The Turner House (28 page)

“But you when you pray, go into your room and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who
is
in the secret place, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”

Tina's eyebrows dropped down into a scowl, but soon the expression disappeared as she located an appropriate rebuttal in her mental concordance. When had they become these people?

“House and wealth are inherited from parents,” she said. “But a
prudent wife
is from the Lord.”

She shifted on her knees to make more space on her left.

“Just come
down
here, Cha,” she said. His verse had been a better choice than hers, and Tina knew it. “If you want to say your own prayer in your head, that's fine.”

Accepting this minor concession, Cha-Cha climbed out of the bed. Being on his knees didn't actually hurt as much as getting down on them; the bracing and muscle control required were the hard parts. Cha-Cha saw Tina's lips moving in the dim light. He closed his eyes, and the first thing he thought of was Alice. The look on her face when he'd left her office. He felt doubly guilty—for thinking of her first when he should have been praying, and for the things he had said to her. He thought he should pray for forgiveness.

Cha-Cha favored short, earnest prayer, and he often wondered what took others so long. It had something to do with excess supplication, he suspected. He never presented a long list of specific requests to God, had always felt uncomfortable with the presumptuousness of “Ask and you shall receive.” This might have been a result of pride, or his own middling ambition, but mostly Cha-Cha's prayers were a series of thank-yous and I'm sorrys.
I'm sorry I told Chucky's first wife, Yvette, she was a cheating whore. Thank you for my health insurance coverage.
If God knew what we needed and the right time to bestow it upon us, then why remind Him all the time? This was one of the many differences between Tina's way of worshipping and his own. “Jesus is on the main line, tell Him what you want” had to be one of the most ridiculous songs created since Negroes grabbed a hold of tambourines, but Tina loved that song. He, on the other hand, could see the beauty and benefit of singing a song like “I need Thee, oh, I need Thee, every hour I need Thee,” because it was more an acknowledgment of the necessity of the constant favor of God, and less an entreaty to treat the Host of Hosts like a twenty-four-hour fast food drive-thru, or an act ACT NOW! special on the Home Shopping Network. This was the sort of lighthearted theological banter he and Tina used to partake in after leaving their AME church, but then she jumped ship and became a holy roller. The most disconcerting part was that it wasn't for show, Cha-Cha realized. Her fervor was consistent, even when no one witnessed it, and because he couldn't match it she had pushed him into a corner.

He looked over to find her still deep in prayer, lips working, fingers interlocked, so he closed his eyes again and said his usual—the Lord's Prayer with a few special thank-yous tacked on the end.
Thank you for my health, my family, my job, that my mortgage is almost paid up, that my son the soldier has stayed out of harm's way.
Then he added,
Thank you for my sanity
, because speaking as if it were still intact, not showing any doubt, seemed the smartest way to proceed.

Tina finally shifted, so Cha-Cha placed both hands on the mattress and leveraged himself into a stand. Tina patted him twice on the shoulder.

“That wasn't so bad, was it?” she said, and walked into the bathroom.

It was as if he were a toddler and she'd just cajoled him into bucking up for a trip to the doctor. He couldn't sleep here, not with this woman treating him like he wasn't potty-trained.

When Tina emerged from the master bathroom she caught Cha-Cha with his pillow clutched to his chest and his bathrobe back on. She stared at him as if he were truly disappointing, a sad case.

“Please, Cha-Cha,” she said. “Get back in the bed.”

She held out a glass of water and his blood pressure pills, pills he'd neglected to take all week. The oversight startled him. More evidence of just how much his day-to-day well-being was dependent on Tina's vigilance. He had set it up this way, encouraged her to stop working, practically forbade her from working. He facilitated this metamorphosis into pushy caretaker, clingy nursemaid. It had made him feel like a man, an old-fashioned, all-capable man like his father. Now he felt like a child. Trapped in the cage of condescension and coddling that he'd built for himself.

Cha-Cha took the pills, swallowed the water, and returned to the bed.

Historically, Cha-Cha and Tina's sleeping arrangements were designed to accommodate an all-night spoon. Cha-Cha preferred to sleep on his right side, so he claimed the left side of the bed in order to be the big spoon to Tina's little spoon. Many things had interrupted this arrangement over the years—kids in the bed, sickness or soreness, too hot summer nights, and arguments—but the unspoken agreement between the two of them was that barring the aforementioned, spooning should be afoot come lights out.

Before Cha-Cha could decide how best to get out of spooning while still sleeping on his preferred side, Tina inched her rear end into position, flush against his pelvis. All that was left to complete the formation was for Cha-Cha to drape his arm across her waist. He hesitated, and he was sure Tina interpreted it as resistance, maybe even rejection. He smelled the Avon Haiku perfume that she sprayed onto the crown of her head every day for his benefit. Ever since menopause she'd started using a silk pillowcase so she wouldn't have to wrap her hair at night.

Then something unexpected happened. An erection. Cha-Cha registered the tingly, nervy sensation and figured he had to pee, but no. It was a different sort of urgency he felt. The real thing. Tina, likely more out of habit than out of genuine interest, shifted her rear against it, just a subtle resettling of her hips. The erection persisted.

Not long ago, sex had still been very much a part of Cha-Cha and Tina's life. He used to quietly thank God that all of Tina's extra churching hadn't shamed away the desire in her. Then Cha-Cha had his accident, and his favorite positions became frustrating, even painful, as his hip healed. He'd once complained to Alice about it, and she'd said, “If the problem is mechanical as opposed to having to do with desire, then you two will figure it out. If Christopher Reeve was still getting off after
his
accident, you can too.” He now felt embarrassed for sharing his “mechanical” sex issues with Alice. But Tina had been upbeat about it all, and the two of them found a way to make it work. Then Viola moved in, and Cha-Cha felt uncomfortable doing it with his mother only two doors down. There was no way to know whether she was asleep or awake because she kept an erratic schedule. The house on Yarrow had a hallway not half as long as this one, plus the boys' room shared a wall with Francis and Viola's room, but Cha-Cha had never heard his parents' lovemaking, only Francis's fervent baritone during arguments. It had been two months since Cha-Cha and Tina last made love.

Tina moved against him again, and Cha-Cha thought they could really do it. It might help right everything wrong between them, or at least help him sleep better. He brought his arm around her waist, and Tina rested her hand on top of his. After much post-accident trial and error, they discovered that their traditional sleeping arrangement was also the easiest on Cha-Cha's hips for sex. Tina had thought being on top might work, but her compact stature belied her heaviness, and Cha-Cha feared his porcelain might crack if she got too spirited. So the spoon became their go-to. He slid his hand underneath Tina's flannel pajama top and onto her belly, where a smiling scar from a teenage appendectomy ran smooth under his fingers. Tina moved closer still, arched her back just a little, and Cha-Cha knew that she too thought this might be enough to fix it all. Cha-Cha wanted to be strategic, as a hasty grope or shift might ruin everything. He figured his next move should be a reach for either breast or booty, but Tina reached back and grabbed his erection through his boxers. Too soon for that, he knew; he wasn't ready for a full-on grab, and just as quick as the stiffness had arrived, it subsided. Cha-Cha forced the breath he'd been holding out through his nose and backed away, lest Tina try to revive him.

“Well,” she started. Her voice sounded hopeful.

“Good night,” Cha-Cha said. He nearly barked. He moved a few more inches back and drew up his knees some, effectively breaking the spoon.

Nothing could be solved so easily.

“Good morning, Bobbie,” Brianne said. She picked him up and sniffed his diaper, tested for wetness with a finger. Finding everything just as dry as she'd left it, she decided to fix him his breakfast before commencing the daily struggle of dressing him. Her shifts ran long and Bobbie's bedtime was early, so Brianne usually woke up at six to spend quality time with her son. Today she was an hour behind schedule. She'd stayed up late, past 2
A.M.
, video chatting with Rob.

As soon as Brianne set Bobbie on the sofa he found the remote and pushed the red Power button, the easiest to locate and the only button he had learned to make do what he wanted. Brianne took the remote from him and flipped through channels until she found PBS, where
Donnie
was on. Though imaginative, the pale, bald four-year-old hero of the show whined too much for Brianne's liking. Bobbie was obsessed with him. Since he'd discovered the show a few months earlier, a large part of morning quality time now included Brianne stomaching Donnie's yelping exploits.

She put a mug full of water in the microwave for coffee and looked at her shadowy reflection in the glass door. The skin under her eyes was swollen, and her hair looked smashed on one side because she'd forgotten to wrap it the night before. That was the downside to video chatting. One had to keep up appearances when one would usually be able to look a mess for bed without the person on the other end of the line being any the wiser. Rob had seen Brianne look disheveled before, but everything between them felt new now.

After she and Rob partook in a bit of awkward, pixelated video sex last night, Rob had asked her to move in with him. She had refused. The boy still didn't have an intuitive bone in his body, so instead of gleaning her feelings and gradually working up to this sort of proposal, he had blurted it out apropos of not much, only a few weeks of being on good terms again. They'd had the same plans in college: get a bachelor's in nursing, then get a master's in public health and become a hospital administrator somewhere. Make more money than all four of their parents combined. It would have still worked with a baby, especially because Rob was going into his senior year, but he'd hesitated. Said he wasn't sure if he was ready to be a father. So she did it all alone. She'd enrolled in night school immediately to get her LPN, just in case she couldn't go to grad school right away. She'd wanted to stay at Eastern Michigan, maybe work in a local nursing home or somewhere part-time until she finished her BS, but it was too much once Bobbie was born. She needed help watching him, and more money than part-time could offer. She came back to Detroit. A few months after Bobbie's birth, Rob had been accepted into an MPH program out in Chicago; he said he wanted to be in his son's life. This was fine with Brianne, but she could not forget those months when she was alone. It had been the darkest, hardest period of her life. She was not was ready to fully forgive him, and had had to move away from the webcam to hide the confusion and annoyance on her face this morning. She told Rob that she didn't think he wanted her, that he was just excited about finally having a relationship with his son.

“
God
, Brianne. I know what I want,” he'd said. “I didn't ask you for joint custody, I asked you to be my girlfriend again.”

“Girlfriend” seemed too casual a term given that they had a child together, given that he wanted her to uproot herself and move to Chicago, where Rob's rent was double her own and childcare was expensive. He had refused to accept a hard
no
(Brianne blamed the cyber sex for this), so she said she'd think about it.

“Come sit in your chair,” Brianne called to her son. She always said it despite his not being able to get into the chair on his own. Bobbie tottered over to her, his
Donnie
pajama pants bunching around his knees, and she lifted him into the highchair. Over his shoulder and through the dining room window Brianne saw her mother emerge from the stairs onto the landing outside. Her mother didn't see her, so Brianne watched her prepare to knock. Her mother smoothed down her ponytail with one flat palm, pulled at her shirt. Brianne felt an urge to pick up her baby and run into the bedroom like she did to avoid a Jehovah's Witness, and like she fantasized doing to her nosey landlord. Then she noticed a McDonald's bag in her mother's other hand. The problem with Witnesses and landlords was that they never came bearing breakfast. Brianne thought they should.

“You're so early,” she said.

“Here.” Her mother handed her the bag of food. “I left the orange juices on the roof of my car. I'll be right back.”

“Mick Donna! Mick Donna!” Bobbie said. He clapped his hands and pushed his rice cereal a few inches away from him. That an eighteen-month-old could already be so enamored with a food he rarely ate scared Brianne.

When her mother returned, Brianne scrutinized the cheerful expression on her face. She could tell Lelah was straining to keep her eyes bright, the set of her mouth resolute.

“You're so early,” Brianne said again. “Thanks for the food.”

“I woke up a couple hours ago and just felt like McDonald's, you know? Breakfast is the only thing they know how to make there, so I figured I'd bring y'all some.”

She wanted something. Brianne could practically smell the question forming in her mother's mouth. She wants something, but she's gonna see what kind of mood I'm in first, Brianne thought.