More Than I Can Bear (8 page)

“A baby! Jesus Christ, Son of God! Oh, Mary, mother of God.” Mrs. Vanderdale placed her hand over her forehead and fell backward, knowing her husband would catch her fall before she could hit the floor.

And even though this was one of Mrs. Vanderdale's normal practices whenever she was faced with so-called devastating news, everyone still rushed to her aid. Miss Nettie fanned her while Stuart fetched her a glass of water. Norman, well, for the first time almost ever, this time Norman just stood there and watched everyone else make a fuss over his mother. She never even gave him the chance to tell her that the baby wasn't his before she went off into her antics. Perhaps if she had they could have avoided this huge production.

The longer Norman just stood there doing nothing, the more his mother felt she needed to do more of something, anything, to get a sympathetic reaction from her son. After all, he was the one responsible for this reaction of hers. How dare he within a week's time bring more shocking news to her doorstep?

Norman's father walked his wife over to the couch where he laid her down. She took sips of the water Stuart had brought her. All the while Norman kept telling himself he'd made the right decision by not bringing Paige with him to break the news of her pregnancy to his mother. He had a feeling she was going to put on a show worthy of a high-priced Vegas show ticket.

“Honey, please, pull yourself together,” Mr. Vanderdale pleaded with his wife.

“Oh, Norm,” Mrs. Vanderdale said to her husband, Norman Senior, “that son of yours is going to be the death of me yet. I swear to you!”

Norman Senior looked at his son and shook his head. “You know your mother,” he mouthed, suggesting she didn't mean the words that were coming out of her mouth. She was just being her dramatic, usual self.

Yes, Norman did know his mother. He knew her very well. She'd always been a drama queen. It had kept things quite interesting in the Vanderdale household when he was coming up. But there had never been drama or issues when it came to skin color, creed, or race. Sure, Norman's mother had come from the South and a long line of ancestors who'd done their share of slave trading, but that wasn't how his household had been run. Everyone was equal. It had always been that way. Norman had never seen any signs of his mother having a prejudice against Black people. So he was baffled at her behavior this past week. Had there been any indication his mother would play the role of Fred Sanford and fake having a heart attack every other day, he would have never knowingly subjected Paige to that type of behavior, or himself for that matter.

“Mother, where is all this coming from, seriously?” Norman said, sounding as unsympathetic as ever.

“Oh, don't play stupid with me, young man,” his mother replied. “You knew what this would do to me. This is just some kind of payback for all the years we wouldn't allow you to dance to the beat of your own drum.”

“Nonsense, and you should be ashamed to even insinuate that me marrying Paige, a black woman, is a punishment to you and Dad. Do you hear yourself? Do you know what you sound like, Mother?” Mrs. Vanderdale remained silent. “It sounds like something a racist would say.”

There, the elephant in the room had been addressed.

“What? Well I . . .” Mrs. Vanderdale placed her hand on her chest and began taking in heavy, deep breaths.

“Do you think we might need to call a doctor?” Stuart asked once he saw that it seemed as if Mrs. Vanderdale wasn't doing any better.

“The only doctor she needs is the one standing right over there,” Norman said sarcastically, pointing to his father, who was a psychiatrist by trade.

That comment seemed to jar his mother back to her healthy composure. She sat up straight and stiff on the couch, her feet slamming onto the floor and her eyes shooting a look of disbelief at Norman. “Well, I've never.”

“And I never thought you'd act this way either, otherwise I never would have even introduced you to my wife,” Norman said. “She and I, and our baby, would live happy and in peace without ever stepping foot into this madness. This whole sick act, it's all in your head. And since you married a head doctor, hopefully we can get you cured quick, fast, and in a hurry.”

“Son, I think you've crossed a line,” his father warned.

“No disrespect, Father, but I think she crossed the line a long time ago.” Norman gave his father an intense, serious look. “We just always excuse her behavior by saying ‘That's how she is,' or ‘You know your mother.' Well how much longer are we going to continue to give her a pass?”

“Son, we're not giving your mother a pass. You know she doesn't mean any harm. It's just . . .” Mr. Vanderdale allowed his words to trail off when he realized his only defense was about to be what it had always been over the years.

Norman exhaled. “Dad, you would truly be okay with someone who felt this way about another race? Like the family is being contaminated because I brought a black woman into the home?”

“How many times do I have to say it's not about a black woman being in the home?” Mrs. Vanderdale said. “Have you noticed that Nettie is a black woman and she's been in the house for years? And will you two stop speaking about me as if I'm not sitting right here?”

Norman ignored his mother's last request and continued talking with his father, who, he hoped, would be the voice of reason. “I can't imagine that you would be okay with that, Dad, not with where you come from. Not with you being who you are.”

Prior to joining the family business he had married into, Mr. Vanderdale had been referred to as the underground Dr. Phil of the Midwest. Mr. Vanderdale had been known as Dr. Vanderdale to most. He'd received his doctorate in psychiatry and had practiced mainly in the prison systems. He felt that if an effort was truly put forth, then the inmates could actually receive what they'd been placed in the prisons to receive: rehabilitation.

Initially Mr. Vanderdale had been a business major, but one evening after leaving a college bar and heading back to his dorm on campus, it had started to rain so he began a light jog back to his dorm. The next thing he knew, a cop car had come out of nowhere and pulled up onto the sidewalk, cutting him off. Within seconds he was face down on the pavement with a gun to his head. He was placed in the back of a police car and waited there for a few minutes in fear, wondering what in the world was going on.

Eventually another police vehicle pulled up. A young, dishelved-looking female, who Norman had seen around campus, was brought over to the car he was in. The officer who led her there pointed at him. The girl then nodded while going into hysterics. Shortly thereafter, Norman was driven downtown and booked on rape charges.

It was a long, drawn-out ordeal that took a couple of months to be cleared up. Mr. Vanderdale was released from jail when the girl later said that she wasn't sure if she'd fingered Mr. Vanderdale because he was the actual rapist, or if she'd just recognized him from around campus. Then there was some DNA testing that didn't match up with Mr. Vanderdale. But before his release, he'd been jailed for two months and in those two months he'd witnessed things he'd never even imagined animals doing. But then he realized why. The inmates were being treated like animals. You can only treat someone like a dog for so long before they start barking and biting like a dog.

Mr. Vanderdale, although two years into his business major and paying for college out of his own pocket, changed majors and vowed to do what many thought couldn't be done in the prison system: rehabilitation. He'd succeeded greatly, receiving all types of awards, accolades, and honors. He became sought after for counseling services in jails and prisons all over the country. He finally began to focus on the youth in the juvenile system, figuring if he could get them while they were young, he'd never have to meet up with them in the prison system.

He'd met his wife during this time in one of his travels to a Southern prison. She'd been the clerk at the theatre he'd decided to catch a movie at during some of his down time. They quickly fell in love and when Mr. Vanderdale moved back north, he had his new bride in tow, who he had found out upon marrying was the daughter of the owner of the theatre chain. Mrs. Vanderdale had kept her relationship to the owners of the chain a secret. Many men had tried to court her simply for her money. But Norman Senior had been different.

From day one his wife's family had pressured Mr. Vanderdale into joining the family business so that their children could continue the family legacy. It took five years of pressure and Mr. Vanderdale almost losing his life after being attacked with a knife during one of his counseling sessions for him to give in and join his wife's family business.

During his days of counseling, Mr. Vanderdale had met, stayed connected with, and continued to counsel pro bono some of the inmates. He did this mainly through letters and phone calls. This was the reason the Vanderdale family currently had and had always had an almost all-black staff. Most of them were rehabilitated convicts. It hadn't gone unnoticed by Mr. Vanderdale the African American ratio of inmates versus the other races. Even when he agreed to join in on the family business, it was under the strict and unwavering stipulation that he'd be allowed to hire some of his past rehabilitated clients to work for him.

“Son,” his father-in-law had spoken to him all those years ago, “you are the best at what you do. If you were a car repairman, and my car broke down and I sent it to you for repairs, if you had the reputation as a car mechanic as you do a mind mechanic, I'd trust driving that vehicle one hundred percent. Therefore, I'd trust anyone you chose to hire.”

Even when Mr. Vanderdale informed his wife that he wanted some of his past clients, who were mainly African American, to work for them in and around their home, her words mirrored those of her father. She didn't put up a fight.

“I believe in you, Norm,” she'd told him. “Anything you fixed isn't broken anymore. You've made a well-earned name for yourself in your field. Besides, I think it's about time that family of mine show some reparation for how they treated those people in the past. It might not be forty acres and a mule, but, my God, it's something.”

Mrs. Vanderdale had shared childhood stories and the history of her family with her husband and children over several evenings throughout Norman's years of coming up. Some were disturbing while others were intriguing. But his mother had always expressed remorse in how her ancestors had treated those outside of their race. But here now, Norman couldn't help but wonder if in all actuality the apple hadn't fallen too far from the family tree.

Norman threw his hands up. “Look, I'm sorry.” He apologized to both his parents. “I'm just really going to need Mother to explain to me what's going on in that head of hers.”

Mrs. Vanderdale swallowed and then looked toward Miss Nettie and Stuart, who'd been standing there taking everything in as if they'd been watching a game of Ping-Pong. “Nettie, Stuart, could you excuse my family and me please?”

“Yes, ma'am,” they said in unison before exiting the room. Once they'd exited the room, Mrs. Vanderdale spoke her piece.

“Son, first off, I'd like for you to forgive me for the way I've been acting.”

Norman nodded his forgiveness, but knew better than to take his mother's apologies at face value. There was always something more lying beneath the surface.

“I guess I should have just come out and said it. Or as you might better relate to now”—she used her fingers to make quotation marks—“I should have kept it real.”

“Mother,” Norman warned her not to go there.

“Okay, okay, I'm sorry,” she apologized again and then continued. “I don't have a problem with Black people. I just have a problem with my son marrying a black person; there I said it.”

Norman was silent at first. “I appreciate you for sharing how you feel. Thank you, Mother, for owning it. But now can you please explain why you feel that way? I mean, you don't mind them cooking for you, and cleaning for you, and—”

“Son,” his father interrupted when he saw that Norman was getting heated, “let your mother finish.”

Norman took a breath and then sat down in a chair while his mother explained herself.

“Son, I have a guilty pleasure I need to confess with you,” Mrs. Vanderdale said as she began to wring her hands.

“Yes, go ahead.”

She turned to her husband. “You too, Norm.” She then talked directly at Norman. “Nettie records all those wives this and wives that reality shows. Then every Saturday afternoon, when your father sometimes thinks I'm off having tea with the ladies, Nettie and I sit and watch them all back to back over some of her sweet tea with lemonade.” Mrs. Vanderdale then mumbled under her breath almost as if she was embarrassed, “With a bucket of popcorn and hot sauce.”

“Honey,” her husband said. “You've said a million times that is trash TV and you'd never let it into your ear gates and eye gates.”

“I know, I know,” she admitted. “It's just that that stuff is so addictive and entertaining. I mean watching those people act like ani . . .” Her words trailed off and she looked to her husband.

“Like animals,” he finished her sentence. It was obvious he was hurt by his wife's actions and comments and that it had struck a chord on that old guitar called the past.

“I'm sorry, Norm, I know how you dedicated your life to make sure, whether a human was caged up behind bars or not, that they were never looked at as animals.” Her eyes watered. “Please forgive me.”

“Honey,” Mr. Vanderdale started, “you told us inhumane stories that were passed down to you of how your ancestors used to treat the male slaves like animals, matching them up against one another, putting them in fights, betting on them and whatnot while everyone sat around and watched for entertainment. You've basically just said you're getting a kick out of the modern-day version of it.”