I still had not seen Yvonne since she’d eaten supper with us on Tuesday. But this afternoon when I got home from church, she was sitting on her front porch steps crying.
“Lord! Yvonne, what’s the matter?” I asked as I ran up to her and put my arms around her shoulder. The hurtful things she’d previously said to me didn’t even cross my mind. She didn’t look like the wild woman I had begun to think she was. She looked like a woman in pain. And nobody knew better than me what that felt like.
“Oh, Joyce! It’s a mess!” she said, choking on a sob. She sniffled and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her bright red blouse, which I was pleased to see was not as low-cut as some of her others. “Today is my baby girl’s birthday. My babies’ birthdays is always depressing for me, so when I got up this morning, the first thing I did was take a drink. Willie Frank drove me to my aunt and uncle’s house to visit my babies this morning. But when Aunt Nadine smelled alcohol on my breath, she wouldn’t even let me in the house, and told me that it would be better if I stopped coming around at all. She said she’ll continue to bring them to see me when she could, but not too often.”
“Please tell me you’re kidding! Your aunt doesn’t want you to see your own children?”
Yvonne shook her head, sniffled some more, and then words squirted out of her mouth like spit. “I wouldn’t kid about something this serious.”
“Why? And why do you let her get away with that?”
“See, my kids don’t know I’m their real mama.”
My whole body tensed up. “What? Who do they think you are all this time?”
“They think I’m their cousin. When my aunt and uncle took them in, my youngest was still in diapers and my oldest had just learned to talk. Aunt Nadine told my babies that their real mama took off with a musician, and got killed in a beer garden brawl somewhere up north.”
“My Lord. Let’s go in my house,” I suggested, shaking my head and rubbing her back at the same time. She trailed behind me like a sheep that had lost its way.
When we got to my living room, I waved her to the couch and then I skittered to the kitchen. I returned with two glasses of elderberry wine and handed the biggest one to her.
“This ain’t nothing like the stuff you and Milton serve, but it’s just as good.” I sat down next to her. We drank at the same time, and then I draped my arm around her shoulder. “I couldn’t imagine what it’d be like if I had kids and somebody else was raising them. That would be bad enough. But I couldn’t go on if I had some and they thought I was dead. What do they call you?”
“Cousin Yvonne.”
“Will you ever tell them who you really are?”
Yvonne nodded. “I will when they get grown. I promised Aunt Nadine and Uncle Sherman that I wouldn’t do so until then.”
“That’s a long time from now. Why would your folks not want your own kids to know who you really are?”
“She’s sanctified. And her husband is even worse. He’s a deacon in the church they go to and the holiest man I know. He don’t even allow my aunt to wear pants or make-up. They believe people that drink and party don’t deserve to raise kids.”
“I know a lot of folks in Branson that drink and party, but they still have their kids with them and they seem to be doing all right.”
“Yeah, but . . . well, there is a real good reason why my kids ain’t with me.”
“Oh? What is the reason?”
Yvonne took another sip before she answered. “I got in a little trouble when I was too young and foolish to know better and I had to spend a couple of years in jail.”
“Oh.” I swallowed hard and sucked in some air. This was not what I had expected to hear. I felt bamboozled. I wondered what else Yvonne was hiding from me and Odell. If she had been in jail, there was no telling what kind of deep dark secrets Milton had. “I’ve never had an ex-con in my house before. . . .”
“Well, you can’t say that no more. I don’t tell people until I really get to know them. While I was locked up, the state took my children. If my aunt and uncle hadn’t took them in, they would have put them in the asylum for orphans. That’s the worst place in the world for a colored child to end up.”
“My Lord. I’m surprised Willie Frank never blabbed this information to us before now. He already told me he spent time in prison. What about Milton?”
“What about Milton?”
“It doesn’t bother him that you spent some time in jail?”
Yvonne let out a loud breath and shook her head. “No, he don’t mind. He was in prison hisself when he met Willie Frank.”
Good God! Milton was an ex-con too! I had assumed he had a shady past, so the news about him being a jailbird didn’t surprise me at all. “I see. Was it just one time?”
“Uh-huh. Me and Milton ain’t been in trouble with the law since. And in case you want to know what we did—”
I held up my hand and shook my head. “It must not have been too bad if they’ve already turned y’all loose. Most of the colored people I know that go to prison stay there for years and years, or get executed. And that’s because
