“Jamison, this is—” Val tried to mediate, but then Jamison cut her off with dribbles of Southern charm in his voice that could have softened any woman’s angry tongue. Anyone listening had the sense that this was how he’d talked to older voters at senior centers and nursing homes during press spots when he was trying to get elected.
“No. No need—” He held out his arm before getting down on his knee in front of where Leaf had sat Mama Fee. “I know exactly who this Cherokee Rose is.” He took her hand and kissed it. “Mama Fee. My new mother-in-law.” He looked into her eyes. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“Well, you too.” Everything Mama Fee had imagined about this brown stranger who was marrying her daughter was whirling down a veritable toilet bowl and disappearing into a forgotten sewer. This old woman was blushing. Her heart was heating.
“I know these aren’t the best circumstances for us to be meeting, but I’m sure you know the old way.” Traces of Jamison’s true Southern accent punctuated each verb. “I had to make an honest woman of your daughter. And fast.”
“Well, thank you, sir,” Mama Fee said, and her tone recalled traces of the young woman she used to be, “but you can save that. I’ve heard many things about my daughter, and ‘honest’ ain’t one of them.”
Everyone chuckled but Val.
“So, we know the same woman?” Jamison asked, rubbing Mama Fee’s shoulder.
“I made her; you bought her.” Mama Fee grabbed Jamison’s hand to stop him. Looked into his eyes. “Just promise me you’ll treat her right.”
“I will.”
“Okay. Enough with the negro family reunion,” Val jumped in, looking at Jamison. “Where’s the judge? Your baby and I are tired and we need a nap.”
“Don’t worry. Everything’s going as planned,” Jamison answered, feeling the sharp, stark jab of a reminder of his predicament in “your” associated with the baby. “We’re just waiting for Mama—” The door opened and Leaf ushered in an older version of the woman in the Tiffany picture frame in Mama Fee’s purse. “And here she is.”
This mother’s pearl earrings were real and huge. Milky mirrors that shined more brilliantly than diamonds as they clung onto her meaty earlobes. And she was also wearing a lace-front wig, but the bold blond hair glued to her forehead wasn’t plastic. It was one hundred percent Malaysian and so soft it bounced down her little meaty back when she wasn’t even moving. After noting how odd the soft flaxen curls looked against her purple brown skin, the second thing people noticed about her was that she was usually the shortest and roundest person in any room. At one moment she could look like one of those old school inflatable punching dolls. At another, an overgrown obese toddler. It didn’t seem to bother her though. She wore her weight and stature like war garments. It made people move out of the way and stare. And that’s just what she wanted.
Jamison was up on his feet and had his mother in his arms before Mama Fee could get a good look at her.
Val seemed to have disappeared into a corner and was clinching her teeth tightly. Not necessarily in fear of what Mrs. Taylor would say to her, but what Val might say back. Since the scene in the bathroom at the office, Val came to realize that Jamison had a firm belief that his mother was the incarnate manifestation of Isis, Mother Nature, Yemaya-Ogun, and Sojourner Truth wrapped up into one wicked widow. Those who spoke against her were outcasts, never to be heard from again. Val just, simply, knew better than to rumble with this robust reincarnation. And that was no easy task f
or anyone. “The wicked witch returns,” Val mumbled.
“My handsome, brilliant baby boy,” Mrs. Dorothy Taylor said so fervently everyone in the room knew Jamison had heard these words a billion times since he was born.
Mother and son exchanged elegant words as if they were alone in the room before Jamison pulled his mother and her bouncing Malaysian curls to Mama Fee.
“Mama, I have someone I want you to meet.” He pointed down to Mama Fee, who hadn’t moved from her place on the couch. She was still taking in the real pearls and Malaysian hair. “This is Mama Fee, Val’s mother.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Mrs. Taylor said. “Hello, dear.” She reached down and offered half of her hand to Mama Fee in a half-friendly, non-palm-touching handshake that revealed that she was more of a politician than her son. Her voice was desperately detached though, and nearly patronizing, as if Mama Fee was a little dear twenty years her senior and on her way to a nursing home; however, they were clearly the same age. “And how are you enjoying our fine city?”
“It’s not my first time here. We’re from Memphis.” Mama Fee deferred to her daughter, who was still hiding in the corner.
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard—” Mrs. Taylor nodded at Val and accepted a fake hug when she finally emerged from the darkness. “But you certainly haven’t seen it with my son, the mayor.” She nearly pushed Val from her side and pulled Jamison to her. “He can get anything done at the snap of his finger. Right, baby?”
“Yes, Mama.” Jamison feigned embarrassment, but really his tone was set to cheer his mother’s petty praises along.
Mama Fee looked on and smiled with tightly pursed lips as if she was listening to a pastor’s wife brag about her new Second Sunday hat.
Leaf, who’d stepped out of the room and was now standing at the door with it halfway open, announced that everyone was to follow him to the judge’s chambers. His voice was productive, punctual, as if he was seating them at the local burger joint and certainly not preparing them for what was commonly a Southern sacrament filled with all of the pomp and circumstance, ritual, and tradition of a pope’s beatification. At that very moment, in a black Southern wedding, the bride was to be buried beneath a cloud of virginal whiteness in silk, lace and taffeta; her adoring father and loyal sorority sisters were to be at her side; a church should’ve been draped in two tasteful, season-friendly colors; a unity candle should be placed at the altar; a broom decorated by some old, or wise, or creative spirit should’ve been hidden in the front pew; three beautiful brown little girls with long pigtails and clear, ambitious eyes should’ve been walking down the aisle; a groom, nervous, but so proud should’ve been standing at the front of what seemed like a mile long line of envious spectators as a woman from the church sang “Ave Maria” out of tune. But there was none of that here. Jamison had asked Val not to wear white, so she wouldn’t draw any attention to them, so she was in a beige Chanel suit that might make coworkers envious at an office luncheon, but seemed par for the course in the back breezeways at the courthouse. Jamison was straggling behind her in a navy suit his first wife had picked out for him just months before they’d divorced.
The small group of celebrants gathered to file out of the door like they were stepping into a teller line at a bank. The only person who might have appeared confused as to whether she was preparing for a deposit or withdrawal was Mama Fee, who was in the front of the line. Holding down the back was the one who was certain—Mrs. Taylor. She grabbed Val’s hand just before she stepped over the threshold.
Jamison saw the tug. “Mama, we have to go,” he said, his eyes now as troubled as Val’s. “The judge is ready.”
“I know who’s ready and who ain’t,” Mrs. Taylor replied, unmoved. “I just need a moment alone with my soon-to-be daughter-in-law.” She pulled Val farther back from the threshold.
“But, Mama—”
“Jamison Taylor, you know I don’t care for people minding my business. I said I have to speak to this here gal about something and—”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Taylor, but we are on a tight schedule,” Leaf tried, cutting Mrs. Taylor off with a voice drenched in authority.