This is exactly why I’m here. My mind be zigzagging all over the damn place. Everybody said that the grieving process takes a long time, but I was feeling like this even before Mama died. It just got worse. I really don’t know where to start or what to say. I done already answered a million questions on that form she still flipping through, so she should know my whole history up to this very minute. Some of them questions was a little too personal and none of her fucking business, so I either left ’em blank or just lied.

They say you should always get two opinions, which is why, right after I leave here, I’m going to see another doctor. This one’s a psychiatrist, and she’s black. Last Sunday, right after church, Smitty’s wife, Lela, told me ever since she accused him of cheating on her it was ’cause she had forgot he had told her he was going fishing, and she said she had to admit that there was a whole lotta loose ends just hanging and not connecting to stuff like they used to, and she was worried that maybe she was going nuts, so the pastor’s wife gave her the name of a psychiatrist who she went to see, and Lela said that doctor told her right off the bat that she wasn’t crazy, and she said the doctor—who didn’t even seem like a doctor, but just a woman you would want to be your friend—made her feel comfortable. Lela said she didn’t want to sound like no racist, but she thinks it’s ’cause they was both black and it was just some things this doctor already understood and she didn’t have to explain. Lela said she done got to the heart of quite a few of her problems and her thinking is getting clearer.

When Dr. Simpson looks at me, I feel kinda weird. I’m scared of what’s about to come outta her mouth, but when she opens it, she just says, “You’ve got a number of stressful things going on in your life right now, especially with the recent loss of your mother, don’t you, Charlotte?”

“Yes I do.”

“Which of these do you feel is occupying your mind most?”

“All of ’em.”

“Wow, all of them are preoccupying you.”

“Yeah.”

She just sits there like she’s waiting for me to say something, but I’m waiting for her to say something first. Finally, she says: “You said your son might be gay?”

“Is.”

“That must really be hard to digest.”

“It certainly was. Don’t you think it’s sick?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. It’s what you think about it.”

I just look at this bitch. She probably from California. They all think like this in California. I get more comfortable in this chair and then I say, “I don’t like it. It ain’t normal. He should be liking girls.”

“But if he doesn’t like girls, does that cause you to have ill feelings toward him?”