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"'When I'm talking to you, I expect you to say something. You understand what I told you?'
" 'Yes,' I'd cry.
"'Well, you just don't make any trouble for me. I got enough trouble-without you making any,' she'd say and mumble the rest of the way home.
"I know it sounds like we never had any mother- daughter talks like you all probably have had with your mothers, but we did. Not toward the end, of course, but before things got so bad so that I couldn't look at her, much less talk to her."
I paused and turned to Misty.
"I remember yesterday how you kept asking how two people who were supposedly in love could suddenly hate each other so much. What happened to all the nice things they said to each other and the nice things they did together? I thought about that too and one day, when Momma was sober enough and being nice to Rodney, I asked her something like that.
"I said, 'You loved Daddy once, didn't you, Momma?'
" `So?' she said.
"'I was just wondering why you stopped, is all,' I said. I didn't want to spoil her good mood, so I spoke softly and looked down quickly.
"'Because he's not the man I fell in love with,' she said. 'He fooled me is what happened. When we were first going together, he used to tell me how different he was and how different things were going to be for us. We're not going to be like these poor, drifting folks around us. We're going to build a real home.
"'He was going to have his own company and I'd be a lady in style. I'd have my own car and we'd have a nice house and on and on he'd go with that web he was spinning to trap me good. That's what he did. I gave myself to him expecting he'd live up to those promises. Every one of them turned out to be just a lot of hot air and when I asked him what happened to all those promises, he said he's doing the best he could, to be patient.
"'"Be patient? I'm growing old being patient," I told him. Then he'd clam up the way he often did and pretend I wasn't in the room. He could be so
infuriating. You know that. You've seen him like that.'
"'Maybe he was trying,' I risked saying. She didn't get mad. She laughed.
"'Yeah. Look around you at the palace he built. Men,' she said, 'are born liars. Don't believe a one.'
"She looked down at Rodney playing with his toy truck on the floor and shook her head.
"'They're so sweet when they're little boys and then something happens to them. They let their thing take over and run their lives and ruin ours,' she said.
"I knew what she was saying, but I just didn't believe she was saying it. Momma and I never really had a heart to heart about sex and stuff. She just assumed I'd learn it like she did, from girlfriends. I guess when your hormones screamed, it was all supposed to just pop into your head and you'd know what to do and what not to do. Most girls didn't know what not," I said. "At least, most I knew:'
"My mother didn't exactly offer me any sage advice," Jade said.
"Excuse me?"
"Womanly wisdom," she muttered with that corkscrew smirk of hers.
"Oh. We got taught stuff by the school nurse, of course. She even gave girls sanitary napkins. I remember when I first started getting cramps, I complained to Momma and she just handed me one and told me to wear it just in case.
"'In case?' I asked her.
"'Well, look at you,' Momma declared, 'you about to bust out, aren't you? Welcome to woman's misery.'
"That was about all she told me about it. I learned the rest from girlfriends and the nurse's pamphlets. Then one day when I was nearly thirteen it just happened. It was like an explosion inside me. I got this terrible cramp which about folded me over. I couldn't move without the pain. The nurse came down to the classroom to help me back to her office. I saw the other girls laughing behind my back and some of the boys, too, but I was suffering too much to care.
"She had me rest and called home. Momma answered and after the nurse told her about me, Momma said, 'Well, what am I supposed to do about it?'
"The nurse told her she should come for me, but she claimed she couldn't because Rodney was home sick, which I had a feeling was a big fat lie. She was probably with someone and drinking. When I was able to get up and about, I went home myself and discovered I was right.
"That was the first time I met Aaron Marks. The music was loud. They had been drinking gin. Momma was wearing only a slip. When Momma saw I had entered, she stopped dancing with Aaron and wobbled for a moment and then laughed.
"'This here's my daughter, Star. She started the monthlies today.' She lifted a glass full of gin and added, 'Let's toast to her happy days.'
"I didn't take much of a look at Aaron Marks that first time. I was so embarrassed, I just made a dash for my bedroom and slammed the door. I heard them laughing and drinking. When Rodney came home, they were in Momma's bedroom. I hurried out and brought him into my room and told him to just stay there. He cried because he had to go to the bathroom so I had to let him out and he heard Momma's laughter and went to her room. The sight of another man in bed with her just put the freeze in his face.
