untitled: the obvious three

"Y'all in here fighting again."

NaeNae wants the air on.

Mbuyu wants the air off.

and Ruthie just wants them to BE QUIET!

"It just gets on my nerves that I gotta come in here and figure something out with y'all e-ver-y-day."

Silence from the girls. We all pick a different spot to focus our attention.

"If you can't play together, you can't be together. Clear?"

A resounding "Yes, ma'am," from the girls.

I leave their bedroom prepared to argue with the air.  It's always something with them three. I really can't believe they came from the same person.

Mbuyu is the Sun. Ruthie is the Moon. NaeNae is the Rising. 

NaeNae always bringing in the strays. She wears the thickest glasses. You'd think she'd be able to tell the difference between good and harmful.

She don't. She cry sometimes. She hurt. But next week, it's a new one. Another thing that needs her.  She like it though...being needed.

And you know who don't help? That dang on Mbuyu. Mbuyu be Queen Ruler, an asset to the people, but can't ever make-up her damn mind.

She tells NaeNae, "They can stay. They a friend, and I need friends."

One time NaeNae brought home this dog. Just the dirtiest thing you've ever seen.  Of course, she hid it from me with Mbuyu's help. Mbuyu is the cleverest sneak. She could hide an oak tree in the grass, okay?

Anyway, after NaeNae lost interest in the dog, Mbuyu begs and begs that the dog stays.  She really believed the dog would die without her help.

Then on the rainiest day of the year, when the dog had been brought in and out the house for a least two months, the dog gets mud everywhere. It's on the girls. It's on the bed. Some even got on the walls. Then I hear a crash.

"Mama! Mama! She hit me!" A very clear outburst of tears. I swear if I have to come in there, one more time.…

Most times when I'm forced to storm in the room, it's the same position.  It's like a play and every accident is a rehearsal.

NaeNae is usually crying while Mbuyu is trying to reason with everybody.

And Ruthie...

Ruthie's in the corner. Out of all three of them, I gotta watch Ruthie the most.  Ruthie don't need nothing and sometimes I feel like she don't need nobody.  Whenever she comes home from school, we have the same conversation.

I ask, "How you doing, Ruthie?"

"Fine."

"How was school, Ruthie?"

"Good."

"You got any homework?"

"Yes."

Then she disappears. I probably won't see her until dinner.  If she needs something, NaeNae will ask for her. It's usually silence from Ruthie, but she can't help it.  She's experienced too much as a child.

When she was a young girl, she trained me to leave her alone.  She'd say, "I can do my homework myself." She basically pushed me out.  So quiet, so structured, so nervous.

She seems perfect but not. You've got to watch her though 'cause she like to hit.

9 times outta 10, she the one that hit NaeNae. This time she blamed NaeNae for getting everybody dirty.

I don't know if they'll ever get along.  My sister told me, "Let 'em alone and there'll figure it out." 

Alone? They can't be alone for thirty minutes before I hear somebody screaming or crying. She thinks alone will help. I've spent so much time waiting for this supposed figuring, I don't think I can wade too much longer. I drown further and further in a pool of nothingness waiting for harmony through 'letting them alone'. 

Ruthie, my stern child.  You can't blame her though cause Ruthie,

she's just like her father. She wear her father's face like a badge of honor. All oval, nose wide, forehead big.  Feet big too.

That's why I like her daddy. He was strong, powerful and big.  His face just engulfed you, there behind it hiding the lies and pain he'd cause me.  Every time I look at Ruthie, it creeps me out.

I don't tell her this, but it's hard to look at her sometimes.  Maybe that's why she's so cold; he and she left together.

But then there's Mbuyu. That my baby cakes.  She's the most like me.  We like to give to other. I hate her loving and giving nature sometimes, but I can't blame her for mimicking me.  We're partners.  She'll do anything I tell her. She can't really keep her side of the room clean, but the public spaces are always together.  She wash those dishes, pick up the trash; just generally make things beautiful, you know?

She like to look beautiful too.  Always the best dressed. Hair naturally coiled with all kinds of bows and ribbons.  I guess I mean becoming beautiful takes some manipulation; it takes a kinda stretch of the imagination.

When she lost her first tooth, she cried and cried. She looked in the mirror and cried some more. "There's a whole in my mouth, Mama. Fix it."

"I can't. You have to make room for new teeth."

The thought of losing to gain and possibly losing again terrified her.  The day went on but two hours later, she came to me again.  "So you can't fix it?"

Mbuyu just ain't know how she supposed to shine imperfectly.  I had to forcer her to go to school.  I think she was more worried about how her friends would react.  She be the pillar that they all lean on.  She hold them up and forgets herself.

Of all the friends I know and don't know, Mary Ann the one that worries me the most.  Mary Ann be cute but she doesn't have that quiet beauty like Mbuyu.  Mbuyu don't see how Mary Ann takes from Mbuyu.  Mary Ann be the Sun but the kind that draws not the kind that gives.  Mbuyu is the Sun that gives and gives and gives.  She's found a rock to stand on that'll eventually crumble under her feet.

NaeNae don't stand on no rock.  I don't see how she stands at all.  Every time I look at her she laying down looking at the ceiling.  Her and gravity got a secret deal going on.  The closer she stays to the ground, the less she can float away.  They're of the same essence. She's always fighting a gravity she doesn't claim.  

I really can't figure her for nothing.  I darn near stopped disciplining her cause ten minutes later, she's lost again and done forgot why she got in trouble in the first place.

"NaeNae"

"Huh?"

"Huh?!"

"I mean ma'am."

"Did you learn your lesson?"

"I don't know." She looks down. She thinks. She looks up again.

"NaeNae!"

"Huh? I mean ma'am."

This girl.

Now that I think of it, she does stand on something...water.  She be Jesus' brother Joseph; born with as much power just less direct God connection.

That's why she be so lost cause she's always looking for her God connection. Even when she's in a corner in trouble for getting in the car with strangers, she looking for her God. Daydreaming, I suppose.

Sometimes she be so sad and crying when she comes home. I never know why, but once she slipped and told me.

"It's like they don't see me, Mama. And when they do, they can't understand what I say.  I don't get it."

"What you don't get?"

"Why I exist? Why I gotta be here or do any of this matter?"

Those are the times I struggle  cause I am too far away.  I can't reach her.  I, her own mother, is in the number of those who just don't understand.

These gifts of mine.

All three at one time, none the less.  My mother friend says if you have three you can handle any number.  At the point of three, you have more children than hands and it makes it easier to manage.  So basically adding more children I cannot hold is just as easy as having one you can't hold? One child who's always left out the equation. I think although I've got more to discover, adding more elements to the equation just don't seem doable.

They do work well together at times.  When it's very still and too quiet, I question.  I have to see what is going on to cause such a quiet.  All I hear is a "Nothing" in perfect triad harmony.  Something is always up though.

The last time I checked in, NaeNae was dancing on top the bed while Ruthie and Mbuyu were giggling and singing her praises.

"Go, NaeNae. It's your birthday. Go, NaeNae. It's your birthday."

 Those are the moments I believe in something. I believe that maybe they can learn to love each other.  Them loving on one another holding each other's space.  Share the time together.  Their differences don't even matter.  It's the strength that keeps them.  The night comes in, they're in peace wrapped under a blanket of love.  

Those are the times it makes sense.

Crash!

I wait by the stove to see if I hear crying.  I only hear silence.

A few moments later, I hear furniture moving and yelling.  I run to the play room used in this instance as a piano practice room.  I walk in confused by a new scene.