Free Searching for Tina Turner by Jacqueline E. Luckett Page A

stupid.”
    Lulu ignores the metered patter of Lena’s foot intended to get Lulu to make her point. She pauses, her smile the best indication
     of how much she is enjoying her story and her daughter’s undivided attention.
    “Men need to
see
things to understand them. They don’t like to
hear
about women’s problems. If a woman understands the man, the man will understand the woman.”
    “I think you’re never on my side.”
    “I know you don’t like what I’m saying, Lena. You probably think it’s old-fashioned, but that little piece of advice kept
     my man by my side for one day short of fifty-nine years. Figure out how to handle your husband while you
think
on that.”

Chapter 7
    S hoppers stare at Lena’s tear-smudged eyes; a toddler points a chubby finger; his mother shushes and whisks the child away.
    “Why did you talk to Lulu about you and Randall?” Bobbie asks. The sister Tina loved, Lena recalls, was not around when life
     turned bad. Growing up, Lena went to Bobbie when she wanted to know about life, bribing her first with hot cocoa and extra
     marshmallows before Bobbie would talk to her little sister. Lulu’s advice was most thorough when it came to etiquette and
     politics. She told her daughters how to vote (Democrat) and why (hundreds of Negroes beaten with hoses, arrested, suffered,
     some killed so that every Negro in America could), but not how to handle a man; just that they needed one. Lena knows that
     Bobbie, miles away in New York, is more than willing to tell her what to do.
    The courtesy clerk crams the last grocery bag into the trunk. Lena tips him five dollars and paces, phone crunched between
     shoulder and ear in the same way Lulu held hers. The converted warehouse in front of the parking lot is shaped more like an
     apartment building than a grocery store.
    “At least I include her in what’s going on in my life.” And you never do, Lena wants to say, but then Bobbie would hang up
     like she always threatens to do whenever the conversation comes close to the intimate details of her life. “I’m all discombobulated.
     Why Randall wants a party so soon after coming home—”
    “Because he knows he can.” Bobbie taps a pencil against the receiver, and Lena wonders why both Bobbie and her mother like
     to make noises when they talk on the phone. “How’s Lulu?”
    “She seems a bit discombobulated, too. I think I might go with her to her next doctor’s appointment. But if you must know,
     I was getting… perspective.”
    “You wanted ‘perspective’ from the woman who ate, slept, and dreamt John Henry Harrison?” Bobbie laughs.
    “What do you know?”
    “I don’t have to be heterosexual, or married, to know that you let your husband get to you. You’re too hard on yourself.”
    “It’s what I do.” Lena sighs like her eight-year-old self under fire from her big sister. “And why don’t you call Lulu more
     often? You haven’t been home in a year.”
    “Lulu doesn’t know how to have a regular conversation without implying that religion and a good man can cure all she believes
     is wrong with me. I love her, and I forgive you for being rude, but don’t change the subject. This is about you, not me. You
     love being married. You love Randall. I simply tolerate him because he’s the father of my niece and nephew.” Randall and Bobbie
     argue whenever they are together. The last time Bobbie was home, it was over music: easy-listening jazz versus bebop. “He
     would not be where he is without you. And that’s a fact.” Lena imagines her sister wagging her finger on the other end of
     the phone.
    “What difference does it make?” Lena groans at the sight of Dr. Miller’s stocky frame between cars one aisle over. She ducks
     and rattles her purse. “God, where are my keys? Kendrick’s therapist is headed this way. Dammit, I don’t want him to see me.”
    “Tell him to go fuck himself. Hand him the phone—I’ll say it if you won’t.”
    At the end