by Ibi Zoboi
I move a brass telescope in front of the window. We used to always peep at James through it. Daddy bought it for us when we turned eight, after we told him we planned to be the first twins to go to outer space.
When they first started dating, Madeleine liked to look each night to make sure he didn’t have another girl in his room, even though he has the type of parents who don’t allow girls to come over. She would climb across the thick tree boughs that reached from his window to ours.
I watch him now, pivoting the telescope to avoid the tree’s new spring leaves so I can see him clearly. I catch parts of him. He has his shirt off. Daddy calls him “the scrawny boy next door” and thinks he’s a little too soft. Mama just thinks his mother should feed him more. He’s all freckled, even his light-brown chest. Madeleine said she would play a game where she’d try to connect the dots on him with one of her gel pens.
James catches me staring at him from my window and he flinches as if I’ve touched him. He yanks on a T-shirt, then sheepishly waves.
I lift open the window, and he does the same.
“You good?” he shouts, then scratches his head. “I mean . . . like . . . I know you couldn’t possibly . . .” He drops his gaze.
“It’s okay,” I lie. “Can I come over there?” I yell back, and sound more like Madeleine and less like me.
He looks surprised by my question but then he nods. “Sure.”
I do what my sister always did—climb into the arms of the tree and tiptoe across the boughs like it’s a tightrope. I stop on his window ledge. He helps me inside, his hands warm from a shower and their heat pressing through my shirt.
“You smell like cigarettes,” he says. “You smoke now?”
“No.” I glance around his room. It’s so different than Madeleine’s and mine. A large bed is tucked in the corner and video game posters cover the walls. He’s even got two small, glowing aquariums full of colorful fish. His DJ equipment is piled into one corner—turntables and speakers and albums and headphones.
I inhale the scent of his room and try to identify all the components.
“So how’s it been?”
“Fine.”
“You still coming tonight?”
The cotillion rehearsal.
“I guess.” His gaze follows me as I walk around his room. I run my fingers over the items on his desk. I let my leg graze the beanbag chair in the corner. I wonder if this is where Madeleine used to sit when she came over here. Or was she bold enough to get on his bed? Yeah, she probably just plopped right on his blanket.
“My mom said that you were going to be my date.”
I stare up at a clear piggy bank on his shelf, fat with coins. His dad is a banker.
“You know I’m sorry, right?” he says.
“About what? You didn’t do anything.”
“I didn’t say anything. I could’ve . . .”
I turn around to face him, then close the gap between us. Tears slick the surface of his deep-brown eyes.
“She always does what she wants,” I say.
His eyes comb over my face. “You both look so much alike. It’s so weird . . . like . . .”
I lean forward and press my lips into his, pushing whatever he’s about to say back into his mouth. He grabs my shoulders and steps away. His brow furrows with confusion.
“What’re you doing?” he asks.
“Don’t you miss her?” I say, moving closer again.
“Of course . . . but . . .” He puts his arms out to block me.
“Then why not?”
He catches me before I get too close again.
“You don’t want me?” My bottom lip quivers and a hot wave of embarrassment warms my insides. My head gets light and the room spins around me.
“Lena . . . this isn’t right,” he replies. “I know things are hard, but—”
“You don’t know anything.” I shove him and head back to the window. “I’ll see you tonight. I guess.” I start to climb out and look up.
Maddie stares at me from our bedroom window.
We all stand inside Ballroom C in the Hay-Adams Hotel. It’s one of Mama’s favorites in the entire city, where she does most of her own private fund-raising events. If she and Daddy don’t go to the Vineyard house, they come here for long weekends, leaving Maddie and me home with Bea.
“You okay?” James whispers as we stand in a pocket of noisy kids waiting for the cotillion dress rehearsal to begin.
Even if I did answer him, my words would be lost in the boom of voices echoing off the high ceilings. The faces of the other kids are a tornado of brown, most hailing from other DC private schools, some from Maryland and Virginia. We’ve seen each other at these events throughout the year. But now, we’re all sixteen and are dressed up like we’ve escaped a group wedding.
Mama likes to call it our very own secret society: a group of wealthy Black people who have their membership-only club to ensure that everyone finds the right person to marry or the right network for the right job or the right people to be friends with. Women with perfect smiles, pearls, and pretty dresses, gentlemen in fine suits, swathed in the best fashions. They were people who set up the Black middle class and distinguished a high society for us, according to my mama.
And now we’re here to be presented.
I smile at a few of the girls I recognize as their eyes comb over my dress. I feel like I’ve caught a fluffy white cloud, its rippled layers of tulle and satin and crinoline swallowing me in a corseted storm. It all feels stupid to be dressed up to practice. It all feels silly now.
I look for my sister, but she’s not here. Parents and volunteers watch us from the side and flash me pitiful smiles if I catch their eye.
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention? Please locate your partners,” Mrs. Moore, one of the cotillion organizers, directs. “We’re going to practice the entry and go straight into the first waltz.”
My eyelids droop in the dim light. The noises wax and wane in my ears, like someone is turning a radio dial up and down, up and down.
“Places,” she says. “When you hear your name, come to the center of the room and step up onto the platform. Find your mark and stand there until I’ve called everyone.”
The names drone on. There’s a fly in the room. I watch it whiz over the beautiful treats set out for the parents to eat. It seems to dance from one cupcake to the next. It could almost be a bee. If only it were more beautiful.
James jostles my arm. “Let’s go.”
“What?” I say, too loud.
A nearby girl chuckles under her breath.
“They called us.”
“Now, presenting Lena Marie Hathaway, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Hathaway. She is escorted by James R. McKinley, son of Dr. and Mrs. George R. McKinley,” the cotillion announcer says.
James tugs me forward like a doll.
I try to smile, but I can’t. My mouth won’t soften. My lips won’t part.
We stand like mannequins on our marked spot as the other debutantes and their escorts are called one after another: “Tamara McDonald, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel McDonald, escorted by Michael Pinkney III, son of Dr. and Mrs. Michael Pinkney II . . . . Emilia Jenna Mullen, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Douglass Mullen . . .”
I feel Mama’s gaze on me. Out of all the eyes, I know the heat of hers the most. I can hear her say, “Lena, push your shoulders back. Soften your face. Look graceful. This is practice for the big event. It will be the event. Act as if it’s the real thing.”
The dress hem of one of the other debutantes drags when she waves at her mother and breaks her arm link with her date. Her mom stands almost on stage, taking prohibited photos of us all. They look just alike, both their shoulders curled over, and they have moon-pie-shaped faces.
I spot Mama shaking her head at her; she’ll gossip about her on the car ride home.
We’re led off the platform. The stage lights dim, and thousands of tiny lanterns glow from within the fa
ke trees planted all over the room. A waltz begins. James grips the small of my back. The tiara glued into my hair bounces from his jerks. His shoes leave gray footprints on my dress hem.
“I need you to pay attention. You’re messing up the steps,” he whispers. Beads of sweat appear on his forehead.
“It’s just the dress rehearsal,” I snap.
“Still,” he complains.
“Ugh, I can’t. I need a break,” I say, leading him to the side. I glance behind me to make sure Mama wasn’t watching. She has her hand cupped to a woman’s ear, no doubt whispering the latest scandal in our small community.
“What is it?” James says.
“Come with me somewhere.” I squeeze his hand.
He doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no.
I yank him forward.
The second body didn’t really wash up at all. Police boats fished out a Black lady still wearing a church hat. The news said her leg hung from her body like a broken twig. The radio said that her husband barely recognized her. Called her pale. Said she’d lost most of her skin color. I guess you can jump into the water as a Black person and die, and be discovered later having lost some of your pigment. You can become white after death—if you start out light enough. The dusty brown color I got at the Vineyard house would fade fast. I’d be the yellow like the butter Gram always served at the Mississippi house. Like Madeleine.
The construction workers putting the new addition on the Williamsons’ house wouldn’t call me a “red bone” girl anymore. When I asked Mama what the term meant, she said it was some old-timey term left over from slavery. That our bones must be red ’cause we were fair-skinned Black people instead of dark brown.
This church lady became one, too. From the water.
Reporters kept shoving microphones in her husband’s face, asking what happened and balking at the fact that a grown woman couldn’t swim.
The man cried so badly, his tears glittered like constellations of stardust.
Her name was Bernadette Jackson, and she was sixty years old. Her husband said neither of them had learned to swim when they were kids because pools didn’t allow Black folks in North Carolina to enjoy the water.
He said she’d left a note that he wasn’t ready to talk about.
I’d love to have read it.
I ask the bellhop at the hotel to get James and me a cab.
“Where are we going?” he asks.
“You’ll see.” I pull out a pack of cigarettes from my clutch and light one. I take one puff just so it will start disintegrating, and watch it burn. I hate the way they taste but love watching the clouds of smoke dance in front of me.
The cab pulls up, and we get in.
“We shouldn’t be leaving,” he says, because he always follows the rules, like I did.
“We won’t be long, I promise.”
“Where to?” the cab driver asks.
“The Key Bridge.”
“That’s not a destination,” the cab driver replies.
“The boathouse,” I snap.
“Okay,” the man replies.
“This isn’t a good idea.” James frowns.
“Nothing is a good idea anymore. But no one asked me how I felt about it. Maddie sure didn’t. My parents didn’t.”
“Okay.” He sits back and stares out the window, then slides earbuds out of his pocket and puts them in.
My sister gets into the front seat. Like the smoke called her right to me.
The cab driver makes a left out of the parking lot.
“You know you should go back, right?” Madeleine stares at me, but I don’t look at her. She shouldn’t be here. But she doesn’t startle me. She hasn’t left my side since the last week of March.
“Lena, you’re missing the last parts of rehearsal. Mama will be mad,” she says. “You hate making Mama mad.”
“I don’t care.”
The cab driver glances up at me. He raises his eyebrows.
“I’m not missing anything important,” I say. “Why you so worried?”
James takes out his earbuds. “Who are you talking to?”
“Madeleine,” I reply.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“You don’t like it when Mama and Daddy are upset with you,” she says.
“You didn’t have to come,” I say.
“You dragged me along,” he says.
“I didn’t mean you,” I say to him.
I look away from him and at her.
“I did have to come.” Madeleine stares back at me. The beaded cornrow along her hairline grazes her cheek. Her curls frizz a little from the humidity. Pale-blue veins raise in her hands. One appears down the center of her forehead, and I know she’s hot. I feel hot, too, just because she does. Just because we’re always supposed to feel the same things.
The cab pulls up to the little boathouse. I give the man cash, and we get out.
James walks beside me, and I feel him watching me.
Maddie lingers behind us. “You have to go back,” she calls out. Her voice is desperate.
I flinch.
“Why did you bring me here?” James asks. “And why are you being weird?”
I ignore her, and him. She never used to act scared of anything: always breaking curfew, not afraid to show Daddy a bad report card or kiss boys in the basement or say curse words at Mama’s benefit luncheons just to be embarrassing.
I am the scared one.
I watch the water.
“You’re too close,” she warns, and now she’s right beside me, her hand reaching out, trying to pull me back to safety. Her nails and fingers are painted purple, and I think one day the colors will seep into her bloodstream, and her sweat and tears will change colors.
“We shouldn’t be here,” James says. “This is weird.”
“You sound like her, you know,” I say.
“It’s time to go. Too much time near the water. And thinking about the water.” She reaches for me again. The moonlight makes her hand see-through.
I don’t take it. I can’t take it.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asks.
“Are you going to be okay?” I spit back.
“I lost her too.” He looks away as a tear falls.
The third body that washed up this summer was my sister’s.
James and I light cigarettes and throw them in the water. Their slender bodies bob in the cold and angry waves. I watch the water soak into the filters and stamp the light out. It makes me think about Maddie and what it might’ve been like for her.
The sadness drowning her like the water. Her heart stopping. Her mind going silent. Insects nesting inside her. Her blue veins and red bones exposed to the light.
“I wish she was still here,” he mumbles.
“Me too.”
I cut my eyes at her. Each time we light a cigarette and toss it, a part of her disappears.
A leg.
An arm.
One of her ears.
Her neck.
Like a candle flame extinguished in the dark.
“Did you know she was going to do it?” he asks.
“No,” I say, but it feels a little like a lie.
“What do we do?”
“I don’t want to let her go.”
“I don’t think she’s gone.” He tries to smoke one of the cigarettes but breaks out into a fit of coughs. “Whenever I see you, I’ll also, always see her. You carry her with you.”
He doesn’t realize she’s standing right next to us. Well, what’s left of her. I watch as she slowly disappears.
“I feel like I drowned with her,” I admit.
He looks at me. Then touches my arm. “We all did.”
Closing my eyes, I tell my sister I will always love her. Then I take my pack of cigarettes and throw it into the water.
Turning to James, I say, “I’m ready to head back now.”
Kissing Sarah Smart
Justina Ireland
It’s the firs
t day of summer vacation, and I stand on the edge of my grandmother’s front porch wishing that I could disappear into the wooden boards. Or maybe I could just vaporize into mist. Anything would be better than this.
“It isn’t serious, I’m just tired,” my mom says to my grandmother. It’s become her mantra. Tired is better than “mentally ill,” better than “nervous breakdown,” much more comfortable than “severe depression.”
In my family we skirt the truth like a minefield.
“Tired people don’t have themselves committed.” Grandma Rose stands in the doorway with her arms crossed. Her face wears a scowl of disapproval mixed with delight in seeing us. My grandmother looks like an older version of my mom: pale skin, dark hair sliding to steel gray, and a bracket of lines around her mouth from a life spent pursing her lips in disapproval. Mom’s lines are just a little less deep.
Mom deftly dodges Grandma’s point. “It was just a few days in the hospital. Exhaustion. Anyway, Tony and I thought it would be good for me to spend some time back home. Things are so stressful that close to the base. Besides, Devon missed you,” she says.
She hadn’t decided anything. It was my dad who had decided that my mother’s breakdown in May was due to fatigue, and that what she needed was some time back home in Maryland. Mom had spent an afternoon taking too many muscle relaxers for her back. She said that she’d forgotten she’d already taken her medicine and taken another dose. Dad thought she was just being overdramatic, that it wasn’t a big deal.
I didn’t know what I thought. I was just glad I’d found her before anything too bad had happened.
But it was the perfect reason for Dad to get rid of us. After all, he’d said, it would give him time to work out the kinks of his unit’s upcoming deployment. He somehow didn’t think Mom’s health issues could be related to his unit getting sent halfway across the world to fight in some war no one wanted. Again.
But that was my father. Country first, army second, and the rest of us somewhere after that.
