8
By the time Michael Jared blacked out from sheer frustration in Glynn’s dusty childhood bed, it was well past midnight. Until Michael Jared closed his eyes, he whined about wanting to sleep in his own bed in his own house. He didn’t like Glynn’s bed, he didn’t like Glynn’s room, he didn’t like Sporty’s house, and mostly, he didn’t like Sporty, the only grandfather he had, but Tandi couldn’t fault him for that. She didn’t like him either. When Michael Jared finally fell asleep, he at least slept through the night—unlike Tandi. The mustiness of her old room from being closed up so long bothered her, clogging up her sinuses. Not even the slightly open window letting in cold air, freezing her to the bone, made her breathing any easier. She had opened one of the windows about an inch in Glynn’s room and could only hope that Michael Jared wasn’t freezing and was breathing okay. Tandi lay awake in her narrow single bed, listening to decades old settling wood creaking and popping throughout the house, wondering whether Jared was the least bit worried about where she was, and worrying herself about how long she’d have to stay in Sporty’s house.
She dozed on and off, waking every time the house made another eerie sound. She was restless to the point of feeling achy from laying down. She was anxious for it to be six o’clock in the morning so that she could be up and about settling her business. Besides it still being dark out, the only other thing that kept her in bed was the bare wooden floor and the fact that her bedroom was right above Sporty’s. If she walked around, he would surely hear her. When she was a teenager, he used to shout up the stairs, “What you doing up there? You trying to come through the ceiling?” Back then, she was barefooted or had on socks. She wouldn’t dare walk around that way now, the dust balls on the floor were so big they could have been tumbleweed rolling down an old deserted dusty town in a western movie. Over the years, she never considered it her job to clean Sporty’s house, certainly not upstairs where no one ventured. What little she did, she did in the kitchen, and that was only because she cooked in there.
At the first light of dawn, Tandi got up and tried to take a quick shower but had to wait ten minutes until the rusty water ran clear through the pipes. Once dressed, she then cajoled a bad-tempered, slow-moving Michael Jared up and dressed for school and, together, they both tiptoed gingerly down the back stairs to the kitchen.
“I don’t want nothin’ to eat,” Michael Jared said.
Tandi was disheartened by the bags under her child’s sad eyes. She didn’t want him hurt by her decision to leave Jared, but leaving him behind was not an option, not when she felt he would be hurt either way and neglected to boot with Jared.
“Honey, I’m sorry you had a bad night, but we’ll be in our own home real soon.”
He perked up. “We’re going home?”
Tandi realized her blunder. As much as she hated to dash her child’s hopes, she had to. “We’re not going back to your father’s house. We’re going to get our own place, an apartment.”
“I don’t wanna go to no apartment, I wanna go home.”
“We can’t.”
“How come?”
Tandi busied herself with looking for oatmeal.
“Mommy, isn’t Dad’s house our house?”
“Not anymore.”
“But he didn’t say it wasn’t our house. He said he wasn’t leaving because he had worked hard to get it.”
Michael Jared had overheard much more than she thought he had. Surely he heard Jared tell her to get the fuck out. No matter what Jared had said that night, he had made it impossible for her to call it her home ever again. And at his tender age, that was something Michael Jared would not understand.
“Mommy, how come we can’t go home?”
“Because,” she said, taking the round container of oatmeal down off the shelf, “your father and I haven’t been getting along very well. It’s best that you and I live apart from him for a while.”
“I get along with my dad. I shouldn’t have to live apart from him.”
Michael Jared was right about that, but was he saying he’d rather be with Jared than her? “Honey, let’s sit down,” she said, leaving the oatmeal on the counter. They sat at the kitchen table. “I will never keep you from your father. You can see him as often as you like, but you know how busy he is. He may not have time to see you other than on Saturdays.”
“I could see him every night if we went back home.”
“Yes, but if you remember, he’s always so tired when he gets in from work. He needs his rest, and if we’re not there to disturb him, he’ll get plenty of rest.”
“He got his rest with us there. Y’all just mad at each other, but y’all can make up if we go back home.”
“Honey, it’s not that simple. Look, try not to worry about your dad and me. We’ll work something out. You’ll still see him, and you and I will have a nice new apartment. You’ll have your old friends, and you’ll make lots of new friends.”
Teary-eyed, Michael Jared’s chin began to quiver.
The last thing Tandi wanted to do was hurt her child, but she just couldn’t go back, not even for his sake. “Honey, I’m so sorry you’re upset,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “You know I wouldn’t want to see you hurt for anything in the world. It’s just that mothers and fathers don’t always get along. Sometimes when they can’t agree to get along, they have to live apart. Sometimes they have to—”
Michael Jared shot up out of his chair. “Y’all can’t divorce!”
“Honey, I didn’t say—”
“Mommy, Dad’s real good to us. He pays all the bills, he gives you money to buy your clothes and my clothes, he buys me computer games. I don’t want y’all to divorce.”
Tandi didn’t think she could feel any worse. By omission she had forgotten how much Michael Jared loved Jared. No matter how little time Jared spent with him, Michael Jared didn’t care as long as he saw him.
“What’ll happen to me? Where will I live?”
She eased Michael Jared back into his chair. “Honey, listen to me. I’m not saying your dad and I are getting a divorce, I’m just saying sometimes that happens. For now, we just need some space, some time out. If your father has time, you can spend weekends with him. I promise. I’ll never keep you from being with him.”
“Then let me go back home.”
Tandi choked back her urge to cry. “You don’t wanna be with me?”
“Yes, but I wanna be with Dad, too. I want to be with both of you.”
Tandi quickly wiped at the tears that rolled freely down her cheeks.
“Mommy, if we go home,” Michael Jared said, “I’ll clean up my room without you telling me to ever again. I’ll take out the garbage, I’ll do all of my homework, I won’t make noise—”
“Honey, nothing you did or didn’t do has anything to do with this. This is between me and your father.”
A stream of tears rolled down Michael Jared’s cheeks. “And me, too. We’re a family, all of us.”
Oh, God. “Honey, that’s true, we are a family, and we always will be. Your father and I both love you, and we know you love us, too. I don’t want you to think for one minute that you are the cause of us breaking up. If it should happen that we do divorce, we’re not divorcing you. Your father is still going to love you the same, if not more, and so am I.”
Michael Jared folded his arms on top of the table and dropped his head onto them.
Crouching next to Michael Jared, Tandi put her arm around his shoulders and whispered pleadingly in his ear, “Honey, please, please don’t cry. I promise you, I’ll make sure your dad spends more time with you, and I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy.”
“Is he all right?” a woman’s voice asked behind Tandi.
Tandi looked back and was aghast. A middle-aged woman she had never seen before was standing in the doorway in a sheer pink negligee showing everything that might have been easier on the eyes decades ago. Her hanging breasts and flabby stomach were not a pretty sight. Tandi glanced down at Michael Jared. He was still absorbed in his despair. Grateful for that, she glared at the woman.
“Oh! Does my attire bother you?”
Michael Jared started to raise his head. Quickly standing, Tandi held his head against her stomach. “What do you think?”
“I don’t see why it should, I have nothing to hide. My body is beautiful.”
Michael Jared stopped sobbing altogether. He tried to pull free of Tandi’s hold.
“One woman’s opinion,” Tandi said, holding Michael Jared’s head. With her free hand, she shielded his eyes.
“Your father likes my body.”
Michael Jared pulled on Tandi’s hand over his eyes, but her hold was firm.
“Miss, my father likes chitterlings, I don’t. Therefore, I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t walk around here like that in front of my son, or me either for that matter.”
“I think your father should make—”
“Bernice,” Sporty said, coming up behind her, “I’ll make the coffee. Why don’t you go get dressed?”
“Oh, sure, honey bun.” Bernice smiled mischievously at Tandi as she turned and brushed catlike up against Sporty as she left the kitchen.
Tandi let Michael Jared up. He looked around for Bernice and was disappointed to see she was gone.
“Daddy, who is that woman?”
“None of your business.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t answer to you, Tandida. This is my house. I do as I damn well please. If you don’t like it, go home.”
For a fleeting but stifling moment, Tandi was reminded of the day she left Sporty’s house. That day, too, he had said, “If you don’t like it,” but he didn’t say go home, he had said, “Leave. Get out.”
“You’re telling me to get out when you’re the one who’s wrong? You opened my mail. You have no right to open my mail.”
“I have a right to look at anything that comes into my house.”
In her hand Tandi held the letter from the Department of Vital Statistics requesting the social security number and the correct date of death for Lorraine Belson. That angered Tandi even more because Sporty wouldn’t give her that information.
“No, Daddy, you don’t have that right.”
“The deed to this house says Glynn R. Belson, Senior, not Tandida Belson.”
“Does that mean I’m not entitled to privacy?”
“That’s exactly what it means. When you have your own house, then you can set up your own rules.”
“Daddy, you can’t keep bullying me. You can’t tell me to not try and get my mother’s death certificate. I have a right to know when she was born and when she died. That’s my legal right. And I have a daughter’s right to put flowers on her grave. But I can’t do that, can I? You’ve destroyed any evidence of my mother ever having been on this Earth. If you could’ve, I believe you would have gotten rid of me, too.”
The hateful look Sporty fixed on Tandi made her want to sink into a corner and hide.
“You watch what you say to me, girl. You’re not so grown that I won’t give you a good hard backhand.”
Tandi held her tongue. She knew well what it felt like to get slapped in the mouth.
“The next time mail comes into my house about your mother, I’ll burn it as sure as I’m standing here.”
“You can’t do that!”
“I can and I will. If you don’t like it, leave. Get out!”
And she did. That same day. It was a whole year before she started coming around again and that was only because Glynn nagged her to death about it. Sporty wasn’t very welcoming but he did open the door. In that year she stayed away, Tandi realized that Sporty and Glynn were the only family she had. She quickly learned that a soul without family is as alone as a soul marooned on an island. She didn’t question Sporty anymore about her mother, but it was a bone of contention always between them.