We Are Not Like Them(67)
“I’ll wear it. Put it under the tree for me and I’ll pretend it’s a big surprise.”
Momma sighs. “The scarf isn’t so much the point, honey. It’s that we can’t wait. You know, there’s a lot I wish I’d said before your grandma passed. Now I’m wondering why we always wait to say things at all. It’s mighty foolish of us to wait for anything. To wait to tell someone we love them or that we’re mad as hell at them. Kevin did a terrible thing, it’s true, and a young boy is dead and he has to live with that, with that heaviness in his soul. I’m not going to weigh in on how he should be punished. That’s for God to decide. But Jenny is not Kevin, and that girl loves you, and sometimes we need to swallow our pride and reach out. Even when we don’t know what to say and we’re afraid of messing everything up by saying the wrong thing. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to talk about something. All that matters is that you try. The longer you let something go, the easier it is to stay silent, and the silence is where the resentment starts to fester and rot.”
She stops to absently take another sip of the brown liquid in her glass. “I know, I’m a hypocrite over here telling you this. I’m not the best at reaching out. I didn’t speak to my own brother all this time. And you know why?”
Momma releases a strange, high-pitched cackle. “I don’t even know! That’s the awful truth. That’s something, right? I know we were both so mad and we said some terrible things to each other and then waited for the other to come to their senses and apologize while the years piled up. Now here we are, at our momma’s grave, like strangers. I don’t want that to happen to you and Jenny.”
She stops again; then, instead of taking another drink, she gazes out the little kitchen window into the dark night. I wait, somewhat stunned by this turn the night’s taken. Is it the grief of losing her mother? Is she that tipsy? Momma and I don’t have heart-to-hearts. This was a woman who simply left a pamphlet about “your changing body” on my bed when I was twelve.
“I’ll tell you something. I always wanted a friendship like what you have with Jenny. I was always a little jealous, truth be told. It’s special to have someone like that. I mean, your dad can be a doggone fool sometimes, but God knows he’s my best friend.” She stops and looks over at Daddy, on the couch, with a rare display of tenderness and affection. “It’s not the same as having a best girlfriend though. Side by side almost since you were knee-high. Y’all painting each other’s toes, telling secrets, sneaking out of the house—don’t think I don’t know you did that too. I never really got to have that with anyone.”
It was something, the topper to a surreal day, a surreal month, to have Momma opening herself up like this, confiding she was jealous. Of me? I was never one of the girls who longed to have my mom as a best friend, chatting about clothes and boys, which she would have found laughable anyway. She always said, I’m here to be your parent, not your girlfriend. And anyway, I already had a best friend growing up. But having this moment with Momma, so sad about her own mom, unfurls something in me, a curiosity about her, a desire to know her more as a woman, a longing for a different kind of relationship. She’s always been so distant, stern, hell-bent on properly molding us, like she couldn’t allow any room for a softer side. But what if she had let her guard down more and I’d gotten to see this side of her, the side that admits to feelings? We might have had an entirely different relationship. Maybe that’s possible now that I’m back home for the first time since I was eighteen; we could go out to lunch and talk, like a TV mother and daughter. It goes against everything I know about Sandra Wilson and thirty-plus years of history, but then I remember Gigi being lowered into the ground not five hours ago—a bittersweet reminder that Momma isn’t going to be here forever—and my determination grows. I want to know, to really know, my mother as an adult, before it’s too late.
“All I’m saying is, don’t take your friendship for granted. You have something special, and a whole lotta history. That counts for something. I would hate for y’all to have to wait for something awful to happen to find each other again and then be sick to death at all the time you’ve wasted. And anyway, something awful already happened. Gigi died. And for anything that can be said about Jenny, that girl loved Gigi like her own grandma, and it’s awful to think of her up there grieving all alone without a soul to talk to about her. And you need to talk too.”
I do. I want to talk to Jenny. I want to call her up right now and say, “I don’t know what to do with Gigi gone, Pony. I’ve never felt a loss like this. I don’t know how to live in the world without her.” I want her to say, “We’ll figure it out, Puff. We’ll never stop talking about her.” I don’t know why I keep pulling out our old nicknames now. Pony and Puff. It’s like I’m clinging to the strands that connected Jenny and me so long ago in the hopes that they’ll be enough. It’s almost 1 a.m. though, I can’t call her now.
I point this out to Momma.
“Darn, I didn’t realize it was that late. We gotta get to bed. But you call her tomorrow, then. Call her when you wake up. Don’t make excuses. You always keep everything so bottled up, Riley. I swear that’s why you had so much constipation as a child. So much so Dr. Lexington told me you needed a therapist more than a laxative. I told him you needed Jesus, but heaven help me, you put up a wall with even Jesus. Always all up in your head trying to reason everything to death. Sometimes you can’t think your way out of a thing. You have to feel it. And sometimes you just have to let it out. You can’t just push it away and pretend it’s not happening. Like with you and Jenny. Who knows what happens with you two from here? I’d like to think y’all find a way through this. I don’t know how that happens. I’m struggling myself. When I think of Kevin pulling that trigger…” She stops and shakes her head. “But I also believe that he gets a chance to explain himself, Jenny too. Bad things have always happened in the world, especially to our folks, but we can’t shut down every time they do. No choice but to keep pushing forward. It’s the same for you and Jenny—you gotta talk and see where you go from here. See that she understands your pain and why. But one thing’s for sure, just shutting down and shutting her out ain’t going to accomplish one thing, ’cept leave you all stopped up.”