What Momma Left Me Read online

  I dream of her being in heaven.

  No more bruises.

  No more pain.

  She is the prettiest angel there.

  She has wings like the others,

  but Momma doesn’t fly.

  She just sits at Jesus’ feet

  ’cause they haven’t talked in a while.

  I like living at Grandpa James and Grandma Claire’s house. So many things are different here. Every house on the block is nice. All the yards are neat and there is no tall grass spilling over to the next-door neighbor’s yard. There are no raggedy cars that don’t work parked in front of the houses and there are more houses than apartments or duplexes.

  Danny and I share a room upstairs. There’s a bathroom next to our room and across the hallway is Grandpa’s home office. We don’t know what to do with all this space. There is enough room for us to be on our own side and not even touch each other. My bed is on the right side of the room, against the wall, near a window. I pull the string to the blinds and let the sun come in.

  “We should paint,” Danny says. “This is a girl color.”

  “Yellow is not just for girls.”

  “Yes it is.” Danny starts unpacking the rest of his clothes. We each have our own dresser. There’s a big closet that we’ll divide, and I think I’d like to hang some posters on the wall. Danny says, “We should paint it white. White is for boys and girls.”

  “Well, I’m not asking. You ask,” I tell Danny.

  “Fine,” he says. He closes the drawer and starts to make his bed.

  Grandma and Grandpa call us down for dinner. A big pot of spaghetti is on the stove and garlic bread is in the oven. After dinner we watch TV and finish unpacking. We are both so tired, Grandma doesn’t even have to tell us to get ready for bed.

  I get into bed first. When Danny is finished taking his bath, he comes into the bedroom, turns off the light, and gets into his bed. “Serenity?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think Grandpa is right about Daddy?”

  “I don’t know.” I pull the covers over me and try to go to sleep.

  “He’s been gone longer than a week before,” Danny says.

  I sit up in the bed. “Do you want Daddy to come back for us?”

  I can barely hear Danny’s answer. “Sometimes.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “I just want to tell him about Momma. Make sure he knows.”

  “And then what?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to live with him?” I ask.

  “No,” Danny says without hesitating. “I just want to know if he knows about Momma.”

  I lie back down.

  “It’s only been a week. Last time he left, he was gone for four, remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” I say. I turn over on my stomach.

  Danny falls asleep.

  The house is quiet and I can hear Grandma and Grandpa moving around downstairs. They go into their bedroom and close the door. They must not know that their voices rise through the vent. Whenever I am in our room I can hear everything that’s being said downstairs. I hear my grandma say, “James, I never thought I’d have to bury one of our children.” I can tell she’s crying. Now that Momma is gone, Grandpa and Grandma only have two children. Uncle Brian and Aunt Sara.

  Grandpa says, “We’re going to be okay, honey. We’re going to be okay.”

  They are quiet for a long time. Too long. I don’t like it when it’s this quiet. My grandma is sniffing. “You should have Pastor Mitchell take over service for the next few Sundays.”

  “Yeah,” Grandpa says. “Don’t feel much like preaching.” He sighs, then sobs come. “Help us, Father. Help us,” he prays.

  I bury my head in my pillow, plugging my ears, like I used to do when my parents would fight. I don’t know which is worse, falling asleep listening to my momma and my daddy yell and argue, or my grandparents pray and weep.

  I thought that one good thing about living with Grandpa and Grandma would be no more sleepless nights.

  • • • • • • •

  When morning comes, Grandma calls us down for breakfast. She’s baked biscuits, scrambled eggs, and fried ham in a skillet. Neither of them looks like they were crying last night. We sit down and eat.

  “Slow down, Danny,” Grandma says. “That food’s not going anywhere.”

  We laugh.

  “It’s good,” Danny says. He grabs another biscuit from the basket in the middle of the table.

  Grandpa takes a sip of his coffee and opens the newspaper. He closes it real fast and sets it on the table. Grandma says, “I read it earlier. Nothing new.” And I know there must be an article about my momma in the paper. And probably a picture too. And I get real mad. Mad that people are writing about my momma. Telling our secrets.

  Grandma gets up from the table and begins to put the dishes in the dishwasher. “Serenity, I’m cooking your favorite for dinner tonight—teriyaki chicken wings and macaroni and cheese. Guess we should add a vegetable in there, huh? You want to help?”

  “No.”

  “But, Serenity, baby, you love to cook. You sure you don’t want to help?”

  “No, not tonight.”

  “You want to help make dessert? I’m thinking about making a red velvet cake.”

  “No!” I yell. I don’t know why I am screaming and how these tears have come with no warning. “I don’t want to help you cook! I don’t want to help you bake! I don’t want to be sitting here in this stupid kitchen with you!” I leave the kitchen, go to my bedroom, and slam the door. Danny follows me upstairs. He’s crying too. Lately, he cries if I cry and I start up when he’s upset. We’ve cried so much this past week, sometimes I think we’ll use up all our tears. Danny goes into Grandpa’s office.

  I am sure Grandma is coming for us. She knows we’re sad, but she does not allow screaming and slamming doors in her house. I know I will be in trouble for this. The tears streaming down my face are hot and all I want is to go back to the day my momma died. I want to go back to the moments right before and stay there.

  I hear footsteps and think Grandma has come to fuss at me, but instead it’s Grandpa and he goes into his office. I hear Grandpa tell Danny everything is going to be fine and that it’s okay to cry. My daddy would disagree. He always told Danny to be a man, to never let anyone see him cry. One day when we were in elementary school, Danny fell off his bike. His knee was bleeding, and dirt and all kinds of small rocks got into the wound. The edges of his hands, right at his wrists, were scratched up and bleeding too, and my daddy asked him what he was crying for.

  “You better man up! Stop all that cryin’. You a man, right?” Daddy used to tell Danny that if he didn’t stop crying he was going to give him something to cry for. And here Grandpa was telling him it was okay to cry. “Go ahead, let it out,” I hear Grandpa say. “If you don’t, you’ll be letting it out in other ways.”

  Danny whispers, “I miss her.”

  “I know. I do too.” Grandpa and Danny go outside. Their voices trail off toward the back of the house. I think Grandpa is showing Danny the car he is working on. He works on old cars in his garage. Danny’s been helping him since he was old enough to pass tools.

  The rest of the day goes by and I don’t go down for dinner. I end up sleeping right past it. I think Grandma lets me stay asleep because she knows I have been having nightmares and losing sleep lately. I wake up in the middle of the night. Danny is snoring in the other bed. The sound of his soft purrs puts me right back to sleep.

  • • • • • • •

  Summer is going by faster than I thought it would. Sometimes the days drag on, but now it’s the last weekend before school starts. The calendar that Danny hung on our bedroom wall is all marked up with Xs across each date. Four weeks have passed since my momma died. One month and my father still hasn’t come for us. I’m starting to think that maybe my daddy does know about my mom. I think maybe he just doesn’t c
are.

  Danny swears he’s not counting anymore. He says he never was. He says he was counting down the days till school started. Danny’s never been excited about school, so I know that’s a lie.

  He’s never been excited about church either. And so every Sunday morning it’s like trying to get a hibernating bear to wake up. “Rise and shine!” Grandma says, knocking on our bedroom door. It’s Sunday morning and it’s time to get ready for church. We’ve been to church more this summer than in my whole life. We go to church every Sunday—all day, and sometimes on weeknights too, if there’s a special service or meeting. We also go on Saturday mornings. It seems like we’ll be in church just as much as we’ll go to school. And Grandpa says that’s good. There is nothing more important than having God and education in your life, he says. With Grandpa being a pastor and Grandma a retired teacher there is no way we will fail at faith or academics.

  Grandma sings in the choir, teaches Bible study, and is the organizer and head cook for the church’s soup kitchen. That is why we are always at church. There is always a rehearsal, a meeting, a time of prayer, a Bible study, a youth group, a community service activity. Always something.

  Danny does not like this, but I do. At church, I like the singing and I like reciting the memory verses. Grandma is impressed that I can memorize scriptures so well. She says that I should have no problem at my Rites of Passage—a ceremony where all the youth of the church are passed to the next level of leadership training. At the end of eighth grade I will be eligible to become a Teen Disciple. In order to move up to a Teen Disciple, I have to write a statement of faith, recite a passage of scripture, and complete a community service project. I’m thinking maybe one of my projects will have something to do with art. I’ve been liking all the art projects we do in Sunday school class.

  We make art pieces inspired by the stories we learn in class. We’ve learned how to do printmaking and ceramics. Sometimes we draw or paint or make collages. Once I used Cray-Pas to illustrate Moses and the burning bush—oranges, reds, yellows, black smoke. Using watercolors, I painted Joseph and his coat of many colors—blues, purples, greens.

  Today, we’re not doing art. Miss Valerie, our Sunday school teacher, is standing at the front of the room with a DVD in her hand. “Okay, class,” Miss Valerie says. “We’re going to watch a video today.” Miss Valerie goes to the DVD player and puts in a disk.

  “This better be good!” I hear a girl say. I turn around and see a girl the color of caramel sitting behind me. Her jet black hair is long and curly. It looks like the kind that doesn’t nap up when it gets wet. She moves my sweater from the empty chair next to me and slides her thin body through the row of chairs so she can sit beside me. “You know what I’m saying?” she continues. “This better not be about obeying our parents or saying no to drugs.” She rolls her eyes and crosses her legs. “You’re Pastor James’s granddaughter, right?”

  “Yes. My name is Serenity.”

  “I’m Maria,” she says.

  “You go to church here?” I ask.

  “Yeah. I’ve been gone all summer visiting my grandparents in Puerto Rico,” she tells me. That explains her hair. “You know what this video is about?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Well, why not? You a PK, so you should know everything.”

  “A PK?”

  “Preacher’s Kid,” Maria says. “Or in your case, grandkid.” She looks very disappointed. “Your mom and dad go here too?” she asks.

  “No,” I tell her. “I don’t have parents.”

  “Everybody has parents,” Maria says.

  “Not me,” I tell her. She looks at me like she wants an explanation. A reason. I can’t tell the truth. Not to some girl I just met, not in the middle of a Sunday school class.

  “Well, do you have any brothers or sisters?” Maria asks.

  “One brother,” I say. I point to Danny.

  Maria looks him over.

  “He’s a year younger than me,” I tell her.

  “I’m an only child. Just me and my mom,” Maria says. “Well, and my dad. But he doesn’t live with us. He lives in Vancouver.” Maria digs in her purse and pulls out a pack of gum. She puts the watermelon-flavored square in her mouth and chews. “Want some?”

  I take a piece, even though I know we aren’t supposed to chew gum in church.

  “So, for real,” Maria says. “Where does your dad live?”

  My palms start to sweat. “Northeast Portland.”

  “You see him a lot?”

  I tell the lie I heard my momma say to nosy people who’d ask her a bunch of questions about where my dad was. “He’s out of town on business a lot,” I say. I wonder where my dad really is. At home, every time the phone rings I think maybe it’s him calling to say he’s back. Calling to see where we are. But it never is.

  Maria continues with the questioning. “What about your mom? How come you don’t live with her?”

  I bite my lip. “My mom died in a car accident,” I lie.

  Maria gives me those sad eyes everybody kept giving me at the funeral. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s okay,” I lie again. I push out the memories I have of the day my momma died and I swallow the truth and keep my momma’s secrets buried on the inside.

  Miss Valerie stands at the front of the room. “Before we begin, class, I just want to remind everyone that there’s no gum chewing in church.”

  Two girls and a boy spit their gum out in the garbage can. I slide mine to the back of my mouth, on the right side.

  Miss Valerie turns the lights off. The DVD starts and a voice comes on that says, “Children, do you know what Ephesians 6 says? It admonishes you to obey your parents.”

  Maria sighs. “This is so stupid.”

  The DVD starts playing in slow motion and then it skips ahead. Miss Valerie turns the lights on and goes to the DVD player. “I don’t know what’s wrong with this thing,” she says. She takes the disk out and wipes it on her skirt; then she puts it back in.

  We start watching the DVD again. This time we get farther. A young boy is told by his parents not to ride his bike past a certain point, but he does it anyway. The little boy is in the middle of the street when a car comes speeding by. The DVD starts skipping forward again.

  Miss Valerie turns the lights on. “Okay, what’s going on here?” She searches her desk for the remote control and realizes it’s not there. “Who has the remote?” Miss Valerie stands with her hands on her hips.

  There are small sounds of giggling from behind me and I turn around. A row of boys are laughing and all of them have their hands in awkward places—in their pockets or tucked under their folded arms. I look at Danny, who is sitting in the last row next to a boy named Ricky. Ricky is the same age as Danny, but he is so tall that he looks older than all of us. His shirt is wrinkled and is tucked halfway into his khaki pants. His hair is braided straight back in cornrows and his lips are shining, like he put on too much ChapStick. Danny and Ricky are hiding their hands too. The only difference between them and other boys is they are the only ones not laughing. I know it’s them.

  “I am very disappointed in you all,” Miss Valerie says. She is trying to sound older than she is. She is not a real teacher. She is in college and only graduated from high school last May. She makes us put “Miss” in front of her first name because it shows respect, she says. But I think she just wants to seem important. “Do I have to check everyone’s hands?” Miss Valerie starts walking through the rows of metal chairs.

  Those of us in the front hold our hands up with all ten fingers stretched wide. By the time she gets to the back I feel Maria tap me on my leg. I look down and she is tapping me with the remote. It has been passed from the back row. I turn around and Miss Valerie is standing in front of Danny and Ricky. Their hands are stretched open for her to see. “Put it on her desk,” Maria whispers.

  I just look at her. I can’t do that. My grandmother could find out.

  “Do
it!” Maria whispers louder.

  “No,” I whisper back.

  Maria looks over her shoulder. “She won’t know it was you,” she says. She hands me the remote.

  I take it and run on my tippy-toes to Miss Valerie’s desk. I put it next to her Bible and rush back to my seat before she turns around. Maria nudges me. “Stop looking so guilty.”

  Two girls, Karen and Sabrina, are sitting at the end of our row and they can’t stop laughing. Soon we are all laughing and I wonder if God thinks this is funny.

  Miss Valerie comes to the front of the room and begins to lecture us about playing in the Lord’s house. “One of you has the remote and I know it!”

  “You mean that remote?” Maria says. She points to Miss Valerie’s desk.

  Miss Valerie looks at the desk, then back at us. “I’m telling your parents,” she says.

  “It’s been there the whole time,” Maria says.

  Then Deacon Harris walks by ringing the bell and the class cheers because we realize we have wasted the whole hour. We get up from our seats and head for the door.

  “Wait a minute,” Miss Valerie says. “Someone has to share during the wrap-up session.” We all get quiet. We have nothing to share because we didn’t do anything. “Didn’t think about that, did you?” Miss Valerie almost smiles at the fact that now the same kids who just drove her crazy will be in trouble because they have nothing to share with their parents.

  Ricky shouts, “Well, if we don’t have anything to share they’ll think you aren’t a good teacher.”

  Miss Valerie rolls her eyes and grabs a picture off the wall. “Whose is this?” She shows it to all of us, like kindergarten teachers show picture books as they read.

  I raise my hand.

  “Good. You are sharing today.”

  “What do I— What am I supposed to say?”

  “Talk about why you drew this picture. What it means to you, which Bible story inspired it. I don’t know. Say whatever you want.” Miss Valerie hands me the picture and we all leave the class.

  During the wrap-up session, when Deacon Harris asks, “Who’s sharing from the middle school class?” I realize that I am nervous and that I really don’t want to do this. And I think how Danny and Ricky and the rest of the class owe me. Miss Valerie too.