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I waited until I was alone in my hotel room before taking the box out of the bag. I walked out onto the balcony overlooking the beach, sat at the small iron table, and lit up a Black & Mild cigar. I didn’t smoke often but there were times when a man needed a little sustenance to deal with shit and this was one of those times. I waited for the sweet cherry wine aroma to reach my soul before I wedged the cigar on one side of my mouth and opened the box.
I ran my fingers over the gold lettering and then carefully opened one box and then the other. I took the little muslin pouches out and stared at them. I realized it was only half of what was left of them but it seemed like nothing. They felt like just a little more than half a pound each. That was what their physical presence on earth had been reduced to. I knew we were more than the vessels we occupy in the physical realm but something about seeing those tiny specs of dirt broke me. Gently, I returned my daughters to their wooden graves and then rested my head on the table and mourned for them.
***
“ZEMI CAME TO SEE ME at the hospital last night,” I told Mom over breakfast the next morning.
She sat back and her mouth thinned in disapproval. “I told her to stay away from you.”
“So you saw her? You didn’t tell me that.”
“Why would I tell you and bring up your pain?”
“She gave me half of the ashes from the girls.”
Her mouth fell open and then her eyes darkened. “Don’t you think that’s a little morbid?”
“No, I’m glad she did. It eases things a little.”
“So you’re friends now?”
I shook my head. “We’re done now.”
She smiled. “Good. I hope you can get rid of all the other women in your life, find someone decent, and get married. I still want grandkids.”
I chuckled. “You mean Leah and Nadine.”
She huffed. “That old crow needs to find someone her age. She must be pushing fifty by now.”
“She’s forty-five.”
“She’s too old to give you a litter.”
“Between her and Nadine we can make it work if we start now.”
She reached across the table and slapped my hand and said; “Don’t play with me, boy, my blood pressure and temper are high enough right now.”
I squeezed her hand. “Sorry, Mommy, I couldn’t resist. Leah and I are not like that. She’s a free spirit, and she did the marriage thing for fifteen years and never wanted children. If she thought I loved her she would kick me out of her life.”
“Are you sure? I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”
“Yeah, she’s in love with all this chocolate.”
She sucked her teeth. “You’re just like your father.”
“Do you think that one day you and Kirk can be friends?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. He hurt me deeply.”
“You don’t believe people can change?”
“People can change; however, I’m less likely to believe the leopard who bit me can change its spots. At the very least, I’m not going to try to pet it again. I feel the same way about Mama Julia.”
I cut into my eggs. “You still don’t like her, do you?”
“No, and I still don’t trust her. You’re too close to her.”
“She’s a professionally trained therapist. After my relationship with Zemi and my prison stint, I needed someone to talk to.”
“You can talk to your mother,” she sniffed.
“It’s not the same. I needed a professional to help me deal with my grief and anger and to help calm the constant babel in my brain. You may not like her but I know you’ve seen the difference in me.”
“I don’t trust her,” she insisted.
I shook my head in disbelief. “You still believe she did something to me when I was a baby that triggered my cancer so she could take care of me. You even had Kirk believing it for a while. Mama Julia didn’t cause my cancer, Mom; she’s the one who cured it.”
“That doesn’t mean she didn’t cause it. I tell you she works Obeah.”
“She practices her ancestral religion.”
“Aka, Obeah.”
“We have the same religion, Mom.”
Her eyes flared. “I raised you Catholic! This proves how much influence she has on you, and then you go and buy land from her and build the house where you will raise my grandchildren. I’ll never be okay with this.”
“When you accused her of hurting me, she was devastated. She promised she would never look into our lives again unless we begged her to and she’s kept that promise.” Which made me wonder why she’d broken that promise for Carl? Even if he’d begged, I didn’t think she cared about him enough to risk Tennille’s wrath again.
“Well maybe if she had my grandbabies would be alive today.”
I chuckled. “So she’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. That’s not fair.”
Her lips trembled. “What’s not fair is that the love of my life has one foot in the grave.” She pressed her napkin against her mouth. “How am I supposed to live without him, Fifi?”
I pushed back my chair, walked around the table, and hugged her. “You will do the only thing you can do and that is to take it one day at a time.”
***
WE LEFT MIAMI TWO WEEKS later and a week after we returned home, Carl died in his favorite recliner watching the politicians he hated so much. I got the call from my mother at eleven-thirty at night and drove over to the house and found her sitting in his lap caressing his head. I put her to bed and then called his local doctor and the cops. Then I called Prescott and Mama Julia who had reservations about coming to my mother’s house but came because I asked her to.
In the process of organizing Carl’s funeral, we found out that he’d taken care of the details, cashed in his pension plan and sold all the assets he’d acquired on his own, paid all of his medical bills, and bought Mom a small home in Bali with the help of a trusted friend. They’d paid off their mortgage about ten years earlier, so between their savings, his death benefits, and the assets they had together; my mother could live very comfortably for the rest of her life. I got the feeling that Carl knew the exact date he would die and only Mama Julia could’ve told him that, and she’d done it so he could get things in order.
The night he died, I’d found his Rolex watch that his father had given him in a velvet pouch with my name on it on the dresser and another with Mom’s name with his wedding band and his mother’s plain gold wedding band that he’d always worn as a pinkie ring and never took off. After his wedding band became too big, he’d moved that pinkie ring from finger to finger and said as long as he could fit it he was okay. I’d seen him earlier that morning and in hindsight, I remembered he hadn’t been wearing it but it hadn’t clicked then because I’d been preoccupied with other things.
Kirk stopped by the bar a few nights later and we reminisced about Carl over some hard liquor.
“He was a good man and he took good care of you and your mother,” Kirk admitted. He took a swig. “I could never fill his shoes.”
“I think you should move on with your life, man,” I advised.
“I love that woman.”
I shrugged. “And I love Zemi.”
Kirk smiled. “I always knew you had it bad for that girl. She’s the one, just like Tennille is the one for me.”
“You found out too late, man. You hurt her too deeply.”
“You don’t believe love conquers all?”
I shook my head. “If Mom ever forgives you for what you did to her, I’ll swim to Miami and beg Zemi to take me back.”
Kirk raised his glass. “Here’s to hoping for a miracle.”
I tapped my glass against his, even though I wasn’t hoping for anything. Kirk Rollins was in for a rude awakening.
