The one person I’m not expecting to see when I get home from work is Uncle Robb. But here he is, sitting on my kitchen counter, throwing back a beer while Ma puffs on a cigarette. The room is thick with the smell and smoke. Ma usually doesn’t let him in the house. He’s a thief, and a pig, she says. And I feel like pulling her aside to ask what the hell he’s doing here, but first ventilation is required.
When I open the window, Uncle Robb pinches my side. “Don’t do that,” I say, and look at Ma, but she didn’t seem to notice. She has caked-up blue eyeshadow on her lids, and she’s smearing pink lipstick on her lips. “Are you going somewhere, Ma?”
Uncle Robb jumps down from the counter and tosses his beer can in the trash. “We’re going to celebrate her homecoming.”
I move closer to her and soften my voice. “Ma, the nurses said it’d be best if you stay in.”
Ma puckers her lips. “Fuck the nurses. They don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”
“That’s right.” Uncle Robb staggers over his feet. “She’s not a prisoner.”
Ma stands and rubs my arm. “Mommy’s a big girl, Natty. You don’t have to worry about the drugs. We’re only going to say hi to some old friends.”
“I promise to have her home before your pretty self goes to sleep tonight,” Uncle Robb says, burping and banging on his chest.
I almost tell her I’ll get more elixir, but it’s too late to change her mind for the night. She leaves to her room to grab a jacket, and I get it together enough to start cleaning the cigarette butts from the table. Uncle Robb snickers from behind me. I ignore him.
But then my skin prickles the way it did in Ray’s room, the familiar feeling that has my eyes darting around. I can’t see anything. But I can feel something behind me. “You’re really filling out, little Nat. Thought you’d be sickly skinny forever, but you look nice,” Uncle Robb says, and suddenly I feel something ice-cold on my elbow. It cools my whole body right before I’m yanked backward. My arm skids across the table, along the cigarette ashes, and I bump right into another body.
“What the hell, girl?” Uncle Robb grunts. He is close, too close. I turn and watch him try to reach for me before he loses his balance and stumbles into the stove. I hope it hurt him good. “Fuck. You elbowed me in the stomach.”
When I find my voice, I say, “That’s what you get. What were you doing up behind me?” My skin is warm everywhere. I touch my elbow, feeling a numbness there while searching the room for the ghost and also moving to put more space between me and Uncle Robb.
“Why are you so stuck-up?” He groans and rubs his back.
Ma comes out, oblivious to the ghost touching me, to my discomfort over her creepy-ass brother trying to touch me too. She’s happy to sling her arm around hurt Uncle Robb, then lean over to kiss my cheek. The smell of beer on her lips lingers on my face. “Your uncle’s sleeping over. Your grandmother started her drama again.”
“He’s what?”
She looks between me and Robb, and for a second, something protective flashes in her eyes. For one moment, she seems like my mom. “Only for a night. Right, Robb?”
“That’s all I need,” Uncle Robb says, and winks at me. “See you later, girl.”
I pack my bag, with cigarette ash still graying my arms, then call Dev’s friend’s house to tell him I’m sleeping out and he should too. He doesn’t bother to ask why, probably planned to already. I can call Ray or Mili, but the only person I want to talk to is Leanna. She doesn’t sound too happy to hear my voice, but when I tell her about Uncle Robb, she says, “Be right there.”
While I wait, I wonder if the spirit was Jas and she was warning me about Uncle Robb.
Ava has a plate waiting for me, and Leanna sets the guest bed with fresh sheets, but they’re heading out for the night. I don’t ask if Ava is also a stripper and they’re going to work. I just wish they weren’t leaving me alone with spirits lurking.
A few hours later, I lie in the guest bed, playing with the chain around my neck. Ma’s diamond ring still shines the way it used to, but the chain is dull. It’s worn and needs to be cleaned, needs some loving, like Dev said about Ma. I can’t believe she left with Uncle Robb, but she did ask me for the elixir.
A couple of summers ago, she came to my room and begged me to go to the beach with her. “Come on, Natty. We’ll catch the really big quahogs.” She could’ve asked Dev or Harriet, but she wanted me. She’d needed me, but I’d already bought a ticket to an art festival. She left before I came home from the festival and didn’t come back for eight days. Eight days wondering if she would’ve been home had I gone with her to the beach instead.
But Jasmine came over every one of those days, forcing me to tell her eight good things about myself, eight good things I’ve done for other people, eight things I want in life. If she was here now, she’d tell me Ma is not my responsibility, she’d say, fuck the elixir, let’s put on music. This is what I try to focus on before sleep: Jasmine and me dancing again, and even the ghosts lingering in Leanna’s house, so I don’t wonder what Ma’s drug of choice is tonight.
I wake in the middle of the night to pee, and see Leanna out on the balcony. She bends to lay her head against the ledge, and she stays there until I slide open the balcony door. It makes her flinch. “Damn, Nat. I could’ve fallen over.”
“It looked like you wanted to,” I say. “Why are you out here?”
She hugs herself. “I keep having these dreams about ghosts trying to crawl inside my body. There was this ugly little kid who ripped his head off his shoulders and handed it to me.”
Leanna laughs, but I’m busy trying to calm my breathing, wondering if her nightmares are a consequence of a truth spell.
“Anyway, it’s ridiculous,” she says, and turns back to look out over the balcony.
“It’s not ridiculous,” I tell her. “Sounds scary as hell.”
Bugs buzz around the lights that shine down into the neighbor’s yard. Even though it’s dark, I can see the Hula-Hoops left out on their grass next to a swing set, the tricycle parked beside the patio. We’re quiet until Leanna says, “I like my job.”
This catches me off guard. “You like guys touching all over your body? You don’t even like men. What about how much you hate Uncle Robb?”
“He takes what he wants without permission. That’s different. I have control. There are rules. And when people get out of line, they face consequences. Still don’t like men, but no job is perfect.” She shrugs, and we both smile. “Natalie, I’d never encourage anyone to try it, but if it wasn’t for stripping, I have no idea where I’d be now.”
“Maybe you would’ve ended up back home with me and Dev.”
“What do you want to hear? That I’m sorry I never did?” She grips the balcony rail. “I had to learn to take care of myself.” She takes a beat. “I’m sorry if it felt like I abandoned you, but I also refuse to be ashamed of myself. I’ve worked hard not to be.”
My eyes sting hearing her apology. I hold the tears back so she can really hear me when I say, “I’m not ashamed of you.” Her shoulders slack. “But I’m pissed you were sneaking around, lying, the way—” I cut myself off, look out into the neighbor’s yard, imagine the kids doing cartwheels and playing fetch with their dog.
“The way Ma does,” Leanna finishes, frowns. “I didn’t realize.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t love you?” I say. “And do you know how much easier it would’ve been with Ma, with Dev, if we were in it together?”
“I tried. I—”
“Giving me money doesn’t fix everything,” I say. “It sucked for me and Dev. I’m the one who tried and it sucked for me.”
Leanna pushes a thumb against her cheek, bites deep. “I thought I was doing the right thing at first, keeping it from you. And then, over time, the distance, it just…” She trails off, braces herself against the balcony ledge. I think of the distance between me and Jasmine, how much easier it was to let it grow. I stand next to Leanna. We look out at the sky. “Natalie, if I could go back and change that part, I would.”
I let myself feel it all when we fall silent. Let it sink in, and hope her words patch up parts of me. “So you’re okay?”
“I’m happy,” she says. “Look who I found to love.”
I think of Ava and her colorful hair and her cool taste in music and how much she loves my sister. “Maybe you both can go back to school together,” I joke.
Leanna shakes her head, laughs. “When will you hear back from schools?” Then she must see it on me because her big eyes get real small. “Tell me you turned in your applications.”
“I … I can’t.”
“But I gave you money to pay for them. What’d you do with the money?”
“I still have it. I’ll give it back to you.”
“I don’t want the money,” she says. “I want you to have a future. Don’t you want one?”
“Of course,” I say. “I’ll work at the bodega full-time, then apply to art school as soon as Devin graduates. Plenty of people go to college late in life.”
I say it the way I’ve practiced, but saying it to someone else feels harder.
Leanna is surprisingly gentle. “I respect people who do, but are you really going to put off your dreams because you think I can’t take care of Devin? You’re not his mother.”
“And neither are you, but he still needs someone.”
She sighs. “You know what I think? Deep down you’re scared to leave because you think leaving makes you like me. But if you were like me, you’d decide the only way to change your life is to do something. I thought art school was that for you, but bet you get caught up with that boy you think I don’t know you’ve been sexing and let your talent rot away.”
Woof. The truth spell must still be kicking. “There goes the Leanna I know.”
“The Leanna who loves you,” she says, and we stay on the balcony awhile in silence.