After giving Mama the evil eye, he shoves both sleeves up his arms. “I never said you did, Eleanor. I’m talking aboutthem.” He points at Martin again. “Do you know anything about what kind of people they are?” He pauses, waiting for Mama to answer. She merely looks down and tips her head to the side. “How about the way they treat others?”
I can tell by the way she’s hanging her head that she feels terrible. Even still, she never answers him.
“And now Ellie is living with their daughter. Really, Wilda, are they the kind of people you want as her role models?” The sorrow in his eyes shakes me to the core. Of course I don’t want Ellie bearing any resemblance to them. I made a mistake—lots of mistakes. Somehow I have to convince him I regret all of it—the lie, the need to fit in, letting her use me. Somehow I have to make it up to him.
I start to respond, but he closes his eyes and drops his chin. “I am going inside to find my daughter, kiss her good-bye, then drive back to Memphis.” He glances at Mama.“Alone.”Then he turns back to me. “You two need to ride together. So you can lie about your means, and talk ad nauseam about Ellie’sutterly spectaculardorm room.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and strolls off. I watch him disappear inside the Alpha Delt House, leaving me alone in the street with Mama.
I grab her by the arm. And I meangrabher. “Why did you tell him, Mama? You knew how he would feel about it. I asked you not to.”
“I never meant to, Wilda, honey. It just slipped out.” She flinches and looks at my hand on her arm, so I let go.
“How? How did it slip?” My voice cracks because now I’m bawling.
“That elegant room was adisastah!” she says at the point of tears herself. “Clothes strewn about the floah. Makeup covering the vanities… cups everywheah.” She grips her temples and shakes her head. “Haynes picked up a full one and smelled bourbon right away. On the way to pour it out he tripped over something and it went all ovah that gorgeous couch, the wool rug, and that furry blanket. I couldn’t help myself, Wilda. All I could think about was the money I had spent and it just spilled out.”
“What spilled out?” I’m practically shouting at her.
“I told him we had to clean it up before Lilith Whitmoah sees it, and that I was sure she wouldn’t take kindly to Coca-Cola and bourbon stains all over their twenty-thousand-dollah dorm room.” At this point, Mama is weeping along with me.
I gasp. And feel my fingernails scraping the sides of my cheeks. Then I grip my stomach and release a loud groan. I’m about to vomit. I want to go over to Martin right now and throw up all over that damn couch. “Oh my God,” I say, rocking my head in between my hands. “What did he say when he heard that?”
“He asked me to repeat myself. I tried to covah it up. But I’ve never been a good liar, you know that, so I finally said, ‘Yes, Haynes, yes. It was very expensive, but look what Ellie got for that money.’ Then I told him he couldn’t put a price tag on Ellie’s good fohtune. Why, landing the Whitmoah girl as a roommate is a rare coup. And I told him so.”
I hold my face in my hands—unable to speak—tears covering my palms.
“We had to clean it up. That’s what took us so long. Haynes scrubbed that couch, and the rug, too, with such fervah, I’m surprised the fabric isn’t threadbah.” Mama reaches her arms out for me. “I told him I’d have the blanket cleaned, but he wouldn’t hear of it.”
Instead of folding myself into her arms I pace around her. “I need to go home. If I still have a home.”
I’m walking off when she pulls my arm. Tears have flooded her eyes. “Don’t you want to say good-bye to Ellie?”
I stop, look at her like she’s crazy as a loon. “And have her and all her new friends see us like this? Crying our eyes out?”
Pausing to look up at the starlit sky, I notice the full moon. Mama looks up, too, and then gives me a small shrug. She always said a full moon causes all kinds of madness. Oh, the paradox of it all—like mother, like daughter. I hook an arm through hers and the two of us start the long walk back to my car.
FORTY-EIGHT
MISS PEARL
I’ve got Fee’s dinner plate in one hand, a liter of Coke in the other, and Cali’s stuffed orca under my arm. “Aunt Fee,” I holler. “It’s me.”
I hear her stirring, but it’s taking her awhile to get to the door.
Her house is in the last low-income part of Oxford on the east side. It was once Mama’s. She had been renting it for years until William McKinney bought it for her after his mother passed. He gave twenty-two thousand dollars for it back in 2001. Standing out here, I can’t stop my mind from flashing back to the good times and the bad. Of Mama, Mrs. McKinney, and of William.
I hear the sound of the chain jangling loose, then Fee’s face peeks out. It’s drawn, but she manages a weak smile. “Come in here. ’Fore you catch your death.” Her voice is low and hard to hear.
“It’s not that cold,” I say.
“Cold to me.”
I walk past her and she locks the door behind me. As she’s sliding back to the couch, I notice she’s hardly lifting her feet. The backs of her slippers are worn and so is the pink bathrobe she’s probably been in all day. From the way her robe fits, I can tell she’s lost some weight. Why haven’t I noticed it before?
Grimacing, she lowers herself onto the couch. I set the food and the Co-Cola down on the end table. Then I hand her the orca.
“What’s this?” She takes it from me and plays with its fin.
“Sweet new pledge sent it to you. Cali Watkins is her name. From Blue Mountain.”
