Skye Falling

by Mia Mckenzie

  “Ugh! Mom! Can you not? Jesus!”

  “Alright, alright. Calm down,” she says. “I didn’t know you were such a prude. The truth is, I liked him because he could be really sweet.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  She nods. “Well, he could be mean, too. Over the years, the mean overtook the sweet. Once it did, I had to divorce him.”

  Which isn’t true. She divorced him, sure, but it wasn’t “once the mean took over the sweet.” He was mean my entire life. Whatever sweet he’d been was long gone by the time she finally divorced him.

  “What shoes do you want to wear?” I ask, hoping she’ll just stop talking about him.

  “I have some nice white flats in there, on the right side by the boots, I think.”

  I find the shoes and put them on the floor by the bed.

  “Some things were easier for me after he was gone,” she says. “And some things were harder. Raising two kids on my own wasn’t easy. But I think I did a great job.”

  I feel heat rising in my chest. I want to scream at her that she didn’t do a great job. At least not for me. That the damage had already been done by then.

  “What about jewelry?” I ask her. “You planning on accessorizing?”

  She gets up off the bed and goes over to her dresser. There’s a jewelry box on top of it and she sifts through it. After about a minute, she’s still sifting.

  “Mom?”

  She looks at me, confused, and I know she’s forgotten what she’s supposed to be doing.

  I pull a necklace from the box—silver with a pink stone—and hold it up. “What about this one? To go with the dress.”

  She smiles, nods her head. “That works.”

  I help my mother get dressed. The hardest part is getting her shoes on, because her feet are so swollen. Once she’s dressed, I help her choose a wig. Then we go downstairs to wait for the church van, which I arranged to pick her up instead of a Lyft.

  Slade is still eating Pop-Tarts on the couch. I tell him he has to be here when the van drops our mother off after church. “Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t,” he says, looking offended at the notion of me questioning his unfaltering reliability. Then he peers at me. “What’s wrong? You look upset.”

  I shake my head. “I’m fine.”

  He frowns. “Mom talking about Dad again? She’s been talking about that nigga all day.”

  “Yeah, she was. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Something reminded her of him this morning. Now he’s stuck in her head. I had to tell her to stop but I don’t think she can turn it off like that, when her brain starts fixating. It’s not her fault.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I guess.”

  “You want to go get a drink?”

  I look at him. “What?”

  “A drink. It’s usually something that comes in a glass.”

  “No. I can’t. I have plans.” I turn to leave.

  “You know we grew up in the same house, right?” he asks. “We’re carrying the same shit. It might help sometimes to carry it together.”

  I never really think about the shit my brother is carrying. I certainly never think of it as the same as mine. I want to ask him if our father ever locked him in a closet for talking back. I think I’d remember if he did. But maybe not. You only remember what fits your agenda.

  “I have to go,” I tell Slade. “Maybe I’ll call you later.”

  “You should,” he says.

  Or, at least, that’s what I think he says. I’m already out the door.

  25

  I wasn’t lying when I said I had plans. I’m taking Vicky to one of my fave spots in Philly. When I get to her house, I find her sitting on the porch, scrolling on her phone.

  “Hey, kid,” I say, coming up the front steps just as Faye is coming out of the house, followed close behind by Nick.

  “We’re off,” Faye says. “Have fun, you two.”

  They head for Faye’s car.

  “Where are they going?”

  “North Philly,” Vicky says.

  “Ew. Why?”

  “Uncle Nick’s dad lives there. I think he has cancer.”

  “You think?”

  “Aunt Faye said he’s sick, but when I asked her what’s wrong with him, she changed the subject. So, yeah, probably cancer.”

  I nod. “Probably.”

  “I guess she thinks I can’t handle the C word at all now. But I can. I’m not like a basket case or something, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Anyway,” she says, shrugging, “where are we going?”

  “To June’s. It’s a pool hall I used to frequent when I was a kid. It’s low-key seedy but the games are cheap. If you need to pee, go now, because you definitely don’t want to use the bathroom there.”

  “I peed a few minutes ago,” she says. “Pooped, too.”

  “Oh, I was positively dying to know when you last took a shit, so thanks for sharing that.”

  She giggles.

  June’s is down Forty-seventh, so we hop on the bus.

  “By the way: I told Faye we’re going to the arcade, so don’t tell her where we’re really going.” There used to be a Pac-Man machine at the pool hall, so it’s not a total lie.

  “Okay.”

  Then I’m like, “Wait. Maybe I shouldn’t be asking you to keep secrets from her.”

  “She keeps secrets,” Vicky says, “so why shouldn’t I?”

  I frown at her. “Are you still giving your aunt a hard time because she didn’t tell you about the egg donor thing?”

  “I’m not giving her a hard time. And she’s not even my real aunt, anyway.”

  Wooooooow.

  “Of course she is. Just because you’re not genetically related doesn’t mean she’s not your family. She obviously loves you. A lot.”

  “If she loves me so much, she should’ve told me where I really came from.”

  “So, you’re planning to hold it against her forever? Wow, that’s immature.”

  “I’m twelve.”

  Solid point.

  “You know Faye isn’t the only one who kept the egg donor thing a secret from you, right? You mad at your mother, too?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she died,” Vicky says. “Being mad at dead people is dumb. They can’t even be sorry.”

  “What about your dad, then?” I ask. “You mad at him?”

  “I’m always mad at him. It doesn’t matter, though. He never says he’s wrong about anything.”

  So that just leaves Faye, I guess, to face the kid’s wrath. It doesn’t seem fair.

  I watch Vicky staring out the bus window, her brow tightly furrowed now. I try to imagine what it must be like to just be going about your twelve-year-old business and then suddenly discover you’re not genetically related to half the people you thought you were genetically related to. SOUNDS AWESOME, ACTUALLY. WHERE DO I SIGN UP? But that’s me. Vicky actually liked her mother.

  “I guess it’s hard, huh?”

  “It’s just weird. I used to know this girl, Lainey, at my old school, who came from her mom’s eggs and some rando sperm. Out of a catalog or whatever. When she told me about it, I was like, ‘That’s cray.’ Not out loud, just in my head. But now I’m the one whose, like…existence…is cray. Except it’s worse.”

  “Worse why?”

  “Because my mom died. And then I found out she wasn’t my mom. So she kinda died again. Like, metaphorically.”

  I start to tell her again that Cynthia was her mom. In literally every way that matters. That genes don’t mean shit. That, a lot of the time, genes just tie you to people you’d never choose to be tied to if you had a choice. That the fact that she would choose Cynthia me
ans more than any DNA could ever mean. But something tells me none of that will help. And I don’t know what will.

  We ride the rest of the way in silence. When we get to our stop, when we get off the bus and walk the half-block to the spot where June’s should be, it’s not there. In its place is a coffee shop. An actual coffee shop, packed to the brim with gentrifying hipsters.

  “No fucking way,” I say. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Could this be any more of a fucking cliché?”

  “That’s a lot of F-bombs,” Vicky says. “Are you okay?”

  “What? Yeah. I’m…fine. I’m just surprised.”

  It doesn’t even look like the same building, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and bright green paint with no graffiti on it.

  “Why do white people like coffee shops so much?” Vicky asks.

  I shake my head. “Let’s just go.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere but here.”

  * * *

  —

  We walk to a water ice stand a few blocks away and get mango ices and soft pretzels. We sit outside and Vicky talks a bunch—about gentrification and white supremacy and capitalism—but I’m distracted. I wish I’d gone into the coffee shop and asked questions, like how long it’s been in business, so I’d know how long it’s been since the pool hall closed. I try to remember the last time I walked or rode by it and saw it open, but I can’t. That makes me sad, then annoyed with myself, because why does it even matter? Nostalgia aside, it was a dive I hadn’t even stepped foot in, in twenty years. Its sudden absence—or my sudden awareness of its absence—shouldn’t be a big deal.

  After we eat, Vicky says she wants to head home to watch a movie. We walk back to the bus stop.

  The ride is kind of a blur.

  When we get back to Vicky’s house, I’m still so distracted that I don’t even look for Nick’s car, I just follow Vicky inside. Which is my bad, because—you guessed it—Nick is there. He’s stretched out on the sofa, one arm behind his head, staring up at the ceiling with a tight brow, when we enter. He doesn’t seem to notice us.

  “You’re back already?” Faye asks, looking up from the papers she’s grading at the dining room table.

  The question pulls Nick out of his own distracted state and he sits up quickly and smiles. “How was the arcade?”

  “It’s gone,” Vicky says. “There’s a coffee shop there now.”

  I feel a lump swelling in my throat, the kind of thing that happens when one is about to cry. But I never cry, so I know it can’t be that. Gotta be acid reflux. I swallow it down hard.

  “A coffee shop?” Nick asks, standing up and smoothing out his jeans. “Could that be any more of a cliché?”

  Vicky looks at me. “That’s the same thing you said.”

  Yeah, but that shit sounded way smarter when I said it.

  “I thought you were going to North Philly.”

  “We did,” Nick says. “But my dad wasn’t feeling up to company much.”

  “We decided to watch a movie,” Vicky says, “since the arcade is closed.”

  The lump in my throat swells again, bigger this time.

  “I have to pee,” I tell the kid, before taking the stairs two at a time and locking myself in the bathroom.

  I’m standing in front of the mirror, the glow of the bulbs casting an amber-ish light on my skin, wondering what is wrong with my throat, when I start to cry. Like, legit. Actual, factual tears start squeezing their way out of my eyeballs. At first, I try to hold them back, but I quickly find that I’m no match for them. Before I can take a deep breath to try to get my emotions in check, the tears overwhelm me and I’m ugly-crying, complete with guttural sobs and full-on snot. It’s gross. But I can’t stop. My shoulders shake. My knees buckle. I sink to the floor, holding myself and bawling. My whole body trembles. As my sobs intensify, I feel something hot and angry rising in my chest, something I’m pretty sure is a scream.

  Q: How batshit would it be if I started screaming on this bathroom floor right now?

  A: PRETTY. FUCKING. BATSHIT.

  Just as I’m deciding whether or not “pretty fucking” is a level of batshit I’m comfortable with, there’s a knock on the bathroom door. I put my hands over my mouth to muffle my sobs.

  Faye calls my name. “Skye? Are you okay?”

  Shit.

  I get up off the floor and slap myself hard on both sides of my face. The crying stops just long enough for me to say, “I’m fine. I’m just…changing my tampon. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  After a pause, I hear Faye’s footsteps moving away from the door. When I’m sure she’s gone, I start sobbing again. I cry and cry, for two or three minutes straight, and then I wipe my eyes, blow my nose in a wad of toilet paper, and whisper to my mirror reflection: Get it the fuck together.

  When I open the door, Vicky’s standing right there, looking at me, and I almost jump out of my skin. “Jesus! You scared the shit out of me!”

  “Your eyes are all red,” she says. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s allergies.”

  She gives me a look.

  “What? It’s allergies! Jesus, kid!”

  “Don’t get mad at me!”

  “I’m not,” I tell her.

  “Okay,” she says, “well, I set up the movie in my room. We just need snacks.”

  All I want to do is go home. But the movie is Ninotchka, the Garbo jawn she used to watch with her mother, and I know how much it means that she wants to show it to me. So, I suck it up and say okay and follow her back downstairs.

  Nick’s no longer in the living room. Faye’s back at the dining room table, grading papers. Her eyes follow us as we walk past her into the kitchen. I smile like nothing weird just happened.

  “I want chips,” Vicky says, opening a cabinet. “And Oreos. Oh! Aunt Faye? Where’s the popcorn?”

  “Basement.”

  Without another word, Vicky skips to the basement door and disappears down the stairs. I take the chips out of the cabinet and pour some into a bowl. When I turn around to look for the Oreos, Faye is standing right there.

  “Jesus! Why’s everybody so lurky today?”

  “I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”

  “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  She gives me a look, like, Really, girl? “Because you were crying in the bathroom.”

  I don’t know why, but being reminded of the crying makes me want to cry again. I feel a lump swelling in my throat. Which: no way. I don’t cry in front of people. I WILL RUN SCREAMING FROM THIS HOUSE BEFORE I LET THAT HAPPEN.

  “Crying?” I ask with a chuckle. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “I could hear you through the door.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  Okay, listen: I’m crazy, but I’m not so crazy that I don’t know when I sound crazy. And right now? I sound crazy. I know that. And I know I should just stop. But I can’t. Because as long as I don’t confess to the crying, as long as there are no credible eyewitnesses, maybe it didn’t really happen. Maybe I didn’t really fall all the way apart over some shitty pool hall in a city I don’t even like.

  Faye’s not looking at me like I’m crazy, though. Her eyes are soft and full of concern, not judgment. She reaches out and puts one hand on my arm.

  The lump in my throat gets larger. “It’s okay,” I tell her, feeling tears tingling at the corners of my eyes. “It’s not a big deal.”

  I can’t adequately express how desperately I don’t want to cry. But I can’t stop it. It’s like I’ve come apart at all the places where my threads were already loose, and I’m spilling out.

  Faye puts her other hand on my other arm.

  I shake my head, feel tears fall on my shirt. “It’s stupid.”

  “Why is it stupid?”

/>   “Aunt Faye!” Vicky yells up the basement steps. “I can’t find the popcorn!”

  “It’s on the second shelf!” Faye yells back.

  “It’s not there!”

  “It is there! You have to actually look for it!”

  “I am looking!”

  Faye rolls her eyes, then turns back to me. “Why is it stupid?”

  “Because it was just a pool hall. With dirty bathrooms and sketchy dudes. It wasn’t something to cry about. I haven’t cried in three years; it doesn’t make sense for me to cry about this.”

  There’s a flash of a frown on her face and I realize I slipped and said pool hall instead of arcade. But she lets it go.

  “I lost a place a few years ago,” she says. “Not to gentrification. It burned down and the owners couldn’t rebuild.”

  I pull up the hem of my shirt and use it to wipe my eyes. “What kind of place was it?”

  “Hoagie shop,” she says, laughing a little. “I used to go there with my girls after school, in eighth grade. It wasn’t anything special. Nothing to cry about, either. It probably failed every surprise inspection it ever had. But we shared a lot of shit in those booths, you know?”

  I do know.

  When I was thirteen, I would go right home most days after school because my parents were still at work. Sometimes, Tasha came with me. We’d do our homework and get a snack and then, a few minutes before my father was due home, we’d leave. Sometimes, we’d take the bus to June’s to shoot pool. It was fifty cents a game. The old heads who hung around there would give us quarters and watch us play, or challenge us to a game. LeRoy, the manager, always stayed close by, making sure no one got out of line with us. Besides leering, and an occasional you got a boyfriend yet, sweet thing? they mostly didn’t. Tasha and I would hang there for three or four hours sometimes, playing game after game, talking shit to your uncles and granddads, and then, when it was late enough that I could be pretty sure my father was snoring loudly in front of the TV, I’d go home, grab whatever cold dinner my mother had left for me in the kitchen, and take it to my room. For years, even after my parents split up and I didn’t need to avoid home as much, Tasha and I—and eventually Viva—went to June’s, to shoot pool and talk shit. It was our spot. Now it’s gone. Now it’s a goddamn coffee shop.