Home was that wide open space that wasn’t quite right. Olivia’s crib wasn’t supposed to be in the corner. A temporary solution when we did it. Until, we whispered when it was just us and kisses interrupted every word. Until…
The energy was wrong. I felt it every time I walked in the door. A buzz of discontent. An itch to change and fix and rearrange. One Saturday I did. Cahir laughed. He always laughed. But he helped. It didn’t matter though. The crib didn’t fit.
It was nice to have something in common with the furniture in that apartment.
Junie said she wanted Olivia for a night. “Not in my apartment because, girl, could you imagine? But I’ll stay at your place and watch her. Y’all go outside and experience it. You remember outside, right?”
We saw a movie. Horror. For me. He smiled every time I laughed. He laughed every time someone shushed me. Until it was a man that told me to shut up, called me a bitch. I had to put my hand on Cahir’s arm. To remind him that we couldn’t go to jail. It wasn’t just us. He nodded.
“Keep your hand there. I need the reminder,” he said.
I pulled down his zipper and put my hand in his pants instead. Felt his body draw up tight and felt powerful for a little while.
He threw away the bucket of popcorn we ignored and the sodas neither of us wanted to drink and took me to a gin bar. We sat under string lights on the back terrace. I had a botanical gin gimlet. I didn’t know the name of his drink. I eyed it until he gave it to me and ordered another for himself with fake exasperation on his face. It was me that couldn’t stop laughing that night.
“You’re beautiful,” he said over and over and leaned across the table to kiss me.
We ate and laughed and talked about the things that made us happy before we knew each other.
“Fighting,” I told him.
He pulled back in surprise. “What?”
“I didn’t dress the way I was supposed to. I didn’t speak the way I was expected to. I didn’t scream during horror movies and everyone knew my grandmother lived in the City and was basically a witch. They knew she taught me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They thought it meant that they could treat me a certain way.” I tilted my head. “I lost a lot at first. My mother wanted to put me in a different school. My father taught me to box. He said moving around wouldn’t stop me from being different or people from being people. My mother’s from Baltimore. My father moved there for her. So she knew better than to argue.”
Cahir smiled the Olivia smile. It twisted me. Or the thing inside me twisted me. But not as much as it usually did. Maybe gin was the cure.
“I learned to fight. My father took me out to dinner when I got suspended for fighting. Because the loser never got suspended and I didn’t have a cut on me. We went to the Prime Rib. He let me wear one of his blazers. My mother loaned me her Gucci belt then said I could keep it. She lied and said it looked better on me.”
He kissed me. I was happy not to see the smile. I kissed him back. On and on and more and more until the separation between us threatened to kill me and I moved around the table and sat on his lap.
“We can’t get arrested,” I told him.
He laughed into my mouth and I got to have my drink in a new way before he kissed me again.
I looked at the moon when the kiss ended and thought maybe I could do it. Maybe I could be better.
“We’re gonna have memories like that with Olivia,” he said. “That’s-you have no idea how much I want that. How much I’m ready for that.”
I went back to my seat. His hand was there on the table, waiting. I was weak. I couldn’t leave it empty even though I had an idea of what was coming.
“We’re ready for a house, right?” His fingers squeezed mine. Did I pull away? Was that why he held on to me so tightly? “A place where there’s room for each of us? That’s intentional? Where you don’t have to rearrange the furniture every weekend because the energy isn’t right?”
Oh, he knew all my favorite buzzwords.
How to tell him that it was different in his apartment. That the chaos was a blanket that soothed. That wide open room that didn’t feel quite right gave me so much room to hide.
That was the thing about houses. They were homes for families. More rooms and less places to hide. We had the largest house on the block when I was growing up in Baltimore and yet we were always running into each other, finding each other- conversation, touch, questions, seeing.
What are you doing? Let me see your homework. What are you working on, babe? Dad, what’s that? Can I go with you? Mom, can you talk to Dad? He’s being weird. The three of us making dinner or watching movies or listening to their old vinyls hum under the needle of the record player. It was my mother laid across my bed while I put outfits together. Us laid on the living room floor as we read Vogue together or sketched out outfits and then ran to her closet to see what she had to make them come alive.
He knew that. He had that growing up too. I felt it when I walked into his parents’s home. Some houses are close no matter how many square feet they have. The love, the rightness shrunk them. Made you throw things out.
The thing about being seen was that once it happened you couldn’t hide anymore. Like playing hide and seek with a child and knowing they will see you the moment they open their eyes. Because you can’t make it hard for them. Even if you want to.
I would love home, and I would love Olivia, and I would love Cahir, and he would see what Olivia saw, and then home would be gone, and everything I loved would go with it. Because I didn’t love myself. The gnawing thing inside me showed me that. I had lost a bit of love at some point. I had decided to be weak instead of growing that love again. Afraid.
Fear was familiar. I didn’t know what the future was like but fear was an old friend.
I pulled my hand free of Cahir’s. I heard my breathing. I heard my “no” and knew it was louder than the breathing. And I knew he knew.
Chapter Eight
Cahir
I woke her up earlier and earlier. Every morning. And I gave her a reason to have a body with sore thighs and a chest too tight and lungs that struggled to bring in air. I did it every morning until she reached for me before I was fully out of my sleep. Until it was her that made me beg.
“Let me take you to work,” I said that morning.
She didn’t smile. I was so busy laughing all the goddamned time I hadn’t noticed that Cash didn’t even smile. She didn’t turn on the music that told me to stop work, to dance, to be present. She didn’t laugh with Olivia or dance with her either. She just…hummed. I hated the sound of it. I wanted her to shut up. I wanted her to leave.
It terrified me. The leaving part. Because if she left I did too. It wasn’t like when I was with Zion- when I knew I was drowning and convinced myself that it was the best thing for me, that I was going to die anyways and it was nice to have a choice.
Losing Cash would be…The future was what I made it. I always believed that. Until her. Then the future became whatever she agreed to. And that was safe in a way that didn’t stifle or shrink me. That was okay. Because she loved me the right way. The kind of love that made her think about both of us before she said yes to me. I got to disappear, let go, fly. I didn’t think about the weight that might have put on her. Because I thought she was as strong as she was soft. I thought it would be fine because she would tell me when it was too much. I would come back to earth for her. I’d walk with her. Maybe I’d be the tether that made it possible for her to fly. But no, not really. Cash didn’t need that. She could fly on her own. She’d always known how.
I panicked first. I couldn’t lose Cash because I wanted to fly. How was that better than what Zion did to me? Stay, Cash, my panic suggested, because that will make me happy no matter how you feel. Even if it crushes you stay so I can keep my smile.
Shame. I didn’t want to be what cut me deepest. I didn’t want to look down at Cash’s hands and see scars. I didn’t-
The truth was I didn’t know how to pull my head out of my own ass to fix it. I knew sex. I knew her body. I knew her gasps and her moans and how her body relaxed in spite of her stress after I gave her more orgasms than she thought she could handle. So I gave them to her until I realized I didn’t have a better plan.
I took her to work. I watched her walk into Beyond. I waited until she went up the stairs and Junie was back at her desk. I waited until Junie came to my window.
“Come on,” she said. Candy-sweet cherry gum breath wafting over my face. “You been waiting long enough to say what you want to say.”
I got out of the car and followed her into Beyond.
Cahir
“I like your hair,” I said. It was teal. A good color against her skin.
“You’re supposed to.” She sat at her chair and ignored the ringing phone. “Talk.”
“Do you need to answer that?”
“No. It’s a man. The men never make the decisions here.”
“Oh.”
“Talk.”
“Right.”
“This. This is why the men never make the decisions around here.”
I laughed and perched on the corner of her desk. “I’m losing her.”
“She’s been lost since she found out Zion was pregnant. Come on now. You blind? Stupid? That naive?”
“We fixed that.”
“No. You talked about it a whole lot. After she broke up with you. Y’all back together?”
I couldn’t blame it on Olivia. I couldn’t point to the fact that I had a new born. It was my fault that I missed that one
“Crazy thing about the two of y’all is how much you don’t wanna talk then you do wanna talk but you don’t talk about the shit that’s actually important. Y’all talk about your feelings.”
“Feelings are important. They’re how you build trust.”
She snorted, and I felt like I’d just been cursed out. Thoroughly. “Feelings don’t mean shit. Decisions do. Got all the feelings in the world but can’t decide to fix this shit.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Finally.” She softened. “The truth.”
“I don’t think she hates the baby.” Everything in me drew up tight.
“No. She loves Olivia.”
And released.
“I don’t think she likes her though.”
Bile rose in my throat.
“It’s not as bad as you think. A lot of new mothers don’t like their kids. What is bad is that you was so ready to buy into the idea of this little United Colors of Benetton family image that you didn’t even check in with her.”
What was I supposed to say to that? I looked at my shoes. The ones Cash picked out for me and made sure were always perfectly shined.
“Only reason I haven’t whooped your ass is because I know you ain’t doing it on purpose.”
“Tell me how to fix it. I can’t lose her.” The truth made my voice dull.
“What do you think it was like for your parents in the beginning?”
“Huh?”
“When they first adopted you. You were a baby, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think it takes either a certain kind of entitlement or courage to adopt a kid outside your race. To get a kid that don’t look like you. Everyone knows. The kid knows. You can never pretend. Can’t lie. Kid knows in some ways they aren’t yours. You know.”
“She’s ours.”
“She’s yours. For sure. She looks like you. She’ll never look like Cash.”
I wasn’t dumb enough to ask if that mattered. I was dumb enough to have never considered it.
“I think there has to be a lot of pressure. What if you get it wrong? You don’t have biology to lean back on. Can’t say ‘I gave birth to you so it doesn’t matter if I don’t get this right.’ You chose the kid. Could’ve left them alone. But you chose. And now you’ve got to get it right. What if it doesn’t click into place?”
I nodded. Because I didn’t understand but was sure I would if she just kept talking.
“In your parents’s case they could share in it, right? Like a tag team. Help when the other is floundering. Take some kind of comfort in knowing the person beside you has the same fears as you. Y’all are really in it together.” Junie tossed her braids over her shoulder. “But y’all aren’t in it. Cash signed some papers that say Olivia is hers. She’s trying to feel it. From the beginning Olivia just was yours. Everyone knew it. Just asked to be polite.”
I remembered O’Shea on my counter, behind my desk. Never going away. Voicemail after voicemail after text message. Because, yeah, she knew. I remembered the way my mother and my friends asked about Cash, scared to assume but doing it anyways. Assuming that she left. Surprised that she stayed and what she was willing to do. Questioning if it was the right choice. If we thought it through.
Yes, I told them. This was what we were going to be. It was just happening sooner than expected. A little out of order. The women would soften. Men would slap my shoulder, my back. Congratulations from everyone. For picking the right woman. For getting my happily ever after.
“So here she is trying to get right but shit, a newborn baby is hard for biological mothers. And she’s not just holding some baby. She’s holding the thing that broke up y’all’s relationship. She’s holding your relationship with Zion. From beginning to end. There she is holding the evidence of the woman that broke you, broke what you and her built, and in some ways broke her. What she supposed to do? Skip into the sunset? Say it’s all easy and keep her cool?”
I should have stayed in my car.
Cahir
It felt like a drug deal. We met in the back of a Target parking lot. The last row of spaces in the far corner. The concrete kept the sun and the wind and sometimes the rain away. We didn’t talk. Tseday, Zion’s mother, would hand me one of those oversized lunchboxes, icepack and all, full of breast milk. I would hand her the empty lunchbox she gave me the week before and a room temperature icepack. In the beginning I would feel guilty that it wasn’t frozen, but what the fuck did I have to feel guilty about?
It was the worst part of my week. It was the only thing I wouldn’t let Cash share in. It was the only time I was happy to leave Olivia at home.
It hit me in the chest every time Tseday got out of her car. She looked like Zion which was its own kind of ache. I could see Olivia in her. That hit me like a fist to the chest. Every time. A surprise every single time. Loss of air. Rounded shoulders. Watery eyes and ringing ears. Off balance and feeling stupid because anyone could see how I got sucker punched.
But it wasn’t about me. I told that myself over and over and over again. It wasn’t about me. Everything wasn’t about me. Wasn’t that why Cash and I were in such a fucking mess? Because I thought it was? And even with the evidence right there I still struggled. Still wanted to tell someone how unfair it all was and how much I hated it. Still wanted to stay in my car and pretend I didn’t see her, didn’t need her, could cut myself off from that entire fucking family and finally move on with my goddamned life.
I took a deep breath and opened the car door.
“Hello.”
I lied. Sometimes Tseday spoke.
“Zion is better. Less of the tears. She asks after you. After the baby.” She tilted her head. She stood in front of her open car door. The car was still running. Because it was supposed to be quick. A frugal woman despite her wealth. I knew she knew she was wasting gas. And my time. But why would my time matter? Why would I? “I am wrong. She cried when she knew the baby’s name was still Olivia. She called out for you.”
“Here.” I gave her the empty bag. I held my hand out. I wasn’t, in that moment, who my mother raised me to be, but she probably never thought I would be in that kind of situation.
“Cahir.” She reached for me. She knew I couldn’t do that. I stepped back. “I know I do not deserve to ask but-The sounds of my daughter.”
“Yeah. I remember.” I rubbed a fi
nger over my scars. “Why? Why are you asking me for anything?”
A ballsy woman. She didn’t bow her head. Didn’t blink. Strength. It didn’t matter. I had Cash to teach Olivia that.
“I-” Her hands smoothed over an already perfectly smooth skirt. “May I know the child?”
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” I held out my hand again. “Give it to me.”
“Cahir-”
“Tseday. No. Are you insane? No.” My head spun a little. I had to go. I had to leave before I felt my knees give out and my body hit the pavement and everyone got to see that despite everything I said I wasn’t okay and I didn’t have shit together. “Give it to me or let me go buy formula.”
She put the bag in my hand. I kept myself from tossing it across the driver’s seat and not giving a shit where it landed. I kept myself from flinging myself in to the car and speeding away.
Barely.
“Think about it.” Her voice wasn’t loud but her words carried. A family gift.
I smelled burnt rubber when I pulled out of the parking lot.
Chapter Nine
Cassidy
In the dream, Olivia was there. The chubby cheeks and excitement of a child on her first day of kindergarten. Her hair was decorated with colorful barrettes and she hopped from foot to foot. She laughed. It sounded like mine. That was why I stopped humming and turned to see her. Because the laugh was so like mine I had to make sure it didn’t come from me.
She reached a hand out to me. Fingers spread wide the way little kids do-so they feel all of us, grasp a little more, hold on a little tighter. I wanted to reach for her too. She looked so happy. Loved. She looked at me. Like I was responsible for it. Like I got it right.
I reached. Darkness swept over my fingers. Between them. Tendrils of it. It coated the floor. Slick, slow moving. Moving to my baby. It held me back. Held me down. It amplified my screams as I watched it drown her.
Better as Lovers Page 4