has a son, Mama. He has a child.”
The blood rushed from Sylvia’s head to her chest. For too many years she had expected to hear about Don’s child, lived in fear of it. Someday, some pitiful woman would show up at her door. Or worse, some skinny, hard-mouthed child with a high forehead like Don’s would come knocking, saying with Don’s lips that he didn’t want anything that she could give him, didn’t need anything he had any access to, but had to meet his father. With all the dirt that Don had done, Sylvia knew it would catch up with him someday.
“What do you mean?”
Ava shrugged. “It means what it means.”
Sylvia twisted the bedspread in her hands. “Are you sure?”
“I saw the boy.”
“Did he tell you that, Ava? Did he say it?”
“Of course he didn’t say it. Am I supposed to ask him? I saw his son.”
“Who’s the woman?”
“Some girl from high school.” Ava didn’t want to say white girl. White girl would have brought on her mother’s pity. She would not understand that the woman being a slut trumped the fact that she was white. Her mother would never see the world in those terms.
“Do you know her?”
“Not really. She’s not from here.”
“Then how do you know for sure?”
“I. Saw. Him. Mama,” Ava said slowly and too loudly.
“Then you don’t know,” Sylvia said and crossed her arms over her chest. She hoped that if she believed it enough maybe she could wish it away.
“You are hilarious. You know that. You don’t even like Henry. Aren’t you the one who said, ‘I give it three years’?”
“How many times are you going to bring that up? Yes, I said that. I wish I’d been right. You have to know,” Sylvia said and set her lips.
“Mama, what would knowing mean? Do I need a DNA test? All that would tell me is he could be the father. Isn’t that enough? What will that tell me that I don’t already know?”
“I can’t believe it. Do you know her?”
“Mama, I said I don’t. I knew it. I just didn’t want to believe it.”
“So you do know her? Is she from high school or not? Is it that Kim? You know I never trusted her.”
“Mama, please just let me rest a minute. I don’t know her. He does. It doesn’t matter. What could it possibly matter?”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Well, I can’t. A man like Don you expect anything to happen, but Henry, he’s the kind to run off. Now that wouldn’t have surprised me one bit.”
“He let me keep trying. You believe that? Knowing what he did.”
“No, no, you wanted that baby. A baby and a husband are two different desires, Ava. Don’t get that confused.”
“Mama let’s stop talking about this. Please. I’m not going to debate it with you.”
“I’ve never liked him. Never. Not from the minute you brought him to this house. But you picked him. I told you.”
“Why did I expect you to understand? Just let me rest here a minute, Mama.”
“How did you find out? Did you see the woman? Did she come to tell you?”
“She didn’t need to. It was obvious. I don’t want to talk about this anymore, okay?”
“You can’t just say something like that and then nothing.”
“I need you to just understand what’s going on here. That’s all. Don’t try to help. You can’t help.”
“Why did you tell me if you didn’t want to hear what I have to say?” Sylvia yelled, her voice shriller than she meant.
“Be careful, Mama,” Ava said.
“Be careful? Who are you talking to?”
“Mama, I remember James Martin.”
“James Martin? What about him? What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. James. The one that came around all the time back then when Daddy was gone. I saw the two of you.”
“What are you talking about, Ava, because I truly have no earthly idea.”
“Okay, Mama, okay. Let’s just play it that way.”
When Sylvia and her sister Lana were girls Sylvia told Lana to run inside the house and tell their mother that she had fallen in the well. In a minute their mother was running as fast as she could out the door, screaming Sylvia’s name, terror, disbelief, and rabid unreasonable hope flashing on her face. Sylvia had watched her from her position behind the well and stepped out so her mother could see her. Their mother stopped, looked at them both. In seconds she was collapsed on the ground in front of the well, like to collect her thinking she had to stop as many life processes that she could to let the truth penetrate. She didn’t move for a moment. That love we have for mothers has to be cut with vinegar and maybe even acid. Otherwise it will overwhelm us. She will overwhelm us. Great love invites pain, must have it or it becomes too big to contain.
“You’re hurting and you want me to hurt. Okay, I understand that. I guess I have to take that. But you are not going to accuse me of something I didn’t do.”
“You don’t have to tell me your business, Mama. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“James Martin was a friend of mine, my only friend. That’s all.” That wasn’t all. Sylvia loved him, was in love with him, but even at the time she knew her love was mostly a matter of convenience. She loved him because he was there. “I spent some time with him, Ava, and talked to him.” Sylvia paused, not sure what the conversation had become. “But nothing happened, except for a few laughs. Not like I have to explain myself to you.”
“Your life. Your business.”
“Oh, now it’s my business.”