“I’m thankful that everyone is here together as a family to talk to one another,” Tati nally mustered. “Mm-hmm. Amen,” Mimi moaned. She opened her eyes and looked around the table. “I’m thankful to see all my children are doin’ all right. Bryan and Lorraine, Terry and Chloe, Nadia, y’all doin’ all right. And y’all kids are doin’ all right. We got us a college girl with four more comin’ behind her. Amen.” “Amen,” Uncle Bryan parroted. “I wish Eugene could’ve seen it,” Mimi continued. “He’d’ve been peacock proud at how good y’all doin’. Thank you, Jesus.” “Amen.” The nal agreement was the loudest. Everyone pulled their chairs and made their plates. Tati pushed the holiday staples around and around until they became soggy from sitting in a pool of their own juices. “Dang, Tati, you been away at school so long with that dorm food you forgot what to do,” Terry joked beside her. Tati laughed as he wiped stains from his charcoal slacks with the orange linen napkins Mimi had folded like candlesticks. Bryan asked, “How’s school goin’? What you studyin’ in addition to runnin’ track?” “Tati’s an English major,” Nadia answered. Tati swore she saw Nadia’s chest and chin lift two inches from her body, pride obvious, as if accomplishments were transferable. Then again, if burdens could be passed down, surely blessings could move up. “Whatchu gon’ do with an English degree?” Bryan asked. “Write. Teach. Law school. I’m still gurin’ it out.” “That’s all right, Tati,” Terry said. “You gure it out as long as you need to, because you goin’ to the Olympics rst. Ain’t that right?” He held his hand up and she slapped him ve. “You that fast?” Mimi asked, her forkful of food poised in the air. “I do all right.” Mimi shoveled food in her mouth and the conversation lulled. There was no music on in the background. Mimi forbade devilment on a day the Lord had made. Which was every day, especially man-made holidays. Without the ller,
the quiet of the dining room overwhelmed. The only sound was the steady clinking of polished silver against china, which begged for interruption. The raucous kind. “Anybody else got news to share?” Mimi asked. “It ain’t like we get together this often with y’all being so busy. With everybody here—” “Not everybody,” Tati mumbled. “Tati, what you say?” Voice stronger, she answered, “Not everybody in the family is here... Not for me, at least.” Nadia dropped her fork on her plate. Mimi set hers down on the napkin. Tati felt the eyes of her aunts and uncles shine toward her as they waited to understand what she meant. Mimi said, “Papa Eugene been on the other side a long time now. Everybody else that’s m e a n t to be here is here.” Mimi’s eyes implored her to agree and drop whatever burning bush singed her tongue. Nadia, on the other hand, cut her cold. Her glare was a dare for Tati to disrespect her space and violate her boundaries. Tati continued, “I’m not talkin’ about Papa Eugene.” “Then who you talkin’ ’bout?” Mimi asked. “Roman.” “Really, Tati,” Nadia sco ed. She balled up the napkin in her lap and threw it onto her plate of half-eaten food. “You want to do this now?” “When else I’ma do it? You never wanna talk about him. You never wanna tell me nothin’. I’m tired of not knowin’ when everybody sittin’ here got all the answers.” “Baby, your uncles were kids themselves,” Mimi said. “Thanks, Mama.” Nadia rolled her eyes. “Tati, the reason he ain’t here is because he didn’t want to be.” “Does he even know about me?” “I told him I was pregnant.” “Did you know he’s been living in Indianapolis all this time?” “Who told you that?” “Miss Grant and Mr. Cortez.”
“That’s new information to me. When I asked Toya and Lou about Roman a few months before you were born, t h o s e t w o refused to tell me. They protected him. I protected you.” “Did you ever try to ask about him again?” Tati asked softly. “For me?” “Toya tried to tell me some things once. But I didn’t wanna know. Didn’t wanna remember. Everything ain’t meant to be remembered, right, Mama?” Nadia swung her head and glared at Gladys. “I always told you to do better by Tati than I did by you.” “It don’t matter now, Mimi,” Tati said. “I know enough.” “You don’t know what you think you know,” Nadia said. “I know you didn’t want me!” “Tati, it’s not that simple.” “Then explain it to me,” she demanded, pulling the note from her purse. “Where’d you get that from?” Nadia asked, her voice steely and calm despite the rage turning her cheeks golden red. “It was stickin’ out of one of the shoeboxes in your room when you sent me to get the rollers for Mrs. Loretha.” “You had no right to go through my things.” “Well, when else was she gon’ learn?” Mimi instigated. “She supposed to learn the same lesson I learned from you,” Nadia sneered. “Stop asking questions you ain’t never gon’ get the answers to.” “Whatchu talkin’ about?” “You dote on Bryan and Terry like they’re your pets. Like they can do no wrong. You so proud of them, and for me...” Nadia stuttered. “... for me... you just can’t stand me.” “Is that what you think?” “You ain’t never showed me nothin’ di erent.” Mimi grabbed her napkin, cleaned her ngers, and threw it onto her own half-eaten plate. With both sts on the table she hunched over until her shoulders met her ears and then dropped them down again. A heavy sigh es caped her lips. Tati stared at Mimi’s face and swore she saw her age ten years in ten seconds, like time-lapse photography. Her body seemed heavier, as if she were carrying weights.
“You don’t know what you think you know,” Mimi warned. “Then tell me,” Nadia pleaded. “Tell me why you ain’t never been able to stand my ass all these years? Why you were always so hard on me when I got my life together without your help or her damn daddy?” “If I tell you, are you gon’ tell Tati what she wanna know?” Nadia didn’t answer. She refused to make any promises she knew her obstinance would force her to break. “Mm-hmm.” Mimi rocked her body from side to side with her eyes closed. “You think I came running up here behind your daddy and got pregnant right away, don’t you?” “I thought you were pregnant before you got here,” Nadia said. “I was. But not with you.” “You never told me that.” “Wasn’t for you to know.” The skin of Mimi’s face sagged as she swallowed a lump of spit. “So, what happened?” “What happens to light-skinned women in the South assumed to be uppity because you walk with your head high down a dirt road on Sunday morning to get the word. What happens when white men in a pickup truck drive past you high o shine and drunk out of their minds, huh? What happens?” No one answered. Dinner was over. Bryan suggested Lorraine and Chloe take the whiny, antsy children away from the table. “They don’t need to be here for this,” he said. Mimi waited for them to clear before she continued. Alone with her children and Tati, she told them she’d had no choice but to follow Eugene. “Place like Land’s End, wasn’t gon’ be long before everybody knew. Small-town folk like to gossip.” “Mama, you don’t have to do this,” Bryan said. “Yes, she does.” Nadia’s voice was cold and caustic. She asked, “So you trapped my daddy?” “I did no such a thing. He a s k e d me to make a life with him. I did.” “So what happened when you got here?” Terry asked.
“I lost the baby I was carryin’. The South takes from you, and the North can’t save you.” “Did he know?” Nadia asked. “Did he know what happened in Alabama?” “News like that travels just like the train. Fast, far, loud, and in a hurry.” “But you didn’t have that baby, so why did you hate me so much?” Mimi looked long at Nadia. Her face, near the color of her own father’s, was racked with the same kind of pain that had consumed Sampson in the days after. It was the kind that ate from the inside like a tapeworm and left nothing but a hollowed frame subsumed by sickness. With as much love as she could muster, Mimi said, “I didn’t hate you.” She looked Nadia directly in the eye but couldn’t hold it. She couldn’t ke ep the gaze of glares that reminded her of all she’d left. The women she’d left. Mimi looked to the empty chair. The one set for her husband. She said, “Even though I loved Eugene, wanted to be a family for him, I lost the longing for myself.” “So you had me because Daddy wanted me?” “He was so much older than me, I didn’t want to d eprive him any longer.” “But you didn’t want me?” “Nadia, it’s not that simple.” “Same thing I told Tati.” “What happened to me and what you did to yourself is two di erent thangs.” Nadia rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. She refused to be set apart. Set aside like she’d done something wrong, “I tried with you as best I could—” “You ain’t have to try that hard with Bryan and Terry!” “Because I know what happens to girl children in our family. My mama, my grandmama, even my great-grandmama. We’re di erent, but we all carry her scar. I knew what could happen to you, and...” Mimi trailed o . She shook her head as if she’d meant to close her mouth before her mind took control, but it was too late. The sentence had begun. Nadia pressed. “And what?” “Mama, what are you talking about?” Bryan asked. “Whose scar?” Terry asked.
“And what?” Nadia r epeated. Mimi hesitated. Sighed. “And enough time had passed to give me a scab. To try again. I thought I’d get another girl to do over with. Never expected boys. Not in a million years. Not from my line. Nobody else had more than one child that lived. And never any boys. My grandmama and great-grandmama said we was cursed. When Bryan and Terry came along, they were such a blessing—” “Then what was I?” “Stop making this about you. You s’posed to be talkin’ to Tati.” “You want me to talk to Tati. I want you to talk to me.” “I just told you everything,” “No, you didn’t. And you know it.” “Nadia, we all got our own crosses to carry.” Mimi’s shoulders slumped and rounded. “You got yours, and I got mine.” “And what about me?” Tati interrupted. “Did you ever think that y’all’s crosses became mine?” “Roman is gone,” Nadia said. “He left before you were born. That should be enough for you to know what kind of man he is.” “It’s not. Just like you messing with him when he was married doesn’t say what kind of woman you are.” Tati stood from the table and grabbed the note that had landed between the half-eaten plates of food. The corner had gotten sucked into brown gravy. Tati wiped it o with a napkin, making sure not to rip or ruin the old loose leaf further. She placed it back in the magazine and then rolled them both safely into her purse. “I’ll nd him myself.” Tati marched out of the room, unmoved by Nadia’s constant questioning of “Where are you going?” and her demands for Tati to come back to the table. “Let her go,” Mimi said as Tati grabbed her coat, gloves, and scarf. “Just let her go. Some things she has to gure out on her own.”
A p r i l 1 9 5 3 It was a Sunday morning, when Gladys walked down the road kicking up swirls of red clay dust. It whirled around the backs of her bare legs, dirtying the slipped hem of her white cotton dress. Old white shoes, the soles nearly s eparated from the gums, dangled from the ngertips of one hand. The other was thrown across her brow, trying in earnest to hold on to her oppy hat that blocked her face from the sun. Hips swinging, loose hair ipping, high-yellow skin browning, Gladys marched toward the sounds calling to her soul. It was a clarion call most folk in Land’s End answered when they passed by the Dupree house. It sat in the middle of a fork in the road. To the left, on the other side of the fence post—land that used to belong to the Duprees—w as Ms. Teena’s, the tin-roofed juke joint where blues was blasted by singers belting their pain, lest they be consumed by their own piddly sadness. On a small stage elevated just a few inches over the packed-earth oor, folks sang, played, banjoed, drummed, and tambourined themselves out of their sorrows. The next morning, they made a right at the fork and headed to church to ask forgiveness for Saturday night’s sins and mercy for Monday morning’s troubles. All exc ept those from the Dupree household. They didn’t so much as swivel their heads, shimmy their shoulders, or even put a bounce in their st eps when Ms. Teena’s got to jumping. They never looked to the left. It was as if the world ended at their fence. They didn’t acknowledge what was next door, any more than they questioned the peculiarity of their place at the fork in the road. The Duprees lived for Sundays, when the song from St. Jos eph’s AME was more reliable than the old rooster that crowed whenever it felt like it. The voices of the choir were always louder than the pianist providing accompaniment. Gladys sang as she walked about how her mind stayed on Jesus.