1987
Early morning light cuts through the bent-up kitchen blinds, slicing the wall in front of me into jagged strips; I count them as I wait for Ma to get out of the shower.
I have Lena’s letter in front of me, and I’m looking at the only photo that exists of Ma and Pop’s wedding day. Ma had told me a thousand times how she’d dreamt of getting married at the Swift River Country Club, with a party afterward in a grand reception hall draped in streamers; white-table-clothed tables polka-dotted across the room. Rows of foil-covered trays would line the walls, steam poofing out from the Swedish meatballs, pigs in blankets, and baked ziti. There’d be shrimp cocktail and lobster on ice and a band playing the Rolling Stones and the Beatles—only music you could dance or jump to.
But Pop wanted to get married under a tree. They didn’t have any money, so Pop won. He pleaded for a weeping willow, his favorite; there was one on the north side of town behind the Top Dollar, surrounded by the greenest moss you’ve ever seen. Apparently, Pop’s Aunt Clara told them about the spot, said it was special. Ma said OK, even though the leaves and branches looked like wet hair. They went and got their marriage license first. They were both eighteen years old.
It rained, hard. Ma said the rain was good luck. To me, this sounds like what you say when you have the crap luck of rain on your wedding day.
The photo also looks rained on. Some careless dipshit must have spilled Coke or something on it, because now it’s stiff and curled up at the edges, like a potato chip. Much of the background has melted into a splotchy, electric blue. The center of the photo, where they stand in front of the tree with Grandma Sylvia and Aunt Clara, is still crisp and clear; an island of people surrounded by a cartoon sea. They are all soaked. Pop’s father had died a year before, so this was it, the whole family. This is the only photo I’ve ever seen with Aunt Clara in it.
Ma has on a long white dress with lace sleeves; Grandma Sylvia made it for her, even though she didn’t approve of the wedding. The dress is rain-soaked—see-through and too sexy, like she’s outside with just a nightgown on. Her bouncy curler curls are spoiled, stuck to her face in limp waves. Pop has on a baggy suit, also plastered to his body. There is a flower tucked into his Afro. He’s trying to be goofy. They are holding on to each other at the waist, heads tilted and touching. Their faces make me think of a sigh—relief, disappointment, happiness. Aunt Clara and Grandma Sylvia stand on either side of them, both squinting, confused, hands covering their own heads like useless umbrellas. They all look like they are trying to make the best of things.
It has never occurred to me to ask Ma, Where are all the people? The friends? The bridesmaids in ugly dresses? Something about the photo makes me feel queasy and embarrassed, and I have to look away. They seem so alone together. At the beginning of so much alone together.
This morning as I stare down the photo, I remember that someone else related to Pop was supposed to come to the wedding, too. Supposed to drive all the way from Georgia. The day had started out so bright and shiny, Ma says the sunbeams coming through the trees looked like Star Wars light sabers. They waited and waited for Pop’s person. Waited until the clouds joined together and the sky turned a solid gray. Then they all fought about waiting and then it started to pour. Aunt Clara complained about her ruined church shoes. Pop yelled at Grandma Sylvia for saying, This is what happens when you get married too young. God always has the last word. Ma cried.
And then just as the thunder kicked in, Pop swooped Ma up in his arms and carried her off into the woods, telling the minister to go home and the old ladies to wait in the car. When Ma and Pop came back thirty minutes later, the rain had let up; Pop was still carrying Ma. They were smiling and clingy. They said they were hitched. Ma won’t give me the part of the story where they somehow married themselves, says it’s too special, too private. I know she was nuts about the swooping up into Pop’s arms part. She loved how he always treated her like a delicate lady (we all know she is neither one of those things). She told me what came next—Pop getting the grumpy ladies from the car, carrying each one over puddles and mud, one at a time, back to the tree. A passing jogger took the pictures for them. The down-South relative never came. It rained on and off all night.
Lena.
It comes to me like someone kicked in the door to my brain. It was Auntie Lena who never showed up. Lena who wrecked Ma’s curls and made Pop yell on his wedding day. Lena who made it rain.
What if she had come? Would a sunny wedding photo with curls and smiles and one more person at their side have made a difference? The difference?
What would my life have been like with her in it?
I try and picture her face and Thelma from Good Times pops into my head. This is something I’d get pissed at Ma for saying out loud, but I let myself skim through random Black TV people for a visual; I settle into Weezy Jefferson because she’s more of a comfort. Just as quickly, my thoughts turn against Weezy, circling around her face like a bunch of angry villagers. Why didn’t you show up for the wedding? Do you know what really happened to my dad? What’s your problem with my mom? Where have you been all this time? Why didn’t you help us?
I put her away in the place where people who let me down all huddle together in my mind, fighting for another chance. The wedding photo goes right inside the box along with everything else.
“If there’s no hot water left, I’m not going with you,” I yell in the direction of the bathroom. I don’t really mean it; there’s no way Ma can get through today without me. We’re going to meet with an old classmate of hers, Jerry, who is a lawyer now. Ma says he’ll help us get a death certificate for Pop, and later Pop’s insurance money. We’re going to make Pop officially dead.
It’s a Thursday, my new day off from work at the Tee Pee; I got it in a trade with Dana Lambert, plus her shitty early morning shifts, so I can make room for driver’s ed in the afternoons. I start class tomorrow. I still haven’t told Ma.
“Your turn, sunshine,” Ma says, popping her head around the corner. “Go get your butt clean!” She snaps her towel against the kitchen table, where I sit, and it releases a moldy smell. She King-Tuts it into the center of the room wearing only underwear and a towel turban, then walks back and forth “like an Egyptian”—neck bobbing, hands poking air, wet feet slapping the dirty floor. Now that song is stuck my head.
“You’re not even doing it right,” I say. It’s hard to believe she used to be a dance teacher.
“You don’t like my boogie?” She gives me jazz hands and a sad high kick. Her saggy boobs, on constant display, point down to loose underwear puddled around her waist, the worn elastic limply hugging her body. Faded period stains creep up from the front and back of her crotch like old wounds, and I have to look again for reasons I can’t explain.
“Too much. No more,” I say, putting my head on the table.
“Can’t your ma be happy on a day like today?”
It’s true that today could set a new life in motion. But it feels weird to be doing high kicks; it’s the seven-year anniversary of Pop disappearing. Usually we ignore the day, fumbling around spaced out, not looking at each other. Ma might stare into an open closet for twenty minutes. I’ll walk into walls, stub my toe on some furniture and start crying. Sometimes Ma disappears and comes back the next morning with a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts or a fun pack of Butterfingers. Then it’s over. Rinse, repeat.
This year, Ma goes full-on in the opposite direction. She slides an index card under my door—an old French vocabulary flash card she swiped from my desk. She’d crossed out Ou est la bibliotheque? and written above it, You’re invited to a celebration of life! Today we’re going to the Goodwill to get new dresses. This evening she wants to go down to the spot at the river where Pop’s sneakers were found. Light a candle. Say some nice things. “I’m not making a speech,” I tell her. Afterward she wants to go for a swim.
I think about those sneakers, not the actual ones still sitting in the back of Ma’s closet, but the ones from the picture in the newspaper. The newspaper sneakers haunt me. They’re just regular old Pro Keds from The Shoe Barn, but they look like lone, stunned witnesses to a crime. They should belong only to Pop, to us; something private turned inside out.
Pop’s wallet was tucked under a sneaker tongue. It held two dollars, his license, a packet of snapdragon seeds for the garden, a grocery list from Ma, and my school picture. When the cops finally gave us back his things, I ate those seeds—swallowed the whole envelope full of black speckles, nine-year-old Diamond hoping a real dragon would sprout up inside me, fire blossoming from my belly.
The current had been strong that summer, too strong for swimming in places. A few people claimed they saw a floating body whiz by in the foamy water. Ma says it probably got hooked onto a steamer headed out to the ocean. He couldn’t swim. He never learned to swim. That was the last thing she said before she laid face down in the front yard and cried into the grass for a whole day and night.
As awkward neighborhood people brought us Rice Krispie Treats and casseroles, they whispered, “Nobody deserves to die like that. It’s all just so strange.”
But he was not dead enough for the courts, even years later. They declared him “missing.” This was one of those confusing situations that fall somewhere in between people trying to mess with us and something too complicated for Ma to manage. Trying to fix this is like swimming in mud, she always says.
We were pissed but didn’t know where to put it, so we mastered the wait for revenge. We made lists of the people who would regret messing with us. We made lists of the things we would do to the people who had messed with us. We crumpled the lists and replaced them with faith in karma, God’s own boomerang for the assholes who had messed with us. We lit our Karma Kandle and prayed with eyes shut tight for it to do its work.
Except that I don’t pray for those people to let my dad be dead. Instead, I picture him waiting for us in an actual place—maybe deep in the woods near the caves, in a barn hiding behind haystacks, or sitting in some diner a few towns over. He plots his return. He watches over us at night. The things that keep him from us by day are as murky in my mind as what keeps him “missing.” I want it that way. Ma is trying to swim in mud; I just let it hold me.
Ma’s mood is what decides whether or not we hitch or walk to get somewhere. Hitching is for days when we run out of ride-favors from our neighbors. Ma rallies me with a Let’s hit the road! like we’re Bo and Luke Duke but without the General Lee. We don’t go with just anyone: no pickup trucks or broken car doors, no more than two men or one college bumper sticker, no beards, no booze, and nothing that tows a four-wheeler behind it.
When we first make a pick from a distance, Ma flashes a friendly wave at the driver, and we shuffle backward in slow motion; putting your thumb out is old-fashioned and only happens in movies when someone needs to be killed off. The town’s small enough that if we don’t know the person, we probably know someone who knows them. Ma’s lived here her whole life. So did her parents, and their parents. A-holes joke that she’s the town’s version of a Native American.
Ma always stays on the outside closest to the cars to protect me in case some drunk guy clips us on his night swerve home. Sometimes a wiseass slows down just enough to fake us out, and Ma pounds on the side of the car door and screams like she’s in pain as he speeds off. I bet there’s a whole fleet of right-side-door-banged-up cars driving through town courtesy of us, the serial denters. I’m always scared that one of these times the brakes will screech and some nutbag will jump out and pound on us or have us arrested. Ma says they wouldn’t have the guts to stop, because what if they’d really hit us?
She pretends that hitching is a treat.
“Let’s catch a ride to the Goodwill, save our energy for later,” she says, turning around to face the cars. Seeing the panic in my face, she tries to distract me with our game.
“I call it on the white Toyota Corolla,” she says, nodding at the one coming toward us. My stomach drops as I scan the car for signs of safety. It’s not foolproof. You can’t really tell until you get in it, and by then, it’s buckle up.
Being inside someone’s car is like going in their purse or bedroom with permission but no advance notice. Ma made up Cargame, where right as a car is slowing down deciding whether to pick us up, we guess what kind of music will be playing, how it will smell, if it’ll be clean or grimy, have a kid’s car seat, a loose-change cup. It’s easy when they have bumper stickers on the front, like I Heart Cats or I wish my wife was as dirty as this car.
“Stuffed animals, nut snacks, wet wipes, and Fleetwood Mac,” Ma guesses confidently.
One for four. The lady is super nice, offering us salted peanuts, and asking if we want the air turned on. Ma thanks her, saying, “I never was one for driving,” like we decided not to use our chauffeur today.
“How far are my girls going?” the lady says cheerfully, making sure to look us both in the eye each time she speaks. She’s wearing a bright green dress with matching sandals, and her short red hair is forced back into a stubby ponytail with gel and a plastic green headband. I think she might be my classmate Brian Doherty’s aunt, but I decide she’s the cousin of an elf—she even smells like the color green. I can tell Ma likes her. There’s something about breathing in normal people who are also nice that makes you feel better than you actually are. The way Ma has one arm hanging out the window and the other wrapped around her headrest, we could be a bunch of pals on our way to Friendly’s for an ice cream sundae after a makeup party.
“We’re just headed to the Goodwill.” Ma says it with a fancy lady accent. Elf lady doesn’t know what to say. “Diamond and me like to dig for treasures.”
“Diamond is a lovely name.” Elf lady looks back at me with an apology on her face.
“Tomorrow night is movie night for us. Diamond and me had a taste for steak and pasta. There’s plenty if you’d like to join,” Ma says.
Elf lady gets suddenly busy looking for something in the glove box.
“I could make some of my famous garlic bread?” Ma says after more silence, and I realize this dinner invite is real. “You’ll join us?” she says with a shaky voice.
I see Elf lady’s eyes get darty in the rearview mirror, and I grab on to the door handle as if that will protect us from what might happen. This is the start of a tricky thing that happens to us. Ma is tough and weirdly optimistic until she’s not. She can run top speed into a wall ten times and laugh, unhurt, but on the eleventh, she just explodes into dust.
“How generous. If I didn’t have to cook dinner for my husband, I’d take you up on that. It would be my cheat night!” She says it so sincerely Ma smiles, and I let myself think of all the things I’d eat on a cheat night.
“Diamond, haven’t I seen you in town riding a bike?” Elf lady says.
“Yes, ma’am, that was my preferred mode of transportation.”
“Some ass-hat jacked that bike, right out in front of the CVS!” Ma says it like gossip. “She was too old for it, anyway, don’t you think?”
“God is making room for new things in your life, Diamond,” Elf lady says.
“That would be cool.” I lean forward into the back of her seat, gripping the edge of the headrest close to her shoulders, as if I have something important to say. I picture her as my ma—both of us wearing different shades of green to complement each other, everybody at school making jokes about elfin magic, but we wouldn’t care. My current ma is the kooky aunt we look after, and me and Elf Ma just shrug when she says something stupid, like, What are we gonna do with this one? She would let me practice my driving in this very car.
Ma pipes in, “You know, a diamond doesn’t just come into the world blinding folks with its beauty. It takes years for it to get like that.” She looks back at me wide-eyed, as if this weren’t the hundredth time she’s said this.
I want to tell Elf lady that new things are happening; room is being made. But I can’t say it in front of Ma. We both have our secrets.
“That’s a good one, Ma.” I smile at her.
I hang my head out the window and my hair makes a purring sound in the wind.
We get to the Goodwill early enough that it’s still possible to find decent things. Morning is when they put out fresh donations. If you get there after noon, it’s like picking through actual mounds of garbage. In the mornings, the clothes are still hung neatly in color coordinated rows with just a light mothball-dusty smell in the air. When the pizza shop next door opens in the afternoon everything smells like sadness and cheese.
I go right to the blues and grab the only dress that could fit me. It’s a shimmery fabric with a small pocket on the chest. “Fancy-casual!” Ma says like we hit the jackpot.
Next, she makes me walk with her to the bank for free coffee before we head back home, calling it our “powerwalking workout” for the day, as if we have a choice between that and Jazzercising at the gym. The only other powerwalkers I’ve seen live across town—an after-dinner flock of ladies who drive to the park with their mini dumbbells and their swishy sweatpants, flapping their arms in unison as they loop around the dried-out duck pond.
Ma isn’t playing around about today; she’s arranged a ride in advance with our neighbor, Lottie DeStefano. We head around the block to Mrs. D’s place, Ma with a bop in her step, proud that we managed to get out of the house clean and dressed on time. She looks like a stranger in her own clothes; they’re tight and loose in all the wrong places. If I were as skinny as she is, I’d just wear my bathing suit, a short jean skirt, and crisp white Tretorns, like the girls I see sunbathing by the river or hanging out in the Cumberland Farms parking lot, spread across car hoods and bumpers like birds in uniform.
She has on the same dress she wore to Grandma Sylvia’s funeral—black-and-white striped, short-sleeved, and shoulder-padded. I have a Swiss-cheese memory of the funeral day, the holes all filled in with pictures taken by one of Grandma’s friends. I know that’s the dress Ma wore because of the photo she keeps on her nightstand, the two of us in our new funeral gear—nude pantyhose and hard shiny shoes, mouths half-open because some dummy told us to smile and say, Two all-beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame-seed bun. Proof that you can’t choose what you remember. Her pantyhose have a thick run down to her toes, probably from that same funeral day.
“No one will know when it got snagged,” she says when I point to it. “It could have happened in the waiting room for all they know.”
She’s carrying a worn brown briefcase that belonged to her father, who died before I was born. He was a foreman at the textile mill. Ma loved her father the most. He was the last person to have real hope for her future. That’s what Grandma Sylvia always said when she fought with Ma. Your father had such hope for your future.
I’m wearing the Goodwill dress. I look lumpy, and the tiny pocket on my left boob only emphasizes the giant mound it sits on. I’m wearing flip-flops, but I can’t see my feet anymore—a scary new line has been crossed.
“Don’t we look like businesswomen,” Ma says, as we stand at the edge of Mrs. DeStefano’s empty driveway, ready to leap into her car as soon as it pulls in.
“Not really,” I say.
Fifteen minutes go by, and Ma is swelling up with panic. She slashes at a pricker bush using a stick she found on the road; tiny red berries rain down on the ground. Our appointment with the lawyer is in five minutes. It takes about that long to get there by car.
“She’s doing this on purpose,” Ma says of Mrs. DeStefano, the closest thing to a friend she has, which isn’t saying much. If you listen to Ma tell it, they both want only the very worst things in life for each other. They’re usually in a fight or recovering from one.
“Maybe she got the time wrong?” I say, without much conviction.
“She knew exactly what time. She knew this was important. Crucial.”
“Think she’s waiting at our house?”
“This is where we always meet. We come to her majesty.” She throws down her stick. “Goddamn it to hell! She’s just getting her revenge because I owe her money.”
I’m tired. I feel like ten years have passed since this morning.
“Eff it. Let’s hit the road,” she says.
“We’ll never make it in time.” It’s a thirty-minute walk.
“You want to drive us over in your dad’s car?” She looks at me so hard, for a second I think I’m found out.
“Why don’t you drive us?” I say.
“Let’s go. Now,” she says, walking ahead of me.
“It’s embarrassing going so late. And my knee hurts.”
My knee does not hurt. It could easily start hurting any minute now, but sometimes I lie about the pain until I feel it. Ma does not turn around to look. “I might not make it all the way,” I say.
“I’ll carry you on my back then,” she says, cracking herself up.
We walk ten minutes or so and cross over to River Street. Our heads turn at every sound as we scan the road, hoping to hitch a ride. Every few blocks we leap over piles of pebbly black deer shit, pristine, like tiny eggs in a nest. “Poop dancing!” Ma cackles, well into making-the-best-of-things mode.
This is the ugliest area along the riverbank—mostly abandoned factories and warehouses, with their crumbling brick and checkerboard windows caked in grime. The lawyer’s office, about a mile away, is part of a new complex in a building that used to be a tool-and-die factory. With views of the river in the back, and old warehouses on either side, people look up to it with cautious hope and burning jealousy—as if the building itself is some rich family moving in to clean up the run-down neighborhood while holding its nose. I can’t even count how many car-ride small-talk sessions turn into I’ve been saying they should build up River Street for years, and No one wanted to listen when I said those factories are worth a fortune; the knowingest people who ever knew nothing about something until it stood up and proved itself.
“I always knew Jerry would be a success,” Ma says to me over her shoulder—I am a few feet behind her. My knee is catching up to my lie, slowly filling with fluid, stiffening up and forcing a little limp. I feel the heat from the sidewalk through the flimsy rubber bottoms of my shoes.
“He always thought the world of me, too,” she says.
“What did he think you would do?” I ask.
“That’s not what I meant,” Ma snaps. “I was an excellent dancer. And I was nice to everyone. Treated ’em all like I would want to be treated, even the bad ones. Just how I teach you to be.”
“Was Jerry the same as you?” I ask.
“Of course. We’re all the same on the inside,” Ma says.
“No we’re not. I’m not.” I stop to catch my breath. I spit on the ground. She hates that.
“Maybe we can get you one of those motorized chairs,” she says.
“A wheelchair? That’s so mean, Ma.”
“No, silly. Like a go-cart. The teens ride them around. Safer than a car.”
“Why would I want a go-cart?”
“Because people with money buy nice things for fun.” She pauses, waiting for a reaction. “Diamond, do you understand that your whole life is about to change?”
“I don’t know,” I say. She wants my hope and I won’t give it to her.
“This was what your dad wanted,” she says. “This is for you.”
I take her hand and squeeze it. This is the moment to pounce on her optimism, wrestle it into working for me.
“I was thinking maybe I should learn to drive,” I say. “A car.” I’m scared to look at her face.
She sighs deeply, like she’s channeling centuries-old wisdom. “That’s not a good idea,” she says, holding my hand tighter, pulling me along as she starts walking again.
“Why not?”
“Having a car is too expensive.”
“I can save up, fix Pop’s car.”
She snort-laughs. “That car is not fixable.”
“I just want to learn. Take driver’s ed. See what happens.”
“Listen.” She stops and grabs me by my wrists. “It’s not the right thing for you, not right now.” She speaks in a clear, knowing way that momentarily wipes my brain clean of the want. I lean into the Ma who knows what’s best for me.
“Remember what happened last time I drove?” she says, whipping up her dress to show me the deep scar that wraps around her leg like a snake. Then she points to the top of her head where I know there’s a white, shiny knot, a hairless island that can knock her silent for days. Migraine, shhhhh is sometimes all she can manage.
“I’m not gonna lose you,” Ma says.
Too, she might as well add.
“Your father wouldn’t want you to do it, either.” She looks at me wild-eyed, like she’s in a fight for her life and all she can find is a shoe to throw.
What she wants to say: You’re not gonna leave me.
“OK, Ma. I won’t do it,” I lie.
“We’ll talk about it next year, OK?” she says. “I’ll be able to buy you a new car by then.”
We stop at a parking lot in front of a deserted warehouse where a handful of druggies are rumored to live. I can’t catch my breath, and my knee has a heartbeat. I lower myself to the curb, knowing full well what it will take for me to get up again. Ma does, too. She looks desperate.
“Sweet pea, you know you’ll get your dress dirty like that. Come on,” she says softly. She stands and holds out her hand as if coaxing an animal from under a car.
“I can’t,” I say. I stretch out, rubbing my puffed-up knee. My legs are lifeless, swollen and sprayed with a delicate red heat rash. It’ll take at least a week for them to get back to normal. I’m hit with a feeling of so much tenderness and pity for them, it’s like they’re my sick children. I’m happy to cry for them, and I don’t care if Ma sees it.
Except I look up and she’s gone. Before I can turn my head all the way around, I hear metal wheels on gravel and then the shuffle of Ma’s heels.
She’s standing in front of me with a busted old Queens Shopping Center shopping cart. The front has been cut out, so it almost looks like a wheelbarrow.
“Get in.”
“Ma.”
“We’re almost there.”
“That belongs to Homeless Richard,” I say.
“He won’t mind. He’s saving us. We’ll thank him later.”
Ma’s wheeze and the metal clanking is all I can hear as we fly down River Road. My legs dangle stiffly from the front of the cart, my poor fat kids out for a joyride.
“Take it easy on the bumps,” I yell back through the wind as she nearly dumps me on the sidewalk.
“There, there now,” she says, making mothery sounds I’ve never heard before.
I close my eyes and listen to the noises leaking out of her as if they’re what’s propelling us forward. I consider kicking off a flip-flop so I’d be forced to wait outside the office, a one-shoed embarrassment.
“I don’t want a death certificate, Ma,” I say quietly enough that I leave it up to the wind to carry it to her, or not.
“This is your very first meeting, sweet pea,” she says in my ear, excited. Someone drives by and shouts something about groceries, but Ma acts like she doesn’t hear.
We ditch the cart once the office is in sight. All of the building’s shiny glass reflects back the decay from the old factories that surround it. Patches of green—weeds, ivy, moss—sprout from rusted crevices and shimmer in the new windows like a water garden.
“Pretty,” Ma says, pulling out a cigarette when she sees people in front of the building on their smoke breaks. I’m holding on to her for balance.
“Do I have to say anything at the meeting?” I ask.
“You don’t have to talk about your father,” Ma says. “You were too young to remember anything. Just tell Jerry how when he was alive we always had a good life, never wanted for anything at all.”
“But how would I know that if I can’t remember anything?”
“Don’t ruin this, please, Diamond,” she says in a small voice, so I shut up.
“Aren’t you a sight?” Jerry Polaski says as he grabs Ma in a bear hug, looking genuinely happy to see her. We’re standing in his very full waiting room. Ma looks around to make sure everyone is taking note. Jerry is basketball-player tall, with arms that seem like they could wrap around her body twice. He looks years younger than Ma, like he’s her friend’s baby brother. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a man in a suit with a ponytail.
“You’re so tiny.” He holds on to her stick-thin arm, his fingers easily encircling the whole thing. Then he looks over at me like I’ve eaten half of her, sucked some bit of life out of the girl he knew. It hits me that as I’ve gotten bigger and bigger these past few years, she’s gotten smaller and smaller.
“Is this—”
“This is my daughter, Diamond. She’s a really smart girl. Way ahead of everyone else in her class.” Ma says it proudly, even as I stand there panting in my sweat-striped dress, plucking fabric out of my folds. He offers me a cool air-conditioned hand and I give him a damp shake. He ushers us through the waiting room and I catch a nod at his secretary like some secret-code agreement, obviously having to do with Ma and me. I wish I hadn’t seen it.
“Can I help you sit down?” he asks when he sees me limping.
“She had a bike accident, but she’s almost all healed,” Ma says. “So how’s Candy?”
We’re sitting on a leather sofa in a corner of his office, facing the river. I can only think about sitting perfectly still so I don’t make the wet static sounds every time my bare skin lifts off the surface. He sits on the arm of his thick leather chair across from us, peeling an orange. The smell fills the room.
“We split up a few years ago.” He’s smiling and nodding.
“Oh, that’s right. I knew that. I’m so sorry.”
He offers us an orange slice, but it’s an afterthought; he only has three pieces left.
“We have a lot of catching up to do then, don’t we?” Ma says. Sometimes I remember that Ma used to be pretty. It peeks through her smile, like now.
“Anna, I’m sorry I don’t have much time left. We were supposed to meet at one o’clock. I’m already running late for my next meeting.”
“Could we come back tomorrow?”
“No, Anna.” He laughs a little. There’s a flatness to his voice, and I find myself wishing for that liquidy softness we hear from men in cars.
“Oh,” she says, looking crushed. “We had a little mix-up with our transportation.”
“Of course. I understand.”
“Well, I think we can both make some money here,” Ma says.
“Anna, let me stop you there. You insisted on this meeting, so I thought we were clear that it was just an introduction. You still have a lot of paperwork to get me, and that’s only the start of the process. I want to manage expectations—”
“But I was thinking we could sue the original judge, the cops, the town—”
“Seven years is the law for death in absentia. Sometimes they make exceptions, but there are enough red flags in this case—”
Ma pulls a crumply piece of paper out of her briefcase, and I can see that her hands are shaking. I recognize the original police report. My eyes always grab on to the same things: July 1, 1980 and Negro with local wife and child and colored man with no known employment and last seen by the Swift River. And Assault and battery with bodily harm, June 22, 1980.
“I thought this was what you needed.” Ma tries to hand it to him, but he waves it away.
My heat rash prickles with Ma’s shame. Our shame.
“Come back in a few weeks after you fill out the forms and get your witness statements. Maybe check in with his old friends and family,” he says. “Put the death notice in the paper. There’s a lot you have to do, Anna.”
Ma stares straight ahead with her dead-eye look, so I nod yes.
“I’ll help you file the petition with the court. But you need to come with two hundred and fifty dollars for the processing fees. And the bank still needs to do their due diligence, checking for bank account activity and possible sightings—”
“Account activity? Account activity!” Ma laughs so hard the secretary pops her head inside and then back out again.
“Anna, I have to ask. Have you ever tried to find him?” Jerry looks embarrassed. “You know, the investigation and all… and there has been talk…”
“No.” She cuts him off.
“You said he had an aunt in Canada and a sister in Georgia.”
“His aunt is dead, and it’s his cousin, not his sister,” I say, my voice quivering. A new feeling twists in my chest—I both need Lena and hate her for being gone.
“He was an only child,” Ma adds, like that was the key missing piece of information.
“Anna, you have to know that people still say they see him from time to time.”
Ma is muttering something about the two hundred and fifty dollars. I pinch her leg to try and snap her out of it.
“These racist pricks think any Black man they see is Rob.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Collins says he can’t wait much longer.” The secretary is back, holding a takeout bag. The sweet orange smell is replaced by the armpit scent of fast food; it still manages to make my mouth water.
Jerry gets up and walks toward us with the same big smile. As he stands over us, looking down, his smile cracks and the sigh that leaks out of him catches me like a contagious yawn; I sigh too. Ma doesn’t move from the couch. She stares at the police report, her hands still shaking.
“Surely you have five more minutes for us—”
“Ma, come on. Let’s go.”
“Anna, I wish I did.” He holds out his hand to pull her up from the couch. She doesn’t budge. He looks at me.
“Ma, please.” I stand up.
“Oh boy.” She suddenly grabs hold of his arm and jumps up with weird enthusiasm. Looking up at him, she reaches around and tugs on his ponytail. Hard. His neck snaps back.
“Look at that thing,” she chuckles, running a few fingers through it like she’s petting an animal. He jerks his head away and steps back from us, shocked.
“Time to go, ladies,” he says. Strands of his hair have fallen out of the ponytail and I can’t help feeling like we just tore his shirt off. He doesn’t move to fix it.
“I’ll go tell Dad to pull the car around,” I say, and give a laugh that sounds like I’m crying with a smile. I want to rip the ponytail off his head because he won’t fix it.
“Diamond, my jewel. Let’s hit the road.”
We are headed home, down River Street toward the cart, holding hands. I let mine be limp.
“Suing the town?” I scream at her.
She shrinks. We always bicker, but I never shout.
“A book I found at the library had a case—” All I can think is, Ma was at the library? And then a car is honking next to us.
“Anna, what are you doing?” Mrs. DeStefano yells through the open window. She’s waving like crazy. “Hellooooo?”
Ma won’t look at her.
“I said I’d pick you up at the lawyer’s office at two o’clock. Why are you walking?”
“You said you’d take us there. You promised.” Ma still won’t look at her.
“I said no such thing. I told you I had to take Frank to the dentist today. Big fucking baby that he is.”
Through her scowl, Ma’s face shows a flicker of remembering.
“Anna? Get in the car. Diamond, tell your mother to get in.”
We both say nothing.
“What’s the matter with you?” She lets her mouth hang open.
“We don’t need your goddamn help!” Ma screams it straight ahead at something in front of her.
“Aw, Anna.” She punches at the horn a final time. “Diamond, your mother is a piece of work.”
“We both are,” I say. “Pieces of work.” I give her a little wave: a thank-you wave, a don’t-drive-away wave, a leave-us-alone wave, a don’t-give-up-on-us wave. It will be months before they speak again.
We are waiting for night to come.
It’s hot inside the house—a heavy, bossy heat pushing us from room to room as the afternoon sun moves through. When night comes we’ll blow up our giant kiddie pool, fill it with water from the hose, and cool ourselves outside. No daytime eyes on us. No nosy DeStefanos. The rest of the town turns on their air-conditioning or goes to Crescent Lake on hot nights like this, loading up their trunks with sandy beach towels, boom boxes, and six packs of beer. We travel through the dark of the house to the patchy grass in our own front yard. We wait for it.
I lie in the cool water by myself while Ma gets ready, looking out at the mountains. Swift River is a valley town. Once the sun starts to set behind the two ranges that surround us, they look like outstretched, muscly arms, tricking us all into feeling protected. Keeping us from ever leaving.
“Make room for your ma!”
She comes out of the house in a long T-shirt, with probably just underwear underneath. She’ll say it’s a bikini bottom if I ask. She’s carrying our Karma Kandle, a flashlight, her cigarettes, and a Sears catalog. We like to circle things we’re going to buy someday.
I’m wearing a bathing suit with a T-shirt that goes down to my knees. Our legs are a brown and white tangle. My belly rises above the water like an island. Ma’s too-big underwear puffs out around her like a cloud.
“How’s your knee feeling?” Ma asks.
“Much better.”
I hold up my feet and wiggle them.
“Such pretty feet you have, Diamond.”
Ma’s pale, flat stomach peeks through the surface of the water like a smooth stone.
“You came from here,” Ma says, patting it. “You came from me.”
I click on our flashlight and make shadow puppets on her boob. A bird. A one-eared rabbit. An elephant with a stubby tusk. She laughs and splashes me.
In the distance someone is calling for a lost dog. A flashlight scans the yard and catches us briefly, like criminals. We hold our breath and wait for it to pass.
Back in my room, I flop down on my bed, waterlogged and bone-tired. My excitement for tomorrow feels both bright and heavy, like a first chuckle after a long cry. By the light of the Karma Kandle, so Ma can’t tell I’m still up, I write Lena back.