Lucinda – Chapter Sixteen

Things have a funny way of changing in this world all at once. In 1960, JFK was indeed elected as the first Catholic president and the youngest to boot. There were race riots and sit-ins still happening all over the place. Women’s rights had started to play a central role in American politics.

I knew for sure that this time I had lost my best friend and the only love of my life. I spent the next few weeks crying all the time. I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t sleep. I guess it was around the time that I started to get sick that Grammy wrote to momma. She must have because soon enough I got a postcard from her stating simply, “I’m coming home.”

Momma arrived shortly after February of 1960. I didn’t write Jessie to tell him. In fact, I had stopped writing him all together. Jessie wrote Grammy to ask about the change. When she wrote him back, he wanted to hop on the next plane and come home, but Willa was four months pregnant and not feeling very well at all. Grammy convinced him to stay there. She would take care of me. It was about the same time that I realized why I was sick. I was carrying Ryan’s child and he would never know it. I was going to have the baby… I had already decided that.

I opened the door that day. It was snowing, an appropriate setting I thought for the warmth of the reception that Momma received.  She looked tired and old. More then that she looked used. It took me all of five seconds to figure out what went on in those communes in California. Stevie could not have cared less that she was there and left almost as soon as she got there. It broke her heart and somehow, I got some small vindication out of that.

After she had taken a bath, and undoubtedly a hit of whatever it was that was keeping her high, we sat in the kitchen to talk. Grammy discreetly left the house to give us time to ourselves.

“Why are you here Momma? Why did you come home?”

“Grammy wrote me and told me you weren’t doing well. I figured the time had come to do what was right for at least one of my children.”

“If you are looking to lecture me on the facts of life, or to warn me against making the same mistakes you made, then you’re a little late. I’m pregnant momma. And I won’t tell the father. I will never be married. I can’t do to him what you and daddy did to each other. I won’t tear us down like that, even if it means moving away so that he will never know.”

If momma was surprised by my revelation or shocked at my bluntness, she didn’t show it. She just moved on, “But that’s just it, child. I came here to help you. Grammy knows you’re pregnant or at least she suspects it. But you don’t have to go through this alone,” she said, but she was fidgety, like the drugs were making it so she could not sit still.

“Your daddy and I, we got along fine until that summer… he broke my heart that summer that I was pregnant with Stevie.”

“I know momma, I know all about the money from the bank.” I was growing impatient with her pauses, her incoherent renderings.

“No, don’t you see? That’s just it. He never took the money from the bank. He was set up. Do you have anything to drink around here? A beer maybe?”

I didn’t want her to stop now so I poured her a glass of wine from the bottle that Grammy kept for company. I urged her on but for a minute she just looked at the glass and swirled the wine around in distaste.

“Oh well… over the teeth and through the gums look out tummy here it comes. Anything for a high I suppose.” She took a big swig and laughed over and over again, cackling. She found her rhyme quite amusing. I found her sickening.

“Go on momma, you said daddy was set up.”

“Oh yeah Mr. Mont… Mont… Mont…”

“Mr. Montgomery?”  I asked quickly losing patience with her. I wanted to shake the information out of her.

“Yeah that was it. He and his wife, good old nervous little Nellie Montgomery never got along. She was your father’s first love. When he left for the war, he bedded her. We were already married. I never knew… never.”

I stared at her, all sorts of thoughts racing through my head.

“She never told him…her husband…until eleven years later when they could barely stand the sight of each other anymore. They got into a huge argument, and she told him that the child was not his. She had your father’s child. I think it was a boy… or was it a girl?

I was startled, a thousand thoughts racing, swirling. I panicked. What had we done?

“Please momma, try to remember. Try to concentrate.” I said and refilled her wine glass.

“No, it was a girl. They named her Clem or Leo or…”

“Cleo? Cleo is my sister! She’s known all along but couldn’t tell me. That’s why it took her so long to open up to me. Oh, momma thank you!”

And no one was more startled that I was when I kissed her on the cheek, feeling better than I had in months.