Girls Like Us

by Randi Pink

  “I do,” Sue replied honestly, biting her tongue not to let it slip. Sippi would never forgive that level of betrayal. “But I can’t say.”

  “Please,” he pleaded, looking like a man with a broken heart and racked brain. “I’ve been trying to narrow it down to who. I can’t see it, Sue. Please. I can’t see it.”

  He deserved to know more than anyone. Certainly more than Sue. He was, after all, her papa. A good one, too.

  “If I tell you, she’ll never speak to me again.”

  “If you don’t tell me, he could do this to her again.”

  It was the right response. He was absolutely right. Breaking this promise was justifiable. This wasn’t a secret told behind a locker at school about a boy she liked. This was life and death. With innocent best friend Sippi in the crosshairs. Sippi didn’t know. She was a child. Fourteen. A young fourteen at that. Sue visualized a man overtop of her young body. Sex could be the most beautiful thing in the world. But it could also be more tragic than death. More painful than any other agony on earth.

  Sippi’s papa slid off the couch and onto his knees, pleading. Crying. Holding his head in his large hands. He could do anything he wanted with those hands, Sue thought. He could build anything. Drive anything. Lift anything, no matter how heavy. But he couldn’t protect his only child, because he didn’t know who to protect her from.

  Sue thought of Sippi. She was back in Valdosta, where the devil lived. He was here somewhere, lurking and waiting for her papa’s rig to back out the drive. He could be watching right now. Waiting to hold the tiny babies he’d forced inside her best friend. Author and Easy.

  “It was her uncle,” Sue blurted angrily. “She calls him Unc.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Sue woke up to Author and Easy screaming, and Sippi’s papa gone. Sippi sat in her rocking chair, wearing head-to-toe black just like everyone else.

  “Hadn’t slept that long in years,” Sippi said to Sue. “Thank you for watching them.”

  Sue wiped her face with her hands and gave the pillow one last squeeze before lifting herself from Sippi’s bed. “I love them,” she said. “I don’t mind it.”

  Sippi locked eyes with Sue. “Y’all have godparents where you come from?”

  “I’m not Catholic.”

  “Me, neither.”

  Then Sue realized what Sippi was saying to her. “Oh, Sippi.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “That’s a yes.”

  Sippi got up from the rocking chair and placed the babies on the foot of the bed. She then brought the brown Bible and hovered over their heads. “I don’t know what words to say. Um … I’ll say that I love you, best friend Sue. You’ve been a gift to me. Brought in straight from God. Who would’ve thought it?” Sippi smiled and let a single tear fall from her eye. “I don’t mean to cry. I’m cried out. I mean to smile and laugh and let these two young’uns know that they couldn’t ask for a better godmama. And I couldn’t ask for a better best friend.”

  Sue looked from Sippi to the babies. She wanted to hug them, but all she could think of was her own betrayal.

  “Sippi…” Sue started to tell her the truth. “I need to tell you.”

  “Hold on,” Sippi interrupted. She slowly walked over to the small window and pulled a bottle of warm olive oil from the sill. “Blessed oil.”

  Sippi opened the tight lid and stood over Sue. “You promise to look out for Author and Easy when you can?”

  Sue felt the heaviness of the moment, weighing down on her. “I do.”

  Sippi drew an oily cross on her forehead. Then, with the same slick finger, drew tiny crosses on Author’s and Easy’s, too. “Done. I’ll go make some us some two-step biscuits to celebrate.”

  * * *

  Sue’s mother showed up before Sippi’s father returned.

  Within seconds, Margaret grabbed ahold of Easy and would not let her go. Deep down, Sue was afraid of how her mother would fit in the tiny living room. Demure and statuesque by nature, she could come across as a snob, and Sue didn’t want that. But as soon as Margaret crossed the threshold, she belonged there.

  Sue had never seen anything like that before. Her mother dropped every ounce of the Vineyard from her voice and slouched her shoulders, relaxed. She wore a basic white T-shirt and jeans. Sue hadn’t realized her mother owned a pair of jeans. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun, and only a small dash of pink stained her bottom lip. No more makeup than that.

  But it was watching her with Easy that Sue would never forget. They were instant soul mates. Laughing together. Sue’s mother kept making funny faces at her, and Easy stared back, seemingly mesmerized. When Author reached for them, Sue’s mother held them both, one on each thigh. He, too, smiled, but Easy looked to be fixated on her.

  “She loves you already, Miss Margaret,” Sippi said, watching her with her daughter.

  “Oh please, darling. Call me Maggie.”

  Maggie. Sue felt her jaw drop. Maggie.

  “I’ll call you Miss Maggie,” Sippi said, grinning. “Down south, our elders are miss and mister whether they want to be or not. Would you like a two-step biscuit?”

  “Well, I don’t know what that is, but I’d love to try one.”

  “Tea, too?”

  “I’d absolutely love tea, thank you.”

  Sue laughed under her breath at their different interpretations of tea. To best friend Sippi, tea was freezing cold and as sweet as a dessert. To Mother, it was as hot as Valdosta and bitter, with a touch of lemon. She was about to be unpleasantly surprised.

  “Darling,” Margaret said as Sippi turned into the kitchen. “Our flight will be leaving soon. Gather your things. We cannot miss it.”

  Sue’s stomach turned at the thought of leaving Author and Easy. “But can’t we take the first flight out tomorrow? I couldn’t leave her alone like this. Not with the babies all by herself.”

  “Dear,” Margaret started, trying to choose her words carefully. “I want that.” She glanced down at Author and Easy, now resting quietly on her knees. “More than you know. But it’s your father, darling. He will come here if we do not make our flight. And he is not as … amiable as I am. I am sorry.”

  Sue couldn’t say anything. There was no arguing with reality.

  “Would you hold them while I go help in the kitchen, darling?”

  Margaret placed the babies in Sue’s arms. “They are dreams, aren’t they?”

  “They are,” Sue replied, staring at her godchildren. They still had greasy crosses drawn on their little foreheads, and they looked to her with such love and longing.

  “I’ll send in Mississippi to sit with you.”

  When her mother left the room, Sippi returned. Sue sang to Author, Easy, and best friend Sippi until it was time to leave.

  IZELLA

  Everyone wore black.

  Ola hated black.

  She preferred color.

  They didn’t know Ola at all. They wore black because Valdosta told them to wear black, not because they loved Ola.

  The funeral was tomorrow. It was probably going to get rained out and muddy at the grave site. Izella hoped the already-dug grave would fill up with rainwater so Ola couldn’t fit in there. It was a childish thing to think—Izella knew that. But when she closed her eyes, she saw it. Too full to fit a casket. Funeral canceled.

  Mr. Melvin kept checking on her. It must’ve taken all of his energy to get up and walk down the hall over and over. He was a nice man.

  Evangelist stayed busy. Weeds had taken over the tomato plants, and Evangelist got bit up by mosquitoes from pulling them all day long. She went out there and only came in to pee.

  Izella had never seen so much food in her life. Barrels of collards, tubs of squash, countertop covered up with roasts and chickens. Pans and pans of dressing in the oven and macaroni boiling on all four eyes. Izella cooked it all. She didn’t want to go anywhere near her bedroom. She’d only gone in there to open up a window to air it out. It still sme
lled too much like Ola.

  Izella took to the cooking like a fish to water. No one to tell her she was too young to work the big knives or hot pans. Evangelist let her loose, checking in every now and then, but obsessively pulling weeds all day. Izella longed for the day they all stood around the sink, cleaning and separating vegetables for the deep freeze—her, Evangelist, and her sister.

  “You all right?” said Mr. Melvin for the thirtieth time.

  “Yes,” Izella snapped. “I told you yes.”

  * * *

  Night fell on the house. And everything was cooked and labeled. Enough food to feed five hundred folks, easy. Izella opened every pantry to find something else to cook. But there was already too much food, and she knew it.

  Midnight was oncoming. That meant it was about to be the day of Ola’s funeral. Izella went out the back porch and jumped the fence to find Stanley Turner mixing moonshine.

  “Birthday’s coming,” he said without acknowledging Ola’s death at all.

  Izella was happy he hadn’t. It was all anyone had been talking about all week long. All she had been thinking about. Her birthday was never a big deal to her anyway. She’d usually forgotten it.

  “Twelve days away now,” he said. “Well, eleven now. Just turned midnight.”

  It was officially the day of Ola’s funeral. She’d have to sit in the front row next to Evangelist. Within feet of Ola’s stuffed body. She wasn’t in there anymore. Izella wondered what they put on her dead body. Hopefully it was the blue paisley dress. That’d been her favorite one.

  “You got a sip of that stuff you always want me to try?” Izella asked, needing something to help her along.

  “Not today, I don’t,” Stanley said with resolve. “Days like today ain’t for forgetting. Days like today are for remembering.”

  Izella took a seat at his side. He was eaten up by mosquitoes just like Evangelist. Not even bothering to slap them away as they sucked his lumpy legs.

  “They don’t bother you?” Izella asked before smacking one from her ankle.

  “They just trying to live best they know how. We all doing the same thing.”

  Izella didn’t understand him at all. He was drunk. He had no idea what he was talking about himself, she thought. Still, she sat there and watched as he mixed and turned and heated the liquid. Finally pouring it into glass gallons.

  She watched him until the sun came up.

  SUE

  Sue’s father still wore his American-flag pin on his lapel.

  “Been a few months,” Sue said to her father as she entered the house.

  “Susan,” he said. “You know Michael’s grandmother, Mrs. Blohm, I presume.”

  “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  As soon as she saw her in person, she understood what her mother had meant in the letters. Even hunched over on a walker, the woman sent chills of intimidation down Sue’s spine.

  “Come sit here,” she said as if she owned the place. “We need to have a chat.”

  Michael already sat on the opposite couch with his lip poked out. Sue wanted to whack him.

  There they all sat—Sue’s mother and father across from Michael and his grandmother. Sue knew her future was about to be chosen for her. She wanted to be strong. She wanted to ask questions. Make waves. Challenge her future as her own.

  “You will marry.” Mrs. Blohm’s words shook with age. “Young lady, my grandson knows this. He put up a valiant fight. He has no choice, and neither do you. You will carry on the Blohm name, and so will this child growing inside of you. What is your full name?”

  “Susan Anna Day.”

  “Your name will be Susan Anna Day-Blohm, and you will live in a home much like this one.” Mrs. Blohm looked around, seemingly judging her mother’s choice of curtains. “You could do worse, child,” Mrs. Blohm told her grandson. “At least they have decent taste.”

  Sue saw her life flash before her. Her mother’s life of silent activism.

  As if reading her mind, her mother smiled with pity in her eyes. She knew it, too.

  Sue’s life no longer revolved around sound or music or protests anymore. Now her life revolved around a baby girl.

  She would sit quietly. Sip tea. And marry a boy she hated.

  But she was still Susan. And, even quietly, Susan would find a way to fight for a fucking cause.

  * * *

  Days later, after a nightmare of a first meeting with her future grandmother-in-law, Sue walked into her room to find a framed painting of four girls holding hands. Walking away from chaos. Together.

  MISSIPPI AND IZELLA

  Valdosta closed down for the funeral. All corner stores, bodegas, even restaurants shut their doors for their employees to attend. Evangelist and Mr. Melvin rode along in the hearse. Izella walked to the church two hours early. She took the sidewalks and skipped the cracks, just like Ola always had. Everyone she passed wore black, but she’d refused. Instead, she wore a light blue dress and bobby socks.

  Missippi watched her skip the cracks in her light blue. She’d already laid out her only black dress the night before, but when she saw Izella walking past, she knew she needed to wear color. She found a blue skirt and blue lace shirt in the back of her closet and dressed her young’uns in white. They all wore bobby socks.

  * * *

  Izella sat alone in the church until the second person showed up. Second, third, and fourth actually. Missippi had brought her young’uns up to sit next to her on the front pew.

  “Mind if we sit?” she asked. “We’ll move when everybody gets here. You can say no. I won’t be mad.”

  “Sit where you want.”

  Missippi sat with Izella, twins in her lap. “We saw you coming early and all alone. We wanted to come see you.”

  “Who is we?”

  Missippi smiled. “Me and my young’uns—this is Author, and this is Easy. Boy and girl. You can tell them apart by the birthmark around her left eye.”

  “They ain’t see me. They what, a week? You saw me. Just you.”

  Missippi remained silent. She didn’t know what to say to that.

  Izella stayed quiet, too. She shouldn’t treat this girl like this. She had never met her. She didn’t deserve it.

  “Sorry,” Izella said.

  “No need.”

  “You wore blue.” Izella noticed. “That was Ola’s favorite color.”

  “I know that.” Missippi remembered Ola in her blue striped dress. “I watched y’all walk by every day. I made up stories about y’all.”

  Izella was shocked to hear this. It took a lot to shock Izella. She thought she was pretty observant of her surroundings, but she’d never once seen this young girl watching them.

  “I’m in that old blue house with the rig out front.” Missippi realized Izella had no idea who she was.

  “Why didn’t you speak?” Izella asked.

  Missippi shrugged. “I suppose I could’ve. Y’all looked perfectly fine on your own, though.”

  She was so right, Izella thought. They were happy with each other. Izella and Ola. Ola and Izella. They were perfect. Izella looked at the two babies. They reminded her of herself and Ola. Two siblings, forever connected. It had been her fault. Izella had made Ola go to Mrs. Mac. She’d killed her sister. Her best friend.

  “Can I tell you something?” Izella asked.

  “Anything in the world.”

  Izella turned toward Missippi. “When your babies get big enough to know what’s what, keep them close, you hear? Don’t think they know what they doing. They don’t. They just floating through life like yellow pollen on the wind.”

  “I hear you,” Missippi replied. “Can I tell you something, too?”

  “Anything in the world.”

  “Sometimes you gotta let things be. Set it all loose or else you lose yourself.” Missippi reached for Izella’s hand. “You got folks loving you that you don’t even know are there.”

  Izella forced herself to hold the tears back. It wasn’t her way
to cry.

  NOW

  The waiting room smelled like the first day of menstruation. The noisy air conditioner wasn’t enough to dry the sweat from Tye’s cheeks, still rosy with hope, but just barely. Vomit-green plastic chairs were bolted into the glossy ceramic-tile floor. The chairs were hooked together, surrounding the perimeter of a long, narrow room that was shaped like a railway car. Tye and Izella huddled around the television, staring at the blank screen as if willing it to come to life.

  “Would somebody cut the TV back on?” Tye hollered at the glassed-in receptionist desk. Her freshly braided butt-length micro braids tugged at her hairline. “We deserve to know!”

  “Your appointment was at four.” Izella glanced at her watch. “It’s coming up on six. Something’s not right. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “I’m sorry, Gran.” Tye softened her tone when speaking to her god-grandmother Izella. “Will the restaurant run all right without you?”

  “Rutabaga’s Diner has been up and running every day for the last thirty-seven years, Babygal.” Gran Izella pinched Tye’s left cheek. “Surely they can make it through one supper rush without me shouting at them what to do.”

  Tye sighed at the blank television. “I doubt any of us could make it through anything without you shouting at us what to do, Gran.” Tye leaned her head on her gran Izella’s shoulder and winced at her too-tight braids.

  Izella smiled the same smile she gave Tye when Easy gave birth to her almost eighteen years earlier. “You’re gonna learn, child,” Gran Izella said with wisdom all over her. “Those heavy braids will rip every bit of hair from your head. I’m trying to tell you what I know, now.”

  “But, Gran!” Tye laughed. “You’re wearing the exact same braids right now!”

  They laughed loudly together, even there in the clinic waiting room. They loved each other deeply, Tye and Izella. And nothing could separate them from each other—not age nor generation; not even Tye’s own mother, Easy, could reach her like Gran Izella could. When Tye first peeked at the world through her foggy, infant eyes, she saw only Izella and hadn’t dared look away since.