Chapter 40
“Despite my best efforts, how did I manage to become
just as screwed up as you?”
–Sullivan Webb
Later that night, Sullivan found herself at a seedy bar downtown with an even seedier companion.
“Can you believe I’m sitting here having a drink with you? Now I know I’ve hit rock bottom!” Sullivan looked down into her empty wineglass and signaled the bartender for a refill.
Her mother concurred. “That makes two of us. Another blackberry margarita for me too.”
“You’ve sat across from worse than me, Vera.”
“As have you,” noted Vera, running her finger across the salt-rimmed glass.
Sullivan raised her glass. “Touché. Don’t worry. I don’t expect you to know what it means.”
“Sullivan, you know we can sit here and exchange insults all night, but I’m sure that’s not why you wanted me to meet you here, so what gives? And make it quick, because I have things to do.”
Sullivan watched as the bartender refilled her glass. “Despite my best efforts, how did I manage to become just as screwed up as you?”
Vera rolled her eyes. “Maybe we need to stick to exchanging insults.”
“I’m serious.”
“Sullivan, I didn’t screw you up. Even if I did when you were younger, you’re a grown woman now. Any screwing up you did after you left my house is all on you.”
“Why don’t you understand that I’m screwed up as a grown woman because of what you did when I was younger?” Sullivan looked up at her mother and asked the one question that had weighed on her practically her whole life. “How could you let those men do that to me?”
Vera sucked her teeth. “Do what to you, Sullivan? Give you money? Buy you designer clothes and expensive gifts?”
“Don’t sit there acting like they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts!” raged Sullivan. “It’s insulting! Those were guilt gifts for me and ‘Hush your mouth and pretend you didn’t see nothing’ tokens for you.”
“Nobody did anything to you that you weren’t asking for,” ranted Vera. “I’m not to blame for you being hot in the pants!”
“What?” Sullivan asked incredulously. “I was a child, and you allowed grown men to take advantage of me and didn’t lift a manicured finger to help! You didn’t protect me. You let pedophiles disguised as boyfriends do all kinds of horrible, vile things to me! I was your child, Vera. Why didn’t you protect me?”
“Sullivan, with so many of those nasty li’l boys in the neighborhood you used to run around playing doctor with, how was I supposed to know you didn’t like it or that you didn’t encourage it?”
It took every ounce of her strength for Sullivan not to toss her drink in Vera’s face. “Don’t shovel that BS excuse at me. You knew better, and don’t you dare try to deny it!”
Vera wanted to say something crushing to Sullivan, as that was her usual defense mechanism. Instead, she yielded to honesty. Vera’s eyes veered over to Sullivan. She gulped down her margarita, needing whatever liquid courage it would provide. “I thought it was normal,” stated Vera.
Sullivan released a low scream. “On what planet is a grown man being with a naive young girl normal?”
“My mama always had men in the house, and they did the same thing to me. When I went to her, crying about it, she told me there was nothing wrong with it and that her uncles and cousins had done the same thing to her. She said she liked it because afterward they always gave her money and presents. She said that sex and money is what being a woman was all about and that if I acted right and kept my mouth shut, I could get money and pretty new things too. She made it seem okay, like it wasn’t that bad, since they weren’t beating me or trying to hurt me. My grandma’s husband beat my grandma to death when my mama was thirteen. To her way of thinking, if a man wasn’t trying to kill you, he wasn’t all that bad.”
“So you went along with it,” stated Sullivan. “You shut your mouth and did what you were told, just like I did.”
Vera nodded. “I did. That’s what I thought you were supposed to do, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t angry about it,” she said, recalling the past. “I hated it. When I saw it happening to you, I don’t know. I just . . . I guess a part of me wanted you to suffer the way I did. I wanted everybody to suffer, especially after your sister died and your daddy treated me so badly. Something burned out and died inside of me. I didn’t care about nothing or nobody, including myself.”
“But I was your daughter, your own flesh and blood. Didn’t that mean anything to you?”
Vera shook her head. “Not when you’re in the kind of pain I was in.”
Sullivan wasn’t moved. “I don’t care how much pain I’m in. I could never do anything that heinous to Charity.”
“I didn’t know better then, but I do better now. Sullivan, I . . . I was wrong. You’re right. I didn’t look after you like I should have.” Vera avoided eye contact with Sullivan. “I wasn’t a good mother to you.”
Sullivan folded her arms across her chest. “I hope you’re not waiting for me to disagree.”
“I’m not. A good mother wouldn’t have allowed you to go through that.” Vera waited before going on. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help you, because I was so messed up myself. I guess in a way I even tried to break you because you had something, a light and a fearless spirit, that I never had. A part of me was jealous of that.”
“Jealous?” Sullivan’s eyes widened. “Vera, all I ever wanted was for you to love me, for you to be proud of me.”
“Sullivan, you didn’t need nobody like me to be proud of you. I was a mess!”
“But you were my mother. What child doesn’t want approval from her mom?”
Vera’s eyes welled with emotion for her daughter. She affectionately reached out for Sullivan’s hand. “Of course, I’m proud of you. You’re a good woman . . . most of the time. You have a big heart, and you’re good to your friends. You love your husband, and you’re one hundred times the mother to sweet Charity that I ever was to you. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was a bad mama to you. You deserved better. I hope you can forgive me.”
Sullivan broke into a half smile. “Why did it take you thirty-four years to tell me that?”
“I’ve been busy. Better late than never, right?” Vera grinned.
“That’s what they say.” Sullivan thought about Charles. “But that’s not always true.”
“Depends on what you’re talking about.”
“My marriage. It may already be too late to salvage it.”
“Sullivan, I was dead wrong for letting those men hurt you, but I have a second chance to get it right with Charity. I’d never let anybody hurt her, not even you, by being fool enough to leave her daddy. I grew up without a daddy, and so did my mama and her mama and so did you. It doesn’t have to be like that for this child. She can grow up knowing what it’s like to have a man’s protection. She can know what it’s like for a man to touch her with love, not with lust. She can know what it’s like to be a daddy’s little girl, instead of some grown man’s woman. Don’t take that away from her. Go to your husband, Sullivan, before it’s too late. That man loves you! He may be tired of you and your shenanigans, but he loves you. The fact that he didn’t leave you years ago—shoot, the fact that he even married you—proves that he loves you.”
“What if I can’t make him happy?” Sullivan asked in a small voice. “What if I’m not enough? Maybe losing Charles is my ultimate punishment.”
“Punishment for what? Being an idiot?”
“For all the people I’ve hurt in the past.”
Vera rolled her eyes. “I don’t know how this God of yours works, but I don’t think He’s sitting up in heaven, worrying about what you did and people you hurt years ago. He’s more concerned about what you’re doing now. That’s what matters, ain’t it?”
Sullivan nodded and laughed to herself. Who would’ve thought someone as worldly as Vera could sum up the grace of God in such a succinct way while sitting in the middle of a dusty bar?
“I must say,” mused Sullivan, “this might be the most meaningful conversation we’ve ever had.”
“And now it’s coming to a close,” said Vera, hopping down off the bar stool. “Cliff is coming home tonight, and I want to be there when he gets there.”
“Cliff is coming home? Go quick, fast, and in a hurry!” directed Sullivan. “Who knows when that might happen again?”
Vera stared at Sullivan for a moment.
Sullivan frowned. “What?”
Vera didn’t say anything. She simply kissed her daughter on the cheek and hurried out.
Sullivan was stunned. Any sign of affection from Vera was almost as unsettling as her making sense while waxing on about the grace of God.
Sullivan figured that if by some miracle, she could make her relationship with Vera work, there was hope for everything else in her life, including her marriage to Charles, assuming he’d still have her.