Color Me In

by Natasha Díaz

  “Because your families have been with Pritchard for so long, we want to offer a fair settlement. So, Abby, we thought you could join the anti-cyberbully alliance to educate students about the negative effects of social media. That leaves Nevaeh. You need to make a public apology on behalf of yourself and your”—she stops dramatically—“visitor for pushing the incident further than it needed to go. If you all agree, we can bring this unfortunate chapter to a close and move on like it never happened.”

  “But it did happen!” I say, unable to contain myself.

  Mr. Jackson springs out of his chair.

  “You are LUCKY my daughter has a warm Christian heart, because she is the only reason we aren’t pressing criminal charges!” he shouts, sounding like an alt-right troll on Twitter personified.

  “Please, Mr. Jackson, you promised to remain civil,” Mrs. Lackey begs, unwittingly exposing their alliance.

  “My daughter is not publicly apologizing unless she is publicly apologizing,” my father says, pointing to Abby.

  “No!” I jump up.

  “Nevaeh!” My dad tries to stop me, but I won’t let him.

  “I’m sorry, Abby. I shouldn’t have touched you,” I say before turning to face Principal Lackey. “I’ve gone to this school since I was four, and the whole time, it’s as if I have been strapped to a buoy in the middle of the ocean. The waves keep crashing around me, and I’m not drowning, but I’ve barely kept my face above the surface. I’ve been fighting to stay afloat, because if I turn one way or the other, the salt water is going to rush down my throat so fast I won’t even be able to take a dying breath.”

  The room is still, so I don’t wait. I let my voice do what it has never done: I stand up for myself.

  “I am not going to die on this buoy, Mrs. Lackey. I’ve held on too long for that. I take full responsibility for my actions, but you need to do the same. You are responsible for hiring that horrible, dangerous, racist man, who assaulted my boyfriend. So punish me however you want, but I won’t clean this up for you.”

  My mom grabs my hand in hers, wet with her tears. She pulls herself together and winks as a show of support, which makes me breathe a little easier.

  “This is a load of horse manure! You think you can hide behind your PC snowflake liberal nonsense?” Mr. Jackson yells. “Don’t you pussyfoot around this. Your daughter is a predator.” He leans forward and my father’s arm flies across my chest, shielding me.

  “You think I can’t see it on you, but I can. Ya ain’t fooling me,” Mr. Jackson rants on. “Your daughter is obsessed with my Abby. I found a hundred of those topless photos on her laptop. She probably uploaded them to Abby’s computer. That is sexual harassment, just like all you feminazis are always whining about.”

  He holds up copies of my topless photos, and even though my breasts have been covered with strips of tape, the humiliation sweeps through me all over again.

  A few months ago, I would have expected Abby to say something to stop her father—a demonstration of that naive confidence instilled by our sheltered, affluent enclave and the willful ignorance that allows us to believe systems are fair and all people are good at their core. But I know what to expect now that my eyes have been opened: nothing. And that is exactly what she delivers.

  Mr. Jackson’s lawyers tap his shoulder and whisper behind their hands, conspiring.

  “Nevaeh, I will have no choice but to expel you,” Mrs. Lackey cautions.

  “Take the deal, honey. You can get back to your life. Let me help you.” My father’s face is red, but his whisper is sad and sincere.

  “That’s not my life anymore, Daddy.” I am firm, and he can tell there is no room for negotiation. “If you want to help me, then help me.”

  My father closes his eyes, replaying my words. When they open, he gives us a look to let us know the show hasn’t even begun. He whispers something to his colleague that sends her digging through the papers in her lap. As soon as she hands him a thin red folder, he stands.

  “I had hoped not to have to do this, but you have left me no choice, Mr. Jackson,” my father says, and steps to the left to face Abby.

  “Abby, the day that the photos in question were taken was my daughter’s sixteenth birthday, is that correct?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What does this have to do with anything?” Mr. Jackson shouts.

  My father hands over photocopies of the Instagram post. The image itself has been blurred, but the time and date stamp is clear.

  “Can you read me the date and time, please?” my father asks Abby.

  “Umm, March thirtieth, five-fifteen p.m.”

  My dad paces the five feet of free space in the center of the room.

  “Thank you. Just to reiterate, it was Nevaeh’s birthday.”

  “All right, enough with the theatrics,” one of the Jacksons’ lawyers interjects, unprepared for proper litigation.

  My father gives a wicked smile. “I’m getting there. I just need a little help from my wife.”

  The word “wife” slips out of him before he can stop it, and both of my parents jump a little, shocked by how foreign it sounds after everything that has gone on.

  “Corinne, what time of day was Nevaeh born?” he asks, recovering his cool before any of the other lawyers can pick up on the tension and use it against him.

  “Eight-twenty p.m.,” she says.

  My father savors the moment as the Jacksons’ lawyers stir and he moves in for the kill.

  “That is correct. Which means when the photos were taken, my daughter was not yet sixteen, which is the legal age of consent. She was still fifteen, which means that if you so much as mispronounce her name, I will slap your daughter with a distributing child pornography charge and she will spend the rest of her life on the sex offender registry.”

  Mr. Jackson’s face turns purple, but he clamps his mouth shut and listens.

  “Nevaeh will finish the rest of her sophomore year as a remote student. She will receive all she needs to complete assignments and exams. Anything that cannot be completed at home will be revised to accommodate her situation. She will receive references from teachers and from you, Mrs. Lackey, for whatever schools might require them, and all of you will sign agreements to never slander her name.”

  Energized by the flawless performance of her mentor, the young lawyer jumps up and hugs my dad in celebration. He allows her to linger pressed up against him for just a second and then shrugs her off. The other attorneys ask us to wait in the outer office while they confer. They call my father back a few moments later. When he emerges, he looks tired and disappointed.

  “They didn’t sign?” my mom asks, shocked.

  “No, they did.” He gives us a handwritten paper with the terms outlined. We won, but for some reason he seems upset.

  “Cynthia,” he snaps to his colleague as she organizes the files they brought. “Draft the formal contract and have the office send a final copy to my wi—” He stops himself and nods in my mom’s direction. “To Corinne.”

  “Thank you,” I say to my father.

  “Nevaeh—”

  “I’ll see you at the bat mitzvah,” I interrupt him—whatever is bothering him is not my problem, not anymore. We both know we can never go back to how it was between us. Even the way it’s been this past year feels like a distant memory.

  His face drops.

  “With everything going on…” His eyes start brimming with tears. “I cancelled it. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

  The words I’ve been wanting to hear now deafen and cripple me. I fall into a nearby chair.

  “What do you mean ‘with everything going on’?” my mom asks, decoding the language of Samuel Levitz in a way I never could.

  “We have to move the divorce proceedings forward,” he says in the type of quiet voice you use when
you don’t want to admit that the words you are saying are true. “Here is a settlement offer.” He hands her a folder.

  “What’s the rush, Samuel? You knock her up?” she goads him.

  He plays with the empty space on his wedding finger, avoiding eye contact, as if his dramatic shame is supposed to make us feel better—or worse, earn him pity.

  “It wasn’t planned,” he admits, as if that makes a difference.

  My mom starts shouting, but her words fade behind me as I run out of the building, past the steps and the corner, all the way to the subway.

  Chapter 39

  I unfold the piece of paper with Rabbi Sarah’s phone number. It’s been carefully tucked into my wallet for months.

  “Hello?” Rabbi Sarah’s voice cracks on the other end of the phone.

  “It’s Nevaeh,” I say. “I need to see you.”

  * * *

  —

  The trip to Queens is long, and by the time I make it to her apartment and buzz the door, I can barely wait to push it open and get inside. Her satin leopard-print robe flutters behind her as she clunks down the stairs eating a bag of cheddar popcorn.

  “What is it, Nevaeh?”

  “My dad is having another baby and cancelled the bat mitzvah and my boyfriend has PTSD from being attacked and Stevie hates me and is leaving for England and I’ll probably never see him again and my mom can’t find a lawyer because no one will go against my dad and we’re stuck—”

  I stop, unable to speak through the heavy stream of huge, mutant tears that have been building behind the now-broken levee inside me. Each drop drains from my person after bearing down on every inch of my body for the past nine months. I cry for so long that when I finish, I can’t tell if the floor beneath me is stained with tears or coffee, and my body shakes, wrecked from the emotional purge.

  The cold fabric of her robe chills my shoulders as she wraps her arm around me. “Come,” she says, leading me up the narrow hallway once I have calmed down.

  The air gets hotter and thicker the higher we climb, making it impossible not to wheeze.

  “I didn’t know you were comin’, so, uh, I didn’t have time to clean the place up,” she cautions, turning the knob to her apartment.

  The studio has a small kitchenette with a white mini-fridge and toaster oven next to a stand-alone sink and a tiny room with a toilet inside. At the far end of the room, a bed peeks out of an alcove with a screen half unfolded in front of it. Rabbi Sarah runs around picking up socks and random shoes strewn about. It smells like cinnamon from one of those holiday-scented candles, and the walls are bare except for a framed crocheted Christian proverb that I’m assuming was left here by the prior tenant:

  AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSE, WE WILL SERVE THE LORD.

  “I liked the colors,” she says behind me. “This is just temporary, you know. Still getting settled.”

  The couch, it turns out, is a frame with overused, deflated cushions that sink like quicksand with the slightest impact. I smile and engage my core to keep myself partially upright, doing my best to appear comfortable so as not to embarrass her.

  “I don’t have much but, uh…water? Do you want some water? Or did you want to keep talking?” She sits down beside me, sinking us farther into the couch.

  The reminder makes the hurricane inside me gear up again, and before I can stop it, the tears are so thick I lose the ability to see, which makes me cry harder.

  “I hate him. I hate everyone!” I shout.

  “Get up,” Rabbi Sarah says.

  She pulls me off the couch and drags me out of her apartment, into the musty hallway.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I shriek as a door opens in front of me and wind hits my face.

  She pushes me out onto a roof deck you would never know existed from the street below. The brick railing blends in with the exterior brick structure and wraps around half the building—a secluded maze in the sky.

  “You’re angry, Nevaeh, and you have a right to be angry, but what you aren’t going to do is be bitter and mean. You need to get it out of your system or it’s gonna eat you alive.”

  “He could have let her go. Before I was born, she left him, and he pulled her back.”

  “Close your eyes,” she says.

  “No!” I shout.

  In seconds, she flies over to me and covers my eyes with the tie from her robe, blindfolding me. She stands in front of me, her fingers locked with mine, and stretches my arms out as far as they can go.

  “My parents were selfish assholes!” she yells into my face. “And what your dad has done to you and your mom is terrible. What that security guard did, that was terrible. But they win if you end up miserable too. You’ve gotta release it.”

  Her hands clench mine as she lets out a primordial yell. A yell so intense that the brick walls around us turn her voice into a wind tunnel, burrowing into my skull like a drill until I can’t take it anymore.

  “STOP IT!” I shout, but she doesn’t. She takes another breath and yells again, and the sound drills deeper until I have no choice but to scream back.

  Our voices cut through the air, discharging regret for us and our parents. We release the pain we’ve been forced to carry because of their mistakes. We spew anger for the selfishness of our fathers and the painful truth that one day, they will stop being people we wished had loved us more and instead will become distant memories.

  When our throats are raw, we walk back to the apartment and I gather my things.

  “So that’s the trick? That’s what you’ve been doing your whole life? You just…yell?” I ask, shocked at how much better I feel.

  “Sweet Lord, no. That’s just so you don’t go around decking everyone and end up on Dr. Phil.”

  “I am so sorry for what I said to you the other night,” I say. “I know how bad it feels when someone tells you that you aren’t who you are. What I said, it wasn’t true. That was my own stuff. I’ve been sitting in this undefined box for so long, I wouldn’t know what else to be if I tried, but that’s no excuse, and I shouldn’t have put that on you.”

  She wants to forgive me, I can tell, but it’s not that simple when someone chips a tiny piece of you away.

  “I just want you to know that this hasn’t been a waste,” I say, swallowing the realization that my lessons with her really are coming to an end.

  “Let’s make sure it isn’t,” she says.

  * * *

  —

  Rabbi Sarah and I find my mom on the stoop, looking nervously back and forth.

  “Honey!” She grabs me and hugs me. “You can’t run off like that. I’ve been looking for you everywhere, I was so worried. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I tell her, and gesture with my eyes to Rabbi Sarah.

  “Oh, Rabbi Sarah.” My mom holds her hand out, a little confused.

  “You’re lookin’ good,” Rabbi Sarah says. They shake hands as though this is the first time they are meeting, which, given the state Mom was in the last time they met, isn’t entirely inaccurate.

  The house is dark and quiet, and we stumble over each other to find the light.

  “Yo.” Janae’s voice comes out of nowhere, scaring us.

  “What are you doing?” I ask once I’ve caught my breath and flipped the light switch to find her. Janae is lying on the living room couch.

  “Just chillin’ with my thoughts. What’s good, Rabbi?”

  Rabbi Sarah strides in, less unnerved than we are, and nods hello.

  “No one was up for cooking, so they went out a while ago.”

  “Why didn’t you go with them?” my mom asks.

  “I wasn’t hungry yet.”

  “Well, I guess I could go see what I can whip up,” my mom offers.

  “NO!” Janae and I both yell, and turn to Rabbi Sarah for adult i
ntervention.

  “Hmm…well, I can make a week’s worth of meals out of a can of beans, some celery, and Ritz crackers,” she says. “Let’s see what we’ve got to work with.”

  She marches in the direction of the kitchen and we follow, leaving my mom with the task of sitting still and touching nothing even remotely edible.

  * * *

  —

  “Rice, beans, ground turkey, broccoli, and a fried egg on top,” Rabbi Sarah announces the dish she created. It smells delicious.

  “Rabbi Sarah, would you bless the food for us?” my mom asks.

  “I’d be honored, Corinne, thanks.”

  “BA-RUCH A-TAH A-DO-NOI

  ELO-HAI-NU ME-LECH HA-O-LAM

  HA-MO-TZI LE-CHEM MIN HA-A-RETZ.

  “Ahhh-meinnn.”

  “Amein,” we agree.

  “That’s pretty. What’s it mean?” Janae asks, digging in.

  “ ‘Blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the universe, for the sustenance and for the universe. For the produce of the field and for the precious, good and spacious land, which you have graciously given as heritage to our ancestors,’ ” I say.

  “Very good.” Rabbi Sarah beams. “You know, Corinne, Nevaeh told me that Samuel has cancelled the bat mitzvah, but I think it would be an awful waste to not hold some sort of celebration for all the work Nevaeh has done.”

  My mom perks up, intrigued.

  “It’s okay if you’d rather not,” I say.

  “No,” my mom says. “I agree with Rabbi Sarah. You have to finish what you started.”

  I am torn. I had begun to feel an unexpected excitement about the bat mitzvah. It was going to be my moment to declare to the world that I am me, in all my ambiguous glory. But now, with everything going on, it feels unnecessary. Do I really need another day to be all about Nevaeh?

  “We can do it our way,” Rabbi Sarah says while she and my mother begin to conspire with their eyes.

  “Dope. I’m down,” Janae says, making my mind up for me. “I’ll film it, but you gotta pay me. My time is money.”