Free Searching for Tina Turner by Jacqueline E. Luckett

usual, I’ve got to get ready for Saturday. Randall wants
     friends over for dinner.”
    “That’s nice, baby girl. That should make Randall happy.” Holding her right elbow with her left hand, Lulu opens then shuts
     the sliding glass door to the sparsely furnished family room behind them. After John Henry dropped dead of a heart attack
     on the eve of their fifty-ninth wedding anniversary, Lulu went into a frenzy. She threw away John Henry’s yellowed, fake-leather
     recliner, years of past issues of
Life
and
National Geographic,
unopened liquor bottles, except for the now forty-year-old bottle of twenty-year-old blended scotch whiskey Bobbie gave them
     years ago as an anniversary present, the old TV, the broken hi-fi and the treadmill John Henry used every other day until
     it broke.
    After Lulu forces the metal latches—top, bottom, and two above the handle—closed to the accompaniment of small grunts, Lena
     heads for John Henry’s tool room, the one room Lulu left untouched, and grabs a can of WD-40. At the sliding door, she sprays
     each of the four latches and the metal runner tracks. She works the latches and the door back and forth until they roll without
     effort.
    Lulu pushes at Lena’s arm. “You get on home. Get ready for your party. Fix yourself up. You have a good life, Lena—I know
     I’m repeating, but it’s the truth.”
    “What if that isn’t enough?”
    “Then
make
it enough. Make it enough to last until death do you part. I hope you’re not thinking about doing something foolish. There’s
     no way you could live like you do without Randall.”
    “You… you sound like a page from a black-mama manual: if you got a man, then you got to be happy.” Mother and daughter stand
     opposite one another, two sets of hands perched on their own hips just like they did when Lena was a teenager, eager to get
     from under her mother’s old-timey ways.
    The locks glide open when Lulu opens the glass door, and Lena knows she is being ordered to leave, as Lulu’s superstitions
     demand, the same way she came in.
    “I’ll get somebody—at least to cut the lawn and trim the roses, there are so many.” Lulu sighs with resignation, as if this
     decision is her punishment for growing old without a man, and heads toward a full white rose bush. She nips three blossoms
     with her shears. “This is an Austin tea rose. Your father gave it to me for our fortieth anniversary. It stands for happy
     love.” She dribbles water from the hose onto a paper towel then wraps it around the thorny stems and hands the bouquet to
     Lena. When Lulu starts to water the lawn again, it occurs to Lena that Lulu has been watering the same spot since she arrived.
     She is either methodical or more forgetful than Lena cares to ponder.
    “How are you feeling, Lulu?”
    “Don’t worry about me; I’m fine. Your father would take care of the yard, if he were here. Your father was the man.” Her words
     are practiced like the rosary she recites every Friday morning. “Your Uncle Joe was busy all of the time. He was a big shot,
     like Randall. Worked day and night on his real estate business so his family could have a big house—not as big as yours—and
     a new Cadillac every year. Inez liked to decorate, but she had to ask your uncle for the money.” Lulu’s face is serious, her
     eyelids close.
    “What does this have to do with me?”
    “Well, when Inez wanted new wallpaper in her bathroom, she peeled pieces from around the bathtub, the sink, places she knew
     Joe would notice, and she flushed them, and a few women’s items, down the toilet. When the toilet backed up, Joe told Inez
     to call the plumber and while she was at it, she might as well get somebody to replace the wallpaper as well.” The wind sprays
     dirt onto Lulu’s face. She wipes her eyes with a lacy handkerchief peeking from her pant pocket and aims the water at the
     wilted juniper bushes beyond.
    “I can’t believe Uncle Joe was that