Chapter 8: Tea and Sympathy

“Momma, I’m home!”

Gospel clambered over the balcony railing, bounced through the French doors, rolled into a somersault, misjudged the distance and skidded as her legs rounded the circle and almost flopped into her mother’s lap.

Serena just squeezed one of Gospel’s ankles affectionately. “Hey, punkin.”

Gospel scrambled to her feet and sat on the sofa as Serena stood up off it. “I made us some tea,” she said, heading for the kitchen where a pot was starting to whistle.

The apartment was composed of four rooms: the dining/sitting room, where the sofa was, a kitchen barely large enough to turn around in, a bathroom, and a bedroom. The official entry was a door off a hall that ran between the living room and bedroom.

Serena slept in the bedroom, while Gospel had the sofa. She’d painted a folding screen so she could sleep while Serena watched her “shows,” her soap operas. Mostly, though, the screen stayed folded back as both women curled on the sofa to enjoy the 10th season of Stranger Things or the urban zombie dystopia stylings of the NecroTech series.

Serena squeezed back through the doorway, two cups in hand.

“I love you, Waddleduckie,” said Gospel, reaching for her cup.

Serena sat down again, her weight rolling Gospel nearer to her. They touched noses, then Gospel settled in with her head against her mother’s shoulder. Steam curled from her cream-colored, heavily honeyed tea.

Serena rubbed her cheek against Gospel’s hair. It always hurt her feelings when Gospel called her Waddleduckie, but she’d never told her. She could never bear to let Gospel think she was in the wrong. And the hurt was overwhelmed by the larger closeness composed of a similarity of taste and a clingy physicality that was almost symbiotic. Loving Gospel was almost her only strong emotion, and it encompassed her in a sort of warm glow, waking to sleeping. A world with Gospel in it. She was truly blessed.

Plus, she almost never wished for a counterfactual — even thought to wish for one. She would barely know how to frame the thought anymore.

But now she said: “I had the strangest conversation at work today.”

Still leaning on her mother, Gospel made a nodding movement to show she was listening.

Serena settled in to her story.

“There’s this girl Kim,” she said. “Bout your age. But she’s like that Cake song, you know, I want a girl with a short skirt — ”

“And a loooong jacket,” finished Gospel.

“Yeah.” Serena turned her cup in her hands. She had long tapered fingers, rather chipped, pale pink nails, soft dimples, calluses. “So she called me in and — I don’t know how to explain what she meant from what she said.”

It took Serena much longer to explain than it did Gospel to understand. The facts had been so indirectly stated that, even though Serena understood keenly what was meant, she had a hard time forming words to describe how Kim’s language related to the mean, small, enormous truth: Potential “problem pissers” at the workplace (and slow defecators and heavy bleeders and breast-milk expressers and throwers-up and readers-of-social-media-on-the-toilet) were to be identified and eliminated. Indirectly, probably, by means of schedule changes or awkward conversations or whatnot.

“You know,” said Serena, “I can’t, I’ve never, I don’t have any opinion about health insurance and so on — of course we’d all like health insurance, but maybe it would make everything too expensive, I mean, there are two sides to everything — but this is so, so — ”

Gospel was sitting up by now, legs crossed, facing her mother with her back against the arm of the sofa. “So egregiously mean.”

Gospel agreed completely. It was like slapping a child. Attacking a part of life in which people were all, more or less, like children or old people — so very vulnerable.

“But what will you do?” asked Gospel.

Serena looked at her daughter affectionately. Gospel’s hair, purple wearing off of dark brown, was escaping her topknot and wisping around her face. Her eyebrows were straight and fierce, her eyes large and direct. Gospel was not like other people, she thought. They talked about things. Gospel did things. And, without ever criticizing, without thinking to criticize, she expected that her mother would be so much braver than Serena felt.

Vaguely, Serena thought: It isn’t safe.

But what did she mean by that?

“I don’t know,” Serena answered. She leaned forward and put her cup on the coffee table. “I’ll just feel my way along.” She looked out the window. It was starting to rain. “Are you painting tonight?”

“Too wet,” Gospel shrugged. “I think I’ll watch something.”

It was Friday. No early morning, no long walk down to Germantown where she caught the company bus at the corner. Serena stretched. “Punkin, do you think you could paint my toes?”