“Sleep don’t erase it one bit, Jacqueline. Gotta get up and face it.”
I said, “Face what?”
Uncle Roscoe and my cousin Jimmy had returned from Tennessee.
Two days before.
The house was a mess, still. I hadn’t cooked one meal in those two days.
Uncle Roscoe said, “Whatever it is got you sleeping all day.”
“I’m just tired. I do a lot around here. You can go off to Tennessee for God knows what, for days on end, and I can’t even lounge around and be lazy for a couple days. Damn.”
He shut the door to my room.
It was all quiet. I could use some music in truth, the new Alicia Keys, or D’Angelo’s baby mama, Angie Stone. Something to break the monotony. Something to make me feel like a grown woman and not a spoiled teenager. I hadn’t eaten much of anything, a few Ritz crackers here and there, and I still wasn’t really hungry. I wasn’t drinking anything, either, so I didn’t have to deal with the inconvenience of having to make multiple runs to the bathroom. I was on edge just the same. I could hear the rush of my heartbeat in my ears, sounded like a drum thwacking overtime. I looked up from behind the covers. That was about as ambitious as I’d become. I hadn’t done that in almost a day. I shouldn’t have then, either. I said, “Damn. I thought you’d left.”
“No. I’m still here.”
“Can I have some privacy?”
My uncle sat down on the foot of my bed. It dipped under his weight. I covered my head with my blanket again. I wanted the whole world to just disappear.
Uncle Roscoe said, “That’s why I didn’t take you when your father died.”
I snapped back the covers. “What was that?”
Uncle Roscoe said, “You headstrong as the day is long. I couldn’t handle you then, can’t handle you now.”
I said, “I’m a grown woman. I don’t need to be handled.”
“I beg to differ.”
I said, “Can I get some privacy, please?”
“Got that and some the past few days, Jacqueline. Thought you’d pull yourself on up out of this here thing on your own. I see that ain’t happening. So I’m here. I do the heavy lifting if I haves to.”
I said, “If you have to.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Uncle Roscoe said, “This have something to do with them voting candles you left all around in the bathroom?”
I said, “Votive. Votive candles.”
“Come again?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He grunted. No one had hit him, but he sounded like someone had punched him in the gut. I knew that sound.
I said, “The storm rattled me, okay. I was here all by myself.”
“Were you?”
I leaned up on an elbow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Uncle Roscoe’s raspy laugh filled the room. I’d have preferred Alicia Keys or D’Angelo’s baby mama, Angie Stone. Uncle Roscoe said, “Place smelled like loving when me and Jimmy came in. We were surprised seeing as you been up in here alone.”
My mouth was open, but I was too shocked to speak.
Uncle Roscoe said, “I askted Esperanza’s brother to check in on you. I take it he did. Boy, did he ever. That’s okay, though. You young, good to see you still got some life in you.”
Shocked, but I managed, “Asked. Not askted.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Boy got a thing for you,” Uncle Roscoe said. “He got his nose open soonst I put that picture up on its nail in the kitchen. Can’t speak hardly a lick of English ’cept for what he pick up in movies…but he can say your name backwards and forwards.”
I said, “Can’t believe you sent him here.”
“I’ve been trying to help you, Jacqueline.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Ain’t washed your tail since I been home,” Uncle Roscoe reminded me.
I said, “Told you, I’ve wanted to be lazy.”
“That’s lazy, all right. You got a dirty backyard.” That raspy laugh again, it filled the room.
I said, “What business you had to attend to in Tennessee?”
That cut the raspy laugh in half like a knife, killed it.
Uncle Roscoe shifted on the bed. The springs sang out. He sighed, long and hard. He said, “Thangs been tough, Jacqueline, truth be told. Gas, milk, everything’s outta control. Got you here. We need the extra money and it doesn’t matter how we get it. I’m determined to take care of you this time.”
This time. He hadn’t when I was thirteen.
Foster homes. Two foster dads I’ll never forget.
Mr. Robinson wasn’t too bad. He just made me touch it.
I said, “Be better if I left?”
Uncle Roscoe said, “Nah. Nah, Jacqueline.”
I heard something in my uncle’s voice. I looked over at him. He’d taken off his glasses, was rubbing his eyes. His shoulders were moving in an up-and-down rhythm. I’d caught Papa in the same way, one day months after Mama had left. He was at the kitchen table where they made me sit when they went into their room together.
I said, “I forgive you, you know?”
He didn’t answer.
I pushed aside the covers, slid out, went over to him. I put my arms around him, hugged him with everything I had. Tears came to me, too. We just held one another and cried. After a while, he was doing the holding. My head was on his chest, he had one arm wrapped around me, the other rubbing my head. It was a cocoon. Best feeling I’d had in twenty years.
Jimmy was at the door to my bedroom. “Aww, can I get me some of that love?”
Uncle Roscoe’s raspy laugh filled the room again. I smiled.
Jimmy stepped in. Mud was caked on his boots. He saw my eyes dart down, said, “I know, Jacqueline. I know. I just wanted to run this mail into you. That DHL brought it in one of them trucks. Gotta be important, right?”
I said, “Mail?”
That was surprising. I didn’t even know anyone knew I was staying there. I’d left my old life behind. There wasn’t anything to bring along anyway, nothing but tears and pain. It’d been a clean and easy break. So who’d be sending me mail? I said, “Probably just junk mail. An application for a credit card or something.”
Jimmy said, “Who’d send you that? Your credit all shot to hell.”
I snatched the envelope from him. His toothless smile and Uncle Roscoe’s raspy laugh—I hated them both at that moment.
Jimmy said, “Junk mail don’t be coming from DHL, do it?”
“No.”
It was a clean white stationery envelope, looked very official, and yes, important as Jimmy had said. My name was typed neatly at the center. An official stamp in the top left corner: DNA Girl, Inc.
I said, “Never heard of them.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I replied.
Uncle Roscoe said, “Read your mail. Jimmy and I got that field to plow.”
They moved on. I opened the letter with the sharp edge of one of my nails.
A quarter of the way down the page, my eyes started to tear up again.
Midway through my heartbeat was racing.
By the end, I was angry, ready to move to action.