Searching for Tina Turner - By Jacqueline E. Luckett Page 0,41
the table.
“It won’t take long. Please.”
Kendrick picks up a piece of toast with his hands and folds it into a pizza-like wedge before swallowing it in two bites. Camille stabs the toast with her fork and drags it onto her plate. Even now Camille dips. She never pours gravy onto her mashed potatoes; she dips forkfuls of the creamy side dish into the gravy boat, or chunks of bread into melted butter. When Camille was eight, Lena decided not to stop the habit and bought her a tiny, bone-china dipping pot.
“I want you to understand that separating from your father doesn’t mean that I don’t love you or that life won’t be the same.” Lena looks from Kendrick to Camille. Two sets of eyes roam from food to table to each other; anywhere but their mother’s eyes. “I don’t know how to explain to you what has happened. I’m not sure I fully understand it myself.”
“I don’t know what’s going on. All I know is that you haven’t been Mom, Mom, in a while.” Kendrick fidgets with his keys, sticking each of them into the lock on the door, even though only one fits. “And, I can’t speak for Camille, but this is between you and Dad. I’m going back to Chicago as soon as summer school starts. Dad already agreed.”
“I guess… I mean it’s scary. You know? My life should be about college and prom and graduation, not my parents’ problems,” Camille mutters. “Dad told us he’s in the middle of some crazy shit at work, and you don’t do anything to help.”
“I’m not going to argue with either one of you. You have no idea of how it is between married couples. You don’t understand my sacrifices.”
“Those were your choices, Mom.” Kendrick opens the back door and steps out as if his abruptness will change her decision.
“Are you getting divorced?” Camille pushes food around her plate.
“Nothing is settled. No matter what happens, graduation will be the same. For now, I assume, your Dad will stay in TIDA’s corporate apartment.”
“Can I stay with him?”
“I’d like you to stay with me.” At the sink, Lena runs water into the teakettle and sets it onto the burner. She angles her head so that Camille cannot see her face and the tears she tries hard to blink away. When steam hisses from the capped spout, she reaches into the glass cabinet behind her and pulls out two flowery teacups. A heaping dollop of honey, lemon, and chamomile tea go into the cups. Lena sets a cup in front of Camille.
When Camille was ten, Lena started a tradition similar to the one her Auntie Big Talker had with her seven nieces: they gathered once a month for a manners and vocabulary lesson and lemon- and honey-laden tea. While the cousins sipped their tea, Auntie Big Talker read to them: the encyclopedia, obscure English novels, the dictionary. She made them write the words they didn’t understand on three-by-five cards and insisted the cousins memorize them. Conundrum irritates Lena’s tongue now. There is a riddle, but no amusement; no pun in the answer to what mother and daughter can do to get along.
For her version of the ritual, Lena took Camille to a collectables store and together they selected teacups and matching saucers. At the bookstore, they searched the shelves until they came across a book about a gutsy little girl who braved her way through a country swamp. Then they sat at the table in front of the kitchen window, the three tall pine trees outside the sole witnesses to their closeness. They sipped tea, ate too many cookies and read aloud to each other. In the years that followed, the last Saturday of the month was theirs. They read the swamp girl’s story more times than either of them could remember, all of Beverly Cleary’s books—it was because of Ramona’s cat, Socks, that Camille fell in love with cats—and The Count of Monte Cristo. They talked about the world and life and what Camille might be when she grew up.
“I’m late for school.” Camille shoves the untouched tea across the table. She is upstairs and back out of the house before Lena can figure out what more to say.
Lena feels it; a barely perceptible rumble on her emotional Richter scale. She understands it: another shift. A shift from her cocoon, her warm fuzzy life, the lovely family she worked so hard for has a nasty crack and may soon rupture and split.