Lydia took the pins from her mouth. “You should, Mrs. Bradley. I bet it’s not as bad.”
“I can’t leave now. Not with Maurice.” He was her grandchild, the son of Sondra, whose boyfriend had refused to marry her. But when they’d broken up, he’d thought his court-sanctioned child support of Maurice gave him a say-so. The judge thought he had a say-so, too. Two years later, when Sondra was diagnosed with early breast cancer, she’d moved back in with Mrs. Bradley. When Sondra died, Maurice’s father still wouldn’t let anyone take his son out of the City, though he had a new woman and a new baby, and said that the apartment they lived in was too small for Maurice. So here Mrs. Bradley was, trying to raise a badass little boy at her age. But she couldn’t leave him for his father to palm him off on some stranger or maybe even foster care. God would never forgive her, would he?
“I don’t know about that, Mrs. Bradley. I pray, but I don’t hear too much these days. I do know this: the Lord knows you’re just doing the best you can. And whatever you decide, it’ll be all right.”
“Thank you, darling. Sometimes I need me a good word,” and Mrs. Bradley’s face cleared of discontent. She was soothed, and Lydia sat back on her heels. She’d known what had been expected of her, but she had been glad for it. Somebody needed her, for once, and there was a near happiness. Almost as if it was only an extended holiday she was taking, in her small apartment decorated with charming odds and ends.
That weekend, she violated her father’s orders. She called her parents’ house on a Sunday, when she knew Mama was in the kitchen. Lydia listened for that southern, musical sound, and then hung up.
*
Christmas was the hardest that first year. The time she’d hated the most as a girl, but there was a longing for the familiar. Mr. Harris didn’t celebrate Christmas, and Lydia didn’t want to feign an interest in his Kwanzaa celebration. Her mother had made fun of that holiday, saying, Black folks always wanted to make something up, just to be fancy.
Lydia missed her baby sister the most, the child who thought her unsullied, even in her lowest time. The baby she’d held for comfort, and Lydia was lonely. She told herself she didn’t have a right to feel that way. She’d messed up her life. Still her husband was dead, and Chicasetta was an impossible distance away. She needed her baby sister. And she took the bus to her grandmother’s street, watching as Mama pulled up in the station wagon. It took some time for Ailey to exit the car: their mother was talking with her hands.
There were a couple weekends of observing, and Lydia decided she would get clean. She wouldn’t see her baby sister high. She cut the days into pieces. Into hours and then minutes. The need kept coming down, and the day Lydia took the bus to Nana’s house, she went a whole day and a half without a rock before she rang the doorbell.
Miss Delores answered and ordered her to stand in the hallway, and Lydia waited, sending her mind different places while she timed the minutes without her rock. She looked at the stairway, waiting for Ailey. The need was worth it, because her baby sister was coming, but Miss Delores sent down Nana instead, who called Lydia a disgrace to the family. Certainly, she hadn’t inherited these weaknesses from the Garfield side of the family.
Lydia had dropped her head, waiting for the tirade’s conclusion. It would end, and then she could see her baby sister, but her grandmother told her, it was time to leave.
“Please, Nana. Let me see her.”
“No, this is for the best. You cannot ruin that child.”
If she had pushed Lydia toward the door—forced her outside—that might have been the end, but Nana told her, maybe if her mother had raised her children properly, this wouldn’t have happened, and then Lydia told it all, every offense of Gandee, how he’d hurt her. Even when Nana’s self-righteousness turned to horror, to contrition, to weeping, to denials, Lydia kept shouting. She wasn’t going away without burning down a forest and salting the dirt to ruin.
When she left, she headed around the corner to the bus stop, and when the bus came, it wasn’t her line, but she got on anyway. She watched the faces of people until she saw the needed misery. Her comrades. Her new family.
The Other Side of the World
There had been terrors in the seven years that Lydia had lived in the neighborhood. Times that she had been hurt in the places where she went to buy her drugs. Twice, her father had disappeared for weeks, until Mr. Harris had passed on the news that her father was fine. He told her don’t be upset, but her daddy had a heart attack. When her father returned to his daughter’s apartment, he told her his doctor had made him cut his hours on account of his health. Mama didn’t know that, however, and Daddy hated to lie to his woman. But a brother didn’t want to be tracked constantly, even when he wasn’t misbehaving. Some nights when he told Belle he was working the emergency room, he really was at Mr. Harris’s house, just hanging out. Sometimes they took a sip or two of brown liquor, too, and Daddy would fall asleep on his friend’s couch.