Chapter 17
"When I got the fellowship," Derrick started, "everything moved fast.
Faster than I was ready for.
And I was so afraid of losing it.
All of it.
The opportunity.
The money.
The way people started treating me." He stopped.
"I thought if I brought you into that world, people would — I was ashamed, Mom.
I was ashamed of what I came from, and I've been ashamed of being ashamed ever since."
Celestine watched him without expression.
"And when I met Vanessa, and she asked about family, I just — I said you were gone.
It came out.
And once I'd said it I didn't know how to unsay it." He looked at his hands.
"There's no version of this that makes me look like anything other than what I was."
"And what were you?" she asked.
"Scared," he said.
"And selfish."
She was quiet for a long time.
"You know what I did when you stopped calling?" she said.
"Mom—"
"I'm going to tell you." Her voice was steady.
"I took in laundry.
I worked three days a week at the church kitchen.
I moved into Mrs.
Patterson's back room because I couldn't keep up the rent on the house alone.
I told people you were busy.
That you were doing well." She paused.
"I told them that because I believed it.
I kept believing it."
He didn't say anything.
There was nothing to say that would be adequate.
"I'm not telling you this to hurt you," she said.
"I'm telling you so you know what the years actually looked like.
So there's no gap in your understanding."
"I know," he said.
"I know what they looked like."
"No," she said gently.
"You know what you imagined.
That's different."
He looked up.
"You imagined something manageable," she said.
"Something you could revisit later when the time was right.
That's what you carried." She folded her hands on the table.
"I carried the actual six years."
Raymond turned a page of his newspaper in the far corner.
He wasn't reading.
Derrick put his face in his hands.
He didn't make a sound.
May you like
His shoulders moved once.
Celestine waited.
