“Don’t I have the right to some privacy?” I said. “Can’t I have my own life?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Dana. This is the time in your life when you need your mother most. You’re sixteen. One wrong move and you can ruin your life forever. Talk to me, Dana. Tel me what’s on your mind.”
“You took his word for what’s happening, and he doesn’t even live here.”
“Tel me about the boy,” my mother said.
“His name is Marcus, and James doesn’t like him because Marcus’s dad does James’s taxes.”
My mother’s face bent to let me know that James had left out this detail. “Your father said he was a hoodlum.”
“He lives on Lynn Circle,” I said. “Nearby to Ronalda.”
“Your father said that he’s twenty years old. That he isn’t al owed around underage girls.”
“Marcus isn’t like that. And he’s just nineteen.”
My mother looked at me with her tired face. “Dana. I need you to tel me the truth here. Are you being intimate with him?”
“No,” I said. “Nothing like that. We’re waiting until we get married.”
“I find it hard to believe that you two are just playing pinochle.”
I was seized with a desperate need for her trust. “You can take me to the doctor. A doctor can look at me and see I haven’t been doing anything.”
“Is he a good guy, Dana?”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s so nice to me. He’s so good to me. He doesn’t cheat on me. A lot of girls like him, but I am the only one he goes out with. He loves me. He doesn’t have a temper. He has never raised his hand to me.” I could hear my own voice, shril with lies.
“He’s hitting you?” my mother said. “He’s hitting you, Dana? Oh baby, come here.”
She opened her arms to me, but I didn’t walk into them.
“I said he’s
“Dana, I am your mother. You can’t lie to me.”
“You can’t read my mind.”
“Baby, I made your mind.”
“He’s not hitting me.”
“Yes, he is.”
It was wrong the way she could browse among my secret thoughts. She says that it was motherly intuition, but this is not true. She and I have a connection. Today, the link is rusty, the current erratic, but there wil always be something between us.
“So?” I said. “James hit you one time. When I was a baby. I heard you tel Wil ie Mae about it.”
“That was one time, it was a long time ago, and he was under a lot of stress.”
“Wel , Marcus is under stress, too. He wants to apply to col ege.”
“Yes, your father hit me, but I had a baby. I just had to make it work. And your father is not a violent man. Dana, you don’t have chick nor child. Why stay with some boyfriend that can’t keep his hands to himself?”
“You just don’t want me to have my own life.”
“You are not seeing this boy anymore. End of discussion. I wil go up to the school and tel the principal that he is harassing my daughter. James tel s me he has faced charges already for statutory rape.”
“Sixteen is the age of consent!”
“You have only been sixteen for a little while. I wil have him put in jail, Dana. Don’t make me do it.”
“Mother,” I said, “you’re just siding with James. He just doesn’t want us around his real family. Can’t you see that this is al there is to it?”
My mother said, “I don’t care what is in it for James. Your safety is what’s in it for me. I am not going to let you ruin your life while you are living under my roof. So that’s it. You are not seeing this boy again, ever. If I ever suspect you are, he’s going to jail.”
“Mother, don’t do that.”
“It’s over. This relationship is over. It’s not healthy.”
I cried myself to sleep. What teenager hasn’t? I woke up with a headache, and I remembered the lost jel y beans and cried some more. My mother tapped on my door at 10 a.m.
“Get up and get dressed. Let’s go surveil ing.”
“No,” I said, just for the satisfaction of denying her. “I never want to do that again.”
9
NO QUARREL
I AM POOR when it comes to grandparents. Flora, the wild woman, didn’t have use for her own child, let alone a granddaughter. Although I saw my mother’s father each spring, I spoke to him only once in my life. My mother believed in rituals, and on the first warm Saturday in April she took me to see him as he groomed the hedges in
