Family of Lies by Mary Monroe Page A

black hair was braided and wrapped around her head like a finely woven basket.
    “I’m . . . I’m fine, baby,” Mrs. Cooper said. “Sarah, uh, me and you need to talk.”
    “We need to talk about what?” Sarah asked, looking from her grandmother to me. “I ain’t done nothing!” Her voice was so loud, a huge man in a black suit and dark glasses walked over and stood in front of Mrs. Cooper.
    “Everything all right over here, Sister Cooper?” the man asked, looking at me like he wanted to bite my head off.
    “Everything’s fine, Jimmy. Go on back to what you was doing,” Mrs. Cooper said, waving Jimmy away. Then she turned to Sarah with a weary look on her face. “I ain’t said you done nothing, gal. But, uh, this gentleman here, Mr. Lomax, he got something important to tell you.”
    “I don’t think we should discuss this here,” I insisted, my hand in the air.
    “This man might be your daddy,” Mrs. Cooper blurted out. She placed her hand on Sarah’s arm and began to rub it.
    “Nuh-uh!” Sarah hollered. Then she gave me a hot look and stated, “My mama didn’t fool around with old men!”
    “Well, she fooled around with me,” I said firmly.
    “Mama told me my daddy died in a plane crash!” Sarah snapped. The hot look on her face suddenly looked cooler. “Didn’t he? She gave me a picture of him, and he didn’t look nothing like you.”
    “I don’t know anything about that. The picture your mother showed you was probably of a man she knew and he may have died in a plane crash. But he was probably not your daddy. All I know is . . .” I stopped talking and stood up, feeling more robust than I had in weeks. The thought that I had a child had brought out strength in me I didn’t know I still had. A lot of the people, who were still gnawing on fried chicken and snatching rolls like they were pearls, kept glancing in my direction, giving me menacing looks. That scared me. I couldn’t imagine what those people were thinking. Strange things often happened at black folks’ funerals. During the service for my brother, a process server had stormed the pulpit and interrupted Pastor Morris so he could serve him with a summons that one of his creditors had initiated. Two of my rough friends escorted the process server out to the church parking lot and laid open his lip with a well-aimed fist. I didn’t want that to happen to me. “I really do think we should go to a more private place to discuss this,” I said. Two more very large men in dark suits and dark glasses were staring at me now.
    “There ain’t nothing to discuss!” Mrs. Cooper hollered, wobbling up from her seat. “Now, if you don’t get out of my face, I’m going to have you thrown out!”
    Sarah held up her hand. “Wait, Grandma.” She turned to me with a pleading look. “If you are my real daddy, I need to know.”
    “I need to know too,” I replied. The more I looked at this girl, the more I believed she really was my child. She even sounded like my niece and had the same slight gap between her two front teeth.
    Another one of the dark-suited men strolled over and glared at me. “Sister Cooper, is this man bothering you?” he asked, removing his glasses. He made the first man look like a choirboy. I stared into the most evil-looking, bloodshot eyes I’d ever seen in my life. His huge hands looked like smoked ham hocks. I was no wimp myself, but this man was at least forty years younger and forty pounds heavier than me. He could have swatted me like a fly.
    Before Sister Cooper could respond, Sarah piped in, “It’s all right, Brother Whigham. I think this man is my real daddy.”
    “Say what?” Brother Whigham said, putting his glasses back on and looking me up and down.
    “Can you leave us alone for a few minutes?” Sarah said in her gentle voice. “If this man is my real daddy, I want to know and I want to know now. Today’s been a real hard day for me, knowing my mama is in that coffin and all. Other than my