“Yeah, I just … snapped a little. I wasn’t tracking.”
She laughs. “Okay, Tyler Durden, what does that even mean?”
“Remember that time we shared that brownie from the Venice beach boardwalk?”
“Yeah.” And then understanding dawns. “Ohh … okay, yeah. If your focus was anything like that time, I totally get it.”
She would. That was the time Slim admitted the ghost dog, Zero, from The Nightmare Before Christmas freaked her out as we sat watching the clock on my car’s dashboard move even though it felt like nothing else in the world was. All we’d wanted were some Jack-in-the-Crack curly fries.
It was the longest anyone had ever sat in a 24-hour drive-thru, I’d wager. My hearing went out twice, I’m pretty sure, and it felt like my tongue had gotten so cottony and swollen, it flooded my mouth.
Naturally, ordering “three large curly fries and DON’T FORGET THE RANCH!” was basically impossible.
Now, I shrug. “Might’ve been worse.”
“Eckh,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“What are you gonna do?”
I laugh and fall back on the floor next to Slim in her spread-eagled position. “I have no fricking clue.”
“Well …” I know it’s coming. Something I’m probably not going to want to hear from her just now. “You could just do nothing.”
I give her a look. A better “exasperated side-eye” than the emoji version could ever pull.
I hate that she’s acting as if this only rates about as high as a broken fingernail on the scale of Life’s Biggest Problems.
Why isn’t she more upset about this?
It’s unreasonable. I know, I know, I know it is. But I need her to feel exactly what I’m feeling. I need someone to feel that with me right now. The anger and the hurt and the confusion and the helplessness. I can’t keep feeling all of it alone like this.
She picks the polish off one of her nails. “So. What do we want to do then, huh?”
I love that she says “we,” like this involves her.
“I just want answers.” I can’t tell her what I really need: that I need her to be as angry as I am. Slim’s not built for anger anyway, so I don’t even know why I’m expecting that from her.
I just feel really, incredibly, ridiculously alone. And that’s new and strange for Slim and me—the disconnect. An emotional wound that can’t quite be shared.
She shakes her head, stands, pulls her pants off, and climbs under her covers. I do the same and climb in on the other side of her bed. I guess it’s a given that I’m staying over. I power my phone down at the same time as she turns the light off in her room.
“You could’ve probably had a few of those answers had you not run out of there like some chick running from the Maury Povich cameras.”
What does that even mean? “Yeah, well. I’ll get them in the morning.”
Slim yawns. “Yeah.”
I yawn. “Think Tristan knows?”
“Nah. He’d have told you.”
True. I turn my phone back on and text him.
up?
waiting for you to come home
I’m not. I’m at slims
k. you ok?
no. I wonder for a second if he knows.
Then he texts, want me to come there? And I know instantly that he does.
no. Then, did you know all along?
I don’t even know what’s going on. mamma’s been crying for like an hour and Dad’s had them shut in his office for about as long. no one’s telling me anything.
I promise I’ll tell you everything in the am. sorry. I know that sucks. love you.
you too.
see you in the am yeah
Chapter Five
Purpose comes in the morning. I wake up imbued with it. Like someone’s injected it, golden and dancing, underneath my skin.
I wriggle out from under Slim, aka the world’s wildest, most cuddly sleeper, and pull my jeans back on. Slim mumbles that she loves me and I try to tiptoe past her father, who is already awake and seated at the breakfast table, as I leave. Instead, Mr. Lim asks me if I want coffee, if I need breakfast, if I’m okay.
No, thank you, long sigh.
Yes, probably, but I’m okay, long sigh.
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, long sigh.
I am made up entirely of long sighs, until I get home and sneak my way into the pool house, where Tristan sometimes falls asleep.
Getting him awake is the stuff of miracles, but I manage it. It’s what happens next that worries me.
Tristan pulls me into a hug. He stands and stretches long and hugs me so tight, and it is so exactly the thing that I need, so sure and full and perfect. Trist and I aren’t huggers, and I wonder if maybe it’s because they’d all be like this. Shattering and restorative at once.
None of my family does the hugging thing. We reserve I love you‘s and physical affection for bank holidays and birthdays. Mamma’s more free with it than any of the rest of us, but that’s just Mamma. She was raised Southern, so I think she couldn’t help it even if she wanted to.
Tristan is shaking a little bit and when he says, “I’m mad at her, too, T,” I know why. He means Mamma. And I think, for a moment, maybe someone is feeling this with me? Maybe Trist can be my person. The one who gets it.
I pull away a little. “Did she talk to you?”
“No,” he says, looking down at me. Tristan hit puberty, like, right out of the womb pretty much. He grew six feet and his voice started to crack around age ten or so and then began its deep descent around age twelve. He’s got this honeyed bass tone thing going on in the pipes, and all my friends talk about it like I’m supposed to care. “I only know what I listened in on. You need honesty. Mamma’s gotta give you that.”
“Did you get caught? Listening in,” I clarify.
“Nah. I’m stealthy as hell.”
With an eye roll, I deadpan, “You’re goofy as hell, is what you are, but sure. Let’s call that ‘stealth’ if it makes you feel better.”
He shoves me. I shove him back. He smiles, but it dies when I ask, “So then, you know I’m not really your sister?”
“Pretty sure half siblings still means you’re my sister, unfortunately for me.”
“Oh, wow. How nice for you that you’ve grown a sense of humor much faster than you’ve been able to grow facial hair.”
“Ha-ha. Yes, I know Mamma lied. That your dad is, like …”
“White. You can say it. It’s not a swear.” I’ve always said that to white people about Black people. You can say that I’m Black, you know. I am. It’s not a swear.
“Yeah,” Tristan says. “Well. Anyway, I know that she, like, lowkey tried to hide that shit from you.”
“Tristan, don’t say shit.” I hate it when he swears. I know I do all the time, but it just feels like my little brother shouldn’t. My little half brother. My half little brother? Whatever. “What else?”
“I know ‘bout the box. Kinda. Not, like, details about what’s in it though. Oh, and that you freakin’ reamed her out.” Tristan laughs.
Nail-biting is not a thing I’ve ever really made a habit of. But since last night, I’ve bitten my already-short-for-football nails down to the quick. “If I’d ‘reamed’ Mamma out, do you think I’d be standing here right now?”
“Fair,” he says.
“What else?”
“Eh. That’s really it.”
That’s really all there is, I guess.
I plop down heavy on his bed. The pool house is on two levels. All glass walls and open floor plans. “I don’t even know what questions to ask.” I pause for a second. “Can we make a list?”
Tristan’s so good at this. List-making. He makes lists for everything. For things he needs and things he doesn’t. He makes lists for fun and for school and for other people, even when they don’t know it. Last year, our Poppa—Daddy’s father—complained about having a stressful week coming up. Poppa is pushing ninet
y years old, so when Trist made him a to-do list for the week, a healthy meals list, and a list of financially-preferable alternatives to his daily meds, I thought it was meant to help. But when I asked Poppa if the lists were helping at all, he claimed he didn’t know what I was talking about. Because Trist never gave them to him. I glance over to the wall at my left where a Post-it list of different red fruits sits. A list on his bedside table is, to my best guess, things that begin with the letter X?
Tristan’s already got a list started, it turns out. There are only three questions on it, but it’s not a bad starting point.
Does Tasia’s real dad know?
Who sent the box?
Why did you lie.
That last one isn’t even posed as a question.
“You wanna add anything else?”
I shake my head.
“Want me to stick around for the inquisition?”
I nod.
Look at me, acting my shoe size and not my age.
Trist walks out of the pool house and in the back door of the main house, and this is the easy part. All I have to do is follow, and so I do.
It’s like I’m the prodigal daughter returned. The back door slams and Mamma and Daddy fast-walk into the room to greet us.
“I’m so glad you’re home safe,” Mamma says, even though I was only at Slim’s and my staying there is a thing that happens more often than not.
And it’s not that I don’t believe her relief, but I keep getting this feeling like she’s making it about her. Her crying makes her the victim. Her compassion makes her the accustomed; it means she’s had time to get used to this that I haven’t had. It feels unfair.
“I have questions.”
Daddy nods. “And we’ll answer them. Let’s go into the den.”
“Tristan,” Mamma says. “Baby, maybe you should give us a moment to—”
“She wants me to stay.”
And at the same time I say, “He stays.”
Daddy says, “All right.” And then we’re all sitting in the stiff-ass antique chairs in our den.
“I have questions,” I say again.
“Yeah, honey,” Mamma says. “Anything you want to know.”
With Tristan’s list in hand, I say, “The man in the photo is my real dad?”
Mamma gives a jerky nod of her head and she’s already crying. Again.
“God, can you please stop crying long enough to answer even one of my questions?”
Daddy’s eyes cut toward me. “Tasia Lynn. Don’t think this situation means you can just talk to your mother any way you please. That’s not how this works.”
I roll my eyes and find it lucky that I get away with that gesture. My parents have never been the ones to tolerate eye-rolling.
“I’m sorry,” Mamma says. “I have … omitted the truth for a long time. And that truth is that … I was young. I needed to tell people something when I got pregnant with you. I was nineteen and I didn’t know what I was doing, so I just tried to smooth things over as much as I could—”
That’s sort of what Mamma does. She smooths things over, just as they happen, in that moment. She’s a fixer in the boardroom and she’s a fixer at home. Like a trauma surgeon—her only goal is to patch things up with immediacy.
I can feel my heart swelling in my throat.
She continues, “I … It was a rough time for me. I was young. Too young. I wasn’t married, I was only nineteen.”
Wait. Nineteen. “But you said you were with Daddy since seventeen.”
Mamma hangs her head. Pauses. Something important happens. “I was. We were together in high school, had planned to be together while we each attended separate colleges. Merrick was my … He taught at my university.”
“Merrick? That’s his name? Merrick?”
She nods. “Merrick d’Aquin”
Tristan nods along like he’s taking all this in. Like it’s helping him make sense of things again. Like these answers are sufficient.
It’s incredibly selfish of me, but I don’t like how comfortable he’s getting with her excuses. So I dig, even though I know he won’t get why I’m doing it.
“He was your professor?”
“Yes. Well, a student-teacher, technically,” she says. Like the distinction matters.
In that photo, Merrick didn’t look that much older than Mamma and Daddy.
“Were you raped?”
She doesn’t even flinch. I wonder if she’s been asked that question before. “No.”
“Did he force you or coerce you … for a grade or something?”
“No.”
“Did you love him?”
She’s silent again. I know she probably hasn’t ever been asked this, because the answer tears out of her like an animal getting free of its cage. “I thought I did.”
“Do you still?” No one would have asked her this. In our family—in Mamma’s and in Daddy’s—when you make a mistake, the emotions behind it, they’re not important. Not enough to talk about. The focus is typically one of two things in a Black family: How could you embarrass me like this? and/or How could you be so stupid?
Love? No. No one would have asked her if her heart played a role.
“No,” she says. “I don’t know him anymore, he doesn’t know me.”
“You cheated on Daddy with Merrick. With your teacher.”
“Yes.” It’s like hearing a gavel rap against wood. The verdict is very final.
I turn toward Daddy, not wanting to ask the question on my tongue. There’s really no choice because he’s still as stone. Daddy’s normal mode of silence tends to run a little warmer. Comforting, like sheets from the dryer. But this silence—it’s quiet, like fog rolling in. “You knew about the pregnancy all along? You were there when I was born.”
I’ve seen the photos of him holding me. He looked so happy that day. I don’t understand how that much happiness was even possible for a kid that’s not even biologically yours.
“Why did you even agree to raise me?”
The weight of his words must be incredibly heavy for all that his shoulders fall. “It seemed like the right thing to do.”
I nod. Ouch. Well. Always a good day to find out you were nothing more than a moral obligation.
I take a deep breath before my next thing. “Who sent that box?”
Mamma shakes her head. “I really don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t have any idea who sent it or why.”
“Does he know about me? Merrick?”
Another head shake. I’m getting a little sick of nonverbal responses but I understand she’s just trying not to cry. She’s holding back the tears for me. “I never told Merrick I was pregnant. I left school as soon as I started to show. Broke things off with him. Came home and did some community college while I lived at your Auntie Sandra’s.”
“So then, he couldn’t have sent the box, right?”
Daddy steps in. “Well, we don’t know, Tasia. Just because Mom didn’t tell him at the time doesn’t mean he couldn’t have found out.” The tension around his mouth doesn’t even loosen when he speaks.
“No,” Mamma says. “No. That’s not Merrick. If he found out, he wouldn’t do this … cryptic watch-from-afar thing. Passive aggression was never the way Merrick operated.”
Daddy’s arms lift and then his palms slap his thighs loudly as they come back down. He’s not given to big gestures, but if ever there was a time for them, I think it’s now. “Sloane, give me a break. You said it yourself—you don’t know this man anymore. We can’t say whether or not he’d have done this. It’s been almost nineteen years. People can change.”
“He could not have been the one to send this,” Mamma says. She seems certain in a way that she hasn’t since yesterday.
“How are you so sure?” I eye her carefully.
“I just … know, in my gut, that it’s not who he was. Can’t be who he is now. Trust me,” she says.
“Ha! This family is a fricking joke.”
Daddy cuts
a sharp eye at me.
“So,” I continue, “You don’t know where this guy is or if he’s even alive or in jail or anything? We don’t know anything about him now?”
Everyone’s silent. And I guess Mamma doesn’t feel inclined to answer my question, because she doesn’t even look at me.
I glance at Tristan. He seems … angry. More angry than I’ve seen him. Tristan is not a person who fidgets. He lists and that’s the extent of it. No fidget spinner for him. Except, now he’s sitting in a chair in the far corner, one knee moving a mile a minute. At a glance, I catch the index and middle fingers of his left hand picking at the skin of his thumb.
“Trist?” I whisper.
He doesn’t look at me. Refuses, only shaking his head in answer.
It’s such a small thing. So inconsequential in the grander scheme of things. Trist will always be my dork brother. Half, full—it’s all just semantics. He was right earlier. Trist is Trist. He gets me. That doesn’t change just because our labels have changed on a technicality.
But he is mad at me right now. Obviously he’s mad at me. He probably expected me to uncover some of this. Maybe just gently peel back the Band-Aid a bit. Not rip it off and shove a rusty fork in the wound. I’m digging for me, though. I have to. It’s got nothing to do with him, and that—the fact that I’m asking the hard questions and not letting Mamma’s tears and “trust me” pleas fly—that’s Mamma’s fault.
Just one more thing Mamma and this box and its sender have taken from me. And it makes me pissed at her all over again.
All I want is to reassure Tristan that I’m still here. One hundred percent.
He needs time, though. That much is clear.
I look at Daddy. “Are you Tristan’s dad? Like, biologically?”
I need that distinction to be clear before he says he’s my dad too.
“I am.”
“But not mine.”
“Tasia, I am always going to be your—”
“Don’t give me the answer you read in a parenting magazine—you’re not actually my dad, just say it.” I say it so calmly. I think it actually hurts him. God, I feel like such a monster. Trying to land all my blows with as much force as I can, taking care not to pull any of my punches.
“No,” he says. “No, I’m not.”
Home and Away Page 3
