by Natasha Díaz
Whatchu up to? 10:01 P.M.
You good? 11:37 P.M.
Are you ok? I need to talk to you. 12:01 A.M.
It’s two p.m. I slept half the day away. I peek my head out into the hallway and hear Zeke narrating the play-by-play to a vintage Knicks game. I’m relieved to know he is back from the hospital, but I can’t go downstairs and interact with anyone in my state. Back in my room, I chug the water and some Advil and dial Jesus’s number, but he doesn’t answer. Instead, the ellipsis in our text chain blinks and he sends a new text.
Meet me at the rings in 45
* * *
—
The unopened restaurant that sits at the top of the stairs in Riverside Park overlooks a jungle gym next to the highway and the water. Jesus swings himself furiously from one ring to the next, gaining momentum as he moves down the metal bar. I watch from the stairs so as not to disturb his focus. He makes it to the end and flips his body around, then drops and lands firmly on the sand beneath him when he sees me.
“You couldn’t call all night?”
He walks over to me, sneakers pounding the ground.
“I had a crazy day and passed out,” I tell him.
I go to hug him, but he pulls away.
“You weren’t answering. I got worried,” he says, hurt.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m here now.”
Beyoncé rings out of my butt pocket—my ringtone, “Run the World.” But I ignore it.
“How was your birthday, baby? What happened, with lil’ man? Did he show?” he whispers, less annoyed, and kisses me.
My phone rings again.
“Sorry,” I say, distracted by the smell of him. I pull my phone out to turn it off.
The word “DAD” fills the screen and I try to shield it from him, but it’s too late. Jesus’s eyes lock on the display. My body is lead. Immobile due to the weight of my dishonesty.
“I…I can explain,” I say.
“What the fuck? How can he be calling you?” He jumps back, sickened. “How could you lie to me about something like that?” he asks with teary eyes.
Still barely able to move, I try to defend myself. “You don’t know what I’ve been dealing with.”
“Don’t bother! How can I ever believe anything you tell me now?” he asks, and storms off, leaving me utterly alone.
* * *
—
The last thing I want to deal with is Ashleigh, but she’s in the dining room waiting when I walk through the door to my dad’s house. The table before her is covered with photos of flowers and tiny plates of sample cakes and cloth napkins in every color imaginable.
“I need you to pick a cake.”
She takes me by the shoulders and slides the samples in front of me one by one. The pound cake with lemon glaze is my favorite: not too sweet, tastes mostly like butter. I point and rise from my chair to escape, but she stops me.
“Uh, uh, uh.” Her finger sweeps in front of my face like a windshield wiper. “Sit down. We aren’t finished yet. Sammy!”
My father shuffles into the room looking like he’s aged fifteen years in the past few weeks. The daunting bags under his eyes sink deep into his saggy skin, and his hair has begun to thin, revealing his stark white scalp.
“You haven’t given me your guest list. I need to get the order out for the adult invitations,” Ashleigh says, holding up a large beige card made of thick, expensive-looking paper, which opens to an intricate three-dimensional Star of David.
I snort. It looks like a trick by a bad Vegas magician.
Ashleigh closes her eyes and waves her hand around in front of her face. “Excuse me! Multiple members of the Housewives franchise used this exact brand for their wedding, including the Countess. Ugh, I don’t know why I spend the energy trying to include you, as if you could find one ounce of gratitude, you spoiled—” she rants, then stops and closes her eyes. My father and I watch, perplexed, as she centers herself with some colonizer chakra purification mantra she probably picked up on Goop.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, eyes open, looking eerily refreshed. “Your invitations have already been sent out. The kids at Pritchard are all going to hire me after this party. It’ll only be a matter of time before Bravo comes calling.”
“What do you mean the invites were sent out?” I ask, alarmed. I wasn’t planning on inviting anyone other than Stevie, and it’s not like he’s going to show up now.
“How many people did you invite exactly?” My father follows up my concerns, his voice returned to full strength. “Nevaeh has over a hundred fifty kids in her grade.”
“I’ve worked so hard,” she whines. “I won’t tolerate this type of disrespect.” She runs out of the room.
My father collapses into a chair. What he traded in was old and worn, but reliable; his replacement, newer and shinier but more stubborn and entitled.
“You skip school, you lie, you date some…menace….I don’t even know who you are anymore,” he says, unwilling to consider that he might be to blame. “You don’t know how much it hurts to see that you haven’t learned anything.”
This could be the rest of our lives: acrimony and disappointment; avoiding eye contact and memories that remind us we will never be the same. Or we could end it peacefully.
“I’ve learned something, Daddy. Rabbi Sarah gave me this book of stories—or more like fables. My favorite is Parashat Korach. God told Moses to separate the Jewish people into groups, like class systems. One guy, Korach, was convinced he was meant to be a kohen gadol, a title bestowed upon members of the community with the highest honor and influence. But he had no proof that he deserved that title; he just felt like he was better than everyone else. He rallied two hundred and fifty people to support his protests against what he claimed was Moses’s divisiveness. Moses advised Korach and his brainwashed followers to build a fire and make an offering to God in apology, but they refused and revolted. Helpless, Moses reached out to God and asked what to do. God told him to go back and warn anyone who had forsaken his word in the name of Korach that they would be punished severely.”
I pause to take the last bite of the pound cake in front of me.
“That’s the end of the story?” my father asks.
“Of course not. Moses went back and relayed the message. He reiterated how dangerous it would be to argue with God, and some of Korach’s followers repented, but a few moments later, the ground opened up and swallowed everyone who had remained faithful to Korach, never to be seen again.”
My father stands up with a wild look in his eyes.
“Why should he be held back from his potential? If he thought he deserved more, he had every right to do what he thought was best for himself, even if he had to hurt people along the way!” He shouts so loud I can’t tell if he’s trying to convince me or himself.
“That’s exactly what Korach thought,” I say. “But after all this time, I wonder what he would say now if you pulled him out of the ground.”
My father’s gaze drifts to his feet to ensure their solid placement on the floor.
I walk away, and with each step I take, I feel a freedom from the burden of his betrayal.
Upstairs, I grab my backpack and open my mother’s journal, determined to finish it, so the past can be wiped clean.
December 9, 2001
You know how people say always trust your gut? Well, mine has been throbbing. Twisting and turning, begging me to listen to my instinct that something wasn’t right. Turns out it was correct.
After months of grueling interrogation, Samuel finally admitted that he lied. He had been with Becky that night I passed out in his room, and he had slept with her.
“I’m sorry,” he cried, but I couldn’t forgive him. I was too disgusted to even look at him.
He was unrelenting. First he begged me for a second cha
nce; then he got angry and said it was just a slip-up, a one-time thing. He wrote me letters and made love song playlists and sent flowers and chocolates for a while, but eventually he stopped and I moved on with my life.
I decided to take an extra class, sign language, and my teacher, Ms. Binder, chose me to teach first-grade ASL classes with her at a local rec center for a small stipend twice a week. We’ve only worked on the basics, but each week the kids move through the letters of the alphabet with pride. Now that I don’t have Samuel, nothing makes me happier than when they scoot closer to suck up new information like adorable parasites. I like it so much that I decided a few weeks in to get a head start on applications for master’s programs in teaching. (I can’t apply until next year when I’m a senior, but no harm in being prepared!)
I made more friends! Well, Jolie introduced me to her friends, a group of girls who work hard and play harder. They’re nice—all white girls who I have to roll my eyes at at least once a meal, but nice. Before winter break, they crashed into my room and claimed that “enough was enough,” that I had to go to at least one party in my college career. Normally, I’d have put up a fight, but I figured they were right, so I let them stuff me into a tiny black dress and take me out.
The party was in a house that reeked of damp laundry. Jolie and the girls made the rounds, delegating a shifting guard to ensure I didn’t bolt when no one was looking.
“Here, take this.” Jolie hands me a shot glass and a lime.
“I don’t think I can—” I said, nauseated from the way the liquid sloshed around the glass.
“Oh my God, Corinne, you cannot be like this all night. You need to loosen up. Plus, it’s like a third of the calories when there’s no mixer.”
“Fine!”
It tasted like death, but the burn went away pretty fast, so I took two more right away to get the drinking part over with.
The girls didn’t have an ounce of rhythm between them, but once I got going on the dance floor, the whole party swarmed over. I started dancing with this guy who was nice and a really good dancer. Our hips moved together perfectly, as if choreographed. We improvised to the beat in sync.
The music slowed and he spun me to face him. He hoisted me up just enough that our mouths could reach each other. I was shocked at how good I still was at kissing. There hadn’t been anyone since Samuel, and I’d figured I might never enjoy making out again, but this was fun. My girls cheered behind me and he pulled me closer, like he couldn’t bear to have even one inch between us, and I let him.
Then I felt his erection on my leg, and the same fear from so many years ago in that auditorium came back. I tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let go. All of a sudden, his slimy tongue lapping at the inside of my cheek made me want to throw up, and I began to wave my arms around to try to get away.
“Hey! Leave her alone!” Samuel came out of nowhere and wrenched the guy off me and I ran away.
“Corinne! Are you okay?”
Samuel caught up to me around the back of the house, where I stood, shivering.
“No!” I cried and collapsed into his arms. I never wanted to tell anyone, especially him, but the words fell out about Raymond and how sometimes, like tonight, the disgrace comes back and fills me with contempt until I feel bloated, like Violet Beauregard after the three-course gum.
Samuel listened to me, and when I was done, he rocked me back and forth and kissed my forehead.
“Corinne?” Jolie ran over and stopped short when she saw Samuel. She’s never forgiven him for cheating on me, and I can smell her disappointment that I’ve let him back in.
“Hey…I’m actually not feeling great. I think I’m going to head home.”
My eyes begged her not to make a scene, and eventually, she walked back inside to find her friends.
“Can I walk you home?” Samuel asked.
“You hurt me.”
“I know I did, but I won’t ever do that again.”
He ran his fingers through the messy waves of his thick brown hair, which was a little too long and in dire need of a shape-up. I missed his smell. I missed his hair. I missed him. I needed him.
“Just to the door,” I said, and never looked back.
The pages of my mother’s journal flutter like sad confetti as I rip them out one by one until her pain covers the floor of this space I used to call mine. Over time, I’ve brought all my beloved possessions over to Pa’s, and now my bedroom is just four walls with a skylight.
I descend the stairs to find my father, who has been temporarily relocated to the living room. Ashleigh is renovating his office—claims it looks like a place where her dad would hang out. He takes vigorous notes with his cell phone balanced on his shoulder, reaching for the various papers spread out all over the love seat.
“Mitch—Mitch, hold on one sec— Nevaeh, yoo-hoo!” he calls as I pass.
The rubber on the bottom of my dirty Converse squeaks against the freshly waxed floor.
“Yes, Daddy?”
“Where exactly do you think you are going?”
He gestures to the space between us with heightened irritation, but I make him wait, relishing how good it’s going to feel to say the word, because it’s true.
* * *
—
“Home.”
Chapter 34
Jesus’s phone rings, but he still doesn’t pick up. I activate the Find My Person app, which we linked to each other’s clouds, and wait in line for a Yellow Cab from the Metro North stop on 125th. A group of young Black women wave to a taxi as it drives past them and pulls up next to me. The driver rolls down the passenger window.
“Hello? We were waiting!” one of them yells from behind me, knocking on the trunk of the car.
“You get in. They always run without paying,” the driver says to me.
All I want is to get to Jesus, but I won’t let myself.
“Nah, I’m good,” I say.
He speeds off, and the women whoop and cheer as he leaves empty-handed. Another Yellow Cab pulls up just seconds later and the group of women climb in, but one of them pokes her head out the window.
“Where you headed?” she asks.
“One Thirty-Fourth and Lenox,” I say.
“Get in, we’ll drop you.” She opens the door for me and scoots in next to her friends in the backseat. They tell the driver to bump the music so we can dance on the way to my stop.
“Have a good night, sis!” they yell to me when we arrive a few moments later, and I watch them drive off toward their next adventure.
* * *
—
I march up the stairs and ring the doorbell to Jesus’s brownstone before I can make a plan for what to do if his parents answer the door. Of course, that’s just what happens.
“You must be Nevaeh,” says a woman I assume is Jesus’s mother. She has the same huge brown eyes and high cheekbones that act as altars to the heavens. “I’m Zoila.”
She steps back to open the door wider and let me in. The smell of garlic and meat and tomatoes dances into my nostrils.
“Mamí, is dinner ready?” Jesus hops down the stairs dripping in sweat after a workout. He looks up, startled to see me.
“Hi,” I say softly.
Zoila shakes her head. “You didn’t tell me Nevaeh was coming over,” she accuses Jesus.
“She’s full of surprises,” he says through pinched lips.
“Jesus!” His mother smacks the back of his head and turns to me with apologetic eyes. “He’s just hungry. He turns into a monster when he hasn’t eaten; all the men in this family do.”
I lag behind Zoila to keep up the impression that it is my first time in the house.
“Who have we here?” Jesus’s father says as he gets up from the table, a fresh bottle of Presidente in one hand.
“This is Nevaeh,�
�� Zoila says, accentuating my name with an excited wiggle of her whole body.
“Welcome! I’m Denis Junior, but everyone calls me Junior. Venga! Sit!” He pulls out a chair for me. “My Zoila made pastelón.”
“Mmm, smells delicious,” I say sincerely.
A metal cooking tray sits in the center of the table, filled with a dish that sort of looks like shepherd’s pie meets lasagna.
“My Zoila makes the best pastelón, after my mamí, of course.”
Junior looks like he has more to say but clamps his lips together at Zoila’s massive eye roll.
“Ay dios, I hope you are hungry,” she says to me under her breath, passing me a plate. “Go on, Junior. Tell your story.”
He twists his neck and fingers to remove any tension that might affect his storytelling abilities.
“My father, Denis DeSantos, grew up with his seven siblings on a farm called Ranchito de lo Peralta in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. They all lived on the land next to one another, like their own village. On days when they completed their tasks early, they were loaned to neighboring farms to fulfill their hours in exchange for room and board and a few coins here and there. When he was old enough, my father left and found a job selling gas to local colmados for a company owned by my Tito Fernando, my mother Iluminada’s oldest brother. One day, Iluminada came to the warehouse where they kept the gas to bring Fernando his lunch, but he wasn’t there, and Denis refused to let her leave.
“ ‘You are too beautiful and that food smells too delicious. You will be kidnapped for sure,’ he said.
“Mamí was wary of him but agreed to wait. He wasn’t much bigger than she was, and she had two pounds of pastelón in a metal container, so she had the upper hand if he tried anything. Two hours later, she’d fed him half of Fernando’s lunch and eaten the other half herself. It was the perfect balance of mashed platanos to meat and so much caramelized garlic in each bite that the only way you could kiss someone after eating it is if you’d both just finished some so you couldn’t tell the difference. He knew right then she was the one. They stayed in Puerto Plata until they could move here to New York, where some of his other siblings had come once they left the farm for the rest of their lives, and then they stayed right here. They never went below One Hundred and Tenth Street.
