Black Girls Must Die Exhausted: A Novel for Grown Ups

by Jayne Allen

  The first thing I noticed about Laila took my breath briefly and made me glad that I saw her first before she saw me. She had cut off all of her hair. The lovely, long, well-kept, hard-come-by locs that I had never known her without were replaced with a halo of ringlets. The much shorter hair made Laila look kind of like a small child in the bed, a visual reinforced by the too-large hospital gown that she wore. She was watching something on television, but turned quickly to me when I gave a slight rap of my knuckles against the doorframe. She looked at me, but didn’t say anything and at first; her face registered neither happiness nor sadness in particular. Seeing her expression change to a slight smile was the reassurance I needed to enter.

  “Can I come in?” I asked. Laila nodded to say yes. We’d never shared so much silence in the entire length of our friendship. I walked into the room and waited for the right words to follow. How are you? That seemed inappropriate. It was a question that I should have asked in earnest a long time ago. It was Laila who spoke first.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey. You…cut…your locs?” Laila brought her hand up to her head as if to confirm that they were in fact gone. As if my words were news to her. She looked nervous and uncertain as she ran her fingers through one side of curls.

  “Yeah…I needed to start fresh…cut off all the dead weight…I guess I shouldn’t say dead,” Laila said with a slight smile. “I mean, given these circumstances.” She laughed a little, indicating around the room with her hands. I made a small awkward laugh also. It was a good reminder that Laila was still in there.

  “It looks…good.” I was lying. But, I could see how her new look would be pretty, in a different place and time, without sunken eyes, wires, drip tubes and hospital gowns.

  “Tabby, I look…like shit,” Laila said. “You can be honest. I prefer it.”

  “Ok,” I said with a smile, “You do…look…kinda bad. But you’re still the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all day.” I walked over to the chair next to her bed.

  “Then you must have had a pretty fucked up day,” Laila said.

  “Could have been worse,” I replied softly. At this, Laila’s face changed. It clouded over with seriousness. She looked down for a moment and then looked at me.

  “I’m really embarrassed, Tab,” she said. “I just need to be able to say that.”

  “You don’t have to be embarrassed. You shouldn’t be. Not with me.”

  “This just isn’t something I want anyone to know about me. It’s not something I want to know about myself. I wish I could undo it,” she said, reaching for a tissue from the box on the stand next to her.

  “I’m just glad you’re still here, Laila. And I’m glad I could be here with you…for you,” I said, also reaching for the same box.

  “Tabby, I’m so sorry. I feel like I owe everyone a million apologies. What I did…” she paused, dabbing at her eyes. “As soon as I swallowed the first pill, I knew it was wrong, by the last one, I regretted everything. I decided even then that I should try to throw up, but I passed out.” She paused again, shaking her head and looking away. “And then my mom had to see that…she shouldn’t have had to see that. All my hair on the floor and me on the floor—God only knows what else. I’m just so sorry. So sorry.” She whimpered into her tissue. I could only obey my compulsion to sit on the bed and hold her in the tightest hug I could make. She allowed her head to rest on my shoulder. I still had trouble finding words, but I was hoping that she could hear how much I loved her from everything unspoken, from my own tears that fell onto her hair, to my heartbeat that thumped against her own chest, to the warmth of my embrace. I gave everything in my body to that moment, to try to lift her up, to be the friend that I failed to be when it seemed like she needed me most and I was too caught up in my own shit to notice. I held on to her like a mother who found her lost child, understanding the miracle of second chances.

  “I think I finally managed to embarrass my parents,” Laila said in a half-hearted joke.

  “Hardly. They’ll get over it.”

  “Will you?” Laila looked up at me. Her question brought a sharp feeling to the innermost center of my body. I could only imagine how vulnerable and exposed she must have been feeling.

  “Laila, there’s nothing to...” I attempted to reassure her, but she cut me off.

  “Tabby,” she whispered. “I’m ashamed.” She pulled herself back to look me in my eyes. “I lost my baby.” The words she managed to push out, and then collapsed again against me.

  “Wait, you were pregnant?”

  “At the gym…I knew then. I didn’t want to say anything because it was so early and I had such a bad feeling about it all. What kind of person would bring a baby into my situation?” Laila said.

  “What did…your Mr. Big say? Did he know?”

  “I told him—he wanted me to…’fix the situation,’ as he put it.”

  “Asshole!” Somehow, I managed to hold back the other words that I wanted to say.

  “When I wouldn’t agree, he just stopped responding. He didn’t even text me back when I told him…what happened.”

  “Oh my God. Oh my God. Laila,” I said. I didn’t know how one body could hold so much pain, hers or mine. I squeezed her harder, as if she was crumbling and somehow I could hold us both together.

  “Everything was going wrong, my job, everything. And then there was this little ray of light—this idea, that things could be better, this little bit of hope growing inside of me…and then, all of a sudden, it was gone. And I just couldn’t stop hurting, Tabby. I had no way to stop hurting.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t? I was embarrassed? I thought I had it handled—I was so used to having all the answers. The whole time, I was running from the darkness Tabby, and I got good at it. Maybe, I felt like talking about it made it real, so I kept running and hiding. I stayed one step ahead, you know?” I nodded. “But then everything started closing in on me. It caught up to me. I should have reached out, but I didn’t know that I was already in trouble—that I was so close to breaking. I should have known, when we got in that fight…I felt so stupid, right away, before I even got home. I knew you hadn’t told Alexis anything. You reached out that night, and I wasn’t feeling well, and didn’t feel like talking. Then, it,” Laila used her eyes to quickly motion downward along her body, “happened just after. The…miscarriage…and…then the pills. I woke up in an ambulance, on the way here….They took my phone.” She looked back up at me. “I’m so sorry about that fight with Alexis. I was just so stressed out—I know I overreacted. You two probably thought I was crazy—maybe I am crazy. I don’t know.”

  “We’re probably all crazy, Laila. All crazy, with our own good reasons to be crazy,” I said. “Can I ask you something?” I studied Laila, meeting her eyes in the center of her glance. She nodded. “Can you tell me now, I mean are you able to—that this won’t happen again?” I asked.

  “This won’t happen again, Tabby. I promise.” I just looked at her, searching her face for some way to know that this was true. “It won’t,” she repeated, looking at me. I took a deep breath, and so did Laila, never breaking our eye contact.

  “Are you ok staying at your parents?” I asked. “Do you want to stay with me?”

  “I’m ok there,” Laila said. “It’s just temporary. I’ve had a lot of time to think. Being in here has taken a lot of the pressure off—of everything I thought I was supposed to be. I didn’t even realize how much I was trying to live up to other people’s expectations. And all this time I thought that I didn’t give a fuck. But it turns out, I was giving lots of fucks. Way too many.” She gave a weak smile and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Tab, I’ve been thinking about what I really want to do. When I get out of here, I’m going to have a plan—a real one and stop B.S.’ing. I realized there’s a lot more that I could be doing—it sounds sill
y, but all I can think about is starting a blog —my own publication, Just my thoughts, my words, and no filter. Is that silly?” I wasn’t used to being the one to reassure Laila, but with the roles reversed, I was happy to for once be the one who encouraged her, like she had done for me so many times before.

  “No, not at all. Laila, I bet it’d be hilarious,” I said, “and wildly successful.” She smiled weakly and then continued.

  “And, I started a journal—I mean, I haven’t written much yet, but it’s something,” she said, looking over at a large sized leather-covered notebook on the stand next to her bed. “My mom brought it for me on my first day here.”

  “The World has a lot more to hear from you Laila Joon,” I said, trying to hold back the tears that the thought of my next words brought. “I don’t have…a lot of family.” The tears dropped as I spoke. “You…and Lexi…” my words caught in my throat. Laila covered my hand with hers. I managed to continue. What I had to say was important. “Sometimes we don’t say what we need to say to each other.” Laila looked at me, and handed me one of her tissues.

  “I understand,” she said. And there we sat as minutes passed, saying nothing, learning together how to find the words unspoken in silent space.

  What can I do to support you?” I asked, eventually. “I feel like such a bad friend, Laila. Like I missed something somewhere—like I wasn’t paying attention. But I was, I just…” How did I miss this? is what I wanted to say—what my mind kept thinking. I thought about the fact that Laila had no visitors other than her parents and me and made my best suggestion, “Do you want me to bring Alexis? I know that she’d want to see you.”

  “You came to see me. That’s enough.” She paused, and it seemed like she was looking for her next words. “I’m not ready to see Alexis. I don’t want her to know just yet. I need a little more time.” I nodded. “I’ll tell her though,” Laila said. “I’ll tell her myself.”

  “I understand.”

  “But, there is something else you can do…” Laila said.

  “What? Anything.”

  “Help me figure out what to do with this hair!” With this, she gave a big smile.

  “Now, that, I can definitely do,” I said, so grateful for the laughter.

  I stayed right up until the near end of visitor’s hours, sending Mrs. Joon a text at a quarter past seven to give her parents a chance to finish up the evening with their daughter. For some reason, I thought of my father. As imperfect as he may have been, I was starting to understand what my grandmother meant about him being “the rare type.” Even when I pushed him away, he never stopped trying to reach me, even in spite of his faults. And, just like Laila, didn’t we all need the space to fall short and keep fighting? Isn’t that what we’re all asking from one another? For the space to try again with the hope that one day, somehow, we could earn that type of forgiveness—the getting over it, over of all of it-type. Laila’s secret weighed heavy on me, but there was no one to share it with. It would be my burden for now, my thought to process, my guilt to weigh, my mind to heal. All I could think of was the bottle of wine waiting for me at home. My phone rang, interrupting the cascade of thinking. I figured I forgot something and perhaps Mrs. Joon was calling me back to remind me. But it wasn’t Mrs. Joon. Of course it wasn’t—it was Marc.

  Chapter 30

  At the moment he called, I wanted to talk to Marc more than I wanted air. I wanted comfort to suffocate and quench the raging brush fires burning in my mind. Lightning had struck twice on that day, in the already vulnerable territory of my consciousness. Laila was a wakeup call, forcing me to become aware of my own fragility, and to recognize my limitations. Based on the explosiveness of our last encounter, even though this was everything I’d been waiting for, I let Marc’s call go through to voicemail. I considered it self-preservation. I knew that I was drinking too much lately, but it was only the better part of a bottle of wine that allowed me any kind of sleep that night, and even that was restless. I found myself awake, again, at 3 am.

  I kept thinking about my dad. I found myself stuck imagining the scene that Granny Tab described. The one in which the little boy version of my dad tried to defend her with his lanky body and wound up broken and bruised by my grandfather. My grandfather, who, because of his own actions, I’d never get to meet. I thought of Granny Tab, and her eternal softness, picking up the handle of a knife, much like my mother did that spatula in our kitchen, in the defense of her child. I thought about Marc’s summary of chaos and abandonment and wondered how that could be so different from my dad’s experience, or even if it was different. Maybe, it was similar. And if it was, how did I wind up repeating a cycle that I didn’t even know about? Was Marc like my dad in some way? I thought of Laila’s small frame, with her short hair and all of the wires and tubes draping from her too thin hands and wrists. Laila made an “attempt?” My friend Laila, with her acerbic wit and tough as balls humor tried to kill herself and I had missed all the signs. I knew I needed to talk to someone, but at 3 am, those options were limited. That’s when I decided to call my mom. With the East Coast time difference and the General’s early rising habits, I presumed she’d be awake, and I was right.

  “Tabby Cat? Is everything ok?” My mom picked up the phone on the first ring. No mom, I thought, it’s not ok. It’s not ok and I’m not sure that it will ever be ok again. But I need it to be ok. But nothing is what I thought it was. I need answers.

  “Hi Mom, sure everything is fine. I’m just…awake. I had a few things on my mind and I thought I’d call…just…just to talk.”

  “Oh, calling at 3 a.m. just to talk? My Tabitha? Something must be very wrong, then,” my mother said. “How is your grandmother? Is she ok?”

  “She’s fine, Mom.”

  “Alexis?”

  “Fine.”

  “Laila?” I froze. Laila.

  “Laila is…recovering. She…had an accident.”

  “Is she ok Tabby?” How did my mom always manage to figure me out? Or was I that transparent?

  “She will be. I think it’s going to take some time, but I saw her earlier and she was fine.” I tried to bring my mother enough satisfaction to drop the topic.

  “Well, what about your dad?” she said.

  “He’s ok. You know, I went to dinner over there last week.”

  “Oh? You did?” My mom said, only thinly veiling the edge that came into her voice.

  “I did,” I said. “Granny Tab asked me to go—and they didn’t even have me on the list at the guard station, but I managed to make it through the gates,” I said, surprised at myself for including those details.

  “Umh, umh, umh. Diane should know better. I’ve never liked how she’s treated you, Tabby, I…”

  “I know Mom,” I said, interrupting. I had a point to reach, so I pushed to continue. “It was fine, because I really just wanted to talk to my dad, you know, about some work things, and some life things, about Marc.”

  “And what did your dad say?” my mom asked, saying “your dad” in largely the same way that someone else might say “the village idiot.”

  “He said a lot of things. He said…that what you needed from him was on the other side of damage that you didn’t create.” I let that sit in the air. “Did you know that?”

  “Hmph.” My mother made only that noise, but really said nothing. She was silent for awhile. I guessed, she was letting the words absorb and roll around in her mind until they developed some kind of meaning to her. I imagined a batter, words, mixing together with old memories, sadness, and a whole history lived with another person, until it became a smooth and uniform consistency—enough to speak on, which she finally did. “I guess, that’s about true,” she said. “But people decide what damage they’re going to fix, and whom they’re gonna fix it for,” she said. And that was just it, wasn’t it? The root of the question I’d never known I needed to ask when it hurt the m
ost—why was I the one you gave up on?

  “Would you have changed anything, Mom? Anything at all?”

  “I don’t suppose I would change much. Well, if anything, I’d have just kept what was mine, and given back what wasn’t.” Kept what was hers? What had she taken that wasn’t hers? I started to ask her what she meant, but my own feelings starting to push through.

  “Mom, I…I just feel like sometimes I’m trying so hard. And no matter how hard, I’m always missing something—like everything I’ve been told to stand on is some kind of quicksand.”

  “Tabby, you’re sounding like there’s more that you’re not saying than what you are saying.”

  “Rob and Lexi are separated. She’s not wearing her ring.”

  “Oh no! What happened, did Rob get someone pregnant?” I loved how my mom skipped over the obvious, because, with Rob’s history, it was so obvious.

  “No, he cheated.”

  “Well now, that’s not new. I feel like I might have dried some of Lexi’s ‘Rob cheated’ tears myself,” my mom said, with full cynicism. “Well, the most important question is, does he want to leave or to stay?”

  “He says he wants to stay.”

  “Lexi needs to figure out if he means it, and then decide what she wants to do. If he wants to stay, she’s got options. If he doesn’t, well…there are only so many decisions as a woman that you’re really able to make. There is no way to make a man stay if he’s intent on leaving. And no way to make a man leave who is intent on staying.” I thought about my grandfather. I wondered which one of my mother’s examples he would have been.

  “He says he wants to work it out—they’re in therapy.”

  “Then Lexi has options that I didn’t. Not with your father…if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I’m not sure what I’m asking, Mom, honestly. I’m just trying to figure some things out.”