“You worked, too.”
“But at your school. It was different. I saw quite a lot of you all.” She added with a mischievous smile, “For better or worse.”
“I just want my children to grow up to be good people who will take care of their momma in her old age. Or at least come by and visit me at the nursing home.”
Washington glanced away at this light-hearted remark, and White bit her lip.
“I’m sorry, Momma, that came out way wrong.”
“In baseball, hitting three hundred in your career might get you into the Hall of Fame. As a parent, hitting four hundred just means you failed at everything.”
“Daddy getting killed like that, it messed with Randall and Frank,” White said. “They were younger and went through hell. Half the town hated us and thought the racist asshole that killed Daddy got cheated somehow. And Randall and Frank got the brunt of it. I was nearly out of high school when it happened. Denise and Teddy were already in college. You were suddenly a single parent with five kids. And two of them were getting torn up every day by something they and you had no control over. What could you do about that?”
“I don’t make excuses for myself, Frederica, and you shouldn’t make excuses for me.”
They took sips of their scotch and let it go down slow and smooth.
White felt her anxiety rising again and took another sip.
Smooth and slow, girl. You got this. You have to have this.
Her mother reached over and gripped her hand. The two women’s gazes met, and in that look White knew her mother understood exactly what was going on with her daughter.
“I’m terrified I’m going to mess up with them, you know,” said White breathlessly.
“The babies will be fine.”
“They’re not babies, Momma. They’re over halfway to adulthood. Lots of things can go wrong. And I can’t expect you to always be there for me or them.”
“Calvin and Jacky are my flesh and blood. You think there’s anything I won’t do for them?”
White looked away and shut her eyes. If I screw up with my kids? If they turn out to go down the path that my younger brothers did? If one of them does, I’m batting five hundred and I’ll be a failure at the most important job I’ll ever have.
“You will not mess up with them, Frederica. You won’t allow yourself to, and I sure as hell won’t let you.”
White opened her eyes to see her mother staring at her with the assured look of the assistant principal she used to be.
“You promise?”
“Honey, I don’t have to promise, do I? I’m here. Walk the walk, bullshit is just talk.”
White nodded and squeezed her mother’s hand before letting it go.
Her mother said, “So, how are things with this Decker fellow?”
“Better, actually. He told me to tell all of you hello.”
“So, you said he lost his child too?”
White’s gaze drifted from the half finger of scotch she had left, to her mother’s large, watchful eyes. “Yes, he did.”
“Then you two can understand each other.”
White’s brow furrowed at the statement. “What do you mean?”
“Understanding from a loss like that, Frederica. You don’t get the real person from good times. You get them from the bad times, the awful ones. You both got your hearts broken and in some ways they can never be repaired. I know. I had mine broken. But that’s also a bond between two people; you have something powerful in common. You can use that to turn a horrible event into maybe something positive. For both of you.”
White looked incredulously at her mother. “We’re just professional colleagues, Momma. We do a job together. No more and no less. We’re not going to be besties. We’re way different people even if we had similar losses. And I don’t even know if I really like the man. So don’t make it into something it’s not. And don’t tell me to go and pray on it. I don’t have the time or the inclination. In case you didn’t know, I have a lot on my plate.”
“Well, if that’s all you want to see in it,” her mother said in a disappointed tone.
“I think that’s all I can see in it. You don’t know him like I do. And I don’t really know Decker at all.”
“I think you know him better than you think. At least in the most important ways.”
“Why do you care about that?”
“I care about that, because I care about you.”
Chapter 56