The Sunday Mama Came Home
What I said
I want to tell the truth about this part, because people who hear the story always want me to be the one who was right about everything.
I wasn’t right about everything.
I had spent five weeks thinking my brother was greedy. Thinking he saw a paid-off house and a sick old woman and did the math. I had sat in the car on Pruitt Road and looked at that trampoline and hated him a little.
I never once called him and asked, “Darren, are you all right?” I called him to ask why Mama was still in the nursing home. That’s a different question.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have asked you what was going on. I didn’t ask. I just got mad.”
Darren shook his head. “You had a right to be mad.”
“I still should’ve asked.”
Mama looked from one of us to the other, and set down her coffee cup.
“All right,” she said. “That’s enough sorry for one afternoon. Now I’m going to tell you how this is going to go.”
Mama’s terms
She held up one finger.
“First thing. This is my house. My name is on the deed, and I paid the last note on it in 1998 with my school retirement check. Nobody makes decisions about this house but me. Not you, Darren, and not you either, Melissa. Is that understood?”
“Yes ma’am,” we both said. Like we were ten.
She held up a second finger.
“Second thing. You all can stay. Through the spring. I’ve got two empty bedrooms and a front room, and I’m not going to put my own grandsons out on the road in November.”
Darren’s face went slack. Tonya put her hand over her mouth.
“But you’re going to pay me rent,” Mama said. “Six hundred dollars a month. That’s half what you’re getting for your house, and you’ll still come out ahead. It goes in my account on the first. I don’t need it. I’m going to put it in the bank for those boys’ trucks when they’re old enough. But you’re going to pay it, because a man pays his way.”
Darren nodded. He couldn’t speak.
“Third thing.” A third finger. “I’ve got therapy twice a week in town. Tuesdays and Fridays, two o’clock. Melissa works. You’re going to drive me, and you’re going to come inside and sit in the waiting room, and you’re not going to sit out in the truck on your phone.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“And when the bank calls, you’re going to tell me. I don’t want to hear about any more letters in any truck.”
Darren put his face in his hands.
Tonya
Then Mama turned to Tonya.
I’ll admit I had braced myself for this. Tonya and Mama had never been close. Tonya’s people are from Murfreesboro, and she has always been a little quiet around our family, and Mama has always taken quiet for stuck-up.
“Tonya,” Mama said. “Who’s been cleaning my room?”
“Me.”
“And changing my flowers.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“And who washed my chenille spread? Because it had a stain on the corner from a coffee I spilled in August, and that stain is gone.”
Tonya’s face went pink. “I soaked it in Biz overnight. My grandmother taught me.”
Mama looked at her for a long time.
“Your grandmother knew what she was doing,” she said. “Melissa, what time do you have to be at your first client in the mornings?”
“Seven, most days.”
“And Darren leaves for that parts route when?”
“Six thirty,” Darren said.
“Then I’m going to need somebody in the mornings. To help me with my bath and my stockings and get my breakfast. Somebody careful.” Mama looked at Tonya. “You don’t start at the Dollar General till noon, do you?”
Tonya shook her head.
“Then you’ve got the morning shift. If you want it. Melissa will come every night after work and show you how, until you’ve got it down. And Melissa’s agency will send a nurse on Mondays to check on all of it.”
Tonya was crying in earnest now. “I’d be glad to, Miss Jo Ann. I’d be glad to.”
“Call me Mama,” Mama said. “You’ve been married to my son nineteen years. I don’t know what we’ve been waiting on.”