Margaret Sexton: A Kind of Freedom

“Let me see him, Jackie, it’s been so long.”

Jackie nodded, smoothed her hands down the front of her work pants, which were already covered in dried paint.

“Just wash up first,” she added, but Sybil was already out of the room.

Sybil pranced back in with the baby on her shoulder, who to Jackie’s dismay didn’t cry. He’d stare up at Sybil, then jerk his head back in his mother’s direction.

“He’s trying to figure out who has him,” Mama said.

“He’s confused by the resemblance,” Daddy said at the same time, though the truth was Jackie and Sybil didn’t resemble each other in the least. Sybil had come out more like their father, with his bunched-up nose and lips; her skin was lighter than his, but not by much, and her hair wouldn’t lay flat if you dared it. Jackie on the other hand was tall and skinny with a size C cup and skin like the inside of an almond. Her hair fell down her back, and she sometimes spiral-rolled it and wore it curly, but mostly she let her mama straighten it, and that was when it reached her behind.

The baby seemed to soften Sybil. Expressions and words Jackie would never associate with her sister sprang out of her now.

“You’re so handsome, yes, you are, just as ooey gooey as a shmooey wooey.”

Jackie and her mama burst out laughing. Soon the whole room was in stitches and that ease that sprang from the mirth smoothed Jackie on the inside as she loaded the dishwasher, wiped down the counters.

Sybil’s comment was more jarring because it was unexpected. “Have you heard from Terry?”

Mama, Daddy, and Aunt Ruby had been cooing over T.C., but after Sybil’s question the room went silent. The thing was, everyone knew not to bring that up.

Jackie shook her head instead of answering, almost as if she didn’t trust her own voice.

“Good, the farther away he stays from you, the better. You and that precious angel.”

Jackie tended to feel the same way, and if anyone but Sybil had said it, she would have stressed her own agreement, might have added that even though she sometimes let him in the house, she had closed off any part of herself that was vulnerable to him:

She spoke in one-word sentences, she didn’t look in his eyes, and she never went over their past, how being with him in the beginning reminded her of the stories her daddy had told her about courting Mama. She had really believed their love was as full.

But Sybil spoke so authoritatively about matters she hadn’t earned the right to dominate. Jackie had let her have the edge on almost every subject: the work, the money, the house, the car. And now she was trying to edge her way into a part of life she didn’t understand, and Jackie had had enough.

“You don’t get it,” she snapped.

Sybil smirked, paused for a minute as if she was considering whether or not to speak. “What exactly don’t I get?” she asked finally.

“I mean to say,” Jackie stammered, “that it’s a complicated situation, not one you can sum up with one sentence the way you just tried to.”

Mama stepped in. “You want the rest of this milk for the baby?” She held up a bottle, shook it in Jackie’s face to get her attention.

Even Aunt Ruby tried: “You better be careful, Sybil. Every shut eye isn’t asleep.”

Sybil just ignored them. “Nothing complicated about crack,” she went on. “He’s either on it or he’s not, and chances are he is. So he needs to be gone.”

The thing was, Sybil had never even had a serious boyfriend. She had ideas about what she would do in Jackie’s situation: call the police on him, or burn all his things. Sometimes she’d ask Jackie questions she already knew the answer to just to get her riled up.

Did he even call you on your birthday, Jackie? What kind of man can’t remember to celebrate his own wife’s thirty-second? And you’re the one stuck with the baby while he’s out doing God knows what.

But her commentary didn’t work. It was true that Jackie felt overwhelmed — reading to the baby at night, making sure she stared at him while she spoke so he could see her lips moving, choosing the stroller, the car seat, the pediatrician. Making every goddamn single decision alone sucked every drop of energy out of her core. But Jackie knew Terry couldn’t help that crack had eaten up his mind, that if he had been himself, he would have sent her favorite flowers, petunias, just like old times, or taken her to dinner at Dooky Chase’s, and maybe a part of her was slumped in on itself, pricked free of air, but she couldn’t transfer that feeling into full-fledged anger.

In fact, standing here now beside her sister who had never laid beside a man in bed, listened to his dreams, then saw them dashed at every turn, who had never become so entwined with someone it was impossible to kick him out without feeling like a part of herself had been rejected, she had a sudden urge to defend Terry. Jackie wanted to tell her sister that she’d run into Terry’s white coworker a few months earlier, the same one who’d started Terry using, and the man had bragged to her that he’d been promoted. She might tell her too that both of Terry’s grandfathers had been alcoholics, that Terry’s daddy was one too, but he had abandoned Terry when Terry told him he was going to rehab, told Terry a real man would be able to stop on his own; she wanted to explain that Terry had been captain of the football team, president of their class, valedictorian of his pharmacy college, and though she hated his new track, she understood his sudden need to just breathe.

She didn’t say a word though, just turned the water off, reached for the baby, kissed her parents, and walked out.

The closer she got to her apartment, the stronger her anger grew. In the car, other instances of Sybil’s audacity sprang up for recognition, examination. Sybil had been the one to tell Jackie Terry was on crack in the first place. It was an absurd accusation. Terry had been valedictorian of St. Augustine and Xavier. Then with three offers in his hand, he’d accepted a job at the VA. He fell right in with his coworkers, the white boys from Brother Martin, who’d all gotten the job through connections. Jackie didn’t mind that he went out every other night with them. It was part of acclimating, he’d said, but even if he hadn’t said it, Jackie liked her alone time. As many friends as she had, there was something intoxicating about not having to rehearse every word before it left her mouth, revisit them once they drifted out. Then Reagan got elected with his tax cuts and spending bans, and it wasn’t long before everybody she knew knew somebody who was standing in the unemployment line. Right after Thanksgiving, it was the VA’s turn, and by Christmas, Terry was out.

Jackie didn’t think it was a big deal — he’d had so many offers he could just go back to one of the pharmacies he’d rejected. But that’s not the way it works, Jackie, Terry had snapped in a tone that was not of him, not of their relationship. He started staying out every night. Those same friends from work had kept their jobs and they were schooling Terry in how to get another one, he’d said. Still she noticed that his lips were cracked when they kissed, that he was never home, and when he was, he was sleeping, that his jeans sagged around the crotch, and that Sewerage and Water Board called her to say their bill was two months late. She just chalked it up to the new pressure of unemployment, even suggested she try to get work again. But he’d snapped at her then too. It wasn’t until Sybil came over for dinner. Terry had burst in their house, all jabber and quick moves, and after he left, Sybil turned to Jackie, said in a pitying tone that she’d seen the same signs in some of her clients, the emaciation, the restlessness. Jackie asked her to leave, threatened to call the cops when she wouldn’t budge. Even though she didn’t believe Sybil, Jackie confronted Terry when he got home. He cried, told her he had a problem, he wanted help, but didn’t know how to get it. He admitted that he started with the friends at work. First pills, then cocaine, and now he was running their savings dry chasing after crack. She vowed to stay with him. She didn’t understand the drug then. He went to rehab in Northwest Louisiana for two months and he came back with a light in his eyes and a calm about him. But it was still a tight market and nobody was hiring.