Hiding The Truth

Hard Answers

"Mama, mama!" Junior ran to Lila, arms up for a hug. She swept him into her arms and tickled him a moment before setting him on his feet.

"How was school?" She asked, and words tumbled out of him in a deluge of stories about his day, telling her all about his lessons, playing kick the can at recess, and how fire trucks had visited the daycare.

"I need to talk to you about something, Junior. Mama's going away for awhile to work." Lila said.

Junior's eyes got big and round. "Like Daddy?"

Lila shook her head vehemently. "Not like Daddy. Mama will come back. You'll be with your Mammaw while I'm learning how to do my new job, but I'll come home and everything will be better. We can move to a big house with a nice yard." Her own daddy had refused to become White when Nita had moved herself and Lila away from the Reserve. He had said it was shameful to forget their ancestors, and a lot of other things she hadn't understood at only eight years old. She had never seen him again after the day Nita had packed their things in the Ford and driven to the White town with its looming Arsenal, and it left a wound that still twinged with the pain of rejection occasionally. She could understand Junior's worry that he would lose both parents, but it was for the best. He would understand someday, she told herself. When he grew up to be Somebody, he would know exactly why she had done it.

"But you have a job now. Why do you need a new one? This house is big enough. I don't want things to be better. I want you to stay with me." Junior said, his eyes downcast. First his smiling, laughing Daddy had disappeared and now his Mama was leaving too? Didn't they want to be with him?

Lila's heart squeezed tight. At only four years old, of course he didn't understand. She looked into his dark brown eyes, so like Tony's, and kissed his sweet face. "I have to, son. You'll understand when you're older. You have to be the man of the house now and help Mammaw whenever she asks you. I know you can be a good boy for her."

Junior sighed and squared his little shoulders. Lila was so proud of him in that moment for accepting her words. He was only a child, after all, and he would live with whatever the adults decided, in the way of all children. He would get used to it, the same way she got used to living in the White world when her mother had taken her away from Red land. Children were resilient, she told herself. He would be fine.