Speaking of Summer

by Kalisha Buckhanon

  I dressed in simple jeans and a peach T-shirt and sandals, with my cream Angela Cummings silk and latex scarf I found balled up in a Ked. I was necessarily reserved when I picked up my last art supplies at the dollar store: a three-hole binder and protective sheet covers, lined paper bound inside. There, I would roll the stone from her tomb in my mind and free-associate her in her own right. Atop my piece, I Sharpied my title in cursive.

  Speaking of Summer.

  THE NEW RULE WAS SUPPOSED to be “No wine” but it became “No wine alone.” I also lightened up with boxed wine, cut with plenty of ice cubes in the tumblers. The bodega sold it now. Its ready and willing spout rested on the floor between me and Asha. This time, I had no guest to introduce to her. We had our butts against the wall and our legs in the air, our feet flexed. She called this “leg draining,” or Viparita Karani in Sanskrit, or “Just ‘legs on the wall pose’ if you can’t pronounce all that.”

  The decision was made for us. We needed “real jobs.” No Asha, no incense smoke, no chanting, and no music in weeks were not signs of fun times as I’d wished. Sugar Hill Holistic Care by Asha Goddess had a CLOSED sign. Like me, she was flat broke.

  A chance meeting with a dancer led her to bartending in a Queens strip joint, and Asha rarely drank. She lasted a few weeks. It wasn’t the work. It was the early-morning commute nearly the length of the A train. By her off time she was clamoring for a seat among the homeless who rode overnight for the longest uninterrupted sleep in the city.

  “Lemme guess, the health insurance was hand sanitizer at the bar?” I asked.

  “Not even. Too many germs floating around in there, and the big tippers got the most.”

  “Maybe we should go sign up to dance. It’d get me back in the gym.”

  We finished our Vinyasa break to return to screwing in mounts for Mama’s precious works I’d neglected in corners and piles. Asha directed me so I hung nothing crooked. I made room first for the personal, inspirations of our old house and attempts at family faces. Also, the abstracts, for I knew they illuminated the spectrum of her moods and senses along the journey to her final rest. The first bright idea to strike without Summer’s intervention was their mass donation: to Asha, our building, the We Go On office, and even Montgomery might like to have my mother’s creations she was too insecure to peddle.

  The next bright idea to strike me all by myself, without Summer’s help, was to reroute my email back to my longstanding college alumni account. I could look more serious in hiring manager’s inboxes, plus cut down digital spam. Then, I put a bold yellow sign on the bathroom mirror with a smiley face on it. I wrote the letters A-P-P-L-Y to make up the smile. I’d always thought I would be too successful to remember those words in my midthirties. But Summer swallowed a lot of time. Autumn was basically starting over.

  Just in case, and with Chase an ex-factor, I gave Asha a copy of my door key. She used it quickly, to come use my internet. It was a small price to pay for suicide watch.

  “I’ve been thinking about approaching one of my clients for a damned job,” I told her. “She owns a temp agency. She’s really cool. Maybe I could ask about you.”

  “Hah!” Asha laughed. “You know temp rhymes with pimp. And panty hose gives women yeast infections, honey.”

  “Asha, the working world has gone business casual these days. Obviously, it’s too cold for flip-flops and flower child sundresses, but . . .”

  I cut off cable before the internet, or lights for that matter. Asha fiddled for a clear radio station rather than roam freely through cable music I no longer had. She stopped on smooth rock. She stood in her simple cream slip dress. I wondered what Summers she talked herself into and carried along, who turned the lithe figure and flawless skin that could have modeled or done anything into a broke sister on borrowed time, in the too-expensive brownstone apartment she lucked on because an older woman passed away in it.

  “Well, yeah,” Asha said when she lay back down. She was half drunk herself. “I’m not exactly the standard cookie out here. But, I guess it’s about that time I join the herd. My mama’s good-looking. It’s where I got it from. But no rich daddy’s taking care of me anytime soon. Or rich man, either. This constant grind to get paper wears me out.”

  She never mentioned it to me. I had to know why.

  “How come all this time, you know, since this winter, you never said anything about what happened? And stayed my friend?”

  “You mean about you out on the roof all by yourself, in the dead of winter?”

  “What else?”

  “Oh, girl, hey. Who am I to judge? I got baggage I never told you about.”

  “You’ve given hints,” I said.

  “Give yourself a few years and that’s all you’ll give too,” she laughed. “I knew you were fragile. Took me a while to hear a fire truck and see flashing lights on the block and not think it had something to do with you. But, I was here while your mom died. I saw you go through it, alone. If my own family wasn’t so ratchet I’d say I couldn’t understand why no one came to be with you, not even your sister you seemed to be close with once. I’m glad I was here and I spent time with her.”

  “Thanks for that, Asha.” I felt ashamed of the mistruths I must have fed to so many, and Asha was one of the few who deserved the truth now that I had it. I would give it to her, one day, in time.

  She gulped down the tumbler of pretty pink alcohol to go refill her glass. “But, see, that’s why I help you take care of yourself. I’m going till a hundred, I tell you. Vegetables. Green tea. Every day like them Asians. You see how they look. Am I lying? Lots of onion and garlic. Italians just the same. Look how old the Godfather was. But, yeah, not enough folks wanna buy into the ideas. I guess temping is cool. It wouldn’t be forever. I can save for the business. These colonics are running for $400 a pop. Or poop. Maybe I can temp long enough to save up for the hydrotherapy unit and speculums.”

  “I love you, Asha,” I laughed, grateful for earthy amateur nursing just steps away. “Do you know where Belinda and her kids went to?”

  “No, matter fact, I don’t. You’d think after all these years living with people we would have been friends, not just neighbors.”

  “Well, she was in a rush,” I slurred. “Did you ever see them around?”

  “Nobody sees garden apartments but garden apartment windows see all,” she said. “Belinda took chances her key would work, better than dragging her brood to a mission, or riding the train overnight. I caught her or her oldest boy all the time. She was mortified. I said I would never tell anybody, and that’s that.”

  So far, all possible delusions I suspected remained confirmed as real-life truth, illusions at worst. I’d actually heard Belinda, her children, and even seen her oldest son often. I did not hallucinate them. Only the movie my memories made wrote in new parts. To integrate myself, or selves as I was told, I needed more than Montgomery’s limited insight to know just how far this thing went. My sly mini-interviews led to disclosures that no one ever framed my disorder as more than erratic behavior, confusion, and grief.

  “And, what’d she ever say about me? About that?”

  It was better to hear when I was tipsy. I would forget it by the morning.

  “Not too much,” Asha said. “She was always carrying too much to chat too long, or trying to hide the kids. But, come to think of it, she said, ‘I’m really glad these folks raised the rent on us and I had to do doubles to try to pay it. Late hours saved a life.’”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Filing applications, paycheck stubs, W-2s, time cards, and whatever else in Norma Roth’s office for $60 a half day was no downgrade whatsoever. My body upgraded to a set bedtime and waking hour, my therapist’s preference. And I could manage the tasks Norma still paid as freelance within work hours she paid me for as well, with her right there for me to check in and consult with. The necessity of a fall wardrobe, too dark and layered to be thrown together in a rushed hoot, finally pushed me to restructure my closets to
an adequate color-coordinated, compartmentalized level my nice things deserved. How had I ever managed to get dressed before? I even fit in another time with Cathy down in Union Square, sans the children. Just regular girlfriend time.

  In gratitude for Norma’s immediate “Why sure!” offer to employ me, plus pitch Asha out to phone work, I kept the pot of coffee refreshed for new applicants and staff. Most times I was unchallenged, patting at my old sweater sets and itchy earth-toned pants. So I watered philodendrons, Lysoled phones or desks, and alphabetized the small lobby’s magazines. This spurred Norma to accuse me of hyperthyroid disease.

  “Sit down, darling,” she said. “You haven’t had your babies yet. You need to rest your uterus as often as possible once you’re in advanced maternal age.”

  Norma, my resting uterus, and I shared an extended Tupperware-packed lunch, and cups of free coffee that saved me $30 a week.

  “With how long the company’s been active, and how many people you’ve employed, you could really branch out into speaking and consulting in HR,” I told her. “There’s a lot of money in it. No startup costs on the web. People build brands overnight.”

  “I can take your word for it, doll, if you say neutrals are where the web is going these days,” Norma told me in her cluttered, open-door office. “But I wonder if you think anybody would listen to me for too long and not get offended. I like making money, anonymously.”

  “It’s just a thought, Norma,” I laughed. “A couple thousand per gig or corporate training session adds up fast.”

  She finished off her daily salad, picked up a butter sliver to smear on her bread, thought about it, and then threw the entire small loaf into the garbage with her plate. Her can was full of papers, tissues, apple cores, hard-boiled eggshells, Diet Coke cans, and water bottles. I rose to tie the bag together.

  “That sounds quite nice,” she said.

  “We’d just have to pep up your section of the site, and give you a separate blog to grow you an audience.”

  “I couldn’t think of anything to say more than once a year . . .”

  “Oh, I’d write it,” I laughed. “Corporate trends in HR, dos and don’ts for jobseekers, tips for bosses and supervisors, company culture suggestions.”

  “You’re speaking a foreign language,” she said. “I just show up to work every day, and treat people nice in between. So long as they do the same for me.”

  “I think you have much you could tell others,” I repeated.

  “Well, I’ll certainly think about it,” she said.

  Her phone rang, she sighed, rolled her eyes, and picked it up.

  I headed back to the peaceful vortex of A to Z and 1 to 100 and “Roth Staffing . . . how may I help you?” when the receptionist was out smoking or on extended break.

  I got used to the thump of my loafers and chunky heels on tile. I picked out the framed photos I would set on my desk where Chase’s would have been just months before. One was me with Mama and Grandma, in front of a nice cake on my tenth birthday, when I accepted a tall doll on a round base. I was happy to explain it to anyone who asked.

  ON HUMP DAY RAYMOND HELD my hand as we wandered through the fifth floor of the MoMA. It was the first time we had seen each other since the summer. We had met in an art class; I saw it fitting we should go to the art museum. My ulterior motive was to see The Persistence of Memory, live in its flesh, far beyond the mere print in my apartment I debated introducing Raymond to later that night. His enthusiasm was still there. Over a shared caprese salad and glasses of white wine in the museum’s café, I turned down his invitation back to Bushwick. I was just not up to traveling too far from my own borough, or burrow, until more of my life made sense—past and present. At my place, he would not need much beyond a razor, borrowed from me or picked up at the bodega.

  He was so good-looking I couldn’t help but debate it. For now, his company alone reassured my ego. I elevated our one-night stand from an accident of greasy Chinese food and pizza to some semblance of propriety. In the two months since I ghosted, he’d found a full-time job in a music store. He paid for our museum tickets and roses. We took a selfie in front of the painting. He teased me to make it my new screen background. I obliged.

  “I see you like the Romance men,” he said to me in front of the work, its somber dull blue and bronze hues my stark reminders summer came and went.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “I have a small print of this. It always seemed to speak to me.”

  “You have a Frenchman too?” he teased.

  “No, I don’t work like that,” I laughed.

  “Just Italian?” he asked.

  “I’m working on the entire globe,” I told him. “Africa and India are next. Or, according to my friend Cathy, I gotta go Caribbean like her. They’re all over Brooklyn.”

  We skipped through other floors and galleries like two people should at first: on lighter feet and subjects. He still thought my sister was missing. I went ahead and let him think it. To explain now would burst forth other explanations I did not owe. If he continued to be there, I would come clean. He wrangled me into a kiss, near the blank-faced and drained older female museum guard who interrupted us: “Don’t get close to the painting.”

  “Let’s go see Carrie Mae Weems before we go,” I told him. Our locked pinky fingers led him behind me.

  His confrontation with Weems was as startling as I had intended it to be. I was, after all, a Black woman—no matter whom I shared my bed with. Her harsh red-filtered nineteenth-century daguerreotype portraits of half-naked slave men and women, with textual reminders for her audience to consider them as scientific guinea pigs and anthropology specimens, clarified me in his White man mind—beyond a juicy brown loveliness to pour into, when and if he could catch me. A Negress devoid of pop culture abstraction, stereotypical contouring, or identity cropping. His beholder’s share was an angle on Autumn Spencer I would find too awkward to blatantly discuss. He took it well.

  “I always wonder how your people survived those things,” he said.

  “These things,” I said. “It goes on, still. Just in new forms. I’ve been lucky, I guess. But if we go to Barneys together, security will think I’m the one most likely to steal a bag.”

  “I never steal a thing in my life. People just like to give me things. Especially women.”

  After the MoMA, his budget was down to a careful choice from both our standpoints: his was plenty of wine for later with Halal street food or a modest sit-down dinner, and mine was another stint as a hussy or a courted lady at dinner. I chose dinner.

  In a midpriced wine bar with enough bread to stuff us down to a few small plates as meals, I told him the truths I journaled every day now: I miss my Midwest version of “the country,” I’d love to have in-laws because I am without parents or siblings, I want to reconnect with my father’s family. I found Raymond, too, missed his family, in a village called Positano, on hills by the sea. He missed goat’s milk and real cheese. And he had a daughter back in his native land. Ghita was going into her teens now. He spoke to Ghita every few weeks, mailed her American clothes and snacks, and visited once a year.

  “Sounds like a good relationship,” I told him when I had had enough of gazing admiringly at all his Facebook photo albums. “We have more in common than I thought. I have a daughter far away too.”

  He peered at me. It was so much more different for a man than a woman. Certainly he calculated my higher price in seconds.

  “Don’t panic. She’s in Africa. Fatu. About ten now. I sponsor her for a charity.”

  I put more olive paste and Brie on bread to pop into his mouth. He held up a spoonful of lemon mousse for me. It was almost ten o’clock, but he ordered a coffee.

  “You’re trying to have me on the train late,” I laughed.

  “I’ll put you in a cab. Or, I come up with you, if your boyfriend doesn’t mind.”

  My attachment to Raymond was not just a lovemaking naturally smooth and without intention or force on my part,
without motive or gratitude or undue shame. He was the most current projector into who Summer really was, a woman outside of my elements and obligations. Her own sparkle and muse, however poorly discerning at times. He showed me how she resolved going along, rather than leading the way as I thought she always did. He was kind to me. I could not mislead him.

  “Well, there’s no ‘boyfriend’ anymore,” I explained.

  His face showed me he thought the song could be about him.

  I explained more: “There’s no ‘he’ because I want some ‘me’ time right now. It’s been a pretty tough year. But, having a friend like you is more a solution than a problem.”

  “We can’t be friends if I can’t find you,” he said. “You disappear more than any woman I ever know.”

  “Well, there’s an explanation for it. Maybe I’ll tell you one day.”

  Raymond and I parted with a stronger tie to each other. I couldn’t see being out of contact with him again for nearly two months. He was a decent man. At this more adult level of things, the necessity to take stock led me home all by myself. Raymond paid our bill. We waited for his M and my D at Rockefeller Center. We decided our next date could be the New York City Marathon the first week of November; he had a friend in the race.

  Riding uptown, I napped and dreamt of what could be my first trip to Italy—landing in Rome, renting a car to drive through hills by the sea with a stop at a hidden inn along the way, and meeting a real family complete with a teenaged stepdaughter: mothered by another woman but abruptly best-friended by me. It was just a thought.