Thrown-away Child

Mama’s voice was resigned.
    My own mother would become overwhelmed like hat sometimes. She would come around when she noticed me worried about her. I remember her saying once, Nothing defeats us quicker than the ever-present thought that we’re defeated, son. That’s what fear is, and shame for who you are. Resist living in fear and shame. Believe in a rich imagination of yourself. And if you never hear another thing I tell you, hear me now: belief is stronger than reason.
    And that was how I decided that Violet Flagg Was right: Perry was innocent of what two armed crackers said he had done. Standing in her doorway, watching a pair of rabid cops, Mama had spoken the hard, simple truth. I believed her. Anybody would.
    Then she told me a harder truth. “No black man can hide in New Orleans for long.”
    Ruby took her mother by the elbow and steered her back to the easy chair. Mama sank down into it like she wanted to be dead. She sat still and silent for almost a minute, hardly breathing. But then she roused herself, and looked around the room after something.
    Mama’s eye fell on her purse, sitting on the floor next to the table under the front window. “Listen, you two, now I got to run a couple little errands before this house starts filling up.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt. “Ruby, y’all going to be sleeping in my room. The small room, that is. Take your things on up there now. Have yourselves the nap you sure must need.”
    I tried telling her, “We don’t want to throw you out.”
    “Better than half my nights I doze off right here in this room,” Mama said. “Tell your husband I ain’t lying, Ruby.”
    “She isn’t lying.”
    “You want to feel better, tell you what,” Violet said to me. “Go on out to the kitchen and fetch my easing pills. I left them on the table or somewheres about.”
    Uncertain of exactly what sort of medication Mama had in mind, I nonetheless went off to the kitchen started back for the parlor after finding nothing, stopped when I heard Ruby and her talking about me.
    “That white man good to you, child?”
    “He’s very good.“
    “He bring any of them man-troubles to your house?”
    “He used to drink. He still eats too much.”
    “What you mean about drinking?”
    “He’s a recovering alcoholic, Mama. I’m learning to take a day at a time, so is he. I’m satisfied he’s doing all right. You want to know more about his boozing— how he used to drink—ask him straight-out.”
    “Maybe I will.” Violet dropped the subject. “All right now, Mr. Neil seems to be an intelligent man.“
    “He doesn’t think so.”
    “Only proves he’s smart.”
    “Also he doesn’t think he’s good-looking,” Ruby said. “He worries about his bald spot.”
    “Where that man going baldy?”
    “Top of his head, in the back. He’s got a little Friar Tuck thing happening.”
    “My, my—just like my Willis.”
    “I kiss his bald spot sometimes.”
    “Same’s I kiss my Willis head, child...”
    I heard Violet cry softly, and then Ruby moving to take her mother in her arms. Ruby asked. “All these years gone, and you still miss Daddy so bad?”
    “He was my lion. Oh, I know I’m a weepy fool.“
    “No—”
    “Time was short for us...”
    “Mama, I understand.”
    I waited a couple of beats before walking into the parlor. When I finally did, Violet was holding her open purse in one hand and a hanky to her eyes with the other. And Ruby looked at me in a moony way, like on she was a teenage kid waiting for me to pin a corsage on her first spaghetti strap.
    Ruby is not moony type. I doubt she ever went through the stage as a girl- But then she had been breaking character ever since we boarded the train in New York.
    “I don’t find a bottle of pills anyplace in the kitchen,” I said to Mama.
    “Don’t be fussing no further then.” Mama flicked the hanky away from her eyes back into her purse. “Well, what do you know. I got me a tin of Bayers right here in my bag.”
    “Why not let me run your errands?” I asked.
    “I’m only walking over to the jot-em-down store.“
    “Got your list, Mama?” Ruby asked. She said to me, “Mama’s always got her list.”
    Sure enough, Mama pawed around inside her purse until she found a recycled envelope, one side full of pencil marks. “Right here it is.”
    “Be careful out there,” I said. I wondered why I said that.
    “Funny you worry about your mother-in-law’s welfare. Mr. Willis Flagg, he used