She laughs softly. “It was pepper spray.”
“Ouch. Cayo and I looked for you in Amherst.”
“You did?”
“Um-hm.” My lips find her neck beneath a clump of sable curls. “To think that all that time you were in Chicago.”
“I didn’t have money to go very far. I hoped to start a new life in a big city and put the past behind me. But I quickly learned you can’t outrun what’s inside you. I thought of you and my family every day. Missing you all so much.”
“I missed you too,” I say, relieved that we can finally talk openly about what happened. “I started drinking heavily.”
“I’m sorry, Mick.”
“No, baby, that’s not on you. It’s how I chose to cope—how I chose to cop out. Just like my old man. Over the years, it got so bad, I wasn’t sure I would ever dig myself out of that dark hole. I held it together to get through classes and practice, but alone I would drink until I passed out. Then do it all over again, despite promising myself that I’d stop.”
“It’s an awful feeling for something to have that type of control over you,” she says, as if she knows what it’s like. “How did you dig yourself out?”
“At the worst of it, during my final year, I ended up in the hospital when I was home one weekend from NC State. Alcohol poisoning. Even though I was pretty much estranged from my old man by then, he tried to cover it up,” I say with all the hatred I still carry for him. “Not because he gave a damn about me, but because he didn’t want the news to leak out to the NBA that their star draft pick couldn’t control his liquor. It was Cayo who kicked my ass and got me into a detox program. I fell off the wagon many times before I finally got my head together. I haven’t had a drink now in more than ten years. But sometimes I crave it. When Cayo got sick, for example. And tonight.”
“Is that why you think you’re like your father?”
“I inherited my drinking and my temper from him.”
“You’re nothing like him!” she says with a spike of feistiness. “Aren’t you the one who told me when you showed up at my office that biology doesn’t mean shit?” I smile at the reminder. “You had a drinking problem. But you were strong enough to get help and get sober. And so what if you have a temper? You’re not violent or cruel with it. You’ve always reminded me of Papa T. Generous and strong. Protective. When you love, you love completely. Your father has none of those qualities.”
I give her a squeeze. “Thank you. Being compared to Cayo is the highest compliment.”
“You’re a good man, Mick. You’ll make an amazing father someday, just as he did.”
“And you’ll be an incredible mother.”
Her body tenses. “Children aren’t in the cards for me.”
“You’re not your mother either, Dee. She couldn’t handle parenthood, but that has no bearing on the kind of mother you’ll be.”
“My mom wasn’t always bad,” Dee says. “She had serious problems. Court-ordered counseling never did her much good. And she hated taking medication. She said it made her feel lifeless. But without it, she had huge mood swings.”
This is the first time Dee has told me this much. Holding her close, I encourage her to open up: “The unpredictability must have been tough on you.”
“It was better than being sent away. When my mom was in a high mood, she was fun and happy.” I can hear the smile in Dee’s voice. “She’d catch fireflies with me in the woods. She’d take me to the movies. I got my love for black-and-white films from her. When I was older, we’d have girls’ nights and paint our fingers and toes. She’d choose the brightest colors she could find. She was full of hugs and laughter. I like to think that was the real her. The mom who wanted me.
“But when she was down, she was a different person.” Dee’s tone shifts to sadness. “She couldn’t stand any noise. She just wanted to sleep. I tried to keep quiet and not give her any reason to send me away. But it was inevitable. She always did.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, baby.” I now understand why Dee didn’t tell me about her pregnancy right away. Not only to protect me. She learned at an early age to keep quiet and not rock the boat. To rely on herself because she couldn’t count on anyone else.
Flashing back on what Mama T let slip, I ask Dee a delicate question: “How did your mother die?”
“She was sick, but not in the way I led you to believe. It happened in one of her bleak moods.”
I have a pretty good idea what’s coming and I hug her close.
“I got home after school one day, hoping to find the happy-go-lucky mother I’d left that morning. But Mom didn’t come out to greet me. I knew she must be in her room, sleeping. I stayed quiet, tiptoeing through the house. I didn’t want to do anything that would trigger her calling Child Protective Services. But I thought if I brought her something to eat, maybe she’d feel better. I made her macaroni and cheese from a box, extra cheesy, the way she liked it.
“Her room was so dark I couldn’t see much, but I didn’t want to turn on the light and wake her up suddenly. When I reached the bed, I noticed the blanket was pulled up to her neck and her eyes were closed. I gently shook her shoulder at first. But she just kept sleeping. I saw the empty bottle of pills on her side table. I guess I knew, but I just kept shaking her harder and harder. At some point, I must have called 911. I don’t remember doing it. But I woke up in the hospital with an oxygen mask on my face. I had passed out from an anxiety attack.”
“Oh baby.” I shift her around, kissing her hair and her temple, and bringing her trembling fingers to my lips.
“My social worker was the one who told me my mother had taken an overdose. I didn’t cry then. I didn’t talk about it. What was the point? Resources were dismal in our county, so I was sent over to the Springvale General Hospital. That’s where I met Mama T. She was the nurse on duty and the one who held me when it finally hit me that I’d never see my mom again. There’d be no more girls’ nights. No more catching fireflies. No more anything. I had no family left and I had no home.
