Yup, Peaches confirmed it in the Friday, August 15 episode of Beyond the Gates. Barbara Mitchell, the OG Articulette, is Dana Leslie Thomas’s mother. She’s tied to Anita’s story forever, and that fact isn’t going to sit well with the Dupree matriarch.
Barbara Didn’t Want Children
Peaches (Arle Michel) had an agenda for telling Leslie (Trisha Mann-Grant), the woman she raised, who her mother was and why Leslie had no idea why she never learned the news before today.
Barbara didn’t want her to know. She didn’t want children, so she basically arranged an off-the-books adoption and gave her child to Peaches to raise. And the one stipulation was that Peaches and Leslie had to move away and never tell her where they went. She could never tell Leslie who she was.
And now that Peaches was dying, she wanted to tell Leslie everything.
There was no way Leslie would have heard her mom’s voice on The Articulettes’ records. She didn’t get that far. And a year after being pushed out of the group, she got pregnant. Unfortunately, a few years after that, she died. And it wasn’t cancer or an accident. It was nothing physical, and it was everything psychological and mental health-related. Barbara ultimately died by suicide.
Even though Barbara looked at her baby with love and tenderness after she gave birth, that was it. Once Peaches started raising the baby, Barbara never asked about her.
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Leslie’s Reaction
While Leslie was surprised by the news, she kept her reaction low-key even for her. She said she felt like crap. But her luck was about to take a turn for the better. Peaches filled her in on the silver lining of it all.
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Leslie stood to inherit a fortune, and she was undoubtedly about to find out that Anita’s (Tamara Tunie) guilt trip would help her establish herself as a force in Fairmont Crest, should she want to lean that way. And from the looks of the video preview at the end of Friday’s episode, she does. Leslie hightails it over to Anita’s place right away.
What did you think of the story? Everything you thought it would be? Let us know in the comments.
