by Naima Coster
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Naima Coster
Cover design by Sara Wood. Cover copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First Edition: March 2021
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The lyrics in Chapter 15 are from “Sombras” by Javier Solis
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Coster, Naima, 1986- author.
Title: What's mine and yours : a novel / Naima Coster.
Description: First edition. | New York ; Boston Grand Central Publishing,
2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020042924 | ISBN 9781538702345 (hardcover) | ISBN
9781538702352 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3603.O86814 W53 2021 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042924
ISBNs: 978-1-5387-0234-5 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-0235-2 (ebook)
E3-01112021-DA-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
copyright
Dedication
1: October 1992
2: November 1996
3: September 2018
4: November 1992
5: July 1998
6: August 2002
7: September 2018
8: September 2018
9: September 2018
10: September 2002
11: October 2018
12: October 2002
13: October 2018
14: November 2002
15: April 2019
16: December 2002
17: February 2020
Acknowledgments
Discover More
About the Author
Also by Naima Coster
For J & E
Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.
Tap here to learn more.
1
October 1992
A city in the Piedmont of North Carolina
The street was dark when Ray pulled up behind the bakery. The birds sang wild in the trees, the only things astir so early in the morning, the sky a deep and cloudless blue. His little boy, Gee, was asleep in the backseat, neat in his school clothes and fogging up the window with his breath. Ray lifted him out quietly, the keys to the shop jangling in his free hand. They walked around to the front, and the boy was already drooling on him, on his pressed collared shirt, red-and-pink plaid.
“My good luck charm,” Ray whispered as he unlocked the gate, holding the boy close.
Superfine stood near the corner of Beard Street, about a mile north of the city square. A neon sign hung out front, the window boxes planted with yellow mums. This part of town used to be where people would fuel up before driving out of the city, or if they were passing through downtown. There was a garage at the end of the block and a gas station where you could pay only in cash. Otherwise, the neighborhood was empty lots, one-story houses, a ballfield the minor league used in the summer. Wildflowers and busted tires swelled out of the plots of land where the old factories were boarded up. But in the past year, a brewing company had opened in one of the old buildings. They gave tours and served beer in tiny glasses. A lunch window had opened to serve chopped barbecue and hot dogs for a few hours every day. And there was Superfine, which was open from dawn until dusk. They served biscuits and breakfast pastries, coffee, in the morning. At lunch, they sold sandwiches and fresh-baked bread. In the afternoon, they added cookies and lemon bars, slices of chocolate cake. Customers trickled in on their way to work downtown or stopped by to sober up after drunk tours at the brewery across the street. Superfine was cheaper than the coffee stand downtown, and it was the only place this close to get a fresh ham sandwich, a biscuit and peach jam, coffee that didn’t taste like hot water and tar mixed together.
It had been Ray’s idea to open the shop, although Linette was the one who bankrolled it with the money she got from her husband’s life insurance. They knew each other from a job at a coffeehouse an hour away where she had been the manager and he a barista. He’d worked three jobs then, but now Superfine was his everything.
Ray set the boy down on the bench by the windowsill. He ran behind the counter to fetch a bottle of cold coffee from the refrigerator. He dribbled an ounce or two into a glass of milk, stirred it with his finger, and then took it to Gee. He was spread out on the cushions by the window, one arm flung behind his head, the other across his chest, palm flat, as if he were trying to protect himself, to cover up his heart while he slept.
“Morning, my man,” Ray whispered. “Drink this,” he said, holding the glass to the boy’s mouth. Gee would have a longer day than Ray wanted him to. A little caffeine wouldn’t hurt him.
“Daddy, why’d you bring me here?”
“Well, it’s a big day for me. I thought you could be my helper.”
Gee shone at the prospect, sat a little taller in the window.
“Am I still going to school today?”
“We go to school every day,” Ray said. “I’ll run you over when it’s time. Come on now, let’s get you an apron.”
They had to fold the apron over twice so it would fit Gee, who was small even for a six-year-old. Gee laughed at the sight of himself in the mirror. He was missing one of his front teeth, a baby tooth he’d chipped so badly they’d needed to get it pulled, but he was still a beautiful boy: brown skinned and brown haired with big hands and feet for his stature. He had a cleft in his chin, and dimples, eyes that watered when he smiled. He had a hoarse whisper of a voice that Ray liked to joke was from talking too much. Gee was a truth teller: he liked to tell about what he saw, and he saw everything. It made Ray nervous that one day the boy would tell the truth about the wrong thing.
They rolled up their sleeves and washed their hands in the sink. Then Ray sat Gee on a stool in the kitchen and told him to turn on the radio. Ray started folding up croissants and sliding them into the proof box. He made pretty knots of dough for the morning buns, sprinkled them with sugar. He explained what he was doing and sometimes asked Gee how much butter he thought he should brush on top of the biscuits, whether the dough had come out of the sheeter smooth. It was the only way he could let Gee help this morning. This was a day that could change their lives—for the shop, for Linette, but most of all for him and Gee and Jade. If business picked up after the story came out, like they hoped it would, Ray had a list of things he’d do—he’d buy Jade a ruby ring and
ask her to marry him; he’d buy Gee a set of drawers to keep his things; they’d go on a trip somewhere, like Washington, DC, or Florida. He’d take pictures of Gee in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Jade in front of the cherry blossoms, all of them in front of the castle at the Magic Kingdom—they’d ask a stranger to take the shot, and put Gee in those funny ears.
But first, the reporter, and the feature on Beard Street, the way it was coming back to life. We’ve got to steal the show, Linette had said, and Ray knew she was right. He was making a special just for the day—a devil’s food cake doughnut. He’d spent the weekend perfecting the recipe with Gee. What Ray loved about doughnuts was that nobody really needed them. Coffee, you could get hooked on to the point where you couldn’t live without it. But doughnuts—soft, rolled in cinnamon sugar, glazed, dripping with caramel, fat with fruit at the center—had no reason for being. They were his secret power, his mark on Superfine.
Linette arrived at seven a.m., just before they were set to open. Gee was counting out quarters into the register, Ray listing the day’s pastries on the chalkboard menu. He had named his doughnut Gee’s Devil’s Food, which had given the child a thrill.
Linette came in carrying an armload of gardenias in waxed paper. She looked ready for battle. Ray liked to tease her that he’d be an old man before she retired and left him the shop. She drank, on average, six cups of coffee a day, and she never stopped moving. She was all muscle and fat, gray haired, her face painted in a different palette of bright colors every morning. She brought in with her the scent of perfume and hair oil, a pair of shears sticking out of her purse.
“You look tired, Raymond. Didn’t you know they were going to take our picture? I was counting on your face to bring in the ladies.”
Linette laughed at her own joke, and Gee went running to meet her. He stopped short, waiting for her to react to him, to put her arms around him or pick him up. He could be like this—hesitant—as if he didn’t expect to get the things he wanted. Ray didn’t like to see him that way.
“Go on and give Ms. Linette a hug,” he said. “Say good morning.” He measured coffee into the grinder and started the machine.
“What’s my big boy Gee doing here?”
“Daddy needed my help.” Gee pointed proudly to the sign with the name of his doughnut.
“Devil’s food? But you’re too sweet. Does that mean this doughnut is going to be too sweet?” Linette sent the boy, laughing, off to wash his hands. When he was out of earshot, she turned to Ray. “Today of all days?”
“He didn’t slow me down, I promise.”
Linette shook her head and started putting the gardenias in tiny bloom vases she’d brought along in her purse.
“Doesn’t that boy have school today?”
“I won’t be gone more than five minutes when I run him there.”
“I thought that was his mama’s job.”
“He’s my son, too.”
“What are his mama’s responsibilities exactly? Or were they done the day she pushed him out and handed him over to you?”
Ray didn’t contradict her. He didn’t want to fight about Jade this morning.
“That’s why I never had children, you know,” Linette said. “I didn’t want to take care of anyone but myself. I got enough of that when I was young. My mother—”
“Birthed five children, and you raised them all. I know.”
Linette liked to tell this story, as if everything there was to know about her had been decided when she was a girl, missing days of school to take care of her siblings and ferry them to the doctor. “Did you ever think that with all the things you do for the two of them all the time, you could be doing something for yourself? You could be taking a class. Getting your degree.”
“Why do I need my degree? You’re still leaving me Superfine, right? Or are you going to cut me loose, Linette?”
Linette polished the tables in the front room, somber now. “You can’t count so much on other people, Ray. Not even me. One day I’m going to die. Everybody dies.”
“Well, hold off on dying until after that reporter comes.”
Linette smiled and snapped her cleaning rag in Ray’s direction. He kissed her on the cheek, triumphant, and started setting the table for just the three of them.
They sat by the window, drinking the fresh coffee, devouring biscuits. The whole shop smelled of devil’s food: thick chocolate, sugar, and starch. By seven thirty, the two front girls, Michelle and Michaela, arrived. They fawned over Gee, put on their hairnets, and a feud ensued over what to play on the radio. Linette settled it by putting on the gospel station, although she wasn’t religious. She did it to bring a blessing down on the shop, and all of them. They were all humming along by the time Ray withdrew to the kitchen and left Gee in the window seat, looking forlorn. The boy was one child with him—easy, bright—and another without him.
The shop was full when Jade burst into Superfine, her sunglasses on, her hair folded into a side braid already coming apart at the ends. She was still wearing the gray leggings and Bad Brains T-shirt she’d slept in, underneath a tan trench coat. Gee leapt up to kiss her, and Jade let him and then held him away and asked where she could find Ray.
“Why’d you take him?” she asked as Ray emerged from behind the counter. Her voice was high and thin, and the customers turned in their seats to look at them. “I know how to take care of my son.”
Ray took her by the arm and steered her out to the street.
“You all right?”
“My head,” Jade said, pressing her fingers to her temples. She didn’t explain where she’d been last night, but Ray could figure. There was a restaurant off the freeway that she liked to go to with the girls from her class. They served frozen jack and cokes.
“I had an alarm set. I was ready to take him. But I woke up, and everybody was gone.”
“I didn’t want him to miss another day of school.”
“I would have done it,” she said.
Jade pushed her sunglasses up, and he saw last night’s eyeliner thick around her downturned eyes. Her nails were painted black, and she was wearing her lace-up boots. How pretty she was, how small, was all the more obvious in her dark, clunky clothes. He’d seen the pictures of her from high school right before she got pregnant with Gee—a black-girl goth who read comic books and hung out with nerds, dreamed about going to punk shows out of town if she could ever find a ride. It was a much older boy who’d gotten her pregnant, someone at the community college where she was taking a math class. He’d wanted nothing to do with Gee, so Jade lived with her mother until she met Ray and he said to her, Let’s find a place, the three of us.
Jade stared at him, as if she were thinking of apologizing.
“Did that reporter come by yet?”
Ray could sense her mood shifting. She was penitent, maybe because she wanted him to bake the best he ever had and impress that reporter, or maybe there was no reason at all. Sometimes, Jade was tender, gathering up Ray and Gee in her arms, declaring how lucky she was to have a family that loved her. Other times, she tore through the house, kicking things that were out of place and going on about how she hated living all cooped up, and she hated her dinged-up car, and she hated that Gee was never quiet when she had to study, when she had two hours to sleep before her shift.
“We’re just watching the door,” Ray said. “He’s supposed to come by before three.”
“I’ve got an exam today, too. Drawing blood. I was going to practice on you last night, but I lost track of time.”
“You were gonna come home and stick a needle in me even if you couldn’t see straight?”
Jade laughed and covered half of her face with her hand. “No, I was going to find your vein. Pretend to stick you.”
“You can pretend later. Tonight. You can show me how after you’ve aced it.”
“Why are you so sweet to me, Raymond?”
Ray leaned toward Jade and kissed her. She smelled of the musty couch where she’d fal
len asleep, her rose perfume, the cream she rubbed on after a shower, naked in the bathroom, her limbs spread wide. She was all ribs and small breasts, a brush of hair between her legs. Ray groaned a little, without meaning to, thinking of her. They had been missing their time together lately, Jade hard asleep in the mornings before he left for the shop.
Linette could say what she wanted about Jade, but she deserved, at least, some respect. None of her people had gone to school, and here she was, pushing, making a way. Who could blame her if sometimes she needed a break, to go out and have a few drinks?
Ray kissed her again. “You deserve all the sweet things in life,” he said, and went inside to collect Gee. When they returned, Jade had her headphones on, a song roaring in her ears. Ray handed her coffee and a devil’s food doughnut, then kissed his boy two, three, four times.
“Come and meet us after your shift. We’ll be at Wilson’s house. He called for a favor.”
“What’s he want?” Ray asked.
“Help moving furniture or something.”
“He can’t ask one of his boys to do that?”
Jade shrugged. “I never ask Wilson questions.”
“I don’t like you going over there alone.”
Wilson lived in a rough corner of the east side, but it wasn’t just the neighborhood that bothered Ray. Wilson was the sort of man who lied about the plainest things: how much he’d paid for a microwave, why he’d been fired from his last job. He teased Gee for his missing tooth, slapped Jade’s behind to say hello and good-bye. More than once, Ray had run interference for Wilson after he started an argument at a bar. More than once, they’d lent him cash they’d needed themselves. But Jade tolerated him because he was her cousin, and he’d been good to her. He’d bought her beers when she was sixteen, taken her to her appointments when she was pregnant with Gee.
“Did he ask you to bring money? Who else is going to be over there?”
“You worry too much,” Jade said, and kissed Ray good-bye. She pulled Gee along by the hand, and the boy leaned into his mother, content to finally have her eyes on him.