Tracie Adams: WE DON'T TALK • Cleaver Magazine

Flash by Tracie Adams
WE DON’T TALK

We have a pact, an unwritten and unspoken one. We don’t talk. Unless you count that one time every year when I call you and we chat for over an hour while your hair dries naturally because you had just gotten out of the shower when the phone rang. That will be our first topic. We’ll talk about how bad your hair is going to look because you didn’t blow-dry it, and starting over by rewetting it never works. We agree on that much, at least.

We agree on lots of things actually, except for all the real stuff that’s too heavy to lift, too overbearing and glaring, too true. Like when I tried to tell you that I was molested, and you asked me, “How does something like that even happen? I mean, why do you think it happened to you?” Yeah, stuff like that. And the other time I tried to tell you about the panic attacks I was having due to the trauma, and you said, “Trauma? What trauma?”

I don’t have to worry about my hair drying naturally because my phone never rings. You don’t call. So we don’t talk, mostly. There was that one time recently when you replied to a text I had sent you with pics of me and my grandson. Your text: “I like your hair.”

I don’t know what you’re thinking all those months we don’t talk. And you don’t know me, your oldest daughter, who once sang with you at the top of our lungs into wooden spoons as we made dinner together, stopping between verses of “Goodbye Yellowbrick Road” to laugh hysterically.

Our pact is working out just great. I love you the best I can from far away. I mean, it’s at least a thirty-minute drive to my house or yours. And that’s okay. I haven’t needed a mother anyway. I gave up on that silliness when it started to pulsate like a deep wound that wouldn’t heal. I found some substitutes, some understudies, to play the role of mother. These are amazing women in my life who aren’t afraid to commit to being emotionally vulnerable and available. They’ve nurtured and nourished me. They’ve done the mothering. They’ve brought meals of comfort food after I had a baby and prayed for my healing when I had surgery. They’ve held my hand in silence while I grieved and spoke wise words of encouragement when I doubted. They called.

Maybe you don’t like me saying this. Maybe you disagree. Maybe it strikes a nerve. You don’t have to worry. Next year, when I call, I won’t bring it up. We’ll talk about your hair instead.

Tracie Adams is a writer and teacher in rural Virginia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in BULL, Does It Have Pockets, Anodyne Magazine, The Write Launch, Bright Flash Literary Review, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Bodega, Sheepshead Review, and others. Pushcart Prize nominee 2025. Read her work at www.tracieadamswrites.com and follow her on Twitter @1funnyfarmAdams.