We all have mess and secrets just some folk are better at hiding it. I ain't never met a perfect person in my life. So the rules I learned is don't dare judge a person for their downfalls because I found God has a good way of knocking you from your high horse to see you ain't all perfect.. I travel across country the moment I found out the truth about Jensen being alive. I arrive and I see this tall man standing there. I knows a Pearl's man and he inherited the height, slanted eyes , his bow legs and those gray eyes are a mystery to me.
I moved that child to live with her Aunt Carolina in Brooklyn, Ny because at the time I was going through dealing with depression and we use to bump heads like two raging bulls. I was at one time a woman who live life full of regrets because I was so unhappy inside. I had a good husband but I dealt with the ridicule of him being a white man. I dealt with the fact my son, Thomas was half-white and Gloria was dark like me. In her mind I love him more and it wasn't true. She was just like me born on the same day of me, look,like me and she resented me for giving her a different father. I slept around on the man she thought was daddy.
The problems of today happen in my time but we kept it a secret and our business didn't need to be all over the neighborhood unless the town gossip got hold to it. Now social media and reporters are getting paid to tell your business. I wish I would have knew she was pregnant at seventeen. It what stopped me from ever speaking to my sister but now as the time past and she dead I realize maybe I should have tried harder with my child. I should have given her the best of me and I take full blame.
Now I am riding on the bus with my eldest grandson and I see the scars on his heart and my daughter gotta face up to her wronging her child. She can't hide behind the lie anymore that she never birth him. He needs her and behind the tough guy act he wants more than ever to know he has a family. Jensen needs her and I will see to it they connect.
I’m getting up there in age and all I want is my family to come together and it is funny what I wish for when I was younger is totally different then now.
God has provided me with a beautiful home, a successful business and a rooming house where I met struggling actors, actresses and singers. Some of them I see on the television now. I have fix a many of lives but in my own there is a huge hole.The broken lines are the fact I married a white man and that in the same breath years later I cheated on my husband with one of my cooks which conceived Gloria. She hated her black skin, her tightly coiled hair and most of all her brother. She didn’t believe her black was beautiful and no matter how I tried to show her that she couldn’t see it.
Part of it was they adore Thomas and hated Gloria but part of it was her attitude. She was just so angry and pissed off at life. I couldn’t put my finger on it because her stepfather andI provided her a good life, she always had food in the house, decent clothing, and a Momma that cares and loves her. Every time I want to talk about the baby she has forgotten she announces it is not a good time. It was the past and she doesn’t want to reflect on it.
I dial her number and Reba is finally sleep that child ‘s cackle makes the hair on my neck stand. She sweet as she want to be but that laugh got to go. She a talker to but I tell you one thing she can sing and good music too. Gloria picks up on the first ring.
“Mama, where the hell are you? I called Auntie Gina and she ain’t seen or heard from you?”
“Child, how many times I done told you to respect me and I am grown? I go where I please.” Jensen and Janae look back at me and I lower my voice. I don’t want to upset him knowing how he feels about her.
“So where are you?” I hear those fake nails tapping on the phone.
“I’m on my way back to California. I am eight hours away from home.”
“You are getting up there in age you just can’t go on long trips on the Greyhound.”
“I found him. I found your son.”
She sucks her teeth and curses under her breath.
“ I ask you to leave that situation alone, Mama.”
“He is your son and why are you so hell bent on not seeing him?”
“God Mama leave this one alone, okay.”
“ He is apart of me and I won’t leave him or the situation alone. “
She screams, “ Mama , I just want to forget okay. I want you not to do this.”
“ It’s the guilt of what you did you can’t face and the lie of hiding my grandson. You left that boy on the table to die. You know good and well I would have taken care of my grandson.”
“I am not going to talk about this at all.” She hung up and there was the distance of her hiding the truth. I dialed Gina number and she answer on the second ring.
“Your big mouth can’t hold nothing. I ask you to cover for me.”
“Ginger Pearl don’t start I told the child the truth because she was worried about you. You went on a hunt for her son.”
“Yep and I found him.”
“She wants you to leave it.”
“Why? You talk to her more than me. What’s the secret?”
“Ginger you won’t let things rest.”
“I won’t and what is the secret.”
There is a pause and I press the phone to my ear and wait.
“She ain’t want no dark baby. She ain’t want him because he was dark.”
“What?”
“Ginger it is the same reason you married a white man.”
“I married out of love.”
“And your daughter married a white man because she never wanted her children to have dark skin. All she knew was everybody treated her different because she wasn’t light skin.”
“That is no reason to give up your child.”
“ Gloria bought every skin lightening cream, wash in bleach because she didn’t feel beautiful. She wears make-up two shades lighter than her skin. She hates being a dark skin woman."
“I have always told her she was beautiful.”
“Society and the cruel kids who called her ugly didn’t. She lived in a house where her mother loved a white man and Thomas was your favorite. "
I hung up the phone and it hit me I was the center of my daughter's pain but I always told her she was pretty. Then I think back to the times that I told her she couldn’t go out being nappy headed so I ran the hot comb to her hair and straighten it. When I put slabs of grease one her brown skin so she wouldn't look ashy. The days I wouldn't put cornrows in her hair because for one she was tender headed but I didn't know how to braid. It didn't help that we live in middle class neighborhood that was predominately white Until we moved to Baldwin Hills. It was there her self conscious kicked in when the light skin girls called her ugly, picked and tease her.
I dial Thomas number and as soon as he answers I hear the sound of piano, the trumpet and guitar players.
"Hey take a break fellas I have to take this call it's my Ma on the phone."
"I was waiting on you to return your son call back. How are you beautiful lady?"
"I'm fair to middling. How things in Atlanta?"
"I love it so much , good food not as good as yours but good and the honeys out here got me and I feel like I am doing God's will with getting the message out on how great he is."
"Have you talk to Gloria?"
"She don't want nothing to do with me and I don't feel like the Gloria show of how much she hates me because my Daddy was white episode."
"Can you come out to L.A for a weekend to spend with me?"
"I'm booked up here for like five shows. Ma, I worked with Kelly Price and I have a gig possibly with Vanessa Clark"
"Wonderful. So this musical engineering thing is taking off."
"It is like a dream come true and I'm out here doing my own thing."
"You could do that in L.A."
"Ma I'm not happy in L.A. I get I into too much out there and it has been three years since I haven't fallen off the wagon and took a drink. "
"Ma, I'm around good Christians and for the first time I feel like I can make God and you proud."
"I've always been proud of you. I love you and before I hang up I found him. "
"My nephew. So how Gloria dealing with it?"
"She ain't. It is why I want to get the family together and throw down BBQ and introduce him to the family."
Ma sounds good but I have to get back to work. I love you beautiful lady."
"I love you too."
Thomas and I have always been close our relationship was different. He was and still a Mama's boy. We spent so much time together with him battling a kidney disease called Nephrotic syndrome. I spent more of my time caring for him. I know Gloria thought it was because of his complexion and curly Afro but he needed me. My husband had to work in addition to me running a restaurant. I left her with auntie and maybe something was missing in both of us. I was lacking the know how to deal with a sick child, a child with behavioral issues and my emotions was a wreck. It is not a good combination. So I'm trying to make it right and this one I need thenLord to drive because I am just a passenger on this journey.