Diamond Life

by Aliya S. King

  Lily shook her head.

  “Are you in trouble, Lily? Is someone hurting you?”

  “No. It’s not that. It’s just someone who . . . likes me. Or thinks they do. Or something.”

  “Approximately five thousand flowers over the course of a few months . . . yeah. Sounds like they might be at least slightly interested.”

  “Thanks for the time off.”

  “Can I give you a suggestion?”

  Lily stopped buttoning her sweater but didn’t speak.

  “Don’t just go home to your cat and cry yourself to sleep,” said Beverley. “Talk to somebody. Try to work this shit out. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know you need help.”

  Lily left. She didn’t give two thoughts to anything Beverley said about talking to someone. She had two episodes of Jeopardy waiting for her at home. And she was in the middle of two online crossword games with some random people she met online. So she was shocked when she heard her own voice telling the taxi driver to take her to Penn Station.

  The screen door still had a long, jagged rip right in the middle. Lily wondered how much it would cost to replace it. Was it still ripped because he couldn’t afford to fix it? Or because he just didn’t care? Lily opened the door and looked for a doorbell. To the right, a buzzer was hanging by a wire. She tried to stuff it back in the fixture and press it, but nothing happened.

  She walked back to the curb and looked up at the house. There was a naked bulb hanging down in a room with no blinds or curtains. She could clearly see a closet door, half open, with several men’s dress shirts hung up neatly inside. As she looked around to see if she could make out anything else, the front door opened. A young woman with a heavy round belly opened the door fully and looked Lily up and down.

  “Is James here?” Lily asked.

  “Yeah.” The woman didn’t move.

  “Can I come inside?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m his . . .” Lily looked up and then back at the woman. “I’m his child.”

  The woman put her hands on her belly and glared at Lily.

  “James don’t have a daughter.”

  “I didn’t say I was his daughter. I said I am his child.”

  The woman stood in the doorway, not moving. Lily pushed past her and started up the stairs.

  “He doesn’t like to be disturbed while he’s eating!” the woman yelled from the bottom of the steps.

  Lily held her breath when she walked past the bedroom that used to belong to her. For five awful seconds, scenes flashed through her head that she worked every single day of her life to suppress. She got to the last bedroom in the hallway and opened the door without knocking.

  The man was sitting on the side of his bed, a plate of food settled on a rickety card table pulled up to him. He was using his fork to mash lumps out of what looked like potatoes. The smell of whatever was on his plate made Lily gag. Lily walked over to the tray and took the fork out of his hands and picked up the plate.

  “What is this shit, Daddy?” Lily said, sliding the paper plate into an empty trashcan and setting the whole thing outside the room.

  “It was my dinner.”

  “Who’s the pregnant chick?”

  Lily’s father pretended he didn’t hear her and walked over to the window.

  “I didn’t hear you drive up.”

  “I took a cab.”

  He turned around and looked at Lily for the first time.

  “You don’t have a car?”

  “I live in Brooklyn.”

  “They don’t have streets in Brooklyn?”

  Lily sat down in a wooden chair near the door. She reached into her bag and pulled out a white plastic bag.

  “Here. Brought you something.”

  Lily’s father held up his hands and Lily threw the bag in his direction. She threw it overhand and it sailed past her father’s head and landed on top of his bureau. Her father stood up and shook his head as he went to pick up the bag.

  “You throw like a girl.”

  Lily dropped her head and laughed quietly.

  “Well.”

  Lily’s father sat back down on the bed and pulled out the oversized pretzels in the bag. He put one on his tray and bit into the other, closing his eyes and moaning with pleasure.

  “Extra butter, no salt . . .” he said, his eyes still closed.

  “The other one’s extra salt no butter,” Lily said.

  The two were quiet for several minutes. The only sound was Lily’s father chomping on his pretzel and occasionally grunting his approval.

  “Be even better if it was still warm,” he said.

  “How are you?” Lily asked.

  Her father worked a piece of the doughy pretzel out of his teeth and glared at her.

  “That’s not why you’re here.”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “You only come here when you need something. I guess you’ll come when I’m dead. But that will only be out of obligation.”

  Lily inspected her shoes.

  “I’m not dead. So what do you want?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Her father picked up the other half of the pretzel, peeled off a piece and bit it, chewing carefully.

  “If I had to guess, I’d think you were having some problems with your . . . situation.”

  “And what if it was that? What would you say?”

  Lily’s father shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

  He shook his head for a few seconds. As if he were reliving some tricky moments in his child’s life that he’d rather forget.

  “When did you know?” Lily asked. “About me.”

  Lily’s father peeled off another piece of pretzel but didn’t eat it.

  “You know why pretzels are shaped like this?” he asked, laying out the bread on a napkin on his bed.

  Lily shook her head.

  “Came from leftover dough at a monastery. The monks baked bread. And they didn’t want to waste the dough left over from a loaf of bread. So they rolled it out and then they folded it over. They decided to cross the ends of the dough over, so that it would look like a person praying with their arms folded across their chest. See that?” He held up the pretzel to show Lily and she nodded. He tossed the pretzel back on the bed and scratched the back of his head.

  “I prayed a lot when your mother was pregnant with you. After James Junior died, I thought having another baby right away made sense. I wouldn’t leave your mother alone. She was still a mess. Walking around blubbering. Crying out for Junior in the middle of the night. Last thing she needed was me trying to mess with her. But I thought it would help settle her. She didn’t even know she was pregnant with you until she was five months along.”

  Lily felt a chill. She knew the room was warm, but she still felt like she was being slowly submerged in ice water.

  “I knew she was gone the minute she started calling you Junie. That was our special name for Junior. You popped out and just like that, she started calling you Junie like James had never died. Like he just regressed back to a newborn baby and she gave birth to him again. I think your mother really, truly thought we had somehow traveled back in time four years.”

  Lily’s father stood up and went to the window. He kept his back to Lily and she could see only the side of his jaw working on the last bit of his pretzel.

  “I came home early from work one day and your mother was sitting in the kitchen, sipping an empty coffee cup. A pot of coffee was burning and the smoke alarm was going off. After I waved the smoke away and it stopped ringing, I heard you. You were in the back bedroom screaming. You hadn’t been changed or fed since I did both that morning before I left for work.”

  He slipped his hands into the back pockets of his pants and let his shoulders slump.

  “I quit my job that day. Had to stay home until you were old enough to go to a sitter.”

  “How’d you know what to do with a newborn baby?” Lily asked.

  “I didn’t.�
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  There was more quiet. Lily began to get restless. She didn’t want to pressure her father to speak. But the quiet was becoming thick and uncomfortable. Now that he was done with both pretzels, he was just standing at the window, still and stiff.

  “Daddy?”

  “I knew right away,” he said. “You were probably eighteen months old. Maybe less. We were at ShopRite and I had you in the cart. Every time I pulled up to a section, you would grab at something and I’d have to take it away. We got to the floral area. I wanted to get something nice for your mother. You grabbed a flower and held it up to your face.” Lily’s father turned around and his face was ashen.

  “You smiled at me,” he said. “With that flower held up to the side of your head. It was like you were imitating something a girl might do. Except you weren’t imitating . . . You just . . .”

  “I just what?”

  “I’ve never thought of you as my son,” he said. “Not since that day. I know women. And no matter how low I kept your hair cut. No matter how many times I took you out to tee-ball or flag football . . . you just. It was like . . .”

  “I know . . .” Lily said.

  “Your mother always said it was her fault. She wasn’t in the right frame of mind when she got pregnant. She didn’t take care of herself while she was pregnant. And she wasn’t there mentally when you were born.”

  “That has nothing to do with—”

  “And then when you were about eleven or twelve, I took you to a pediatrician for a checkup and he said he wanted me to get some bloodwork done for you.”

  Lily felt his father’s demeanor change. What had been a light, conversational tone became halting. Like he wanted to purge but was afraid to.

  “Why?”

  “He just said there were some parts of your body that seemed . . . feminine.”

  “What?”

  “They did this test. Brought me in and told me about Klinefelter syndrome.”

  Lily felt like she had been punched in the gut. She’d read about the chromosome disorder, where men had an extra X chromosome that resulted in infertility and sometimes a softer, rounder physique. But she never thought it applied to her. At thirteen, Lily already had small, round breasts, the same size as the thirteen-year-old-girls in her class. And years later, when she transitioned, she noticed that every man in the plastic surgeon’s portfolio had to get huge breast implants. Lily went up exactly one cup size.

  “How come I don’t remember you telling me this?” Lily asked.

  “Because I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I knew years before then that you were going to turn out to be a woman. What difference did some test make?”

  “Do you hear yourself? What difference would it make? I was down the hall in that dingy-ass bedroom, trying to figure out how to get up the nerve to slice my wrists because I felt like a freak, and you’re sitting on a medical explanation because you already knew?”

  Lily pushed her chair back roughly and it hit the wall and then fell over.

  “I didn’t say I did the right thing,” Lily’s father said. “And looking back, I will admit that I never really considered what you might be going through. You just always seemed so certain of who you were. Even when you still had . . . your parts. It didn’t matter. You were who you were from the very beginning.”

  “It would have been very helpful to hear this from you ten years ago. You could have saved me a lot of pain.”

  “Joseph?”

  Lily looked up, despite herself.

  “Here’s what I do know. You were born a girl. You just happened to have some boy parts. I spent your entire life wishing you’d hurry up and get yourself fixed so you could just be who you were supposed to be in the first place.”

  Lily picked up the chair and set it upright before slumping into it.

  “So you think I’m normal.”

  “Hell no. You’re a freak of nature. But you’re still a girl.”

  Lily scratched her head and absorbed her father’s words. He came back to his bed and sat on the edge, this time on the side facing Lily.

  “Sorry about the whole no-grandkids thing,” Lily muttered.

  “Eh. I’m having a kid in a few weeks. I’m old enough to be his great-grandfather.”

  “That’s kind of gross, Dad.”

  “I know you brought me another pretzel. Let’s have it.”

  Lily dug inside her bag, pulled out the last pretzel, and broke it in half. She handed one praying monk’s arm to her father. Then she shrugged her shoulders and sunk her teeth into her own.

  Ras refused to live at the house in Jamaica without his wife and daughter, so he wandered the country for weeks, staying at hotels and then flying back and forth to New York whenever the feeling struck him, which was often. His hair was beginning to become overgrown, like an untended lawn. And his beard was rivaling Jake’s in thickness and in unkemptness.

  Cleo called him daily. He either ignored the call or answered it and cursed her out until she hung up. He in turn called his wife daily. She just ignored the calls.

  In New York at the beginning of June, Ras took a car service from his hotel to the Midtown studio he’d been working in for several weeks. He was having a hot streak. A few remixes he’d done had some chart success and suddenly his phone was ringing more than usual. Sometimes the artists would come down to the studio in Jamaica. But ever since Josephine left, he was just as likely to come to New York instead. The engineer and a few assistants came into the studio talking nonstop.

  “Bunny in today?” Ras asked the engineer.

  “Supposed to be.”

  “But?”

  “Heard she’s been missing a lot of days in the studio. Having some . . . issues.”

  Ras shook his head. He hated to see someone so young falling prey to the temptations in the music industry. Ras just hoped Zander wasn’t following too close behind her.

  Ras went to the console to cue up some music for he and Bunny to write to. An hour later, Bunny rushed into the studio, flustered and unkempt.

  “I’m sorry, Ras,” she said, peeling out of a light jacket.

  Ras noticed immediately that Bunny kept rubbing her nose. Coke? Already?

  “You alright?” asked Ras.

  “I’m fine,” Bunny snapped.

  “Are you sure . . .”

  “I came here to work,” said Bunny. “Can we make some music?”

  For the next three hours, Ras and Bunny worked on two songs, completing one of them entirely. Every twenty minutes, Bunny disappeared into the bathroom and came back out as high as a kite. Ras said nothing and just focused on the music. As she sat with her back hunched over the table writing, Ras glanced at her face a few times. She was gone. Ras knew the signs well.

  “Okay, I’m done,” said Bunny. “I need to get out of here.”

  “I think we had a good session,” said Ras.

  Bunny nodded and avoided looking directly at Ras.

  “Bunny, can I talk to you for a second?” Ras said, pointing to a chair. Bunny hesitated. And then sat.

  “I don’t want to get into your business . . .” he began.

  “So don’t.”

  “Z is a really good friend of mine,” said Ras. “We’ve worked on a lot of music together over the years.”

  Bunny nodded.

  “And Zander is a good kid. He has his issues. But he’s a good kid for the most part.”

  Bunny’s face was stony.

  “I just want you to think about the influence you’re having on him.”

  “Are you serious?” Bunny asked.

  “Very.”

  Bunny stood up.

  “You? You’re trying to tell me about being a good influence on someone? Your side chick wrote a book about your relationship. You cheat on your wife in front of the whole world and you’re trying to tell me about being a good influence on someone. That is hilarious.”

  “You don’t have to listen to a thing I say,” said
Ras. “Just think about it. That’s all I’m asking you to do.”

  “With all due respect, Ras. Stay in your lane.”

  Bunny left the studio and Ras stayed behind, adding some extra elements to the work they’d done. He wished he hadn’t said anything to Bunny. Who was he to counsel anyone about anything? If Bunny wanted to flame out when her career was at its height, so be it. But it would be a shame if she had to take Zander down with her.

  Ras went back to his hotel to get his luggage and prepare to go back to Kingston. He stuffed clothes into his duffel bag and thought about what hotel he would stay at when he got home. Eventually, he was going to have to sell the house and find a permanent place to stay. But for now, the nomadic life suited him.

  His cell phone began ringing nonstop while he took a quick shower; he ignored it. When he got out and cinched a towel around his waist, he checked the phone. Josephine had called him eight times in a row.

  Reina.

  That was his first thought. There was no way Josephine would call him like this unless there was something wrong with the baby. Actually, he thought, as he stabbed the numbers on the phone, there was no way she would call him at all unless there was something wrong with the baby.

  Josephine picked up on the first ring.

  “Ras, you need to come.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The baby . . .”

  Ras heard Josephine choking back tears, trying to keep herself composed.

  “What’s wrong!” Ras yelled. “Where are you?!”

  “I’m at the hospital. I can’t explain everything right now. You just need to get here.”

  “Josephine,” Ras pleaded. “Tell me Reina is okay.”

  “She will be,” said Josephine. “She needs a blood transfusion and I’m not a match. She has a rare blood type. We’re going to have to get in touch with her biological parents right away.”

  Ras sat down hard on the bed.

  “A transfusion . . .”

  “Do you know how to get in touch with . . . you know . . . them.”

  Ras stared at his reflection in the mirror of the hotel bathroom.

  “I don’t,” said Ras. “But I know who does.”

  Ras hung up the phone and went downstairs to get a taxi to the airport. As soon as he was settled in the back seat he took out his phone. He dialed Alex’s number and waited. He started speaking before she could even say hello.