Never Too Real

by Carmen Rita

  “Well, I hope so.” A chance at self-righteousness: Luz would take it. “But had Mom been keeping in touch with them, with Cookie and her sister?”

  “Gladys is still there, in the same apartment. So I just looked up her number and it was listed.”

  Luz sat back, nudged by the mounting evidence, and effort. “Wow. Thanks for doing that.”

  They sat and breathed while Tomas’s coffee steamed. So much truth in the air. Huge truths sat in the room with them, big enough to be their own entities. Pull up a chair! A family secret. A new father. A new sister. A new kid in the family. Parents withholding. Class lines blurring, overlapping. There sits a big, fat brown mess.

  But at this moment, something else aside of all these things was bothering Luz the most. Like the nasty itch of a healing burn, Luz mulled the realization that her brother was only, technically, biologically, her half brother. Sure, Luz was lighter, her eyes not brown, her nose more refined, but all black families were blended families to some extent. Except she’d always thought most of the blending happened generations ago. Not in this generation, in her bloodline. It made her ache with some sort of mourning. As big of a bully she could be with him, she loved her little brother above and beyond anyone except her own children. And now these children had another grandfather. In prison. And another tía, an aunt closer to their age than to hers. Her head began spinning again from the implications of one monster of an afternoon, just a few days ago, that began with a pretty teen version of herself, sitting in her brother’s living room.

  “I just can’t help being pissed off, ya know?” Luz stood so she could pace away some of the negative vibrations she felt running through her body, an anger buzz rising. “I mean, who does that? Who lies about who your father is?”

  Her brother stared into his cup, recognizing this tone.

  “And Dad, too. He knew! Like, what the fuck . . .”

  Tomas stated firmly, “I don’t think you should talk to Mom and Dad just yet.”

  “What?” Luz’s eyes narrowed.

  “Just hear me out, okay?”

  Luz sat back down. It was time for her to listen.

  “Dad’s blood pressure has been an issue, right? And this is really just going to hurt them both—Mom and Dad. So let’s just take care of the Emeli situation first ourselves, okay?”

  Luz looked up at his pleading eyes.

  “I mean, she’s too young to be going through this, and there’s probably going to be some logistical things with adoption, or maybe legal stuff to get her emancipated—”

  “Okay, just stop.” Tomas straightened for an onslaught, but this time, it wasn’t Luz’s anger running the show, it was her realization that they had to manage this lock-step for the best results. “Before we get to that stuff, what’s the situation with her father? Damage control here, okay?”

  “Uh, what damage?”

  “Well, he’s in prison, right? This guy?”

  “You mean, her, your father . . .”

  “Yes, her father.” Don’t you dare call him my father again, so help me Dios, Luz thought.

  “I spoke to him after you left yesterday.”

  Her stomach lurched. She felt disgust. The idea of this . . . convict . . . just made her sick. “You . . . you spoke to him? In prison?” Her eyes went wide. In apprehension but also in awe of her brother’s management of what was essentially not his problem. The divorce toughened him up a bit. Wow.

  “He’d like to meet you.”

  Luz blanched as much as her cinnamon skin would allow.

  “I mean, not right now, of course! Just, eventually,” Tomas assured her.

  Luz’s head hurt. She pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “But he did ask if you could please take care of her. She doesn’t have a lot of family around—good family—and he knows that she’ll do so much better with you.”

  At the mention of “good family,” Luz stood back up again, bristling. “Oh, he knows, huh.” She started biting her nails. “He knows shit. That’s what he knows.”

  “Okay, forget about him. Right now, we need to focus on Emeli, okay? We gotta keep her in school and out of trouble. Assuming she is one of us, a sister, we have to take care of her, Luz. With all that we’ve been given . . . I mean, that could have been us, right?”

  Luz sat down for a third time, spreading her arms wider and wider until her hands grasped the sides of the table at either end as far as she could reach. She looked at her wingspan and laid her head, right cheek down, on the table, like a child. As she spoke her voice was muffled as the side of her lips touched the tabletop.

  “Mira. Look. Just give me until tonight, okay?”

  Tomas perked up, his body language shifting, communicating to Luz his relief. She then realized just how much this load was weighing on him—how scared he must be, even as a young, strapping man. Poor guy, she thought. Bad me. Again, I suck.

  “Great. Great.” Tomas smiled.

  Luz noted his verbal tic of repeating words twice. He’d had it since grade school. When he was a kid it had sounded like a stutter. But as an adult, it sounded charming, an eccentric quirk. Not a bad thing in their family circle. Family. Huh. Luz righted herself.

  “I just don’t think I can manage being alone with her yet—but, and thank you, by the way, for taking the controls there . . .” She trailed off, allowing her appreciation to be heard first. “So, the kids are on their way back with Chris and will be here by like, five—how about you bring her by around six? With her stuff.”

  “Okay, six. Six is good.” Luz saw a hint of a smile on his face. Poor kid—I mean, kids. And the stress of his divorce. Which had been a big blow to him. But it wasn’t a failure. It was just a mistake. And, Luz noted, he had come out of it a better person. Obviously. So there.

  “And, Luz, you’re saving me because I swear my doormen are all thinkin’ I’m having a post-divorce crisis with some uptown hoochie.”

  “Ha! Okay, that’s funny, but . . . that’s no hoochie,” Luz teased, “that’s my sister! I mean, our sister, Dios . . .”

  “Yeah, no, your sister first!”

  “Shut up, fo’ reals, yo.” Luz was already starting to accept the situation as just another event in her never-dull life. Just another challenge for her to manage, just another problem to solve. At the same time, she was panicking at the thought that some unrefined “hoochie” was gonna make house at her house—with her own kids. Because Emeli was Luz’s sister. From her real father. Who was a drug dealer, in jail.

  Coño, she thought. This was some crazy shit.

  “Are you sitting down?” Luz answered the phone as Cat called right after Tomas left.

  “Yeeeees . . .”

  “Girl. Shit. So, my brother just left.”

  “Wait—what happened to the Vineyard, ’cause I’ve been texting you and I just called there and Chris said you’d gone home early to take care of some family business, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was all about, and then all Gabi would say is ‘Talk to Luz.’”

  “Good man, good friend. So. Hon, I have another sister.”

  “What?”

  “A teenager!”

  “Wait. Your mom is, like, in her sixties—”

  “No, no, it’s not from Mom, silly.”

  “Your dad has a baby-mama? Oh Lord, Lord . . .”

  “Nooo! My dad wears bow ties. He’s like chastity on wheels,” Luz said, “or maybe not. Okay, not going there . . . So.”

  “So,” Cat urged.

  “Speaking of my dad. He’s not really my dad.” Oh God, Luz thought. I don’t like saying that at all.

  “Luz!”

  “Seems my mother had an affair or something, well, I guess they broke up—my mom and dad—the dad that . . . Argh!” This was so hard to wrap her head around. What did it mean? Who was she now if not her father’s daughter? Did it mean she couldn’t claim his legacy bloodlines? Hadn’t she inherited her bookishness from him—her sharpness? Who was this new man who supposedly was he
r father, and what had he given her besides her light eyes and lighter skin? I can’t just stop Dad from being Dad, Luz thought. I can’t just stop him being my father.

  “Luz?”

  “Sorry. Just processing.”

  Luz did her best to share the backstory with Cat, filling her in on the details.

  “So he’s in jail now,” she said, wrapping up, “and he got in touch with my brother and had someone drop off a teenage girl, like a total, like, ghetto girl.” Luz felt bad saying that word “ghetto.” She knew it was elitist, even racist, and she hated when she got this way. Some Vineyard snob had really rubbed off on her and now here she was, “ghetto” herself. Takes one to know one.

  “Ghetto? You mean like a girl from the ’hood?”

  “Yeah.” Luz paced again, rubbing her head. There were so many places her mind was running and each sentence she spoke seemed to lead her down another route that she was just discovering. The father-route, rife with brambles. The mother-route, messy with loose ends. The sister-route, burdened with the weight of how the other half lived. What seemed to hold all these together in a swirl was Luz’s insides asking: What does this mean about who I am?

  “Well, is she nice? Did you meet her?”

  “I did. At my brother’s place. That’s where she’s been staying.”

  “Girl, you cannot let your brother take care of a teenage girl!”

  “I know. I know. That’s why he was just here to ask me to take her in.”

  “So, are you?”

  “Yes.” Both women paused. “Yes. And the kids are coming back tonight with Chris—who I haven’t even told all this to yet—and then she shows up like an hour later.”

  “Carajo.”

  “You said it.”

  “Want me to come over and help?” Free of the responsibilities of children or spouse and now even a job, Cat welcomed the distraction. “I don’t want to be in your way, but I’m here if you need me.”

  Luz, for once, was grateful for the aid. “I may need you tomorrow, if you don’t mind. I just don’t think I feel comfortable with her here, just the two of us. I mean, I don’t know this girl, and I don’t know how to feel. . . .”

  “Totally understandable. But . . . how is she feeling about all this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Luz, is she okay? And what is her name, anyway?” Cat might be short on family, but her heart was huge and her empathy personal.

  “Oh. Yes, I mean, yeah. I guess. Yeah. Um, she’s Emeli. Like ‘Emily’ but spelled Dominican, weird, with like three E’s or something . . .” Luz was still in staccato mode and slightly taken aback by what felt like a reminder to not be selfish. “Wait, Cat?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Cat. This girl, I mean, Emeli, and her world are all new to me. I mean, forget for a second about my whole new-dad thing.” She growled in frustration. “Just . . . I mean, the kids will probably love her because she’s beautiful and young and cool and shit.”

  “Yup, they will.”

  “But, what if she disrupts this house? What if she completely throws everything off? What if she gets between me and Chris? What if she brings in drugs! I mean . . .”

  “Okay, just stop for a sec. Luz. She’s not going to ruin your marriage or your family. She’s going to be family. So you guys will all adjust and I suspect that just as much as you fear her being an influence on you, you guys can be a great influence on her, right?”

  “Right. But will we?”

  “I have no doubt that you will. But it’s not going to be easy.”

  “Tell me something.” Luz sat and then paused, sucking in a breath. “Don’t take this the wrong way, okay? But, you grew up kinda like this girl—”

  “Emeli,” Cat corrected her friend.

  “Yes, Emeli. So, can you help me out with her here? I mean, I just don’t know how to deal with someone like that, ya know?”

  Cat sighed. She pressed Luz, annoyed. “Like what?”

  “Like, from where she’s from!”

  “Look, she’s from the city, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing, really. Look, she’s a kid and we all were kids and you gotta treat her like your kids,” Cat said gently.

  “Well,” Luz harrumphed. “She’s far from being like my kids.”

  Cat was beginning to take offense. “Okay, now. That’s just not . . .”

  “What?!” Luz didn’t get it.

  “Luz, pretend she’s me. That was me at her age. I mean, single mom, poor, people like you dismissing me . . .”

  “I’m not dismissing her.”

  “No?” Cat waited a beat. “Luz, think of how little control you have over this situation, and how that feels. Well, she has no control over where she came from or her father’s failings or being alone and suddenly finding herself with this bougie family!”

  “Uh.” She just called me bougie.

  “Hmm. Just sayin’.”

  Both women waited a bit. Luz admired Cat and felt gratitude that Emeli had an advocate—that both Luz and this teenage ragamuffin had Cat on their side. Because they were going to need advocates, desperately.

  “Yup, I got it. You’re right. You’re right.” Luz echoed her brother’s tic. “So right.”

  “I don’t wanna be right so much as help, mm-kay?”

  Luz smiled and sighed. “Girl. Thank you, hon.”

  “No problem.”

  Suddenly Luz shot to attention. “Oh shit, I gotta get a move on here and get a bed ready and make more calls and what the hell am I going to do about my mother and I’m scared to talk to my father and I’m not even thinking about the kids and their father and—”

  “Aiight! Go, go and please text if you need me, okay? I’m here.”

  “Thank you. That helps a lot.”

  “And if it helps, Luz, every time you look at that girl, think about her as me.”

  Chapter 16

  Cat set her phone down. Heavy stuff with Luz, she thought. That poor young girl, Emeli. Cat remembered herself at the same age as Luz’s “new” sister and imagined how it would feel to be thrown into her world—a sharply different world—so abruptly. And as Cat was now part of that world, she knew how harsh and judgmental it could be, where fewer people looked like you and knew the life you knew. Where everyone’s heads are filled with much more than yours (international travel, how to eat edamame, art films), and their expectations of a young woman of color were slim to none: You’ll get pregnant by a few different men over your lifetime, sit at a receptionist’s desk for decades if you were cute, or maybe just lug dirty towels at a gym until your back gave out. Because it was assumed that there was no brain in that pretty little brown head. No aspirations, no drive, no sense, no entitlement, and no desire for the things they had, their lifestyle. Yeah, I love sci-fi, too. Really? Yes, I’m applying to these colleges. Really? No, I’ve never been pregnant before. Really? Cat’s mouth went sour. That last one she used to be proud of. But now, decades into her diminishing fertility, she wondered: What price had she paid for her success? Ding-dong! Delivery! Here’s your crown, m’ija. Here are your degrees and your celebrity and your paychecks and your free clothes and fancy parties and awards won for all your hard work. But, what about babies, husband, family? Lo siento, bella, you didn’t order that.

  I didn’t realize I had to.

  Shit—what time was it? Cat shook herself out of her thoughts and started moving quickly between her closet, her dresser, and her bathroom. She was still in workout clothes after a halfhearted spin on the bike and she needed to shower and dress up for an early dinner appointment. Now that she’d been laid off, Cat didn’t go out much. Sure, she would be getting a paycheck for another several months, but you had to shift your gears down just in case the hunt took longer than expected.

  As she turned on the shower as hot as she could take it, Cat wondered: What am I hunting for again?

  Cat took in the dark, narrow restaurant, an old speakeasy in the E
ast Village full of Mexican wood décor. Like Luz’s front door, she thought. But the layout was dark and tight. Sexy, though. And empty at this time of the early evening. Ugh, she thought, I’m getting old.

  Cat was meeting a young woman whose name she knew in passing, a fairly green Latina starting out in TV and online as a host. Sofia Montez was impressive; her father was a well-known politician, a local congressman. Of course, at this point Cat was impressed by anyone actually still working in the business. Plus, she was looking forward to hanging with someone who was neither stuffy nor blustery for a change. There were too many of those at her level. In and out, always in a rush, no lingering. Transactional relationships only. Of course, they tended to have families, and she didn’t, so . . .

  “Right this way.” The wispy hostess, dressed snugly in all black, led Cat upstairs to a balcony level, a flight and a half from the main bar. It’s even quieter up here, Cat thought. Ten-plus years ago, she had done a lot of eating and drinking in spots like this, but not lately. The word old still echoing in her head, she sat down.

  “Do you have Herradura?” Cat asked the hostess.

  “Sure. We have a library of tequilas.” She flipped over one of the plastic-covered menu pages and pointed to the word Tequilas. Usually Cat loved spending time with a list like this one, but tonight she didn’t want to wait.

  “How about just a clean Herradura margarita, on the rocks, no triple sec, with salt?”

  As Cat sat, contorting herself to get out of her jacket in the tight booth, she let her eyes wander over the list. How she wished she could taste each and every one. Just a sip. And how she wished that someone else was paying.

  “Hellooo, girlfriend!” Sofia was a pretty brunette with green eyes and the olive skin of conquistadors. She came in with a bluster, jacket and bag rustling. She wasn’t smiling, but Cat noted her internal smile. One of those, she thought—reserved, dry, above it. She liked that. In contrast, Cat was all surface. What you saw was what you got. She was happy, you saw happy. Disgusted, you saw disgust. She had to train herself not to be so transparent on air, but it was why people loved her, right? Nothing phony. Sofia was nearly the opposite. Snarky smile, and maybe, if you were lucky you’d get teeth. But Cat sensed that she was all warmth on the inside.