47. Hi, Gorgeous. #3
“Jada.” I shook my head at her. Not worth it. I'd planned to nod at Ma's advice and let it slide off, the way I always did.
“No, Lyss.” Jada looked around at the three of us. “That man flew up here. For Alyssa. Nobody asked him to. And the first thing out of your mouth when she walks in is hold on to him. Like she's the only one responsible for the holding.”
“She should hold on to him,” Ma said. “What's wrong with that?”
Tamika set her own cup down. “You told her the same thing about Malik.”
“That was different.”
“You raised us to be strong, Ma.” Tamika said.
“But everything you taught us was how to survive a man who wasn’t good to us.
Hold on to him. But don’t need him. Keep your own money.
Stay strong enough to carry what he won’t.
” She paused. “Now you’re handing Alyssa that same advice for a man who’s good to her.
And they don’t fit. You can’t stay armored up against somebody who’s only trying to love you. ”
The last time I'd cried at this table about my marriage, she'd told me to be strong and hold it together because I had a child.
“She’s right. You did give the same conflicting advice.
” I said. “I’ve gotten the same advice from you my whole life, pointed two different directions.
With Malik it was shrink so you can survive him.
Now with Julian it’s the same words except now I’m supposed to shrink so I can keep him.
Different men. Same instruction. Be less, and expect less, so it hurts less when it goes. ”
“I never told you to be less!”
“You didn’t have to say it in so many words, Ma. It’s the air we grew up breathing. And I’m not blaming you. I chose Malik. You handed me a map, but I’m the one who followed it.”
Ma looked down for a long moment. “I did the best I knew,” she said. “With what I had for you girls. Raschad too. The best I could.” She looked at the table a long time. When she spoke she didn’t look up, and her voice went flat.
“Your father promised me the sun, moon, and the stars. I believed him. Staked my future on him. Gave him everything in me. And what did he do? Got me where he wanted me then treated me like dirt. Had other women before Tamika was even born. Cheated through every pregnancy. Never really held down a steady job because he was busy chasing dreams.” She looked at her hands.
“I stayed anyway just for him to leave me anyway. Five babies and nobody to hand one of them to. And I never asked for a dime. Rolled up my sleeves and made it happen. Strong was what I had left after he got done making a fool of me. And I survived. And I taught all of you to be strong, so you could survive it too.”
She looked at all of us.
“So don’t sit around my table and make me the bad guy.
I fed all of you. On my own, no husband, no help.
You never went to bed hungry a night in your life, and you don’t know what it cost me.
If the best I had was strong, that’s what you got.
I’m not apologizing for the thing that kept this family off the street. ”
Then she looked at me. “You want to know why I tell you to hold on to him and don’t need him in the same breath?
Because I want you to have that man so bad I could cry sitting here.
But life is life, baby. So if it doesn’t work out, I want you to be able to get through it.
I don’t know how to want a thing for any of you girls and not brace it to be lost.”
“Here’s the difference I’ve just come to realize, Ma.
” I waited until she looked at me. “Being small for Malik never bought me a thing. I shrank, I stayed strong, I wanted less. And guess what? I was miserable the whole time anyway, AND I was miserable when it ended. All that armor didn’t save me from one day of it.
It just cost me the years on top of it.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Julian’s the opposite. I’m happy. Every day I’m with him I’m getting the thing I spent my whole life certain I’d never get.
So if it ends, if I lose him, it won’t have been for nothing.
I’ll have had a great love, for however long I had it.
But I only get that if I actually let myself have it.
If I keep part of myself in a drawer so the fall won’t hurt as bad, then I never really had it at all.
And that’s the only way losing him would be a waste. ”
“Bracing made sense with Malik. There was nothing good to protect. With Julian, bracing is the one thing that could ruin it. So I’m not doing it anymore. Whatever happens with him, I’m all in.”
Ma looked at me a long moment. “Okay,” she said.
She didn’t promise to change. She didn’t tell me I was right. She wiped under one eye with the side of her thumb, quick, like she was mad at the tear for showing, and said again, quieter, to the table more than to me. “I did the best I could.”
After a while we talked about other things, and the fresh pot finished, and the afternoon went on around us, and the thing we’d finally said out loud sat there at the table with us, not fixed. Just said.