I have no words. I can’t confirm or deny. I just stare at her helplessly, this eleven-year-old girl who’s too young to have her illusions stripped away. I may be mad as hell with my sister going on twelve years, but this is still my niece, and though I barely know her, I love her.
“You cheated?” she demands of Terry. “Oh, my God, Mom.”
“Quianna,” I start, not even sure what I’ll say next.
“Is that why you’re never around, Aunt Neevah?” She’s volleying the questions between Terry and me, getting answers from neither, deducing the plain truth that neither of us can hide now.
“No wonder you and Daddy are such a mess,” she spits, turning on her heel and going back the way she came.
The door slams behind her, leaving a silence swelling with shock and rage.
“Look what you did,” Terry snaps. “What am I supposed to tell my daughter, Neevah?”
“I’ll talk to her.” I start for the door, but Terry steps in front of me.
“And say what? She don’t know you. I need to be the one to explain.”
“You mean tell her your version?”
“Ain’t worth trying to hide the truth now that you’ve spilled it everywhere. Made a mess I gotta be the one to clean up.”
For a second, I actually feel guilty. Yes, I wish Quianna hadn’t heard it that way or even from me, but for Terry to shift the real blame of her actions to me for inadvertently exposing them?
It’s too much.
“It’s not my fault you have to explain the shady shit you did to me to your daughter.”
“Oh, you’re just loving this, aren’t you? Terry got pregnant. Terry’s stuck in this dead-end town. Terry’s marriage is—” She breaks off and glares at me despite her bottom lip quivering. “You got it all, Neevah. You always had it all, didn’t you?”
“I got it all? I always had it all? Seriously, you were the one everyone wanted.”
“No, it’s just that no one ever thought they could get you. You walked around like you were too good for everybody until Brandon.”
“Like I was too good . . .” Beneath my indignation and rage, a small bud of hurt breaks through. I loved my sister best in the world back then, would have done anything for her, and this was how she saw me? How she truly felt?
“I can count on two hands with fingers to spare how many times I’ve been home in twelve years,” I tell her, my voice trembling and tears filling my eyes. “Quianna wasn’t just your child. She’s Mama’s grandchild. What was more important? That I be around? Or that she be around? But for years I couldn’t look at you or Brandon without feeling sick. You didn’t just take him. You took Mama. You took my home and you broke my heart.”
I can’t see my own eyes right now, but I imagine they look just like my sister’s—brimming with tears, shaded by rage and regret. Her fists are balled at her sides. She glances at the door to the car porch, and I hear the car running in the driveway.
“I better go see about Quianna,” she says, grabbing her purse from the kitchen counter and leaving without another word.
The door slams behind her and I grip the counter tight, my only support in the wake of that confrontation. I lower my head, letting hot tears spill over my cheeks. I knew this trip would be hard in some ways, but I’d thought they would be gone. I didn’t think this would all burst, like an infected blister lanced and oozing everywhere. I have no idea how I’ll face them tomorrow. Terry and Brandon and Quianna. I’m tempted to leave, but that’s what I’ve done for twelve years—ceded the field, my home, for them. It’s been too long. Tonight may have been awkward and even painful, but it’s a step toward exposing the past and, hopefully, moving on to some kind of future. Maybe when I see them at Christmas dinner tomorrow, we’ll figure it out.
But the next day Christmas comes, and they do not.
Their absence is glaring. It’s so obvious they are missed.
The house is packed for Christmas dinner, as it was when we were growing up. Our natural family is not that large, but Mama has a way of collecting people. Strays. Friends. Folks who would be alone were it not for her “adopting” them. I’ve missed how she makes our home a community unto itself. It’s loud and boisterous and much less trying than I’d thought it would be. Except when someone forgets and asks about Terry and Brandon. An awkward silence. A furtive glance my way. The last time many of them saw me, I was Brandon’s fiancée. The girl who ran up north as soon as she graduated, rarely seen back in these parts.
And now I’m back, so Terry and Brandon aren’t here for Christmas.
There are moments when I feel perfectly at home, and it’s like one of our famous Mathis family reunions. And there are times I feel like an intruder, a sojourner in a strange land.
“You make this corn pudding?” my Aunt Alberta asks Mama. She seems virtually unchanged by time. A little more gray in her hair, brown skin still relatively smooth. She still walks around the house carrying her purse like she expects somebody to steal it.
“I made it, yeah.” Mama scoops a generous portion of the corn pudding onto Alberta’s plate.
“I bet it’s not good as Terry’s,” Alberta says teasingly. “That girl can throw down just like you.”