“Ma. C’mon.”
“No, I’m jus’ sayin’!” She talked over him. “If you was to be arrogant, ain’ nobody would blame you. But you’re not.”
She smiled and reached over, touching his hand briefly before pulling away again.
Their server returned with her tea and his espresso, and they both were busy with that for a few moments. Deuce was so busy that he almost missed it when she said it. He almost believed he had misheard her entirely.
“I have cancer.”
Slowly lifting his head, he leaned in. “Wh …”
The words came out of nowhere and were so unrelated to anything that had been said up till then that it took a moment for Deuce to absorb their meaning.
“Breast cancer,” his mother said.
Her eyes were unflinching as she looked at him, like she wanted to make sure she was being crystal-clear, and that he heard and understood her.
“Ma, when …”
Now, she looked down, slowly stirring sugar into her tea, but she kept talking.
“I was careless about some things. I didn’t check up on my health as much as I should have, and now … well, I’m at Stage III.”
“What does that mean?” Deuce exhaled.
“Basically, it’s spread beyond the breast.”
“Ma.” He reached for her hand, and she flinched, as though her impulse was to withdraw, but she let him hold it. It was clammy.
“How long have you …?”
“I’ve been knowin’ for a few months. And I …”
“Months?” he asked, his voice a little too loud. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“Deuce, I’m a grown woman. I don’t need to report to you about my health. I was taking care of it.”
“Taking care of it?” he asked between his teeth. “How? You a doctor now?”
“Don’t get smart with me. I went to doctors. That’s what I’ve been doin’ these past months. I thought it would get … handled. But now …”
“But now, what?” he asked.
Suddenly, he was aware of his heart beating in his chest. He could both hear and feel it. His temples felt tight, and hot.
“Now I have to get reassessed. They think … I don’t know. It might be too late to get … More aggressive chemo might be the only …”
“Fuck,” Deuce said, releasing her hand. He ran a hand over his face. “Fuck, Ma! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Christopher, I have a sister, a mother. They knew. They’ve been …”
“But I’m your fuckin’ son!”
“Exactly!” she said. “And stop cussin’ at me! I didn’t tell you because you’re my child. There was no reason for me to worry you about …”
“Worry me,” he echoed. He looked up at her and tears rose to his eyes.
“Christopher …”
“Stop callin’ me that!”
She exhaled and leaned back, sliding her hand from beneath his.
“It’s your name,” she said, pursing her lips.
Their food came, and Deuce looked at his large plate with something between disinterest and disgust. His mother began buttering her warm brioche, seemingly unfazed.
But of course, she was, probably. She had been living with this knowledge for months, while he had only had minutes to process it.
“You have your father’s temper,” she said conversationally. “But I guess a bad temper can be a motivator sometimes.”
“Stop talking about my father,” he said irritably. “Is that why you’re doin’ it? Because you think you about to die, you figure you’d better get in some positive things about him before it’s too late? So I don’t get left remembering all the shitty stuff you’ve been sayin’ my whole life?”
His mother put down her butter knife and looked at him, and to his surprise, she smiled.
“Yup,” she said. “Pretty much.”
Deuce almost smiled back.
“Are you?” he asked, his voice choked.
“Am I what?”
“About to die.”
She paused, thinking about the question. “I’ma fight hard as hell not to,” she said finally.
“You can’t,” Deuce said, his voice thick. “You hear me? You can’t die.”
The tears were back, and his throat clogged. This time, it was she who reached for his hand.
“Bossy like your Daddy, too.”
After Ellen’s, his mother said she needed some things at the grocery store and when Deuce offered to take her home and go back out to get them, she snapped at him, and told him not to treat her “like a damn invalid.” So, they went together to Whole Foods, and walked the aisles while she picked out her items, and then headed back to the house.
By the time they got there, she was too tired to unpack them, though. So, Deuce did, while she relaxed in the sunroom. When he went out to join her, she was looking out into the backyard, her expression soft and nostalgic.
“You don’t have to stay all day,” she said. “It’s Saturday. I know you probably have plans with Regan.”
“Nah, she’s working today. I can hang out.”
“I won’t be no kinda company. I’m about to go get some sleep.”
“Ma, look at me …”
Deuce crouched next to her chair and she turned to look at him. Her eyes followed all the contours of his face and she touched his cheek with a tenderness he couldn’t recall having experienced from her before.
“What?” she asked.
“I can move back,” he said. “If you need …”
“No.” She was shaking her head before he was finished. “I don’t like the idea of you seeing me sick. Throwing up and all that mess … You stay in the city. You’re not that far away if I need you. And I have your Aunt Stacey … and Gayle comes more often now. I’m okay.”
Searching her eyes, Deuce tried to figure out whether she meant it. But of course she did. She meant it, but it wasn’t true. She thought she was okay, emotionally, but her body might be dying. He swallowed the urge to cry.
“You’re such a good kid,” she said. “I don’t know what I ever done … to deserve such a good kid.”
He didn’t leave until she was back in her bed and asleep. And even then, not till he called his Aunt Stacey and asked if she had any plans to come over. She confirmed that she did, and that she came over every Saturday and some weekdays as well, when her schedule permitted.
She told you, she said.
Yes, he said.
Baby, she responded. I am so sorry.
And that was how Deuce knew that things were much, much worse than his mother told him they were.
CHAPTER SIX
“Turns out you are not a total ass.”
“Thanks, cuz,” Asif yoked an arm around Zora’s neck as they entered their apartment building, his hold half-affectionate, and a little faux-threatening. “I want you to make sure to tell my mother that when she calls.”
“No, seriously. I had fun with you today. And it’s good to know that this documentary you’re working on isn’t complete BS.”
They had been scouting locations, vetting potential subjects for his film and stopping in on Asif’s friends and colleagues all day. Zora watched her cousin as he navigated a city that was new to him, with the confidence of someone who had lived there his entire life.
It made her want to be braver. She was a girl from Jersey and knew a lot more of New York than he did. It should have been she who was showing him obscure little haunts. Instead, she had been the tag-along.
Except for a few wrong connections on the subway, it was a completely productive afternoon. Now, they were coming home, Zora carrying two hot plates of Jamaican food, jerk chicken for her, and oxtail for Asif. She stood back as he let them in, then dumped the food on the coffee table, sitting to slide off her sneakers.
“After we eat, I’ma head back out,” Asif said, collapsing next to her. “You should come with me.”
“Where to? We’ve been out all day.”
“Friend of mine is a jazz musician. I’ma check him out at this spot downtown. Might ask him to score the film. Then after that … hit up some clubs.”
“Are you serious right now? You’re going out again tonight?”
“Zora. You’re the one who can’t be serious. We live in one of the most exciting cities on the planet. Why you want to stay home?”
“No, it’s just …”
“You have no life. I know. It’s fine. Hang with me, and I’ll help you get one.”
“Shut up.” She kicked him in the calf. “I have a life. I just … it’s with school about to start and everything.”
“Yeah, yeah. Come with me. Put on some makeup, something nice, and let’s go listen to some music.”
Why not? Once Asif was gone, she wouldn’t do anything other than watch Netflix and idly surf the internet. And for good measure, she would probably spend a couple of hours imagining Deuce and his girlfriend and what they might be doing on a Saturday. All afternoon, she had been too engrossed to think about that, or to torture herself wondering whether Deuce was as attentive with Regan as he had been with her.
During finals week senior year, he brought her coffee every morning. Got up before she did, went to work out before the crack of dawn and then went to Starbucks for coffee and breakfast.
They had practically lived together in those last few months of school, but during finals week, Zora was cranky and wanted lots of space to study. Most of the time, she was sequestered in her room, and sometimes didn’t answer calls, not even Deuce’s. But every morning after his workout, he knocked on her door and she stumbled from bed, to open it.
He would be standing there, sweaty, sexy, holding a coffee cup and a breakfast sandwich.
How’d it go last night? he’d ask, even though he might not even know what she was working on.
Fine. No biggie. Only that my entire future hinges on this stupid paper.
God, she was obnoxious when she was stressed.
You’ll work it out, Deuce would say, kissing her on the forehead.
Then he’d hand her her breakfast and grope her butt when her hands were both occupied, and she couldn’t shove him away.
And then he’d leave.
Zora remembered how conflicted she was, watching him walk down the hall. Wanting him to stay because she always wanted him to stay. But knowing that she needed the time and space to study.
And also resenting that it seemed easy for him to walk away. But respecting him for respecting her need to get her work done.
The afternoon after her last final, she got back to her room to find him waiting, leaning against her locked door, playing around with his phone, texting or something. He looked up as she approached, and she grinned at him and shook her head as she unlocked the door, pretending exasperation she didn’t feel.
Deuce held her by the waist, pressing against her from behind.
Can I have my girl back now?
Thinking that he might be like that with Regan, with anyone but her, felt like a hatchet had been taken to her heart. What made it worse was the knowledge that the wound was self-inflicted.
“Okay. Screw it. Let’s do it,” Zora said. “Let’s go out.”
“Damn right,” Asif said, extending a fist for some pound.
~~~
Zora made an effort for her night out with Asif, partly because she thought looking nice might improve her mood, and partly because she didn’t want to cramp his style. With skinny jeans, she wore high-heeled pointy-toed boots, of the kind that never went out of fashion with It Girls. And because the evenings were still muggy, she topped it with a lightweight organza tank top.
Looking her over as she walked out of her bedroom, Asif frowned.
“Grab a cardigan with that,” he said. “You want your father to kill me?”
“It’s almost eighty degrees outside. I’m not wearing a cardigan.”
“Something. But we ain’t leaving with you looking like that. I can see your … headlights.”
Huffing, Zora went back to her bedroom and swapped out the tank for a high-necked, sleeveless top that showed off a lot of arm and shoulder, but less of everything else.
“Better,” her cousin said, semi-approvingly.
Asif was a good escort. He held her hand as they entered the club and made sure she walked alongside rather than behind him, using his size to nudge people out of her path.
Onstage, the musicians were playing the kind of jazz that was anything but smooth. It was a chaotic riff of notes that the listener had to surrender to, rather than try to understand. Zora’s first impression of jazz as a music form was that it gave meaning to the words, ‘neither rhyme nor reason.’ Only once she studied a little about it did she realize that wasn’t true. The rhyme and the reason were both there, embedded in the music, but it wasn’t handed to you, you had to work for it.
Asif got them a table, by looming over one where a couple seemed undecided about whether to leave and made up their minds a little faster when they noticed him. Once they stood, he offered them a blinding smile.
“Thanks,” he said pleasantly, as though he hadn’t just passive-aggressively hastened their departure.
Once they were seated, he leaned over to Zora and spoke in her ear.
“That’s Nicolas on the sax,” he said.
Zora looked at the guy onstage with the quartet, eyes closed, blowing the hell out of a saxophone.
“Oh my god, he’s Senegalese, isn’t he?” she said.
Asif laughed. “Why ‘oh my god’? You object to knowing people from your country?”
“No, it’s just that I can’t understand how it is you manage to know almost exclusively people from our country.”
They said “our country” though neither of them had been born in Senegal, and Zora’s mother was American. But the sense of community was a solid, living, breathing thing and Zora’s tendency to be more American than not, was an anomaly in their family.
“Is he going to be in your documentary?”
“Thinking about it.”
Asif’s documentary was about the diversity of Muslim communities in America, the differences between them and their shared challenges living in an increasingly xenophobic social climate. He was vacillating about how much to include about the Nation of Islam, and how to address 9/11. His and Zora’s many stops and meetings today had been with people he was considering interviewing on camera. And they all had different points of view about their shared faith, and about September 11.
“I think it’s going to be amazing, by the way,” Zora said to him now.
Asif grinned and nodded. “You could help me, if you want.”
“What kind of help could I possibly give in making a documentary?”
“Your perspective.”
Zora leaned back and thought for a moment.
“Like, on camera?”
Asif shrugged. “If you want. But if not, just in the background. Could be a nice little family bonding project for us.”
Zora opened her mouth to answer when a server showed up. Asif ordered them a pitcher of beer and potato skins, then looked at her again.
“So, what you think? You into it?”
Zora nodded. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
She had been worried lately—not very worried, but worried nevertheless—that she was becoming complacent. Law school was time-consuming and thought-consuming, but that didn’t feel like a good excuse for not being involved with BLM. She hadn’t even caught up with Rashad like she’d planned to when she moved out West. There had been a few phone calls, a few text messages and a hundred broken plans to get together. But he was busy, and she was busy, and the more time passed, the more they felt like former friends. She heard through the grapevine that he was still deeply involved in the cause, though not as visibly as he used to be.
She wasn’t alone in her complacency. Black Lives Matter these days had become more of a slogan, less of a movement; and that saddened her. She knew that important work was
happening, somewhere. She just didn’t know anymore who was doing it. Her connections had grown stale.
This project of Asif’s felt like it might be a way to reinvigorate herself and become more than a drone reading case law ten hours a day.
Onstage, the quartet concluded a song and announced that they were taking a break. Zora looked up and watched as the saxophonist set aside his instrument and leapt off the stage, wading his way toward them. Up close, he was handsome, with the high cheekbones, strong chin and brows of the Mandinka people. His hair was jet-black, in tight, coarse curls, cut low.
Smiling, he extended a hand and greeted her in Wolof.
“Salaam aleekum.”
“Bruh, she doesn’t speak the language,” Asif intervened.
“I can say ‘hello’!” Zora blushed, smacking her cousin on the arm.
“I’m Nicolas. And you are?”
“Zora.”
“My cousin, Zora,” Asif said, putting emphasis on their familial affiliation.
“Ah,” Nicolas said nodding. “I see … no resemblance at all.”
Zora laughed and Nicolas took the seat next to hers, spinning it around so he was straddling it.
“So, where you from? The D, or …?”
“She’s a Jersey girl,” Asif said. “Just moved back from California.”
“It’d be totally fine to let me answer for myself,” Zora said. “I mean, I think I can handle it.”
Nicolas grinned wider. He had great teeth. Not ‘great’. Perfect teeth. Perfectly straight, perfectly white. There was just something about Senegalese men.
The server returned with their pitcher and skins, and Zora indicated the beer and food.
“D’you want to join us, Nicolas?”
“Just water for me,” he said. “I don’t drink while I’m working. Or … at all, actually.”
Zora’s head fell to one side. “Oh.”
“Water though. I’ll drink water.”
“For the table,” Asif told their server. “Please.”
“So, are you going to be part of the documentary my cousin’s working on?” Zora asked.
“I don’t know. Am I, Seef?
“If you act right,” Asif said.
“We go way back, Seef and me,” Nicolas told her. “Since middle school. One time he beat my ass when I cheated during Ramadan. I’ve always been grateful to him for that.”
Rhyme & Reason Page 5