by Natasha Díaz
Anita joins her. And then we all get wrapped up in a fit of laughter at the absurdity of the rancid smell and the undeniable failure of my mom’s dramatic reemergence.
Zeke rises from his seat and removes the giant pot of mush with a quick swipe of his hands, though even after he disappears behind the kitchen door, the awful stench lingers around us like a lost spirit.
Anita holds my mom’s face in her hands, wiping tears from her eyes and laughing, reunited with the sister she lost and the friend she never got to make.
“I knew she’d come around. Must’ve found you a man, what with these late-night appointments,” Miss Clarisse says with a wink before she picks at her teeth with a fingernail and runs her pink tongue across her gums.
“No!” My mom reaches across the table in my direction, as if I am about to slip and plummet to a rocky death. Her eye twitches and she presses her lips together tightly, protecting herself from what she actually wants to say. “It’s…a therapist,” she whispers.
Her words quell the agita that began to rush through my torso. She really is trying to get better.
“Well, therapists are men too, ain’t they? And usually rich. A good man’s all you need. You trust Miss Clarisse now. It’s been twenty-five years since my Reggie passed, and now I got me a fine man and he gon’ take care of me, ain’t you?”
She leans toward Pa with her big red lips pursed and ready to suck the life out of him.
“All right, that’s it, everyone up. We’re going to Sylvia’s,” Anita announces.
Jerry rises from the dead and races to the living room to tie his shoes, praising the Lord in thanks as he goes. The rest of us get up and move toward the front door, but Anita waits, blocking Miss Clarisse’s path.
“Not you.”
Miss Clarisse holds her shoulders back like a show horse, unwilling to yield.
“Anita! Why must you be so contrary? Apologize to Ms. Brown at once!” Pa shouts so loud that his shiny head shakes, along with the finger he has outstretched before him.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Anita says. “I can’t do this. Not tonight.”
We watch from the front door, holding our breath, as Anita’s defiance causes Pa’s arm to fly up above his head, ready to come down and strike her. I feel Janae tense next to me, protective of her mother, but Anita stands firm, ready to accept the consequences of her disregard.
“Daddy!” my mom screams, but Miss Clarisse stops him with a pat on his arm and a flirtatious smile.
“That’s all right, baby. We’ll get some takeout. You know, those spare ribs I like.”
Pa hesitates for a moment before lowering his hand and escorting her to the front door without giving Anita so much as another glance.
* * *
—
By the time we make it back, we are food drunk after stuffing our faces with corn bread and fried catfish and smothered chicken and barbecued ribs and greens and mac and cheese and candied yams. Zeke goes up first, carrying Jerry passed out in his massive arms, before Anita and Janae and Jordan attempt to make it up the stairs three at a time, each one vying to get to the bathroom first to begin their evening beauty routine.
“I was going to tell you about the therapy after a few sessions,” my mom says from the bottom of the stairs. “If you want to go speak to someone, you can. I never really understood how it works, therapy. When I was young, feelings were just another thing you pushed down inside you and ignored, but therapy helps and it’s nothing to be ashamed of, okay?”
She holds eye contact until I look away, uncomfortable with this level of intimacy after such a long period of neglect and indifference.
“Okay” is the only word I can get out because the tears are building inside me, and it hurts to feel right now.
I keep my eyes down, and eventually, she slides her foot up to the next step.
“We can talk more in the morning. I’m going to turn in,” she says, and heads upstairs.
“Nevaeh, is that you?”
My grandfather’s unexpected voice in the dark a few minutes later sends me shrieking bloody murder into the coffee table.
“Pa! You scared me!” I scream-whisper once I’ve collected myself.
My grandfather stares at the messy dining table in front of him, and I go over to kiss his head like I always do. Rather than looking up and smiling at me, he just sits there, still, in the dark.
“Pa, are you okay?”
“When I was young, my mother told me that everything you need to know about a person is in their name. That’s why she named me Nathaniel, ‘the gift of God.’ She died when I was a teenager, so I took a job with the consulate as soon as I was old enough to escape the pain of losing her.
“When I met your grandmother, we were both in line at the library in Kingston. I was visiting for a Baptist conference and wanted to borrow a few books for my speech. She was smart, much smarter than me, and loquacious!” He slaps his knee lightly at the memory of his wife as a young woman. “I had to keep a list of words she used in my head to look up later in the dictionary. When we got inside, I suggested we sit together, but she was meeting friends for a book club and began to walk away. I knew I couldn’t delay any longer, not if I was ever going to see her again. My tongue was dry, but I heard my mother’s voice in my head.
“ ‘What’s your name?’ I said, holding my hand out to her, anxious to hear her response. ‘I’m Nathaniel.’
“ ‘Kaleisha,’ she said.
“Her hand was light in mine, although not much smaller. I felt a thin scab on her palm that I imagined was a paper cut from turning the pages of book after book as she sipped ginger beer on the beach. The first thing I did when I walked away was look up her name. Kaleisha means ‘strong, dynamic, and beautiful’; she was perfect. Two years later, we were married and moved into this house.”
He looks at the empty chair beside him, and I imagine I can hear his heartbeat stutter in his chest, a hopeful delay to give her just a little more time to make it back to him.
“I miss her too, Pa. But it’s good for you to make new friends.” I point upstairs. “They’ll come around.”
He covers my wrists with one of his big, smooth hands, overcome by the memory of his first, true love.
“Go to bed, Pa. I’ll clean up,” I tell him as he rises, weary and up way past his bedtime.
“Your mother, she is returning to us. You just have to let her back in,” he says in his wisest and most all-knowing voice.
Then he walks down the stairs to his bedroom to dream of perfect Kaleisha.
Chapter 27
Up until now, all I have known was a deep love for the holidays. They mean a break from school and the chance to snuggle between my parents on the couch, all of us still in our pajamas for the fourth day in a row, eating leftovers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
No more.
Now that official divorce paperwork has been filed and a judge has been appointed to the case, the only thing holding the process up is my mom. She has yet to secure a lawyer willing to go up against my father, who’s representing himself. In the meantime, the judge has final say over the custody arrangement and split the holidays: Thanksgiving and Hanukkah with my dad, and Christmas and New Year’s Eve with my mom.
Ashleigh went to her parents’ in New Hampshire for Thanksgiving. My dad is buried under a major case that had him and two malnourished interns working overtime in his home office, so I spent the long weekend Netflix and chillin’ with the hoard of beef jerky and sour Jelly Bellies I snuck into the house for sustenance.
Hanukkah, however, was a whole other ball game. We’ve never actually celebrated it. The closest we’ve come is using the menorah Bubby sent to keep the front door open after my mom almost burned the house down trying to make chicken cordon bleu. But Samuel Levitz wasn’t going to let my mom get two holidays while
he got one, which means today, after I finish my biology final with Abby, I have to break my normal schedule and go to White Plains for a Hanukkah celebration.
Normally, I’d be irritated, but I have a surprise planned for the evening.
* * *
—
The American flag in front of the Jacksons’ house flaps around like a tornado warning in the winter sky as I approach.
“Nevaeh! Is that you? I haven’t seen you in ages!”
Mrs. Jackson flings the door open after one knock. She holds a full glass of wine and is dressed like she just got back from giving a speech at a country club to a bunch of Republican housewives on the current trends in Tupperware.
“How are you, honey?” she asks, showing off her newly buffered veneers with an uneven, tipsy smile.
“Hello, Mrs. Jackson. Nice to see you. Is Abby home?”
Mrs. Jackson peeks behind her shoulder dramatically, as if her sixteen-year-old daughter is playing hide-and-seek.
“I don’t think so,” she slurs, and grabs me by the shoulder, as if desperate for company not in the form of a bottle. “You are so exotic-looking! You must have a boyfriend. Does he have any friends for my Abby? Wouldn’t that be great? Going on double dates, you two best friends again, just like old times!”
“Mom!” Abby screams from the top of the staircase, dressed in athleisure wear and patting her damp hair with a towel.
Mrs. Jackson whips around to meet her daughter’s mortified look, but her heel slips on the marble and she topples to the ground. I’m only a few feet away, but Abby gets to her first.
“Help me get her to the couch,” she commands.
We do our best to keep Mrs. Jackson’s body off the ground as we move her. She couldn’t top the scale at more than a hundred pounds but might as well be a metric ton in deadweight.
Once we have her propped up on the couch, Abby instructs me to get water from the kitchen. I return with an armful of bottles with varying flavors and electrolyte percentages—her house is better stocked than my corner bodega.
“Wu happ’ned?” Mrs. Jackson mumbles.
“Mom, just lie back.” Abby speaks softly into her mom’s ear and snatches the basic Poland Spring bottle from me. She wets a towel to clean any nicks on her mom’s head, then hands her the bottle while Mrs. Jackson groans and pets Abby’s shoulder as if she were a Pomeranian. Once she finishes the water and regains enough consciousness to speak clearly, we hoist her to her feet and help her upstairs.
I wait in the hallway while Abby puts her to bed. Twenty minutes later, Abby walks past me to her room, where our next experiment has already been set up. We sit and read the directions. Her breath is heavy and measured; she’s trying to keep herself together.
Each time she exhales, I almost say something.
I almost tell her I know how it feels when your mom falls apart and needs you to pick up the pieces. I almost tell her what Rabbi Sarah told me: that “okay” is usually the best we can hope for, and she’s got more than that. I almost tell her I know her mom wasn’t always like this—I remember Mrs. Jackson when we were little, and she was silly and bubbly—but I don’t say anything.
Even though I have this new emboldened voice, now doesn’t seem the appropriate time to exercise it, so I do what I’ve always done and keep my mouth shut.
Not five minutes into the experiment, the door creaks open and Mrs. Jackson teeters in. Her bathrobe hangs half open, and her lipstick is smeared across her mouth so she looks like the Joker. She lunges, sobbing uncontrollably and barely holding herself up. Abby caresses her. She sweeps her mother’s hair to the side, whispering in her ear, and walks her to the bathroom.
“You should go,” she says to me, turning to lean against the door in case her mom tries to get out and make another scene.
“Are you sure?”
“Nevaeh. I’ll finish the project, all of it, I promise. But…please, don’t tell anyone.”
“What—what type of person would do that?” I ask, offended at the dig to my character.
Her eyes water and her whole body trembles, but the temperature hasn’t dropped; in fact, it’s actually warm in here. I realize as I answer my own question, Abby would do that. She’s the type of person who would sing this news from the rooftops if it meant torturing one of her enemies, and she knows it.
Mrs. Jackson wails and Abby’s head flies back and forth, unsure where her attention should lie.
“Take care of her,” I say, nodding in the direction of the bathroom. Then I pick up my bag and leave.
* * *
—
My father’s house smells incredible. My mouth waters and I drop my bag in the foyer, where I always used to. After the scene at Abby’s, I’m almost glad to be here.
“Hello?” I call.
“Your dad said you wouldn’t be back till later,” Bubby says from the kitchen doorway, peering over her thick tortoiseshell glasses. “Grab an apron.”
So much for being glad to be here.
Bubby is making potato latkes, and there’s a brisket in the oven that I can’t wait to watch Ashleigh scoff at in disgust. Bubby orders me around, complaining about her digestive issues; then she fills me in on the drama from shul. Evidently, a gentleman named Marty asked both her and her best friend, Gertie, out for coffee. Bubby declined, disgusted that he would try to pull any such nonsense, but Gertie (she found out through the Manischewitz vine) lied to her and went on the date anyway.
Listening to her go on about the way she instructed the other ladies in their crew to box Gertie out reminds me of the Gray Lady Gang at church. I wonder if all religions have these built-in mafias of the elderly wreaking havoc or if it’s a coincidence that both houses of worship my families attend are run by terrifying female geriatrics.
“Your grandfather Samuel, alav ha-sholom, would never have been so classless,” she says, throwing her hands in the air.
Whenever Bubby brings up my late grandfather, Daddy’s eyes turn all pointy and narrow and his voice drops low as he swiftly changes the subject, but he’s not here right now, so I jump at my chance.
“How did he die?”
Bubby’s face turns ashen, and her voice is so unusually low and somber that I have to watch her say the words to believe another person hasn’t entered the room.
“He was killed.”
My heart races. Killed? How could I not know this? And what does she mean? Was he murdered? What sort of trauma was my father exposed to as a child that might have hardened him into the monster he seems to have become? The questions bubble up so quickly I can’t decide which to ask first.
“Hello?” my dad calls from the front door, interrupting this monumental discovery.
“In he-eeere!” Bubby sings.
“Mom? What are you doing here?” My father walks into the room, looking disheveled.
“I thought you said Dad told you I would be home later?” I ask Bubby.
“He did. That’s when he told me to come too.” Bubby winks.
“What is that smell?” Ashleigh’s voice incites the same rage in me as an early-Monday-morning garbage truck that backs down the street two hours before I need to be up.
“You must be the girlfriend,” Bubby says, and pulls her fogged-up glasses down to give Ashleigh a proper once-over.
“Ashleigh,” she says, and takes a step back toward my father for protection.
Bubby gives a little tsk.
“Well, honey, I know you said to come over to light the menorah,” she says, looking at my dad, “but we can’t have Hanukkah without latkes. We haven’t celebrated since you were a kid, and it’s Nevaeh’s first proper candle lighting. A special occasion. Historic, really.”
“How did you get in here?” he asks. “I had the locks changed six months ago.”
“I had keys made,” Bubby
explains casually. “Took them out of your pocket two weeks ago. A mother needs to be able to check on her child. You look skinny, Sammy. Come have a latke, they’re your favorite.”
My dad is tempted by the smell. I can tell because his toes keep bouncing in the direction of the food, betraying the rest of his body, which remains next to Ashleigh.
We face one another, my grandmother and I, a highly unlikely united front against the demon who took my dad to the dark side.
Suddenly, the front door slams shut with a crash.
“Why do rich people always leave doors open? It’s freezin’ out there. I know some squatters who would turn that yard into a tent city before nine p.m. if they knew it came with free heat.”
Rabbi Sarah walks into the room—my surprise for the evening. Between Mrs. Jackson’s accident and the truth about my grandfather’s untimely death, I totally forgot about her. After the way things went when she came to dinner at Pa’s, I wanted her to see that there were issues on both sides of the aisle. Plus, there’s nothing my dad hates more than losing control, so I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been looking forward to the deranged twitch in his eye currently on display.
With a flick of her wrist, Bubby orders Ashleigh to set the table, and while she vets Rabbi Sarah with a string of rapid-fire Jewish trivia, my father and I are instructed to set out platters of meat and potato pancakes accompanied by large bowls of applesauce and sour cream.
Ashleigh sits at the table, typing furiously on her phone.
“My nutritionist said that if I break from the plan, my chakra is going to be off,” she complains to my father, who ignores her and places his platter on the table before taking a seat.
Rabbi Sarah and Bubby wander in a few moments later with a bottle of sparkling water.
“Rabbi, would you do the honors?”
Bubby gestures to the bronze menorah she unearthed from whatever hole my father threw it into.
