Seven Days in June(69)

“Hello, Genevieve,” she cooed, all honey-mellow tones and lilting accent.

“Hey, Mom. Hi.” Her daughter sounded frantic. And close, as if she were yelling from the next room. It must’ve been an emergency if she was calling her on a random afternoon in June. They talked exactly four times a year: twice in April (on each of their birthdays), once in September (on Audre’s birthday), and at Christmas. She couldn’t imagine what had precipitated the call. But to her daughter, everything was a crisis.

Lizette had barely seen Genevieve since she’d moved away from home. When she came back from that psychiatric ward where the police sent her (she would never have had her flesh and blood committed, good God), Genevieve had told her in a long, teary midnight conversation that her therapists had said she needed space. From her mother. For her health.

Space!

Those were her words, in that kitchen, in their janky rented apartment in Washington, DC. That home had never felt like one, just an in-between purgatory riddled with bad luck. Everything fell apart in DC. Genevieve went missing. Lizette’s lover went missing, too—and then, one night, he hobbled into his bar, where she was cocktail-waitressing. She yelped, seeing his chubby, square frame propped up on crutches and his face bruised to hell and back.

She sidled up to him, a vision in black lace.

“My condolences to the other guy,” she chirped breathily into his hairy ear. An attempt to appeal to his (unearned) vanity—but he didn’t react at all. He just looked right through her. It wasn’t a look, actually; it was an unlook. The end.

It shouldn’t have hurt so much. She’d been dumped before. But this one had such potential! Lizette had met him while waitressing in Vegas. Over Bloody Marys, he’d invited her to live in DC, promising to set her up nicely and teach her how to manage his bar. She’d hoped he’d be her forever guy. She was so tired of starting over with a new man every couple years, only to be abandoned for unspecified reasons. When bad things happened over and over, it was a sign. God was telling you to change. Your attitude, your hair, your address. Something.

So she knew why Genevieve had fled. Lizette also knew that no matter where or how far you went, you couldn’t outrun yourself. But her daughter was grown. What could she do? She hugged her, kissed her, and helped her pack for the dorm. And “space” stretched across years. Until one night, Lizette picked up a Glamour in the dressing room where she was dancing, and saw a profile on Genevieve, in the Ones to Watch section. And discovered that she had a baby and an ex-husband, neither of whom she’d met.

Lizette didn’t lay eyes on Audre till she was two. It was cruel. She hadn’t raised her daughter to have such ghastly manners. But in the end, maybe Genevieve had been right to sever ties. Genevieve was Eva now, and she and Audre were both thriving.

Everything turns out the way it oughta, she thought.

“What’s wrong, bé?” She plucked a cigarette from the Parliament pack under her couch cushion and lit up. On an exhale, she said, “Must be trouble.”

“Are you smoking?”

Lizette took a deep drag and then blew smoke directly into the receiver. “No.”

“You said you’d quit. I sent you those e-cigs. Did you get them?”

“Jayzee Mahdee Joseff!” Jesus Mary Joseph. “Why you tendin’ to my business? Don’t antagonize me—I’m in the middle of class.” She glanced above, where Mahckenzee’s rat-a-tat-tat-tat tapping pounded through the ceiling.

“I need to ask you something. It’s important.”

“You sound off,” said Lizette. “You been crying?”

“What happened the morning you found me in the Wisconsin Avenue house?”

Slowly, as if moving through water, Lizette brought her fingers to the corner of her mouth. They’d never talked about this. Genevieve always insisted she didn’t want to revisit that morning ever again. Long ago, she’d put her foot down. Why now?

“I don’t like to think about that morning,” she said. “I’m having a hard day, G. So many girls, so little time, and I’m exhausted. You should see little Mahckenzee up there.” She gestured at the ceiling, with her cigarette. “No bigger than a minute, but she projects to the stars.”

Upstairs, Mahckenzee’s tapping was actually shaking the ceiling. Lizette’s crystal chandelier, a long-ago gift for excellent services rendered, was swaying. That was probably dangerous. It could fall on her.

Ah well, she thought, her eyelids fluttering shut. We all die of something.

“I need you to tell me every detail, Mom.”

“Well, why you ain’t asked till now? When you came back from that insane asylum—”

“Insane asylum? It was Howard University Hospital’s psychiatric ward, not One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

“Well, whatever. You forbade me to ever discuss it again. You made me promise.”

“I was a kid!”

“Yes, a stubborn, hincty kid with volcanic emotions. I ain’t wanna upset you, so I did what you asked. Besides,” she said haughtily, “there are things we just don’t talk about. That’s our relationship.”

“We have a relationship?”

“Lord, the theatrics.”

“Tell me,” Genevieve demanded. “Please.”