Something She Can Feel (30 page)

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Authors: Grace Octavia

BOOK: Something She Can Feel
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“Daddy, that's not necessary,” I tried.
“This is not a house of sin and what I say goes,” my father said so harshly it came out in a whisper and I knew not to say another word. I just looked at Justin standing there alone to let him know I was feeling his hurt. “Go!”
“So, you don't want me here?” Justin said and now he was crying, too.
“If I get up from my seat, so help me Jesus, I will remove you from this house myself.” My father slowly backed up his seat, and I sat stunned, knowing this was more anger coming from him than any of us had known. His eyes were already red and I could see the veins bulging in his neck.
“Fine,” Justin said. “I'll go. But I'm still a member of this family and some day you will all have to face who I am. Do you think you're the first family to go through this? Well, you're not. And you won't be the last. None of this changes who I am. Don't let it change you.”
“Justin,” I called, getting up, when he turned to leave but my father banged his fist so hard on the table this time that I flinched.
“Don't you dare follow him,” he ordered me and at once, I realized I was in my father's house. “No one moves.”
Justin looked at me and I looked back sympathetically. I could hear our mother crying. I was too overwhelmed with the pain at both sides of the table to choose a side to fight for. I loved my brother and he was hurting. But I also loved my father and I knew, even in his anger, he was hurting, too.
Justin walked into the house. And no one moved.
“What are we going to do, Jethro?” my mother asked. “We can't just let the boy leave like that. He's too upset.”
“Let him go.” Jr shrugged. Then, smiling maniacally as if nothing had happened, he reached past May and picked up a corn cob and began to chew on it. “Anybody hungry?” he asked.
“Don't be a jerk, Jr,” I said, pushing my plate away from me.
“One less brother in this family for me to worry about,” he said. “Yeah... . That's two girls and one boy now. Right, Dad? Or is it more?”
“Don't say that,” I said, not understanding how Jr could be so cruel to everyone. “Daddy has nothing to do with this.”
“Hush, Jr,” my mother pleaded.
“Oh, that old man doesn't scare me anymore,” Jr managed between bites of his corn. “If he wasn't so busy running around out in the street with his other son, maybe this one wouldn't be so fucking soft. You know?” Jr looked at me with ice in his eyes.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Stop it, Jr,” my mother demanded. “That's enough.”
I looked at my father on the other end of the table and he was sitting back and staring at Jr.
“I don't know, Journey,” Jr went on and pointed his half-eaten cob at my father. “Ask your father about his other son. About how all these years, he's been lying to us.”
“What is he talking about, Daddy?”
“You shut your mouth,” my father said venomously.
“No, you shut your mouth,” Jr snapped, slamming down the cob. “I don't have time for this shit anymore. I'm tired of this family's crap.” He leaned in toward the middle of the table. “Old Jethro here has had his very own secret family right under our noses. Right at the church. Right in the pulpit.”
“Jr, stop it,” May tried now, but Jr only pulled away from her.
“It appears,” Jr went on, “that Jack Newsome isn't a Newsome at all. He's a Cash. The oldest of the Reverend Doctor Cash's sons. And the next in line to the throne.” He laughed.
“Oh, Jr,” my mother said. “Why couldn't you just shut up?”
“Jack Newsome? He's what?” I looked at my father again for a sign of dissension.
“He's
your
brother,” Jr said, and with the last word it sounded as if he'd finally felt some vindication in his exposure.
“No,” I said, but my father did not move or object.
“Daddy, say it's not real,” I implored him, bracing myself.
I watched a tear form in the corner of his eye.
“Can't even say anything to your family, can you?” Jr said. “After all these years of supporting Jack and his mother—taking them on vacations and making sure Jack got into your alma mater—I heard you even went to the parents' weekend with his mother—of doing the right thing by them and you can't do the right thing by your own family and just tell us the truth? From your own mouth?”
My father gnawed at his lip and got up from the table with a kind of sad resolve that let me know he'd never admit anything Jr was saying.
“That's right,” Jr spat to his back as he walked away. “Just leave us and go about your business of doing good in the community. Make sure you stop by Jack's!”
“Oh, no,” Nana Jessie said, getting up to follow my father.
“How could you treat your father like that?” my mother cried.
“No,” Jr said. “How could he treat
us
like that?”
I felt ill—like I was about to vomit what little food that was in my stomach onto the table. I couldn't take it anymore. And then I remembered that this wasn't even what I'd feared when I sat down at the table.
“Evil is as evil sees,” May uttered hard-heartedly.
“What?” Jr asked, and we all looked to her.
“You heard me,” she said. “You should know about treating people wrong.” She pulled the envelope from beneath the table and I felt my tonsils quiver as she flung it to the center.
“What's that?” my mother asked.
“Now who needs to tell?” May said to Jr. “Who needs to man up to his family now?” Her voice grew to a scream.
“You don't have to make me man up to a damn thing,” Jr announced boldly. “I know exactly what it is.”
“What?” my mother pressed.
“It's about my son.”
“Your son? What? What are you talking about?”
“I have a son, Mama. His name is Jethro III and he's going to be coming to live with me,” Jr said proudly.
“A son with who?” My mother looked at May.
“He's not your son, you jackass,” May said.
“What?” Jr asked.
“Look at the letter. That boy ain't no more your son than he's mine.”
“What?” I said, reaching for the envelope, which had fallen closer to me at the table. I pulled out the letter and opened the results.
“What does it say?” Jr asked.
“You're not the father.” I read the results and they plainly said that there was less than a five-percent chance that Jr could be the father of Kim's child.
“I'm not?” Jr's expression quickly shrank. I tossed the results to him. “It can't be true. He looks just like me. He's mine.”
“It is true, Jr,” May said. “You lay down with a whore and now you have whore problems.... Let that woman lay up in your father's house and paid her off all these years ... and for some child that's not even yours.”
“You let a woman live where?” my mother asked.
“It can't be true,” Jr repeated, looking over the letter again and again. “I was there when he was born.”
“Well, evidently, you weren't there when he was conceived,” May said. “And you know what else? I want a divorce.”
“May, don't say something you'll regret,” Jr said passively.
“All these years, I thought you were leading me and that I needed you for something. That I had to be here because nobody else would want me. But you know, after reading those results, I realized that all these years I've been letting a fool lead me around. And only a fool lets another fool lead.”
May threw her napkin on the table. She got up from her seat and nodded to me.
“I'm thinking about myself now,” she said. “And I'm not going to be a fool anymore.”
“May, don't leave,” my mother said, but this was only to May's back as she walked away from the table without looking back.
Jr just sat there with a vacant carelessness in his eyes.
“See what you did?” my mother cried to him as she got up from her seat, too. “You see?”
“I didn't do anything, Mama,” he said flatly. “I was just being my father's son.” He looked at her. “Maybe you should try looking at him for a change, because he made us how we are ... all of us.” He looked at me and through the corner of my eyes I saw my mother walk slowly from the table.
“You didn't have to do this,” I said to Jr. “Not like this.” I started crying and looked around the table to see that we were alone. Everything had changed. Justin had started it by saying he wasn't who we thought he was ... and now I wasn't sure who any of us were ... not really.
 
 
In the house, I found my mother sitting in her tea chair in the living room. It was where she always sat when she wanted to think and be alone, to plan, to pray.
“Your brother,” she said as I sat in the chair beside her, “he took his bag. I should've stopped him... . Should've said something. He can't drive like that.”
“He'll be fine, Mama,” I said, still parsing out what he'd told us. And it was strange because I wasn't really that surprised. Yes, I wondered what had led him to make such a big decision, but in a way, I was happy for him. He looked happy. He looked good. But it would be a long time before any of us truly accepted him. “Justin knows how to take care of himself.”
“He was always a good boy. Never asked for anything. And the one time he does, I let your father just throw him out.” She was holding a napkin in her hand, but she'd stopped crying. Instead of sadness, I saw anger in her eyes now.
“Was what Jr said about Daddy true?” I asked carefully. She didn't look at me. “Oh, God. How could he? How could he lie to us like that? All that stuff about what we can and can't do in this house ... in our lives ... and he was lying all along.”
“He wasn't lying.”
“What?”
“I knew. What do you think, I'm blind?” My mother looked at me quizzically. “I always knew about him and Iris Newsome. Always. And when Jack was born ... just months before I was due with Jr, I just knew.”
“Why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you leave him, Mama?”
“Leave?
You don't just leave
. Your father and I had plans,” she said with her voice demanding and grim. “I knew what we could be together. What we could build. And that he loved me. He always loved me more than he loved any of them. Just like Jr, your father's just the kind of man who needs an audience. If he doesn't have a crowd of people following him, he feels empty. One person isn't enough. That's just his way. I can't leave him for that.”
“But what about the divorce?”
“Divorce?”
“Yeah, when I saw you talking to Deacon Gresham when we had lunch,” I said. “He's a divorce attorney.. . . I thought maybe you were thinking of leaving Daddy.”
My mother looked off in a way that churned the bile in my stomach again.
“No, Mama,” I said. “I know that's not it. Don't tell me that's it. Not that ...”
“Timothy came to me when I had no one to go to.”
“No, Mama,” I cried. “But you can't. Not with everything you've said to me about marriage and love and accepting who I was and where I'm at ...”
“Marriage is hard, Journey,” she said. “It's very hard. And you have to work at it to stay. To keep it together. Nothing is perfect. You need to learn that.”
“So working at it means you just pretend nothing's wrong and act like your blind while everyone is just ... doing whatever?”
“It's not that simple ... not the way you make it sound.”
“I used to think that, too,” I said. “But ... now I think it should be.”
In that room, the last promise holding my family together withered like an old rose petal orphaned at the bottom of a vase. If this was who we were, then who was I? What was I? What life was I living? Whose life was I living?
“You told me everything would be okay,” I said and I wasn't sure if I was talking about her marriage or mine. “You sold this to me. You wanted all of this for me? Knowing what it was like?”
“So your life hasn't been good? I haven't protected you? Helped you make the right choices? You have a good husband. Don't throw it away because of what's happening in this house. Don't be a fool.”
“No, Mama,” I said, getting up. “My life hasn't been good.... It's not working ... and maybe if you and everyone else hadn't been protecting me all these years, I wouldn't feel like I've been just ... just ... sleepwalking around in my life. Mama, I'm thirty-three years old and I feel like I haven't ever left home. Like I'm stuck here. And now I see that all of you are. And I'm just like you ... just like you, and Daddy and Jr... . I'm stuck.”

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