Almost Crimson

by Dasha Kelly

  “All I’m saying,” Rocky had hissed, leveling his auburn eyes on her, “is if you’re so miserable, but still choose to stay here, then you’re as fucking crazy as her.”

  Now, CeCe scanned the store aisle with wide eyes. She wanted to yell out his name. After all these years, she wanted to, finally, yell out his name.

  “Miss, are you alright?” said a man’s voice, so startlingly close that it spun CeCe around to face him with a gasp.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, taking a small step back from his own cart. He was an average-sized guy but well toned, so he materialized to CeCe like a brick wall.

  “You just looked like you might need some help,” he said.

  CeCe nodded and mumbled acknowledgements to his blue warm-ups and brilliant white shirt as her eyes darted up and down the aisle. The core of her continued to radar its signals for Rocky.

  “Is someone following you?” the man asked. “Did you lose somebody?”

  Over his shoulder, at the bank of registers, CeCe saw a pattern of plaid maroon slide into the express checkout. Her heart dashed around in erratic, painful circles. It wasn’t Rocky. CeCe’s heart collapsed, like an extinguished star.

  CeCe gave a quick shake of her head, allowing her to rest her attention on the stranger. He was decent looking, with skin and eyes the color of warm molasses. Language found her again.

  “I’m sorry; I thought I saw an old friend,” she said.

  The syrupy brown man looked behind him, followed her searching gaze, then settled a concerned look on her. He said, “Looked more like you saw a ghost, but as long as you feel OK . . . ”

  The stranger was, actually, quite handsome in the way ordinary features can assemble themselves into an extraordinary portrait. His jaw and forehead were broad. His skin was healthy and clean. His lips were symmetrical and supple and the facial hair well groomed. CeCe could tell his hair was freshly clipped, too. His black waves faded flawlessly into smooth brown flesh. Her father, in one of his instructional letters to her as a young girl, had listed at least a dozen signs for sifting out “trifling” men. A neat and crisp haircut was one of them.

  “My name is Eric,” he said. CeCe reached across their carts, side by side, to shake his extended hand.

  CeCe declined his number, giving him hers instead (another commandment from her father’s letters) and insisted walking to her car without his escort. As soon as she slid the key into the ignition, her phone rang.

  “I’m on my way, Mama.”

  EIGHTEEN

  WHISK

  CECE ENTERED THE APARTMENT UNIT, marching the corridor to their front door. The grocery store bags swung by her sides. She felt emboldened. CeCe recalled earning a sales award once and being called to the front of a conference room at a district meeting. Her inner-city store had never been expected to outperform the affluent suburban locations. It only happened twice during her five years there, but it did happen and she never forgot the way her shoulders pulled upward as she walked to the front of the room and the patter of applause that followed her.

  CeCe moved down the hall and into her apartment with the same strident walk. Cable news anchors murmured at the end of the hall, where CeCe knew she would find her mother propped in the armchair. When her mother began to emerge from her fugue eight years ago, ravenous for headlines and news stories, CeCe thought it was her mother’s effort to reclaim lost years.

  When she moved her mother into this four-unit, CeCe made sure their cable package had every possible news channel. Dr. Harper had advised CeCe against further codependency. The relationship with her mother was more habit than necessity by that point, he’d said. CeCe had insisted the therapist was wrong, citing her mother’s shredded and infected cuticles. Dr. Harper reminded CeCe that the injury had been an isolated episode of anxiety. Pam had co-signed with Dr. Harper, saying it had become hard to tell who was enabling whom. Rocky had called her a tragic coward.

  But things would be different, now. Doris’ house had given CeCe a rare second chance, like Halley’s Comet blazing across her sky. The resentment she’d clutched to her chest for so many years felt unwieldy for the first time. She was ready to seize that streak of fire now. They both were.

  CeCe moved toward the clipped and manicured television voices. Her mother sat in the armchair, her narrow shoulders not even touching the wings of the tall chair. She reminded CeCe of a hand-carved figurine, her brown elfin features dulled from anguish and age. Her mother was still an attractive woman, CeCe thought, though hollowed and distant. CeCe looked at her mother, soaking in the news footage and anchor banter like nourishment. She looked tiny bathed in the world’s news. CeCe’s mother’s life, she knew, was neither of their faults. The plastic bags of groceries hung in silence at CeCe’s side.

  NINETEEN

  WOLVES

  AT ARMSTRONG ELEMENTARY, CECE FIRST realized her life was different from her classmates’, with their show-and-tell turtles, birthday parties, and mothers who took turns volunteering in their school library. In meeting her mother’s family, however, CeCe realized her life was an aberration outside of Armstrong, too. Her aunts’ and uncles’ gentle questions and tentative rubs on her shoulder confirmed for CeCe that little girls weren’t supposed to fetch groceries, soak laundry in the bathtub, or keep count of their mother’s heavy tears.

  Their blank stares and nervous swallowing made her skin feel small and tight across her bones. As her new family’s collective enthusiasm melted into quick and familiar pity, CeCe resorted to the edited telling of her life, the tidied versions she reserved for prying teachers and social workers. Before Ms. Petrie, most had been intent on moving CeCe to a new house with a new mother. CeCe’s mother wasn’t like others’, but she still didn’t want a replacement.

  CeCe shaved their details to soften her new family’s stunned dismay. She played in her courtyard; she didn’t play by herself. She watched Little House on the Prairie; she didn’t overhear her classmates discussing the episodes. Her favorite sandwich was tuna salad; it wasn’t a sole option that she spooned from the huge bowl she made every week. She and her mother read in bed together every night; she didn’t ramble excitedly to the librarians and catch the bus home to a silent house.

  For these people, the McCalls, CeCe and her mother were urban legends come to life. The elders remembered her mother, the quiet and bookish girl, but no one could give an accounting of her after those first few years at MacMurray. Carla seemed to have been swallowed by the sixties.

  “How do you disappear from this nosy family?” asked one of the college-aged great-nieces.

  “We ain’t nosy, girl,” Aunt Rosie said, sucking her teeth in mock disgust. “We concerned.”

  The co-ed laughed as she pulled a stem of grapes from the crisper. “Well, I’m glad y’all got somebody new to be concerned about now.”

  The cousin noticed CeCe standing in the kitchen doorway as she closed the refrigerator door. She was petite like CeCe, like all of the women who trailed into this house, but carried a different set of facial features. The McCalls all favored one another, even if they didn’t resemble one another. The cousin tried to swallow her laughter and Aunt Rosie popped her on the shoulder.

  “Look at ya,” Aunt Rosie said. “How ’bout you try making yo’ cousin feel at home.”

  The cousin moved across the expansive kitchen with open arms to give CeCe a hug. CeCe’s arms were stiff and awkward.

  She had been at Aunt Rosie’s for three days now. She was the only one of the clan who was not small-framed. She was, in fact, a mammoth, like her clapboard house, which seemed to stand as the central hub for their family. CeCe spent the first day in Aunt Rosie’s house holding her breath and restricting her tears. She would release them when she was tucked inside the bathroom, where she would sit on the fuzzy blue toilet seat and rock herself back to silence. Quentin stood outside the door when she emerged the first time, offering his hand for her to hold.

  “You’ll be fine here, Crimson,” h
e said to her when they stood together on Rosie’s enormous porch. “Aunt Rosie was good to your mother when she was a little girl, too. I have to go back and meet with her psychiatrist in the morning. I’ll be back for you next week.”

  He didn’t come back. Aunt Rosie sat next to CeCe on the porch swing one morning and announced that her mother would be staying at the clinic for a while and Quentin was going back to San Diego. CeCe was furious to learn her father had swooped into her life, plucked her from the library steps, ruffled her mother into a catatonic trance upon hearing him speak her name after so many years, and carried her to this brood of strangers. Aunt Rosie said CeCe shouldn’t be so angry, that being human sometimes gets in the way of doing what’s best.

  “Seein’ yo’ mama fall apart the way she did got all dem ghosts and memories jumpin’ on him again,” Aunt Rosie said.

  CeCe was dizzy from deciphering Aunt Rosie’s clipped words and hybrid idioms. Irritated, CeCe wondered how the woman’s speech could be so firmly rooted in Arkansas dirt after more than twenty-five years in Illinois.

  “He didn’t have to leave me again.” CeCe mumbled, leaning back against the swing. She tilted and rocked her end with the tips of her sneakers.

  “He done you right,” Aunt Rosie said, her large feet planted evenly on the porch. “You gon’ be alright, baby. You got you plenty family now. We gon’ take care of you while you mama and daddy take care of theyself.”

  CeCe didn’t want this new family. She wanted the one she almost had with Quentin and her mother. Her mother’s relatives had been generous and kind to her, but CeCe couldn’t help but feel like a zoo exhibit. They popped by Aunt Rosie’s every day to spy the exotic animal. They often came with clothes or food, but always with fascination on their faces.

  The rough count in CeCe’s head totaled two uncles, three aunts, eleven adult cousins, and nineteen first cousins between the ages of eleven—like her—and twenty-five. And there were another twenty-five who either still lived in Arkansas or moved to other cities. They linked their introductions to which uncle was their father or which sister was youngest. CeCe figured there were more people in this family than tenants in her apartment complex.

  CeCe stopped trying to keep track of names. After a month, she also stopped asking when she could go home. Aunt Rosie had started a string of phone conversations to enroll CeCe in school for her upcoming sixth-grade year.

  CeCe’s head throbbed relentlessly.

  Her favorite relative, after Aunt Rosie, was cousin Coretta. Coretta wasn’t as sugary as the other adult relatives who came to meet her. Coretta had two daughters CeCe’s age and took them all roller-skating and bowling, but she did not coo at CeCe or issue spontaneous hugs and sentiment. CeCe found she appreciated her cousin’s appraising eye and plain talk.

  In mid-August, when CeCe had been in Decatur for six weeks, she was at Coretta’s house playing with her cousins, Tremaine and Corinne. Rain had forced the girls into the basement to re-imagine their favorite yard games. The washing machine became a wolf den, and balled up black socks from the laundry hamper became wolf pups the warrior girls were stealing to their village. Crouched next to the dryer, looking around furtively for imaginary wolves, they heard CeCe’s name come tumbling down an air vent from an upstairs room.

  “I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with her,” Coretta was saying, presumably into the phone, since no other voices came down. “Carla is supposed to be released in a few weeks, but if things just go back to the way they were, the girl ain’t in no better shape . . . yeah . . . been playin’ the mama all these years . . . seriously, paying the phone bill, signing school papers . . . the girl’s whole life, apparently . . . real bright, a little awkward, maybe . . . ten, same age as Tremaine . . . I know . . . don’t forget about Carla’s mother, too . . . no, something different . . . maybe some kind of crazy gene . . . ”

  CeCe slid to the laundry room floor and forced the air from her chest. Her cousins flanked her on either side. Corinne, the younger cousin who was eight, burrowed the top of her head into CeCe’s shoulder. Tremaine turned to curl her knees against CeCe and clutch her hand. Coretta found the three of them wailing against the dryer, hysterical that CeCe might spontaneously lose her speech and her appetite and her mind. Coretta led them all upstairs and told them about Carla.

  TWENTY

  FLOODGATES

  CECE SAT AT HER DESK, trading attention between a desktop calendar, a calculator, two printed spreadsheets, and a legal pad covered with figures and scribbles.

  “You don’t have to keep pretending; I know you all don’t do any work when I’m gone,” a man’s voice spoke from her office door.

  “You should be impressed I’m using props,” CeCe replied without looking up.

  CeCe adored her boss. Kester Williams had been an enigma to her when she started four years ago, with his eclectic reading lists, couture socks, and bottles of hot sauce in his office. Following him around that first year, she learned the breathing definition of “dynamic.” Kester could negotiate contracts against blue-chip attorneys, consult with caterers about Moroccan versus Lebanese couscous, wage debates about cap and trade or redistricting or boxing or the best coffeehouses in the city. He was strategic, sophisticated, successful, and incredibly sexy with his rectangular spectacles, gleaming bald head, and skin as dark and rich as chocolate cake. He was also twenty years her senior and concretely devoted to his wife, but CeCe appreciated the view just the same.

  Mostly, Kester had taken a risk in hiring CeCe. She’d been clumsy and unconvincing in her interview, a debacle he enjoyed referencing now and again, as she’d long since advanced from his personal assistant to the management firm’s accounts manager. He’d never been anything but direct and demanding and managed to extract a brand of excellence CeCe hadn’t even realized she possessed.

  “You made a triple play, I see,” Kester said, his crisp cologne and deep baritone filling her small office. He stepped in to slide her cell phone on the desk. “You left this in the conference room. It’s been ringing in there all morning.”

  CeCe hadn’t even realized her phone was missing, but she had been unconsciously grateful for the quiet. She scrolled through the call list while Kester peered down at one of the spreadsheets. Eric, Brian Clark, and Rocky.

  “All morning, Kester?” CeCe said, giving her boss a scolding side eye. “Three calls.”

  “I know. I was the one trapped inside the noise chamber,” Kester said, raising three manicured fingers. “Eric and Brian. Who are they? Rocky, I know.”

  CeCe was accustomed to Kester’s intrusions. He had counseled her through her makeover, selecting life insurance, dumping a cheating almost-boyfriend, transferring her mother’s trust-fund accounts, the circus of being a bridesmaid in her cousin Tremaine’s wedding, and discovering Rocky was back in town.

  “Eric,” CeCe said, counting off with her fingers, just as Kester had done, “is a guy I met at the grocery story yesterday. Brian Clark is an attorney. I’ve sort of pre-inherited a house. I’ve been waiting for you to come in.”

  Kester’s eyebrows shot up above his purple eyeglass frames. CeCe registered at least half a dozen instant questions in his face. She didn’t expect the single question he chose: “Rocky. What’d he want?”

  CeCe took a deep breath. She knew Kester wasn’t a fan. “He’s returning my call,” she said, not looking into Kester’s face. He had not been impressed with the way Rocky handled his homecoming to Prescott. “I wanted his opinion on the same thing I’m about to ask you.”

  Kester pursed his lips, accepting her deflection. “What’s going on?” he asked, folding his arms.

  “I want the house,” CeCe said, her voice shrinking as she finished, “to myself.”

  She looked up to scan Kester’s face for a reaction. His eyebrows were peaked above his frames again, and she wasn’t sure if it was shock or disappointment. In any event, CeCe was awash with shame all over again. Kester turned to close her office door, sealing
them both in as her floodgates broke free.

  TWENTY-ONE

  CANDY

  WHEN CECE LEFT AUNT ROSIE that first summer, she was clutching a promise in her heart. Once home, however, CeCe found the only way to honor her word to Aunt Rosie of being kind to her mother was to be quiet around her mother. She arrived in Prescott three weeks after school started; in the fourth week her mother had been in the apartment on her own. CeCe layered the still of their apartment with her own new brand of quiet.

  CeCe peered at her mother over the edges of her novels and textbooks, searching for signs her mother might laugh, or speak a full paragraph, or stay awake past twilight. She wanted proof her mother was cured. Nothing. Her mother was more mobile now, CeCe noted, bringing in the mail, sweeping the kitchen floor, adding the courtyard bench to her rotation of gazing sites. The one intriguing habit her mother had assumed was going out to the corner store on Sundays to buy a newspaper. Throughout the week, CeCe watched her peel open a new section and slowly consume the pages. CeCe was surprised, but disappointed that the results of her mother’s eight weeks of treatment weren’t closer to astounding.

  CeCe intended to tell Dr. Harper how unimpressed she was with his work. She sat in the waiting area of his office, kicking at his coffee table with the toe of her sneakers. Ms. Petrie, her social worker, sat two chairs away, ignoring CeCe’s irritated foot. She stood to shake Dr. Harper’s hand when he emerged from his office. CeCe walked past him without speaking as he and Ms. Petrie exchanged pleasantries.

  When Dr. Harper took his seat across from CeCe, he gave her a warm smile and opened his mouth to speak.

  “What’s wrong with her brain?” CeCe said before Dr. Harper could vocalize his warm-up to her.