Legendborn

by Tracy Deonn

  “You get mad at me for not taking school seriously enough, and now I’m taking it too seriously?” I scoff. “A couple weeks ago I came home crying, too. Is that what you want?”

  “Of course not. But…This week you’re a zombie. You know what you need?”

  I stand up and sigh. “You gonna say Jesus?”

  “No.” She points at me. “You need homeostasis.”

  “Did you just… biology me?”

  “Sure did.”

  I falter, no comeback in sight. In the end, I give up. “I gotta go,” I mutter. I pick up my tray and leave, ignoring the look of disappointment on Alice’s face.

  * * *

  That night I lie in bed with the window open, twisting my hair and listening to the shouts and conversations on the busy sidewalk below. Old East is close to the north perimeter, so I suppose every week we’ll be able to hear the undergrads leaving the campus grounds and heading to the main drag for the bars and clubs. For a moment, I wonder if I’ll hear the Legendborn. Maybe they’ll go back to the biergarten to celebrate the end of the Trials.

  I make myself imagine the gala, even though it hurts. A grand room, hundreds of people in formal wear. A stage. When I imagine Nick in a tuxedo and bow tie, I curl into a tight ball of want on my bed. I lean into the vision to remind myself of the loss. I see him. Tall, handsome, and—for a short while, a quick moment, a heartbeat—mine.

  On the other side of the room, Alice’s snores are light and even. I know she’s right. I don’t have homeostasis. I don’t have equilibrium, no matter the stimuli. Patricia knew it, saw it, and wanted nothing of it.

  My agony has a hunger, I’ve discovered. It doesn’t want the truth. Not really. It just wants to feed itself sorrow until no other emotion is left.

  * * *

  My father calls before eight on Friday morning. He knows I don’t have an early class on Fridays, but he rarely calls me before noon, especially this close to the weekend when his shop is busiest.

  “Dad?” I say, holding my phone to my ear as I pull on a pair of jeans.

  “Hey, kiddo.” I half expect to hear the heavy clink of a dropped tool on concrete and the high-pitched whirr-whine of a pneumatic wrench, but there’s nothing like that. “You busy?”

  “Nope. My first class is at ten. What’s up?”

  “Come have breakfast with me. My treat.”

  I chuckle. “If only.”

  “Naw, kid. Meet me downstairs and bring your books.”

  I freeze. “You’re here?”

  “Yep. Sittin’ in the lot.”

  “… why are you here?”

  “Oh, just in the area.”

  It’s a four-hour drive, and if he’s here, that means he took off work. No “in the area” about it. I close my eyes and sigh. “Alice.”

  “Is a good friend,” he finishes with a warm laugh. “Better hurry before one of these meter cops gives me a ticket.”

  * * *

  My father has worked with cars his entire life. Starting in the shop before moving up to manager ten years ago. He still gets into a repair every now and then; it shows in the ever-present gray-black line of grime under his short nails and the faint grease fingerprints on the upholstery of his car door. He’s my height and stocky, and if he’s not in the shop polo and khakis, he’s in a tracksuit and a cap. His skin is a deep, earthy brown the color of fallen pine needles. When I open the passenger side door, he smiles, and his entire face rises until his eyes tilt up at his temples.

  “Seat belt.” His eyes flick down to my waist and then to his side mirror as we pull out of the drive. Black and blue striped tracksuit today. White cap with a blue Tar Heel.

  His car smells like home. I expect to feel the twinge of pain in my chest, and I do, but it’s chased by warmth.

  * * *

  The Waffle House is thick with the smell of processed syrup and stale coffee. Mostly empty booths line the wall to our left, and a mottled gray counter runs down the right. The quiet murmurs, the sizzle of the griddle in the kitchen, and the low jukebox music remind me that there’s life outside UNC. The woman behind the counter barely glances up when we enter.

  Dad leads us to the empty booth that looks the least sticky. The red cushion backs hiss and sigh when we slide in, and there’s a constellation of crumbs strewn across the creaky table.

  A waitress strolls over, one hand deep in her black apron and the other clutching a pair of stained menus. “I’m Sheryl. I’ll be takin’ care of you today. Here’s a menu. Can I start y’all off with some drinks?” She tugs a notepad out and waits, watching us from underneath a black visor.

  Dad flips his menu over once, then hands it back to her. “Coffee, please. Black. And I’ll have a waffle with city ham and smothered and covered hashbrowns, large.”

  “How ’bout you, sweetie?”

  I hand mine back too. “A large orange juice. Pecan waffle with regular hashbrowns, smothered, covered, and peppered, please.”

  Dad waits until Sheryl’s on the other side of counter before he sits back and looks me full in the eye. The silence is interminable. The kind that makes everything said afterward a thousand times louder.

  I avoid his eyes and inspect the condiment collection at the edge of the table. It’s the usual suspects: A1, Heinz ketchup and mustard, salt, pepper, and a glass sugar dispenser heavy enough to double as a free weight. I wrinkle my nose at the Tabasco bottle; Texas Pete or nothing. Thank goodness there’s a small bottle of it at the back.

  “You gonna make me pull it out of you?” My father’s voice is low and measured, slower in person than on the phone. It releases that part of me that I’m always holding tight at school, even if what he’s saying makes me shift uncomfortably in my chair.

  “You bribin’ me with hashbrowns so you don’t have to?”

  “Yep.”

  “That ain’t right.”

  “Life ain’t fair.” His tone sharpens. “You gonna make me ask again?”

  I swallow, hard. “No, sir.”

  He sniffs, nodding a thank-you to Sheryl when she drops off our drinks. My lower lip trembles. My chest tightens. I don’t want to lie again. I can’t. But I can’t put him at risk by telling the truth. The hands of the Order—and my mistakes—are still clenched tight around my neck, squeezing when they want to, suffocating me. The tears I’d held back since I’d heard his voice on the phone fill my eyes now, and I look down at my orange juice to hide them.

  “Bree,” he says softly. He reaches a weathered hand out to me across the table. I shake my head, refusing to look at him. “Look at me, kiddo. You can come home if you want. I’ll move you out today, but it better not be because that dean got you scared.”

  I stare at him, gobsmacked, while Sheryl deposits our food. “What?”

  “Alice says you been going hard with school, not acting like yourself. I didn’t send you here so you could run yourself into the ground. I heard the better-than-you in that man’s voice. Just don’t want you doing all this because of him.” By the time he finishes, Dad is smearing butter into his waffle’s squares in angry, hard strokes.

  My father has never gone to college himself. He’d never gotten the chance to, not really. But now I wondered if he wished he had, or if he’d tried—and met his own Dean McKinnon.

  “That’s not it,” I mutter. “I can handle classes, and the last time I heard from the dean was the day he called you.”

  “Well, what’s got you down, then? Was it therapy? Cuz we can find you someone new.” He cuts a bite of waffle and sticks it together with a piece of city ham. Before he puts it in his mouth, he gestures at my plate with his fork. “Eat your food ’fore it gets cold.”

  I pick up the Texas Pete and sprinkle it on my hashbrowns while I think. Then, a question comes. “Did Mom ever talk to you about Grandma?”

  My father’s gray-flecked bushy eyebrows rise, and he sighs heavily, sitting back in the worn booth. “Not much. Your grandmother died when she was young. Eighteen or so, I think? So
she was gone by the time your mom and I met.” He looks out the window, eyes going distant. “I could tell her mother’s death weighed heavy on her, you know? Real heavy.”

  That surprises me. I knew the facts about my grandmother: she did hair in a salon in Texas, where my mother was raised. She didn’t have any siblings herself. She died from cancer. I knew about the woman, but I rarely saw my own mother’s pain from losing her. “She never said anything.”

  He smirks as he reaches for the Texas Pete. “It didn’t come out like that. Came out in how she raised you.” He chuckles, tapping the Texas Pete bottle until it half empties onto his hashbrowns. “I didn’t notice it at first, but she had these nerves that started up when you were, what, ten? Eleven? You’d do a sloppy job cleaning your room or forget to take out the trash—didn’t matter, what it was, she just got on you for it. You remember.”

  “That’s just… parents, though?”

  He shrugs. “Black parents been pushin’ their kids hard for decades. My parents did it. I know your grandmother did it too, but your mom took it to another level. She tried to control it around you, but in private?” He whistled. “Anxious, rattled. Sometimes even straight-up scared. Had nightmares about you getting hurt or kidnapped. A few years ago it started taking longer and longer for her to calm down. One week when you were thirteen, you left the milk out on the counter overnight, remember that? It took three days for her to let it go. That’s when I finally told her, I said, ‘Faye, she’s a kid! She’s gonna mess up!’ She’d say she just wanted to get you ready, make sure you could handle yourself if we weren’t around.”

  My chest tightens. Did she know?

  My father reads my expression. “I think she was scared she’d leave you early, just like her mom left her.” He inhales sharply and draws his shoulders back, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing.

  That she was right.

  My hands wipe at the tears traveling in quiet streams down my cheeks. She knew what this is like.

  He stares out the window, voice heavy with grief and regret. “We weren’t raised with therapy and all that. Not somethin’ Black folks did or talked about. If you said anything, you got sent to the church—” He sighs, shaking his head. “Anyway, when you applied to Carolina, it was like the dam she had inside… just broke. And all of it, every fight, every worry, came out on you.”

  “Because she never wanted me to come here.”

  “Or maybe she just wasn’t ready to let you go and got mad at you for forcing her hand. But that fight wasn’t your fault, Bree. And it wasn’t hers, either. All of that stuff your mom was holding back, hiding… It’s why I wanted to make sure you started seeing somebody soon. So you could get some peace, maybe head all of that suffering off at the pass.”

  While my father takes a sip of his cold coffee and grimaces, then signals for Sheryl, I look at him with new eyes. He’d done all of this thinking and planning and hoping for me, because of the pain he’d witnessed in my mother. Her death had sent him on his own mission to save our family, and I’d never noticed.

  I’d never taken the time to notice.

  After Sheryl refills his cup and moves on, I ask, “Why didn’t she move us away from here? Then I’d never even know about this school.”

  “In some ways, I think your mother couldn’t stand Carolina, but she loved it something fierce, too. Said no matter how she felt about that school, she never could get it out of her system.” He shrugs. “You woulda found out about her graduating from here eventually. Maybe applied anyway, just because she did.”

  I take one of the too-small waxy napkins from the metal dispenser. “I think she was right, anyway,” I whisper, and wipe my nose.

  He looks up from blowing on his coffee, startled. “What now?”

  “About me not being ready,” I explain.

  His eyes sharpen, and he clunks his coffee down. “You got that wrong. All wrong. And I thought you were smart. You’re wrong, cuz she was wrong. It was never about you not being ready, kiddo. It was always about her.”

  I set my jaw stubbornly. “Stop trying to make me feel better.”

  He fixes me with a stern glare. “That’s the truth. She wasn’t ready to let you face the world. But you been ready, kid. She made sure of it.”

  He shifts in his chair to dig into his jacket and pulls out a small, square pocket Bible. I recognize the worn, cracked brown leather and the gilded golden edges immediately. It’s my mother’s. The one she carried with her everywhere.

  “Flip to the back.” He hands it to me and I take it, pushing my untouched plate of food aside to clear a space on the table. “Probably not something she meant for anyone to see, but…” He shrugs. “I love her, and I miss her, and…” His eyes fill with tears, and he squeezes them and lets out a breath. “I think she’ll forgive us for snoopin’.”

  I open the Bible with shaking fingers. It feels like I’m touching something intimate and private, and I am. Personal Bibles, even though I’ve never owned one, always seem mystical. Like the longer someone carries one, the more their spirit lives in the pages. As I flip through the thin, small-print paper, her smell wafts over my nose: verbena and lemon, mixed with a bit of leather. The last section is blank, for notes. On the very last page, in curling script and dated just last year, is a small note.

  Lord, she is already stronger than I ever was.

  I worry her challenges will be just as powerful.

  I worry that I am running out of time.

  Please, protect her and give me the strength to let her go.

  “Got something else for ya too, kid. It’s in the car. Be right back.” My dad puts his napkin aside and shoves out of the booth. I nod and stare down at the Bible in my hands, letting the gift of her words wash over me.

  My mother had carried so much pain from her own loss. Maybe the exact things Patricia said I had inside me: traumatic grief, PCBD grief. Then, after I was born, it became anxiety. Maybe she’d had the feeling like she could explode. Maybe she’d had my fear and fury. And she hid it from me as best she could.

  Just knowing that we have this in common, knowing my feelings are an echo of hers, is a revelation. It makes me sad that she suffered. It makes me wish I could talk to her about it. It makes me want to tell her that I understand. I’ve been chasing the hidden truth for so long, and now I find out that one of her truths already lives inside me. It makes me feel closer to her somehow, and right now, that feels like enough.

  When my dad slides back into the booth, he’s laughing under his breath. “I thought about maybe donating her clothes. You know how many clothes she had. And shoes, my God.”

  I smile. “Tall order. You might have to take a few trips to the donation center.”

  “Yeah,” he says with a sigh. “Bringin’ myself to do it’s another thing. Rich Glover down at the shop lost his wife last year. He says that once you get rid of their clothes, that’s when you know they’re really gone.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, I was in the closet the other day, and I found this. Thought you might like to have it.”

  He hands me a square blue velvet box. I recognize it immediately: this is where she stored her golden charm bracelet. She’d only ever had two charms on it—one with my name and one with my father’s. It wasn’t one of her nicer pieces, but it’s the one she seemed to love the most. Even now, the smell of her in the velvet is strong and alive, like she’d never left. It overwhelms me, bypassing any rational parts of my brain and zinging straight to memory. It pulls at a weekend of shopping with her at the mall, unearths the sensation of her hugs, sinks me down into her lap when I was little, rushes me past every single one of her cool hands on my forehead when I was sick. I move to open it, but he stops me. “Open it when you get back to your room.”

  I eye him. “So I’m going back to my room? You’re not gonna tell me not to study too hard?”

  “You can study hard, but only if that’s how you want to do it.” He gives me a wry smile. “No matter what you do, you gotta live y
our life, kiddo. You gotta be in the world. That’s what she would want you to do.” He reaches across the table to take both of my hands in his. “Don’t make your life about the loss. Make it about the love.”

  42

  BY THE TIME I get back to the room after my morning class, the clenched fist of regret in my chest has loosened. I set my book bag down and pull out my mother’s velvet box, place it on my bed, think of my father’s face and words.

  Make it about the love.

  Could I do that? Really? As soon as I try, I miss her. I miss her voice and her smile. I miss hugging her and feeling whole.

  I look down at the box again and feel ready, pick it up. “Make it about the love,” I murmur.

  I take a deep breath, flip open the lid—and the room fills with mage flame.

  Silver and gold smoke dances up the walls and floods the ceiling with light. Everywhere the flame touches my skin feels like the caress of her hands. My nose fills with the scents of verbena and lemon, bright and sharp and warm. I’m on my knees before I know it, hands shaking.

  Inside the box my mother’s charm bracelet is pulsing like a heartbeat. When the tips of my fingers touch the gold links, a voice echoes in my mind.

  “Bree…”

  I drop it. I’m gasping, choking, sobbing. “Mommy…?”

  As soon as I lift the bracelet and grasp it in my hands, my eyes flutter shut.

  A memory takes me over.

  * * *

  We are on the lawn outside the fairgrounds. I bounce up and down with unrestrained glee, because today is the first time I’ve gone to the fair. Ever. Faint screams of joy rise and fall in the background in time to the roller coaster and Tilt-A-Whirl. I can already smell the deep-fried Snickers bars. The sweet, hot scent of funnel cake is so close, I can almost taste the powdered sugar.

  I remember this. I was seven. The annual state fair was a monumental experience, one my friends spoke of in excited, envy-inducing whispers. But I don’t remember my mother guiding me to a bench outside before we went in. In the memory, she wears a loose white button-up blouse under a lavender cardigan. Her straight hair is pulled back. Our shared strong jawline is lined with tension.