Waving his shotgun, Freddie stalked her into the store, demanding that Mr. Odom tell him, “Where is that bitch?” Mr. Odom shrugged. “Well, she’s not in here, Freddie, and you got to get out of my store with that shotgun. You hear me?”
Mr. Odom suffered no fools. Knowing this, Freddie, like all bullies, was actually a coward when confronted by someone who refused to be bullied. Without so much as an argument, Freddie turned around and left, continuing up the block, holding his shotgun in broad daylight, looking for Momma.
She was able to lay low until later that evening, when he apparently cooled down. For the next two days or so, Freddie’s internal barometric pressure seemed to indicate that storms weren’t imminent, as if the valve had temporarily released some steam. But the signs were sometimes misleading, so we all walked on eggshells, all of us—me, Momma, twelve-year-old Ophelia, four-year-old Sharon, and two-year-old Kim—all the time.
While I knew that we all feared and pretty much loathed Freddie, the question of how my mother really felt about our increasingly intolerable situation was left as unanswered as the question about who and where my real daddy was. That is, until I happened to stumble over one of the only clues to her inner world that I would ever have.
Around this time, Moms actually made one of the only references to the man who fathered me. Freddie had, once again, reminded me that he wasn’t my goddamn daddy. Trying to console me, she mentioned offhandedly that I did have a daddy down in Louisiana, who had once sent me a letter with five dollars or so enclosed. I had never seen the letter, the money, or his name. Momma pointed out that she was always giving me money, as much as she could, which was true. But that didn’t explain why she thought my seeing my real father’s letter would cause me more heartache than not knowing anything about him.
That may have been on my mind when I was surprised to find myself home alone in the back house one late afternoon and decided to go rummaging in drawers, looking for that letter perhaps, and others. What I found instead was a letter written in Momma’s careful, simple script, which had no salutation, even though it was obviously being sent to a trusted friend. It seemed to slip right into my hands when I reached into her bedside drawer to pick up Momma’s little worn Bible she kept in there.
It was evident to me that even though Freddie couldn’t read any of it, Momma was aware that if he just saw the letter, he would view it as an act of treason. For that reason, she probably had to write it in stealth and then keep it tucked secretly into her Bible, where he wasn’t likely to find it.
