Cry Me A River by Ernest Hill Page A

his hands, looking her directly in the eye.
    “Son, I don’t question his wisdom,” she said. Her weak voice had become strong, steady. “Neither should you.”
    “Well, what should I do, Mama?” Tyrone asked, his intense eyes studying her face, pleading for an answer. “What should I do?” he whispered again.
    He continued to stare at her, but now his troubled mind was no longer there; it was on the box that he had left sitting in the hall next to his bedroom door. He heard her say something, but what, he did not know. Though he heard her voice, he wasn’t listening to her. He was pondering, thinking, planning. Suddenly, he heard the quiet, tense whisper of Janell’s discouraging words echoing through the quiet recesses of his overactive mind: I’m pretty sure the evidence we need is not in that box.
    What if there wasn’t a way to get his son off? The thought was strong, the impact immediate. His tepidskin flushed warm; his frightened body shivered. What would he do? What could he do?
    “I should’ve been here for him,” he said, his eyes in a daze.
    “You ain’t the blame for this.” His mother’s response was quick, forceful. “You hear me? You ain’t the blame.” She had turned in her chair, and now she was facing him. Both of her hands were clutching the soft, plush arm of the chair on which she sat. Her eyes were narrowed; her brow, furrowed; her lips, pursed.
    “I should’ve set a better example,” he said. His eyes were distant, vacant.
    “Ain’t no cause in carrying on like this,” she said. “You made a mistake, and now you done made amends for it. That’s all there is to it.”
    “That ain’t all, Mama,” he said; then his voice quieted. “Now my son paying for it.” He looked at her with still moist eyes. “How am I supposed to live with that, Mama? How?”
    “Yo’ trouble ain’t his troubles.”
    “People say he got convicted because of me.”
    “You can’t pay people no mind,” she said. “You ain’t the cause of this.”
    “If Pauline would’ve just let him come see me. Maybe—”
    “Maybe nothing,” his mother interrupted. “Pauline was hurt, and she was scared. And she did what she thought was best for that child. She ain’t the first woman made up her mind not to ever let her child walk through the doors of the penitentiary.” His mother paused, and Tyrone knew she was remembering her own pain—pain that he had caused. “It’s hard to see yo’ love ones caged like some kind of wild animal,” she began again. “You free, but you suffer just as hard as they do.” She paused a second time and looked Tyronein the eye. “You can’t fault Pauline for trying to spare her child. Nobody can.”
    “I let him down, Mama.”
    “You let yo’self down,” she said. “Now you got to pick yo’self up and go on.”
    “How,” he said. “How can I go on without my son?”
    “Same way I had to go on without you,” she said in a tone marked by a wisdom that came only from experience. “When they put you in that jail, look like my whole world stopped. People tried to comfort me. Some of ‘em told me they knew what I was going through. But I knew they didn’t. They meant good. But I knew they didn’t.”
    “What did you do, Mama?” Tyrone asked more for himself than for her. Her suffering was over; his was just beginning. “What did you do?”
    “Talked to God,” she said. “And he told me that I had to keep on living. And that’s what I did. And that’s what you got to do.”
    Tyrone looked at her but did not speak.
    “Don’t you thank I blamed myself just like you doing?” she began again. Her eyes were distant; her voice was low, soft, calm. “Told myself I should’ve got between you and them old drugs anyway I could’ve. Told myself if I would’ve, then you wouldn’t’ve tried to rob that store. And if you wouldn’t’ve tried to rob that store, you wouldn’t ever shot that man. I know you wouldn’t’ve ‘cause you ain’t no bad