Always You (24 page)

Chiara glanced up at John, George and Cady, who stood in a huddle far from the telephone. His eyebrows raised, John exchanged meaningful glances with George and Cady, and then gave Chiara a thumb’s up.

“As soon as possible fits my timeline perfectly,” Chiara said.

* * *

“Is your mother coming?” Chiara asked as she and John stood in Abby’s tiny library, peering through the sheer curtains. “I don’t see her car.”

“My father might be bringing her, or she might walk,” John said. “George could be giving her a ride.”

Chiara smiled. “You invited George?”

John lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. “I figured it was time to stop keeping all of you to myself, considering how much help he’s been in the past couple of weeks.”

“That’s mighty generous of you, John,” Chiara allowed. “Although I’m not sure a baby shower will be his cup of tea.”

“A houseful of women not George’s cup of tea?” John scoffed. “Please. That kid’ll have Miss Etheline eating out of the palm of his hand and your mother showering him with kisses.”

“While she tries to talk him into getting a haircut,” Chiara said knowingly. “Miss Etheline isn’t coming, by the way. She told Mama that she won’t ever come back here again until I apologize for being so ‘smart’ with her.”

“Are you going to?”

“Mama said that wouldn’t be a very smart thing for me to do.” Chiara took one more look through the ecru sheers covering Abby’s windows. “I think she’s glad that I managed to do in one afternoon what she couldn’t do in fifty years. Get rid of Etheline Simpson.”

John took Chiara’s hand and set a kiss on the back of it. “Ready to face them?”

“Ready or not, let’s get it over with,” she sighed.

Practically overnight, Abby had organized a baby shower for Chiara and John. The guest list included all of the Winters sisters, their families, and all of Abby’s friends. John and Chiara had no friends in St. Louis to invite, and none from Chicago who could come on such short notice. The Mahoneys had all been invited, which was the only reason Chiara and John had agreed to the event. Because there would be so many people in the house, many of whom were mutual friends with Almadine, the shower was the perfect opportunity to give Almadine the two pieces of news they’d been concealing for so long.

A tidal wave of happy greetings, whistles, cheers and general noise greeted John and Chiara when they emerged into the overcrowded dining room. The surfaces of the black Victorian pine buffet and dining table were covered in food, thanks to Abby’s idea of making the event a potluck supper, and gift boxes and bags were stacked waist high in the living room. There were so many presents wrapped in pastel papers or covered in frolicking giraffes, kittens or cherubs. Big ticket items—a bassinet, a high chair and a complicated contraption called a Whisper Soft Swing guaranteed to keep baby asleep and nestled in cloud-like comfort—spilled into the foyer and lined wall all the way to the front door.

Chiara gripped John’s hand a little harder. Her sisters, aunts and her mother’s friends had gone well above the call of duty for her baby, and Chiara felt a hitch of shame at having hoarded her secret for so long.

“Just wait until the wedding,” Zweli said close to John’s ear as he handed him a dark brown bottle of beer. “They like weddings just as much as they like babies.”

“We’re already married,” Chiara told her brother-in-law. “We don’t need to have a big wedding.”

“What you need and what you’re gonna have are two different things, Chi,” Zweli chuckled. “Do you really think you can deprive these ladies of the chance to see you and John…renew your vows?”

“Hey, I like that.” John sipped his beer. “ ‘Renew our vows.’ It sounds better than getting married again.”

“We’ll have to see,” Chiara agreed diplomatically. “Right now, let’s just get through this baby thing.”

The floral-printed loveseat had been reserved as the place of honor for Chiara and John, and he seated her before he joined her.

“Oh, it’s so nice to see a young man with manners,” one of Abby’s teacher friends commented as she beamed at John over the tops of her half-spectacles.

“John used to mow my lawn for me, before he started high school,” an older neighbor lady, Mrs. Vida Kinloch, said. “I never knew such a nice, quiet boy. Never talked back and he was always on time.” She lowered her voice, but not so much that she couldn’t be heard. “Now that Chiara, she’s a whole other story. She used to ride her bike up and down the street while John was workin’, tryin’ to get him to skip off with her. Abby should’ve put her to work, too, ‘stead of letting her run ‘round doing what-all she wanted.”

Chiara chomped the inside of her lower lip, biting back the caustic response she wanted to deliver. John took Chiara’s hand in both of his, mutely telling her what she already knew: that Chiara’s company was the only reason John had mowed Mrs. Kinloch’s lawn. She lived a few doors down from Chiara, and the lawn mowing job had given him a reason to be on Chiara’s street, if only for a few hours on Saturday morning.

John’s attention to Chiara’s right hand seemed to bring attention to her left, and one of the sharp-eyed guests spoke up. “Is that your wedding band, Chiara?”

She resisted the urge to curl up her hand and sit on it, instead, raising it, back out, to display her ring. Her eyes met John’s, and she smiled, proud to wear her ring out in the open.

Her smile faded when she heard, “It’s so plain,” from somewhere in the back of the room.

“It’s still real pretty,” another older woman said a little too insistently.

“Well, I ain’t never seen a wedding band that look like that,” another voice declared, not bothering to mask its disapproval.

“They’re young and just starting out,” someone else said. “They can put some diamonds in it later, when they’re in a better position.”

“How much did the ring cost?” Ciel asked pleasantly from her position near the fireplace, as if she and Chiara were alone in the room.

John handled that one. “I don’t see why the cost of the ring should matter.”

“It does to these people,” Chiara hissed softly through a petrified smile.

“How much was it?” Ciel persisted. “You can tell us. You’re among friends.”

A hearty chorus of agreement met Ciel’s words, and John suddenly felt trapped. Thankful that his mother wasn’t there, he gave his rapt audience the purchase price of the ring, including the shipping expenses from Japan for good measure.

Every eye in the room seemed to bulge from its home for a second, but every tongue remained silent.

“It’s made of three layers of metal,” John went on to break the silence. “Platinum, titanium and white gold. It’s an original piece I commissioned from one of Japan’s most respected metalsmiths. Chiara likes Japanese art, and I thought this ring would be a unique way to represent my love for her.”

John realized what Chiara and Ciel already knew, that his heartfelt explanation was wasted on most of the shower guests when one of the woman said, “Ooh, Lordy! All that money on a wedding band!”

“It may not have the sparkle and shine, but Chiara definitely got herself a piece of the rock!” laughed someone else.

“I think we should move on to opening the gifts,” Abby announced. “If we don’t get started now, we’ll be here all night.”

Cady, Kyla, Ciel and Clara took the role of attendants to the mother-to-be. Cady sat at on the arm of the loveseat with pad and paper, recording what gift came from whom for the thank you notes to come later so that Chiara and John had only unwrapping to worry about.

With the orderly precision of the National Guard, Kyla, Ciel and Clara set unopened packages before Chiara and John, discarded the used wrappings, and then stacked the gifts in another corner of the living room.

A set of three crocheted baby blankets in white, yellow and green inspired a loud round of oohs and aahs. “They’re so soft,” Chiara remarked, rubbing one of them against her cheek. “Are they handmade?”

“Yes,” the gift-giver, another one of Abby’s teacher friends, said, “but not by my hands!”

A sterling silver Tiffany & Co. bunny bank from Ciel and Lee left onlookers capable only of subdued whispers. “When the baby’s born we can have his or her initials engraved on it,” Ciel said.

“It’s so heavy.” Chiara had to use both hands to hold the tiny bank.

“Lee filled it with Sacajawea dollars,” Ciel explained with a wink.

“Why those?” John asked.

“When Clarence lost his first tooth, the only money I happened to have in my wallet smaller than a five dollar bill was some loose change and a Sacajawea dollar I’d gotten for change at stamp vending machine,” Ciel began. “I put the Sacajawea dollar under his pillow with a note from the tooth fairy reminding him to take care of the teeth he had left. The next morning he woke up, all excited. He thought that the image of Sacajawea on the coin was the tooth fairy, that she’d given him her own money.”

“Like Queen Elizabeth,” Kyla laughed.

“We leave Sacajawea dollars for our kids every time they lose a tooth,” Ciel said. “I wanted to pass that tradition on to you and your children.”

John tested the weight of the gleaming bunny. “We’ll have to have ten kids to use up all this tooth fairy money.”

“Okay,” Chiara whispered as she kissed his cheek.

“Our gift sort of goes with Ciel’s,” Kyla said, setting a distinctive pale seafoam box tied with white ribbon in Chiara’s hands.

Chiara opened it and withdrew a pair of sterling silver Tiffany photo frames embossed with bunnies sniffing at daisies. “These can be engraved, too,” Kyla said. “Once the baby has a name.”

Cady’s gift was next, and Chiara thought it perfectly represented her big sister’s tendencies toward practicality and excess. Cady hadn’t wrapped the stylish Briggs & Riley diaper bag which looked more like a traditional backpack than baby gear. She’d stuffed the bag to the point of overflowing, giving everything inside a cursory wrapping in pastel tissue paper. Chiara pulled out short-sleeved kimono tops, leggings, onesies, bodysuits, soft-knit hats, socks, tiny mitts, bibs, adorable bear-, pig-, cow- and penguin-shaped cloth rattles, a fleece receiving blanket, cloth diapers for burping and wiping up throw-up, baby wipes, infant gas drops, Balmex, infant nail clippers, Calendula baby wash, wash cloths and hooded towels and lavender massage oil.

“There’s a case of diapers and baby wipes, too, but they wouldn’t fit in the bag,” Cady said.

“There’s nothing left for us to buy,” Chiara said to John with a soft chuckle.

The whole room erupted in laughter.

“That’s what you think!” someone called.

“I know these things won’t last forever, but when the baby first gets here…we’re all set, and then some.” Chiara unsuccessfully fought to hold back tears. “Seeing all this, and all of you here, it really shows me how much a baby needs, both in everyday equipment and attention and love.” She picked up the brightly colored patchwork stuffed giraffe someone had given her and gave it an offhand hug. “This baby will come into the world receiving so much, and I’m so grateful to all of you. Thank you.”

“There’s still tons more to go, Chi,” Cady said.

“You haven’t opened our gift yet.” The low, cold voice was accompanied by a flat, slim box that whizzed through the air and landed on the floral rug at Chiara’s feet.

“Mother,” John said, working out the only word that came into his mind at seeing Almadine standing in the archway. She still wore her black coat and hat. John moved to greet her and his father and brother, who stood behind her.

“Almadine, it’s so good you could come,” Abby said graciously, holding out her arms.

Almadine, scowling, took off her coat and thrust it at Abby. “My husband and sons insisted,” she said, using jerky, angry motions to straighten the tight-fitting jacket of her black suit. “Although I don’t see why we were invited here for your daughter’s baby shower. Your Cady pushes ’em out faster than I can count, and what’s more—”

Almadine’s black eyes darted around the living room. They landed on Chiara, the gifts at her feet, and then the women crowded into the living room.

“Mother,” John started, all too familiar with the bright shine of panicked rage rising in Almadine’s eyes. “We should have told you that this shower isn’t for Cady, but I was afraid that you wouldn’t come.”

Almadine’s mouth worked furiously, but her tight lips produced no words. Her hands fisted, her shoulders swallowed her neck, and her whole body seemed to shake.

“Lord, here it go,” muttered a wary voice from the living room.

And then it did.

Almadine’s stiff arm lifted to aim a deadly pointed finger at Chiara as one word exploded from her. “Jezebel!”

Abby threw Almadine’s coat to the floor and stepped over it to confront the skinnier, wrathful woman. “Don’t you come into my house and start calling my baby girl names!” Abby breathed heavily, her shoulders dramatically rising and falling.

Almadine stepped past Abby and gave John a push to remove him from her path. “Seductress!” she hissed, moving ever nearer to Chiara, who stood to face her. “It took you twenty years, but you did it. You turned my boy from the Lord and you corrupted his flesh and led him into sin!”

“Mother, stop it!” John shouted, taking her by the arm.

“Almadine, that’s enough,” Bartholomew sighed heavily. “We knew you were gonna act out, that’s why we didn’t want to tell you why we were coming.”

Almadine’s eyes rolled wildly around to pin Bartholomew in his tracks. “You knew this hussy was pregnant?”

Abby pushed up the sleeves of her prim white blouse. “I am gonna whip that woman’s ass once and for—”

“John told us a few days ago,” Bartholomew admitted, placing his big bulk between Abby and his wife. “And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call my daughter-in-law a hussy.”

“Daugh…wha…” Almadine stared at John. Then she stared at Chiara. “You married my boy?”

“He’s not a boy,” Chiara said as gently as she could. “And I’m not a Jezebel or a hussy. I’m the mother of your grandchild.”

Almadine’s facial muscles seemed to wilt. Despair and confusion took turns canceling out her wrath, and she suddenly seemed to be fully aware of all the eyes fixed on her. She turned and started back into the foyer. Bartholomew, George, Abby, John and dozens of gifts blocked her path to the front door, so she went the other way and fled through the dining room and into the kitchen.

Abby started after her, but John caught her shoulder. “Maybe I should talk to her,” he said. The last thing he wanted was a physical altercation between his mother and Abby in front of so many people.

“Let me go,” Chiara volunteered, to her own amazement as much as anyone else’s.

“You don’t want to do that,” George warned through an apprehensive smile. “When she gets like this…well, I’ve never seen her as angry as this. I don’t know what she’ll do.”

“Look,” Chiara started, rapidly becoming thoroughly annoyed. “She’s going to have to deal with me sooner or later, and it might as well be now.”

Chiara took deep breaths to steady her nerves as she made her way to the kitchen. She opened the swinging door cautiously, half expecting one of the new Wusthof chef’s knives Abby had received for Christmas to come flying at her. To her surprise and relief, Almadine was standing near the back door, her right elbow cupped in her left hand, her right hand clutching a wad of paper toweling to her eyes.

Chiara moved soundlessly to the sink. She grabbed a few tissues from the box beside the dish drying rack and brought them to Almadine. “Those paper towels are scratchy,” she said.

Without looking at Chiara or thanking her, Almadine snatched the tissues from her hand. She turned her back to Chiara and blew her nose. Chiara couldn’t remember the last time she’d been under the same roof with Almadine, never mind the same room. Even when Almadine had visited John in Chicago, Chiara had kept her distance from John’s apartment until Almadine and all traces of her had vacated the premises.

This close to her for the first time in years, Chiara saw that time had wrought its own punishment on Almadine. Deep lines creased the ebony skin of her face, and her thin hands looked more like talons. Her hair, a flat, dimensionless shade of black, was obviously dyed. For the first time Chiara could recall, she saw something other than meanness, hatred, anger and envy in Almadine’s face.

Almadine looked old, which softened Chiara’s heart.

But only a little.

“Does it even matter to you that I love him?” she asked.

Almadine didn’t turn, made no effort to respond. She only hunched her shoulders tighter, practically folding in on herself.

Chiara walked around Almadine, forcing a confrontation. “Does it matter to you that he loves me?”

“No!” Almadine snapped. “John was a good boy before he fell in with you. He was my boy!”

“He’s still yours,” Chiara said, surprising herself with her ability to remain calm in the face of the spitting harpy before her. “He’ll always be yours. In spite of everything.”

“Is everything all right in here?” Abby asked, entering the kitchen from the hallway with John close on her heels.

“Everything’s fine, Mama,” Chiara said impatiently. “Mrs. Mahoney and I were just trying to talk.”

“Talk?” Almadine spat. “I don’t have one damn thing to say to you, not now, not ever!”

“You’re going to have to let go of all this hate and anger some time, Mother,” John said. “You may as well try to start now.”

“Don’t think I’m going to forgive you for this ambush,” Almadine threatened, jabbing a finger toward John. “You and your father and your brother are all in this together. I hope you’re all having a fine time making a fool out of me, because I promise you, it won’t ever happen again!”

“No one’s trying to make a fool out of you,” John said wearily. “I wanted you to come here and be a part of my happiness.”

A high-pitched, scratchy laugh crawled out of Almadine’s throat. “You got a baby in that little Jezebel, ran off and married her, and you expect me to sit around and be happy about it? Is this how I raised you? To be a fornicator, and a sinner, and—”

“Mrs. Mahoney,” Chiara tried to cut in.

Almadine’s arms went stiff at her sides and she seemed to swell with rage. “You led my boy away from the church!” she blasted at Chiara.

“You drove me from the church!” John fired right back, his voice shaking the rafters of Abby’s house. For the first time Chiara saw the resemblance between mother and son. Pain and anger shaped John’s face into a near mirror image of his mother’s as he untethered everything he’d ever wanted to say to her. “Every time I did something you didn’t approve of, you’d start muttering ‘spare the rod, spoil the child,’ like it was some kind of magic solution to your complete lack of parenting skills. You blistered me with that damned rod for five straight years!”

Almadine’s narrow chest swelled as she drew a long, deep breath.
“ ‘He that spareth his rod hateth his son!’ ”

“ ‘But he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes,’ ” John countered furiously. “I know Proverbs, too, Mother. Just because I didn’t sit in church having the Bible fed to me doesn’t mean that I haven’t read it in an attempt to understand you. To find a justification for you.”

“The justification comes from Solomon,” Almadine said through gritted teeth.

“Solomon?” John laughed bitterly. “The same Solomon who was such a shitty father that his own son Rehoboam grew up to be a tyrant who barely escaped being stoned to death for his cruelty? Nowhere else in the Bible is there a call for corporal punishment. Jesus taught mercy, forgiveness, humility…Jesus saw children as being close to God. In the book of Kings, it says that Solomon displeased God. In Matthew, God says, ‘This is my son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.’ God never says listen to Solomon.” John, although not calmed, lowered his voice. “When my child is born, I will not spoil him with anything other than understanding, encouragement, devotion and love. I will never raise a rod to him.”

“How dare you try to shape the good book into a defense for your sin.”

“How dare you wield it like a weapon, not against evil or sin but against anything that threatened to take me or George away from you,” John argued.

“You will burn for turning your back on your religion, John.”

“I haven’t abandoned religion, Mother,” John said somberly. “I’ve found a new one, a better one, right here in this house.”

“At least I still have one son who loves and respects me,” Almadine said, her voice painfully shrill. “One I can be proud of.”

“George is not angel, Mother,” John said. “Both your sons are just men.”

“Fine, fine men,” Abby put in, “of whom you should be proud, Alma.”

Almadine whirled on a new target. “I don’t need you to tell me about my boys! What do you know about raising young black men? Black boys have a much harder path in this life than anybody else!”

“Only when they don’t have good parents behind them,” Abby said. “I never agreed with your methods of discipline, but I know you did the best you could by John and George. And they turned out wonderfully.”

“ ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child!’ ” Almadine stated triumphantly.

“The Bible doesn’t say to whip your child until he can barely walk just for playing in the park,” Abby said softly. “Or ’til you draw blood.”

Almadine finally broke, her shoulders bouncing from the force of her sudden tears. “He should have kept his little butt in church like he was supposed to instead of running wild with your little seductress.”

Abby chuckled sadly. “If kindness and friendship are what seduced your son, then my Chiara really was a seductress. And so am I, because I did everything I could to let John know that he was welcome in my home any time. That he was just as much a part of my family as if he’d been born to it. I never loved your son more than when he came back to St. Louis for my mother-in-law’s funeral.” Abby looked upon John with the maternal tenderness he’d never seen on his own mother’s face. “That’s the kind of man you raised, Alma, despite your dependence on the rod. You couldn’t beat out the very thing you tried to—John’s love for the folks who loved him.”

Almadine started for the swinging door. “I don’t have to stay here for this. I won’t be persecuted, not by the likes of you, Abigail Winters.” She pushed the door, but it wouldn’t give. She found out why when Bartholomew and George swung the door in to gain entry to the kitchen. “Take me home, Bart,” Almadine demanded. “I won’t spend another minute in this house. George, get your coat and let’s go.”

“Mother, don’t,” John said, following after her. “I don’t want you to go.”

Almadine narrowed her cold black eyes at him. “You like it here so much, you can stay. I want you and all of your things out of my house
today
. And don’t bother calling me or coming by until you’re ready to apologize for what you did to me here today.”

“You’re being ridiculous, now,” John said.

“Moms, come on, that’s not right,” George said.

“I want him out!” Almadine shrieked, her mouth in a jagged line that made her look like a badly carved jack o’ lantern. “He’s got no respect for me and I want him out of my house!”

Bartholomew cleared his throat, his huge belly shuddering from the effort. “Actually, Alma, it’s my house,” he said. “And you are not kicking my son out of it.”

Almadine’s eyes and mouth fell open, and she spent a good few seconds frozen in that position before Bartholomew spoke again and spurred her into motion. “I’ve spent the past twenty years hearing about what a good cook Abby Winters is, and waiting for an invitation to this house to see for myself. I’m not about to leave now before I get a crack at that buffet. If you want to go home, get your coat and go. And if you feel like throwing another tantrum, think on Ephesians 5:22: ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.’ ”

Almadine’s chin quivered.

“John’s not the only one who tried to learn your language, Alma,” Bartholomew said. “Now what’s it gonna be?”

“I…” Almadine smoothed her hands along the sides of her skirt as though unsure what to do with them. “I’m…I think I’ll step into the lavatory and freshen up,” she said at last. “And then I’ll start a plate for you, Bart.”

With all the dignity she could muster, which was considerable, Almadine allowed Abby to lead her to the first floor bathroom.

* * *

Chiara sat hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder with John on the steps of Abby’s back porch. She held his right hand in both of hers, every so often brushing her lips across his knuckles. They had finished opening gifts and the guests had broken up into smaller groups for conversation and food. John and Chiara had taken that opportunity to sneak away to the solitude of the darkened back yard.

When they were kids, she and John had sat silently in the shade of the big sweet gum tree in the farthest corner of the schoolyard. So they sat now, in silent contemplation of the elemental shift that had just occurred in John’s relationship with his mother.

Chiara broke the silence by asking the one question she’d never asked John before. “Did you cry when she hit you?”

He shook his head.

“Mama tried to spank me once,” she said, “that time I used her crystal punch bowl to mix up some mud and eggs in the kitchen. She was going to use her bare hand, but as soon as I started crying, she started crying, too. She couldn’t hit me. The whole time you were yelling at your mother in there—”

“I wasn’t yelling,” he said.

“Yes, you were. And the whole time you were doing it, I kept thinking about that one time in the sixth grade, when you showed me your back. There were at least a dozen thick, red, swollen welts criss-crossing your back.” Chiara swallowed back the hard lump that had risen to block her throat.

John hung his right arm over her lap and hugged her knees, drawing her closer to him. He remembered that day, and how the sight of his back had sent Chiara into hysterical tears as she’d begged him not to go to the park ever again.

“Why didn’t you cry, John?” Chiara asked. “Maybe she would have stopped if she’d really known how much she was hurting you.”

“The first time I cried would have been the last time I’d ever have seen you in the park,” he said. “My mother would have gotten what she wanted. She never talked about her childhood much, but from what I’ve seen of her relationship with my grandfather, he kept her on a very short leash. She couldn’t wear pants or drink anything stronger than soda. She had to go to prayer meetings every day after school from the time she could walk to when she graduated high school. She wanted to go to college, but her parents thought she would end up ‘corrupted,’ and they made her get married. They practically handpicked my father for her.”

John bowed his head, his hand leisurely stroking Chiara’s right calf through her pants. “I can see why my mother has hated your family all these years.”