What's Mine and Yours(55)
It had taken all her strength to shout at them, and the girls were stunned into silence.
“Oh, Mama,” said Margarita. “Now you’re in the running for best performance in a drama.”
“I’m serious. I need you girls to help me find your father.”
“Margarita was the last one to hear from him, but that was days ago,” Diane said. “There’s nothing we can do. He’ll show up when he wants to, Mama.”
Hank finally spoke up. “That’s your father. Never around when he’s needed. Only shows up when it’s convenient for him.”
“If I were you, Hank, I wouldn’t be talking about convenience,” said Noelle.
After that, Lacey May was on her, screaming and calling her ungrateful. Margarita egged her on, and Noelle snatched up her purse and left. Diane felt woozy and sank onto the bed. Maybe Alma was right, and she was only lying to herself, pretending she could keep the peace among them. She took her mother’s hand.
“You can’t take it to heart, Mama. She’s just afraid.”
“Something’s going on with her. I bet it’s Nelson.”
“Mama, every time there’s something wrong with Noelle, you blame it on Nelson.”
“And ninety-nine percent of the time I’m right.”
Margarita sighed heavily and stood from the window. “If I had known we were all coming here for a conference about the state of Noelle, I’d have stayed in L.A.”
“She’s your sister,” Lacey May said.
“And the center of the universe. Go on and make your plans to save her from herself. You let me know what I can do for my beloved sister when I get back.”
Margarita bowed her head beatifically, her hand on her heart, then turned and left, too.
Lacey May could have wept at the ease with which her daughters left her. They had seen her, in her gown, the wires needled into her hands, and she had won no sympathy. She wanted to wail, What did I do? and Hank would put his arm around her. Diane would reassure her: Nothing, Mama, nothing. And she could say, You can’t control your kids—you can only love them, or, They turn out how they turn out. But these were lies. There was plenty she could have done differently. She could have stayed with Robbie; she could have never gotten involved in that campaign at the school; she could have loved and welcomed Nelson; she could have let her daughters be. But she couldn’t bring herself to wish she’d taken another course. She was their mother, and she’d tried to use her influence for good. If she had the chance to do it all over again, she would do it all exactly the same.
When Diane returned to the camp, Alma was out front fiddling with the banner. It was sagging, and she cut and rewound the wire to string it back up.
“Your dog is here,” she said. “The blue nose pit. I moved her in with the small dogs and she’s happier. So far, everybody’s behaving.”
“I wish I could say that for the Venturas and the Gibbses.”
“Was it that bad?”
“I’ve got to find my father. The doctor finally gave us the rundown.”
“Is she going to die?”
“I don’t know. It was all numbers. Just because forty percent of patients live doesn’t mean you’ve got a forty percent shot. It’s either you die one hundred percent, or you live.”
Alma dropped the pliers in her hand and reached for Diane. Diane buried her face in Alma’s neck, inhaled the tinny odor of her sweat, her floral hair gel, and her underarm funk. They pulled apart, and Diane could see Alma was near tears.
“I know it’s not a good time to push all this. But it would break my heart if your mother never knew who I was, not really.”
“I can’t talk about this now. It’s too much.”
“Fine. Tonight then.”
“I can’t sneak off and see you anymore. Margarita’s sleeping on the couch with me now, and she’ll notice if I disappear.”
Alma released her and frowned. “Is there anyone you’re related to who isn’t on the list of people who can’t know about us?”
“It isn’t a very long list.”
Alma looked down at her high-tops, smeared with mud. When she looked back up at Diane, her face had changed. It was softer, but more closed, and Diane wondered whether this was the moment when she would begin to lose Alma, if in a little while, she’d give up and move on.
Alma spoke gently, her face half in shadow, the rusted wire spooled around her wrist.
“It’s only our life if we say so. Otherwise it belongs to them.”
10
September 2002
The Piedmont, North Carolina
The enrollment at Central was higher than anyone had expected. There had been talk that students wouldn’t rise to the challenge when they saw what it required of them: inconvenient bus routes, early mornings, the awkwardness of being new. But Central was at capacity with transfers—two hundred across the four grades—and Gee sensed them, the others, when he wandered the halls, when he sat at lunch with kids he recognized from elementary school, and in PE, where the black boys scheduled for sixth period had drawn together into a little band. They changed together in the locker room, ran laps in sync, and separated only when the coach divided them into teams.