One Better Page 21

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  Sterling laughed. It was a nasty laugh. “Travis told me. I heard he left Southern Spice to open his own business. Is that why? Jealousy?”

  “How would Travis know? Anyway, I can get along fine without him.”

  “Even without fucking him?” Sterling didn’t know where that had come from. Certainly Travis was ancient history to both of them.

  “I shouldn’t have mentioned men. I asked you to meet me so that I could say I’m sorry. I miss you. I want to be your mother again. I’m sorry about cutting off the money, Sterling, and the credit cards.”

  “I don’t need your money.”

  “We both know you need the help. And now with a baby . . .”

  “Stop talking about this phantom baby! All you can think about is money! The day is long gone when I would kiss your ass for some money.”

  Spice looked shocked.

  But Sterling continued, “All that money has made you cold. Money doesn’t give you pleasure, it doesn’t comfort you at night.” She turned away from Spice. “Neither does a scripture. A man does. I’m sure you get my meaning. Let’s face it, Spice, you’ve never been a mother to me.” Her steel gray eyes challenged Spice’s.

  “You should take a good look at yourself. All you’ve ever given me is money.” Tears filled Sterling’s eyes, and she felt the heat rising between her breasts. “I’d rather be broke but be able to feel something for another human being every now and then. Maybe Golden needs to work a little harder to make you more human like the rest of us. Even if I have to suffer pain from Bennie, at least he makes me feel something.” She stood up to leave. “You don’t know what love means.”

  “Sterling, you’re my baby. I love you.”

  “No, you don’t.” She picked up her purse to leave. “You love success.”

  “These ill feelings have gone on too long between us.”

  “You’re right. Keep your money, Spice. I wouldn’t take another dime from you if you begged me to.” Sterling pressed her purse securely beneath her bosom, then walked away.

  Wiping the tears from her face, Sterling unlocked her car door and slid inside.

  Spice still didn’t understand how simple it was to offer love. Love was free, it wasn’t bought. She tried so many times to define it, evaluate her and Spice’s ongoing problems. She knew without anyone telling her that she was at a disadvantage trying to cope with the pain alone. Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeeded each other. She needed someone to take her out of the darkness and into the light, where nothing shone but love.

  She let the tears fall.

  * * *

  The next day she went to the doctor. She was pregnant all right. Noticing the needle marks on her arms and her ill health, the doctor talked to her about an abortion. Then he asked if she was married. Sterling resented his intrusion into her privacy and stormed off in a fury.

  Did the doctor think she was heartless? This child was her miracle, her one chance at making something good come from her life. She would make certain her child would be safe. That meant more to her than her own safety. No way would she use drugs again.

  What she hadn’t told Spice, and what she did not want to admit to herself, was that Bennie had promised to move in with her last week, in preparation for their getting married. It was a trial run, Sterling had insisted to him. And he’d agreed. But she hadn’t heard from him since that conversation. She knew that her trump card was the baby.

  She wasn’t ready to tell Bennie. She wanted him to love her for herself, not for carrying his child. But how else would she get him to commit to her?

  CARMEN

  If you don’t have children the longing for them will kill you, and if you do, the worrying over them will kill you.

  —BUCHI EMECHETA

  C armen had now been at Temple Gardens for almost ten weeks. And as much as she attended the daily AA meetings and talked to Connie, her craving for alcohol never vanished. Some days, like today, the craving was so keen that she thought she would die unless she had a sip, just one sweet sip.

  Carmen could get no peace. She couldn’t quell the need filling her, coursing through her veins. Her arms itched so badly, they burned. She quaked inside while her outer shell remained still. With each breath, she felt as though her chest were being squeezed tighter and tighter and she was suffocating little by little. Her body was crying out for alcohol.

  Today Spice was scheduled for one of her visits, but as Carmen looked down at the fresh scratches on her arms, she knew she couldn’t face her friend. She was afraid that Spice would know what was really happening—that yet again Carmen would fail. Or was it something more? After her session, when she broke down and told Connie more about the fire that killed Adarius, Carmen had a dream. She was a little girl, tiny for her age, malnourished. She was standing at the edge of a stream. Her dress was in tatters. She was watching her doll float down the stream, and not knowing how to swim, she couldn’t jump into the water to save it. She stood there on the muddy bank, crying out, and then the dream shifted and it was she who was floating down the stream. And on the banks she saw Spice, who was reaching out to her, yelling, “Carmen, Carmen, let me save you, please let me save you!”

  Even to this day, the fearful dread of the dream stayed with Carmen. Finally, unable to bear the pain, Carmen casually dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the floor as she walked past one of the male nurses. She continued to walk ahead, stopping only when she heard him say, “Carmen, you dropped something.”

  “No, it’s for you.”

  “I can’t accept this.”

  “Please, I need a drink. Anything. Just bring a bottle to my room.”

  The guard looked at her and shook his head.

  Her therapist brought it up in their next session. Carmen couldn’t speak, she was so humiliated.

  Now, from the solarium, where visitors came, Carmen saw Spice park her company truck in the visitors’ section. Then Azure jumped down from the cab. Carmen felt a moment of elation as she rose to greet them at the solarium door.

  “Hi, Azure. I’m so glad your grandmother brought you.” Carmen hugged Spice, then took each by the hand and led them to one of the sofas near the coffeemaker. “Let me fix you a cup of coffee.”

  “Can I look at the magazines, Aunt Carmen?”

  “Sure, baby.”

  As soon as the girl walked away, Spice took Carmen’s hand. Carmen knew she hadn’t been successful in hiding her tension from her friend.

  “You look so afraid, Carmen. What is it, what’s happened?” Spice asked, her voice gentle.

  “I don’t know. Just people, I guess.”

  “You were doing so well. But you don’t look well now. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Turning her head to the side, Carmen looked directly into her friend’s soulful eyes.

  “Can’t you talk to me about it?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Carmen said.

  “I hadn’t realized that you were in this much pain.”

  Suddenly Azure appeared. “Can you read this book to me, Aunt Carmen?”

  Carmen took a deep breath and began to read. Azure stopped her by the third paragraph. “Stop. I don’t like this story.”

  Thinking for a moment, Carmen said, “Wait, I know a story that you might like to hear.” She walked to the shelf and picked up a worn copy of the children’s Bible. She flipped the pages to the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

  “The Queen of Sheba was a beautiful black woman like your mother and your grandmother.”

  “For real?” Azure asked.

  “Um-hm. When the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, she came to see him—”

  Before she read much further, Azure had fallen asleep. Visiting time was over. Carmen handed the sweet bundle to her grandmother. All the while she tried to think of a way to explain to her friend that she really suffered from two diseases—alcoholism and depression. The two diseases fed off each other, in a
downward spiral. The depression caused her to drink. The drinking depressed her.

  Carmen blinked away tears, turned to Spice, and said morosely, “I’ve been studying butterflies. Did you know butterflies have no ears?”

  “No. But I do, and I think you’re trying to tell me something. I don’t know what to say to you anymore, Carmen,” Spice said. “I don’t have the words. I don’t have the power. I don’t know how to help you.”

  “You can’t. And you can’t understand how I feel because in order for you to understand, you would have to experience the pain of causing your child’s death.” Even though Carmen loved her friend, there were lines between them.

  “I want to help you. Tell me what I can do.”

  “I’m hoping that as my best friend, you’ll honor my request.”

  “Anything. Just ask.”

  “I think it would be best if we didn’t see each other for a while.”

  “Carmen?” Spice asked, shocked. “I’m not hearing you correctly.” She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “Are you saying you don’t want me to visit you here again?”

  “I’m getting better. The doctor said that detoxification is not a cure. I need to do more work, Spice, and I need to do it on my own. Dr. Wright has told me that I’d be out soon.” Refusing to give in to defeat, Carmen knew she was out of options. She was facing an ultimatum: Stay sober or die. If her son’s life meant anything to her, sobriety was her only choice.

  Spice breathed, speaking fast. “Of course you need a few days to sort out—”

  “No. I need more.”

  Spice didn’t speak.

  “I hurt. You hurt. Who’s to say which of us hurts more—does it really matter? I love you, Spice, but I can’t survive with your love. It’s smothering me. If I don’t make it, I’ll die of guilt, not alcohol. I wish I didn’t love you, so that I could say ‘Kiss my ass, Spice.’ But no matter how much I love you, I have to get sober for me. I have to shed the tight strings holding us together. That’s what friendship is about, Spice. It’s about loving someone without thinking, without questioning. You give it freely without a second thought, like your next breath. It’s that easy. To give this to you, Spice, I feel I have to ask you to let me find my strength without borrowing it from you. You’ve been my rock for so long, I feel I have to break free.”

  Lifting Azure, Spice transferred her dozing granddaughter from Carmen’s lap to her shoulder. She collected her purse and moved to the door. Cupping Carmen’s arm, she gave her friend one last sorrowful look before turning away. “I love you, Carmen,” she said over her shoulder.

  The echo of Spice’s words reached Carmen’s heart, and then the glass doors closed between them.

  * * *

  When Carmen was released from Temple Gardens, she asked her new AA sponsor not to call Ms. Witherspoon. Then she took a taxi to her bank and withdrew $10,000 from her savings account, money that she’d saved all the years she’d worked for Spice.

  She walked to a nearby diner and purchased a newspaper and, after ordering a cup of coffee and a slice of pie, checked the Want Ads for a job. Her hopes fizzled when she saw that there were no listings for a chef—not even a cook. Before she tossed the paper in the trash, she noticed the real estate section. A full-page ad of new homes and businesses in the town of Novi piqued her interest. It was just far enough away, and close enough to come back home if she chose to.

  She got another taxi. “How much to drive me to Novi?” she asked the driver.

  “That’s quite a ways, miss.”

  “I know. How much?”

  “Probably forty to fifty bucks.”

  “Let’s go.”

  As soon as they left I-96 on the Novi exit, Carmen was overwhelmed by signs and shops on both sides of the highway. Twelve Oaks Mall was surrounded by several places to dine. Furniture stores, linen shops, bookstores, and craft stores were just a few blocks away from a Red Roof Inn. Carmen asked the driver to stop there. She had found her home.

  During the next week, she temporarily put aside her search for a job and shopped for clothes and crafts. She felt lighter, free, and was enjoying the hell out of her freedom.

  The small town of Novi was booming. Newly constructed shopping centers and businesses were being developed all over the affluent community. Carmen placed fifteen applications at different establishments. Within three days she had secured a decent job working the late shift at Cicero’s Truck Stop Restaurant, which was open twenty-four hours a day.

  At Cicero’s there was room for three hundred trucks at night. Sometimes they had to turn some away. There was a twenty-room motel adjoining the stop that was usually full. Inside Cicero’s there was a minitheater that could seat sixty truckers and showed the current video releases. The truck stop also contained an ATM machine, Laundromat, party store, and drivers’ lounge. Lot lizards, prostitutes by trade, bargained their bodies outside while truckers conducted their business in an eighteen-unit phone room. In the rear of the building was a bank of twenty-five showers; it cost five dollars to use them, although they were free with a fill-up. On the second floor was a ladies’ lounge and shower room, barbershop, a certified psychotherapist—and even a masseuse by appointment.

  Throughout the evening, truckers of all shapes and sizes came in to eat. Carmen watched the flow of men and women dressed in plaid flannel shirts and jeans stream in and out. They looked as though they’d come off the Roseanne show. When Carmen’s shift was over, she scouted out the apartments in the area. Already she knew she was going to like her job. It was the middle of May, and the apartment complex that she’d decided upon wouldn’t have another two-bedroom apartment available until the first of June. Carmen was disappointed that she would have to stay in a motel for two more weeks, but she wasn’t willing to settle for a one-bedroom apartment. As soon as she got her new place, she planned on packing up her things at her old apartment and resuming making the porcelain dolls that were part of her plan for her future.

  After a week of working, she scouted the area for a cheap car and settled on a Honda Civic hatchback. Now she could get away during the day, and soon she’d be able to see Spice; she would be living on her own, alcohol free. She had been sober for almost three months, and her life was falling into place. Could it be?

  Right off, she contacted the welcoming committee in the small town and received all kinds of information about the area. She checked for information on local AA meetings close to her home. But Carmen felt uncomfortable when she attended the small meeting. She was the only Hispanic female in the group. Actually she was the only minority, period. She felt alienated, with no commonality with the other members.

  The day she finally moved into her two-bedroom apartment, she overslept after the exhausting work of getting settled. Late for work. It was 1:15 A.M. when she punched in. Cicero’s was nearly packed.

  Carmen worked nonstop until her break at four. The weather was warm. She sat outside, watching the large rigs going in and out while she ate a bagel and drank orange juice. It amazed her how the truckers maneuvered the large rigs so effortlessly. She thought the trucks looked like pretty, dressed-up women with all their red glittering lights. Some of the trucks were painted with naked women on the side, their chrome wheels shining like new money even in the darkness of the night.

  Carmen noticed a shiny, purplish opal truck filling up at the truck station. She was fascinated as she watched the huge machine with its silver pinstripes, four antennas, and blinding chrome wheels. It was beautiful.

  Then she saw him.

  He parked the truck and headed toward the restaurant. Carmen felt the goose bumps start to rise on her arms. But she had to stop herself dead in her tracks. AA members were encouraged to wait at least a year before dating or getting involved in anything romantic. Getting sober and staying sober were supposed to be your priority.

  The tall man with muscular biceps and soft brown eyes was walking toward her. He looked up at Carmen, and their eyes met. A flood of feeling washed
through her body. He said, “Hi,” and, trying to sound casual, Carmen responded in kind. He took a seat inside at a counter as Carmen sat still, finishing her cigarette before resuming her shift. This feeling reminded her of what she had imagined David and Spice had shared at the beginning.

  Suddenly she missed Spice terribly. She’d picked up the telephone several times to call her, but she was determined to contact Spice only when she felt really secure in her newly won sobriety. Somehow Carmen knew that she couldn’t rush seeing Spice. But that realization didn’t stop her from fearing that she’d lose the friend she loved so much, lose Spice as she had lost so much else in her life.

  Later that morning, as she lay in bed waiting for sleep to come, Carmen couldn’t erase the calm face of the man at the truck stop. She knew she wasn’t ready for a romance yet. But just the fact that she’d felt an attraction for a man, that she’d been sober long enough to allow an emotion like that to come through, reassured her that she was on her way to getting better.

  MINK

  Be ever gentle with the children God has given you. . . . Watch over them constantly; reprove them earnestly, but not in anger. . . . In the forcible language of Scripture, “Be not bitter against them.”

  —ELIHU BURRITT

  M ay is for remembering. The month in which we remember our heroic men who died for their convictions. It is a time for the recalling of suffering and defeat as well as victory. Some say we should forget our personal errors, erase our mistakes, expunge the past, and go forward. But Mink did not feel that all errors, sins, or the wrong turn in your path should be entirely erased. She felt that all these troubles and griefs should be remembered.

  What had she done about it? How deeply had she repented? How much had she learned from her mistakes? Her sorrows? The reality of what might have happened six, seven, or eight years earlier with Dwight stung deep in her heart. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop remembering.