“She talked back to Ramona, and when I told her to go to her room she locked the door and wouldn’t let me in. So I took the damn thing off the hinges until she apologizes.”
Nydia blinked once. She did not want to believe what she’d just heard and headed for the staircase. “I hope you’re kidding. How long has she been without a door?” she asked Lamar when he followed her up.
“No, I’m not kidding. I’ll put it back when she apologizes and not before.”
Nydia headed for Kendra’s bedroom and saw the door resting on its side against the wall. “What’s the hell is wrong with you, Lamar!” she shouted. “She’s a young woman and you’re disrespecting her right to privacy.”
“Damn privacy when she disrespects my home and my rules.”
She looked into the room to find Kendra sitting on the window seat, staring back at her. “Put the door back on, Lamar,” she said in a quiet voice.
“I will not,” he countered angrily.
Going on tiptoe, Nydia put her mouth close to his ear. “Put that fucking door back on or I’ll walk out of here and never come back.”
“No, Miss Nydia!” Kendra screamed. “You can’t leave me!”
Nydia heard the panic in the child’s voice. She had lost one mother and she suspected Kendra viewed her as a surrogate mother. “I’m not leaving, but your father is when he goes and gets the tools he needs to put up the door.” She walked into the room and took the girl’s hands. They were cold as ice. “Come, baby, let’s get into bed so we can talk.” She turned to glare at Lamar. “May we please have some privacy?” Waiting until he left, she pulled Kendra over to the bed. She removed her shoes and lay atop the quilt and patted the side of the mattress. “Get in and tell me what’s bothering you.”
Holding the child, Nydia listened intently as Kendra told her about the fight she’d had with her mother hours before she was killed and how she subsequently blamed herself for Valerie’s death. Kendra also admitted she resented her mother going away for days at a time when other kids always had their mothers every day.
“I told Daddy I hated you but I really don’t. I love you, Miss Nydia, but I’m so afraid of losing you.”
Nydia kissed the girl’s forehead. Kendra smelled wonderful. She’d given her a gift basket of scented body wash, lotion, and matching spray cologne to celebrate her becoming a woman. “I’m not going anywhere. You saw how old my grandmother is, and that means I’ll live at least until eighty or older. By that time I hope you’ll make me a grandmother or even a great-grandmother.”
Kendra giggled. “Why do the kids in your family call your mother Abuela and your grandmother Abuelita?”
“That’s to tell the difference between the two.”
A beat passed. “Are you really going to marry my father?”
“I want to marry your father, but that’s not going to happen if the three of us are fighting with one another.”
“I don’t want to fight with you, Miss Nydia.”
“This is not all about me, Kendra. Just because you’re upset with something or someone you can’t say things to people—adults in particular—that put you in a bad light. I used to talk back to my mother and spent almost my entire teenage years grounded. I believed I was asserting myself when in fact I was being rude and insolent, which I’m now ashamed of.
“I know you won’t agree with everything your father says, but you have to know he loves you and only wants the best for you. And when I marry him I will support whatever decision he makes for you, so don’t think you’ll be able to pit me against him. I only challenged him to put back the door because as a young woman you’re entitled to your privacy. Now I want you to apologize to him and Miss Ramona for your behavior, because I don’t want my daughter to develop a reputation for challenging authority.”
“I’m your daughter?”
Nydia smiled when she saw an expression of shock cross Kendra’s delicate features. “Of course you’re my daughter.”
Her eyes lowered. “Does this mean I can call you Mom?”
Nydia gathered her close. “Of course you can.”
“Now or when you marry Daddy?”
“You can start now, so I can get used to it. Now, I want you to go and apologize to your father and Miss Ramona. I’ll be here when you get back.” Nydia left the bed, sat on the window seat, and stared out the window overlooking the courtyard. Somehow she had averted a major crisis that could have resulted in her walking out on the man she loved beyond description.
“What did you say to her?”
She shifted and saw Lamar standing in the doorway with a drill in one hand. “It was just girl talk.”
He set the drill on the floor and closed the distance between them. “So, it’s going to be like that?”
Nydia’s eyes made love to his handsome face. “Yes. What goes on between me and my daughter stays between us.”
