She always said she felt the spirit of the ancestors, would have full-on conversations with them when she was in a tizzy about something or when she was in the kitchen. Kneading biscuits, dragging fat chicken thighs through flour, rolling out piecrust, it all made her feel close to them. So maybe it would do the same for me—connect me to them, to Gigi.
Speaking of legacy, Dad flips open the ancient album, its pages creaky and cracking at being disturbed. We spot Gigi in the first picture. She must be about five years old, in a white lace dress, head full of braids, spunky grin revealing two missing teeth.
A gangly teenager in crisp brown trousers and a white tank top revealing well-muscled arms stands beside her, his hands on her shoulders. They’re in front of the house, and it looks exactly the same as it did when I came up the drive.
Momma turns it over and reads the handwriting on the back. “？‘Marla and Jimmy, 1935.’？” I grab hungrily at the picture. Jimmy’s wearing a felt hat with a feather in the side. His nose is crooked like it was broken and never healed right. It doesn’t make him any less handsome though, in fact just the opposite.
I rub my finger over the photo like I’m reaching through time.
“Who’s Jimmy?” Shaun asks.
“Grandma’s cousin,” I start. “It’s terrible. He was—”
And Momma holds up a hand to stop me, sighs into her drink. “Another time. Another time.”
She’s right. Tonight’s a night to talk about Gigi, to reach for happy memories. So we do just that. Shaun launches into the time Gigi chased him through the house with a shoe for recording over an episode of General Hospital she hadn’t watched yet, and we pick at the spread Momma managed to cobble together from the meager options at the tiny local store—a roast that’s surprisingly tender, a big pot of turnip greens, a skillet of cornbread all brown around the edges.
“All we need is miracle bread,” I say. “Who’s making the miracle bread?”
The question makes me happy before it pains me. No one loved miracle bread like Jenny. I tug at the pearl bracelet circling my wrist. I’ve changed out of my dress, and the necklace is back in the box. I’m still wearing the bracelet.
“When are you going to give it to her?” Momma asks.
“This week, when we’re back.” I say it even though I don’t know if it’s true.
“What’s going on with you two anyway?”
“Come on, Momma, you know what’s going on.”
“No, I don’t, Riley, so you’ll have to use your words.” She says it exactly like she did when I was a toddler wordlessly begging for candy.
That’s the problem. I don’t have the words. It’s hard to pinpoint, let alone describe exactly what’s going on between us—this weird, unspoken rift. The longer we go without talking, the stranger it all feels, like we’re in an invisible fight and neither of us understands the rules.
A loud snore comes from the threadbare couch where Daddy is stretched out.
“I’m gonna let y’all two talk that out,” Shaun says, standing to kiss Momma, then me, before heading to the back bedroom. I’m exhausted from traveling and from the sadness of the day, though it’s nice to sit here with my mother at this sticky linoleum table full of empty glasses and crumbs. Momma must be more than a little tipsy, because she makes no move to clean up the mess. My mind swims as I consider how best to explain what’s going on with Jen, but Momma’s moved on. Her eyes are a little glassy—could be heartache, or moonshine.
“You know, I bought Gigi a scarf for Christmas.” Her voice is small. “I was hoping she’d hang on until then. I knew even if she did, she wouldn’t last much past Christmas, and then I thought maybe we could bury her with the scarf, and then when I thought about that, I didn’t want to give it to her at all.” She tears a napkin into long white shreds. “I should’ve given her the scarf.”
“Did you bring it down here?”
“Nah, I left it at home. It’s in a box in the top of my closet. Maybe you’ll wear it when we get back. It’d look nice on you. You and your grandmother have the same coloring, like a twice-toasted coconut. She always said that when you were a baby.”
“I’ll wear it. Put it under the tree for me and I’ll pretend it’s a big surprise.”
Momma sighs. “The scarf isn’t so much the point, honey. It’s that we can’t wait. You know, there’s a lot I wish I’d said before your grandma passed. Now I’m wondering why we always wait to say things at all. It’s mighty foolish of us to wait for anything. To wait to tell someone we love them or that we’re mad as hell at them. Kevin did a terrible thing, it’s true, and a young boy is dead and he has to live with that, with that heaviness in his soul. I’m not going to weigh in on how he should be punished. That’s for God to decide. But Jenny is not Kevin, and that girl loves you, and sometimes we need to swallow our pride and reach out. Even when we don’t know what to say and we’re afraid of messing everything up by saying the wrong thing. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to talk about something. All that matters is that you try. The longer you let something go, the easier it is to stay silent, and the silence is where the resentment starts to fester and rot.”
She stops to absently take another sip of the brown liquid in her glass. “I know, I’m a hypocrite over here telling you this. I’m not the best at reaching out. I didn’t speak to my own brother all this time. And you know why?”
Momma releases a strange, high-pitched cackle. “I don’t even know! That’s the awful truth. That’s something, right? I know we were both so mad and we said some terrible things to each other and then waited for the other to come to their senses and apologize while the years piled up. Now here we are, at our momma’s grave, like strangers. I don’t want that to happen to you and Jenny.”
She stops again; then, instead of taking another drink, she gazes out the little kitchen window into the dark night. I wait, somewhat stunned by this turn the night’s taken. Is it the grief of losing her mother? Is she that tipsy? Momma and I don’t have heart-to-hearts. This was a woman who simply left a pamphlet about “your changing body” on my bed when I was twelve.
“I’ll tell you something. I always wanted a friendship like what you have with Jenny. I was always a little jealous, truth be told. It’s special to have someone like that. I mean, your dad can be a doggone fool sometimes, but God knows he’s my best friend.” She stops and looks over at Daddy, on the couch, with a rare display of tenderness and affection. “It’s not the same as having a best girlfriend though. Side by side almost since you were knee-high. Y’all painting each other’s toes, telling secrets, sneaking out of the house—don’t think I don’t know you did that too. I never really got to have that with anyone.”
It was something, the topper to a surreal day, a surreal month, to have Momma opening herself up like this, confiding she was jealous. Of me? I was never one of the girls who longed to have my mom as a best friend, chatting about clothes and boys, which she would have found laughable anyway. She always said, I’m here to be your parent, not your girlfriend. And anyway, I already had a best friend growing up. But having this moment with Momma, so sad about her own mom, unfurls something in me, a curiosity about her, a desire to know her more as a woman, a longing for a different kind of relationship. She’s always been so distant, stern, hell-bent on properly molding us, like she couldn’t allow any room for a softer side. But what if she had let her guard down more and I’d gotten to see this side of her, the side that admits to feelings? We might have had an entirely different relationship. Maybe that’s possible now that I’m back home for the first time since I was eighteen; we could go out to lunch and talk, like a TV mother and daughter. It goes against everything I know about Sandra Wilson and thirty-plus years of history, but then I remember Gigi being lowered into the ground not five hours ago—a bittersweet reminder that Momma isn’t going to be here forever—and my determination grows. I want to know, to really know, my mother as an adult, before it’s too late.