right behind it. Paula pulled in, ate a couple of antacids to calm her nervous stomach, and got out of the car. Maybe she should put this off until tomorrow or the next day, or after she’d had the baby.
Mitzi and Jody met her at the sidewalk leading up to the small-frame house with red roses climbing up the porch posts. Paula usually loved the sweet scent of the flowers, but on this day they almost gagged her.
Jody looped her arm in Paula’s. “I’m not pregnant. I took a test today and it’s negative.”
“I almost stopped and bought a test for you. Glad I didn’t.” Paula dreaded going into the house. The outside always looked like something out of a gardening magazine, and there wouldn’t be a spot of dust on the inside. But if it was true that the heart of a home was the mother, then the core of that place was rotten.
“You okay?” Mitzi asked.
“No, but I will be in a little while.” Paula sat down on the porch swing. “I need just a minute. I used to sit here for five minutes when I came home from school to get settled before I went in the house, and I still do every time I come over here. That’s Selena’s new car out there. Y’all know that she’s always driven a small car, liked tiny jewelry rather than the big clunky stuff like I wear, and now she’s all taken up with little dogs. She has a Chihuahua that she carries in her purse, so get ready for it.”
“Maybe it makes her feel smaller than she is,” Mitzi said.
“Probably,” Paula agreed.
“Can’t they hear us?” Jody whispered.
“No, they’re watching television.” Paula pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped sweat from her brow. She’d dreaded this moment for months, but it would all be over in the next few minutes. No doubt, she’d take a mental beatdown, but at least it would be done and finished.
“Do we know if the baby is a boy or girl?” Mitzi asked.
Paula nodded. “Not saying yet. Okay, I’m ready. Let’s get it over with. Dammit! I turned thirty-two two months ago. Why do I feel like I’m a teenager coming in five minutes later than curfew?”
“Because you and I would give anything for our mothers to love us unconditionally. But, honey, it ain’t goin’ to happen.” Jody opened the old screen door and knocked.
Paula pushed past her, turned the knob, and went right inside without waiting for her mother to yell at them to come in. “She doesn’t get out of her chair except for meals and to go to the bathroom. It’s us, Mama,” she called out as all three of them made their way to the den at the back of the house.
“Selena is here, too.” Gladys’s voice sounded happy.
“I brought Mitzi and Jody, and we can only stay a little while.” Paula didn’t know what to do with her hands. She wanted to hold them over her stomach to protect her child from what was about to happen, but instead she dropped them to her sides.
“Oh.” Gladys’s tone changed instantly. “Well, y’all have a seat. I was hoping that you’d go to the drugstore for me before they close. Selena can’t stay long. She has to get home and cook supper for her husband.” Gladys shot Paula a dirty look. “I don’t guess you’re ever going to need to go home and cook, are you?”
“Probably not,” Paula said. “Hello, Selena.”
“What’s this big occasion?” Selena smiled. “Are you dating—better yet, are you engaged? We’ve been planning your wedding for the past half hour. I’d offer to let you wear my dress since that would get some use out of it other than dressing up a mannequin.” Her brown eyes started at Paula’s toes and traveled to her neck. “But then again, I’m so much smaller than you, it wouldn’t be possible.”
“I told Selena talking about you ever finding someone was just a pipe dream.” Gladys’s cold stare made Paula feel like a piece of trash.
Paula took a long look at her mother. One side of her chin-length gray hair was pulled back with a bobby pin. She wasn’t a big woman, but then she wasn’t a thin person, either. If someone put her in a crowd, there wasn’t one feature that would make them take a second look. Too bad she’d been a churchgoing woman all her life, because she would have made an excellent bank robber.
She smiled at that