by Mia Mckenzie
Faye moves away from me, to the edge of the rooftop, and looks out over the city, saying nothing. I watch her, waiting.
“Do you want me to leave?” I ask her.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she says. “I just need a moment.”
She stands there staring out at Philly for another full minute. Then she rubs her temples and says, almost to herself, “I really don’t want to be thinking about Nick tonight.” She turns back to me. “Why are you telling me this now, Skye?”
“Like I said, I didn’t think I could handle—”
She shakes her head. “But why are you telling me now?”
It’s a good question. For a second, I can’t think of an answer. Why am I telling her now, in this moment, when we’ve just used the love word for the first time, when we’re on our way to my room to finally do the sex? This is the absolute worst moment. I suddenly hear Tasha’s voice at the back of my brain. You test people to see if they really care about you.
Now I start to panic. Maybe I’m testing Faye. Maybe I don’t believe she really loves me and I’m telling her about Nick now to make her prove her love by forgiving me. Maybe I haven’t grown or changed at all. Maybe I’m just as jaded and disconnected and messed up as I was when I landed in Philly two months ago. But then I look at Faye. She’s watching me with those intense dark eyes. And I feel sure. Sure I love her. Sure she loves me. And it’s such a relief.
“I think I’m telling you now because I want you to have all the information,” I say, realizing it’s the truth as I’m saying it. “So you can decide if you still want to sleep with me or not.”
She’s quiet for a moment, thinking about it. Then she sighs. “That’s such a good answer.”
NAILED IT.
“Please don’t keep any more things from me,” she says.
“I won’t.”
She comes and stands close to me again. She puts her hands on my face. “I still want to sleep with you.”
Oh, thank God.
* * *
—
Back in my room, we lie on the bed and kiss. And kiss. And kiss. I cannot get enough of Faye’s mouth, of the taste and smell of it, of the way her lips feel against mine. I could lie here with her tongue in my mouth for the rest of my life. But after a few minutes of kissing, she climbs on top of me. She sits up, so she’s straddling me, then she pulls me into a sitting position, too. She tugs at my shirt and, as I raise my arms, she pulls it over my head. This is when I realize I’m still wearing my emergency bra and begin to scream internally.
Faye looks at the bra and I can see the horror in her eyes, like: WHY ARE YOU WEARING YOUR GRANDMOTHER’S BRASSIERE?
“I…wasn’t expecting this to happen today,” I tell her.
“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s coming off now anyway.”
She reaches around to unhook the bra. Thing is: Grandma’s bra has one hundred and seventeen clasps. Oh, you thought Meemaw was just going to be out here with a regular-ass bra with a regular-ass number of clasps? You thought Gam-Gam was going to risk her titties not staying perfectly still through a four-hour church service? What if she caught the spirit? You thought she was finna risk her bosoms just falling out all over the place while she was praising Jesus? You. Thought. Wrong.
Thirty seconds later, Faye has managed to unhook two, maybe three of the clasps. Sweat is starting to form on her brow.
“Um, you know what?” I say. “Just let me do it.”
She lets go, looking relieved.
I take the straps off my shoulders, twist the bra around and unhook it, then hurl it across the room like I’m exorcising a demon.
I reach for Faye’s top and she lets me pull it over her head. She’s wearing the kind of bra you want to be wearing whilst getting laid. It’s black and silky. When I take it off, there are her new breasts. They’re different from her previous breasts, for sure. They’re higher, bouncier, firmer. I like them exactly as much as I liked the old ones, which is a lot. I suck one nipple and then the other, and hear Faye’s breath quicken.
She pushes me back on the bed again and kisses my stomach. She unbuckles my belt, unzips my jeans and pulls them off. Thankfully, I’m not wearing your grandmother’s drawers. I’m not wearing underwear at all, in fact, which makes things easy. Faye pushes my thighs apart. I close my eyes and wait for more pleasure to wash over me. It…sort of does and it sort of doesn’t. I mean, she’s definitely down there doing stuff. But…to be quite honest…
Faye stops and looks up at me. “Is this okay?” she asks.
“Okay” is exactly what I’d call it.
“It’s been a while,” she continues. “I might be a little…rusty.”
“I can talk you through it if you like.”
She smiles.
So, I talk her through it. She goes back down and I tell her exactly what to do and how to do it, how slowly, how softly. Not like that. Yes, there. There. Yes. She listens, her tongue following my every instruction, until it feels as though she’s got the hang of me, that she understands how I like it, and then I shut up and let her take over again. And it’s wonderful. I come, thinking about how lucky I am, how safe and happy I feel.
And that’s not even the best part. Because now it’s my turn, now I get to go down on her. I get to feel her hands in my hair, her thighs against my cheeks. I get to see her back arch and her head fall back. I get to hear her little-bit-raspy voice wrap itself around my name when she comes.
31
The next couple of weeks are the best of my entire wasted life. I spend my days working on the final deets of the Bali-Sydney trip, which kicks off three weeks from now, and planning the New Zealand and Indonesia trips in late July. I tell Toni that I’d like her to lead the Malaysia trip in August, so I can get back to Philly in two months instead of three, and offer her a promotion and a raise.
Most days after school, and on the weekend, I hang with Vicky. Some nights, Faye comes to my bed. We agree not to tell Vicky about us just yet, what with the whole I didn’t find you to give you to Aunt Faye thing.
“We’ll figure it out,” Faye assures me.
We make plans to go to Wildwood the week before I leave, which is also the first week of summer break for Vicky and Faye.
I give more thought to introducing Vicky to my mother, who asks about the kid when I take her to the grocery store and again when I help her get ready for church.
“You bringing the baby next time?”
“She’s not a baby.”
“She’s my grandbaby. Baby or not.”
Vicky is similarly eager for the intro, asking me to take her with, every time I mention I’m going to my mother’s.
“What harm can it do?” Viva asks when I talk to her about it.
I figure she’s right. My issues with my mother are mine. They aren’t really relevant to Vicky, who will never need to depend on my mother for anything.
So I give in. I tell them both that I’ll bring Vicky to visit next Sunday afternoon. I tell Slade to make sure the house is clean by then.
“Why?”
“I’m bringing someone to meet Mom.”
“Who?”
I haven’t mentioned anything about Vicky or the eggs to my brother. I’m not keeping it a secret or anything. I guess I just figured my mother would tell him. Which, apparently, she has not.
“Good for you,” he says, smiling wide, when I tell him about the kid. “I’m glad you found something to stick around for.” There’s only a little bit of shade in his voice; he mostly sounds sincere, earnest even.
I never called him about that drink. I feel kind of shitty about it now.
“Can I meet her?” he asks. “Or just Mom?”
“You can meet her, if you want.”
“Aight,” he says. “
Aight, cool.”
* * *
—
On the last day of school, there’s an awards ceremony at West Philadelphia Montesssori. Faye has to be at her own last day of school across town, so I ask Viva to come along so I have someone to share shade-glances with when Kenny and Charlotte annoy me. Vicky gets certificates of excellence in English, science, and geography, and an extra special certificate with embossed gold print on it for outstanding achievement in spelling. I get teary every time she walks onstage.
“It’s kind of crazy loving somebody this much, isn’t it?” Kenny asks, and when I look at him he’s a little teary, too. I decide he’s not quite as annoying as I thought.
When the awards ceremony ends, I hurry over to Vicky, ready to tell her how proud I am of her, how smart and good at stuff she is, but when I open my mouth, what comes out is, “I love you so much, Vick.”
She beams up at me. “Same.”
* * *
—
I wake up Sunday morning in Faye’s bed. Vicky’s at her dad’s, so I slept over. We had a rough night. In a sexy way. My nipples are sore. And there’s a visible bite on my right inner thigh. Faye is a ravenous lover, with an eclectic sexual appetite. Pretty confident every hole in my body has had her tongue in it. Even my nose, although I’m eighty percent sure that was an accident. Well. Seventy-five percent. She’s kinky. Is what I’m saying.
The moment I open my eyes, she’s wrapping her arms around me, pulling me on top of her, opening her legs. I slip my fingers inside her and she moans in my ear. We stay in bed for hours, fucking in different positions, with our hands, or our mouths, or my vibrator, or the strap-on Faye picked up for us at a toy shop on her way home from work. During breaks from all the sex, we talk.
I ask her why she doesn’t have children of her own. She says she never thought she could handle kids. “My parents never really seemed to be able to handle us. I didn’t think I could do much better.” She’s lying on her side, propped up on her elbow. Through the window, morning sun casts amber light on her face and in her hair.
I ask about her former spouses. She tells me about Nigel, the Jamaican boyfriend she married right out of college. “He was like my father in some ways. He’d disappear for days at a time and then show up bearing gifts. In the end, I realized that wasn’t something I had to accept in a relationship. And I divorced him.”
“But you got married again?”
She nods. “Five years ago.”
“To a woman?” I ask, twisting a lock of her hair around my finger.
“Yes,” she says. “Sydette.”
“What was she like?”
“Smart. Ambitious. Obsessed with the idea that I was going to leave her for a man.” She shakes her head, annoyed at the memory. “I’ve left men for women. I’ve never left a woman for a man.”
“So, why’d you break up?”
“She left me, for a lesbian. Whose sexuality wouldn’t aggravate her ulcer, I guess.”
“Wow.”
“We’re still friends, though,” she says. Then, “What about you, Skye? Who are your significant exes?”
“I had a long-term thing in my twenties,” I tell her. “Mostly it’s been short-term and very short-term things since then.”
“Why?”
“It’s what I’ve wanted.”
She makes a little sound, like hmm. After a moment, she asks, “Is it still what you want?”
“No.”
She kisses me. Softly at first, and then with an increasing passion. I grab fistfuls of her hair and slip my tongue in her mouth, and she reaches for the strap-on.
When it’s nearly eleven, we disentangle our bodies and drag ourselves out of bed. We shower together and put our clothes on, and we’re fully dressed when Kenny drops Vicky off.
* * *
—
“What’s going on?” Vicky asks me. “Why are you smiling so much?”
We’re walking to my mother’s house. It’s a mile away, but it’s a bright afternoon.
“Nothing’s going on. Can’t I just be in a good mood?”
“Yeah,” she says. But she looks suspicious.
Faye isn’t coming to meet my mother, because Vicky wants it to just be us. Which I’m fine with. Having Faye meet my mother feels like a lot, under the circumstances of all the sex we’re currently having. And it’s still nice to just kick it with Vicky, to be goofy with her, to talk about Grace Jones, and gossip about Jaz having a new boyfriend who looks like Gerald from Hey Arnold!
When we get to my mother’s house, she’s waiting for us on the front porch. I’m a little surprised she remembered we were coming. Her hair is done in fresh plaits and she’s wearing a lavender tracksuit I’ve never seen before. When she spots us coming up the steps, she stands, nervously smoothing out her outfit, and I think she wants to look put together for the kid.
“Hey, Mom. This is Vicky.”
Despite harassing me to introduce her to my mother, Vicky is silent now, bashfully waving hello. My mother’s not having any of that. She wraps her arms around the kid and squeezes. After a few moments, she takes a step back and beams down at Vicky. “Look at this perfect child,” she says, her hands on Vicky’s face, examining it from every angle, while the kid smiles up at her. I’m smiling, too, watching them.
“I’ve been praying for you to come and see me,” my mother says to Vicky. “I feel so blessed today.”
“This is for you,” Vicky says, reaching for the potted plant I’m holding. “Aunt Faye wanted us to get amaryllis but they didn’t have that at the flower store. This is a red begonia.” She hands it to my mother.
“I love begonias,” my mother says.
I’m wondering if that’s true or not when my brother hurries out onto the porch, looking stressed.
“Why didn’t you answer my calls?” he asks me.
“I didn’t get any,” I tell him, taking my phone out of my pocket and realizing it’s still on silent from last night.
Slade looks at Vicky and smiles, but there’s something weird in his face.
“What’s going on?”
“Skye?” a voice calls from inside the house.
A man’s voice.
My father’s voice.
“Is that Skye out there?”
I move away from the door.
“He showed up yesterday,” Slade whispers. “I didn’t know until I got home this morning.”
Vicky and my mother are still talking about the begonia. I take the kid’s hand and pull her away.
My mother looks at me. “What’s wrong, Skye Beam?”
“What’s Fred doing here?” I ask her.
“Oh,” she says. “Well, your father doesn’t have anywhere to stay right now—”
“He’s staying here?”
“For a little while,” she says.
I feel walls suddenly closing in on me.
“Skye?” my father calls again, his voice closer this time. And then there he is, standing in the doorway. His light skin is even lighter than it used to be, almost papery with age. He’s wearing thick glasses that make his eyes look small. The twenty-five years since I’ve seen him have not softened him. He’s still thin and relatively muscly, still stern-faced. Still menacing, at least to me. “I thought I heard your voice,” he says, smiling.
I look at my mother, standing there holding the begonia, blinking at me as if she doesn’t know why I’m upset, and I feel twelve again, unprotected and unloved.
“You not gonna say hello to your own father?” Fred asks me. He looks at the kid. “This my grandbaby?”
I start down the front steps, pulling Vicky along behind me.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
I don’t answer. My face feels hot. My chest is tight. We start down the street.
&nb
sp; “Where are we going?”
“Home.” Only I don’t actually know where we’re going. Is the bed-and-breakfast this way? Is Vicky’s house in the other direction?
Slade catches up to us near the corner. “I told her to make him leave,” he says. “But it’s not my house. I can’t make him leave. I would if I could.”
But I barely hear him. Because this is the corner where, when I was twelve, I stood in the rain trying to decide which direction to run, after my father hurled a pot of coffee across the room at me because I rolled my eyes at him, and all my mother said in response was, “Calm down, Fred. It’s too early in the morning for all that.”
I leave my brother standing there, on the spot where coffee dripped from my sneakers onto the pavement, and pull Vicky across the street. I don’t look back.
* * *
—
“What happened?” Faye asks when Vicky and I enter the house, less than an hour after we left. “Why are you back already?”
“Skye’s dad was there,” Vicky says. “She got all freaked out.”
“She’s exaggerating.”
When we got to the other side of the street, I was reeling. A few blocks later, I was seething. By the time we got to Vicky’s block, I’d pushed the past back down into the bowels of my psyche, where it belongs. And now I’m fine. Really. I’M FINE.
“What was your father doing there?” Faye asks.
I shrug. “He doesn’t have a place to live, I guess. I didn’t hang around to get all the details.”
She peers at me, concerned. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. It’s my fault, anyway.”
“Your fault how?”
I let my guard down. I let myself forget for a minute that nobody actually gives a shit about me. “It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “I don’t even want to talk about it anymore.”
“Skye—”
