Gigi.
But Gigi isn’t on Instagram. In fact, one of her favorite things to say is, “Why do they call them smartphones when they’re really making you dumb?” I swipe to the next image. It’s from her eighty-fifth birthday party, which I know because I was there. Gigi’s holding court on the big old red armchair we’d pulled out into the stamp-size backyard of the Wilsons’ house like she was a queen. The picture reminds me how much I miss her. I gotta find a way to get to the hospital. Then I see Shaun’s caption.
Rest in Peace, Gigi.
No, no, no. It’s not possible. Once all this settles down, I am going to visit her in the hospital. She’s going to rub my belly and tell me my baby’s future. I squeeze my eyes closed, trying to process the news—first that Gigi’s dead, and then that I had to find out about it on Instagram. It’s like I’ve been slapped across one cheek and then the other. I pick up my phone, start scrolling through missed calls and texts. Maybe I missed a call from Riley or Mrs. Wilson, a text from Shaun… something. There’s nothing. Nothing but the usual string of unfamiliar numbers. No one bothered to tell me that Gigi died. That fact is devastating, almost as devastating as the death itself.
I return to the first photo, stare at it for a while, Gigi leaning up against the car, full of swagger, an expression like she’s discovered all the secrets in life and might share them with you if you’re lucky. I start drowning in memories, they just keep coming—all the nights I couldn’t sleep, would creep out of Riley’s bed and find Gigi, also an insomniac, sitting in her La-Z-Boy crocheting an afghan or watching old movies.
“How’s my little firecracker? Can’t sleep either?” she’d say as I crawled into her lap, ready for another one of her stories. My favorites were the ones about her “heyday,” when she moved to Harlem for a few years in her twenties and got a job selling cigarettes at a jazz club called Bill’s Place, and how she almost married a professional boxer named Z, but then she met his cousin Leroy, who was visiting from Tennessee. Leroy grinned at her with a gap in his teeth “as wide as the East River” and told her they didn’t make women like her in Kingsport, and the rest was history.
“Chile, he swept me up like a Hoover. Didn’t know what hit me.”
Leroy was hit too, literally. Z broke his nose. It was never straight again after that, but according to Gigi he’d always said it was worth it. Was there anything more glamorous than the image of young Gigi working in a nightclub, out on the town with Leroy, drinking martinis in smoke-filled bars? Not to me.
It was in Gigi, and only Gigi, that I’d confided when one of Lou’s boyfriends pulled me onto his lap, slid his filthy hands under my shirt, and asked if I was “a good girl,” if I liked the way he touched me. It had left me with a sludgy, confused feeling oozing through my body.
“Some men ain’t kind, sweetie. Some men are. We need to protect each other from the bad ones, because no one else will,” Gigi whispered as she rocked me gently. “So if that man ever touches you again, so help me God I’mma go to your mama’s house to give him a beatdown he won’t forget. You tell him that, you hear?”
The next time he went to tickle me, I looked him straight in his beady eyes and said, “I told my grandmother that you were a bad man. You better not touch me. Or else.” I’d never felt so powerful, never mind that he laughed in my face. He also never touched me again.
Some nights Gigi and I would wander to the dark kitchen and snack on string cheese or slices of deli meat. Or I’d convince her to make her famous miracle bread—slices of white bread soaked and fried in butter, a mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon on top, then sprinkled with bacon bits. Suddenly, that’s all I want. I’m desperate for some miracle bread. I make my way over to the fridge. Please, please let there be what I need.
Thank God. There’s a half loaf of white bread frozen in the freezer. I don’t even remember buying it or putting it in there, but there it is, and that’s a miracle itself. I have plenty of butter and sugar. I’ve been baking cookies for Kevin’s overtime shifts at the Eagles game to make all the extra hours a little more bearable for him.
As long as I’m cooking, Gigi is still right here with me, telling me I need to put some meat on my bones. The bread sizzles in the pan and I dump another pat of butter over it, exactly the way Gigi would’ve done. It’s all brown and bubbly on the edges now. I pull it out of the pan right before it burns and spoon sugar and cinnamon a half inch high on top. There aren’t any bacon bits in the house, but this will do. Butter drips through my fingers onto my sweater as I bring the slice to my mouth and shove it in, letting the sweet mixture coat the back of my throat like cough syrup.
I need to find out when the funeral will be. Probably this weekend. I press my fingers on my phone screen, leaving greasy smudges. Gigi once told me she wanted to be buried in Alabama. Can I swing a ticket? Would Dr. Wu even let me fly?
I open one of those travel websites on my phone and do a quick search. Fifteen hundred dollars for a last-minute flight, and it’s not even direct. The check from the Order of the Kings seems to glow on the table. Ten thousand dollars would cover a plane ticket—and a whole lot more. I can’t though. We aren’t those people.
Not having the option to go to the funeral is a relief in a way though. It means I don’t have to confront the real question, which is almost too much to bear—would I even be welcome? I mean, no one told me she died. Are they mad at me too? Is everyone mad at me? Shaun’s Instagram had pictures of the Wilsons at Justin’s march. Mr. Wilson held a sign that said, IT COULD HAVE BEEN MY SON. Shaun had one that read, WHITE SILENCE IS VIOLENCE. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. White silence is violence. I thought back to Blazer again. How I didn’t say anything when he called the Wilsons niggers. How I never stop Cookie from saying “those people” or Matt from calling them animals. Was my silence as bad as their slurs? I’ve always tried to make the Wilsons love me. Whenever I stayed over at their house as a kid, I worked so hard to get on Sandra’s good side, carefully washing any dish I used, painstakingly folding my sleeping bag with perfect corners in the morning. I even volunteered for weekend chores. There was no greater feeling than waking up Saturday morning, watching cartoons around the kitchen table—and when Mrs. Wilson mentioned that day’s activity and Shaun would say, “Jenny’s comin’ too, right?” Even if Sandra didn’t always look fully enthused to have a scabby-kneed little white girl tagging along to the fountain or the zoo. But I was family. Right? And okay, I haven’t been by the Wilsons’ since last Christmas Eve, when I was a hot mess, and I didn’t make it to the hospital to visit Gigi, and I’ve been slacking when it comes to acknowledging holidays and birthdays, but that doesn’t make it less true. Yet here I am, like a dog left on the doorstep when the owners move away to some nice new place that doesn’t allow pets.
I don’t know what to do. Should I comment on Shaun’s post? Should I text Riley? I open our text chain and see her last message, checking in about my thirty-week appointment. I’d been too pissed off about her interview with Tamara to respond. Now I can’t find the words. This shouldn’t be so hard. I scroll further up and see how long our text chain stretches, a blur of white and blue bubbles. I might never reach the end, or the beginning. The stream is a veritable time capsule of every aspect of our lives—proof of our friendship, our closeness, our connection. There have been moments where Riley has disappointed me over the years, or frustrated me, but she has never, until now, broken my heart. The phone itself is painful to look at. I want to throw it out the window. I settle for turning it off completely, in effect turning off the world of bad news, my bittersweet memories. Maybe I’ll never turn it on again.
I hear a rustling outside and instinctively crouch down, move slowly to the back of the house. It’s become more of a tap; maybe I’m imagining it. I make my way over to the patio door. The curtains are drawn. I pause, crouched, listening. There it is again, louder this time. I dare to peek behind the curtain into the backyard. A shadowy figure stands less than a foot from the
glass. My scream is so loud the door rattles.
“It’s just me, hon.”
The stranger’s features arrange themselves into Mrs. J, bundled inside a long puffy coat, her little yappy dog tucked beneath one arm. Shocks of bright red hair peek out around the fur-lined hood wrapped tightly around her face.
“I was up watching Jimmy Fallon and saw the light and figured it was you,” Mrs. J says through the door as I fiddle with the lock.
A blast of frigid air slams into me when I open it, though the snow seems to have stopped. I should take advantage of the lull and get the hell back to Cookie’s. Mrs. J hands me a small box. “I grabbed this when the UPS guy came the other day. I opened it. Just in case…”
Neither of us needs her to finish that thought. I pull up the cardboard flaps, look inside. Neatly folded on top of delicate tissue paper is the onesie I ordered after seeing it for 50 percent off on one of my mommy blogs. The fabric is as white and soft as a newborn bunny. Across the front it reads, “Hello, World!” in a graceful script. I’d forgotten all about it.
I turn on the porch light so I can show Mrs. J, and accidentally flip the backyard switch at the same time. The adorable little onesie falls to the floor as the sight behind her comes into focus.
Across the back fence, the fence Kevin and Matt spent an entire weekend building, there are three-foot-high letters, in bright red paint that drips like blood: MURDERER.
Mrs. J doesn’t even turn to look at the fence—she just stares at me, pained. “I already called my grandson. You remember—Bobby. He’s going to come paint over it this weekend.”
I can’t speak.
“Jenny, don’t you worry. We’re going to get that painted over, good as new.” Mrs. J gently pushes me inside. “Come on, it’s cold out here. Let’s get you indoors.”
I let myself be carried along back into the kitchen.
“I’m going to make you a cup of tea. Everything’s going to be okay. You hear me, Jen? It’s going to be okay.”
But it’s not. Nothing is okay. There’s no okay after this. There’s no okay after you’re the reason someone is no longer alive on this earth. I love my husband and I made a vow to stand by him for better or worse, but never did I think that worse would include my son being raised by a man who murdered a child.
No, Mrs. J, it will never be okay again.
Chapter Nine RILEY
That the grief is so physical, tangible, is a surprise. It’s heavy, as burdensome as the overnight bag pressing into my shoulder that I let fall to the ground with a thud in front of the Hertz counter. The clerk, a girl who looks like she’s barely out of high school, wears a bedazzled Santa hat over her bright pink hair. She’s drawn hearts around her name—Tiffany—on her name tag. Before she opens her mouth, I already know Tiffany is going to be too much, too perky, too cheerful.
“Heya, ma’am.”
Ma’am? I haven’t been called ma’am since I left Birmingham.
“Omigod, I love that nail polish color! How was your flight?! Ain’t it lovely out today?!”
Every single one of her sentences ends in an exclamation point. I don’t know what to latch on to first in that overwhelming greeting.
“Yeah, sure is warm,” I respond with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. Thankfully, while she’s looking up my reservation, she turns her chatter to her colleague at the neighboring counter, a prim elderly white woman with a helmet of blue-gray hair, who’s helping an older Black guy, decked out from head to toe in Miami Dolphins gear.
I fight the urge to look at my watch or tap the counter impatiently as Tiffany recounts her Saturday night in excruciating detail. Outwardly, I plaster my face with a polite smile. Inside, I’m screaming. No one cares!!! How could you possibly think anyone cares about any of this? Someone spilled wine on your new hobo bag. Oh, you poor little thing. My grandmother died six days ago. She’s gone, Tiffany. Gone.
The Dolphins fan shoots me a commiserating eye roll. He takes a step toward me, close enough now for me to see the keloid scars from old acne that dot his chin and smell the cigar smoke on his aqua-and-orange Starter jacket. When he opens his mouth to speak, I catch the glint of more than one gold crown.
“Hey, can you give me directions to the lynching memorial?” he asks in a slow, lazy drawl.
The clerk helping him, the elderly lady, interjects, probably to escape Tiffany’s inane ramblings. “I think you mean the National Memorial for Peace and Justice,” she corrects him, the patronizing tone unmistakable.
“Well, yeah, same thing,” he replies, throwing me a knowing glance. These white people.
The woman unfolds a large map and pulls out a plastic pen. “I’ll circle it here for you. It’s very close. About fifteen minutes from here.”
“I hear it’s pretty powerful,” the man says.
The clerk offers a vague nod. She obviously hasn’t been there.
Even grief can’t shake my compulsion to fill the quiet, to make everyone around me comfortable at all times. “I’ve read a lot about it. The memorial and the Legacy Museum down the road from it too. They’re supposed to be incredible.”
“Well, you’re here, you might as well check it out,” he says. “I’m Willie, by the way.” He extends a hand.
“Nice to meet you.” I don’t offer my name as he pumps my hand vigorously up and down.
Willie has at least two decades on me, and there’s something about his slightly flirty vibe that makes me think he’s angling to invite me along. Figures, my only action in ages would be with a man old enough to be my father at a museum dedicated to racial terror.
“Oh, well, I’m already late. I need to get to Perote.” I’m not sure why I bother to say the name of a dot on a map no one has heard of like it’s New York City.
“Never heard of it. Where’s that?”
“A little town, if you could even call it that, about an hour south of here.”
I will Tiffany to hurry up and finish with my paperwork so I can escape. I’d forgotten this about the South, the incessant small talk that draws out every errand and interaction twice as long as it needs to be. Sure enough, Willie shifts toward me now, fully invested in our chat. “And what brings you down here?”
It’s a reasonable question—a predictable one—and yet the answer doesn’t want to come out of my mouth. “Oh, uh, it’s actually my grandmother’s funeral.” The convivial mood is ruined as everyone suddenly looks at me with sympathy. The upside is that introducing death into the conversation might make Tiffany get me the keys already.
“Oh, well, I’m sorry for your loss,” Willie says with genuine compassion. “My moms died last month. It, well, it’s tough.”
My back stiffens when he turns to me; I’m irrationally afraid he’s going to hug me. Then I feel bad for tilting backward and force myself to lean into the conversation again. He nods and tells me to be strong as he walks toward the exit.
Be strong. God knows I’m trying.
His words have me slipping right back to the night Gigi died. Momma said the same thing when we were gathered around Gigi’s bed. “We have to be strong. We have to be strong.” The doctors had stabilized Gigi after she’d suffered a stroke. She was unconscious but looked peaceful. You almost wouldn’t know her organs were shutting down, even though the doctor had explained that was exactly what was happening. I made it to the hospital in time, which will always be one of the things I am most grateful for in this life. When I arrived, the first person I saw was my dad, staring vacantly into a vending machine down the hall.
“Daddy?”
He jumped a little, coming back from wherever he was. “Oh, hey, baby, come here.” He reached over, pulled me close. In the glass of the machine, I could see our reflection, how much we look alike, same round eyes and large forehead, same sadness.
“How you holding up, Daddy?”
“I’m fine. It’s your mother we need to worry about. You know this is—this is it, right?” He looked at me solemnly. He wanted me to be prep
ared. If there’s one thing my dad always wants, it’s for me to be prepared, for anything, everything in life.
But I wasn’t prepared for this, for losing Gigi. I nodded anyway. I knew that was what he needed to hear.
“How’s Momma holding up?”
“Oh, you know how she is. She’s making unreasonable demands of the nurses and of Jesus… going on about miracles. I keep trying to tell her that she has to let Gigi go, but I know that’s easier said than done. She should be grateful it’s so peaceful.”
The look on his face made me wonder if he was thinking about his own parents. They’d died before I was born, on their way from Baltimore to Philadelphia on a Greyhound bus that crashed. “Here one second, gone the next,” was how Daddy always put it. The modest settlement from the crash helped pay for my education, which makes me feel connected to the grandparents I never got to meet.
I reluctantly pulled myself out of his arms. “We should get in there. I want to… I want to say goodbye, I guess.”
It was the last thing I wanted to do.
And now we’re here, about to bury Gigi at sundown, and again it’s the last thing I want to do.
I glance down at my watch. It’s 11 a.m. If I leave now, I’ll still arrive in plenty of time for the service. I can spare an hour to visit the memorial. And the man had a point: I’m here, I might as well. When else am I going to be in Montgomery?
By the time Tiffany hands me the packet of papers and keys to my economy rental, I’ve decided to make the detour. I shoot a text to Shaun, letting the family know I’ll be a little later than expected. I want to be with my family, but the pull of the memorial is stronger, a need I can’t explain or ignore. Jimmy.
We Are Not Like Them Page 18