by Mia Mckenzie
I silence the phone and finish my bourbon. When it’s gone, I stare into the empty glass.
“Another drink?” Viva asks me as the bartender brings hers.
“Actually, I haven’t visited my mother much at all in the…What is it now? Two years since her accident?”
“Define ‘much at all.’ ”
“Including the hospital a few days ago? I’ve seen her three or four times.”
“Three? Or four?”
“Two.” I signal for the bartender, point to my empty glass. “I haven’t been a good daughter in twenty years,” I tell Viva. “Maybe I never was one. Why start now, right?”
“I’m not judging you,” she says. “I know your relationship with your mother is…complicada. You call, though, don’t you?”
“I call. Sometimes,” I say. “It’s not that I don’t feel sympathy for her. I do. So much of who she was is just…gone. She can’t work. She hardly even makes it to church anymore because she can’t remember to get dressed in time. She can’t even go pee without being reminded.”
Viva nods. “It’s awful.”
“And all she has is Slade to take care of her. Can you imagine? Slade’s never properly cared for anybody in his life.”
“Lo sé,” Viva says. “From experience.”
“And even recognizing that, I still don’t go over there. I hardly even call. I feel sort of shitty about it, but at the same time…”
“¿Ajá?”
The bartender pours more bourbon into my empty glass. I feel like downing it but I don’t. “I gave up on my mother a really long time ago. Maybe something should’ve changed after her fall. Maybe I’m supposed to want to try again. But I don’t.”
Viva reaches over and puts her hand on mine, squeezes. It feels nice and I let myself like it but then I feel a tingling at the back of my throat like I might cry or some shit, so I take my hand away.
“Vicky’s mean aunt is engaged,” I say to change the subject.
Viva raises an eyebrow. “The one who came by?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Does that bother you?” she asks.
“No,” I tell her. “Maybe?”
“Because you’re attracted to her?”
“No! She’s the worst.”
“Then why do you care about her relationship status?”
“Because marriage is an institution concocted by the patriarchy to oppress women. Obviously.”
She laughs and sips her drink.
“Okay, maybe I’m attracted to her,” I say.
“I thought you didn’t do relationships nunca más.”
I shrug. “Who said anything about a relationship?”
“So, you just want to sleep with her?”
“Sí. But that’s messy, right?”
“¿Por qué?”
“Porque she’s the sister of the friend I gave my eggs to? Who she didn’t even like? Who subsequently died? And whose kid she’s now raising? Who is the product of one of the aforementioned eggs?”
Viva nods. “Well, maybe it’s a little bit messy. Is she into you?”
A long sigh escapes me, made of sexual frustration, probs. “I thought she was when we first met. But she doesn’t like me at all now.” I shake my head. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I kicked it with Vicky yesterday.”
“Oh, sí?” she asks, raising her eyebrows again. “How’d that go?”
“Bien. I think we’re bonding, maybe.”
She smiles at me. “You don’t bond easily, chica, so that’s good news.”
10
A couple of days later, I pick up Vicky after spelling club, which is apparently a thing, and we go get soft pretzels. I’m squeezing mustard onto mine when I realize I haven’t had one in almost twenty years. “I practically lived on these when I was a kid,” I tell Vicky. “They used to sell them in school. A lady with a cart came around at recess. They were fifteen cents apiece. Two for a quarter.”
“They still do that,” she says. “But it’s fifty cents for one now.”
We sit on a sunny bench in Malcolm X Park and eat our pretzels. Vicky tells me about her life before Cynthia died. Like how they used to watch old movies together. Really old movies. Those black-and-white jawns.
“My mom liked Greta Garbo, so we watched her movies a bunch. My fave is Ninotchka. She plays this Russian who goes to Paris for work and falls in love with this dude who’s supposed to be Parisian but doesn’t have a French accent. It’s so funny.”
She tells me about life after her mother got diagnosed with breast cancer. About how, during treatment, Cynthia had to advocate for herself to receive more pain medication, on several occasions, because she wasn’t being given enough.
“She told me Black patients get less ’cause white people don’t think we feel pain the same as they do. It made me so mad. I still think about it a lot. Aunt Faye calls it my ‘radicalizing moment.’ ”
Later in the week, I pick her up from school again and we walk down Fifty-second Street to the library, so the kid can check out books about hoodoo, Santería, and witchcraft.
“This is for an assignment?” I ask, watching her stack volumes on a table. “I thought Montessoris didn’t have homework.”
She shakes her head. “I just want to get some ideas.”
“You trying to put a spell on somebody?”
She shrugs.
“It’s not me, is it?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, cool.”
When I’m not kicking it with Vicky, I’m planning We Outchea’s June trip, to Bali for the annual arts festival and then to Sydney for the Australian International Music Festival. With Toni leading the group in Brazil, most of her usual administrative tasks fall to me. Some days I make a dozen phone calls and write twice as many emails and it reminds me of the days before I had an assistant, when it was just me doing all of it, from trying to get deals on hotels to buying metro cards to making sure my travelers knew in advance not to venture out alone—or sometimes even in twos—in certain places. It was a lot of work. It still is. I’m up late on a Friday-night phone meeting with a club owner in Bali, tryna set up some VIP shit, and don’t get to bed until three.
I don’t wake up until after noon on Saturday. From under my covers, I can hear music and laughter coming from downstairs and, at first, I decide to avoid whatever that is. But then I get hungry and realize music and laughter probably also mean food, so I brush my teeth, throw on some clean-ish clothes, and head down.
The music and laughter is coming from the courtyard, where several dozen people are gathered, sipping drinks and eating off small plates. Many of them I’ve never seen before, but there are also familiar faces from the block, including Miss Newsome, who’s standing near the DJ, dancing by herself with a beer in her hand. I spot Viva, smiling and laughing and being her generally charming self. I wave to her and then head for the spread, loading up my own small plate with cheese, olives, tomatoes, and crusty bread. I’m devouring it when Viva comes over.
“Hey. What’s all this?” I ask her, through a mouthful of olives.
“My spring garden party,” she says.
“Oh, right.”
Every year, usually in April as long as winter doesn’t hold on too long, Viva throws a party in the courtyard of the bed-and-breakfast to welcome spring. I’m almost never in the country when it happens. In fact, the last time I was in attendance was four years ago. I remember it because the flowers in the courtyard were so big and bright that they attracted hella bees and a bitch got stung, twice. To help with the pain, Viva made me a special drink, a bourbon jawn with caramelized pears, served up with a twist, and I had enough of those chumpies that I don’t remember anything else about the party.
Viva is giving me a strange look.
“What? I got cheese on my fa
ce?”
“Sí,” she says. “Pero that’s not the problem.”
“There’s a problem?”
She nods. “Tasha’s here.”
Fuck. Me.
“Where?” I ask, my eyes darting around the courtyard.
Tasha’s not hard to spot, walking into the party in a bright orange jacket and bow tie.
“Jesus, Viva! I told you I don’t talk to Tasha. Why would you invite both of us?”
“I didn’t invite you, Skye.”
Oh.
“You were supposed to be in Brazil, remember?”
“Okay,” I say, “but it’s almost two weeks since I changed my plans. Why didn’t you make an adjustment?”
She makes a face, like, Bitch, are you serious? “Contrary to what you seem to think, I have other things to do besides accommodate you. I have a business. A marriage. Familia. Otras amigas. Lo siento si all that got in the way of making sure you didn’t end up within twenty-five feet of Tasha.”
The implication here is that I’m being self-centered and immature. It’s an implication I find offensive, frankly.
“Is it really that big of a deal?” Viva asks me.
“Yes.”
“You can’t put your feelings about her aside for one afternoon?”
“No.”
She frowns and throws her hands up, exasperated. I don’t know why she’s being so dramatic.
“Hey, Viva,” Tasha says, coming right over to us as if it’s no big deal, violating—for the second time in two weeks—our unspoken rule of avoiding all avoidable interactions with each other. She kisses Viva on the cheek and then looks at me. “You’re still in Philly, huh?”
“I seem to be.”
“You’re leaving again soon, though, right?” she asks, in this tone that’s half innocent-conversation-making, half this isn’t your city anymore, so why are you still here?
“Skye’s not going to be leaving for a couple more months,” Viva says. “Which is good for me, because the garden needs replanting and I can use an extra pair of hands.”
This is the first time she’s mentioned this to me. I shake my head at her. “You know I can’t stand dirt under my fingernails.”
“I know,” she says. “That’s what garden gloves are for, chica.”
Tasha is looking curiously at us.
“¿Qué?” Viva asks.
“Nothing,” Tasha says. “I just can’t believe you two are still friends.”
I frown. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
She shrugs.
“¿Qué tal unos drinks?” Viva asks a little nervously, and starts to walk past Tasha toward the bar.
Tasha hesitates, like she really wants to say something else to me. Then she turns and follows Viva.
I should just take my plate of munchies and go back upstairs. But, guess what? I don’t. I follow them both to the bar, which is just a tall table, from behind which Viva’s husband, Jason, is serving drinks.
“Bourbon for Skye, babe,” Viva says to him, putting a hand on his arm.
They’re a weird-looking couple. Still. Even after four years. Viva’s all cocoa skin, shiny hair, and legs for millennia, wrapped up in fashionable outfits and oozing charm. Jason Schneider is a straight-up goober. The type of white dude who wears khaki cargo shorts and Speedo slides with socks, and says “bro” with a hard O. Plus, Viva was never into white men before she met him. He’s a strange choice for a starter white boy. My first white boy was Italian. Dark hair, dark eyes. His skin—and perhaps most important, his dick—was tan, which I think made for an easier transition. Viva made the switch to pink dick in one fell swoop. It had to have been jarring. All that said, though, Jason is attentive and sweet and, according to Viva, he lays impressive pipe. Plus, he always has her back.
“What are you drinking, mami?” Viva asks Tasha.
Tasha thinks about it, then says, “I’ll take whatever good beer you have.”
A memory flashes in my mind. Senior year of high school. Me, Tasha, Viva, and a couple of other girls getting sloshed in Tasha’s basement off some pissy malt liquor we talked some old head who was loitering outside the state store into buying for us. The basement was recently finished but had no furniture yet, so we sat on pillows, taking turns chugging, and laughing about everything. When it got dark, we went out into the tiny backyard and lay together in the grass, holding hands and linking arms and crossing our legs together, a mass of brown limbs, beginning and ending nowhere.
“What are you drinking?” Tasha asks Viva, bringing me back to the present.
Viva shakes her head. “Nothing. I’ve had a few too many White Russians lately. They’re going straight to my ass.”
“Good,” Tasha says. “Because your ass is perfect. It always has been. The only way it could be better is if there was more of it.”
“Ay, gracias,” Viva says, smiling and sticking out her butt a little.
Tasha reaches over and smacks Viva’s ass. Viva laughs. It’s all pretty disgusting.
“Should we leave?” I ask, indicating Jason and myself. “Do you guys wanna be alone?”
Jason puts his hands up, like his name is Bennett.
“I guess since you’re not friends with any of your exes,” Tasha says, “this seems weird to you.”
Okay, listen:
smacking your friend’s ass is weird, whether or not you used to date, so don’t try to tell me it isn’t;
a “perfect” ass cannot be made better, that’s not how perfection works; and
how the hell does she know who I am or am not friends with?
“That’s not even true,” I say.
“Oh, my bad,” she replies, all fake-apologetic. “Which exes are you friends with, again?”
“Ones that you don’t even know about.”
“Like…?”
“Like…” Come on, brain, don’t fail me now. There are so many women’s names you can come up with on the spot. Andrea. Karen. Felicia. “Tif…onica.” Damn it!
She laughs. “Tifonica? Really?”
“Yes!”
“That’s a made-up name.”
“Pssh. No, it’s not.”
Tasha looks at Viva. “You heard of this Tifonica person?”
Without skipping a beat, Viva says, “Sí. She’s this Dominican girl Skye used to go out with.”
“See! You don’t know everybody I’ve dated, Tasha.”
She shrugs. “Maybe I don’t. But lesbian communities are small. Even when they’re big.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means, women talk. Some of them talk about you.”
“Who talks about me?”
She shrugs again, like she doesn’t want to say. Which: Why are you bringing it up, then?
I decide she’s just trying to mess with me. I mean, maybe a couple of my exes talk about me. I’ve had bad breakups like everyone else. But I’m not one of those lesbians with a trail of angry women in her wake. I’ve never had trouble moving on when something felt done. Most of my relationships have ended without a ton of drama. I’m not one of those notorious dykes. At least, I don’t think I am.
Jason hands me my bourbon. I drink it in one shot and hand him back the tumbler, wait for him to refill it, then down that one, too. When I’m done, I say to Viva, “I’m going to my room.”
“You don’t have to,” she says. “You can stay and enjoy the party. You don’t have to skulk off by yourself.”
“I’m not skulking. And I like being by myself.”
Tasha laughs.
“What’s funny?” I ask her, because I’m already feeling the bourbon and now I don’t give a shit.
“I just can’t believe you two are still friends.”
“You said that already. If you hav
e something else to say,” I tell her, “just say it.”
She puts her drink down. “You’re probably not ready to hear it.”
Probably not. “Try me.”
“I guess I’m just surprised you haven’t deemed Viva unworthy yet,” Tasha says. “Like you usually do with people.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know,” she says, “how you test people to see if they really care about you? Except they don’t know they’re even being tested? So then when they fail, you deem them unworthy and cut them off? Like you did me?”
“Like I did you?” I ask her. “When? When did I do you like that?”
“When we went away to college,” she says.
“You’re the one who didn’t keep in touch,” I tell her. “Seriously, are you drunk right now? Did you get hammered before you came here?”
“Is that how you’re choosing to remember it?” Tasha asks me. “Damn, Skye, are you really that lacking in self-reflection? Still? At your age?”
“Chicas,” Viva says. “Can we not, por favor?”
Naima comes over. “Hey, Viva? Is four-twenty allowed at this party or no?”
“No,” Viva and Jason say in unison.
“I’m gonna go,” I tell Viva. I don’t say shit else to Tasha. I bounce before either of them can say anything else to me.
I’m all the way up the back stairs and halfway down the hall to my room before Viva catches up to me.
“Skye,” she says, grabbing my wrist, “are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Viva. You don’t have to take care of me. Go be with your friends.”
“You’re my friend. Dios mío.”
“Tasha was just messing with me, right?” I ask. “When she said women talk about me.”
Viva sighs. “No sé, Skye.”
“Tú sí sabes. I can see it in your face.”
At first, she just shakes her head. Then she says, “Well, you do have a…reputación.”
Oh? “For what?” I ask as incredulously as I can manage.
“For leaving,” she says, “as soon as anything goes wrong.”
“That’s bullshit. Who said I do that? Joy?”
