Angela Flournoy - The Turner House

Tina jabbed a finger at her own chest.

“You got no right to humiliate me just cause you’re having a crisis. Especially after I offered to listen, to help, to do whatever , and you pushed me away.”

“Alright,” Cha-Cha said. “I think we both need to calm down some. At least come outside before Mama gets upset.”

He walked over to the sliding glass door leading out to the deck, gestured for Tina to follow him. Tina picked up the folded printout on her way and pushed it against his chest.

“Matthew five twenty-eight,” she said. “I know you know what it says.”

Cha-Cha unfolded the paper. The Rothmans looked up at him. For a moment he considered capitulating; he had indeed been unfaithful under Matthew’s parameters, and by proxy Jesus’, but then he saw an opportunity for leverage.

“See, that right there is what all of this boils down to, Tina. You don’t even see me as a person anymore. I’m just a body to toss scripture at and guilt-trip all the damn time.”

“Oh, that’s real clever—”

“You act like I’m not saved enough for you, but that’s not how belief works. Just cause you wanna spend all day churching with your friends doesn’t mean I’m not worthy. It doesn’t make me the devil.”

“All day churching? You never come to church anymore, Cha. Not ever. And I know it’s not cause you don’t believe, it’s cause you think you’re better than everybody there. Smarter than everybody there. But you can’t even figure out why you’re seeing ghosts! I’m not gonna let you blame me and what I do at church for this. Try something else.” She turned her back on him and walked to the far end of the deck. Cha-Cha followed.

“It’s not about blame,” he said. “It’s about giving each other what we need.”

Tina spun around, incredulous.

“What we need? Sounds like some stuff you got from that shrink. For the majority of my life I’ve given you everything you’ve asked for, and a whole lot more you didn’t, and I don’t think you ever really thought what it took for me to give all that. The other night you acted all miserable because your body wouldn’t cooperate when you were ready to make love. Well, guess what, Cha? That’s been the story of my life since menopause! But do I blame you and ruin things? No, I blamed myself. I got hormone pills and crazy bottles of lube and stuff from the ladies at church—oh, I know you think they’re too stuck up to have that kinda stuff, but they do —and I made it work. I did it for you, not to keep you, but because I love you. But I bet you thought it was all magic, huh?”

“Tina, I . . . this isn’t . . .” Cha-Cha tried. “Nobody ever said—”

“And the thing that’s really embarrassing is that I still want you, old as we both are. Last night and too many nights. I’m embarrassed by it, Cha-Cha. Really.”

She covered her mouth with her hand and stifled a sob. Cha-Cha knew better than to say anything else. He could elicit pity by telling her about his trip to the hospital, simply lift up his sleeve so she could see where the IV had been. But that did not negate the feelings he had for Alice—feelings that had not quite disappeared—and he was not interested in Tina filling the role of caregiver anymore. She walked back to the sliding glass door.

“Your mother is dying , Cha-Cha. Ain’t no more quick fixes left for her. And you two don’t even talk. More than everything else, that’s a problem. I’d like to be here for her until she’s gone, but after all of this—”

Tina did not finish the thought. She slid the door open and left Cha-Cha outside.

LELAH AND Viola sat on the edge of Viola’s bed, perfectly still, trying to eavesdrop. After Cha-Cha and Tina moved to the back deck and out of earshot, Lelah convinced her mother to lie back down. Viola’s weight loss was evident: her thick blue diabetic’s socks, usually tight, pooled around her knobby ankles. The springs in the bed, which Lelah recalled being loud, made no noise under Viola’s weight. When Lelah first walked in she had found Viola sitting on the edge of the bed trying with all of her body to listen to the argument unfolding on the other side of the door. She was trembling from the effort, her torso sloping to one side.

“Were you even supposed to be sitting up, Mama?” Lelah said. “I thought you had to rest your neck.”

“It don’t hurt. I’m all doped up now,” Viola said. “I been telling them doctors I need stronger medicine. They didn’t never wanna give it, but now cause I’m dying for real they went on and gave me everything.”

They heard stomping through the living room, then the hollow clang of the garage door slamming.

“What exactly did the doctors say?”

“Cancer in my lymph nodes, and some in my lungs, too.”

Lelah sat down in the little armchair wedged between the bed and the window. She picked up bottles of lotions and nail polish and pretended to read their labels.

“And what did you say to that?”

Viola blinked several times and yawned.

“Oh, I don’t know. It was cold in there. You remember how that chemo did Marlene? All that weight gone, then back, then gone. Ain’t enough of me for that.”

Lelah nodded. She had often detected an undercurrent of melodramatic dread in her mother’s words. Growing up it was if Viola had expected to lose a child, or that she’d never expected her own life to go on for as long as it had. How to act when the end was truly near?

“So you got more drugs for now,” she said. “Then what?”

“Nothing. Cancer takes too long. That’s why I’m not foolin with no treatments. It’s just gone drag it out more. Naw, baby, not for me.”

Viola closed her eyes and wiggled her feet under the blanket. She was high off of pain meds. Not enough to be incoherent, but enough to make her sassier than Lelah had seen her in a long time. Lelah climbed into the bed next to her mother. The corners of Viola’s mouth turned up in a smile.

When Cha-Cha rescued Lelah and Brianne from Missouri, he had brought them to this house. Lelah had slept in this room for an entire day, and Tina had looked after Brianne. Lelah had heard Brianne’s cries through these walls, or thought she did, but she could not muster the strength to go to her daughter. It was like she’d been drugged. The weight of her own body, thinner than she would ever be again, was too much to maneuver. Lelah had not cried; she just stared at the ceiling and tried to figure out why she’d married Vernon in the first place, why she hadn’t thought of any other plan for herself. At the twenty-four-hour mark she sat up, a new question in her mind: what would she do now? She was twenty-two years old, and the only answer that came was work and raise your daughter. Now, back at this place, Lelah saw it had cost too much to aim for so little.

“You’re not even afraid to die?” she asked.

Viola scrunched up her nose and shifted her torso as if trying to get away from Lelah. Without the upper-body strength required for a full scoot, she ended up rocking from side to side for a moment and resettling. She opened one reproachful eye.

“You smell like smoke. Like a pool hall or someplace. When you start that? ”

“You know I don’t smoke, Mama. I was around some smokers yesterday. I need to take a shower.”

“I don’t know what’s worse, smokin or drinkin. Your daddy used to drink, you know.”

“Everybody knows that.”

“Your daddy was always worried , worried himself drunk. So worried about what didn’t happen at his job, with the house, on the street. Worried about heaven and hell. Waste of time.”