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Kerry let go of the inside of her lip. “Well, no, he can’t live with his daddy because he lives with his mommy. And he sees his daddy on weekends—when his daddy is free.”
Mrs. Taylor walked over and placed her body right in front of Kerry’s.
Val might have considered getting between them if a to-the-death fight wouldn’t lead to the total elimination of at least one person she no longer wanted to see on earth. Due to the current situation, she found herself on Kerry’s side.
“Are you saying my son is never around his son?” Mrs. Taylor pushed.
“Actually I didn’t say anything like that,” Kerry backed up—she had meant this but hadn’t expected Mrs. Taylor to repeat it in such a way that Tyrian would hear and understand. She decided that it would be best to cut the conversation short to avoid more consternation. She grabbed Tyrian’s hand and pulled him to her side.
But, Mrs. Taylor pulled him back.
“A boy needs his father,” she quipped.
“I’m not going to argue about that,” Kerry said, and then she added as if it was a new epiphany, “because I don’t have to. I’m not doing this with you.” She pulled Tyrian back to her side and started heading toward the door.
Mrs. Taylor laughed a laugh so deep at Kerry’s back it was more of a wicked cackle.
“So sensitive,” she said to Kerry. “That was always your problem. No backbone.”
Kerry stopped in her tracks and considered a few lines she could share that might defend her strength—the pool of power that had been but a dithering puddle when she’d first met this woman talking behind her back. It had since grown into an abyss that had given her so many options of defense against the powers of evil—one being walking away. She looked down at Tyrian’s eyes, saw them drinking in every one of her actions, and decided on a course: one foot in front of the other.
Mrs. Taylor was still cackling at her victory when Kerry was out the door and in her car.
Val was silent. Standing in front of the fresco like a pregnant paper doll.
“Thank God my son ain’t married to the stuck-up one anymore,” Mrs. Taylor said, really to no one, but it just so happened that Val was in the room. She sucked her teeth and let out a loud sigh like Kerry had been the aggressor in the exchange. “Straight-up simple. Like she has any business raising that boy. She needs to be somewhere figuring out what she’s going to do with her life. Can’t mooch off my boy forever.” She snapped her fingers in the shape of a Z at that last point and started toward the steps to head back to the refuge of her bedroom.
But something was going on downstairs still. The outburst or random conflict or foolery—whatever anyone would call it—had led Kerry to walk away (an action Mrs. Taylor had predicted), but Val was a different creature. She wasn’t a Southern belle, she was a Southern gal, and though she’d been playing it safe to stay in the good grace of Mrs. Taylor and her not-so-obliging husband, any wise person could say of the situation, “It’s only a matter of time.” Now was said time.
“You didn’t have to say all that,” Val shot back, not in Kerry’s defense, but speaking in a way for a circumstance she could predict in her future. “Not in front of that boy.”
Mrs. Taylor stopped the same way Kerry had. “What?”
“That wasn’t right. You shouldn’t have spoken like that in front of that boy.” Val’s conviction didn’t waver. She was getting louder.
Mrs. Taylor, who’d made it a few steps up the staircase, turned around and headed back to Val ready for combat. “That boy is Tyrian. My grandson. I know what he can and can’t take. So you don’t need to add any amount of change to this conversation.”
“I don’t care who he is to you or anybody else; you don’t speak crazy in front of a kid,” Val snapped. “Who doesn’t know that?”
“I know one thing, and it’s that you have a whole lot of damn nerve if you think you’re just going to walk up in my son’s house talking about what I can and can’t say in front of my own damn grandson.”
“Wrong,” Val started, her voice confident she was about to one-up her opponent. “I didn’t just walk up into anyone’s house. I live here. This is my house. I’m the woman of this house.”
“Hell you are!”
“Hell I ain’t!” Val pointed to her face in the fresco.
Mrs. Taylor felt the jab, but it only made her more defensive. “What’s that cheap shit supposed to mean?” she asked after a pause. “You ain’t on the mortgage. The deed. The taxes. You’re just visiting.”
Val felt so small then. She could run right toward Mrs. Taylor’s stomach and tackle her to the floor.
“I mean, as smart as you were to get pregnant by my son—if that’s the case—you seem pretty light-headed to move into a house you don’t own fifty percent of. That’s rule number one.”
“Fuck you!” was all Val could say.
“I’m glad you said that,” Mrs. Taylor said coolly. “Get used to it. You’ll be saying that a lot. Stick around. You’ll see. I got rid of that Kerry. You think you’re safe?” Mrs. Taylor laughed like a heavyweight and started back up to her room. “Mama’s always on the job. Out the house, on the job”—she made it halfway up the steps and looked down at Val fuming—“in the house, on the job. Always on the job.”
Seemingly building upon a new talent, Jamison walked into the house after all of the fighters were back in their respective corners—Kerry at home serving Tyrian dinner, Mrs. Taylor in her bed, Val in her bathroom. He was still surprised by the silence that met him at the front door. He ignored the fresco in the living room and climbed the steps lightly so his mother wouldn’t hear him and request a visit to sit by her bed and watch General Hospital . He was waiting to hear back from Emmit’s guy with a response from Dax, and he couldn’t wrap his mind around the mental gymnastics that would be required of him to sit and pretend he enjoyed anything about watching television with his mother.
