Margaret Sexton: A Kind of Freedom

Jackie and Mama just smiled.

“Well, you’d have them out all hours, then wonder why the feel of their mattress didn’t put them in the mind for rest,” Mama said.

“Well, I had to work.” Aunt Ruby’s voice began to rise. “I had to provide a steady home. Must be nice to have a—”

“Chasing men,” Mama muttered.

“What?” Aunt Ruby jerked her head up.

Jackie didn’t even look up from her magazine. When it came to her sister, Mama couldn’t be without her, but she couldn’t say a positive thing about her either. Times like these it was best for Jackie to just nod.

Her daddy walked in the room then, wearing the same tracksuit as Mama, only its stripes were blue instead of pale green. Sometimes her parents were so in sync it made her sick. He squeezed Jackie’s arm. “You okay, princess? You seem a little down.”

“I said the same thing, Renard, but it’s just that she’s tired. You didn’t get up with those babies, so you don’t remember, but I remember. Oh, I remember,” Mama added.

Then they began to bicker in their sweet way about who got up when, and Jackie shut out their sounds, asked herself the same questions they had. What was it that had come over her, a darkness of some manner? Of course she’d been this way when Terry first left, but she’d been steadily improving, and she didn’t know what it was about the day that made her feel like every evenness she’d regained was being snatched back, that she was doomed to a certain and dark fate, that that fate was upon her even now and she could barely walk through it, it clung to her so thickly.

The door to the nursery opened, and Jackie heard her sister’s heels clacking against the hardwood floor, smelled her Armani perfume before she saw her. Since Jackie had started working at the nursery a few months earlier, she and her parents and sometimes Aunt Ruby ate dinner together every night. Nothing fancy, whatever Mama had prepared for the kids’ lunch, spaghetti with sausage and meatballs, red beans, beef stew or cabbage and rice. Jackie had dreaded those meals at first. Her depression wanted to extend itself, wanted to strap her to her couch at home eating TV dinners in front of Murder, She Wrote , but it was those meals with her parents that had brought her back to her own. They didn’t talk about much: layoffs, what the Saints might do next season, but it was more the chemistry of them together, the soft rhythm of it that reminded her so thoroughly of her time as a child that she could convince herself her biggest problem was whether she’d learn to fishtail her doll baby’s hair before her playdate with Lucita McConduit.

Now her sister was here with her waxed eyebrows, red blush, and pink lipstick, her shoulders pushing through the top of her business suit, and her pumps making such a racket Jackie was certain she’d wake the baby. Jackie looked down at her own washed-out sweatshirt and faded jeans. She was still looking down when Sybil kissed her on the cheek, which in itself felt condescending. They didn’t do that with each other. It was likely something she learned from one of her law school friends, and it was all well and good when Jackie had her man beside her, certain Sybil would study herself into a lonely oblivion, but now they were both alone, and Sybil’s alligator bag probably cost Jackie’s rent.

“Where’s my baby?” Sybil scanned the room looking for T.C. and Mama had to shush her. “He just went down. Let Jackie Marie have a break.”

“He’ll be up after dinner, wanting to eat what I eat,” Jackie chuckled, and Sybil wrinkled her nose as if Jackie had told a tasteless joke, or farted.

“What a nice surprise.” Daddy walked back in from washing up and hugged his oldest daughter.

Sybil’s face lit up when she saw him. “I got off early and knew you’d be here,” she said.

“Good. You deserve a break. Well, stay for dinner, darling. Mama made some butter beans and salad, didn’t you, Mother?”

Mama just nodded. She had already laid the plates out in the kitchen and added another setting before they said a quick grace. By the time Jackie was halfway through her meal, Sybil still hadn’t spoken, and Jackie prayed the rest of the dinner would pass that way. She knew Mama had made Jackie’s favorite that morning, bread pudding, but she was willing to forego it to skip out on a conversation with her sister.

Sybil cleared her throat. “I have some news.”

“Oh, Lord, are you pregnant?” Aunt Ruby asked.

“God, no, Aunt Ruby.” Sybil shook her head.

“Well, is there a man at least?” Aunt Ruby went on.

“Let her say it, Ruby,” Daddy said, his mouth full.

Mama and Jackie glanced at each other, then looked away. Neither felt up to Sybil since she graduated law school ten years earlier. It wasn’t the accomplishment itself. Jackie loved visiting Sybil’s office, looping around Lee Circle past the streetcars ambling onto Poydras, peering up at the Superdome scaling the sky. Her sister had always said she wanted to be a lawyer, but given she didn’t start law school until she hit thirty, everybody believed she’d talk her dream out until it was drained of all its power. Still, she had done it, and Jackie felt a vicarious surge in her own confidence when Sybil passed the bar. No, it wasn’t the accomplishment itself that made Jackie dread her sister’s presence. It was the way Sybil tried to make her feel about it.

Daddy though was proud on all accounts. It was as if Sybil’s achievement had brought them closer. Jackie had been his favorite growing up. He had fawned over her when she was a girl, enraptured by her descriptions of her best friends’ Uptown houses: their wide-open pools and terraced decks. The two drifted apart some when Daddy opened Action Academy. Jackie was in high school, and she had her own life, cheerleading practices and Terry’s football games, and it was Sybil who had helped Daddy most days, bleaching the changing tables, folding spare clothes, and driving to the discount warehouse every week for boxes and boxes of baby wipes. Then Jackie got married, and Sybil went on to law school, and now Daddy sat with his mouth gaping as his oldest daughter went on about her cases. If she paused for even a second, Daddy would jump in with yet another question: How she’d decide whether to settle or go to trial, whether she had considered advertising like that fellow Morris Bart. If so, he had thought of a slogan: No Need to Retort, I’ll See You in Court .

“Well, you know that contract I was trying to snag with Taco Bell, Daddy,” Sybil went on now. “I think it’s going to work out this time. They called me in twice for an interview. I met with the regional manager.”

“The regional manager. Isn’t that Jack Jackson? He used to try to talk to me back in the day,” Jackie said to have something to say, but Sybil snapped back in that tone she’d used since childhood, “Jack Jackson manages the Taco Bell in the East of New Orleans. I’m talking about the manager of the Taco Bells all over Southeastern Louisiana.”

Jackie didn’t say anything to that, just kept her head down, scooped out some more rice.

“That’s great, baby, that’s really something,” Daddy said again, his mouth wide enough to fit the table through it.

Sybil was beaming too. “I know, Daddy. It’s been a long time coming. I can’t do criminal law anymore. It’s starting to eat at me, all these black men on the street.”

Daddy nodded. “Not to mention how dangerous it is.”

It was as if it were a conversation between the two of them and Aunt Ruby, Jackie and Mama were just some fixtures to navigate around, a table leg that dangled, a chair that creaked when you applied too much weight. Jackie suddenly tried to fumble through her past for fodder, which high-end Creole boy had asked her out, her playdates with the Haydels and Davieliers, but it was no use. She was thrilled to hear T.C.’s wails, but Sybil stood up the same time she did, as if she had as much right to the room where the baby slept.