I’M NEARLY INCONSOLABLE WHEN MY sister Aabidah finds me in the teachers’ lounge. The crying brought on a coughing fit, so she had to bring the oxygen tank through a side entrance so no one at the dance would see. Aabidah eventually had to half walk, half carry me out of the school building. I’m no longer crying, but I’m still sipping breaths from my oxygen mask as she draws me a bath with Epsom salts and eucalyptus oil to open my chest up.
“You want to tell me why I had to come and get you? Or why you went to a dance when you know you’re not supposed to?”
“I’m n-not a-a child,” I say, fully aware I’m acting like one.
“I can forbid you from doing things, but I haven’t, because usually you don’t need me to be the adult in the room. You handle it yourself. But this? You could barely get up and get dressed this morning. There is a reason we’re doing virtual school online. Why, why—”
“Because I’m seventeen. Because I want my senior memories to be more than doctors’ visits and binge-watching singing competitions,” I say, holding back the frustration and sadness building inside me as I pull the mask away from my mouth so she can hear me clearly.
“Mama would be on your ass right now,” she mumbles to the tub.
“But Mama isn’t here anymore, so…”
“So…” She turns to face me, then shuts off the faucet and lets her hand drag in the water a bit to break up the salt crystals settling in like fog.
“I saw Coach Letterman outside,” she reveals.
“He tried to push up on you, didn’t he,” I say as I let the mask snap back in place.
“Yup.”
“Ewww.” My face contorts.
“I don’t know how he keeps his job,” she wonders.
“He only pushes up on the recent graduates. Once you cross that high school stage, you’re fair game. He needs to be reported.”
Aabidah nods a little too fervently, and I can tell she’s hiding a smirk.
“Did you give him your number?” I ask, drawing in a pained breath of shock. She breaks into a fit of laughter, and I can’t help but follow her. “Owwww. Don’t make me laugh.”
“I didn’t give him my real number. But Coach Letterman is fine!” she argues.
I grimace. “He’s old as hell, too.”
“Whatever, I’m grown.”
“See, y’all be encouraging that nasty behavior. What did Mama used to say? A fast tail makes a soft behind,” I chide.
She sucks her teeth. “That is not how the saying goes. It’s a hard head makes a soft behind.”
“Whatever. You know what I mean.” I take a beat to let my breath slow, and slip off my robe to get into the tub. “I’m sorry for going out. It was selfish. Fay called, and I don’t know. I just couldn’t say no again,” I say, guiltily.
Aabidah shakes her head. “Shut up. You’re supposed to go out and have fun, and you’re supposed to do it behind your parents’ backs. You don’t have any of those anymore, so my back will do just fine.”
I slip lower into the water and let the warmth do its work. Eucalyptus pushes past the blocks in my nose and chest, allowing me to breathe just slightly better than a few minutes before, but the feeling is delicious all the same. Aabidah gets up to go, but I stop her. I don’t want this tension between us. I never ever let us leave a room without smoothing things out. Not after how Mama died.
“Tell me what you remember most about senior year.”
Her shoulders slump, hating the change in subject. “After you tell me what happened with Fay.”
My chin drops to my wet chest and I draw circles in the water with my finger.
“I ran. Metaphorically speaking. Really, I just leaned on this girl until I partially collapsed in the teachers’ lounge.”
Her mouth drops open in genuine shock. “Why?”
“I couldn’t stand looking into his eyes and seeing so much hope there. The wanting. How many times can I say no when he wants to come over? I know he just wants to see me, but I’ll be damned if he sees me with my face half drowned by an oxygen mask. The house smells like old sick people, no matter how much Pine-Sol you use. And I’m not blaming you. It’s me.
“And Fay’s sitting there at the table and he wants to dance. He doesn’t say it but I know he does, and I keep coming up with these excuses because the truth is too real and too pathetic. I saw the looks on all the other girls’ faces. Pity. Not for me, but for him. Those bitches smell the blood in the water, and you know what? I agree with them. Why would he want to be with me when he could be with one of them? One of those smiling, happy girls with a scholarship on the way and finals the only fear in her heart. Somebody who can twerk and drink spiked punch and laugh at dumb shit ’cause laughing is easy. I thought I could handle it, but I couldn’t.” I pause to take a much-needed breath, small though it may be.
“So that’s it, then?”
“What’s it?” I say, the grief giving way to anger.
“You just giving up? Like you did with Spelman?”
“Spelman’s just on hold.”
“Scholarships don’t hold. You’re a legacy. You’ll be the fifth generation of women in this family to go to Spelman College and pledge. Pretty girls do what?”
I roll my eyes. “Wear twenty pearls. I know.” We don’t talk about how Aabidah missed her opportunity to continue the legacy because she had to stay home and take care of Mama. Her sorors are great, but the University of South Carolina wasn’t her dream. I think it’s too much for her to imagine that Spelman might not be my dream too, or that fate has intervened yet again to set fire to our family legacy.
“I know their music program isn’t what you originally had in mind but—”
“We had a deal!” I whisper-yell, rising just a bit in the water so she knows I’m serious. This part of the conversation is over. “No college dreams, no future plans. I want scandal and intrigue. Four years ago. Spill,” I demand.
Aabidah chews her lip and fixes the decorative towels on the rack so they line up just so. Thinking. She wants to say more and I’m waiting for it, but she doesn’t go there. Instead she launches into a story about how the French teacher got caught cheating and his speech-pathologist wife tossed all his clothes onto the tennis court right before a match. It’s funny. It’s also a smoke screen. She gave up too easily, and if I know anything about my sister, it’s that she never ever gives up without a fight.