Growing up, Granddaddy had never been a big writer or a reader; he was never good with words. Numbers were his thing. They meant dollars, survival. Words could get you dead. Too much talking meant not enough working. But his baby was smart, even though she hated words and he often had to chastise her into finishing her work for class. She’d written an essay that had gotten her into college before she was old enough to go. That opportunity he wanted to give her, a chance to be more than he could. But no one had ever given him anything. He took to breaking the law in order to get what he and his family needed. That was the world she had inherited. To demand anything less would make her weak and he’d seen to it that none of his girls were weak. So he’d give her work she’d already proven she could do.
He swallowed hard, sat back farther in his chair than the frame had ever intended, and said, “If you want to go, Pretty, write ten reasons I should let you. Write ’em out and I’ll think about it.”
Momma sat in her room, writing words that did not flow as they had when she wrote the essay for Upward Bound. The words she wrote for her daddy were reluctant to appear, as if they feared her daddy too. Her writing was disjointed, too much pressure on the paper, her life sketched in scraggly lines. She started, stopped, balled up the paper, started again. She scratched out a word. Wrote another. In between each page she crumbled, her future dipped into a valley. It stalled there, unable to muster energy to creep up the mountainside. There were moments she was able to press on the gas of her existence, when she barreled up that mountain, revved herself past the downward tug of incline. Then, there was no destination in mind, just the moving reminded her she was fighting toward her own space. Finally, she’d scribbled ten things, ten reasons her daddy should let her leave his house.
“What were those reasons?” I once asked. She said she does not need to remember. I, on the other hand, must know. Did she write she had missed her period and she knew, but really didn’t know what that meant? Had the graphite against paper wanted to confess what had happened with Pop, as she, clenching her fingers, burrowed down on blankness, wrestled words into short, simple sentences? Had she fought the urge to write, “I need to get out of here before we all know,” aware he might not read beyond the letter “I?” Those things cannot be known. The past only reveals what it chooses, but I see her as she inspects her paper, as she says a prayer for each word, and takes her future into her daddy’s room.
Momma quietly handed her daddy the paper. She quivered as she leaned toward him. He pretended to read even though the curves, the straight lines had always been foreign to him. He cleared his throat and she flinched in response. She looked straight ahead. He stared down. No parts of the house creaked. Even the windows seemed to hold their breath. The ear of the world turned toward him—waited—just as Momma did.
“All right, you can go.” He spoke with heat, as if she were in need of a whipping.
She heard it that way too, but through the heat she heard song. He ordered her out of the room, told her to clean something before he changed his mind. She didn’t smile as she left and she didn’t look back. I see him and her in my mind and I know what Momma did not; if she had looked back, if her eyes had touched his, she would have seen the smile, the celebration in him.
Her first week in Norfolk was the reprieve for which she’d prayed. Norfolk State University was only twenty minutes from her daddy’s Deep Creek, and yet it felt years away, so far, from the two-bedroom house with floors that had moaned as she tiptoed over them. She had moaned too, quietly, so her daddy couldn’t hear, once she’d passed her second month without a period. At Norfolk State, she could moan loudly. There she wasn’t Big Boone’s daughter, she wasn’t “Pretty,” and she wasn’t the girl Pop had deposited his shame into.
No fear of her daddy hearing in spaces he did not own. This new space, with buildings so large they could have birthed her daddy’s house five times over, belonged to her. She belonged to it, and neither she nor that majestic campus would suffocate under this new belonging.
There’s something about being surrounded by people who believe the world will work as expected. That kind of confidence rubs off on the less fortunate. That’s what happened to Momma. She became so immersed in that environment she forgot what awaited her at home. She forgot what had prompted her to leave.
She attended classes, walked the Norfolk State campus like she’d always belonged there, and spent nights with other Upward Bound students talking about lives they would enjoy after graduating and entering college. That was her plan too. Upward Bound, college, maybe even the Army. The Army would get her far from Deep Creek.
While there was more than enough food at Norfolk State, there were still those pangs, those cramps in time that doubled her over, and left her paralyzed in a bathroom stall. She rationalized her weak stomach as nerves. Then she found she was sick at her calmest moments. Finally, she visited the infirmary. After a quick rundown of her symptoms—nausea, tender breasts, headaches, vomiting—the nurse recommended she take a pregnancy test.
She didn’t need a test. She knew there was something growing inside her and its life meant her life would forever be changed. She knew this soon after Pop did what he did, soon after that first ride on those handlebars. No, she didn’t need a test. She needed a time machine, a way to go back and do things the right way so the life she’d glimpsed those few days at Norfolk State could be hers.
After she learned she would be a mother, she learned there would be no Upward Bound graduation. As if she and her pregnancy were contagious, Norfolk State officials told her to leave the campus. No longer one of the hopefuls, she instantly became the girl Norfolk State graduates would look down on, the one they would warn their sons to steer clear of, one they would caution their daughters against becoming. All the possibilities, the future she’d imagined, college, Army, moving far from Deep Creek, were no longer possible. She needed answers and to get away from the people she’d spent weeks with, so she boarded a bus to Portsmouth. She was going to a place she felt safe, a place she knew had answers and possibly a way out. She was going to her momma.
In preparation for Momma’s visit, Grandma Rachel had strewn her newly purchased red dress across the bed. She’d crisscrossed the store several times, trying to find the perfect one. Then she saw it, fire-engine red, with gold buttons on the side, a modest split, and turtleneck top. She couldn’t wait to try it on and show her baby how done up she’d be for her Upward Bound graduation. In celebration of Momma’s visit, she hadn’t taken a drink all day. She was not sitting at the kitchen table, arms limp at her sides, head smashed into the tablecloth. Her baby wouldn’t have to place her ear against her mouth, just to see if she were breathing. Grandma Rachel was wide awake, alert, and sober, all because she wanted to see her daughter’s face when she showed her the dress she’d purchased.
Grandma Rachel stared out of the window as she saw Momma trudging toward the house. She studied her daughter’s movements, her body. Something just isn’t right, she felt in her back, her neck before she saw Momma’s tear-stained cheeks, before her growing belly came into view. Grandma Rachel gathered the red dress with the gold buttons, folded it into a square, and placed it in the drawer atop her clothes. She smoothed the creases in the fabric, wiped the tears that fell down her face, and went to greet her daughter.
Together, they devised a plan. Momma would have to tell her daddy she was pregnant. They agreed that was the right thing to do, but Grandma would be there. Not next to Momma, in the conversation, but on the porch steps, able to get to her if necessary. Where she’d live? What she’d say to Pop? All of that would come later. She first had to tell her daddy.
Granddaddy’s gaze pulled Momma to the car. The passenger seat was