I start to laugh. Jo and my father look at me quizzically.
“This was from your great-grandfather’s office. It’s one of the few things my grandmother took with her when they left Oklahoma.”
First he passes it to Jo, who cradles it in her hand for a little while before passing it to me.
It’s heavy in my palm. I run my hand along the ornate etching swirling this way and that across the bronze shell. The turtle pokes its head delicately out the front. I hold it in my hand and use my finger to press the shell, and it rings out loud and clear as day. I press it two more times. It’s beautiful.
Jo walks over and puts her arms around my father, who has tears in his eyes. “Thank you, Daddy.”
Afterward, we all go to Ronnie’s house, my grandma’s house, which still smells of lemons.
The mint-green paint I remember is faded and peeling in several places. The wood trim needs to be replaced. Still, the house is proud, the yard tidy, save for a few scattered fallen lemons. Uncle Ronnie’s not like some people who, after their divorces, let their houses fall apart like their marriages.
“I’m gonna miss this place,” Ronnie says.
Ronnie’s decided he’s going to rent the house out while he and Morgan figure things out in Vegas.
“You don’t have to go,” my father says. “This is your home. Here.”
But I think maybe Ronnie’s decided now it’s his turn to run away.
Our grown-ups go over the insurance paperwork on a dining-room set that looks like it’s been there since my father and uncle were boys kicking each other under the table while doing homework.
A big burn mark shaped like a lake mars the polished wood in the middle. Jo runs her fingers along its edges.
“That’s from when your father was ten and he tried to make a tuna casserole for dinner, but he put it down on the table fresh out the oven without putting something under it,” Morgan says.
She knows all the stories that Jo and I do not. Morgan’s lived in our fathers’ old memories her entire life. I wonder how cramped that must’ve been, growing up with ghosts.
I try to picture my father and uncle as they must’ve been, two little black boys who had to fend for themselves while their mother either worked too hard or lay up in her room, too depressed.
“It’s too quiet in here,” Ronnie says, as though he can hear my thoughts.
He walks over to the record player and puts something on; a swell of strings and wah-wahs before a familiar voice rings out high and clear even through the elderly speakers.
Ronnie and my father both start singing along, moving their bodies percussively and mumbling through the lyrics until they get to the chorus, which they sing loudly so that it echoes off the small walls in passable harmony. “ ‘ And we’ve got love / We’ve got love / We’ve got love (we’ve got love) / We’ve got love (we got love).’ ”
“Shit, Craig, remember when Mama…”
The both of them start laughing superhard, even though it’s an unfinished thought.
“Go outside,” my father says.
“We’re not ten,” Morgan says.
“Don’t matter,” Ronnie says. “Here.”
He reaches into a hidey-hole in the kitchen containing a seemingly endless supply of hoarded plastic bags, gives us each two, and tells us to pick all the lemons we can from the trees.
“Maybe in Vegas, your dad’ll be able to sing for a living,” I say to Morgan. “Plenty of places for him to audition there.”
“I don’t know,” Morgan says. “He’s kinda old for that now…”
“But maybe?” I say.
“Yeah. You never know…” Jo drifts off elsewhere.
“Do you remember Grandma Shirley at all?” I ask.
Jo surprises me by actually answering. “She was good at chess and smelled like baby powder and wasn’t a good cook. I remember I didn’t like her cooking when we would come over. Daddy said she was too impatient to be a good cook.”
She laughs.
“I didn’t know you remembered her at all.”
“It’s just small things. I was too little to remember that much… Oh! Once, I broke this fancy vase that had belonged to her mother, and Daddy started to yell at me about it, but I remember she didn’t. Instead she held me in her arms while I cried and told me we could put it back together. The two of us.”
“I see her walking around sometimes,” Morgan says after a long pause. “Grandma Shirley, I mean.”
“What? Like Casper?”
“I know what I see.” Morgan pouts, and I think she may actually be serious.
“But does she look like Casper or like a person? Is she a good ghost or a scary ghost?”
Movies and television have taught me that ghosts are people with unfinished business, like in Ghost. Maybe we’re Grandma Shirley’s unfinished business. Maybe our family’s a little like the vase Jo broke, and somehow all of us have to put it back together. From inside the house, I hear Uncle Ronnie and my father laughing together, deep brotherly belly laughs.
Instead of responding to me, Morgan hits me with a lemon, and I duck and hit her right back. Then she, Jo, and I run around the yard pelting one another and laughing while the fruit cracks open on our bodies, flies buzzing around us, our clothes soaked in bittersweet.
* * *
When we get home from Uncle Ronnie’s, Lucia tells me she’s going back to Guatemala to visit Umberto and Roberto. She hasn’t booked a return flight, hasn’t figured out what happens after that.
Lucia has told me all about the beauty of Guatemala—the sun-soaked days spent searching for Mayan artifacts with her cousins; the colorful carpets made of sawdust and flowers and painstakingly worked on by artisans and families alike for the Holy Week processions through colonial ruins; nights spent camping out with her friends on actual volcanoes; standing on the roof of her house in the middle of a lightning storm and looking around in wonder—but all we ever hear about is the blood. Three years ago, an American nun was gang-raped and tortured. Two years ago, an American innkeeper there was beaten and all but decapitated. And this year, a guerrilla married to an American was tortured to death. The only reason it even made the news here is because there was some connection to the United States. Damarís used to squint her eyes at the television whenever these awful things would make their way to our newscasts and say to Lucia, “It’s the Americans.”
I guess that’s exactly how you’d view black people if you were from elsewhere and all you knew of us came from the news, like the riots. Still, I’m afraid for her.
“What about Jose?” I ask.
“Que sera, sera. But first, it’s time to see my boys.” She reaches over next to her and passes me an envelope. “The mail came.”
It’s from Stanford. If this were a few days earlier, if this were a different story, I’d leap up at the sight of it. It’s funny how a few days changes everything.
“I love you.” I put the envelope down, walk over to her, and hug her.
“Siempre,” Lucia says.
* * *
The clouds in the sky are small and dense like babies. I look down at the envelope next to me. I’ve picked it up several times, started to open it, and then dropped it back on the roof. I don’t care, but also I do. It starts to slide down, and I quickly grab it before it falls off. Jo crawls out to join me from her bedroom window.
“You’re not supposed to be up here,” she says.
“I’m not the one who fell off,” I say.
“I didn’t fall,” she says quietly.
“I know,” I say.
She pauses for a little bit.
“Guess I fucked that up.” Her chipped teeth whistle the tiniest bit when she laughs. I look over at her incredulously, but she looks down at the envelope next to me.
“Small envelope,” I say.
“Sometimes good things come in small packages.”
Mrs. Katz waters the plants around their yard while Mr. Katz suns his pecs.
“For now.” Jo smiles. It’s not her real one, but they don’t know that.
“Open it,” she says to me. “Your future awaits! Something good’s gotta happen to one of us, at least.”
My future didn’t get in off the wait-list at Stanford. And with the rejection letter goes some version of myself that I had imagined, but there are new versions to imagine. Other schools. I’m in at Occidental, all of the Claremont schools, USC, UCLA, and Cal. Each of them hold other future versions of me. Maybe better versions, even.
Jo frowns, then pats my thigh.
“You’re gonna be okay, Ash,” she says. I’m not sure whether we’re still talking about college.
Still reclining on the lounge chair, Mr. Katz reaches out a hand and runs it up and down Mrs. Katz’s leg while she tends to their plants, sliding his fingers under the edge of her shorts.
“Omigod, they’re such horndogs,” Jo whispers.
“I guess it’s kinda nice that they still love each other that much,” I say.
“Love is good,” Jo murmurs.
“I wanna be good. I wanna be happy. Sometimes it feels like there’s so much that I want,” I tell my sister.
“Me too.” Jo sighs.
“I’m afraid,” I whisper. “Are you afraid?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead she stands up on the roof and stretches her arms out to either side of her like she’s a plane.
“Be careful,” I say, but then I stand up too. She reaches her hand out to mine. I grab it and extend my right arm so that we are, the two of us, planes together. A slight breeze rustles through the trees, pressing against our skin. The sun runs down the length of our wings. The Pacific glitters; everything is a little sun-drenched and desaturated except for our brown fingertips against the blue.
“It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” Jo says.
“We don’t got a lot to compare it to,” I say.
We’ve traveled, but not as much as some of my peers, and mostly to places where you could still pronounce the city names. I’ve already decided that when I get older, I’m going to have a passport full of stamps, so many that I’ll have to keep getting new passport pages. Maybe when we’re older and she’s better and I’m whatever it is I turn out to be, we’ll get to see the world together: Paris! Istanbul! Djibouti!
“Doesn’t matter—just look at it. Look!”
Jo inhales it all in, content to be right here, right now. Home.
* * *
(“You better get your little asses off that roof,” my father yells.)
CHAPTER 25
THE NIGHT BEFORE, you will climb into bed with me and will be more talkative than usual, even though all I’ll want to do is sleep.
“Ash?” you’ll say.
“What?” I’ll say.
“I’m sorry I’m not better,” you’ll say. “You deserve better.”
“Better than what?” I’ll say.
You’ll scoot in closer so that your breath is hot on my face, and I’ll be able to smell the night’s Thai food from your favorite restaurant, sweet like curry but sour from the hours.
“You didn’t brush your teeth,” I’ll say, and you’ll open your mouth, blow on my face, and laugh.
“Tell me everything I don’t know about you,” you’ll say.
I won’t know what to tell you, how to give you all the things in my head. Somehow it’s easier to tell these things to people who aren’t blood, to share pieces of yourself with people who have no pieces of you in them.
“There’s not that much to tell,” I’ll say. I’ll want to say more, and you’ll look disappointed but nod like you understand.
“Will you visit me? During your breaks from school, I mean?” you’ll say.
“Of course,” I’ll say. I’ll mean it when I say it, but after that first time I visit it’ll get harder and harder. I’ll tell you all about school and how I’m not sure what I want to major in but I’m leaning toward biochem, and how I’m thinking about rushing but I don’t know how I feel about sororities, even if they are the black ones. You’ll sit there and listen and nod and say, “Maybe I should’ve done that…” And I’m not sure which part of that you’re referring to, but maybe all of it.
That night you’ll sleep soundly. You won’t thrash at all. In the dark of early dawn, I’ll lean my ear to your mouth to make sure you’re still breathing. I’ll feel your life in small gusts against my cheek.
The morning we take you in will be chillier than usual. The fog will feel like it’s suffocating everything. You’ll sit between her legs as Mom braids your hair into two French braids and fastens them with little colored bands still hidden in the back of drawers from our childhood. You’ll pull on an old sweater and jeans with some sneakers.
“You’re wearing that?” I’ll say.
“It’s not a fashion show, Ash.” You laugh, although there’s no real joy behind it. “Besides, I’m not going to get to keep any of it with me.”
Harrison will pace back and forth as we eat breakfast. He’ll drive everyone crazy by doting on you excessively—is your breakfast too hot, too cold, does your coffee have enough creamer, enough sugar, do you need anything else, anything at all—until you finally grab his hands, lean your forehead against his, and say, “Enough, love.”
All of us will pile into Mom’s car except for Lucia, who will kiss you on both your cheeks and hug you tight like someone who doesn’t know when she might get to see you again. She will whisper something in your ear, but none of us will hear it. We’ll just see you squeeze her harder and not let go, until Mom tells you, “It’s time, Josephine.”
“Escucha a tus padres,” Lucia will say to you as she takes her thumbs and wipes away your tears.
“Let Ash drive,” you’ll say. “She needs the practice, right?”
“I have my license already, remember?”
“So what? Practice makes perfect.”
I’ll carefully take each curve down the hills and onto the freeway. I’ll be so nervous I almost miss the entrance to the 10, and Daddy will yell, “No! Your left! Get to your left!” but you’ll say, “Dad, she’s got it.”
Before that I’ll have the radio on, KIIS, which you used to love to talk shit about, but today we’ll both sing along to “Hold On” by Wilson Phillips until I almost hit somebody merging right and Dad turns it off and we both go, “Oh, come on!”
“Ashley needs to concentrate,” he’ll say. “She’s about to get us all killed.”
You’ll stick your face out the window like a dog, feeling the wind on your skin, and your curls will bounce and stretch in the breeze into and out of your face and your mouth and plaster to your forehead.
Several times, I’ll catch Harrison staring at you as if to memorize every pore on your face.
We’ll have to circle the structure two times before we find a spot.
“Geez! Are this many people going to jail?” I’ll say, and you’ll start to laugh. It’ll be obvious that I’m trying to make Mom laugh because her lip is quivering, because you can see the rainstorms brewing on her face and in her head, and I’ll try to find the sunshine.
“Mom, don’t,” you’ll say. “Don’t. For me. Please.”
“Look! I didn’t get us all killed!” I’ll say as I finally pull into the space.
We’ll march in a solemn procession toward the building. You’ll link arms with Mom and Harrison and Dad, and I’ll straggle behind. Downtown, the sun will beam down on the tops of our heads. Dad will throw his arm over my shoulder and it’ll feel a little comforting, but mostly I’ll notice the weight of his sad bearing me down.
You’ll stop steps away from the entrance. We’ll see all kinds of people enter, but we’ll notice how many of them are black, how many of them are brown. We’ll feel it circle around us as a family, this shared, unspoken thing. A man will nod his head at Daddy, and they will understand each other fo
r a moment, as the man walks inside with somebody he loves.
“I think maybe… I don’t want you to come inside,” you’ll say to us, and our parents will stand there stunned.
“But, Josephine…” Mom trails off and doesn’t fight it much, because I don’t think she wants to go inside either. She doesn’t want to see what happens next.
In the end, it’s Harrison who will go inside with you to see you off. When he comes back outside to us, his red eyes puffy and his cheeks tearstained, he’ll say, “She’s all set.”
And that’s the last thing any of us will say for a while that day.
Inside, you will be stripped and searched and showered. You will be given a set of clothing, underwear, socks, white sneakers. You will be given an inmate number.
That first night, as you lie awake in the middle of all those unfamiliar sounds, you’ll think of Harrison and Mom and Dad and Lucia; your thoughts will drift to Latasha, and to Grandma Shirley. In that moment, the jail will briefly remind you of the gymnasium after the wildfire, all those people breathing, snoring, and being, all that life pumping all around you like an organ.
One woman will cry and one woman will laugh, and their voices will echo off the walls so that you won’t be sure which one of them is doing which. That’s it right there, isn’t it? you think.
Mostly, you’ll stare out at the handful of stars that manage to shine through the smog and city lights, the ones that beg to be seen, that push their way through. You’ll look at the brightest and think of me.
And across town, I will think of you.
CHAPTER 26
THE HOT SAND feels almost ancestral. There’s a picture in our house of a very young Grandma Opal and a bunch of pretty black women in two-pieces, their arms wrapped around one another, their brown legs planted like flags in the sand.
“That was three months after I arrived in California,” Grandma Opal said when I asked her about it. “Santa Monica was still segregated then.”
“What?” Jo and I said in unison. “Here?”
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