THE next morning I drove right from dropping the older kids off to Corentine’s house. She answered the door wearing a pale pink robe and a pair of quilted slippers at least two sizes too large for her feet. When she saw me, her hands lifted to her hair. It was wrapped tightly around her head in a dark brown nylon scarf.
“Oh my,” she said. “I’m not even dressed.”
“I’m sorry, Corentine. But I have to talk to you. Can I come in?”
“What a pretty little baby,” she said. She didn’t open the door.
“Please, Corentine.”
She looked back over her shoulder into the house. “I don’t usually like to have visitors before I get the house fixed up a bit.”
“Please,” I said.
She sighed. “Just understand that I haven’t done my housework yet. I was going to get to it right now.”
The house was no messier than any house with children on a school-day morning—laundry spilled out of a plastic basket in the front hall, shoes tumbled haphazardly in the middle of the floor, and the remains of breakfast on the kitchen table. It looked, in fact, a lot better than the house I’d left behind me that morning. I put Sadie down in the living room. She had fallen asleep in her car seat and I didn’t want her to wake up. Corentine began clearing dishes and putting away the milk and the boxes of cereal.
“I usually cook a hot meal for breakfast,” she said. “I don’t like to let them go out with just cereal in their stomachs, but I been a little tired.”
“You should see what my kids eat. Half the time I can’t even get them to eat a bowl of cereal.”
“Oh, you’ve got to make them sit until they eat. They can’t concentrate in school if they don’t have a nice breakfast warming them up. I tell that to mine all the time. It’s just too hard to pay attention to the teacher with your stomach rumbling, and lunchtime is a long time away.”
She turned on the water and began scrubbing the dishes. I took up a dishtowel and started drying. She smiled at me. “I’m not even going to tell you that you don’t need to do that,” she said, “because I know you will no matter what I say.”
“Corentine,” I said as I wiped the plastic cereal bowls dry. “Did you talk to Violetta before she died? After that Sunday dinner when you had to ask her to leave?”
Corentine sighed heavily and wiped her forehead with the back of one soapy hand. She left a spot of foam on her forehead and I leaned over and blotted it gently with the towel.
“Thank you, honey,” she said. “Lord this house is a mess.” She stood with her hands in the warm soapy water, not washing the dishes, just holding them still under the bubbles.
“Here, let me,” I said. I put my hands in the water next to hers and gently but quickly washed the remaining dishes. Then I drained the water out of the sink. She held her hands out obediently as I rinsed them and my own.
She allowed me to lead her to the table and sat down. I poured her a cup of coffee and she sat, her hands cupped around the mug. I made short work of the countertops. I found a broom behind the door and swept the floor. I glanced over my shoulder to see if she would protest as I went into the living room to clean up the children’s toys and shoes, but she didn’t, just stared into the cooling coffee in her cup. After the living room was in order I quickly made the beds, smoothing the covers and doing my best at hospital corners. Within twenty minutes I’d done more house cleaning in Corentine’s apartment than I’d done in my own house since my kids were born.
I dumped out Corentine’s now-cold coffee and poured her a fresh cup.
“Oh my,” she said. “Oh my. I just sat here and let you clean my house?” She sounded befuddled and dismayed.
“Corentine,” I said. “Did you talk to your daughter before she died?”
She sighed and lifted the cup to her lips. Her teeth clacked against the rim and she set it down again. “Yes,” she said, finally. “Yes, I talked to my baby.”
“What happened?” I asked gently.
“It was bad.”
“You can tell me.”
“I didn’t help her.”
“You tried. I know you tried. You spent your whole life trying to help your daughter.”
“Not that time.”
“Please, Corentine. Please tell me what happened.”
She sighed heavily. She tried again to drink from her mug, and this time succeeded in taking a tremulous sip. “It was the day before she died. She called about this time of day, maybe a little later. I know it was still morning, because I wasn’t done getting the house to rights. Violetta wanted to talk to Vashon, but of course he was at school. I said, ‘Girl, it’s a school day. Your baby’s in math class right now.’ But I don’t think she even knew the time of day. She kept talking about how she going to get him a Game Boy. She going to buy me a new pair of my orthopedic shoes. Talking such foolishness. Those shoes cost one hundred and twenty dollars. When did Violetta ever have that kind of money? For a little while I just let her go on and on, making those promises. I remember I was sweeping the floor, and I just put the phone on speaker and let her talk about that Game Boy and my shoes. And all sorts a other things she was going to buy Vashon and me. When I was done sweeping, that’s when I did it.” Corentine bit her lip.
“What? What did you do?”
She shrugged her heavy, rounded shoulders. “I told her she couldn’t call me no more. I never said that to her before.” She rubbed her eyes. “Oh dear Lord.”
“She was high, wasn’t she? You didn’t want her calling like that.”
She nodded. “I told her she couldn’t call or come by no more. I told her that if she wanted to see her baby again she’d have to go into a real program. Lord help me, I told my poor girl that what she did to Ronnie was so evil, I wouldn’t even let her talk to Vashon no more unless she got herself into a program.” Corentine’s mouth twisted miserably.
“I think you did the right thing,” I said. “I mean, I know it probably doesn’t mean much; why should you care what I think? But I’ve spent a long time representing drug users in court, and I can tell you that you don’t do them any favors by making it easy for them to take advantage of you. You made it clear to your daughter that you would be there for her if she ever wanted to stop using. You told her you’d help her if she got into a program. That’s more than a lot of people would have done considering all she’d put you through.”
“I let her down.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I didn’t help her.”
“She didn’t want to be helped.”
“But she did! She did want to be helped. She called me again, the next day, the day she died, saying she didn’t want to be out on the street no more and could she come home. I was stone cold. I told her that I meant what I said. I said she couldn’t cross my threshold until after she’d been through rehab. I said I didn’t believe her. And I told her what she did to her little brother made me sick.” Corentine sobbed suddenly and put her face in her hands.
“Ronnie told me that after you talked to her she called him to apologize.”
Corentine nodded, her face still hidden.
“Corentine, please. Please help me figure out what happened that night. Violetta called Ronnie to apologize, and then what happened?”
She raised her face. “The last words my baby girl heard from my mouth were angry words. Hateful words. Do you know what that feels like? She thought I didn’t love her no more. She thought she couldn’t come home no more. She died thinking her own mama didn’t love her.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is! It is true. She never knew that Ronnie called and told me about her apology. She never knew that I called up Chantelle and said that I was going to let her come home and that Thomas would need to find some real good program for her.”
“You called Chantelle?”
“Yes.”
“To tell her what exactly?”
“What I told you. That Violetta was finally serious about the rehab, and that Thomas should find her a good place.”
“What did Chantelle say?”
“Oh, you know. She was worried that Violetta wouldn’t really do it, that she was just making promises. You got to understand, my girls used to be real close. They were closer even than twins. Chantelle just loved her sister. And Violetta, she broke Chantelle’s heart over and over again. Chantelle tried to argue with me, but I said ‘Look, we got to give Violetta another chance. Family is family and I only got two daughters left now.’ Well, three, with Heavenly, but you know what I mean.”
“And did she agree?”
“Of course she did. Thomas is a good man, and he promised once before to pay for Violetta to go into rehab.”
“Did you try to call Violetta? Did you try to tell her that she could come home?”
Corentine started to cry, her tears running down the swells of her smooth, round cheeks. “I left her a message. The day she died I left her a message on her voice mail. I said, ‘Violetta, baby, come on home.’ I left her a message,” she wept. “And I don’t know, I don’t know if she got it. I don’t know if she died knowing she was welcome in my house.”
“I’m sure she did,” I said. “I’m sure she knew that. She always knew that.”