Chapter 13
TATUM
By the time I realized my mistake, it was too late to do anything about it.
And no matter how good my intentions around it had been? Bringing Rori to Wildwood was absolutely a mistake that was becoming clearer by the second.
What was going through my head?
Nothing.
Nothing was going through my head.
Clearly.
Because if I had been thinking critically, I would have suggested another method of cheering her up, as opposed to a week of being on the Summer Jam screen.
It was insane to invite a woman I’d only known a few months to be subjected to the women in my family.
I wasn’t worried about anybody being purposefully cruel. That wasn’t really our vibe as a family, not usually. And if we did unintentionally cross a line into offense, the sincere apologies would be swift.
That was just how we’d always gotten down.
They were not inclined to be unkind.
Most likely not judgmental.
It was just…for them, there was no such thing as too much information, which could easily—and often did—cross the line from being curious to becoming overly intrusive.
Lately… Rori had a lot going on, to put it mildly. The last couple months had been a whirlwind of it, but the shit with Monty hadn’t started when we met. It was years of mess with that nigga, lots of drama of the exact variety my mama n’em liked to indulge.
The kinda shit I should’ve been thinking about before I swooped in with my cape.
I wasn’t afraid they’d be mean to her; I was afraid they’d treat her like a behind the scenes episode of a messy reality show.
It had been a great, lazy morning, a bit of sleeping in, since we’d gotten in late. A bit of pussy when I stopped by Rori’s room down the hall from mine to pick her up and bring her downstairs to the dining table for breakfast. I was planning to go three for three, down the stairs to indulge in the full breakfast spread I could already smell wafting up the stairs.
And then…the realization happened, sparked by a simple request as soon as we stepped into the dining room.
“Rori, come sit down here,” Tam had called, waving her down. “Let him go be with his musty brothers.”
And all the possibilities flashed.
Maybe because she knew better than to show any possible weakness, Rori didn’t even look my way for assurance or anything first. She smiled at my sister and was already headed down there when I grabbed her wrist, stopping her.
“Uh, hold up,” I said, getting ready to put a little warning in Rori’s ear at least, but Tam sucked her teeth, speeding our way.
“Relax,” she said, looping her arm through Rori’s. “Tater, you act like somebody’s gonna bite the girl!”
Tam’s teasing may have been comforting if my grandmother hadn’t popped in from the other side, pushing me out of the way to declare, “I might! Look at these big ol’ legs on this girl. She can take a little nibble. I bet you’ll give a horse hell with these thighs, ain’t it?” she cackled, grabbing Rori’s hand.
“Ay!” I called out, brows furrowed. “I done told you about trying to take women from me,” I warned, which made Rori’s eyebrow hike up as she looked back and forth between us.
Grandma Jenny laughed. “If you were doing what you were supposed to do, a Sugar Mama wouldn’t be enticing,” she said. “You wouldn’t have to worry about me taking them from you.”
“Yeah, Tater,” Rori quipped, looking me dead in the face as her mouth twitched from the effort not to laugh.
Clearly, this was my payback for agreeing with Sierra the day before.
“Mamaaaa!” I called, looking around for my assistance. “Mama! They messing with me!”
A moment later she appeared from around the corner, laughing. “Y’all leave my baby alone.”
“Nobody messing with his big ass, he mad his lady friend finds me compelling,” Grandma Jenny shot back.
“Mama…” my mama warned. “Please don’t scare Tatum’s guest…”
Grandma Jenny sucked her teeth. “Y’all trying to put me back in the closet. I stayed there?—”
“Fifty some-odd years,” the rest of us chimed in, laughing. “And you ain’t going back!”
We’d heard this declaration many times over the last ten years.
It was nothing against my Grandpa Nelson. He was kind, funny, and they were famously the best of friends. The kind of couple you looked to as an example. But the fact was… Grandma Jenny was gay, and kept it under wraps until the day he died, almost a decade ago.
She kicked the closet door wide open at the funeral, introducing a woman we’d all known as her other best friend… as her woman.
Surprising everyone, yes, but shocking?
Not really.
But then they broke up, and my grandmother started wildin’ around the community, and was apparently whatever the lesbian senior citizen version of a fuckboy was called.
Now that was the shocker.
Very un-grandmotherly behavior.
But hey, she was the homie, so if it made her happy…
“As long as you keep it cool, we cool,” I told Grandma Jenny, tucking Rori close to me as she laughed, too.
Cool.
Maybe it won’t be that ba?—
“Now these girls tell me you was about to marry ol’ Hershey Chocolate from that team that whipped the Kings outta the championships?” she asked, and I felt Rori go stiff. “I know that ain’t his name, but that was one pretty Black man, so that’s what I called him.”
“I’m sure she don’t wanna talk about him, Mama,” my mama said, shaking her head. “She’s not here for that.”
Thank goodness, they’re beha?—
“Well good, ’cause I don’t wanna talk about that nigga either,” Grandma Jenny quipped. “I just wanted to say, I know he must’ve been real rotten if you couldn’t tough it out for them checks. I know he got more endorsements than Tater country ass.”
“Wait, now how the hell I catch a stray?” I asked, and got patted on the arm.
“Them people don’t want you in they commercials baby but we love you,” she said, brushing me off. “Anyway, they also tell me you got an app for pregnant women and babies, but ain’t got no kids!” Grandma Jenny spoke up and my eyes went wide.
“Granny, can you not?” I cut in, knowing this wasn’t a subject for her to poke at.
“What?” she asked. “I’m trying to help you out, make sure everything is on the up and up. If she can’t have no babies that’s fine, but you need to know, and I’m sure you been pussyfooting around it.”
“Stop,” I said sharply, looking at my mom and sister, wondering why the hell they weren’t saying anything to pull her back off the line of what was appropriate.
From the looks on their faces though, it was easy to see the answer; they wanted to know too.
So this has been a topic of discussion, I see…
“It’s fine, Tatum,” Rori said, with a soothing hand on my back and a gentle smile on her face.
Maybe she was just a good actress, but it seemed genuine enough.
“Uh, you’re right,” she said, looking to Grandma Jenny. “I don’t have children of my own, and I’ve never been pregnant. But I have a wonderful little niece, and I am godmother of another delightful little girl. I’ve seen the struggles of my sister, and my friends, right in front of me. Heard the experiences of lots of other women through social media, focus groups, and so on. Enough to understand that something like BabyBee was very much needed.”
“But there’s lots of apps for pregnancy, development, all that, right?” Tam asked, and I shot her a dirty look that she shrugged at. “Damn, I can’t ask questions?”
“Yes, you can!” Rori said. “And to answer that question, yes. Lots of apps are quite similar to BabyBee—a shared goal of helping navigate pregnancy symptoms, the birth process, tracking milestones after the baby is born, and all of that. To the point of confusion about which one truly works the best for that person. But at BabyBee, we put really special effort into not just presenting the information, but helping them process it, and giving them resources to utilize that information in a way that improves the lives of these families. We contract with doctors, nurses, midwives, doulas, nutritionists, speech therapists, social workers, literally any field that has a vested interest in the welfare of families, we have on our consult board. And we have a pretty sophisticated algorithm too, that suggests certain articles, certain questions, all that, based on past inputs,” Aurora spoke, the pride in what she did so coming through so vividly, it put a smile on my face too.
“Ah, so you like problem-solving,” my mother said, nodding. “You’re obviously a brilliant young woman, and applying that in a positive way doesn’t have to be about you specifically for it to be valuable and useful,” she commented, directing her gaze pointedly at her own mother.
Meanwhile, Rori shook her head. “It is personal though, actually. These life stages are so major in the lives of people that I love, in a community that I love, that it’s vital to me to support. Especially postpartum mothers. There’s so much stress, so much pressure, so much trauma often involved, that doesn’t get the attention and support that’s needed, and so many families slip through the cracks.”
“Oh child, your generation is so sensitive,” Grandma Jenny quipped, waving her off. “Pregnancy, childbirth, raising kids… it’s the most natural thing in the world. We’re built for it!”
“No, we take it for granted,” Rori countered, as Tam and my mother nodded.
I’d heard more than one knock-down, drag-out argument about this topic.
“It’s life changing,” Rori said. “And too often, actually life-threatening or disabling, and we can’t treat it as a given that everyone will survive it. We have to affect the results, not expect them.”
“Most people are not dying in childbirth anymore!” Grandma Jenny argued.
“But too many still are, and in pregnancy, and postpartum too,” Rori argued, not backing down. “Dying, developing life-altering disabilities, having their mental health severely impacted… and those are just the extremes. There is a whole spectrum of adverse outcomes before we even get there, and we have to stop pretending otherwise. It is extremely important that we learn about, prepare for, and mitigate those possibilities while we can. My own sister, for example,” she said, her voice faltering for the first time since she started speaking. “Perfect pregnancy, beautiful birth experience, healthy baby. Things were very idyllic, and then… a few months down the line, my brother-in-law called me, and said hey, Nova is really not herself.”
“She’d just had a baby, of course she wasn’t herself,” Grandma Jenny scoffed, and Rori shook her head.
“No. It was more than that. And as bad as things got, I’m glad we didn’t brush it off as just had a baby, because it could’ve been worse. We had hell trying to get anybody to take it seriously. ‘Baby blues’, postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression. Everything the doctors offered, everything insurance covered, weak.” Rori shook her head, staring off in the distance like she’d been transported back to that moment. “And unhelpful. And then suddenly… we were dealing with untreated postpartum psychosis. We found a private program. An insanely, prohibitively expensive private program. We got her in, though. And we thought it was working; it was working. And Nova was finally coming back to herself. And then… um… she accidentally nicked the baby while she was clipping her nails. Baby girl screamed her head off, of course, but it was just the tiniest little nick, barely even bled. But… I guess that was just like… the last…”
“You don’t have to do this,” I told her, grabbing her hand to squeeze. I brought it up to my lips as she turned her glossy eyes to me. “You don’t have to?—”
“I do, though,” she countered, flashing me a sad smile. “I need to finish saying it.” She turned to my grandmother. “See… all the things that a healthy, prepared, unclouded mind can synthesize as just part of life… we take that stuff for granted. For so many people, that situation would’ve been a few tears with the baby, maybe feeling stupid or clumsy for a few minutes. For Nova… it was proof enough that she was a danger to her child, that she took her life in the bathroom while my brother-in-law was settling the baby.”
Those words pulled the air out of the room.
Even I was stunned. I had no idea about this branch of the story.
“I’m not saying that everyone will have that experience, just that some will, and it’s impossible to predict or necessarily prevent. But when education is in place, and preparation is there, we can get in front of it. Start treatment sooner, not do things that exacerbate. There’s research now about sleep hygiene, hormone therapy, proper vitamin supplementation, accessible things! That’s the type of thing BabyBee is putting money behind, to save and change lives,” she said. “And then… also of course there’s a contraction timer and a diaper tracker in the app.” She laughed, and the rest of us did too, welcoming the levity after such a heavy conversation shift.
“We’re sorry for your loss, sweetheart,” Grandma Jenny said to Rori, accompanying the words with a deep nod.
“Yeah,” Tam spoke up, stepping forward to grab her hand. “We didn’t mean to… We didn’t know… that wasn’t on the about page for the app.”
Rori smiled, accepting Tam’s hand squeeze. “No, it isn’t. But her influence is all over the website, and her story is laid out in the postpartum mental health section. Even the community support forums… that area is named after Nova.”
“It sounds like a beautiful tribute,” my mother spoke up, joining Tam to approach Rori. “And I, for one, agree with you about the lack of education and preparation around all this stuff, especially the birth process. I did my best to prepare Tam?—”
“You mean you scared the living daylights out of me?” Tam teased, and Mama shook her head.
“Call it whatever you want, you had a contingency for every possibility, didn’t you?” Mama looked at Grandma Jenny and rolled her eyes. “More than the pat on the head and a prayer this one gave me.”
Grandma Jenny sucked her teeth. “Don’t you start that, especially not with Tater’s big grown ass standing right there, healthy as a good ox. All that fussing and worrying and the boy was perfectly fine, exactly like I always said he would be!”
“Are we pretending the boy wasn’t hooked up to tubes for the first year of his life, mother?”
Immediately, I felt Rori’s eyes on me, and I shook my head. “See what y’all did?” I asked. “I wasn’t ready to tell this story yet.”
“It ain’t your story anyway,” my mother corrected, pushing me away to pull Rori off to the side. “He got stuck!” she told her. “Big ass! Got stuck coming out, ended up with nerve damage, compressing his cord, the whole mess.” She shook her head. “They put that thing on his head to yank him out, tore me three different ways. I didn’t even know until way after, too busy worrying about them trying to save his life. Seemed like it took him forever to cry that first cry, but whew, when he did!” She put a hand to her chest and Rori grabbed the other one.
“That’s so scary!”
“Baby who you telling!” Mama agreed. “I didn’t even get to hold him. They rushed him straight to the neonatal unit. It took weeks to get to hold him the first time, and even longer to see him without a damn tube somewhere. Very scary,” she said. “You got a section in the app for that?”
Rori smiled. “Yes, actually. A very special section, developed with a ton of help from neonatal specialists, nurses, everything. We also have specialists on consult for a second opinion on rare cases, twenty-four-seven counseling, and the business donates heavily to living arrangements and expenses for families with babies in NICU.”
“Oh you’re really about your business, ain’t it?” Mama grinned, and Rori nodded.
“Yes ma’am. This is my life’s work. I’m ten toes down. Now, I’m personally… a nerd,” she laughed. “I code, I don’t… counsel. But I can happily make sure that people who do that stuff are in the right places when people need them.”
“I like her, Tater,” Mama whispered to me, loud as hell.
Before I could even say anything, she and Tam had swept Rori away, talking her ear off about something.
Grandma Jenny turned to me with a grin. “And you were worried about me taking your bitch?”
My eyes went wide. “I wasn’t worried…”
For a long time, I wasn’t allowed to play in the dirt.
There were no early mornings with the chickens, rough-housing with the dogs in the yard, learning to ride, or rope. On occasion, I could ride beside my father or Grandpa Nelson in the tractor, but only under immense secrecy and the rare occurrence that my mother wasn’t home.
I hated that shit.
Long before I ever understood why there was that difference between what was allowed for my siblings, but not me, I resented it.
Hell, I resented it after I understood too.
They were learning to be ranchers while I was cooped up in the house, watching from the windows until I got brave enough to start sneaking out. I wanted to do what they were doing, learning the family business, developing skills as a ranch hand.
Every time I got caught, I was dragged back to the house and lectured on the danger of me being out there without supervision. It was a reminder that I was different.
That I was weak.
While my brothers were learning to rope, building fences, mowing, being taught to drive, I was struggling through occupational therapy to get my physical development caught up to my age. Motor skills that came naturally to them, were hindered by neuropathy and the associated pain of it for me.
It often felt pointless.
Strides forward were followed by setback after setback.
Which led to a long period where I wouldn’t even try, even under threat of whoopings, punishments, whatever. None of that shit meant anything anyway, not compared to what I was living with.
Every adult in the family tried reasoning with me, and I wasn’t hearing any of it.
Ultimately… my siblings roasted me into it.
Even if nothing else was going to move me, the approval/disgust of them, especially Tam and Tim, was gonna do it every damn time.
They were vicious with it, saying shit that could probably qualify as hate crimes, but it certainly worked.
I had to prove them wrong.
The pain, frustration, failures, none of it mattered, as long as by the “end” of it, I was able to pass every milestone they put in front of me.
And I hadn’t stopped since then.
My father eventually had to intervene to get my mother off my back so I could really fly. I loved the outdoors, loved the ranch, but never did find myself as connected to it as the rest of the family, after losing those years to the disability caused by my birth injury.
Instead… I focused on football.
My neuropathy was still not completely understood, and certainly not pristinely managed, so it was rough for a while. Mean ass kids with ugly things to say about my sometimes less-than-graceful movements didn’t make things better. I learned how to fight though, so there was a silver lining even in that.
Sports therapists helped my family better understand how to navigate my disability, how to manage symptoms with specific supplements, where to build strength in certain muscles to take pressure and stress off certain nerves, all that.
Football…
“Changed your life.” Rori nodded from beside me in the four-wheeler.
After breakfast, I’d finally gotten her away from Mama and Tam, and had been driving her around to show her the property as I fielded her questions about my childhood. Mama had told her part of the story… now she wanted mine.
“Yeah,” I agreed, stopping at the top of a hill for a moment to let her take in the view. From here, more than half the property was visible, albeit much of it at a distance. The residential zone, the oversized vegetable garden, the crops, the cattle fields, all the way to the river that marked the property line on that side.
It was beautiful.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at a large home set between the vegetable garden and a huge field of colorful flowers.
I grinned. “You know how BabyBee is your life’s work?” I asked, and she nodded. “Well… Wildflowers is my mother’s,” I explained. “It’s a pediatric therapy center, the kind of thing she wishes had been more readily available to me as a kid.”
“Really?!” Rori gushed. “That’s amazing! She didn’t say anything about it when we were talking though.”
I nodded. “She can’t talk about it without talking about me and my experience,” I chuckled. “Which, from your reaction to the NICU thing, she probably knew I hadn’t shared yet, so…”
“She was waiting for us to talk,” Rori mused. “Makes sense. Why am I just now finding out about all this, by the way?”
“The same reason I just found out about your sister today,” I countered, and she pressed her lips together, nodding.
“Fair enough. I wasn’t keeping it a secret though. It’s just… kinda heavy, you know? And we’ve been vibing, having a good time. This isn’t supposed to be about heavy stuff, so I wanted to keep it light.”
“Fa sho,” I agreed. “That doesn’t mean we can’t talk, get to know each other… get harassed by the other’s family,” I added, cringing. “Sorry about that, by the way. I should have given you a little more warning.”
“They were fine,” Rori said, waving me off. “Trust me, if you ever happen to run across my mama… that lady is gonna embarrass both of us. Bad.”
“Wait, how she gonna embarrass me?”
Rori laughed. “You’ll see. Just you wait,” she said, and then must’ve had something flash in her mind, ’cause she wrinkled her face. “I… sorry,” she said. “That’s so presumptive, and a little creepy. Why would you be meeting my mother? I?—”
“Nah,” I said, grabbing her hand to stop her spiral down the road of second-guesses. “I definitely gotta meet her now.”