by Naima Coster
She had been pulled over once for a broken tag light. She was five minutes from home, and four cops got out all at once. They shone flashlights in their faces, made Gee lie on the ground next to her, his cheek against the grit of the road. She had felt anger surge through her, an electric strength in her limbs. They sent her off with a warning. On the drive home, her leg thumped uncontrollably beneath her, the car lurching as she shook. Her anger gave way to terror, for her son, the world she’d never be able to shield him from. And all of this was before they’d lost Ray.
At the register, the cashier was a gaunt-faced man with chin-length hair. He wore a neon-yellow vest over a tattered plaid shirt. He asked her how she was doing, and she grumbled hello and turned back to the register to see if she’d been right about how it would all add up.
“That’s a pretty little boy you got there.”
Jade nodded at the cashier in thanks.
“He got all his good looks from his mama, didn’t he? But it’s not really right to call you good-looking. You’re a lot more than that.”
“Don’t you talk that way to me in front of my son.”
“I was just giving you a compliment.”
“Any more compliments and I’ll have to ask to talk to your manager.”
The skinny man laughed and pointed to a tag on his shirt. It read TEAM LEADER.
“That’s me, sweetheart. Would you like to file a complaint?”
“Just ring me up. I’m not your goddamn sweetheart.” She handed him the twenty-dollar bill.
“You’re short,” the man said, and Jade saw it was by seventy-nine cents. She started rummaging in her wallet knowing she wouldn’t find anything there. She picked up the box of cereal to leave behind.
“Easy there,” the team leader said. He scooped a handful of change out of a plastic container beside the register. “I’ve got you.” He spoke in a low voice, magnanimous, as if he didn’t want to embarrass her. She wasn’t embarrassed. He dropped the extra change into the register, withdrew her receipt, and handed it to her.
“What’s your name anyway?”
“Onyx.”
“Well, Onyx, next time you’re in here, you come find me. This is my register. I’m here almost all the time. Come see me, and I’ll take real good care of you.”
He winked at her, and Jade felt her stomach turn. She knew what she wanted to say, Fuck you, you nasty arrogant fuckface. She wanted to drive her palm up into his nose.
Instead, she told Gee to step up on the cart. She pushed him toward the exit and made sure not to turn around. She was sure he’d be watching them.
“Mommy, you weren’t very nice to that man. He gave us money.”
“He didn’t do what he did out of kindness.”
“Why’d he do it?”
“There are bad people in this world, Gee.”
“Like that man?”
She wanted to say, Like him, like the man who killed your father, like my father, like Ray’s father, like your father, like Wilson, like a lot of people. She cleared her throat.
“Maybe. I don’t know. But sometimes you’re better off not sticking around to find out.”
Their first date had been marred by Gee. Jade had never gone out somewhere with a man. She’d never had one show up at her house, drive her away, kiss her good night in the car. She and the college boy had only ever gone to the Cook Out drive-through after class. They’d listen to hard rock and split a joint, then drive somewhere to have sex in the backseat. There hadn’t been dates.
She had told Ray she had no one to watch Gee, but he said to bring him.
He’d taken her to a café in the next county over. It wasn’t far from the campus of the university, where she’d been accepted but couldn’t attend because of Gee. The café was a little shack in the middle of the woods, tables scattered beneath trees, stone sculptures and dirt paths winding around the hilly grounds. Inside, they didn’t ask for ID, so Ray ordered them beers, two slices of cake. They could sit wherever they wanted, so they found a stone bench underneath a string of lights. The night was breezy and the mosquitoes were biting, and Gee squirmed and cried. It was getting close to his bedtime. She stood to rock him, to get him to be quiet, so she could drink her beer, talk to Ray, but it was no help. He was ruining her dress with his drool.
Eventually, Ray asked if he could hold the boy. Gee was mesmerized by him, a new person. He put his hand on Ray’s cheek, gazed at him. Jade rushed to finish her cake, to drain her beer, until she was fuzzy-drunk and calm. The cicadas were singing. She couldn’t believe the café was less than thirty minutes from where she lived. He told her he wanted to own a café of his own one day, so he made a business of visiting them, memorizing menus, learning about flavors. The key was slowing down, he said. You had to slow down to taste.
When they were back in the car, Jade rode in the back with Gee in her lap, the seat belt over the both of them. Next time bring the car seat, Ray had said, and it surprised her that she didn’t hear it as an order. He was sweet and matter-of-fact, and she wanted to see him again, too.
New Hope sliced through the forest. It was one of the newer roads, uncracked and brilliant black, snaking through the heart of the east side. The trees formed a tunnel around them. If she turned left for the freeway, she could ride back to that café she and Ray had visited that one time.
“Mommy?”
Gee snapped her back to the car, the present. “Hmm?”
“Did Daddy have other children?”
“Who told you that?”
“Carmela was saying Daddy wasn’t really my daddy. So I wanted to know if he was really somebody else’s?”
Jade looked through the rearview at her son. He already looked dejected, although she hadn’t said anything. What could she say to dislodge the doubt her cousin had planted?
They were going forty-five on a two-lane road, the shoulder no more than dirt, but Jade pulled off quickly, slammed the car into park. She had to turn around and look at him, make sure he understood.
“Sometimes, people are your family because they’re your blood. But that doesn’t mean much on its own. The realest family are the people who stand by you. Your daddy would have stood by us every day for the rest of time, if he’d gotten the chance. He’s not your blood, but he’s your daddy. And the next time anybody tells you different, you tell them, ‘Fuck off.’ Even Carmela. That’s right—‘Fuck off.’ And if they say anything to you, don’t you worry—you tell them your mommy said it’s all right. Under this one condition, you have my permission. It’s not nice, but sometimes you have to tell people so they can hear.”
As soon as she got home, Jade called Linette. “I know you wish that I was pregnant,” she said. “But Ray already has a child. He’s already left someone behind for us.”
Then she explained about Carmela, how she wasn’t attentive to Gee, didn’t cover him with a blanket when he fell asleep on the couch. Linette seemed unmoved.
“She’s been telling him that Ray isn’t really his daddy.”
“I’ll take him,” Linette said.
Jade was so relieved she swooped down and kissed Gee on the mouth. He was startled but pleased, and he smiled back at her, stumbled off to unpack the groceries.
“But you’ve got to do something for me, Jade,” Linette said, still on the line. “You’ve got to take a test. I just have a feeling.”
“You’re getting your hopes up for nothing.”
“Please.”
“Fine, but get ready for bad news.”
Jade hung up the phone and got a beer from the fridge. It was old, flat. She took one long swallow and then another. If she were pregnant, one wouldn’t do any harm, she figured, but she wasn’t sure. She took another swig.
Gee had pulled a stool over to the sink. He was filling a big pot with water. He set it on the stove and then started fishing out the tools they’d need. He was quick around the kitchen after all the time he’d spent shadowing Ray. Even though Gee had Ray’s imprint all over
him, Jade couldn’t help but be overcome with the sense that Gee was hers. It wasn’t that he looked so much like her—he didn’t—or that he had her mannerisms—he had Ray’s. It was this feeling that she wanted him to live more than she had ever wanted anyone or anything to live. This feeling that her survival was mostly about him. It would be easy to chalk that up to nothing, but no one had ever loved Ray that way; no one had ever loved her. On the day Jade left home, her mother barely looked up from her can of beer. “Bye,” she’d said, without stirring from the couch, without a wave. Her mother had slapped her, thrown her against a wall, cut off all her hair once with a pair of shears, but none of that had hurt as much as how indifferent she could be. Jade had left and hadn’t looked back, and her mother had never gone searching for her.
If there was something she could do for her son, it would be to never be indifferent to the course of his life. She would advise him. She would watch over him. It would be either her or no one, and he deserved more than that.
They worked together in the kitchen, Gee salting the water, showing her where Ray had kept the red pepper. They ate spoonfuls of powdered cheese while they waited for the pasta to cook. The boy seemed content.
“This is good,” she said, tasting the spirals of the spaghetti. It was all she said out loud, but she hoped he’d get her other meaning—it could be good, just the two of them, together. She didn’t believe it fully herself, but she didn’t want him to feel alone. Would it be better, after all, if she were really pregnant like Linette had said?
With Gee, she’d had weeks of cramps she’d mistaken for a period taking its time to arrive. She’d felt nothing this time, but even if there was a churning within her, the buildup of new cells, would she have noticed? They weren’t always careful. She didn’t like it when there was anything between the two of them, and she felt fine about it because she was good at timing her cycles. After sex, Ray liked to get up and rinse off, and she would pin him down on the bed, try to get him to stay where she wanted him. It was one of the only times she let on how much she needed him. She assumed it was obvious from their life, all the ways they were one, but now she couldn’t be sure she’d done enough to make him know. She shook the thought away—it was too bottomless. She heard his voice in her ears comforting her. You didn’t never know, he said. How short our time would be.
Jade’s mouth dropped open. It was the visitation she had been waiting for. His spirit. She strained to hear him again.
“Mommy?”
It was the first time she had cried in front of her son. She had done her best at the funeral, the ensuing days, to shield him, to be strong. She built the shrine for her private mourning.
“Mommy,” he said again, reaching up to her. She brought his arms down to his side.
“Now, now,” she said, “no more tears,” although she was the one who was crying. “Remember what I told you? We’ve got to keep moving forward. Daddy would have wanted that.”
Gee gaped at her. She patted him on the head, told him to bring down the plates. When Gee didn’t move, she told him to pay her mind. She kept her voice soft, went on giving him directions. This was better: to calm him, turn his mind elsewhere. She went through the motions: serving food, eating, cleaning up, but she was waiting to hear Ray’s voice again. She didn’t. He’d already gone away from her.
That night at the hospital, Jade went to see the attending physician on her break. She brought him a cup of coffee and knocked on the door. She liked working with Dr. Henriquez, his full head of silver hair, his green eyes and thin face, his wide, pouting lips. He was always laughing at his own jokes, clapping staff on the shoulders to congratulate them on the smallest of tasks—a smooth handoff of a patient, a quick draw of blood. He didn’t look past forty, despite his hair, and Jade wondered if he’d gone gray from all these terrible night shifts.
He offered her a wrapped pineapple candy from a crystal dish on his desk. Jade said no, still working up the nerve to say what she had to.
“You know we don’t get insurance in this job, right?”
“You’re part-time,” Dr. Henriquez said. “And they keep it that way on purpose.”
“My boyfriend died last month. I haven’t brought it up cause there’s always a different attending, and I didn’t want to keep having to say it, over and over.”
Dr. Henriquez snapped his jaw shut, relaxed his brow. It was the same composure she had seen him use with patients. She wondered if it was real, his ability to tolerate bad news, or if he’d learned how to switch something off inside himself.
“Jade, I’m sorry. You need some time off?”
“I can’t afford that. I’ve got a little boy.”
Dr. Henriquez didn’t react to the mention of Gee, which Jade appreciated. She was sick of the doctors looking shocked and saying, But you’re so young! It was worst with the female residents, who were older but didn’t have any children of their own. They could hardly cover up their envy, disgust.
“That’s a big burden, raising him all by yourself now.”
“I used to think of him that way. Like a big old weight tied to my ankle. But it felt different with Ray. Like maybe my turn wasn’t up yet. Like maybe I still had a shot at my own life. You know I’m in school, right? I’m not going to be a medical assistant forever.”
“You’ll make a great nurse one day. Your boyfriend was right to support you. Good man.”
“He was. My son is, too. We call him Gee.”
She took a candy from the dish. It stuck to her tongue, the tart, artificial yellow tang. “I think I might be pregnant.”
“Then you ought to check.”
“Could you give me a test?”
“All right,” he said, rising. “Let’s get this done.”
Dr. Henriquez met her back in his office. He cleared off an area of his desk, handled the plastic canister that Jade had brought back from the bathroom. It was embarrassing to watch him hold the cupful of her pee. He dipped in one of the test strips, laid it flat on a paper towel.
“Now we wait,” he said.
Jade nodded. She didn’t want to look, to see if two lines materialized. She stared at the doctor. He must have been a pretty younger man once, before his gray hair, the little lines encircling his lips. She had known somehow that she could trust him, even if they had only shared small talk on these night shifts together. She believed, for whatever reason, that he’d keep her secret.
“Where are you from, Dr. Henriquez?”
“Miami,” he said, then, “But you mean before. Peru. My parents were both doctors. They sent me here to study.”
He didn’t say that they were rich, but Jade could figure out that much. He nodded, as if he could read her thoughts.
“I’ve been luckier than I deserve in life. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in medicine, it’s that life isn’t fair. Nature isn’t fair, and we only make it worse.”
“How much longer?”
“A few minutes.”
“Are you married?”
“My wife left me during residency. She hated North Carolina, and I was never home. Once she was gone, I had no reason not to stay. I like it here.”
“It’s fine.”
“Honestly, it’s not so bad being alone, under these circumstances. It’s hard when you feel you’re constantly letting someone down just by doing what you have to do.” He drummed his fingers on the desk.
“I know what you mean,” Jade said.
When Gee was born, Jade cried and cried. She could barely look at him; there had been so much blood. Before he was born, he had been mostly theoretical to her. First, he was a blastocyst, and she tracked the development of his cells. She had wanted to study molecular biology in college, and pregnancy had been like a science experiment that she couldn’t halt, unfolding in her own body. Then he was a squealing purple thing they handed to her. He smelled medicinal, raw, and she had wanted someone to take him away.
She had never had a baby by a man she loved. Maybe it would be
different.
“I’m sorry, Jade,” Dr. Henriquez said. She leaned over his desk to examine the strip. A single pink line, the control line. She wasn’t pregnant. Her legs buckled, and she sank to the ground. Dr. Henriquez went to her, held her by the shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said again. How could she explain that it was relief that brought her to her knees? It was better this way, a mercy. She had chosen Gee when she was a girl, and she didn’t know any better. She wouldn’t make the same choice now.
Her voice rose from within her, unbidden. “Ray,” she said. She waited for him to speak, to return. To forgive her. “Ray,” she said again. She heard nothing, so she conjured up his voice for herself. How short our time would be. It was no comfort, false. Why would he come to her now? She was selfish, and she knew it. It was a terrible thing to choose your own life, to be willing to live it.
5
July 1998
The Piedmont, North Carolina
Lacey May pretended she was still asleep, belly down, her arms covering her face. She flicked her eyes open to check the time. Thirty-four minutes until Robbie’s bus got in. She felt her heart beat in her ears. He was closer and closer.
The front door clanged shut, and she heard Hank stomping toward her. She let out the long sigh of someone who was still out cold. Soon he was kneeling beside her, whispering a litany of pet names. This was the phase they were still in, even after more than a year: waking each other with kisses, fetching glasses of water in the night, murmuring sweetheart and baby at every chance. They were still trying to make it real, neither wanting to catch the other in a lie.
“Baby,” he said. “Sweetheart. I got the car all loaded up. You ready?”
Lacey May mumbled unintelligibly, and he shook her by the shoulders until she gave up the ruse.
“We can’t leave yet. The girls have got to eat and get ready.”
“We’re going to the beach. They can go dirty. They can eat in the car.”