31
jonquinette
I hesitated before I knocked on Momma’s door. I had no idea how I would break the news but it had to come out. I needed her, more than ever.
She saved me the trouble of knocking when she suddenly swung the door of her condo open. She was startled and slapped her right hand across her chest.
“Hello, Momma,” I said, faking a smile.
She took a deep breath and sighed. “Jonquinette. What a pleasant surprise.”
“You really mean that?”
“Yes, of course I mean it. I was on my way out to the store but come on in.” She turned and walked back into her place, leaving the door ajar for me to follow her. “In fact, I’ve been getting frustrated because you haven’t returned any of my calls.”
It was true that she had left several phone messages, both at home and at work, but I just couldn’t bring myself to call her. Dealing with the drama from Darnetta and Mason had been bad enough and I didn’t think I could deal with a lot of drama from Momma.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I was out of town for a while and then when I got back, some things happened.”
Momma eyed me suspiciously. “What sort of things?”
“Can I sit down?” I asked as I walked into the living room. Her place was immaculate as always. I was hoping I wouldn’t catch her at a bad time, with a man in the house, and it appeared that I had lucked out.
“Jonquinette, stop acting like you’re some sort of stranger.” Momma laughed. “Of course you can sit down. My home is your home.”
I plopped down on the sofa and she took a seat in the armchair directly across from it. “What if I am a stranger?” I asked her.
She leaned her head to the side in confusion. “Excuse me?”
“I said, what if I am a stranger?”
Momma seemed irritated. “You’re not making any sense. You’re my daughter. I gave birth to you, so how could you possibly be a stranger?”
I picked up a photo frame off her end table. It was a picture of the two of us at my college graduation. In retrospect, I guess it was a picture of the three of us. Momma didn’t say another word to me. A heavy silence just hung in the air like thick smoke.
“I live inside this body and I feel like I’m a stranger,” I finally said.
She laughed again, this time uneasily. “You must be over-heated. You’re acting delirious.” She got up from her seat and started walking away. “Let me go into the kitchen and get you something cold to drink. I made some freshly squeezed lemonade, your favorite.”
I tossed the picture onto the sofa cushion, jumped up, and grabbed her by the elbow. “Momma, lemonade isn’t going to cure this.”
“Cure what?” she snapped at me.
“My illness.” We stared at each other while I searched for the words to say. “Momma, did you never figure it out or did you just choose to ignore it?”
She yanked her arm away in anger. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She took off toward the kitchen anyway and I was right on her tail. I refused to let her walk away from the situation. “I won’t cut any corners with this. Momma, I have MPD.”
Momma took two glasses out of the dishwater and started to get an ice tray from the freezer. She paused and asked, “MPD? What the hell is that? Some sort of venereal disease?”
“No, Momma. MPD stands for Multiple Personality Disorder.”
She dropped both the ice tray and one of the glasses on the floor. The glass shattered everywhere. “Bullshit! Bullshit!” she screamed.
Momma grabbed a dishrag and bent down to clean up the mess. She wouldn’t even look at me. “Momma, I’m serious.”
“You can’t be serious. You’re not some lunatic.”
“No, I’m not. I just have an illness and I plan to get help for it.” She continued to busy herself with the cleanup efforts like it was no big deal. “That’s why I came to see you today. I need you to be there with me. I can’t go through this alone.”
She finally stopped in her tracks, stood up, and got close enough to me to breathe on my cheek. “Who filled your mind with this nonsense?”
“I’ve been seeing this doctor, Dr. Spencer, and she’s the one who broke it down for me. She explained it and then when I spoke with Daddy, he—”
My mother’s voice went up ten notches. “Wait a minute! When did you speak to Henry? Did he call you?”
“No, he didn’t. Actually, I went to see him.”
Momma looked like she was suddenly on the brink of tears when she said, “You little ungrateful bitch. How could you betray me like that?”
I knew the mention of my father would get her upset. Momma always expected me to choose her side over his. I was determined to make her see the light, though. “Momma, going to see Daddy wasn’t about betraying you. He’s my father. I have a right to spend time with him.”
“Your father disrespected me. He went out and got that bastard child and totally disgraced both of us.”
“Daddy said none of that was true.” Momma stormed back into the living room. I was getting sick and tired of following her, but I wasn’t about to give up. “He doesn’t know why that woman showed up there that day, but he said he’d never laid eyes on her before.”
She smirked at me. “And you believed him?”
I put my hands on my hips and stood my ground. “Yes.”
“You know what I can’t believe?” she said with a snarl. “I can’t believe you’re turning your back on me.”
That’s when I felt myself getting angry. My mother had always been selfish, thinking the entire world revolved around her. “Momma, can’t you understand that this is not about you!” I screamed at her. “For once, pay attention to me! What I need!”
She slapped me across the face and I was stunned. Momma had never hit me before, not ever.
“How dare you?” she asked. “I’ve taken care of your needs your entire life. When that motherfucker deserted us, I took on sole responsibility for you.”
“Momma, Daddy didn’t desert us,” I said, beginning to cry. “You pushed him away. Maybe you’re the one that needs some of that lemonade. You seem to be delirious.”
Momma went into the foyer and opened the front door. “I won’t listen to any more of this.” She stood there, obviously waiting for me to exit. When I didn’t budge, she yelled, “Get out!”
I sat back down on the sofa, determined to say everything I needed to say before I left. “You have to listen. Think about it. All those times when I said I didn’t do those horrid things. All those times you probably had conversations with me that didn’t seem quite right. Remember our dinner a while back?”
Momma remained by the door. “Yes, you were talking crazy then, too.”
“No, it was because I wasn’t there. Momma, I woke up the next morning with a carryout container full of red meat and had no recollection of ever meeting you for dinner.”
She slammed the door. “What?”
“When I called you up to apologize, I was calling to apologize for not keeping our plans.” She came over and sat down beside me. “I know all of this is hard to comprehend, but listen. I need you to listen because all my life, I’ve been scared to open up and tell the truth.”
Something changed in her face and her demeanor. For once, my mother felt compassion for me. She took my hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m listening, Jonquinette. Tell me everything.”
“There have been countless times, dating back to my childhood, when I simply wasn’t there. I would black out and when I came back, that’s when I would find out what I supposedly did.”
Momma shook her head but continued to hold my hand. “This is crazy.”
“There’s more.” I sighed. “For years, I’ve been waking up with signs of sexual intercourse. Sex that I never had.”
Her left eyebrow went up in the air. “How can you have sex and not know it?” she asked incredulously.
I knew all of it was too much to believe. Hell, I could barely believe it myself and I was living it. “Momma, it happened and it’s going to continue to happen if I don’t do something to stop it. To stop her.”
Momma let my hand go. “Her?”
“Apparently, she calls herself Jude.”
“Jude?”
“Yes. Jude.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because Dr. Spencer met her. She “came out” in her office when I was contemplating about reaching out to Daddy.”
Momma laughed uneasily and ran her fingers through her hair. “Came out?”
“Took over. Took control.” I took her hand again. I needed that connection, even if she didn’t. “It seems that she hates Daddy for some reason and that was the trigger that made her show herself.”
Momma looked confused. “Why would she hate Henry?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because he wanted to get help for me when I was younger and she was all about self-preservation.”
“So how long has this Jude person been around?”
“According to her, since damn near the beginning.”
A look of revelation shot across Momma’s face. “Then since she hates Henry so much, do you think it’s possible…”
It suddenly hit me at the same time it hit Momma. “She could’ve been the one who set him up.” I let her hand go, jumped up and started pacing the floor. “That’s it! That’s why I don’t remember anything about Thanksgiving Day. Jude was in control and somehow, she did it. She planned the entire thing. Now that I think about it, I had some money stashed away in my sock drawer and when I searched for it the following weekend to go clothes shopping, it was gone. That must have been what she used to pay the woman.”
“She probably paid that whore money to show up and say she was screwing Henry,” Momma said, jumping up also. “Oh my God, that means our marriage ended for nothing. All these years wasted.”
Momma broke down in tears. I held her tightly in an embrace. “It’s okay, Momma. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”
She looked at me with glazed-over eyes. “So what do we do now?”
“We get help. All of us.”