They put her in a regular classroom, but I told them right up front, “Don’t give her a nicey-nice teacher.” I spelled it out for them. Nobody could touch her. They couldn’t expect her to talk, but they shouldn’t assume she wasn’t listening and learning. I didn’t make requests and I didn’t apologize.
Things weren’t perfect after that, but they got better.
She lived with me for almost two years, and in all that time, she touched me twice. On what would have been Irv’s and my fortieth anniversary, I had a little wine and got maudlin. Wavonna touched my hand, my wedding ring. To comfort me, I think. The second time was right before Valerie got paroled, and I hired a lawyer to help her get custody of Wavonna and the baby she’d had while she was in prison.
We drove down to Tulsa for Leslie’s birthday and had a fine old time: singing, wearing silly hats, and cheering as Leslie ripped open packages. After all the big hoopla, the three girls settled into the living room to play, while Brenda and I cleaned up.
I couldn’t keep putting it off, so I sat down at the kitchen table and said, “I’ve been talking to Valerie’s lawyer about this transitional program she can get into.”
“I didn’t know she still had a lawyer. Are you paying for that?”
I didn’t answer. I wanted it not to be her business, but maybe it was.
“Fine. So, Val’s lawyer thinks she can get into some program?” Brenda cut a second slice of birthday cake. Her weight dogged her for years, because she ate when she was upset.
“It’s for women with children, to help her get back on her feet so she can take care of Donal and Wavonna.” I knew that would cause a ruckus and it did.
“Are you serious, Mom? Do you really think Val can take care of them? You know what Vonnie’s like. That’s Val’s parenting skills right there. A daughter who won’t speak, won’t eat, and sneaks out at night.”
“She’s doing better.”
“I know. You’re doing so good with her. I—” Brenda laid her hand on my arm, and I could see she really was sorry she’d lost her temper.
“I want Wavonna to be with her mother.” I wanted to want that. I wanted things to be simple and they never were.
“Do you really think that’s the best thing for her?”
“Val’s been getting treatment. This program will put her in an apartment, where she’ll have a counselor. They’ll make sure she takes her medicine, and help her take care of the kids.”
“Well, what do you need to do? Is there paperwork?”
“I need you to go to her parole hearing and the custody hearing. You’re going to have to do it, Brenda.”
“Why?”
“Metastasized.” Wavonna had crept up so quietly neither of us noticed her until she spoke.
“What does she mean?” Brenda said. “Mom?”
“She must have overheard me talking with the doctor’s office. The cancer is back. It’s in my lungs and my liver. Three months they think, maybe less.”
Now that we were talking about hard things, Leslie and Amy stopped playing Barbies and came to stand in the doorway next to Wavonna. I tried to will Brenda to be strong, but she started shaking and crying. Amy and Leslie cried, too. They were all crying, except Wavonna. She crossed the kitchen and reached out to me. For a second, she laid her hand on my chest, touched those fake foam boobs I wore in my bra.
I loved her then, right as I was getting ready to leave her.
3
WAVY
June 1977
Aunt Brenda didn’t want me to stay with Grandma at the end.
“Let Bill take her back to Tulsa. My friend Sheila is staying at the house to take care of the girls while I’m here,” Aunt Brenda said.
“She’s going with you soon enough. Let her stay with me,” Grandma said. She held out her hand and I went to her, even though I wasn’t brave enough to touch her with Aunt Brenda there to see.
“I love you, sweetie. I love you. Pretty soon I’m going to go and be with your Grandpa Irv, but God willing, you’ll see me again, Wavonna. Not for a long time, but some day,” she said.
For a while, Grandma slept, and Aunt Brenda went into the kitchen to make coffee, but she sat at the table and laid her head down on her arms to cry. When the big clock should have chimed three o’clock, it didn’t, because no one remembered to wind it. Aunt Brenda was asleep.
“I wish I weren’t afraid. It seems so silly to be afraid, but it feels like driving to a new place and not knowing where I’m going,” Grandma said when she woke up. We were alone, so I held her hand.
I thought about Mr. Arsenikos, our neighbor where we lived before Mama got arrested. When Mama and Uncle Sean used to fight, Mr. Arsenikos let me hide on his back porch. He called me his “stray cat,” and gave me bacon sandwiches. Sometimes they were just bacon grease spread on soft, white bread, but sometimes they had whole pieces of bacon on them. After I ate, he would sit out on the porch swing and tell me the names of stars. He used his cane to scratch them out in the dirt, so I could learn them. He was a sailor on a boat called USS San Diego, which is also a city in California. His boat sank in the Great War, and he knew which way to row the life raft toward land, because of the stars.
On the chenille bedspread that was stretched over Grandma’s belly, I drew Ursa Minor, with his tail pointing down.
“Ursa Minor is north tonight. Little Dipper,” I said, because Grandma called it that. I drew it in the palm of her hand, so she would remember. She nodded. By the time the sun came up, she was asleep again, and she didn’t wake up.
Mr. Arsenikos said if you knew the constellations you would never get lost. You could always find your way home.
* * *
At Grandma’s funeral, the only real thing was Grandma in a fancy box. Everything else was pretend.
Aunt Brenda pretended she wasn’t mad at Mama.
“Oh, Val, I’m so glad to see you,” she said.
Uncle Bill pretended, too. Before Mama came, he said, “Let’s get this over with and get her out of our lives,” but then he hugged her and said, “You look great, Val. You need to visit more often.”
“I want us to get together for Christmas. We can’t just see each other for funerals,” Aunt Brenda said.
“I know! We have to keep in touch. I can’t believe it’s been so long since we saw each other. I’ve missed you so much,” Mama said.
Then she brought the new baby to me.
“This is your little brother, Vonnie. This is Donal. Give him a kiss.”
I didn’t know why Mama wanted me to kiss him, when she was the one who said the mouth was a dirty place. In case it was a trick, I only pretended to kiss him.
After the funeral, Mama and Donal and I went to The Transitional Program.
“Everything’s going to be different this time,” she said.
The first two weeks at The Program, it was different. She was Good Mama and followed the rules. She washed our clothes and put them away in drawers in the new apartment. She cooked dinner. She didn’t hide in her bedroom and smoke her pipe like she did before she got arrested.
Then one day she woke up Scary Mama instead of Good Mama, and I knew things weren’t going to be different. I never knew which Mama she would be when she woke up.