Page 15 of Can't Get Enough

“I’m sorry to hear that. What exactly… Is Mama okay?”

“So I went to the prayer service tonight, and the nurse came to sit with her.”

“Okay.”

Teeth gritting. Pulse picking up. Fingers clenching.

“I just got back ’bout fifteen minutes ago and she was in a state,” Aunt Geneva continues.

“What kind of state?” My brows collapse into a deep frown.

“She’s dumped the potted plants and stripped the beds and is saying the house is bugged or something. You know how she gets sometimes.”

“Yeah. I… I know.”

“Well, the caregiver got her calmer, but she’s still just… agitated.” Aunt Geneva pauses and then presses ahead. “Maybe you could help?”

Help is the last thing I feel like I could do. I live with a perennial sense of helplessness these days.

“Sure,” I say with a confidence I’ve learned to fake. “What do you need? I can try to catch the next flight out—”

“No, no, you were just here. I know you’re busy and have a business to run. I don’t need you to come back so soon. I wondered, though, if you could do that thing you did last time.”

“What thing I…”

Oh. That thing.

I gulp past the hot knot crowding my throat, and nod even though my aunt can’t see. “Sure, Aunt G. Put her on.”

In the thirty or so seconds of silence while I wait for Aunt Geneva to put my mother on the phone, I brace myself for what the next few minutes will hold.

“Hello?” Mama asks when she comes on. Everything feels like a question these days, which underlines her uncertainty navigating a world that looks a little different to her every day she wakes.

“Hey, Bet,” I say, using the name my mother’s family always called her by.

“Ma?” my mother asks, her voice going breathless with hope and relief. “Is that you?”

I lick my lips and blink at the tears stinging the corners of my eyes. I had half hoped this wouldn’t work—that my mother wouldn’t be so lost in the dark corridor of her mind that she would immediately know I’m her daughter, but it’s the same as the last time she got this agitated. Over the phone, with only my voice for reference, she thinks I’m her mother, and it brings her peace.

“Yeah,” I say, clearing my throat. “It’s me. You okay?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.” Her voice thins, shedding years and leaving her sounding like a little girl. “Something ain’t right, and they aren’t telling me the truth. And I think someone was in my room going through my things. They always—”

“No one’s going through your things. Remember I told you last time. It’s just you and Geneva in the house. You know your sister loves you, right?”

“Y-yeah.” It’s a stilted affirmation, hesitant, but clinging to trust. “But I could’ve sworn…”

I give her a moment to sort through the debris of the memories crowding her mind, to make sense of everything her brain keeps rendering senseless.

“Could you sing to me, Mama?” she asks after a few seconds. “You know the one?”

I know the one.

I was maybe twelve years old when we first watchedSister Act 2and listened to Lauryn Hill sing “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”

Your grandmother used to sing this to me,Mama had said.It was her favorite hymn.

And this song, these worn lyrics, always manage to reach through time and space and darkness to light Mama’s way back. I take another step away from the bar, cognizant of the three people I abandoned to answer this call. It’s not that I’m ashamed, but this is private. It’s Mama at her most vulnerable, her most lost, and I want to cover her like she covered me so many times over the years.

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