By nine we are all braiding and Cruz hasn’t been out of the house yet. He said he doesn’t believe so I wonder whether Mrs. Rodriguez is keeping him locked in there, or whether maybe he was lying and there’s a part of him that knows I’m dangerous.
I have braided fifty bracelets. Angelika has added ten keys to my chain. I will my hair to grow faster and my heart to grow more slowly.
Delilah is sitting so close to me she’s practically on my lap. “You needed to see,” she says. “You needed to understand. And now you see. Now you understand.”
I am scared enough to braid until my fingers hurt. I am scared enough to leap off the stoop when I see Mom a few blocks away, coming home from Roger’s. Her hair is sticking this way and that and she doesn’t have on makeup or stockings. She’s in a blue button-down that must be Roger’s and she’s in a rush.
I meet her a few buildings before ours and Angelika’s, in front of Bistro, which is opening up for the day, waiters tying their ties and reorganizing chairs and filling up saltshakers.
“Charlotte doesn’t love Cruz,” I say, because that is the only place to start. Mom looks past me, to our building.
“Honey, I don’t have time. I’m picking up some stuff and heading back to Roger’s. He’s really having a tough morning.”
“Mom. Charlotte doesn’t love Cruz.” I want her to have the same moment I had last night—the zap and the panic and the need to be by Angelika’s side and the sureness that we Have to Do Something.
The belief.
Instead she pats my head, smoothing some of the flyaways.
“I hate seeing you like this,” she whispers, like people are listening, which they probably are. Behind her there’s a group of outsiders, snapping pictures of buildings and wearing keys around their necks.
More tragedy-tourists.
“Charlotte’s in love with a girl named Nisha. And I’m falling in love with Cruz. And what’s wrong with Roger, Mom? He’s sick? How sick?” I feel a little like Delilah and I try to breathe deeply. I find a breath big enough to fill my throat and chest and I try again. “What if we’ve spent so much time not believing we’ve forgotten to look and see if there actually might be reason to believe?”
Mom gets a look on her face that has never been directed toward me. Something hard and cold and indignant. She runs a hand through her messy short hair. Before she has a chance to speak, the group of tourists approaches us.
“You’re Lorna!” one says. They have matching white T-shirts and matching wide eyes.
“And you’re her mother, right?” another says. That one’s wearing sunglasses and I want to believe it’s because of the sun, not me, but it’s a gray day.
Mom and I nod and try to look at each other instead of the group, but that doesn’t seem to stop them.
“Can we have a picture?” the first girl asks.
“Are you in love?” an older woman asks. There are two men and they look sleazy and sneering. I cover my chest and cross my ankles on instinct. I look over at Isla and want her to do the same, but she’s eyeing the group of strangers with interest, with intent.
“No pictures,” Mom says. She puts a protective arm around me, but the group doesn’t shy away.
“Where’s the old lady who runs everything?” one of them asks.
“Where’s the Isla girl?” a man says. His friend snickers next to him, and I feel ill and overtired. Behind us, in Bistro, are more strangers who look at the menu like it’s an ancient artifact and stare out the window like they’re on the top of the Empire State Building.
When we don’t answer, the group moves on, but not before snapping a few more photos of our dumbstruck faces and the way grief has imprinted itself along our jaws, in our pupils, inside our fisted hands.
We watch them approach the girls on the stoop. Delilah gives them bracelets and Charlotte avoids eye contact. I wonder if she’s thinking of Nisha and a way to escape all this. Charlotte could get out. Charlotte could leave this all behind and live a normal life with love and happiness and no threat of misery around every corner.
Her braids are frizzy and uneven, bumpy on top. Her nose is too serious and her bracelets are braided as sloppily as her hair. She has to keep shoving her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose and she can’t carry a tune or run fast or be much fun at a party. There are so very many things that Charlotte Pravin isn’t. But she is a girl who can love without fear, and nothing else really matters.
“I have to go, Lorna. I don’t want to leave Roger alone for long,” Mom says. She kisses my cheek. “Don’t get caught up with this. Go for a walk. Or a museum. Go with Cruz. Live your life, honey.”
“This is our life.” I gesture at the street, but Mom is already rushing to the apartment to pick up who knows what for her boyfriend; and I don’t have time to ask her again what’s wrong with him, how sick he is, how much more worried I should be.
Meanwhile Isla poses for the tourists. She stands on the stoop with one hip jutted all the way out and her arms up in the air, reaching toward nothing. They look disappointed. I think they want her to look sadder, more serious, more romantic. They turn toward Delilah and snap her picture, too, and seem more pleased with the effect.
Isla sees the way they fall in love with Delilah’s serious face and busy hands, and she mirrors her. She sits next to Delilah and furrows her brow and separates her lips the tiniest bit and hunches her shoulders and braids.
The visitors grin.
“You’re exactly like we thought you’d be,” one of them says.
“Isla Rodriguez,” one of the men says, and my heart worries for her, “can I get your autograph?”
Isla beams.
“Of course,” she says, and the man brings out a pen and a copy of our photograph on the bench, and Isla signs below her face before Angelika shoos them all away, telling them it’s not safe.
For who? I wonder.
• • •
“They love me,” Isla says hours later in the garden. I am on high alert for Cruz, who still hasn’t left his house. Charlotte and Delilah are on the stoop, but Isla and I needed a walk and a moment away from red and white threads and huge thermoses of tea.
“We love you,” I say, because I want her to know that’s the more important thing.
Isla hums a non-response and stretches her legs.
“They’ll love me, but I’ll never be allowed to love them,” she says.
When Cruz comes to get her, the sun’s going down and I can’t believe we’ve spent the whole day being Angelika’s Devonairre Street Girls.
“Mom’s looking for you,” he says.
“I’m right here,” Isla says, and she looks so sad it vibrates off of her. “I’ll always be exactly right here.”
“Head home. I’m going to talk to Lorna for a minute,” Cruz says, but Isla doesn’t move. She shakes her head the tiniest bit. She plants her feet. Cruz plants his feet. I look at the peonies because I’m scared that if I look at Cruz for even one minute more, the falling in love will be complete.
Eventually he gives up and Isla leads him out of the garden, away from me, and I’m all alone with the peonies and the question what now?