Bebe Moore Campbell Read Online Free PDF

customers. As I watched her, I recalled how she used to work in the shop every day after high school. A bright, clear-eyed young girl, she had made the customers laugh with her wise-cracks and sheer ebullience. She’s still got most of that, I told myself, and what’s missing will return. She’s not so far behind she can’t catch up. She’ll go to college in the fall, go on to graduate school, get a great job, and meet a nice guy, an understanding go-getter. Everything will work out fine.
    “Ready to go?” I asked her when her customer went to the cash register.
    “Where?”
    “I was thinking home. We have to put the flowers in water.”
    “Aww.”
    I sighed. “Where do you want to go, Trina?”
    “To the movies, to the mall, to eat.”
    When Trina was in her early teens, she would jump out of a moving car in order to avoid being seen going into a movie with me. That was when she had friends who called, who met her at the mall, who spent the night and filled her bedroom with whispers and laughter and boys’ names. She had been robbed of that casual happiness. I wanted to make up for that void, to fill in the empty spaces until she recovered all she’d lost.
    There were moments, right before my world began to tip over again, that I don’t want to forget. Simple, normal minutes, the sun bright, the breeze drying the dampness between my breasts, the clock ticking, nothing special. We took the flowers home, and I put them into water. We drove to the marina and saw a movie, a comedy that made us grab each other as we convulsed, and then had an early dinner at a Thai restaurant before returning home. Trina took her evening pill, and we sat in the hot tub in our backyard and drank lemonade. It grew dark as our legs bumped against each other in the warm water. The stars, at least those that were visible, came out. In LA, it’s easier to see planes than stars. When I’m missing Atlanta, a lot of times I’m thinking about cold winter nights, me scurrying home under a sky filled with stars. But even in LA, I could make out the North Star, with its steady glow. It’s bright like a plane, only it never moves.
    The last thing I did before I retired was to count Trina’s pills and subtract the days that had passed from the original number. Counting pills had become a way of life. Even though she’d been well for five months, I took nothing for granted. My old instincts hadn’t yet dulled. The old fears hadn’t completely receded. One more week to go before a refill; there were twenty-one of the pink three-times-a-day pills and seven nighttime white ones. I counted once again, to make sure; then I put the cap back on the bottle and breathed.
    During the night Trina climbed in the bed with me, and I pulled her close, wishing she could be a baby again in my arms. No, inside me. We would start over; even my milk would be new. If only I’d known then what I knew now: everything that could turn a gift from God into a tragedy. I knew where the road turned slippery and treacherous and the baby fell out of the car seat. Women would kill for what I know.
    Babies should come with instructions taped to the soles of their little feet. A cheery note from God:
Be careful! This child is accident-prone.
Or:
Lucky you! This one goes straight to the top!
How about:
Congratulations! You have just given birth to a natural beauty, who will never know
acne or need braces or diets. Your darling straight-A student will be a
pleasure, an endless source of pride and joy right up to high school
graduation, and then she’ll hit a wall of craziness that may never end.
Take lots of
before
pictures.
After
will be unphotographable.
    As I said, the end of that day was unremarkable. Nothing really stood out. Everything flowed, the kind of flow you take for granted when your shackles have been removed, the scars from the last beating have all faded, and it’s Sunday on the plantation. But I did pray. I will always pray. This is what I prayed:
Mother