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Excerpt of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
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Lawrence tightened his grip on the steering wheel until his fingers ached. "They never made a car better than the '44 Buick. I told you it was a smooth ride," he said. "Didn't I tell you? I drove this car all the way to Chicago once to see my cousin."
 
"You told me," Hattie said.
 
A car passed in the opposite direction. Hattie put her hand over Ruthie's eyes to shield her from the headlight glare.
 
"You'll like Baltimore," Lawrence said. "You'll see."
 
He did not know if she would. They were to live in a couple of rooms in a boardinghouse until he could get the money together to rent a house. A place large enough for all Hattie's children would cost twenty-five dollars a week. Lawrence could make that money easily; he could pull six months' rent in a single night with a couple of good hands. It wasn't the money that made him nervous, though he was skinned at the moment.
 
" 'As the sparks fly upward . . . ,' " Hattie said. "It's from the Bible," she added.
 
"Well, that's dismal. Don't you remember anything else?" Hattie shrugged.
 
"Guess not," Lawrence said.
 
He reached over and tapped her playfully on the knee with the back of his hand. She stiffened. "Come on, baby. Come on, let's try and be a little bit happy. This is a happy occasion, isn't it?"
 
"I like that verse. It makes me feel like I'm not alone," Hattie said. She shifted away from him in her seat. "You're going to pick up more shifts on the railroads, right?" she asked.
 
"We talked about this. You know I will."
 
Lawrence felt Hattie's gaze on him, uncertain and frightened. Her shine was going, Lawrence thought. There was something used and gray about her these days. Lawrence did not want Hattie to be a normal woman, just any old downtrodden colored woman. Hadn't he left Maryland to be free of them? And hadn't he married his ex-wife because she was glamorous as a rhinestone? It did not occur to him that he contributed to the fear and apprehension that had worn Hattie down.
 
He missed the Hattie he'd found so irresistible when they met— a little steely, a little inaccessible, angry enough to put a spring in her step and a light in her eye. Just angry enough to keep her going, like Lawrence. And there was another side of her, the one that yearned and longed for something she wouldn't ever have— the two of them had that in common too. Lawrence took Hattie to New York a few months before she got pregnant. The trip had required elaborate lies— Hattie told August and her sister Marion that she'd been hired to cook for a party at a white woman's place way out on the Main Line and that she had to stay overnight. Marion kept the children. Lawrence had not anticipated Hattie's guilt, but it had cast a pall over their trip, and over New York City itself— or so Lawrence thought until the next day when they were driving back to Philadelphia. As they drove out of the Holland Tunnel, Hattie turned for one last glimpse of the city's ramparts glowing in the setting sun. Then she slumped in her seat. "Well, that's gone," she said. Something in the New York streets was familiar to her. More than familiar, she said, she felt she belonged there. Lawrence understood. It seemed to him that every time he made one choice in his life, he said no to another. All of those things he could not do or be were huddled inside of him; they might spring up at any moment, and he would be hobbled with regret. He pulled to the shoulder of the road and held her. She was a beating heart in his hand.
 
Lawrence hardly recognized the distant, distraught woman next to him now. "You act like your whole life was one long January afternoon," Lawrence said. "The trees are always barren and there's not a flower on the vine."

Excerpted from The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Oprah's Book Club 2.0) by Ayana Mathis. Copyright © 2012 by Ayana Mathis. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.