Jubilee

by Jennifer Givhan

  What the hell? “Hey, hey.” He lifted her face up to his. “Shhh . . . Jubilee’s fine. She’s in her crib. And our baby is fine too. Want me to call the doctor, see what she thinks?”

  Bee nodded, still crying.

  He helped her up and walked her to the couch. “You sit here and rest. I’ll call right now.”

  “Can you bring me Jubilee?”

  What had she meant, she killed Jubilee? The fetus inside her? Or the doll in the bassinet? Could she tell the difference?

  Joshua went to the bedroom, picked up Jubilee, handed her to Bee.

  “Hey there, little girl. Mama’s here. You’re safe. Mama’s got you.”

  “Bee . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  I’m scared. I’m scared you’re gonna fall apart. I’m scared I’m gonna lose you. I’m scared for Jayden, and I don’t know what to do. I’m not your therapist. I’m your husband. Your brand-new husband. I’m in over my head. “Nothing. I’ll call the doctor. You relax.”

  In the kitchen, he dialed the doctor. From the living room, Bee hummed “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” She sang it every time she was upset.

  Now it upset him.

  Twenty-one

  Letter to Jubilee

  There are windmills and there are dragons.

  (You can be anything you want to be.)

  I’m a fisher queen. Forever floating in your blood-murk sea.

  Forgive me.

  Twenty-two

  A Floody Place

  Between Jubilee

  Lily had been Bianca’s best-friend-forever but she hadn’t invited her to the wedding. She hadn’t told her she was getting married—

  Time was a construction. Time was fluid. In the many-worlds hypothesis, time was no arrow. It was everything happening at once. It was still happening, somewhere.

  In the valley, Bee had tried not to bother Lily with her soap opera shit. Not that Lily would have minded. But even Bee was tired of herself and Gabe. This time though, Bee needed her BFF.

  Lily was there in three minutes flat. She used her key to let herself into the empty house-still-for-sale, her footsteps echoing through the bare hallways.

  “Where are you, Bee?”

  Bianca slumped over on the bathroom floor, half dressed, her boxer’s flat snout-of-a-muzzle resting on her naked thighs. She held a pregnancy stick.

  Time was cyclical. Time was broken.

  Lily appeared in the doorway, her blond hair swept away from her face in a ponytail. She never went out without curling her hair and bangs because she hated her forehead and how greasy her hair looked slicked back. “What’s it say?” Lily nodded toward the pregnancy test.

  “Positive.” What else would it have been?

  “Oh.” She squatted on the rug beside Bianca. Lily knew how conflicted Bianca had felt when she was fifteen. How much she’d wanted a baby to glue together the broken glass inside of her. She also knew how Bianca’s mama and dad had fought. What had happened to her dad. What family meant to Bianca. How she felt when Gabe had one with Katrina.

  They were both quiet a while, Lily staring at the pee stick like it was a poisonous insect. “Do you know how far along?”

  Bee shook her head, hiccoughing a sob and wiping snot from her face with the back of her hand. It could have been any of the times Gabe forgot a condom or used the pull-out method like she was a dirty sock. She hadn’t been keeping track of her period, didn’t even know how late she was. Only that she felt like shit and couldn’t stop vomiting. She shuddered to think she’d been pregnant long though. She’d been drinking like a fish.

  “So what’s the verdict?”

  Kanga perked up, wagging her stump of a tail, waiting for someone to pet her. When no one did, she settled her face back on Bianca’s lap. “I meant to leave him, Lil. I’ve claimed it so many times. But this time I meant it . . .”

  She couldn’t tell Lily about Cattle Call. Couldn’t admit what happened in Gabe’s puke-green truck. What humiliation. What degradation.

  Time was a joke. How even in those awful minutes, cells joined. Cells clung. Signaling a second chance. Forgiveness, maybe. Redemption. But at what cost?

  Lily raised her eyebrows. “But, you changed your mind . . . because you’re pregnant?”

  Kanga snored from her place on Bianca’s lap.

  Bianca lay flat, rubbing the bath mat’s shaggy rungs between her fingers. Her reasoning sounded so wired with faults in Lily’s cynical voice. Where was her feminist mierda now, she wondered, thinking back to Hector and his compadre making fun of her. She felt like a joke. She felt heavy. Even her blood felt heavy. Yet somewhere in that mess, in that swollen, heavy sea, a pink, iridescent jellyfish clung. And if she didn’t touch it, maybe it wouldn’t sting her. If she didn’t move from this bathroom floor. If she didn’t move a goddamn muscle.

  “You don’t have to stay, you know.” Lily said it with such startling frankness, lying on her stomach beside Bianca, stroking her hair. “You have a choice.”

  This time. This time she had a choice. “Remember what Gabe used to be like? Before Katrina. Before Lana. Before he hurt his back and lost his scholarship.”

  “What was so different?”

  “This one summer morning, I remember, the desert air smelled like a sweet mixture of cow manure and hay . . .”

  “You’re gross, Bee. Cut it out with that poetry shit and tell me what happened.” Lily chuckled, realizing what she’d said. “Poetry shit, like, your poem was about cow shit.”

  Bianca wadded up the toilet paper in her hand, threw it at Lily. “Fine, you poetry-hating philistine. Shit or not, Gabe came to my house early to take me to this fruit stand on the Eastside over by his Nana’s house at the edge of town because I said I’d never tasted a mango. He pronounced it like a Spanish word, like mongo. So we went and chose fresh fruit, then went out to the fields where he set this picnic. He said we’d follow each other out of the Valley and take the world by storm. It was cliché, I know, but I believed it.”

  “Yeah, except he couldn’t keep his dirty dick in his pants long enough for that to happen. How long did he last away at college before he knocked Katrina up? A month? I don’t buy it. What? You tell him you’ve got his kid growing inside you all fat and cute, a little Gabey baby, then all of a sudden he’s supposed to morph back into a good guy?”

  “When you say it like that, of course it’s stupid. But I don’t know, Lil. It’s possible.”

  “Yeah, it’s also possible I could drink soap and blow a bubble out of my ass.”

  Bianca rolled her eyes. “You’re so crass.”

  Lily gave a wry grin. “That’s why you love me.”

  Bianca pinched Lily’s thigh.

  Time was a dick.

  Bianca scratched Kanga behind the ears. She’d made up a song to the tune of Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Suzie Q”—Oh Kanga Roo, Oh Kanga Roo, Oh Kanga Roo, baby I love you, Kanga Roo. The puppy followed her everywhere through the empty house, waiting for her outside the shower, licking the water that leaked through the cracks in the linoleum. Would a baby be so different from a puppy?

  Bianca was ridiculous. She had other plans. Bigger plans. She had to leave Gabe.

  “So come on, chica-dee. Tell me. Should you stay or should you go? If you stay there will be trouble. If you go there will be double.”

  Bianca rolled her eyes again.

  “Seriously, Bee. I can help you pack. I’ll drive you up to La La land myself. Back to your mama. I’ll hate to see you go. But I hate to see you hurting even more.”

  “I’ve loved him since I was fourteen, Lil. I can learn to love sports bars.”

  “Ugh. I knew that’s what you’d say.” She made a gagging face. “Hey, I don’t want to be the one to let you down, but I’ve got to tell you. I’ve been holding it in, but I can’t let y
ou go on like this. If Gabe treats you this badly now, he’ll only treat you worse if you stay. Face it, he does not want this baby. You want this baby. He doesn’t. Wake up and smell the dirty diapers, chica. He’s an arrogant jerk. What kind of drunken role model will he be for your kid? He doesn’t freaking deserve you. If you keep the baby I will support you one hundred percent, but if you stay with this son-of-a-bitch asshole, I’m outta here. You always said you wouldn’t turn into one of those women waiting around for a man who’s out with other women. Well, with this jerk you’re one of those women. What happened to that fighter spirit? What happened to La Bee? Where’d she go? Why’d you let him take her out of you? He’s a loser. He didn’t change when he had what’s her name. He won’t change for your baby. Take your little fish of a kid and get out of this Valley. Go home to your mama and Matty, to people who care about you. I’m washing my hands of the whole damn thing if you insist on staying with him.”

  Bianca narrowed her eyes, her pulse fluttering in the veins of her neck, her cheeks hot. “So what? You’re giving up on me? You’re my best friend, but you have no fucking idea what I’ve been through. You make it seem easy, like I could walk away. To what? To being a single mom? To a family who will make me feel guilty the rest of my life for having a child out of wedlock? You know my mom. The Saint. Santa Rosana. I can already hear her saying extra rosaries for me, her sinful daughter.” She sighed, leaned down and squeezed Kanga’s thick neck. Naked on the bathroom floor, scratching a dog with one hand and holding a goddamn pregnancy stick in the other, she felt like a still life. A painting she would have loved, if it didn’t hurt so much. What the Water Did, maybe. Who could she blame but herself though? What the Bee Did. Stung and stung and stung. She sighed again. “Frida always went back to Diego.”

  “Your painter hero?”

  Bianca nodded. “It’s all over her journals, her undying love for him no matter how awful he fucked up. No matter how badly he hurt her. Hell, Lil—he even fucked her sister!”

  Lily snickered, then shook her head. “Look, I won’t trashtalk your saints. But that sounds like no kind of life. Talk about suffering for your art.”

  “She divorced him at one point. But remarried him a year later.”

  Lily scoffed, shook her head again. “Damn. Well, there you go. Looks like there’s no talking sense into you, if you’re determined to follow Saint Frida. But remember, even saints fall.”

  “Don’t let my mom hear you say that.” They were silent a moment, then Bee grasped Lily’s hand. “Just don’t abandon me like my family, promise me. Whatever I decide. Don’t make me choose between him and you.”

  “Jesus, Bee. You’re in bad.” She pulled her hand away and smoothed a piece of yellow hair that had fallen out of her ponytail. Then she reached out with both arms and hugged Bee’s shoulders, squeezed her in a tight mama-bear embrace. “You know I’ll stay and help you. I always do. But I predict this’ll only end with your heart broken again. And that baby? God only knows.”

  Time wound itself like lights around a Christmas tree, choking. Flashing sirens.

  Bee dragged her ass off the floor, got dressed, and followed Lily back to her house, where they dug through the Christmas decorations. “No one can feel like shit when they’re Christmas decorating,” Lily said, cradling an absurdly large plastic reindeer.

  “Watch me,” Bianca said, but she strung tinsel and lights anyway.

  Next, Lily lugged in a plastic storage container of wrapping paper, tissue, boxes, and bows.

  “I don’t even have any presents to wrap this year,” Bianca said. “I’m broke.”

  “We’re gonna wrap empty boxes and put them under the tree so it looks like you do.”

  When they finished wrapping and tying and curling ribbon, Bianca stood back. “It looks like people live here again.”

  “Don’t leave the Christmas lights on all night, Bee.” Lily clicked off the switch. “You could start a fire.”

  Bianca tried to laugh. But it hurt when she laughed.

  Time was a body. Her body was a floody place.

  The holidays disappeared. She spent the day with Esme while Gabe went riding his quad in the desert. He asked her to go, but she felt sick. He didn’t even notice she wasn’t drinking. Instead of meandering through the desert with Gabe and his friends, Bee spent the day in Esme’s kitchen, woozy, cooking spicy pork, steaming the tamales, and preparing the champurrado, a thick chocolate atole they made with toasted masa harina and water, piloncillo (brown cones of unrefined cane sugar), cinnamon, and Mexican chocolate. It smelled delicious, and Bee had loved it since childhood (when she used to eat the dark, hard discs of Mexican chocolate straight out of the box, so bittersweet and granular, even though they were supposed to boil it into a drink, Mama used to scold her). But now, every smell in Esme’s kitchen made her nauseous.

  Esme said, “You look sick, mija. Go lie in Gabe’s bed and take a nap,” and brought her some of the champurrado and pan dulce, mothering her the way she had before. Except there was no blood. No pad. No absence. Just heaviness.

  Whether left on a bathroom floor or thrown away, even time faded like the lines on a pregnancy stick. Sometimes they grew so faint a body could barely make them out.

  Maybe Gabe did not love her. Not enough. But she was Esme’s nuera, her daughter-in-law, even if Esme’s son wouldn’t admit it. Bianca held Esme’s grandbaby inside her. Hector would warm to her. Gabe would love her again. She could make up for what she’d done. What she’d failed to do. All would be right in the Valley because she was pregnant again.

  But she couldn’t tell Mama until Gabe married her.

  And he would. She knew he would.

  Twenty-three

  The Figure

  With Jubilee

  As Joshua and his little family pulled up to the apartment after another Sunday afternoon at the Getty, a figure perching on the steps to their building came into view. She wore baggy jeans and a loose T-shirt, and her hair formed a dark pom-pom atop her head. She was tiny, but her hunched posture made her look even smaller. She held her knees to her chest. She reminded Joshua of a ghost. She was his sister, Olivia.

  “Is that her?” Bee asked, as if she’d been expecting her.

  “Yes.” Joshua cleared his throat. He reached for the inhaler in his pocket. What was she doing here? It had been nothing but Murphy’s law since the wedding. Everything that could fall apart did . . . including himself.

  “Do you think the social worker called her? Because of what Oscar said?”

  His stomach clenched. “God, I hope not. You and the kids stay in the car. Let me go talk to her and find out what’s going on.” He pulled the parking brake.

  The last time Olivia had gotten out of jail and visited Jayden when he was a baby, she’d left him in a motel while she went on a drug run. She was a no-show the first two court cases. Joshua didn’t know she was out. She’s gonna try to take Jayden. Be careful. Don’t let her get the upper hand. She can’t have him. Not for a weekend. Not ever.

  Joshua moved closer to where she slouched on his stairway and noticed she looked sallow, ashen even. The usual cocoa of her skin was more like waxy butter. The bloodshot Red Vines of her eyes were gone, replaced with a strange yellow glow. She reminded him of an alley cat, scraggly and defensive. He thought of Jayden’s spirit animal. The owl hovered above, wary.

  “Hey, Suga.” Olivia’s mouth cranked upward mechanically, as if trying to lift off into a full-blown smile but stuck on the uptake. “You look fancy.” Joshua had worn dark-wash jeans, a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and black boots to the Getty. He and Bianca liked dressing up for family outings. Bianca had worn a long maxi dress to hide her baby bump (though Joshua liked it, she insisted she looked “fat”) and strappy sandals. They’d dressed Jayden to match Joshua, except the kid wore black-and-white Converse lace-up low tops. They were teaching him to ti
e his own shoes.

  His palms felt clammy and his stomach hurt. It was eerie, like he’d reverted to a little-boy version of himself. Olivia had a way of making him feel small and scared. He couldn’t tell if he was upset or relieved. He hadn’t heard from her in so long, part of him wondered if she could’ve died. He managed, “Hi.” She started to stand up, but he motioned for her to stay. “I’ll join you.” He sat beside her, wrapping his arm around her bony shoulder and squeezing her softly. Was she as brittle as she looked? Would she crumble if he squeezed her too tight?

  “I’m back,” Olivia said, like those words didn’t carry the weight of their lives.

  The first time she’d left, they were kids. The first time she’d broken her promise. Maybe she’d resolved to follow their parents’ footsteps. Maybe she’d been waging war inside herself, screaming out not to become them, but scared as hell that no matter what she did, she would end up becoming them anyway. They had an aunt from Tennessee who’d visited Patti’s once, Aunt Arlene. She’d told them how their father had run off with their mother, left his wife and three daughters in the lurch. The ex-wife and daughters still lived back East, Arlene had said. She’d come out to California to find John’s other kids after their father died. A drug-induced seizure. Joshua and Olivia hadn’t known anything about their father, much less that he’d died. Joshua didn’t feel anything when she’d said his name, John. He was only a story. Arlene had said she didn’t know where their mother was. Arlene hadn’t gone to the funeral, if there’d been one.

  Patti had stood in the kitchen, listening from a distance, giving them time with “family,” though Arlene didn’t feel like family to Joshua. He wanted Patti to come in and hug them, but she didn’t. She couldn’t have known what that “family time” would do to Olivia.

  Arlene had said she couldn’t take them home with her. She’d had no idea his kids were growing up orphans, but she was no good with kids. Never had any of her own. She was a traveler. She had friends all over the country, flitted here and there throughout the year, staying with each one a while, not long enough to wear out her welcome. That’s no life for young’ns.