This is all a mistake. Isn’t it? It’s just a misunderstanding.
Fuck, I think as I drop my head and close my tired eyes. My mind’s playing tricks on me and my emotions are storming inside of me, whipping me around until I can’t think straight.
“Did he hit her?” I repeat myself, louder this time when neither of them answers. Auntie doesn’t say a damn thing, but she doesn’t stay silent either. She’s deliberate when she grabs one of the two cups off the table in front of us and makes her way around the other side of it, saying she’ll give us space.
It took me a long time to realize the reason for the tension between my auntie and my father.
He came from money, had a white-collar job. He was powerful, older and white, marrying a younger black woman from a poorer neighborhood. “Trophy wife” was a term used a lot when we were younger.
My mother once screamed at her family that they couldn’t be happy for her. That they hated him because he wasn’t like the rest of them.
I thought she was right because my grandmother, her mother, never did seem to like him. But then again, my father’s mother never seemed to like my mother. It went both ways. All of my grandparents died before I was ten and I hardly remember them but I do remember the way they looked at their child’s spouse. Like they didn’t belong together in any way.
I thought my auntie had the same ideas as my grandmother.
Until Mom left him one day, taking us to Auntie Susan’s and both of her sisters told her she needed to leave him. I was too young to realize what was going on. Cadence knew before I did. She’s younger, but she remembers far more than I do. That was the one and only time, though.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did,” my sister finally speaks, her voice lowered and careful. “They haven’t been getting along recently.”
“Well, what did Mom say?” I question her, feeling my pulse strike harder. I struggle with the way my sister sees my father. I know they had fights, they had bad moments, but there were so many good ones. So many times they kissed each other in front of us. So many happy memories and occasions that were pure joy. What they went through before was a rough patch. That’s what my mom said, it’s what she called it, a rough patch.
“I want to know what really happened,” I comment and as I do, I feel warm tears at the corners of my eyes.
“I think I started it,” Cadence whispers in a choked voice then reaches for her tea. She holds on to it like it’ll protect her, her shoulders hunched inward. “I called Mom because… that guy I was with. He was rough the other night and I don’t know why, I called her and I blamed her.” Her voice cracks as she slumps back into her seat.
“What?” Disbelief runs rampant through me. Unpacking everything takes time, but the first reaction I have is to protect her, to defend her from whatever fucker she’s referring to. “What do you mean he was rough with you?”
“He just pushed me against the wall. I told him to leave when we got into a fight over something stupid. I don’t even remember.”
“Who is he?” I ask and my voice is deathly low.
“No one now. I’m done with him. I blocked him and he’s not interested in me anymore anyway. Not after what I said to him.”
I can only nod once before waiting for her to continue.
“I was upset and I called Mom and told her and she was so… so judgmental.” The hurt is there in her voice, but so is guilt. It’s riddled with it between each quickly taken breath. “So uppity about him and what happened and all I could think is that it happened to her and she stayed with him.
“And I went off on her… I said some things I shouldn’t have.”
“You think she got into it with Dad afterward?”
“I don’t know for sure, but … I just …”
With one arm wrapped around my sister’s shoulders, I pull her into me and let her rest there as her face contorts and she cries again.
“Have you talked to Mom?” I ask her and she shakes her head. “It’s been hours,” I remark.
It takes my sister a long moment to respond, “She was unconscious.”