She blinked at me like she was trying to make sure she had heard me right. "A therapist?"
"Yes."
"For what?" I didn't answer that question right away. Instead, I shifted the car into park and turned the engine off. Thequiet settled around us immediately. The building in front of us was still waking up. A cleaning woman pushed a cart through the glass lobby doors while the receptionist inside turned the lights on behind the desk. Saturday mornings at therapy offices always looked strange to me. The world outside still half asleep while people inside were already unpacking their lives. "For what?" Julise asked again, slower this time.
"For talking," I said finally. “The kind you been avoiding."
She stared at me like she was deciding whether to be mad or confused. "I don't need therapy."
"Yes, you do."
"I'm not crazy. “That word always came quick with kids. Like feeling something too deeply automatically meant something was wrong with you.
"I didn't say you were."
She crossed her arms and leaned back against the seat. "I'm not going in there."
"Yes you are." The way I said it made her pause. I didn't raise my voice or threaten her. I just said it like a fact. Children understood the difference between a suggestion and a decision. She stared out the window again, watching the building like it might change shape if she looked long enough.
"Why can't I just talk to you?" she asked quietly. That question sat between us for a moment. Because the answer wasn't simple. It was just honest.
"Because you don't talk to me," I said. She looked down at her hands. "You don't talk to anybody." That part was harder for her to argue with. "Go ahead," I said to her. She didn'trespond, instead she stared at the coffee lid while the morning light started creeping across the parking lot. For a second I studied her face. There was something about that moment that made my chest tighten. Julise had always been strong. Strong in that stubborn, quiet way that reminded me of Jules. But lately there had been something else there too. Something restless and wounded. she opened the door. Cold morning air rushed into the car for a second before she stepped out and shut it again. I watched her walk toward the entrance. Her shoulders looked smaller from this distance. Still a child. Even though she was trying so hard to act like she wasn't. The glass doors opened and swallowed her inside. And suddenly the car felt too quiet.
I leaned back in the seat and stared through the windshield. Finally this morning, there was nothing to distract me. Just silence. Silence had a way of bringing thoughts forward that you had been pushing down for years. I realized When Julise asked why she couldn't just talk to me... I didn't answer the real reason. Because the truth was harder to say out loud. My children had spent years watching me absorb everything. Stress. Disappointment. Loneliness. I carried it all without speaking, complaining, or asking for anything in return.
At some point they learned that silence from me. Children didn't just inherit their parents' features. They inherited survival as well. And I had taught mine how to carry things quietly, like it was strength. I rubbed my hands together slowly. Marriage had a way of reshaping women quietly. When I first married Jules, I thought love meant endurance. Standing beside your husband no matter what. Holding it all together. Protecting the family. Making sure the children never felt the cracks forming underneath their feet. And for years I did exactly that. All while tired, feeling invisible. It happened slowly. Like dust collectingon furniture. One day you just noticed the room didn't look the same anymore.
I stared at the therapy office doors again. I hoped to myself that she was honest and took advantage of therapy. The glass doors stayed closed for a long time. Cars came and went in the parking lot. A mother walked a little boy inside holding his hand. An older man stepped out with a folder tucked under his arm. Life moved around the building like nothing heavy was happening inside of it. But I knew better. Rooms like that held the things people couldn't say anywhere else.
I sat there with my hands folded in my lap, watching the door like it might tell me something about what my daughter was feeling behind it. I wondered if she would sit there with her arms crossed like she did when she felt cornered. Strength in children could sometimes turn into silence if nobody showed them how to release what they were holding. And silence had been the language of my house for years.
The thought made something in my chest feel heavy. For most of my life I believed absorbing things quietly made me strong. I believed endurance meant maturity. I believed a woman proved her love through patience. But sitting there in that parking lot, waiting for my daughter to speak to a stranger about the feelings she couldn't say at home. I wondered if my silence had taught her the wrong lessons.
When she was finished she came out and climbed in the car. She was silent and didn't speak, so I didn't push her. Her eyes looked tired, but not the same kind of tired she had been when she walked inside. Something had shifted in her expression. I couldn't tell if it was relief or confusion. Therapy sometimes did that. It opened doors people didn't realize they had closed.
I pulled off and headed in the direction of the neighborhood I grew up in. The streets started changing as we drove farther across town. The houses got smaller. The sidewalks cracked. Corner stores replaced grocery stores.
I wanted to show her my lifestyle before I met her daddy and what it could have been if I hadn't met him. She needed to know that she was privileged and there was a world outside of hers that was way worse than what she was acting out about. Children sometimes believed the small storms in their lives were hurricanes. They needed perspective.
I pulled up on the street I grew up on and parked in front of the house that I grew up in. It looked just as rundown and raggedy as it did when I was growing up. The siding was still chipped. The porch sagged slightly in the middle. The screen door hung crooked on its hinges. I hated that house, not because it was broken, because it made me feel like I was. I was always ashamed of it growing up.
The house next door that was painted sky blue was still there. Shante's parents left it to her when they died. Me and Shante grew up together, same age, birthday in the same month. We were inseparable before I met Jules and she met Shad. We sat on either of our porches plenty of days and talked about our plans to leave this rundown ass neighborhood and never come back. Back then we used to talk about the future like it was something waiting right around the corner. Like all we had to do was grow up and the world would open for us. Depending on how you looked at it, we both got what we asked for. Just not in the same way. I watched the two little boys chase each other out of the front door of the house into the front yard. I smiled at their interaction. One of them tripped in the grass and the other one laughed before helping him back up. It seemed like Shante gotpregnant as soon as she met Shad. By the time we were twenty-five I'd heard they had six kids. I didn't come back after I left with Jules, so we hadn't kept up with one another. She went on about her life with Shad and her kids, and I went on about my life with Jules and mine. Life had a way of splitting people apart without anybody intending it.
"Where are we?" Julise questioned. "This is where I grew up." I said nodding at the house on the side of the street before turning to look at her. She had a frown on her face. Her eyes moved slowly across the neighborhood. The cracked pavement. The rusted chain link fences. The empty lot two houses down where somebody had burned something recently.
"If you knew where your family was this whole time how come you never told us?" She questioned. Her question sat with me. Because I'd never talked to my kids about my family and my life growing up. Once my daddy made me pick between him and Jules, I put my family in the back of my mind and left them there. A mistake I made when somewhere along the lines I should've made amends. Evie and Saint surrounded the kids with so much love, they never even noticed. Or so I thought.
"My daddy made me choose between him and your daddy before you came along." I said. "I chose your daddy and I never saw mine again after that day. I left it behind and I thought that meant I didn't have to go back. " She looked at me differently after that. Children had a way of seeing their parents as permanent fixtures in their lives. They rarely imagined the choices that shaped who we became.
"What made you choose daddy over your dad?" She questioned with curious eyes. I shifted my eyes away from her resting my head on the headrest thinking about the question myself.
The truth felt heavier now than it did back then. "I was so in love with your daddy Julise. I thought love was enough to fix everything. " I said slowly. I didn't know back then that love didn't erase where you come from, it just built on top of it. "He showed me a life that I'd never seen before and loved me in ways that I hadn't been loved before. He looked at me like I was the only girl in the world back then." The memory felt distant. "My mama and daddy worked shitty jobs, we just barely got by. They never had time for me so I spent a lot of time by myself or with my friend Shante." I glanced back at the house again. "I always had stained worn clothes, and my hair was never done. I never knew what it was like to go to a salon and get my nails and toes done and be pampered." I laughed quietly under my breath. "We were poor Julise." The words hung between us. "My life changed when I got with your daddy. Yeah he showed me a different lifestyle." I paused for a second. "But we spent so much time together Julise." The memories surfaced easily. I could still see us sitting in his car outside Evie's house. Still hear the way he used to laugh. Still feel the way he used to look at me like I mattered. "I was always at his side, and he always made the world stop for me, something my parents had never done." I looked over at her again. "I was just a girl in love." Julise didn't interrupt. She just listened.
It was tough admitting that now that I was grown and had my own kids I looked at things different. The fact that I had gone through life, I looked at everything different. Back then love felt like rescue. Now I understood something else about it. Love could save you. But you aren't careful, it'll become the only thing you know how to be.
I stared at the house again. The porch creaked as one of Shante's boys ran back up the steps. For a moment I imagined my younger self sitting there with her. Two girls makingpromises they didn't understand yet. "I wanted you to see this place." I said quietly.
"Why?"