She shrugged. “I just wanted to see you. I was driving by the other day and I saw your daughter playing outside. She looks just like you.”
Flora liked it when people talked abut her, so she smiled.
“What’s her name,” Chaurisse wanted to know.
“Flora,” my daughter piped up.
The smal parking lot was busy with parents and little children. Al the kids carried cardboard cutouts of their hands decorated to look like turkeys.
I waved at some of the mothers. I hoped I looked normal, wel adjusted, and happy. I leaned against the side of my car. “Wel ? Is somebody dying?” I said it with a sort of flippant attitude, but I real y wanted to know. Al these years later my mother stil scanned the obituary page every Sunday. If James Witherspoon died, she would be there in widow’s black.
“Nobody’s dying,” she said. “I just saw your girl and I wanted to say hel o and see how you are.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “How are you?”
She sighed and leaned on the car next to me. As we talked, we watched the cars fly down Cascade Road. “I’m okay.”
“How are your parents?” I asked.
“Stil together,” she said.
“Figures.”
She shifted her weight to her other side and took a real y deliberate breath. “You ever see him?”
I could have laughed at her. After al these years, she couldn’t quite believe that she and her mother had won.
I hadn’t seen my father since the day he and Laverne renewed their vows at the big party at the Hilton twelve years ago. I had gone on my own and spent most of my time riding the glass elevator al the way to the twenty-third floor and then back down again. Looking at the city lights, I wondered if James had other children like me. I had gone to the soiree, not looking for my father, not trying to spoil anything, but hoping to see Chaurisse. I was going to ask her if maybe we could be sisters. It wasn’t our fault what our parents had done to each other.
THEY CALLED IT a “recommitment ceremony” and held it in the Magnolia Room, the same space where Ruth Nicole Elizabeth had her Sweet Sixteen. When the elevator stopped at the twenty-third floor, I was too afraid to step out. The ceremony was under way behind a pair of closed doors decorated with bunting. I could imagine Mrs. Grant, silently applauding with her satin gloved hands as Chaurisse pranced down the aisle clutching a bouquet of cal a lilies. Behind her would be Raleigh and Laverne in her almond-meat dress. I could see Raleigh bending to kiss her cheek before handing her over to James.
My mother had taken to her bed and I didn’t like leaving her alone, but I al owed myself an hour more. I took the elevator underground and walked the aisles of the parking ramp until I found the Lincoln. I sat on the hood as the engine beneath me ticked like a patient bomb.
My father approached the car at quarter after eight. He had to smoke. I may not have been his “legitimate” daughter, but I knew him wel enough to anticipate his cravings.
I said, “Hey, James.”
He said, “You can’t be here.”
I said, “I know.”
“Then how c-c-come y-y-you’re out here.”
I told him the truth, that I wasn’t sure. I think I wanted him to hug me and tel me that I was stil his daughter, that blood meant something. Yes, he could walk away from my mother, but could he walk away from me? My mother could find another man, but there wasn’t any way for me to replace my father.
“Don’t you love me?” I asked him.
“It’s not about loving people,” he said. “You have to go home now. I’ve m-m-made my choice, just like you made your choice when you went bothering Ch-Chaurisse. You almost took my whole life away from me.”
“What did you think was going to happen?” I asked him. Did he think that I could live my entire life tucked away a dirty photograph? “I’m your daughter.”
“Everybody knows that now,” James said. “That’s what you wanted. You got it.”
EVEN NOW, I cringe to remember it. I fought him. I threw myself at my father, fighting like a girl, al windmil ing arms and shrieking. My voice bounced off the concrete wal s, but no one came to stop us. No one helped even when he shoved me away like I was a grown man. I didn’t fal . I didn’t crumple. And I am proud of this smal moment of dignity.
“You made me do that,” he said. “You and Gwen have turned me into an animal.”
“NO,” I SAID to my sister. “I haven’t seen him.”
“Would you lie to me?” she asked.
“You only lie to people you love,” I said.
CHAURISSE LEFT THEN and Flora and I walked toward my car. I was shaken, but I hid this from my daughter. She recited her -
