What's Mine and Yours

by Naima Coster

  Jenkins, perhaps, was the most distraught. The dog, who mostly lay on the floor by the couch these days, was alert and whining sharply now. He followed Noelle around, barking at her, as if he knew what was going on. He bit at the hem of her shirt to get her to stay, but she swatted him away. After that, he kept close, shadowing her, until there was a honk from the street, and Noelle left, carrying her suitcase and cardboard box down the lawn. Lacey May had given up by then, slammed the door behind her. Jenkins stayed at the door, sniffing and whimpering, until Lacey May told him to shut up and kicked him good in the ribs. Diane picked the dog up into her arms and carried him down to the basement; he couldn’t handle the stairs on his own anymore.

  It wasn’t until Lacey May was alone in the bedroom with Hank that she finally let herself wonder aloud. “Am I wrong? Am I crazy?”

  Hank was in his pajamas, cross-legged on the bed, reading a motorcycle magazine. He looked tired, his graying hair long around his ears.

  “He isn’t Robbie,” he said.

  “He’s black.”

  “Jesus Christ, Lacey May. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Nothing on its own. But you’ve got to look at things in the big picture, think about how he’s been raised, where he’s from. And his mother—”

  “You don’t even know the boy.”

  “Please tell me I can still speak my own mind in my own home. Goddamn it, Hank.”

  She had come to him for consolation, and he had let her down. She pulled on her nightgown with a vengeance, as if she wanted it to rip, and Hank sighed, called her to him.

  “You speak your mind all you want. Meanwhile, your daughter’s run off to another house.”

  “Are you saying I’m wrong?”

  “What’s it matter if you are? You’ve got to decide whether you’d rather be right, or you’d rather have your daughter.”

  It felt like no kind of choice to Lacey May.

  * * *

  The first few days at Ruth’s were peaceable. Noelle stayed in a spare room with a daybed, an exercise bicycle, boxes full of Bailey’s old clothes and toys. She had plenty of company. They ate breakfast and dinner together, the three of them, every day. And Ruth drove Noelle in the mornings to the mouth of the freeway, where she waited on a little patch of grass for the bus to arrive in the early dark. She did her homework in the room, and sometimes Ruth came up and rode the bicycle while Noelle worked. Still, she was lonely, lonelier than she had ever been. It surprised her, since she was sure she didn’t miss Lacey May.

  Gee hadn’t been to school for days, and the boys who had gone after him had been suspended. Noelle waited until lunchtime to tell Duke it was over, so she could make sure it was in front of all his friends, the kids of his parents’ friends from church. Even in public, he had tried to plead with her, and it had felt good to yell at him, to say, I am through with your bullshit, as if they were getting divorced, as if it had been years, as if they were on reality TV.

  Mr. Riley asked Alex, who normally played Lucio, to read Gee’s lines at rehearsal. He said he had a hunch that Gee wasn’t coming back. “I tried to help him,” Mr. Riley said. “But you can’t help anyone until they’re ready.” Noelle had wanted to say to him, You have no idea.

  When the quiet got to her—it was so unlike living with her sisters, the dog—she would go find Bailey in the garden. He never sought her out, but he never objected to her presence either. She had helped him harvest his carrots and cabbage. Now they were laying down sawdust and leaves before the next frost. Bailey gave orders without being bossy. He had ruddy skin, a spate of brown freckles across his nose, hair that he kept buzzed around his ears. He was nearly fourteen, and he had the slender body of a boy, but his voice was changing, breaking sometimes when he laughed.

  They didn’t talk much—he wasn’t the kind who felt the need to fill up silence. Noelle realized that she was. She was a Ventura, whether she wanted to be or not.

  When they were done in the garden, they went inside and rinsed off all the vegetables they had picked. Sometimes they sat on the porch with the vegetables still in the colander, a tea towel underneath to sop up the draining water.

  They took out a batch of green beans and sat on the swing, the colander between them. Bailey read his comics and snapped the beans between his teeth; Noelle read the play, going over the lines she liked. They stirred something in her, even when she wasn’t totally sure what they meant: Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

  She had been staying with them for six days when she finally asked Bailey about his father.

  “Don’t you ever think about him?”

  “All the time. Probably more than he thinks about us.”

  “Sometimes, I think my parents are all I think about. It’s pathetic.”

  “What about that boy from the play? You must think about him.”

  “I think it’s a lost cause. He’s probably going to quit.”

  “Maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll do it because of you.”

  Noelle couldn’t help but smile. Bailey talked plainly, as if life were easy. He still had all the clarity and candor of a child. She nudged him. “What about you? You got a girlfriend?”

  Bailey began to blush. “No. But your sister Margarita sure is pretty.”

  Noelle grimaced. “Her face is weird.”

  Bailey looked taken aback, and Noelle saw how her meanness looked to him. He wasn’t like her. He was a sweet boy, his mouth full of metal, dirt caked under his nails. He couldn’t understand all the things she had inherited, the way she was. After all, he had Ruth for a mother, not Lacey May.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Sometimes I can be a shit person. It’s my DNA.”

  “You shouldn’t talk that way about yourself. Maybe you are the way you are for a purpose.”

  “A purpose? You been going to church or something, Bailey?”

  “Maybe your quirks are what make you who you are. Maybe you’re not supposed to be any different. Not just you, but everybody.”

  “I don’t think I like that,” she said. “Maybe we are supposed to be different.”

  Bailey shrugged.

  “But that’s kind of deep. Where’d you get all that stuff anyway?”

  “There’s this manga that I like,” he said, and Noelle laughed.

  When Hank pulled up in his truck, he took them by surprise, and Noelle leapt down from the swing. She crossed her arms, ready to protest that she wasn’t going back. Bailey called for his mother.

  They had hardly come to a stop before Diane burst out of the truck and darted up the driveway. Her face was puffed up and red.

  “Jenkins ran away!” she wailed. “It’s been two days, and we can’t find him. Is he here?”

  Margarita came loping behind her. She was frowning, her arms crossed, as if to copy Noelle’s stance. “I already told her he probably ran off to die.”

  Diane’s eyes filled with tears. “If he’s dying, why would he want to be alone? If he’s dying, I want to hold him.” She turned to Noelle. “I think he left looking for you.”

  Noelle opened her arms to her sister, but Diane didn’t move. She dropped her head into her hands and sobbed. Bailey called again for his mother.

  Hank joined them on the porch, his hands in his pockets. “She’s been like this since you left,” he said.

  Diane ran for Ruth as soon as she opened the door. Ruth gathered her into her arms and shushed her, then carried her inside. Hank followed without a word. Noelle found herself reeling. She thought of how she’d shoved the dog away, how he’d whimpered and followed her.

  “You think Jenkins is really gone?”

  Margarita fidgeted with the ring Robbie had given her. “We all knew it was coming. I just didn’t think he was going to run off. I thought we’d find him in the yard or something.”

  “Diane probably thinks it’s my fault. She wouldn’t even let me hold her.”

  “She just misses you. That’s the real reason we
came.”

  “What about you?”

  Margarita shrugged. “Mama’s at the store, and they wouldn’t let me stay home alone.”

  “Unh-hunh,” Noelle said, and she felt closer to her sister than she could remember feeling. They were alike in this way; they both refused to let on how much they needed. Noelle regretted saying what she had about her sister’s face.

  “The thing about dogs is you get used to them,” Margarita said. “Just being there, around.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Noelle slid back onto the porch swing, patted the place between her and Bailey. Bailey’s face was burning red now, and he left without a word, the screen door clapping behind him. Margarita hesitated, staring at her sister, measuring. Finally, she climbed up on the swing beside her.

  “Can you believe we used to live there?” Noelle pointed to the empty blue house next door, the SOLD sign pitched into the cold earth.

  “No,” Margarita said. “I can’t.”

  They swung their legs together, shared the sweet, hard beans.

  At home, Linette fussed over Gee more than was necessary. She made him chili smothered in cheese, cup after cup of warmed milk. His tailbone ached, so he couldn’t sit at the table, or at his desk to play at the computer. He ate in the kitchen, standing up, and then he went up to his room and lay on his bed under the swinging bulb, listening to music on his CD player. He took naps, and when he couldn’t doze off, he stroked himself to sleep. There wasn’t always pleasure in it, but always release. His humming fingertips. His blank mind. His loose jaw.

  Jade had allowed him to stay home from school; he had a doctor’s note; the days passed in boredom and peace, except for his nightmares. He ran through alleyways and fields of grass; it was dark; he was alone; he couldn’t see who chased him. What Gee knew in every dream was that he couldn’t outrun them. If he stayed sleeping, he’d be gone. Once, he woke up crying, which was embarrassing. Usually, he lurched awake with a feeling that he’d swallowed a mouthful of cold water; his teeth ached, vibrated. He went down to the kitchen to drink mugs of steaming water. One night, he boiled water and drank, then opened the back door, and sat on the steps.

  The town houses at the complex were narrow brick. They were close together, separated by little seas of grass that the neighbors used as yards. They kept grills or bicycles or tools under large tarps. A wooden fence divided the complex from the road, the squat houses on the other side. The ground was covered in fallen pine needles, sharp cones. It was dark, a night without a moon.

  The cool air felt good on his skin. His face was still swollen, and he wondered how he’d look by the time he had to return to school. There would be rumors. People would know what had happened; they would know about Ray. What was worse was that Gee was certain most of his classmates didn’t even know who he was. Which one is he? they’d probably asked. Who’s Gee?

  Adira had called a few times to check on him; so had Mr. Riley. He hadn’t come to the phone for either of them, although Linette tried to encourage him. There had been no word from Noelle, and he wondered whether what had been brewing between them was over now, if she had been scared off by their mothers. He hadn’t had the chance to see whether knowing the truth about Ray had changed how she saw him; he hadn’t had the chance to hear what she meant when she said she liked him. Maybe he was just another project to her, the way he was to his mother, to Mr. Riley. Maybe she just wanted to be the kind of girl who could be friends with a boy like him. Maybe she was just trying to show she knew wrong from right. Whatever the reason, he didn’t want her to change his mind.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  Jade stood in the doorway, her face bare and serious, her earrings off. She wore an oversized T-shirt for some band he’d never heard of and a pair of men’s boxers, knee-high socks.

  “You need your rest,” she said. “Come on, it’s cold.”

  “Sit next to me,” Gee said, and to his surprise, she did.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Can’t we just talk?”

  “All right.”

  The silence leached between them.

  “You ever been in a play?”

  “I used to dream sometimes about being in a band,” Jade said. “Playing the drums.”

  “I thought you wanted to be a scientist.”

  “I used to dream about a lot of things.”

  “But you never dreamed about Daddy. You just found him.”

  “We found him. You were there, too.”

  Jade talked about that day at the DMV the way some mothers talked about their children’s births: it was where Gee began. He knew nothing about the day he was born; he supposed it was a day she didn’t want to remember. He didn’t bring up those circumstances, how young she’d been. He didn’t ask about his biological father. He knew his name and that he’d left; he didn’t need to know anything else.

  “So what’s going on?” Jade asked. “Are you in love or something?”

  Gee shrugged. “She’s my friend.”

  “I don’t like that girl for you. She’s got too many problems.”

  “You don’t even know her.”

  “I can tell by looking at her family. You can’t escape the people you come from, at least not when you’re that young. Girls like that get good men in trouble.”

  Jade rubbed her thighs against the cold. She looked up at the dark stamp of the pines against the sky.

  “Whatever happened to Carmela? And to Wilson?”

  “I don’t concern myself with them anymore,” Jade said. “And neither should you. I’m talking to you now about that girl—”

  “Noelle.”

  “Is she the reason you’re doing that play?”

  “Mr. Riley gave me a big role.”

  “I was reading about that play. He cast you as a man in jail. That Mr. Riley is not your friend.”

  “I like being Claudio.”

  “Please, we both know you’re no actor. This is about her.”

  Gee felt his voice rising. He was sick of his mother telling him who he was and who he wasn’t. “You’re the one who wanted me to go to Central in the first place.”

  “And I still do. I don’t think those boys are going to cause you any more problems. They’re just some little punks who did what they did cause they thought they’d get away with it. Cause there were three of them.”

  Gee felt himself shrink under the idea that he was an easy target.

  “But they won’t do it again. I’ve already called their parents to let them know I’ll make it my personal business to send those boys to jail if they ever so much as look at you again.”

  “Ma, I told you I just want to leave those boys alone. I want to forget about this.”

  “So they get to put their hands on you and walk away free? Gee, I swear, I’ll never understand you. It’s like you’ve got no pride in yourself at all.”

  “What’s there to be proud of? You just want to fix my life because you couldn’t fix yours.”

  “That’s not how I see you at all.”

  “How do you see me then?”

  Gee felt himself clamoring for his mother. What would she say? He waited to hear.

  “It doesn’t matter how I see you. It matters how you see yourself. When are you going to learn that, Gee? I don’t know how else to show you.” Jade stood up and sighed. “You’re going to quit that play. Leave all this drama behind.”

  “I am not quitting,” Gee said quietly.

  There wasn’t a trace of rage in her voice when she answered him. “We’ll see about that.”

  15

  April 2019

  A town near the Crystal Coast, North Carolina

  On weekday afternoons, the theater was a holy place, emptied of its congregants. It was cool and unlit, the curtains drawn back from the stage, the austere rows of stiff metal chairs. Noelle felt like a small seed at the center of the dark, cavernous room.

  The next production was Frankenstein, and N
oelle was painting the North Pole: blue-black water, the iridescent fragments of glaciers. She tipped her paintbrush in teal and silver to make the edges shimmer, where the ice touched the water. She worked over a scroll unfurled on the floor of the stage, listening to music from her portable speaker. She sang along in her tongue-tied Spanish.

  Sombras nada más, entre tu vida y mi vida…

  The day outside was bright and warm, breezy. It was spring on the coast. She had a few hours before she met Ruth, and she hadn’t been able to resist a morning in the theater. It was soothing, peaceful to work under the sweet light streaming in from the street, her hands stained blue. When she was done, she sprayed the paper with fixative, clipped it to a rack to dry.

  She rode her bicycle the few miles from the theater to downtown. She rolled past the graveyard, the rows of Queen Anne houses, many of them boasting bronze plaques engraved with their build dates. The sound glimmered around her as she rode over the bridge, but it was the vegetation, not the water, that reminded her most she was somewhere different: her new home. The myrtle shrubs and goldenrod, the fans of palmetto on the front lawns, the red cedars and wild olive trees. Noelle liked to think these would be beautiful names for a child—Cedar, Olive, Myrtle. Even Palmetto. Why not? If Hollywood actors could name their children after fruit and bugs, then she could name hers after a tree, a bush.

  Ruth was waiting for her on the boardwalk in a little park, shaded by craggy, windblown trees. She sat on the edge of the fountain, her hair peroxide blond, twisted into a fat braid. She wore navy exercise pants, a sun visor, and a bright green T-shirt that read Clementine Farms. Her body was heavy and firm. She threw open her arms for Noelle.

  “Aren’t you a vision,” Ruth said, and Noelle looked down at herself. There was nothing special about the cork sandals she wore, her black pants and gingham blouse.