Family Tree the Novel Read online

  Family Tree, the Novel

  Family Tree

  ANDREA N. CARR

  Copyright © 2012 Andrea Carr

  All rights reserved.

  Title ID: 4548788

  ISBN-13: 978-1494322847

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book is dedicated to

  all readers of this book.

  THANK YOU.

  CHAPTER 1

  I was sent to Mental Health, thinking this must be some sort of evaluation. I had no previous jail experience. I was unaware there had been an emergency in my family.

  “Hi, I’m Dr. Meredith Stein. I’m the clinical psychologist here at Orange County Jail. You are Angel Harper?”

  “Yes.”

  She reached to check my wristband anyway. “There has been an emergency in your family. I’m going to let you call home and talk to your mother, so she can tell you what has happened.”

  “This is not part of the process?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what the emergency is about? Does it concern my son, Malcolm?”

  “I don’t know the emergency. I know it concerns Lady Penman.”

  “That’s my sister; is she dead?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to let your mother tell you the emergency.” I told her the number; she had it written down already. She made the connecting call. “Yes, this is Meredith Stein, at the Orange County Jail. I have your daughter sitting here with me. I will let you talk to her now.”

  Dr. Stein handed me the telephone.

  “Angel, Lady hung herself.” I could hear my mother sobbing.

  “Where?”

  “In the backyard.”

  “From a tree? Is she dead?”

  “Yes”

  “Did she read the letter I sent to you all?”

  “No,” my mother answered. I was weak with disappointment: not showing Lady the letter, on top of my sadness from the news I had just heard. I wanted to ask Mom why not, but I didn’t. I didn’t want a confrontation with her now anyway.

  I mentioned Lady specifically in that letter. I was thanking my sister for helping with ‘Cousin,’ that’s what she called my son. She was taking him places while I was in jail, spending time with him, when I couldn’t. The last time I talked to her, I called my mother’s house to speak to my son and Lady had answered. She told me she was keeping them busy, ‘Cousin’ (Malcolm) and Abraham. Abraham was her son. They had been many places together. Most of the time I couldn’t catch up with them.

  “How are you paying for all of this?” I had asked her. Lady had lost her new job, for not calling or showing up to work. “I’ll give you the money back.” I told her.

  “My friend is paying for it, don’t worry about it,” she’d said. We’d laughed. Back to her old tricks, I thought. She was always getting some man to pay for what she wanted. I think I thanked her, but I couldn’t remember the details.

  At the time, Mom was complaining in the background, “Hurry up and get off the phone!” while we were talking. I hurried because it was a collect call. I wanted so desperately to remember now what we had said. I was angry with myself for not having picked up on it; something, in her voice, to warn me about what was going to happen. I always believed my relationship with Lady was meaningful, so I should have noticed something wrong. I had been close with her. One thing I do remember, I didn’t tell her I loved her. It was in the letter she never read.

  “Mom, who found her body?”

  “Your son, he needs you.” I felt caged from help.

  “Mom, I’m in jail.”

  “I know,” she said. Then why are you telling me now, I thought. I hated her, right then. “How is Malcolm?”

  “I think he should talk to someone. I’m going to take him to St. Joseph’s Hospital.”

  “Let me speak to Malcolm.” I wanted to see for myself if he was okay. “Take him to Dr. Jerry, he’s a friend of mine. Malcolm saw him before, he’s listed in the directory,” I said. Maybe the good Doctor could help find the answers my son may need for himself. I trusted him. I had spent countless hours in his office pouring my life on his lap, trying to make sense of it. Trying to figure out what a normal life was.

  “Malcolm isn’t here.”

  “Where is he, is he in the hospital?” I was confused, and at my mother’s mercy.

  “No,” she said. “Philip took them to his house.”

  “Them?”

  “Abraham was with Malcolm when he found her. Abraham’s father is on his way.”

  “Did anything happen? Do you know what would have made her do this?”

  “No.” I knew this wasn’t the whole story, coming from Mom. She kept secrets. Things had never been as they appeared. I hung up the phone, and looked at the staff psychologist.

  “My sister hung herself. My son and hers found her body.” I said. “I’d like to go back to my cell now.” The doctor looked shocked; I should have been. Her forehead wrinkled. However, I had the feeling she already knew the emergency.

  “Why did you ask if she was dead, when I told you the emergency was about your sister?” She asked as she straightened her face, patronizing me.

  “My sister had some problems, it made sense.” It might have even been expected. How much had gone unnoticed?

  “How old is your son?”

  “We were pregnant at the same time, my sister and I had our children five months apart.”

  “How old are they?” she asked.

  “Thirteen.” I answered.

  “How old was she?” She paused, waiting for my answer.

  “Forty.” I spoke like a robot. I was numb. I took the news and got rid of it someplace hidden. I’ll look for it when, I’m ready, I thought. I knew this was not time or place to be dealing with it. I was not ready to grieve.

  Why didn’t she wait for me, like I used to wait for her after school when we were children, so she could walk me home? I loved her. Did Lady know how important she had been to me? It was important to me now, that she know. I had problems in the past telling people that I loved them, even if I truly did love them. I’ve since taught myself to tell the ones I love, for times like this. I hadn’t told her lately. It was in the letter.

  I was angry. I hadn’t talked to Lady for about a year before she came home. Lady couldn’t fool me with her manipulations, I knew what she was going through, and when she was ready for help she knew I would be there. She had been living with Mother for about a month before killing herself. I had dealt with what she was going through; I wanted to show Lady how to overcome her turmoil. She was so out of control, I didn’t want to see her self-destruct.

  There had been times she’d come to my house at 3:00 in the morning, drunk and high, asking for money. Going from door to door checking to see if I had left one unlocked. As I tried to ignore her by hiding in the darkness, I was bruised and scarred by what was she was doing. Lady wouldn’t listen to me. My mother often looked the other way, denying the truth and keeping secrets.

  The moment I heard of Lady’s suicide, God became my only friend. I had no one I wanted. I felt the distance between my mother and myself. I didn’t want my mother trying to shield me from the truth. It has never worked. Whenever the truth is revealed, whatever her motive, whether it be to spare my feelings or not, what I remember is she wasn’t truthful.

  Secrets outlined my life with my mother, not knowing whatever new drama I was dealing with. In addition, not knowing what secrets would come out later, having to rearrange my grief as the truth surfaced. Through Dr. Jerry I had learned happiness existed but it took work. Lady seemed to have given up on happiness. She didn’t do things I suggested; or know how. It was like she kept fumbling with the wrong combination to a lock.

 
I thought about when we were children, when we walked from school. I would wait in the schoolyard on a bench until she got out of class. Then we walked home together. I depended on her, and realized her importance to me then. She would open the door with her key, and we would wait together – for someone to come home.

  Tears streamed down my face as I recalled: Lady made straight A’s in school, and could draw anything just by looking at it. She would do my homework for me before my mother came home. It was so easy for her. I had often wished I was as smart as she was.

  Why couldn’t she wait? I was some place different from this jail’s Mental Health office, in our childhood’s floating images.

  I asked the psychologist, “May I go back to my cell now?” She paused for a long time. I sat there. I wasn’t going to talk to her anymore than I needed to. I did not need her or her words. What I wanted were the answers I was never going to have – to know what Lady was thinking before she died. Did she think of me? I felt I understood her most, out of anyone who knew her. I was like her. Why couldn’t she wait? Did she want to be dead that bad? I kept thinking.

  “If you’d like to talk, you can ask to come back to Mental Health, and I’ll see you right away.”

  I could see the doctor’s lips moving, nothing really was registering. I was still someplace else. I was being interrupted. Memories were stronger than her words to me.

  “Thank you,” I said, because I thought I should when her lips stopped moving – like smoke clearing from the air.

  Then she asked, “Do you feel like running?”

  “What?” I frowned.

  “Do you feel like running,” she repeated. That question brought me back and angered me even more. “I’m sorry, I have to ask.” Dr. Stein said, and I got the feeling she was genuine.

  “I would never have thought of it,” I said. I don’t run from my problems. But that couldn’t have been farther from the truth right now. “I wouldn’t add to my family’s burden,” I said. And that was true. “Please, I would like to go back now.”

  “Okay, I’ll walk you.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Back at the cell, I was sick to my stomach. I wanted to vomit for relief and couldn’t. I wasn’t quite sure of what to do. I walked around in circles.

  I called to talk to my best friend Mary, but she wasn’t there. I wanted to talk to her; she seemed to know the right thing to say when I needed her to. Mary’s my best friend because she is always the same, like Sister. Mary treats me the way she would like to be treated. She spoils me like one of her children, and I like that. She has three daughters. Mary and I played with them sometimes like they were dolls.

  Mary and I would laugh over stuff like me giving their baby daughter Sandra, a candy corn-shaped candle. Not thinking, I told her to burn it on Halloween. Daughter had burned their house down a few years before, when she was three. Mary told the little fire starter to just let the candle sit there for decoration.

  Mary and I had laughed while she asked me, “What were you thinking?” I wasn’t. No one ever really knew why we were laughing. I liked our silly private jokes. All I’ve ever really wanted from a friend, she is. I’m lucky to have her, I thought.

  I spoke to Jesus, her husband. I cried and told him what had happened. I knew Jesus before I ever met Mary. We used to work together on the same unit and talk. Jesus and I both love nightclubs and dancing, and our birthdays are two days apart. Jesus never hit on me once. I was so used to feeling mislead by men. I guess this was the reason I respected him most. He gave me back my faith in men. Jesus didn’t lure me in with a nice guy act, pretending to be my friend, or having some sort of business with me just to try and have sex with me. Eventually I transferred to another unit and met Mary.

  At the time, she told me, “You know my husband.” I moved my head back a little with a frown on my face wondering. “He worked with you on unit 14, his name is Jesus.”

  “Oh,” I said, “that’s your husband.” Still wondering whom she meant. I would never have pictured the two of them together. They seemed so different, not an apparent match. I knew immediately Mary had something I wanted, and it wasn’t Jesus.

  We all worked at a state mental hospital. Mary and I got along immediately. I never thought of Jesus to be there to comfort me. I looked to Mary for that, but he did when I spoke to him.

  I looked to him to talk with my son about male points of view. Malcolm’s father was weak. It’s hard for him to say no and he doesn’t stand up for himself or believe in anything. I don’t like that. I can’t tolerate weakness in men. I don’t trust Malcolm’s father is able to teach him what he needs to learn to be a strong man. I like Jesus sharing his male-type facts with my son, especially about women. Jesus seemed like a normal man to me, except he did not hide his feelings. I wanted my son to learn that.

  Jesus would debate with Mary and I about the differences between men and women. Once, we watched a news story about a teacher who had been having sex with one of her students. The boy was about thirteen, and had fathered a child with this teacher. The teacher was jailed for breaking a restraining order forbidding her to see the boy.

  “I know that kid is upset,” Jesus commented.

  “That poor kid,” I said as I thought about the boy having to deal with being a father at thirteen, and being taken advantage of.

  “Poor kid,” Jesus laughed like I wasn’t getting something and said, interrupting my thought, “That kid should be loving it.” Mary and I thought Jesus sounded crazy, and we told him so by with the looks on our faces.

  “Loving what?” Mary said with a hostile attitude.

  “It’s different when you’re a man.” Jesus said. We argued the student was not a man. He was a boy. Jesus said, “I would have loved to have sex with an older woman at thirteen, especially if she was a freak..” He laughed. I thought to myself, you sound like a freak.

  “What if it was your thirteen year old daughter?” I asked, challenging his logic.

  “That’s different,” he said.

  “Because of the way we’re built?” Mary asked. “Women are penetrated, and not men? Is that it?” she said quickly and harshly. Jesus could see to back out of this one. He sat back in his chair looking as if he had given up, while he sipped his beer. I wasn’t sure if his credibility was warped in my eyes or not. I was hoping this was the difference in our points of view I was depending on him for.

  “You are women, you don’t think like men,” he started again. Who would want to, I thought. If men think that differently from women, there were things I couldn’t begin to teach my son, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to learn when Jesus spoke this way. “Although, Angel, you come pretty close to thinking like a man.” He laughed.

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean that as a compliment,” he said raising his beer from the table.

  “I know you do, thanks,” I said. He laughed again. I thought, it’s because you’re not emotional like a woman, you just ask for what you want, no mind reading. I repeated a past quote from Jesus in my head – It’s not that I think like a man, It’s that I don’t like games, or mind reading and unnecessary drama. I ask for what I need from men. If that’s what men do with women then, I’m guilty.

  I think, Jesus enjoyed talking to Malcolm, and the opportunity to express his manhood in a way with him he wasn’t able to with his daughters. In the same way, I came to be able to share my femininity with the three of them. I didn’t always agree with Jesus point of view. I guess that was the point. When my son and I would visit their house, sometimes Jesus would have us watch war documentaries on TV, insisting we would learn something interesting. I wasn’t interested in war documentaries. Jesus would manage sometimes to come up with some facts I found interesting while he tried to persuade me to watch.

  “Angel, during World War II our US Intelligence used Navajo Indian codes to transmit our war communications, because there were no such codes in Japan, and Germany. Also, in the twenties, American Indians helped build New York
City’s skyscrapers; walking on girders, risking their lives on buildings’ high stories, served as a rite of passage.” I don’t know if they were accurate facts, or confused by the effect of beer, but they were interesting nonetheless.

  I liked the fact that Mary would allow Jesus to watch what he wanted on TV when no one else wanted to, making him feel like a man who runs his house. He didn’t. Mary would hand Jesus money to pay the bill under the table when they dined out. It helped maintain their balance of things. Mary knows you have to give to get, and so does Jesus.

  Mary and Jesus’ daughters are my surrogate children. They are representatives of the family that I wanted. They have problems, but they stick together and endure them. I have asked Mary for her insight into people. Mary seems to be able to zero in on my confusion with why people are the way they are. I was like her, but I struggled with what seemed natural to her: being the same no matter what anyone else did. I wanted her ease. Mary was different from me, yet the same.

  She told me once when I asked her, “How did you get to be this way?”

  “I’ve always been the same,” she answered. I liked that. Mary was more confident than I thought I was. I had to learn my strength, Mary seemed to know hers. Jesus’ presence seemed to be the difference between us. Mary and I had similar upbringings, but I believe that if I had had someone outside my family who loved me for myself and who was consistent in that fact, things would be different. If someone had validated me as a person growing up, it would have allowed me to believe I was okay a long time ago, helping ease my struggle.

  I felt my siblings loved me anyway because we grew up together and were comrades. As children, we shared thoughts and feelings freely. Especially true of Lady and I because we shared the most time together and most of our thoughts. Somehow we all lost the closeness we shared growing up. Mary seemed to be close with her mother and her sister. I wanted closeness. I had wondered how they managed to keep it. I got closeness from Mary.