by Natasha Díaz
“It’s always about what you need and what you want, B. You’ve got your boyfriend and your new life and your newfound voice. You think I didn’t need you all these months? I had one shot to get into that program and you couldn’t even support me. I needed you, and you’re so full of yourself you couldn’t see it.”
A flock of pigeons flies overhead, masking the sun as they swoop around like a giant dark cloud, mimicking the mood between Stevie and me. One bird lands on a branch directly above my head, a small, brittle stick that sags under its weight as it puffs out its feathers and takes a giant shit on my forehead.
“Oh my God!” I shriek as the hot goop dribbles into my eye.
I can feel people move around me, closing in to get the best angle for photos. The only way to free myself is to launch my Cobb salad in front of me, narrowly missing Abe and a few other spectators, before running into the building cupping my eye so as not to draw more attention. The nearest bathroom is off the cafeteria, but there’s a line, so I run to the second floor and splash water on my face, nauseous from the smell of bird shit.
No amount of soap can remove the grime, so after three rounds of washing, I crumple to the ground, temporarily blinded by the peppermint soap, and scream into my sweatshirt. I scream because I still can’t cry, and after all these months, the pressure from the tears that have been building inside me is almost unbearable.
The door to the bathroom opens and closes, and someone I can’t see stops at my feet.
“Come with me,” a voice says, and I feel a hand reach out to help me up.
Her heels click down a secret stairway I never knew existed, but I follow close behind because all I want right now is for someone else to make decisions for me, even if that person is Abby Jackson.
Outside, I’m ushered into a black SUV before anyone can witness my escape. The older woman behind the wheel gets us back to Abby’s house in four minutes, displeased to be an accessory to hooky. Abby leads me inside her house and takes me to a bathroom on the first floor, where she hands me a towel and a bathrobe before closing the door.
The room is marble top to bottom, which makes it feel like the doorway is a vortex to a different world. I stand in the shower for so long that the steam starts to dehydrate me and I get dizzy, so I have to step out to let the cold air bring me back to life.
My dad stays at fancy five-star hotels when he travels. He took us with him on a handful of his trips to England and Paris and Tokyo, and I lived in the big fluffy hotel robes the entire time. Those upscale franchises must all use the same manufacturer, because the robe Abby left me has “The St. Regis” embroidered on its lapel and feels exactly how I remember: like a warm, weightless comforter with pockets.
My shirt and pants need to dry after I finish doing my best to rinse the bird crap off them, so I hang them on the shower-curtain rod and put my underwear on under the robe before heading upstairs.
Music streams from under Abby’s door and drowns out my knocks, but eventually she swings it open.
“Finally!” she says, waving a half-empty bottle of prosecco.
She has a whole spread from Dean & Deluca set up: fancy salami, cheeses, olive pastes, and a nice sourdough baguette she’s ripped apart. I take a seat on the ground, awkwardly positioning myself so as not to flash her with my polka-dot boy shorts.
“Look, I know I’m a raging bitch, but that shit today, that was cold-blooded.”
Abby hands me a plastic cup filled to the brim and the bubbles explode under my nose, tickling me with the oddly appealing scent of honey and gasoline. The cool liquid coats my tongue with a forbidden effervescence that tastes sweeter than it smells, but it’s not sugary—more like refreshing and bright and dangerous.
“Happy birthday to me,” I say, holding the empty cup in front of me.
“It’s your birthday?” she asks, embarrassed, as though she should have known.
I nod and she refills my cup and taps it with the top of hers.
“Happy birthday, Nevaeh.” She toasts me with such sincerity that I chug my second cup in disbelief.
Abby turns the music up and starts to dance around her room. Unbothered by how we look, we focus on how good it feels to get lost in a melody, especially once the prosecco starts to take effect. My entire body buzzes, and gradually a lightness spreads through me that makes me feel invincible.
Abby takes my hand and we sing along to pop music from a time when boy bands were required to wear head-to-toe denim. I jump up and down so hard that every fear and worry falls off me, and with the deadweight removed, I’m so light that I begin to float up toward the ceiling.
In gratitude for her kindness, I bring Abby with me. We circle the room, giggling and spinning one another around, until eventually we flutter apart, relishing the last moments of calming unrestraint.
“It must be hard—your parents separating,” she says, opening another bottle. “My mom threatened to split a few times, but she’ll never leave him, can’t give all this up.”
The cork flies out of the bottle and lands on the platter of food between us.
“Woo-hoo!” she yells, and passes the bottle to me after taking a sip.
This bottle is heavier than the last one, and I lift it to find a label that reads Dom Perignon.
“Abby! This is like a two-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne!”
Over the years, my dad has received expensive champagnes as tokens of appreciation from clients. He looks up the cost and then saves them for his next dinner party.
Abby shrugs and pours at least sixty dollars’ worth of booze into my plastic cup. She begins to take selfies in front of a tripod that has a bright ring of lights and a slot to hold her iPhone. She bends her body toward the camera, squeezing her cleavage between her forearms, and pursing her lips, reduced to nothing more than breasts and a blue verified check next to her name. She shifts her head so the light hits her hair at the right angle to fake natural highlights. Abby is the type of girl who has never looked bad in a photo. She may not make it to the toilet to vomit if she’s wasted, but she will still do her full face routine before bed every night, no questions asked.
Abby catches me watching her. She beckons me.
“Come over here.”
She walks to her vanity and spins the chair around. It looks like the ones at the hair salons, with a round metal bottom and black leather seat.
“What look do you want?” she asks, gathering supplies.
“Umm…” The champagne bubbles dance in my brain, making it impossible to hold on to a thought long enough to answer. “Whatever you think,” I say, still unsure how I ended up here and why I’m having so much fun.
Abby begins to work, but not before filling my cup one more time.
“All right!” she says after what feels like an eternity. Abby unclamps the eyelash torture device from my right eye and spins me toward the mirror.
My eyebrows are slightly darker than usual and dramatically arched, my lips are a nude peach, and my cluster of freckles is gone, covered by whatever skin-colored paste made of toxic oxides and whale fat Abby has smeared all over me. She drags me and the chair over to the other side of the room and positions me in front of the tripod.
This isn’t real. It’s all a game of dress-up, I think, and I loosen the top of the bathrobe so one side falls down to reveal my shoulder.
I want to escape. I want to lean into this new persona she has created and disappear. What have I got to lose? The only person waiting for the real me on the other side is Jesus, and that won’t last long. Not when he finds out the truth.
I kick my foot back to spin myself around and the other side of my robe falls down, revealing my small breasts to the fresh air. Drunk and free behind this made-up facade, I pose, mimicking Abby from moments ago.
“Whoa, your nipples are like…brown, brown,” Abby observes with exci
ted curiosity.
Suddenly cold and self-conscious, I stop my chair from spinning and pull the robe up.
“Wait, wait, let me do a ponytail.” Her fingers slither through my hair like snakes in the grass. “Oh…it’s like…normal hair…like mine.” She sounds disappointed.
Between the moving chair and the buzzing in my head, standing up has never been so difficult, but I smack her hand away and pull my body up all the same.
“What’s your problem?” she snaps.
“Just…don’t do that—don’t touch my hair.”
“Okay, Solange.” She rolls her eyes.
“I should go,” I say.
“Oh my God, get over yourself! People like you just search for reasons to be a victim. Newsflash: you’re barely even Black, Nevaeh.” She takes a swig from the champagne bottle. “I can’t believe for one second I thought we could be friends again.”
Anita’s voice rings in my ears: But get ready, because when you find your magic, everyone around you is going to try to snatch it away.
Abby takes a step back, revealing my reflection to me again. For the first time in my life, I miss my freckles. The foundation she covered me with smears off the center of my face with a single swipe, freeing my own unique war paint from its short-lived hiding place. My freckles now hold new meaning in their reemergence, a reminder of who I am and what I will never wish I didn’t have.
Abby stands, waiting for some explanation for my behavior or words of gratitude, but I don’t owe her anything, so I go downstairs, throw on my damp, stained clothes, and walk to the subway.
Chapter 32
He usually waits till after dark,
Which is why I thought it safe to cross the park.
But of course, today would be the one
When the Ogre decided to step out for some sun.
He stopped and sniffed my head hungrily,
Then plopped down right in front of me.
“How do you do?” he asked with a yawn.
“I’ve been asleep for a year. What’s been going on?”
He smiled a goofy and crusted grin
And waited patiently for me to begin.
My grandmother’s warning ran through my head:
“Never trust an Ogre. Run or you’re dead.”
But this one seemed friendly and curious and bored.
I thought: Maybe they are kind creatures at their core.
Why should I believe that none can be good?
What if she was wrong and they’re misunderstood?
So I told him about the weather and Ms. Brenda’s choir.
I showed him a card trick and my new bicycle tires.
He learned quite a bit by the time the sun set,
But by then I was tired, and in need of some rest.
My shirt was wrinkled and sweaty, my pants covered in soot.
The ground shook beneath me as he stood back on his foot.
“Come with me; I have a safe place you can lie.”
“Why, thank you.” I accepted his gracious reply.
The bed was soft and huge and round,
My head barely laid before my sleep was sound.
The next thing I heard was the crunch of my bones.
The horrible, gut-wrenching gargle of moans.
The stench of his teeth, rotten and sour,
Is the last odor I smelled in my final hour.
But at the end, what I saw—I’ll never unsee:
The piles of corpses that came before me.
I stop on the corner for a moment and meditate, willing my body and mind to function long enough to not expose my afternoon of drunken depravity.
My cousins are out on the stoop, enjoying the brisk spring evening.
“Ooooooo, you’re in trouble! Your daddy called and told your mom you missed school. I could hear him even though he wasn’t on speakerphone, and he sounded like the devil,” Jerry divulges in a single breath. “But Auntie yelled back. She told him not to call and shout, just to email her from now on, and she hung up on him while he was still screaming on the other end.”
I drop to the step directly in front of Janae, who greets me by opening my hand and dropping a packet of mints into it.
“Happy birthday, cuz,” Janae says. “You reek,” she says with a grin.
“Must be nice, doing whatever you want without a care in the world,” Jordan says, disgusted.
“Chill, Jordan, it’s her birthday.” Janae calls her out. “Don’t act like you never had a drink before.”
Their twin-sister bond is supernatural. I have witnessed one of them stub her toe and the other grab her own foot. Of everything wrong that I represent, Janae’s fondness for me might be my worst offense: her soft spot has acted as a shield from the full force of Jordan’s disdain. But she’s not holding back anymore.
“All you have to do is show up, and you can’t even do that,” she says, bitter.
“Yeah? Well, I’d gladly trade places with you.”
“What? Regular? Princess Wanna Try Being Average?” Jordan sneers, and turns on her heel to take Jerry inside with her.
“You set yourself up for that one,” Janae says, clapping me on the back, more amused than empathetic. “The dumb part is if you just got over yourselves for a second and listened, you would see you both want the same thing.”
“What’s that?” I ask, skeptical that Jordan and I could ever have anything in common.
“Recognition.”
Anita pops her head out a window.
“Oh, Nevaeh, thank the Lord you decided to grace us with your presence. Let me ask you a question: What is the point of you all carrying around mini-computers in your pockets if you can’t even use them for the basic function of a phone call?”
She holds her hands up before we can respond, then slams the window so hard that a corner panel cracks. Janae and I rocket up the stairs toward the yeasty, egglike scent lingering by the entrance to the house.
“Where’s Stevie?” my mom asks from the living room, where she’s tidying up.
“He couldn’t make it. He got that dance fellowship he’s been competing for a few weeks ago, and his dad is finally taking him out to celebrate.”
My mom buys my story, but I track the look of skepticism from Janae’s face to Jordan’s.
“I am giving you a pass for tonight only, but there will be consequences for skipping school, young lady,” my mom says, doing her best stern voice, which is barely convincing and not even remotely intimidating. She peers at me more closely and lifts her nose to the air like a drug-sniffing dog.
I run to the bathroom in the hallway and scrub the remaining bird poop off my chest, then spray myself with air freshener since there’s no perfume handy.
“You might want to gargle that Listerine a little longer. You smell stronger than Deacon Willis after choir practice on Tuesday nights,” Miss Clarisse says. She’s waiting for me outside the bathroom and follows me back into the room.
“Oh!” I jump, startled by a sharp pinch to my left butt cheek.
“My ScRUMPptious Gurl tights would add at least two inches to that pancake booty,” she announces.
Anita’s top lip quivers in anger at Miss Clarisse and her inappropriate absurdity.
“You, you, and you.” She points to me and the twins. “Go set the table.”
“Yo, Pa must be into some freaky shit. Miss Clarisse is next level,” Janae declares as she pulls containers from the takeout bags.
“Ew, Janae, what’s wrong witchu?” Jordan huffs, grabbing some plates.
“So are you going to explain the real reason Stevie isn’t here?” Jordan asks nonchalantly, as though interest in my life is normal for her.
“And save that tired story you told your mom for
Iyanla,” Janae adds. “We’re not here to save your life, we just want the tea.”
My head is pounding, and the alcohol sloshes around in my belly. All I want to do is lie down and forget this day ever happened, but that isn’t an option.
“Okay, fine, so after the open mic…”
* * *
—
After dinner, my mom brings out a cake she baked. It looks normal, verging on tasty, but when we cut into it, we find a puddinglike texture in the center, surrounded by a dark crust. Jerry and I pass on it, too stuffed to even think about taking a bite. Miss Clarisse and Pa both plead high blood sugar, and Anita and the girls straight up refuse. Only Zeke finishes his slice, and then one more to compensate for the rest of us.
An hour later, Anita lets out a piercing scream, and we all rush to the second-floor bathroom, where we find Zeke collapsed on the tiled floor, conscious but clearly not well.
“We need to go to the hospital. NOW!” Anita says.
“But it’s a birthday party!” my mom whines.
“Think about that the next time you try to make me a widow—or are you gonna take care of all of us, selling those lopsided shirts on the street corner?” Anita fumes.
My mom hesitates, but Zeke cries out in pain.
“I’m sorry, baby,” my mom says to me, forlorn to have disappointed me again.
“It’s okay, Mom, really. This was the perfect birthday. Take care of Uncle Zeke,” I say, grateful that I’ll actually be getting to sleep soon.
The door shuts behind my mom and Anita as they rush Zeke to the ER, and my cousins and I scramble to grab the plates and clear the table, trying to ignore the loud kissing noises coming from the living room, where Miss Clarisse and Pa relocated for some after-dinner delight.
“Go on,” Janae says, releasing me from dish duty once we’ve brought everything into the kitchen.
“And take an Advil with a cup of water before bed. You’ll thank me in the morning,” Jordan calls after me, sounding exactly like her mother.
Chapter 33
When I wake up, my head feels like a shattered mirror, slicing me from the inside with every thought and movement. A full cup of water and an unopened bottle of Advil sit next to my phone on the night table. The phone screen is filled with text messages.
