by Naima Coster
Now, she mostly asked Ray for help. Help to rise early enough to do all the things that he used to do: fix breakfast and pour milk and wash dishes and iron clothes. Help to carry on. Help to find peace, whatever superpower had made Ray able to smile at life, keep cool, and be satisfied. That wasn’t her. But she had to find a way now, for Gee.
And she was tired, so tired. It had been six weeks since Ray was gone, and she hadn’t felt this drained since her first days with a newborn. All those hours she spent alone in her mother’s house with a baby she didn’t know how to soothe or hold or feed. The only thing she knew then was that she had to control herself. She couldn’t lose her temper. He couldn’t see her weep. They learned about the world by looking at your face, listening to the tone of your voice. A baby couldn’t handle the raw force of her loneliness, her terror. And so, she had smiled at him, forced herself to stay calm when he spat up milk on her, to say sweet things she didn’t mean when she crawled out of the bed to feed him in the middle of the night. All that effort in those days, and still her son had wound up a boy with a father who was dead. Now, she found herself playing that same role again. She was even. She smiled at Gee. She turned to him even when she’d rather stay in bed. She pretended she didn’t miss Ray as badly as she did; she pretended it wouldn’t be near impossible for them to go on. She stopped herself whenever she felt she would overflow; it was far too much for such a little boy.
On her first day off since the funeral, Jade sat at the shrine and waited on Ray. She was hollowed out, dazed from another string of bad dreams. Sometimes, they were benign: She was looking for Ray, wandering the halls of her high school, a corridor of empty hospital rooms that opened one onto another. She saw Ray ahead of her, and she chased him, but he’d vanish every time, just before she reached him. But other times, the dreams were terrifying. There was a fire, and Ray was walking into a smoke-filled house. There was a storm, and Ray was charging toward the center. There was an earthquake, and he was standing on the road, unshielded. Every time, she ran to him. Every time, he was going away from her.
Jade sat cross-legged on the carpet, and she hurt all over. Her knees hurt, her hip bones, her jaw. Grief, she knew, could take over the body. The social worker had left her pamphlets that said so. The pamphlets included bullet-pointed tips, as if mourning were like starting a new diet. Check the boxes, and you’d be on your way. Talk out loud to your beloved was the one she tried each morning at the shrine. So was Lean on your higher power. Another bullet point encouraged her to sit still and observe her thoughts, but she quit that one quick. Her thoughts were a dismal parade. We never got married and I’m still a widow. Ray looked after me and it killed him. When I graduate from nursing school, nobody’s going to be there. I don’t want to love anybody else. Gee won’t ever be able to unsee what he saw. Ray, where are you. Ray, can you hear me. Ray, Ray.
Jade sat for a while, asking Ray for help, the only help he could provide—for an idea. She had to do something about the bills. Electricity, gas, the phone, the rent. She was late on everything. Things had been tight since she went back to school, but without Ray, it was worse. She and Gee were already on cups of noodles, canned beans, bread and peanut butter. The night before, Jade had scavenged dessert from underneath the sink: canned peaches that she and Gee ate together on the couch with spoons, taking turns to drain the syrup from the can.
It had been easy when Ray was alive to ignore how much she depended on him. She loved him—that was clear—but he had guided her, too, in a way she would never have admitted. He was the one who administered their lives, who bought Gee the next size up in shoes, who turned down the thermostat at night, who bought detergent and set alarms, who drew a blanket over her when she fell asleep with her books, a drink.
After several minutes of nothing at the shrine, Jade gave up and told Ray good-bye. The day was calling her, and Gee would be getting up soon. She kissed her fingers, touched them to his face. The photograph was from a day they had gone to the park with Gee. It was nothing but a flat field and a few oak trees, and she remembered being bored, wishing she were somewhere else, by herself for once, or studying. But Ray had amused Gee, making up games and running around, pulling up grass and tossing handfuls at their boy. It had moved her, how much he seemed to delight in Gee, how content he seemed with their life. She had taken the picture of the two of them.
Without any intervention from Ray, wherever he was, she had to go on with the only plan she had: to move Gee in with her and rent out his little square of a room. Jade sat at the kitchen table and wrote out an ad. She wouldn’t get much for it, but it was better than nothing. She wondered about the odds of finding a woman, someone safe enough to let in her house.
When she was done, she hauled herself to the stove, and made hot chocolate from two dusty packets she found in a cupboard. She browned bread in the oven, spread butter over the last two slices, and left the bigger one for Gee. She went to his bedroom and turned on the lights. “Up,” she said. A few minutes later, he was in the kitchen in his pajamas, frowning at her.
“Mommy, it’s too early.”
“We’ve got a lot to do today.” She pointed at his toast and chocolate. It was a command, and Gee sank into a chair, rubbed his eyes, and started nibbling at the crust.
Gee seemed fine, more fine than she had expected. Sometimes, he moved too slow, took too long to answer her, but he snapped out of it when she shook him. He went to school and did his homework, watched cartoons and colored at the kitchen table. He was still seeing the social worker for now, but as far as she knew, he wasn’t doing much crying in there either. He seemed like himself, maybe a bit more turned off, but he had always been that way with her: somber, tentative. He was used to saving up all his play and sweetness for Ray. The biggest change was that he was asking her questions, and it made Jade suspect Gee didn’t understand what had happened at all. He talked as if there were a small chance Ray would be coming back. When the summer comes, who’s going to take me wading in the creek? he asked, as if she might say, Your daddy. Or Who is going to teach me to play ball? or Who is going to make my roast beef sandwiches now? Every question gave her a reason to break. Still, she answered him. What else was she to do?
Jade found suddenly that she’d lost her appetite. She slid her toast onto Gee’s plate.
“What do you think about getting a roommate?”
“Like another little kid?”
“No, like a nice lady. Somebody fun to eat breakfast with in the morning?”
“A stranger?”
“Some strangers are nice,” she said. “Some strangers are nicer than your own family.”
“But I don’t want to live with a stranger.”
Jade shushed him before he could say more. She knew whom he wanted to live with, and she couldn’t bear to hear him say it. “Finish up your toast,” she said, and he didn’t protest. He ate, rose to put his plate in the sink. He was such a pliant child, she often wondered how it was that he came from her. Jade reached for him by the shoulders, looked him hard in the eyes.
“You know I love you, right, little man?”
As soon as she spoke, she realized it had come out all wrong. It shouldn’t have been a question. Gee nodded at her and mm-hmmed, then shuffled back to his room to get dressed. She should have just told him—Gee, I love you. I love you, I love you.
When they finished hanging the flyers, it was ten thirty, and Jade drove them to Superfine, where they could get free breakfast, and she could talk to Linette.
They found it closed, the metal gate down, the windows shuttered. The mums planted in the window boxes were shrunken, brittle. Jade had a bottle of water in the car. She doused the soil, but it wasn’t hardly enough.
“Should we get more water, Mommy?”
Jade shook her head. “It’s too late.”
“They’re dead?”
She nodded.
“And they can’t grow back?”
“No, they can’t, baby.”
She watched him puzzle over what it meant. She laid a hand on his shoulder, and the scent of the rotting flowers, the stale dirt, overtook her. She doubled over in front of the shop and vomited.
Gee thumped her on the back. “Mommy, Mommy,” he said, and she snapped at him. “Jesus Christ, can you stop banging on my back?”
He stared at her, his face twisted with fear. She caught herself, wiped her mouth, and cupped his little chin in her hands. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got to find Ms. Linette.”
She knew the way to Linette’s house by memory. It was a brick and white town house wedged between identical homes on either side. There was a small courtyard full of crape myrtles. The purple flowers were all gone, the parking lot and walkway slick with rain and crushed petals. Gee walked ahead of her. Jade had to call to him twice before he turned around, took her hand. It was an act of obedience, as if he, too, found it unnatural for her to hold him.
At the door, Jade checked the two of them to make sure they were presentable. Linette had strange ideas about what people ought to wear. Jade was in a black turtleneck and skirt, her lace-up boots, and Gee in a secondhand wool sweater, sneakers, and jeans. He was bleary-eyed but neat. The old woman couldn’t object.
“My little man!” Linette said when she opened the door. Gee stretched his arms up to her, and she hoisted him onto her hip. “You must be cold. Out here with no jacket? No coat? What was your mama thinking?”
Jade made a point not to roll her eyes and followed them into the house.
The living room was dark, velvet drapes hanging over the windows. Linette had grubby carpet that smelled of dust and recycled air. The plywood coffee table was scattered with porcelain figurines—a white lamb, two children drawing water from a well. Linette left Gee and Jade on the couch and went to fix a pot of tea.
Linette had answered the door wearing a rumpled blue housedress, her hair tied into a crooked bun at the side of her head. She was moonfaced, pale lipped without any makeup on. She came back with a tray, teetering with cups, a plate of shortbread cookies. Gee thanked Linette and dug in.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” Jade said. “I didn’t want to come over empty-handed.”
“But here you are.” Linette smiled, squinted her eyes at her over the porcelain cup. The cup had a gold rim, blue roses painted on the saucer. Jade wondered whether this tea set was one she’d used when her husband was alive, whether all the things Linette owned were relics of her old life. He’d died of a stroke one day while waiting in line at the bank.
“You admiring my china?” Linette asked. “These were passed down to me by my grandmother. She lived here, you know? Back when there was still a black business district, a whole city inside this city. Before they built the freeway right through it. Did you know about that? They didn’t teach you that history in school, I bet.”
Jade didn’t like when older women talked to her as if she were their child, as if being old gave them a pass to mother anyone they wanted. It was hard for her not to fight back whenever someone talked down to her in that motherly way. They’d mean to say, I’m looking after your own good, but it always seemed closer to You are no good.
Jade felt a flutter in her chest, a surge of exhaustion that started behind her eyes and rolled down to her feet. She had the sensation that she might faint, and she knew she should have eaten more that morning, but the idea of tasting anything had made her sick.
“Mommy, what’s the matter? Are you going to throw up again?”
Linette sputtered over her coffee.
“I’m fine,” Jade said. “I’ve just been feeling funny since what happened.”
“What’s going on now?”
Jade tried to explain. “Sometimes, after a shift, I’ll be walking to my car, and it’s like I’m floating outside of my body. Like I’m not really there, like I could just fall right through the earth.”
Linette was staring at her now, clenching and unclenching her hands.
“Gee, why don’t you go out to the yard and play? Sometimes there’s a big cat that likes to lay out there in the sun. Go on and see if you can find him.”
Gee took one last gulp of his tea and went out the back door.
“You can’t talk like that in front of him,” Linette said. “You’re all he’s got now, and you’ve got to learn to be the solid one.”
Jade felt bruised. She had been trying to confide in Linette, share something real. “You know I had Gee before I met Ray, right? I was raising him all by myself.”
“You were raising him the way they raised you. Keeping him alive but not so much as looking at him.”
“Give me a break, Linette.”
“Ray told me about all the times Gee missed school because you were dead asleep, drunk. I hope you’re ashamed of yourself.”
“Shame’s not really my thing,” Jade said, and she decided there’d be no better time, no use in trying to butter her up anymore. “I came to ask for a loan.”
Linette knit her fingers together, shook her head. “I closed Superfine. Since the story ran, I’ve been getting calls. Inquiries. People who want us to cater. But I don’t have anyone to help me fill those orders. Not without Ray.”
“I wouldn’t need more than twenty dollars. Just something to hold us over until I get my check.”
“You know, I haven’t seen you since the funeral. You haven’t dropped by to see me once.”
“We’ve never had a habit of visiting each other.”
“This hasn’t been easy on me either,” Linette went on. “First, I lose Billy. Then I lose Ray. It’s no good dying, but sometimes I think it’s worse being the one who’s left behind.”
Jade couldn’t agree. She’d have done anything to have Ray back again—anything short of dying herself. She was certain that she wanted to live. It was all she wanted, too, for her boy.
Linette sighed and heaved herself off the couch. She looked wider than she had at the funeral. She came back with her tangerine leather purse, fished inside, and handed Jade a twenty.
“You must know how I feel about you,” Linette said. “Or how I don’t feel about you. I never kept it a secret.”
“I’m not sure how you feel,” Jade said, “but I bet it’s mutual.” She slipped the bill in her purse.
Linette leaned back on the settee, as if she were too tired to go on trading blows with Jade.
“Ray was the closest thing I had to a son. I won’t let you go hungry, especially not Gee.”
“Thanks for being clear,” Jade said. She headed for the back door to collect her son.
“Wait,” Linette said. She stood with a huff and clamped her hand on Jade’s arm. “I’m just trying to find someone to put all my anger on. I know it shouldn’t be you.” Linette looked at her pleadingly. She softened her voice. “I know you and Ray used to talk about having a baby together.”
Jade wrenched her arm away from the old woman. She didn’t want to talk about those times with Ray, times Linette could know nothing about. The way he used to whisper in her ear when they were making love: Come on, baby, can’t you just picture her—a girl?
“You look different,” Linette said. “I can’t explain it. Something in your eyes, in the way you’re moving around, your limbs. I saw it when you walked in the door. And then Gee said you threw up this morning.”
“He’s been dead six weeks, Linette. That’s too long. I’d know by now.”
“Well, did you get your period?”
“They say grief can affect all kinds of things. It’s probably stress—I haven’t given it any mind. It’s not possible.”
“Why don’t you take a test?”
“He’s gone, Linette.”
Linette sighed, and Jade could see now that she was crying.
“It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, Jade. Ray gave you a life once. Maybe he’s giving you life again, one last time. Maybe there’s a little piece of him that’s still here.”
At the supermarket, Gee darted ahead of her in t
he aisles, pulling down the things she’d said they would need. She wanted to get home and make him lunch so that she could sleep a few hours before dropping him off with her cousin Carmela. She didn’t like leaving him with her, but there was no one else anymore. She wasn’t talking to Wilson. When Jade arrived in the morning, she usually found Carmela snoring on the floor, the TV still on, and Gee huddled on the edge of the couch, as if he hadn’t slept at all, chasing off bad thoughts by keeping his eyes open.
Gee had piled the cart with cereal, milk, bananas, and everything she needed for her specialty: chicken cutlets, roma tomatoes, a box of spaghetti, bread crumbs, a can of sauce.
“You know, before I met your daddy, I used to make dinner for myself, and there was only one thing I knew how to make. Chicken Parmesan. And it was the only thing I made because I never needed to learn to make anything else—it’s that good.”
She kissed her fingers for emphasis, and Gee giggled. She collected his laughter in her ears. It was the greatest accomplishment of her day.
“Go on and get me some cheese,” she said, and he took off again. He was a good boy.
He returned, waving a green canister. She thanked him and did some quick math, counting up what was inside their cart. They could eat the leftovers for days, stretch the sauce over spaghetti, put the chicken inside sandwiches. She told him to return the tomatoes and meet her at the front.
In the pharmacy, Jade inspected the pregnancy tests. She felt foolish for even taking Linette’s words to heart. She had always looked at Jade as if she had no right to be a mother—lots of women did that to her, especially when she was younger, carrying Gee around wherever she had to go. If she’d gotten an abortion, they’d have called her a murderer, but now they looked at her and Gee as if they were a waste of life. Why bring another child into this world?