The Phoenix of Birmingham V

The Phoenix of Birmingham V

         The scars had barely healed when he showed up.  She was not prepared and she would never be again.  In fact, she gave up on preparation.

         He came in on the arm of her mother.  Margaret had put her to work as a consumer eye for the geriatric product line.  It was amazing how the old woman seemed to come alive. She even wore the stuff.  Margaret thought she would be bored out of her skull and ask for something else, but the old woman thrived.  "Good," thought Margaret.  It was easier to pay her a salary than give her cold hard cash for nothing other than donating her genes.  She smiled, in spite of herself.  She realized her mother gave her more than that.  She just couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.

         When Margaret came back from her convalescence, she thought everything would go back to normal, whatever that was.  What she couldn't fathom was her rage and where it came from.  It could percolate at any moment and Margaret had no idea where it would direct itself.  It didn't take her too long to figure it was directed at her mother.  She had thought they were working on reconciling their relationship, but lo and behold, all she could visualize was planting the old woman out in the backyard in a grave with no headstone. The thought danced in front of her eyes like a dream.  It finally exploded one Saturday afternoon following a couple of alcohol-free mint juleps.  Such a shame, she couldn't even blame it on the booze.

"You abandoned me," fumed Margaret.

"Oh yeah, and love don't live here anymore.  Isn't that a goddamn song?  Please, Margaret, grow up"

"Grow up.  I am grown up, you old fucking bitch."

"Oh now we have it.  I haven't been called a fucking bitch in weeks."

"You left us there with that sick son-of-a-bitch, and he tried to kill me."

"As if I had a real choice, well, he didn't, did he?"

"No thanks to you."

"No thanks to me.  You dumb ungrateful nappy-headed Klan member," Aresta screamed.  "Do you know why I left?  Do you?  Every time I would turn around that motherfucker was climbing all over me trying to get inside.  You'd have to call the police to make him stop.  Do you know how many I lost, huh?  Six, I lost six goddamned babies because I couldn't stand him or myself anymore and I dried up inside.  I no longer could support life.  Do you have any idea what that was like?  You have no idea how many years I suffered.  You forget that sick fuck threw me down a well.  He tried to kill you?  He tried to kill me!  He thought he had and all along let you think I'd jumped.  If I had climbed my sorry ass back up there while he circled, he would have hit me in the head with a brick the next time, and I wanted to live.  God knows why, I'll never know, but I wanted to live.  I had no idea his sickness went any further than me.  I swear to God, I didn't know.  A mother can't knowingly let someone harm her children.  I would have killed him and killed myself, but swear to God, I didn't know.  I just couldn't bear any more death.  I couldn't do it.  I just couldn't.  Maybe I'm not strong."

"You're strong Momma, and I guess I'm strong too," Margaret smiled.  "I'm strong enough to survive simply putting one foot in front of the other.  I suppose I should be grateful.  But, I'll have to work on it.  I guess I just had no idea it could be so hard.  So when I blow up and call you a fucking bitch just grin and bear it.  I've called you worse."

"I bet you have, and at one time I might have let you.  I wasn't always this brilliant spear of wisdom and strength.  I was weak and not all that young when I met your father.  I ran from one desperate hellhole into the next.  I called what he did to me rape.  He called it privilege.  In reality, what I called it didn't matter.  At one time, I had to do as all women did and just let things pass.  But no more, sometimes we have to reach out choke it to death or let it die.  Some things do die and stay dead.  Besides, we'll all be in hell soon enough wrestling with our sins for all eternity."

"Imagine, screwed now and screwed later."

"Margaret, watch your mouth.  We may as well fake being ladies with all that genteel bullshit and flowery breath.  Who knows, one day we might begin to believe it."

         Since that blow up, there had been one or two other milder explosions, usually centered around why her mother never looked back to see what happened.  It usually ended with, why?  Why would she look back?  To see how well everybody did without her?  Why return and give him another chance?  Questions begat questions, but eventually there were few left.  All in all, Margaret was happy the old lady was around.  It was nice to see her, hear her, and nice to be seen.  Even her siblings seemed to relish in having a mother, if only as adults.  As their emotions softened so did her hands.  They almost looked normal and they almost seemed a family.

It was the old lady that convinced Margaret to give up trying to salvage all her father's fatherless children.  Margaret had tried, but in each instance, she had been made privy to a sick child beyond reprieve.  No amount of money or good will would be enough.  Her journey was mere frustration and pain.  She saw herself repeating her childhood pursuits of trying to save the damned.  Then she remembered, "Some things should stay dead. "

When her lawyers approached the mothers of these children, they only reported denial after denial of who the father was.  Each one had a man swearing his seed produced each miserable specimen of decayed youth or depraved heart.  She had to admit relief when she gave it up.  It was one of the first things she gave up.  Next, she gave up guilt over doing it.

So when this man walked in with her mother, Margaret couldn't figure out what to do with him.  He was much too young for geriatric hair products, and besides, he looked too good to need any.  Her mother introduced him as a friend of the family, but he was clearly no friend Margaret remembered, and she had an excellent memory for good-looking men.  If she could have growled and gotten away with it, she would have put on her best Eartha Kitt impersonation and shimmied along the floor.

She caught a twinkle in the old lady's eye as if reading her mind, and realized a set up when it smacked her across the face.

Right after she introduced him, her mother slid out like a fireman down a pole in search of a fire.  Margaret couldn't imagine where that image came from.

"Now how do you know my mother?"

"I'd heard you get right to the point.  She raised me."

"She did what?"

"I know you're not deaf and you can't fake stupid.  Your mother raised me.  She worked for my parents cleaning house, washing clothes, and cleaning my face."

Normally, Margaret would have tossed a man out for thinking he could call her stupid, but she realized that somewhere in what he said, there was a compliment, and it felt good.  He'd also said something nice about her mother and that affected Margaret on a deeper level; one she'd never experienced.

"Your mother also saved my life.  Soon after my mother died, my father started to drink and one night he set our house on fire.  I'd never managed to catch much of his attention, so I guess he forgot I was there.  If your mother hadn't happened by, I would have died.  You saw the burns on her hands?  I had to look at those hands all my life after that.  They're the most beautiful things I've ever seen... until now."  He looked closely at Margaret, almost through her.  She stepped behind her desk for cover.

Margaret had to revert to something familiar.  "I suppose you're here for a job.  Y'all always seem to want something.  I'll have the director of my human resources department interview you.  Did you bring a copy of your resume?"  Where in the hell did y'all come from?  Next, she'd be wrapping a rag around her head.

"If I didn't know your mother, I'd swear you were trying to blow me off.  But since I do know her, I think you're trying to dismiss me, thinking that will dissuade and deflate me.  I don't work that way.  I'm patient and I'm anything but deflated.  I'll be back later.  And believe me, you'll need to marshal your defenses a lot better than that to put me off.  Oh, and by the way, I don't need a job.  I have several.  There is another job I want though, but if you paid me for it, I'd be a whore.  Think about that and call me.  I know a resourceful woman like you knows how to get all the numbers you need."  He winked, turned, and walked out. 

Margaret stood there stunned.  If there'd been flies in her penthouse, she'd have swallowed them all.  She'd never been speechless before, and absolutely never so turned on.  She didn't even want a drink to turn it off, another novel sensation.

It took Margaret two weeks and several motherly slaps upside the head before she called him.  It felt good to volunteer for something unusual; something pleasurable.  Dinner with no business, but private business; wouldn't that be nice?  It felt even nicer to be selfish and beyond that, she wasn't telling.  She knew how to keep a secret.