Emory
In the desert, there’s a plant called the false rose of Jericho. It grows in places so dry and dusty it damn near kills itself so it doesn’t have to think about where it might get its next drop of water. It shrivels up and tumbles in the wind, aimless.
I was rolling in the breeze, hoping the little drops of water I got when Kai giggled would be enough to keep me tethered, but it wasn’t. I was drying up and it was getting harder and harder to pretend I wasn’t.
The truth was, I didn’t care a smidge about lace or chiffon. I didn’t have half a horse’s fucks to give about daffodils or sunflowers. Not a pot of gold or a barrel of wine could’ve made me worry about a church or a community center or an outdoor ceremony.
April was trying to convince me that a buffet’s always the best idea and Jamilah was arguing with her that a plated meal’s more classy, even the wedding magazine she stole from the gas station said so.
They both turned to me. “What do you think, Em?”
We’d been sitting at a booth in the McDonald’s since noon, when I got out of school for lunch and beelined for anywhere but Adela. It was late afternoon now and I picked apart a french fry and held a piece on my finger for Kai to slurp up like a fish. A new wave of heat arrived without warning this week, sending us burrowing for shade like desert foxes, and the McDonald’s was one of the only air-conditioned buildings to hole up and breathe in. Besides, Simone was gone for the day and so was the truck we all relied on.
I sighed. “I don’t even know if I want a wedding. It’s expensive.”
“Please, girl, your man’s got a real job, he can afford to rent out the church basement for two hours.” Jamilah set her daughter down on the ground and let her hold on to her fingers as she walked. She was fourteen months now and she still wasn’t walking and Jamilah’d gotten so worried, she trained her like she was some kind of athlete.
“You’ve seen how expensive a child is. His money goes to gas, food, and the garage we’re renting from a lady at his church since Pawpaw kicked me out. I don’t want nothing fussy, just a courthouse and maybe a little suit for Kai.”
“You’d look so handsome in a suit, wouldn’t you?” April cooed at Kai. He giggled and grabbed at a piece of her bangs. “I don’t get it, you always loved shopping and doing your hair and stuff. Why wouldn’t you want a big party where that’s all you do?”
I shrugged. “Who wants a wedding no one will show up to?”
“I do,” Jamilah said. “Can be just me and my Girls and my baby, but I’m taking my day.”
It wasn’t really my day to begin with. Jay was the one who wanted to decorate the church and hire a band instead of just using a playlist on my phone. He was the one who begged me to take a trip out to JCPenney and look for real wedding bands. He’d been asking me for weeks when we were going to pick a color scheme, but I kept avoiding. The truth was, I didn’t give a hoot. All I cared about was the little person in my hands and not letting him out of my sight in case he fell and they tried to do to me what they did to Simone.
“Do you know what’s going on with Simone?” April asked. “It’s been two weeks and she’s still saying her and the twins need ‘space.’ ”
“We spent the afternoon with them yesterday,” Jamilah said.
April shook her head. “Yeah, but nobody’s spent the night in weeks.”
I shrugged. “She just heard that DCF closed her case. She’s probably just being cautious.” I stood from the table. “I should go. Jay’s gonna get back soon and I told him I’d meet him by the school and we’d drive back to the garage together.”
“At least think about the dress,” April pleaded. “Short or long? Train? Bustle? Anything, Emory. You have to want something.”
At some point or another you have to stop dreaming about things. You look around and realize where you are and, suddenly, the appeal of fluffy white clouds and satin dresses fades and you remember how much safer it is to not want nothing at all. The hospital room did that to me. Adela did that to me.
Then, when the social worker showed up, I looked down at Kai and realized how precious this was, getting to hold him, getting to love him. Anything else I wanted couldn’t matter next to that. I’d made my bed. It wasn’t plush or wide or warm, but it had sheets that covered the urine stains from the last person who wet the bed, and, regardless of everything else, it was mine.
I placed Kai into the BabyBjörn carrier and then slung his diaper bag over my shoulder.
“See y’all tomorrow morning for laundry,” I said.
April tilted her head. “You’re coming? But you have school.”
I shrugged. “Don’t matter much anymore. My grades are good enough to graduate even if I don’t go back the rest of the year. We only have two weeks left anyway.”
I waved behind me and headed into the thick outside, hotter than two squirrels humpin’ in a sock, and I knew April and Jamilah were worried, but the truth was I didn’t much care what happened after I graduated, so why work harder than I had to? A high school diploma was more than they had.
When I made it back to the school building, Jay was still an hour out, so I checked that Adela wasn’t in sight and settled at a picnic table, deciding it was as good a time as any to paint my nails. I fed Kai first and then I took out the only color I had on me, a salmon that didn’t really go with my skin tone but was better than the old, chipped green I had on.
I scratched at the old paint till it came off in flakes and then laid my left hand on the table, working around Kai’s body still strapped to mine, and delicately applied the first coat. It wasn’t half bad either. I started thinking about how colors don’t really look like what they’re called and how salmon’s not the color of salmon at all and if it was, I don’t think nobody would wear it, kind of like peach or mustard. I was onto my second coat when I heard heels digging into dirt and looked up to the sight of Mrs. Simmons and a glare unlike any I’d seen since Pawpaw kicked me out the house.
“Miss Reid, gather your things and come with me.”
“Sorry, ma’am, but I can’t. If I move it’ll smudge my nails and you see, I just painted ’em, so if we could do this tomorrow, I’d really appreciate it.” I smiled, fanning out my nails so she could get a good look at them.
“I can’t be sure you’re gonna show up to school tomorrow, so I’m afraid it can’t wait.”
I pursed my lips. “Well, my fiancé’s on his way and he’s expecting me to be out here waiting for him, so I just don’t know what to tell you, Mrs. Simmons.”
Mrs. Simmons wanted to rip me a new one, I could tell. But she stayed composed, nodded at me, and lifted her skirt up so she could climb over the bench opposite me and sit down.
“Then I suppose I’ll be joining y’all.”
She was a tricky woman, that one. Just when I expected her to give up and go cry into all her years-old magazines, she grew a pair and did the unexpected.
“Fiancé, huh? I didn’t realize you and Jayden were plannin’ on getting married. That why you’ve been skippin’ class?”
“Jay?” I laughed. “Jay doesn’t know where I’ve been. As far as he’s concerned, I’m still gonna be valedictorian or whatever.”
I started blowing on each of my nails to get them to dry faster, since I was pretty sure it was hot enough they might melt and clump if they didn’t dry quick. Kai laughed as I blew and after I got through each finger, I’d blow right onto his forehead and send him into a giggle fit.
Mrs. Simmons rolled her wrists and I could tell she wanted to get up and go inside where she wouldn’t have to worry about ticks finding her ankles beneath the picnic table.
“Then why, Emory? You’re so close to graduating, all you gotta do is show up to maintain that GPA, but instead you’re jeopardizing all your acceptances to these elite universities after I bent the rules to let you bring the child to class with you. All your teachers been real accommodating with your absences, but it’s just gone too far. We can’t help you if you decide you don’t wanna help yourself. So what is it? Hmm?”
I stopped whistling at my fingers and looked at her.
Last week was supposed to be decision day, when all the colleges I’d gotten into demanded I give them a response, but apparently something went wrong with federal aid and now half the schools were emailing, saying I didn’t have to commit until June. It didn’t matter much either way since I wasn’t going to any of them, but Mrs. Simmons seemed to still think I was.
“There’re more important things than college, Mrs. Simmons.”
I was ready for her retort, her scolding that I was being smart with her, but instead she said, “I agree.” She leaned closer to me across the table. “But I remember the first week you came back to school when there wasn’t nothing more important to you. Besides, of course, this child. But the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Even I didn’t think it was possible, but I’ve seen where you’re getting into. University of Miami, Washington, Michigan, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara.”
“I’m not going.” I couldn’t look at her and say it, so I kept my eyes on my salmon nails as they hardened and began to reflect light.
Mrs. Simmons shook her head. “The best way to fail is not to try.”
“Oh, please, you read that in one of your magazines?” I spit.
“My what?”
Mrs. Simmons was so righteous, coming to me saying I was giving up when I was fighting harder than I ever had to give my child a life I would’ve wanted if I was him. She had no right to judge me.
Mrs. Simmons sighed and composed herself again. “I’ve spoken with your teachers. Come to school on Friday, pick up your final exams, complete them and turn them in by the next Friday, and they’ll honor your grades from the beginning of the semester. This is your chance, Miss Reid. Take it, and that gold valedictorian sash is yours. Take it and head off to one of these colleges and prove to all the folks like me that you’re bigger and better than we ever could’ve imagined. Take it.”
She stood up, lifted her skirt, climbed over the bench, and smoothed her skirt again. “Alright, then. Congratulations on your engagement, Miss Reid.” She nodded at me. “And I think your nails are cuter than a June bug.”
With that, she smiled, turned, and marched her heels back through the mud and into the school building, leaving me with my salmon nails, a clever scolding, and Jay’s horn blaring out across the clearing.
Crystal’s daughter was a biter. We all knew it, and when she wasn’t biting us or our kids, it wasn’t a problem. She only bit when she was upset or overwhelmed and so we yelped when she bit the way you’d train a puppy and worked on deep breathing, all of us wheezing in a breath together and humming as we released it. When that didn’t work, Crystal moved Cece away from the group as soon as she saw that twitchy look of a toddler about to let herself loose on you.
Crystal was one of the more composed of us, didn’t get ticked off easy like Simone or me—we got madder than a couple of wet hens more often than I think neither of us cared to admit. But not Crystal. She didn’t want people thinking of her like that, was always trying to make up for the life she’d lived and the life she’d made. It was beautiful, but it was also kind of sad.
Anyway, it was just me and Simone and the kids at the dune lake, our little group more distant than ever, when Crystal came up on us sobbing. We thought maybe Cece had bit her real hard, but Crystal was used to Cece’s bites and we didn’t see any blood on either of them, which was how we knew it had to be worse.
“What’s wrong?” Simone hung up the towel she was washing on the clothesline and wove through it straight to Crystal. “You hurt?”
Crystal shook her head and Cece got close to her ma and kissed her cheek with a wide-open mouth, except she tasted the tears and she must’ve liked them ’cause then she started just sucking on Crystal’s cheek. It made Crystal laugh for a moment before she put Cece on the ground and resumed her crying.
“It’s not important.” Crystal choked on her own words.
“Oh, please,” I said. “Clearly it’s got you in a fit.”
Simone added, “Can’t be sillier than Em callin’ about a dead whale at six in the morning.”
I shot Simone a glare and then we waited for Crystal to gather herself and begin talking and when she did, I felt both me and Simone’s anger curdle and boil up like milk on a too-hot burner.
Crystal was applying to all kinds of jobs, and she’d been spending time calling a career center to help coach her on how to prepare for interviews and format her résumé, real grown-up stuff like that. When she had interviews on the phone, she’d need a place to go do them while she was still watching Cece, and with Simone and the twins going on all kinds of trips in the truck, Crystal was left spending her days at the nearest park.
There were only two real parks in Padua. One had nothing but a rusty swing set and the other park had a whole play structure with a slide and everything. So everyone in Padua went to the park with the structure, which meant it was always crowded with kids and all kinds of different mothers and fathers and the occasional nanny too.
Two weeks before she came to us crying, Crystal’d been on the phone while she sat on the bench at the park and Cece was in the sandbox. Cece was only two and there were kids twice as big as her and babies half her size crawling and waddling and running all over the park while she sat in the sandbox pouring sand in and out of a plastic cup Crystal gave her. She was minding her own business and then somebody’s four-year-old came up and grabbed the cup from Cece.
Cece did what anybody would’ve done and tried to take her cup back. But the four-year-old was bigger and stronger than her and Crystal was on the phone, so Cece did the only thing she knew how to: she bit. The kid shrieked and Crystal rushed over, but Cece was all fired up at that point and while Crystal tried to talk to the four-year-old’s ma, Cece turned to the next closest child and bit them too. The sandbox was evacuated and Crystal left holding Cece close and talking her through her deep breaths.
Today Crystal had another interview, so she went back to the park with Cece. Cece’d got a good night’s sleep and she was fed and happy, so Crystal wasn’t worried about biting, ’specially ’cause Cece hadn’t bit no one at all that week.
But when they showed up at the park, all the other mothers started whispering and some of them went up to their kids and said something, pointing to Cece. Crystal ignored it and unleashed Cece on the playground. Cece beelined for the sandbox, excited to dig. When Cece climbed into the sandbox, all the other kids climbed out, looking over at their mothers for approval.
Cece, not wanting to play alone, left the sandbox to go play on the structure, looking into the tunnel and waving to the two toddlers on the other side. The toddlers waved back, and they all started crawling into the tunnel to meet in the middle, but then their mothers ran up and yanked their toddlers back, taking them as far away from Cece as they could get. Crystal watched it happen, waiting for her call, and when her call came through, Cece had just been shunned from the swings too.
Crystal didn’t know what to do but she knew you don’t leave your child sobbing and looking around like a stray cat, so she told the interviewer she would need to reschedule, hung up, and raced over to Cece. She took Cece to get a frozen yogurt at McDonald’s and then they came right here, to us, when Crystal started crying and wouldn’t stop.
I turned to Simone, met her eyes. “Wanna drive or should we walk?”
Simone’s voice was firm. “Let’s walk. The towels still gotta dry.”
The other Girls arrived within the hour. Strollers were unfolded. Children strapped to chests. Palms latched to one another. Shoes tied. All of us, except Adela of course, began our march to the park.
It wasn’t that far but it was enough time to add heat to the boil and by the time the park was in sight, all of us were prepared to do what had to be done in the name of the little girl who didn’t know the power of her own jaws. We were ten years younger than most of the mothers, had backpacks and exposed midriffs and children clawing at our legs, and we knew we scared them. A whole coven of us stampeding toward them, Crystal and Cece at the back, the only ones cowering.
“Which ones did it?” I called back to Crystal.
“All of ’em.”
All of ’em. We split up, pairs of us approaching each mother scrambling to pack up her diaper bag and get the kids home, most of ’em to the other side of the highway, but they weren’t fast enough. These were the aunts, the sisters, the mothers of those seaside girls I used to think were my friends, and I thought this’d be the perfect opportunity to get back at all of them too.
I went up to a woman who I used to see at church when I was a kid, her fingers still disturbingly long as they now gripped a three-year-old’s hand. Simone was beside me.
“Shame on you,” I hissed.
“Excuse me?” The woman was trying to counter with the same husk, but I saw those long-ass fingers shake. “For what? Is this about the biter? I’m not about to let my child catch rabies from somebody on a playground.”
I spit on the ground at her feet. “Then why don’t you just come out and say it to a mother’s face instead of making your child do all the work for you?”
Simone was controlling herself in front of the twins, but I could feel the rasp of rage coming off her. “Don’t be messing with nobody’s kid.”
“You threatening me?” The lady whipped her hair behind her shoulder.
I laughed. “You don’t got ground to stand on. None of us forgot about what you did with Johnny in a public outhouse on a Thursday before sunset. In fact, Lisa Cobb got a photo, if I’m not mistaken, and Lisa was good friends with my ma back in the day, so I’m sure she’d be happy to share it. Your husband’s the one with the adult video addiction, huh? Bet he’d love something new to get off to.”
The long-fingered lady snapped her mouth closed and dropped her child’s hand. “Let’s go, McKayleigh. We’ll be spending our time at the other park from now on.” She threw her bag over her shoulder and began stomping off, the confused child scampering after her.
By the time we got done talking to all of them, the park was empty. It remained that way the next time Crystal came by for an interview. The only people left were the ones who had heard the story of us Girls coming up, prepared to beat the asses of half the mothers in town, and decided they wanted to be on the right side of history. They took turns on the swing sets, and Cece happily raced all over the big playground, where no child feared her, taking her deep breaths and never biting again.
This was how us Girls reunited. In the defense of Cece’s teeth.