Shard of Glass

Shard of Glass
By Alaya Dawn Johnson
14 February 2005

Part 1
That day, my mother picked me up from school, wearing the yellow
sundress and shawl I remembered from our trip with Father the year
before. She looked just like she did most days back then--a glamour
queen, a movie star ("Just like Lena Horne," my friend Chloe had once
said, "only darker--oh, sorry, Leah!"), but today her beauty somehow
had a harder, more defiant edge to it. I could smell the expensive Dior
perfume as soon as I opened the door, which surprised me, because my
mom was usually fastidious about not getting perfume on her clothes.
She was wearing her bug glasses--huge dark things with lenses that
bulged out like fly eyes and reflected my face like a fun-house mirror.
She had tied a yellow silk scarf around her hair and was taking deep
pulls on a cigarette held between two immaculately manicured fingers.
Only I knew about the nicotine stains she carefully covered with her
special order "forest sable" cream each morning.
Tiffany, a stupid but vicious senator's daughter who I had the
misfortune of sharing a classroom with, suddenly dashed from inside
the school, her face flushed.
"Hello, Mrs. Wilson," she called. Before my mother could respond, she
giggled and ran back to three of her friends waiting beyond the door. I
could hear them laughing, but I was glad I couldn't understand their
words. They were all fascinated with my mother--the black
housekeeper who dressed like Katharine Hepburn and drove a Cadillac,
whose daughter's "light toffee" skin indicated that she might just like
her coffee with a lot of cream.

Sometimes I hated those girls.
"Get in the car, Leah," my mother said. Her already husky voice was
pitched low, as though she'd been crying. That made me nervous. Why
was she here?
"Ma, Chloe was going to show me her dad's new camera. Can't I go
home on the bus?"
My mom pulled on the cigarette until it burned the filter, and then
ground it into the car ashtray--already filled with forty or so butts. She
always emptied out the ashtray each evening.
"Get in the car, Leah." My mom's voice was even huskier as she lit
another cigarette and tossed the match out of the window.
I sat down and shut the door.
We rode in silence for a while. Despite her shaking hands and the
rapidly dwindling box of cigarettes, she drove meticulously, even
coming to a full stop at the stop signs. She never stopped at stop signs.
"Ma . . . is something wrong?" I asked hesitantly.
Her fingers tightened on the wheel until her knuckles looked even
paler than my skin. "We're going on a trip, Leah," she said finally,
jamming on the brakes at a stop sign.
Was that why she had chosen to wear that outfit today? "A trip? Where
is it this year? Are we meeting Dad soon?" My heart sped up at just the
thought of seeing him again.
"Charles," my mother corrected, deliberately. "You know you can't call
him 'Dad,' Leah, I've told you a hundred times. And no, we're not going
with . . . Charles, this time." Her voice caught on his name and for a
second I thought she was going to cry.
A cop behind us leaned angrily on his horn. My mom's head jerked
around so quickly I could hear the bones in her neck popping. We had

been sitting in front of the stop sign for over a minute. My mom cursed
and the car lurched forward. A minute later, after the cop had turned
away, she seemed to relax a little.
"Did something happen to Da--Charles? And can I still go to school
tomorrow? I have a geography report and, well, . . ."
I trailed off. My mom didn't even look like she'd heard me. After
checking over her shoulder again even though the cop had long since
disappeared, she pulled onto the highway.
"They can't know we're gone yet," she muttered to herself. "I'm just
being paranoid. They won't be looking for us for hours. . . ." She shook
her head and took off her sunglasses. The face she turned to me scared
me more than anything--her mascara had run and her eyes were glazed
and puffy. I knew my mom cried, of course I did, but she had always
tried to hide it from me before. Now . . . what could have happened to
make her cry so openly?
"Is he . . . dead?" I asked, suddenly terrified.
Her mouth twisted in a bitter half-smile. "No. No, Charles is most
certainly alive. Leah . . ." She sighed, and handed me a thick
leather-bound book.
"Don Quixote," I read out loud,