Angela Flournoy - The Turner House

“Well, we’re not selling the house, especially not for no four thousand dollars,” Marlene said.

“Yeah,” Netti added. “We sell it today and in ten years Donald Trump or somebody will buy it, build a townhouse, and sell it to some white folks for two hundred grand.”

Everyone, faces stricken, acknowledged the truth in this.

“That’s the way the east side is gonna go eventually,” Russell said. He balanced precariously on the barstool; it was a bit too narrow for his behind. “People are just walking away from their houses, and the city’s makin it too hard for other folks to buy them. Talkin about you have to pay the back taxes and what all else. Even on empty lots! They should be happy somebody wants to mow the grass.”

“But let some millionaire offer to buy a whole bunch of lots at once,” Troy said, “and all of a sudden the city will start cutting deals for them. Pennies on the dollar, I bet you anything.”

“Well y’all don’t have any other ideas, do you?” Cha-Cha asked.

A moment passed in silence. Cha-Cha wondered why he’d even called this meeting in the first place. A Turner family meeting rarely ended in agreement.

“What does Mama say?” Marlene asked. She looked from Cha-Cha to Tina, who was leaning on the kitchen counter, and back to Cha-Cha again. “What’s she wanna do?”

Tina coughed and turned away to check on her chicken in the oven.

“Cha-Cha? Please tell me you clued Mama in to all this.” Marlene’s eyebrows folded into a frown, causing her high forehead to break into a series of ripples. “I keep telling y’all she’s not a baby. It’s her house, she shoulda been the first one to have a say.”

Cha-Cha would have liked to remind Marlene that he was Viola’s legal guardian—a role he took on after her last stroke—and that he would be the executor of her estate when she passed, pitiable as that estate might be. He would have liked to tell her that as far as the law went, Viola might as well be a baby because his decision was the only one that would matter in the end. But Marlene’s wrath was infamous, first exhibited at age nine when she plotted for an entire week to get even with her younger brother Lonnie for breaking her Easy-Bake Oven, and finally found vengeance by dropping him on his head in front of the entire family during an impromptu performance of Ice Capades (wherein the children “skated” on socks across the waxed living room floor). Lonnie had needed ten stitches. Cha-Cha had no desire to call forth such rancor now.

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s go ask her.”

Viola’s room shouldered a burden designed for a much larger space. The pictures that once crammed the common rooms on Yarrow Street had been shoehorned into this one, producing an effect not unlike the famous-patron photos that smothered the walls of pizzerias and Greek diners throughout the city. Every relative pictured looked a little more important than they were in real life. The room, chosen for its abundance of natural light, had belonged to Todd, Cha-Cha’s younger son, before it was Viola’s, and despite new furniture and professional carpet shampooing, a faint smell of adolescent armpit and athletic socks lingered. Marlene entered first, with Russell on her heels and Francey and Cha-Cha behind them. Troy and Netti stood in the doorway. Tina opted to stay in the kitchen.

A matriarch, even one who demurred at that title and its pressures as often as Viola did, is a hard thing to lose. The Turners had to reckon with the loss of their matriarch every day they laid eyes on her. Viola had been a thickset woman, the origin of the Turner hourglass shape that had set east side men to drooling for five decades. Time had finally claimed those curves in Viola’s seventies, and the stroke the year before had withered her still-shapely legs. The right leg was all but immobile now. She’d held together for ages, then every part of her seemed to collapse within six months. Marlene, Russell, and Francey appeared unbothered by the tight confines of the room, but Troy and Netti, more sparing with their visits, were shaken. Cha-Cha lived two bedrooms down from Viola, and still he felt a shock every time he came through her door. His mind held a crystallized image of his mother from a specific epoch in his own life, and it was hard for him to reconcile it with current reality. Cha-Cha would always imagine her in her late fifties, all thirteen children born, wide-hipped and heavy-chested, carrying both of his young sons with more ease than even Tina, thirty-something at the time, could muster. The woman lying on the bed now, not at all asleep, using the remote control on her lap to flip through TV channels, was a stranger. More than Francis Turner, Viola had always seemed the type to just drop dead one day, not wither slowly. She lowered the remote and regarded this incomplete amalgamation of her brood.

“Now I know it can’t be my birthday already, can it?” She said. “Russie, why ain’t you tell me we were celebratin my birthday today?”

They moved toward her, kissed her cheeks and gripped her papery hand.

“Mama, you know it ain’t your birthday,” Marlene said. “You’re more than a month out. We’re having a family meeting tonight.”

“Oh Lord,” Viola said. “About what? Y’all votin on something? You know Cha-Cha’s gone do what he wanna do. Ain’t no democracy in this family.”

Cha-Cha felt his face burn and heard his siblings snicker. Troy snorted.

“No I’m not, Mama,” Cha-Cha said. “If we vote, I’ma listen. One man or woman, one vote.”

Russell sat on the edge of the mechanical hospital bed and put his hand on Viola’s good leg.

“It’s about your house,” he said. “We owe the bank more than it’s worth now. To be exact, we owe forty—”

“Bottom line, Mama,” Francey interrupted. “Do you think we should sell the house? Or do you want us to figure out a way to keep it?”

“Well, it’s not that simple,” Russell said. “That’s why I was tryna break it down for her.”

“She understands , Russell, god-lee,” Marlene said.

“Just let Russell finish,” Netti said. “Before Mama gets confused.”

“Who’s confused?” Viola asked. “Y’all ain’t even said nothin yet. I know how much we owe the bank, Netti. You forget I was there when we did it?”

Netti, chastened, said she remembered.

“And I don’t wanna lose it,” Viola continued. “I plan on movin back just as soon as I get strong again. Just a couple more months.”

Viola continued to flip through channels. She paused briefly on a megachurch telethon.

“Why everybody lookin at me crazy? I’m serious. A few more months is all I need, so just sit tight. Shoot, I ain’t fixin to be up in this room forever.”

She flipped through channels some more and finally settled on an old western, replete with covered wagons and pew - pew gunshot sound effects. She leaned back on her pillows and yawned, signaling she no longer wanted to be bothered.

Back in the kitchen, Tina was dicing a mound of boiled potatoes for salad. The Turner siblings returned to their seats in the dining room. Each felt a coward for not pointing out the obvious to Viola. She would never live on Yarrow again.

“You short-sell that house, it won’t even be worth four thousand,” Troy said. He’d found a toothpick and talked while jabbing the thing at his gums. “Mrs. Gardenhire’s son, not the one strung out on herr-on but the younger one, Dave? He bought that house next door to them for only fifteen hundred. And that was back in ’03. What we should do is short-sell to somebody in the family, but someone that you can’t prove is family on paper. That way we still own it, and only have to pay what it’s worth now.”