A house is not a home.
Luther’s lyric replays in my head as I pull up to the house where I grew up. A house may not always be a home, but this one used to be. In the years before my father died, this brick ranch-style house was filled with laughter and the four of us were happy.
When he passed away, grief drew Mama, Terry, and me closer. Love kept us tight.
It’s hard to believe this patch of land, this street, this town used to be the breadth of my existence. Not much has changed here. Oh, the Piggly Wiggly is gone and there’s a new Taco Bell/KFC combo on Main Street, but Mama says Mrs. Shay still does a fish fry every Saturday and sells chitterlings dinners at Christmas.
I thank the Uber driver and drag my small rolling suitcase behind me under the car porch and to the door. My flight was delayed and Mama had to take one of the ladies from church to the doctor’s office, so I told her I could find my way home.
“You still got your house key?” she had asked.
I pull out my key ring and select the one I haven’t used in years. I wonder if the key, like me, no longer fits here, but it slides right in. I can only hope my homecoming goes as smoothly.
“I’m home,” I tell the empty foyer, parking my suitcase at the foot of the stairs. I’m not quite ready to face the pink canopy bed and my wall poster gallery of Missy Elliott, Justin Timberlake and Soulja Boy.
“Soulja Boy?” I grimace and laugh. “That was quick.”
It’s not my first time home in the twelve years since I left for college, but it’s one of only a few, and the first time I’ve had this house and all its memories to myself. I wander down the hall into the living room and, like a shrine to what our family used to be, a lifetime of photos line the mantel. Each one chronicles a uniquely awkward phase of my life. Stockings decorated with candy canes hang over the fireplace, the same ones Mama used to stuff on Christmas Eve with our names on them. Now there’s a new stocking.
Quianna.
The beautiful living indiscretion that demolished my illusions and tore my family at the seams. Mama was disappointed and angry with them, of course. She took my side, of course.
But Terry was pregnant and needed Mama more than I did.
Terry was a new mother and needed Mama more than I did.
Terry was here, and I was gone, so she got more of Mama than I did.
In a strange new city, I licked my wounds alone. Away from home for the first time and overwhelmed, I learned to stand on my own by necessity. I never stopped needing Mama, but I let her think I was fine, and to survive, I told myself the same lie. But lately with my life barreling ahead at breakneck speed, with a decade’s worth of work harvesting rewards seemingly overnight, there’s been a tiny hole in my happiness. An irritating tear like a sock in need of darning. A secret tucked inside my shoe, but it doesn’t affect the way I walk, and I’m the only one who knows it’s there.
Last I heard from Mama, Terry and Brandon were packed and ready to go to Virginia. Looks like we’ll avoid each other again. I’m looking forward to some time with Mama, just us two. It’s good that Terry and Brandon went to Virginia to see the other side of his family. After the strain of starring in my first movie, and one as huge as Dessi Blue, I need a break, not more stress.
This room hasn’t changed much either. The couch is still here—the one Terry and Brandon sat on, side by side, building their little wall of solidarity with the mortar of deceit. Masons of betrayal.
An artificial Christmas tree stands in the corner. That’s different. Growing up, we always had a live tree. Daddy insisted, and Mama continued the tradition when he was gone.
I haven’t been here many Christmases. The holiday season is one of the busiest in theater, and it’s hard to get off even for a few days. I often used that as an excuse to stay away, especially when I knew Terry and Brandon would be here. Touring or understudying, waiting in the wings, longing for home, I always pictured a live tree and imagined I could smell the pine.
Not this year.
This too-green thing sprinkled with cheap tinsel is odorless and stiff, with gaps and plug-by-the-number branches.
The alarm dings, signaling an open door. In New York, we keep a bat for protection when doors open unannounced, but the neighborhood watch is a formality here. Crime is not a thing.
I walk to the kitchen, eager to see Mama for the first time in nearly a year. “How was Mrs.—”
My words wither and die. Terry stands in the kitchen at the car porch entrance, toting grocery bags full of food. I can’t remember the last time we were alone, but I know it was as awkward then as it is now.
“Oh.” I lick my lips and grit my teeth. “I thought Mama was coming home.”
“She took Mrs. Dobbs to—”
“I know. She told me. I didn’t think you would . . .”
Be here.
We stare at each other with identical eyes, dark brown with gold-splashed centers. She was always the pretty one, but that wasn’t enough for her. There was one boy in our whole school who preferred me, and she had to take him, too.
Brandon’s betrayal doesn’t even hurt anymore. He and I would have been driftwood and our marriage a shipwreck. But her? My sister and how she decided to hurt me—that I’m not sure when I’ll get over. Not today.
“Brandon’s Aunt Sharon has pneumonia.” Terry lays a bushel of collard greens on the counter and pulls sweet potatoes from the grocery bag. “So they’re not really doing much of a Christmas up there. We’ll visit her soon, but decided last minute to stay here for the holidays.”
“Oh.”
That’s the best I can do. It’s been so many years, and I hope we can put this behind us, but I hadn’t planned on confronting this particular demon for Christmas.
“Brandon’s working at the garage,” she adds, pulling out two-dozen eggs. “And I ran by Food Lion to pick up some stuff for Mama.”
The least I can do is help. I pull out pepper and season salt from the grocery bag, instinctively opening the cabinet to the right of the stove only to find stacks of plates.
“Spices over there now.” Terry nods to the cabinet on the left.
It’s a small thing, but not knowing where my mama keeps her spices feels like another thing Terry robbed me of. She betrayed me. She stole from me, but I’ve been the one in exile.
“Mama says you’re starring in some big movie,” she says, lifting her brows like she’ll believe it when she sees it.
“I’m in a movie, yeah,” I say, putting a pack of neck bones in the refrigerator.
“She’s cooking those tonight,” Terry says. “Leave the neck bones out.”
I don’t mean to slam the meat on the countertop, but it happens. I’m tired of her knowing all the things I want to know, too. She confiscated the man and the life I don’t even want, but it was mine. And she didn’t leave me any choice.
“Surprised you even came home.” Terry twists her lips.
We’ve never discussed it, but of course she would know I’ve avoided coming because of her and Brandon.
“Assumed you thought you were too bougie for us now.” Terry rolls her eyes and pulls out two bags of shredded cheese for Mama’s famous macaroni.
“Wait.” I lean against the counter and rewind what she just said. “What?”
“Yeah, all these years you been staying up in New York, and now you in Hollywood. Uppity and too big for your britches and—”
“You think I don’t come home because I’m uppity? Bougie?”
“I mean, you were always bougie, thinking you were better than the rest of us. That you were gonna be a star. Go off and forget about your family. Hope you’re happy now.”
“Hold up. I didn’t come home because of you.”
“Because of me?” What looks like genuine surprise widens her eyes.
“Is that shocking? After what you did?”
“You can’t be talking about the thing with Brandon.”
“The thing with Brandon? I may have been young, and maybe it wouldn’t have lasted. Who knows, but I was engaged and you cheated on me.”
“There you go. Being dramatic.” Terry sucks her teeth. “I guess that is your job.”
“Did you bump your head and forget? Well, I didn’t. You fucked my fiancé and got pregnant with his kid.”
A gasp from the door leading to the car porch jerks both our heads around. Holding her phone, apparently mid-text, stands their daughter, Quianna. Horrified brown eyes with gold-splashed centers flick between her mother and me.
“Q,” Terry says, her lips tight around the nickname. “Go back out to the car. Let me finish unloading Grandma’s groceries.”
“You were engaged to Daddy?” Quianna asks me, ignoring her mother.
I have no words. I can’t confirm or deny. I just stare at her helplessly, this eleven-year-old girl who’s too young to have her illusions stripped away. I may be mad as hell with my sister going on twelve years, but this is still my niece, and though I barely know her, I love her.
“You cheated?” she demands of Terry. “Oh, my God, Mom.”
“Quianna,” I start, not even sure what I’ll say next.
“Is that why you’re never around, Aunt Neevah?” She’s volleying the questions between Terry and me, getting answers from neither, deducing the plain truth that neither of us can hide now.
“No wonder you and Daddy are such a mess,” she spits, turning on her heel and going back the way she came.
The door slams behind her, leaving a silence swelling with shock and rage.
“Look what you did,” Terry snaps. “What am I supposed to tell my daughter, Neevah?”
“I’ll talk to her.” I start for the door, but Terry steps in front of me.
“And say what? She don’t know you. I need to be the one to explain.”
“You mean tell her your version?”
“Ain’t worth trying to hide the truth now that you’ve spilled it everywhere. Made a mess I gotta be the one to clean up.”
For a second, I actually feel guilty. Yes, I wish Quianna hadn’t heard it that way or even from me, but for Terry to shift the real blame of her actions to me for inadvertently exposing them?
It’s too much.
“It’s not my fault you have to explain the shady shit you did to me to your daughter.”
“Oh, you’re just loving this, aren’t you? Terry got pregnant. Terry’s stuck in this dead-end town. Terry’s marriage is—” She breaks off and glares at me despite her bottom lip quivering. “You got it all, Neevah. You always had it all, didn’t you?”
“I got it all? I always had it all? Seriously, you were the one everyone wanted.”
“No, it’s just that no one ever thought they could get you. You walked around like you were too good for everybody until Brandon.”
“Like I was too good . . .” Beneath my indignation and rage, a small bud of hurt breaks through. I loved my sister best in the world back then, would have done anything for her, and this was how she saw me? How she truly felt?
“I can count on two hands with fingers to spare how many times I’ve been home in twelve years,” I tell her, my voice trembling and tears filling my eyes. “Quianna wasn’t just your child. She’s Mama’s grandchild. What was more important? That I be around? Or that she be around? But for years I couldn’t look at you or Brandon without feeling sick. You didn’t just take him. You took Mama. You took my home and you broke my heart.”
I can’t see my own eyes right now, but I imagine they look just like my sister’s—brimming with tears, shaded by rage and regret. Her fists are balled at her sides. She glances at the door to the car porch, and I hear the car running in the driveway.
“I better go see about Quianna,” she says, grabbing her purse from the kitchen counter and leaving without another word.
The door slams behind her and I grip the counter tight, my only support in the wake of that confrontation. I lower my head, letting hot tears spill over my cheeks. I knew this trip would be hard in some ways, but I’d thought they would be gone. I didn’t think this would all burst, like an infected blister lanced and oozing everywhere. I have no idea how I’ll face them tomorrow. Terry and Brandon and Quianna. I’m tempted to leave, but that’s what I’ve done for twelve years—ceded the field, my home, for them. It’s been too long. Tonight may have been awkward and even painful, but it’s a step toward exposing the past and, hopefully, moving on to some kind of future. Maybe when I see them at Christmas dinner tomorrow, we’ll figure it out.
But the next day Christmas comes, and they do not.
Their absence is glaring. It’s so obvious they are missed.
The house is packed for Christmas dinner, as it was when we were growing up. Our natural family is not that large, but Mama has a way of collecting people. Strays. Friends. Folks who would be alone were it not for her “adopting” them. I’ve missed how she makes our home a community unto itself. It’s loud and boisterous and much less trying than I’d thought it would be. Except when someone forgets and asks about Terry and Brandon. An awkward silence. A furtive glance my way. The last time many of them saw me, I was Brandon’s fiancée. The girl who ran up north as soon as she graduated, rarely seen back in these parts.
And now I’m back, so Terry and Brandon aren’t here for Christmas.
There are moments when I feel perfectly at home, and it’s like one of our famous Mathis family reunions. And there are times I feel like an intruder, a sojourner in a strange land.
“You make this corn pudding?” my Aunt Alberta asks Mama. She seems virtually unchanged by time. A little more gray in her hair, brown skin still relatively smooth. She still walks around the house carrying her purse like she expects somebody to steal it.
“I made it, yeah.” Mama scoops a generous portion of the corn pudding onto Alberta’s plate.
“I bet it’s not good as Terry’s,” Alberta says teasingly. “That girl can throw down just like you.”
When Alberta’s eyes land on me while I’m waiting with my own plate, her smile freezes. I smile as naturally as I can, cut a slice of red velvet cake, and head for the kitchen. It’s as crowded as the dining room, so I spread a wide smile around to everyone and keep walking to the back porch. Thank God no one is out here. I settle into one of the rocking chairs that have been here as long as I can remember. Mama and Daddy used to sit out here and watch Terry and me play in the backyard. They’d hold hands and talk while we played kick ball or climbed one of the big oak trees that separated our yard from our neighbor’s.
Tears gather in my eyes and emotion scorches my throat. Looking at the old tree, sitting in Daddy’s chair, I miss him. It floods my heart with that ache that never fully leaves no matter how long someone has been gone. And I miss those days when we were a family and this house was full of our love and laughter. I’ve spackled the cracks in my heart with friends, but today, sitting on our back porch, I miss my family.
The screen door opens and I swipe at my eyes and, not even looking up to see who it is, take a bite of cake.
“I was wondering where you got to,” Mama says, settling into the other rocking chair.
I smile and scrape at the white icing on my plate. “Just taking a minute for some quiet.”
“I hear ya. It’s a lot of folks in there.” She spoons up some corn pudding. “Everybody’s glad you came home.”
I snort, not sure that’s true, but smile and tap my fork against my mouth.
“We sure are proud of you on Broadway and getting this big movie.” She pauses, licks her lips, and continues. “I hate I didn’t make it up to New York to see you that week you got to be in the show. I had—”
“Knee surgery. I remember, Mama. It’s fine. I know you would have come if you could have.” I say it, but I’m not sure I believe it. It was hard for me to come back here after Terry and Brandon married and had Quianna. And Mama never seemed too pressed about coming to see me.
“You know I don’t fly,” Mama says, like she’s reading my mind. “So it’s hard to get up—”
“I know. It’s fine.”
An apology would feel so much better than an excuse. I’ve always thought that about Terry and Brandon, and I think it now as I hear Mama’s reasons for not supporting me the way she could have. She’s not the only one to blame for the space between us. I’ve used work and other things as an excuse not to come home. We’ve danced around this for more than a decade and things won’t get better until we stop.
“Where did Terry and Brandon go?” I ask.
Mama’s surprised eyes meet mine in the glow of the back porch light. “Um, one of his co-workers invited them over for dinner.”
“Oh.” I push the moist cake around my plate. “I’m surprised they went and didn’t want to be with you and family on Christmas.”
“I think they . . .” She blows out a tired sigh. “I guess they didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“So it’s my fault they aren’t here.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Isn’t that what everyone thinks?”
“This was never easy for any of us, Neevah.”
“Oh, yeah. It was so hard for Brandon to sleep with Terry and get her pregnant when he was engaged to me. And poor Terry, having to cheat with my fiancé.”
“It was hard for you, Neevah, I know that, but they were young. Terry was pregnant. They didn’t have no money and—”
“They had you, Mama. What did I have? Who did I have?”
“Neevah, you were always self-sufficient. I knew you—”
“I was eighteen years old and had rarely left Clearview, much less moved by myself to another state. Living on my own for the first time.”
“You could have come home. I tried to be there for both of you, but sometimes it felt like you didn’t want anything to do with us anymore.”
“You think I wanted to see her pregnant and them married and with a baby? To be reminded how they cheated and lied to me? I was angry. I was hurt, and yeah. I didn’t want to be around them for years, but I wanted to be around you. It felt like you chose her over me.”
“The body sends help to the part that needs it most. She had a rough pregnancy. She couldn’t work for a while. They had no money. She was living here. I guess I thought you were happy chasing your dreams and Terry needed me more.”
“I needed you, too.” I sniff at the tears, now uncorked, slipping freely down my cheeks. “I still need you, Mama.”
Mama reaches across to take my hand, bridging not only the space between these old chairs, but the space that has separated me from her for years.
“I’m here, now, Neev. I should have been there for you more before.” She swallows, purses her lips, and lets her tears flow, too. “I’m sorry.”
I was right. An apology does feel better than an excuse. The healing property of those two simple words salves my heart, broken and dented by the ones who should have loved me enough.
“It’s not all on you, Mama,” I say, squeezing her hand, squeezing my heart. “I could have done more. I’m sorry, too.”
And the power of those words, said from her to me, said from me to her, pulls us out of the rocking chairs and up and into each other’s arms. Not a hug in passing, but a tight one that grips and heals. We can’t repair everything in one night, in one conversation, but these words and Mama’s arms around me go a long way—go the right way. We are on our way back to each other. This new beginning with my mother is the greatest gift. It’s restoration, or at least the start of one. I don’t know how or when it will happen with Terry.
Or if it ever will.
Mama sniffs, pulling back to smile as I swipe at my wet cheeks, too.
“I think we have a lot to catch up on,” she says, sitting back in her chair, setting it to a rocking rhythm. “How ’bout you start by telling me everything.”
I tell her about the lean years during and after college when I needed so much, but didn’t know how to ask for it. When I couldn’t swallow my pride to call her because I resented how she was there for Terry, but in my eyes, wasn’t there for me.
“That night on Broadway, I thought of you. You were the only thing missing,” I whisper, “That was just one moment in a million I wanted to share with you. When I needed you.”
“Neevah,” Mama says, wiping at the corners of her eyes. “I thought you didn’t want nothing to do with us. And I understood. After what Terry and Brandon did . . . well, I understood, but it did feel like I lost you, too. And now I know you felt like you lost me.”
I hesitate over the next words, but decide I should say them. “Mama, I found out I have discoid lupus.”
Mama’s eyes go round and she reaches for my hand, holding it in both of hers. “Lupus? Like your Aunt Marian?”
“Not that kind of lupus. The kind she had was systemic and what I have is discoid. I have the rashes and some hair loss, but it’s not life-threatening. When we were still figuring it all out, though,” I say, blinking at fresh tears. “I wanted you. I wanted to ask about it, and even then just decided to try and figure it out on my own.”
“Well, your Aunt Marian and I were never that close,” Mama says, twisting her lips. “Nobody was good enough for her baby brother, but it was a long time before she even got her diagnosis. Things were different then. They didn’t know as much.”
She scans my face, and I make sure she’ll find nothing to worry about in my expression.
“You sure you alright?”
“I’m sure, Mama. I just wanted you to know.” I smile and squeeze her hand, wanting to shift to more exciting parts of my life. “Now, don’t you want to hear about the movie I’m in?”
“Oh, yeah. Spill it all! And that director, that Canon Holt. He as fine up close as they say he is?” She leans over conspiratorially, her smile and her wink wicked. “You can tell your mama.”
And for the first time in a long time, I do.
