to some folks who don’t remember where she came from. And what kind of ‘working’ did she do to get outta Leanin’ Tree? All she did was outlive her lowlife daddy. Odette, tell her your mama’s back and that she’s fixin’ to haunt the fuck outta her. Go on, tell ’er.”
I hadn’t seen Minnie McIntyre come in, but I heard the tinkling of a bell and turned to see her standing just behind me. Minnie had taken to wearing her fortune-telling turban with its tiny silver bell all the time. She said that, because she was so near death, Charlemagne the Magnificent had more messages for her than ever. So she wouldn’t miss one of those messages, she made sure to always have her bell at the ready. My first thought was Oh great, now Mama will never shut up.
When Mama was alive, just the sight of Minnie McIntyre was enough to start her cussing and spitting. I prepared myself to hear her let loose with a foul-mouthed tirade. But Mama was watching Denise as she attempted to corral my grandkids. She wasn’t thinking about Minnie. Mama heard Denise call her daughter by her name, Dora, and I thought she was going to fall out on the floor.
Mama was in my business so much that I had forgotten she wasn’t a daily part of my children’s lives, too. She hadn’t seen them in years and didn’t know her great-grandchildren at all. Now she’d discovered that she had a cute little namesake running around and it had knocked the wind out of her sails. She went silent and tottered off behind the kids. After all the shocks she’d handed me, it was kind of nice to see Mama taken by surprise for a change.
Barbara Jean stood talking with Erma Mae on the other side of the living room from me. She nodded her head and pretended to listen to whatever Erma Mae was saying to her. But I could see that she was staring at my grandkids, especially my grandson William, just as hard as Mama was. Barbara Jean did that from time to time, saw boys around eight or nine years old and couldn’t draw her eyes away from them. I knew she was thinking of Adam. How could she not? Sure, Adam and William looked nothing alike. My grandson inherited my roundness and cocoa skin, and Adam was a buttercream-colored string bean. But they shared that same wild energy and heartbreaking sweetness that little boys have in those brief years before your presence bores and annoys them and they can’t abide an embrace. Barbara Jean’s boy would never grow out of that phase.
Barbara Jean watched my grandson as he zipped through the room, tormenting my cats with an overabundance of affection and charming guests with his big smile. When my son-in-law sensed that William was becoming too rambunctious for the crowd and carried his giggling and squirming son out of the room under his arm, Barbara Jean looked like she might cry. I’d have bet good money that she was seeing Lester and Adam just like I was, remembering how Lester couldn’t resist hoisting Adam in the air whenever that boy was within reach. If Lester’d had his way, Adam’s feet would never have touched the ground. Barbara Jean walked away from Erma Mae then, heading in the direction of the vodka.
That year’s party was the biggest ever. It was like everybody we’d ever met came by to say hello. Or, more likely, they came to say goodbye. Nothing like a little touch of cancer to get folks to feel all sentimental about you, whether they cared for you or not. But by midnight most of the guests had left. Mama retired to the family room to coo over her great-grandkids, who had collapsed on the couch alongside Clarice’s grandson by then. I was dead on my feet and longed to stretch out and rest, but I went into the kitchen to do some cleaning up. I opened the kitchen door to find my Denise and Clarice’s Carolyn washing dishes, laughing and talking the same way they had done when they were girls. I stood there for a few seconds watching them—both of them smart, strong, and happy. Well, I thought, looks like Clarice and I did at least one thing right.
A hand touched my shoulder and I turned to see Richmond. He whispered into my ear, “Listen, Odette, Clarice and I are leaving, and we’re taking Barbara Jean.