I was doing it again, letting my mind wander in church of all places. Ryan took my hand and gave me a smile. Very nice. Now if I could just concentrate and stop making menus and to-do lists in the margin of my bulletin, I’d be making progress. I didn’t know why, but ever since I’d had Lily, some of my most creative moments had happened in church. Usually, though, I was holding Lily, so I didn’t get to write any of it down until I got home. Right there, as the choir was finishing, I thought of a concept for the logo for CurlyDivas.com, a site for black women with natural hair. I was enjoying that project a lot, even picking up a few tips for my own tresses.
Today I was wearing my half-ro in twists, set off by a middle part and sporting the copper highlights that my former hairdresser was kind enough to come to my home and put in. I’d tried to make appointments with her several times, but something always came up with the baby. And as much as Queen Liz wanted everyone to think that she was the perfect grandmother, outside of church and other public events, she didn’t want to fool with Lily at all. When I asked her to babysit so that I could get my hair done, she suggested I call a friend or switch Lily to formula so that she could be sure that she’d sleep most of the time.
I got that my choice—our choice—to breast-feed made things a little unconventional for everyone. That was why I pumped my milk, too, so that the Queen didn’t have to worry. It didn’t matter, though. If I could just make it through the first year, things would get better. They had to. The good thing was, I was never, never doing this again. Ryan would have to play catch with someone else’s son, because another baby in this body just wasn’t happening. As soon as I was fertile again, I was going to—
“Here.” Lily dangled from my mother-in-law’s arms like a little golden dishrag. Her face was red from crying. Was I so into my thoughts that I hadn’t heard my own child? The music was loud, but still….
She felt warm against me, pushing her face into my shirt. For all the hard times, there were good ones, too. I loved my baby in a way I hadn’t known it was possible to love anyone. Tapping my foot to the music, I cradled Lily in the crook of my arm and pulled a blanket up over her. My nursing shirt was like some sort of James Bond contraption and with one flip of a button, all the goodies were flowing and totally out of view.
“’Lizbeth? Is that child pulling out her breast-asssissss? Lord have mercy. I do believe that I have seen it all.” One of my mother-in-law’s friends, Miss Bea, looked as though she was about to faint. She grabbed a mortuary fan from the back of the pew in front of her and started fanning so hard that I had to close my right eye.
I should have closed the left one, too.
Maybe then I wouldn’t have seen the Queen’s face coming at me like some sort of eighties 3–D movie. She wasn’t smiling. She didn’t even scream, which was what I expected from the look of her. What she did do was something new, something inexplicably terrifying.
She whispered.
And not to me.
“Son, get your wife up from here and take her to the nursing room. Now.”
Ryan, who’d obviously been doing some daydreaming of his own, looked confused for a moment himself. “What, Mom? Tracey nurses Lily in here every Sunday. What’s the big deal?”
Miss Bea started to wail. The organ faltered and someone missed the entrance to the chorus of the song. The Queen took the fan and tried to comfort her friend, still speaking with the vicious whisper that made me want to look behind me to see if there was a sniper in the church balcony, waiting to take me out at any moment.
There wasn’t. I peeked.
“Now, Bea, calm down. I told you. The girl has no mother, no home training. Don’t you get yourself all upset now. I’m going to take care of this, if I have to drag her out of here myself.” She turned and stared at me with the coldest look I’d ever gotten from her (and that’s quite a collection).
Lily burped while her grandmother pushed up the sleeves on her mint-green suit. She meant that thing, as Dana would say. She was going to try to drag me out of here. I had to pray then, because the first thing that came to my mind in that moment was the almost forty pounds separating myself and the good Queen. Every ounce would come in handy if she tried to put her hands on me. Every ounce.
You are in church. That is your mother-in-law. Get up and go—
I was thinking it. I was praying it. But I guess I took too long about it, because the next thing I knew, Lily and I were up on our feet and a diaper bag was shoved onto my shoulder. My husband took my hand and led me out of the pew, providing a clenched smile to the two hundred or so people in our vicinity. This was past embarrassing, it was humiliating. Despite my resolve, a tear tickled my nostril as I stepped onto the carpet covering the aisle.
Ryan walked close behind me as though he had a gun to my back. I thought to myself that it seemed as though his mother had a gun to his. A loud sniff escaped when the pastor’s wife waved and I tried to smile. Ryan’s phone vibrated in his pocket, but he didn’t stop for that, either. He pushed me along with purpose, even when I paused and tried to turn to him and speak, to say that this was insane and that we should just sit in the back of the church together and try to talk some sense into his mother later, there came a gentle pressure of his arm across my shoulders.
His words, hot on my neck, let me know that sitting in the back wasn’t going to happen. “Keep moving, Tracey. For goodness’ sake, just keep moving.”
For goodness’ sake, Ryan? Or for your sake?
Either way, I kept going. Smiling and crying like some sort of Miss Mom USA without her Prozac, I stumbled out of the only place I felt God in my life anymore and into the cold empty hall. Once the doors closed behind us, I turned to my husband and gave him a look worthy of the Queen herself.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Ryan said in a voice too loud for a church hallway but much quieter than his usual tone in such situations. He pointed down the hall at the door I’d passed so many times, but never gone inside. “Come on. You’re going to have to go in there.”
More tugging and pushing. Him trying to take the baby, me taking her back. Him trying to take the diaper bag, me taking it back. Him throwing his head back as if he wanted to scream, me doing the same. Like a bad zit on prom night, things were coming to a head and this wasn’t the place for the mess.
Though we’d both dug in our heels, mine were a little too cute to endure for the long haul. Just as my wedges started to wobble, Ryan took my hand and kissed it before steadying me. “Baby, please. Can you just come on? I need to get back in the service. Pastor asked me to do something special today and I’m going to miss it. I know Mom is out of line. I do. It’s just not the time to deal with it.” He led me down the hall, toward the door I didn’t want to enter.
I followed, thankful that in the midst of the whole mess, Lily had somehow managed to fall asleep. Must be nice. “You always say that, Ryan. ‘I know Mom shouldn’t have said that. I know that hurt you. I’ll talk to her. It’s just not the right time.’ You know what I’m starting to think? It’ll never be the right time. I think you know that your mother will never accept me and you don’t really care. Well, I do—”
“Get over it.” Ryan folded his arms, rolled his eyes and pointed to the door. “You’ve got to go in there, so just do it and be done with it.”
I looked deeply into my husband’s eyes, wondering if he really saw me standing here, if he heard me breathing. It was me, wasn’t it? Tracey Blackman, business owner, graphic designer, new mother, his wife? I’d never had to wonder who I was before, but since marrying him, bearing his child, I found myself searching for identity more than ever. And my husband had just told me to get over it.
Mother Redding, the wife of the former pastor, who also happened to be the mother of the current one, stopped to smile at me on her way into the