The Mothers by Brit Bennett Page A

desert sun. The time she’d spent studying his photographs had not prepared her for the reality of him, his size and smell. He frowned.
    â€œShe don’t remember me?” he said to her mother.
    â€œWell, she was nothin’ but a baby when you left.” Her mother gave her a little push. “Go on and hug your daddy. Go on.”
    She took a few steps forward and her father pulled her into a hug. His chest felt hard. She smiled at him, even though the hug hurt. Her father held her in his lap on the drive back home, while her mother complained that she ought to be in a car seat.
    â€œShe ought to be getting used to me,” he said.
    â€œIt just takes a little time, Robert,” her mother said.
    â€œI don’t care,” he’d said. “I don’t care how long it takes. She’s gonna love me.”
    Now her father paused at an intersection, before turning onto the road that led to the church. She hadn’t been on this ride since the morning of her mother’s funeral. That drive had been a blur—she’dfelt like she’d been cast in a play she hadn’t tried out for and was suddenly expected to know all the lines. Would she have to speak at the service? What did anyone expect her to say? That one day, she’d had a mother, and the next, she didn’t? That the only tragic circumstance that had befallen her mother was her own self? In the backseat of the hearse, she’d found a run in her panty hose and quietly picked at it until it became a gaping hole, finding peace in the unraveling.
    â€œI need you to take this seriously,” her father said. “Nice thing Mrs. Sheppard is doing for you.”
    Maybe, but she didn’t understand why the first lady had felt inclined to help her at all. Luke’s mother hated her, ever since the seventh grade when she’d caught Nadia kissing Deacon Lou’s nephew behind the church. He was the type of boy she’d liked then—tall and rangy, draped in a T-shirt three times too big—and she’d traced his zigzag cornrows, pressing him against the side of the church as they panted into each other’s mouths. She’d never kissed a boy before, really kissed him. Earlier that year she’d dated a boy for three weeks, but they’d only kissed once after a circle of their friends dared them, so it didn’t really count. But this kiss was a real kiss. She felt it burning through her as he slipped his hand up her shirt and rubbed her through her training bra, and she thought he might have felt it too when he suddenly pulled away, as if he’d touched something hot. Then she followed his gaze over her shoulder to where the first lady stood. She’d snatched Nadia by the arm and dragged her back into the church, shaking her wrist as she fussed at her.
    â€œI’ve never seen such a thing in my life! Carrying on like that behind the church!” Mrs. Sheppard gave her wrist another good shaking, leaning her face close to hers. “Don’t you know nice girls don’t do that? Don’t you know that?”
    She still remembered the way the first lady’s face had suddenly loomed close to hers. She had one brown eye and one blue eye, and in that moment, both became a disorienting blur. She’d dragged Nadia back to Sister Willis’s class. For the rest of Sunday School, Sister Willis made Nadia sit in the back of the room by herself, writing
My body is a temple of God
a hundred times before she could be dismissed. Her mother hadn’t said much on the ride home, but when they pulled into the garage, she’d quietly shut off the engine and sat in the car a minute, still holding the steering wheel.
    â€œMy mama tried to keep me away from boys,” she said. “Obviously it didn’t work, so I won’t tell you that. You just gotta be smart and you gotta be careful. Boys, they can go around careless their whole lives. But you can either be careful now