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“I’m sorry, Victor. I just can’t see you being a cry baby, and your brother calling you Vickie.” Natasha shook her head. “That’s my sister’s name.”
“Believe me, it didn’t last long.”
“What got you out of it?”
“My grandfather. It didn’t matter where in the house he was or what he was doing, as soon as he heard me cry, he was coming to shut it down.”
“What would he do?”
“He’d come in the room. I’d be crying, Rhonda would be holding me, and Stevie would be laughing. He was a big man, so when he’d appear in the doorway he’d fill up the frame. He’d say, ‘Let him go, Rhonda.’ Then he’d tell Stevie to stop laughing at me and get out of there. Then he’d say, ‘Come here to me, boy. You stop that damn crying, boy, right now, you hear me?’”
“Did you?”
“Not right away. Then he’d put his big fist in my face and ask me if I wanted him to give me something to cry about.” I laughed. “I’d try my best to dry my eyes and straighten-up my face, because although he never hit me, I was scared to death of him.”
I smiled at Natasha and she smiled back.
“My father never hit me, either.” Natasha paused. “That was my mother’s job and she turned it into an art form.”
“So did my mother. She was like this mad-crazy ninja assassin.”
The two of us shared a laugh, Natasha took a step closer to me and I fought the overwhelming urge to hold her hand.
“Anyway, he’d tell me stuff like be a man, and that big boys don’t cry, and I was his big boy. And after a while, I wasn’t a cry baby anymore, because I knew what was expected of me.”
“You learned to cut yourself off from your emotions,” Natasha said; then she dropped and shook her head as if she finally understood something.
We walked in silence for a while, as I decided whether I wanted to tell her anymore of my story. I imagine Natasha was politely waiting to see if I’d continue. And then she broke the silence.
“So, you’re not a cry baby anymore, what happened with your mother?”
“So now my mother was twenty-three when I was born. She was young, pretty, and suddenly single. With her parents as built-in babysitters, my mother started going out, having a good time, and eventually she met a man. She used to bring him around sometimes at first, but he didn’t like us. Especially Rhonda; said she had too much mouth. He was right about that. Rhonda still got plenty of mouth, but who’d she get that from? She got it from our mother.”
“The apple very
rarely falls far from the tree,” Natasha said, smiling at me.
“Anyway, he wanted to marry her and he had a job in DC, and they were going to move there. She told me, Stevie and Rhonda that once they got settled, she was gonna come back for us.”
“Did she really?”
“Yeah, same line my father ran on her. Rhonda never believed that she was coming back for us and after a while, Stevie gave up believing and they both stopped getting on the phone when she called. But not me; I believed her lies every time she’d call. It was always gonna be the next month or two. Jimmy just started a new job and once we got settled . . . it would always be. But it never happened.” I looked at Natasha, and then I told her something that I never told anybody, not even Rhonda. “For the longest time, I always felt like I was the reason she left us, too.”
“I know that must have been hard on all of you.”
“It was. It was hard on the whole family. Leaving her kids like that broke my grandmother’s heart. She was never the same after that, and then she had a stroke. My grandfather worked from well before the sun came up, until nine, ten o’clock most nights after that, to take care of us and his sick wife. He’d work, and since my grandmother couldn’t, Rhonda took care of us. A lot of people in the family quietly say that my mother doing what she did is what caused my grandmother to have a stroke, and that sent my grandfather to an early grave.”
“I know that you’re probably tired of hearing me say I’m sorry. But I am. Sorry you had to deal with that so young. But the man standing in front of me overcame all of that. And I’m thankful.”
She may not have understood my life the way I lived it, but I was happy that she listened without judgment. That was when I saw somebody that I definitely wasn’t expecting to see, and her being there raised red flags.
Bria Abbott. What’s she doing here?
I made a mental note to tell Paul and turned my attention back to Natasha. She had been talking the whole time and I didn’t hear a word of it, but whatever she was saying ended with, “I can’t even imagine.”
I laughed to myself. “I guess you can’t. I’m sure your childhood was nothing like mine.”
“We had our moments.” Natasha paused, and for a second her facial expression changed. “Still do.”
