The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

  Gailya would never have put on the clothes without washing them first, but Aimee hands Gailya an advance check for the first week, which is how she winds up at a private elementary school a quarter mile away wearing another woman’s clothes.

  Aimee insists Gailya leave her own car and take the Land Rover, as it has something like twenty airbags and enough road clearance to bring her children home if a flash flood occurs, which occasionally happens. Gailya parks the SUV in front of the school. A bell chimes and chirren bounce down the steps. Gailya realizes she’s doesn’t even know what small, pale faces to look for. She’d only glimpsed at the family photos on the mantel and end tables. Gailya is texting Aimee to ask her to send some pictures of her offspring when the back door of the SUV pops open. A little girl climbs into the back of the vehicle. An older, not by much, girl climbs into the front seat.

  “Let’s roll,” the older girl, yellow haired like her mother, says.

  Gailya stares at the girl for a moment. These white chirren, Gailya thinks, and shifts the Land Rover to drive. If Lea had gotten into a car with a stranger, Gailya would have told her all kinds of things about protecting herself from strangers. But the girl just sits back in the seat, her feet dangling, like it’s an everyday occurrence. This whole situation with Aimee is like that nightmare Gailya used to have in high school: She’s taking a test but her pencil keeps melting in her hand. When she asks for a new pencil, the teacher screeches like a bat.

  * * *

  —

  It had been almost five days since she last saw Derrica. In texts, Derrica said she was busy searching for work herself and spending time jamming with other musicians. But the clipped way their texts went had Gailya thinking their time apart wasn’t just a coincidence. She was on the wrong side of other people’s boredom enough times to know what it might mean. Gailya is trying not to sweat it, and failing.

  “I can’t believe you’ve been dating this chick for weeks and didn’t even tell me,” Coleen says. They’re at the fast-food chicken spot on Canal Street between the souvenir shop and Seth Jansen’s, a restaurant where the customers and waiters dress the same way: in sleek blacks and grays. It was a hassle to find parking, but Gailya had a roll of quarters to feed the meter, and needed someone to talk to and some salty, greasy, crunchy food to calm her mind.

  “Everything ain’t about you,” Gailya says, dunking fried chicken crust into the red beans and rice. The headache in her temples is back again for the fourth day straight.

  “I get it.” Coleen scoops coleslaw into her mouth. “She sounds like a good time and nice and everything. I just figured you’d tell me. She could have been a serial killer and murdered you and you could have been dead on your kitchen floor and I wouldn’t have known anything until you showed up on the internet.”

  “That’s fine anyway,” Gailya says. “She got other things on her mind lately.”

  Coleen grabs Gailya’s hand. Coleen’s hand is sticky from barbeque sauce. “This girl really has gotten her barb in you.” Gailya starts to pull her hand back, but lets Coleen have it.

  “I’m stuck. What can I do? I ain’t trying to be all up in the face of someone who ain’t interested.”

  “Maybe you’re wrong. She could be depressed about you two getting shitcanned by that hotel. She might be lying around in her panties drinking rye all day. Let her tell you what the deal is. Can’t know if you don’t ask.”

  * * *

  —

  Gailya drives down Tchoupitoulas in the direction of Derrica’s apartment. She tells herself that she’s just an old, broke, short, soon-to-be-homeless, college-dropout mammie. She thinks she is not, and cannot be, enough for Derrica. She almost turns away from Derrica’s dead-end street, but notices Derrica’s lights are on. Her first-floor apartment faces the street. Gailya sees movement. Gailya parks two houses down, and looks around to see if anyone is walking around the block. Not seeing anyone, she creeps onto Derrica’s porch, stepping as lightly as she can. Through a gap in the blinds covering the front window she sees the interior of the front room, smoky from weed Gailya can smell through the glass. Derrica is at the head of her table. A woman—short, thick, and dark like Gailya, but much younger and with long black extensions—steps into view. Not even good extensions, but ones that look like old-ass seaweed. The woman caresses Derrica’s shoulders. Just as they are about to kiss, the porch squeaks under Gailya’s shifting feet. She runs back to her hatchback.

  The next couple of weeks spin past like this: Most mornings she’s at the McAdam household by six. She puts on a pot of oatmeal or makes an egg-white omelet with wheat toast if it’s a weekend. She wakes up Aimee and Paul’s chirren. She makes sure they brush their teeth and wash their faces. She gets them dressed. She helps them pack their school bags. She feeds them oatmeal with slices of fruit on the side and OJ or almond milk to wash it down. She makes sure they kiss their parents bye, brings them to school, and drops them off. She goes back to the McAdam house and eats whatever is leftover from breakfast. Spends the morning cleaning up Molly’s and Charlie’s bedrooms. She puts the toys in their cubbyholes. Straightens the girls’ desks and nightstands. She makes their beds, unless one of them wet the bed, which happens to one of them at least once a week. She runs a load of clothes or bedsheets. She eats a leftover shrimp po’boy or a leftover hot sausage sandwich, from the night before, for lunch with a bag of spicy chips and a cold drink. She throws the load of the chirren’s clothes in the dryer. Washes another load. Picks up any other toys or belongings of the girls that are in the common areas. She dries the second load. Folds the clothes. Sometimes Sara with the cleaning service is around to mop the kitchen and bathrooms, vacuum the carpeted areas. She’s nice enough. But her English is less than and Gailya doesn’t know any Spanish at all except to say hola, nice to see you. Gailya wonders who cares about Sara, whether she has a family here, or maybe she’s here a million miles from home. Sometimes Aimee is around but usually she’s off doing Pilates, jogging up St. Charles with the streetcars, or lunching and drinking with her girlfriends at Commander’s Palace. She sells makeup products, but Gailya never sees her selling. Gailya picks up the chirren from school. Feeds them a snack of chopped fruits or a quinoa mix or a half serving of chia pudding. She helps them do their homework. She clocks their free-play time. Sixty minutes each night. Ninety minutes if there’s a playdate with one of the chirren from nearby. Gailya logs Molly and Charlie’s dinner even when they eat with their own parents or at other families’ houses. They’re old enough to bathe themselves, but she ensures they have towels, soap, and powders. She gets them to their beds, so their parents can say good night, if they want. Gailya says good night to the McAdams. By the third week this even includes accepting a kiss from the younger one, Molly. Gailya drives across town toward her house, picks up two or three riders on the app along the way to keep the money rolling. She always passes by Derrica’s, even though it’s a waste of gas. She always stops at the corner of Derrica’s house and stares until another car comes along and honks. Sometimes Derrica’s lights are on. Sometimes they’re off. Gailya then drives to pick up a po’boy, fries, a daiquiri, and dessert from the po’boy shop by her house. She checks the rental side of her house to see if whatever renters were there left the place in one piece. She cleans that side of her house and leaves a key in the flowerpot for the next visitors. She eats half a po’boy, all the fries, and drinks the daiquiri. She also eats a bowl of banana pudding or bread pudding, depending on what the shop had. She usually falls asleep with the pudding and spoon on her stomach and sometimes dreams of people wrapping her house in caution tape.

  But the money is good. She’s stacking more than she did in catering. If she can hang on long enough, she might be able to pay off a big enough hunk of her taxes. It’s a better look than the unpleasant alternatives she’s fantasized about, like showing up in Japan and asking Lea to take her in. Gailya would rather die. It’s not th
at Lea would turn her away. It’s that Lea is just getting started. And Gailya knows almost nothing of Lea’s real problems, the things Lea won’t say to keep Gailya from worrying. Gailya won’t be another burden on that invisible list.

  One morning, as Gailya is leaving home for the McAdams’, she stands on the sidewalk and stretches out her back, which has been tight lately. A white man on the steps of John Jackets’s old house waves and says “Howdy.” Her rude neighbor on the next block is playing his morning trumpet music as usual. This time he’s playing Chocolate Milk. Gailya curses them both under her breath, but waves back at the white man as she drives off.

  Gailya kneels on the hardwood in the foyer of the McAdam house. She’s trying to slip rain boots over Molly’s shoes since it’s pouring outside.

  “I need you to point your toes, baby,” Gailya says, huffing.

  “She’s just making it difficult so you’ll take more time with her,” Charlie says from the doorway.

  “Charlene McAdam, do you have your book bag?” Gailya says. Lightning crashes outside.

  “I always have my bag,” Charlie says. “Do you have your bag?” Gailya screws up her mouth to say something, but Molly pats her cheek.

  “How are you going to keep us from getting wet?” Molly says.

  “You going to get wet, baby. But you won’t drown.”

  After Gailya drops the girls off, she drives to her lawyer’s office. The lawyer is light-skinned with high cheeks, like a laughing cat statue. His office is in back of a house near City Park, on the other side of town from the McAdams’. He keeps opening and closing the manila folder with the papers she got from the hearing at city hall.

  “You should have brought this to me sooner,” he says. “They got you set for reappearance in two days.” Gailya knows she should have come earlier. But every time she went to call him her body froze up. Or she found something else to do with her time, like checking her mattress for spiders.

  “I know that,” Gailya say, “but can you help?”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll work this out. But I’m gonna need that retainer to start.”

  Gailya counts off a bunch of those silly-looking Monopoly-money hundred-dollar bills. That’s a nasty wad of what she spent the last forever saving. But what is all the saving for, if not the house?

  As she leaves the lawyer’s office, her phone chimes. It’s Coleen. They haven’t spoken in weeks. Coleen showed up at Gailya’s house the other day, but Gailya locked herself in the bathroom for an hour to avoid her. She ignores the call. She doesn’t want to feel the embarrassment of explaining that she doesn’t know how to explain anything.

  That night, after she leaves the McAdams’, Gailya goes to a bar in Gentilly with a pole in the middle of the floor. The pole is not for dancers. It holds up the roof. There’s a good crowd out, but not as packed as when she went down to Frenchmen Street last month. She saw a flyer on the wall when she was buying a po’boy. Derrica Smalls and the Flow.

  When Derrica’s set is over, Gailya watches her take compliments from the audience. A woman hands her a beer. That’s when Gailya locks eyes with Derrica. Gailya doesn’t want to be that person, but here she is, and she doesn’t know who else to be. Derrica tells the woman something that seems to make the woman who gave her the beer turn around and walk back to her stool.

  “ ’Sup,” Derrica says.

  “ ’Sup?” Gailya says. Gailya sees the other woman staring at her from across the room. “Let’s talk for a minute, Derrica Smalls.” They go outside where cars and motorcycles are double-parked. A bunch of women are hanging out and joking. A big iron grill cooks hamburger patties and ribs.

  “Well?” Derrica looks around without focusing on Gailya.

  “You stopped answering,” Gailya says, noting Derrica’s mouth, her brisk smell, the way her own body feels a few degrees warmer in her presence. “I didn’t know you was this kind of player. I guess that’s why I came. To be sure.”

  “Hey, it’s not like that. I’ve had it crazy and with this tour coming up, no time at all.”

  “Tour?”

  “I leave for New York in a few days.” Derrica places a hand on Gailya’s hip. “You should stop by my place tomorrow night.” Suddenly, Derrica’s scent is filling Gailya’s brain. Gailya imagines a hot-air balloon rising toward the sky. She shakes her head.

  “I don’t think you hearing me.” Gailya pushes Derrica’s hand away and steps free. “I came to tell you goodbye.”

  “Whoa whoa whoa. Calm down, shorty. It don’t have to be that way.”

  “Fuck you, Derrica,” Gailya says. She flips Derrica the bird as she walks down the block to her car.

  Gailya speeds off too fast. She blows through a light, the needle on the dashboard past the red line. She thinks she can go faster until the car explodes like a hard-boiled egg in a microwave. Lea’s calling. Gailya wants to let it go to voicemail, but never misses her daughter’s calls, if she has a choice. She breaks hard and pulls to the side of the road, huffing. She pounds the dash once and answers.

  “Konichiwa, Mama,” Lea says brightly.

  “Konichiwa, baby.” Gailya laughs. It makes her happy to say hello to her child in somebody else’s way. “You calling late. Everything alright?”

  “School’s out so I’m at the pachinko parlor with my co-workers.”

  “Let me ask you something serious, Lea Maribel.” Gailya only uses Lea’s middle name when she wants her complete attention. “How happy are you right now?”

  “Right this second, Mama? I’m not sure. Are you okay?”

  “I just had a long day, baby. One to ten it for me.”

  “I’m doing what I enjoy. I have good friends. I can recite Jamaica Kincaid in Japanese now. Oh. And I just sent you a pic before I called!” Gailya puts the phone on speaker and opens the picture. Lea is with a group of smiling people. She’s wearing shiny armor and has big metal wings. “I’ll give it a ten, Mama. That’s how I feel right now. Mama, was that a hiccup? Mama, are you crying?”

  “No, baby, I’m just fine.” Inching her car into drive, she wipes her cheek.

  Back on her own porch, Gailya sits drinking a daiquiri. Two more of those “I want to buy your house” letters were waiting for her when she got home. The latest ones promise to pay well over market price to cover any debts the owner might have, and then some.

  It’s almost midnight. She’s off tomorrow and bought a party jug daiquiri, and the jug is almost empty. She doesn’t want to think about the hangover she’ll have in the morning or the sugar diabetes she might catch if she doesn’t cut back. She glances at the houses to her left and right, unsettled by the quiet. She used to do this, sit on her porch in the middle of the night, all the time when she was younger. It felt safer before. She realizes her former neighbors were a big part of why she felt so comfortable doing this back then.

  “Ms. Gailya,” a young man in baggy jeans and a tank top says, walking up the block. Gailya grabs the arm of her chair. She doesn’t know him. He’s not from the neighborhood. The boy pulls an envelope from his slouchy jeans. “Mr. Ivey asked me to give this to you.”

  “Who?”

  “Your lawyer up on Carrollton.”

  “Oh. Why didn’t he mail it?”

  “I’m faster than the mail,” the young man says. “He put in the box, you get it in two days. He give it to me, you got it now.”

  Gailya opens the letter under her porch light. The letter says the city has reassessed her house. She owes even more than they thought before. Gailya inhales and crumples the letter, feeling the sharp paper edges against her skin. It’s like the city is pranking her, putting plastic wrap over the toilet and stuffing her nightstand with rubber snakes. Gailya pulls the cap off her daiquiri jug and wonders if it isn’t time to just give in. All the money she’s spending might be better spent on a small apartment in the suburbs
near the mall. She downs the rest of the daiquiri.

  * * *

  —

  That Thursday afternoon Gailya is in the passenger seat of Aimee McAdam’s SUV, for a trip to Magazine Street for snowballs. Aimee drives and the chirren are in back. Charlie has on her headphones and is watching a video on her phone. Molly plays with a pair of plush toys, a cat and a bug.

  The impact of the other car is enough to spin the SUV backward. Gailya’s vision is blurry for a moment, then corrects. She unhooks her seatbelt and looks back. The girls are still in their places. They’d dropped their distractions, and Charlie’s mouth is wide open like she’s unsure whether to laugh or cry.

  “It’s okay, babies,” Gailya says.

  Aimee rubs her forehead and grunts. She looks at Gailya with frantic eyes. “Shit shit shit! You’ve got to swap with me.”

  “What?”

  “This is my third accident in five years. They’ll put me away. I’m under the influence.”

  “The influence of what?”

  Aimee glances back at her daughters. She spells out the word marijuana fast like a rapper trying to stay ahead of the beat. “Gailya, look. That man in the other car is still out of sorts. Any second he’s going to see me in this driver’s seat and then I’m screwed. I’ll pay you whatever you ask. You want enough for a new car? Done. Bail money for one of your people in jail. I’ll pay it.”

  Gailya knows Aimee is serious. Even with her racist comment, Gailya considers her offer. The money she needs to pay off her increased taxes is just a weekend trip for them. But she isn’t about to go to anyone’s jail. House or no house.

  “Ain’t none of my family in jail.”

  “What?” Aimee says.

  “You heard me,” Gailya says. “I ain’t doing it.”