by Dasha Kelly
Barely a week after arriving in Decatur, Coretta announced CeCe would stay with Aunt Rosie for a few days. CeCe wasn’t surprised Aunt Rosie would want to be the first to offer advice about her upcoming year as a high-school student. At least her father had given her family.
CeCe and Aunt Rosie watched back-to-back episodes of Jeopardy!, worked the garden, cleaned and cooked mustard greens for Sunday dinner, and sucked Popsicles in the back yard. One afternoon, CeCe read in the porch swing when Aunt Rosie sat in the fan-back chair next to her with a large brown envelope.
“Sometimes when we lookin’ real close at a patch,” she said, “we don’t know we only seeing part of the quilt.”
CeCe looked over the edge of her book at Aunt Rosie. She could rarely guess where these Rosie-isms might lead, but had come to trust they always held a nugget of wisdom. Aunt Rosie’s eyes did not sparkle as she spoke, though. CeCe lay down her book, looking from Rosie’s solemn face to the envelope in her hands.
“What’s going on, Auntie?” she asked.
Aunt Rosie held CeCe’s gaze before speaking. “Your daddy died, baby.”
The inside of CeCe’s chest constricted violently as she struggled to focus on Aunt Rosie’s face. Rosie waited while CeCe tried to blink and twitch into understanding. Her mouth formed slow shapes, but ejected no words.
“I guess he been sick for a long time,” Aunt Rosie said. “Your letters was gettin’ sent from his apartment to a nursing home.”
CeCe’s chest convulsed again.
Aunt Rosie laid the square envelope on the swing next to CeCe. The flap was already opened.
“I saw your name on the envelope, but it didn’t make no sense why it came here. So I read it,” Rosie said. “Look like he been lovin’ on you harder than he could say. We was all seein’ his little patch, but the quilt is always bigger, baby. Always bigger.”
Aunt Rosie lifted herself from the wicker porch chair and stood above CeCe for a moment. She used her thumb to wipe away the tears that sprang into CeCe’s eyes, kissed the top of her great-niece’s head, and shuffled back into the house.
CeCe stared at the yawning envelope. She recognized the return address as the Milton Olive Towers, the residential hall where her father had settled in Detroit. In the early letters he wrote to her, he described the facility as a kind of hotel for, mostly, veterans of color. CeCe slid a sympathy card from the envelope with a folded letter tucked inside. The card was signed in a florid script, Anna Schultz. The letter was typed:
Dear Crimson—
We’ve never met, but I feel as if we have. I’ve had the privilege of knowing your father for several years now. He was one of the men I cared for here at Olive Towers. Your father was special to me for many reasons. First, when he moved here three years ago, we were both new to this building. I loved the job right away, but there are always so many things to learn in a new place. He was one of the only residents to sit down and ask how I was adjusting and to encourage me on my rough days. Odd, it was MY job, to make sure HE was OK. I knew instantly he would be one of my special residents, and I was right.
He was a quiet presence, but when your father did speak he had wise advice, insightful observations, sincere questions, and wonderful stories about you. He told me all about your job as a library assistant, the straight As on your report cards, and what a big help you’ve been to your mother. He was so proud of you, Crimson. He saved all of his best words for talking about you.
When he started to get sick, no one knew what he had for a long time. His coughing and wheezing had gotten so bad he couldn’t get out of bed. The doctors ran tests and learned he had a disease called pulmonary fibrosis, even though he wasn’t a smoker. He said it felt like someone was trying to smother him.
We moved him to a nursing home, and the front desk forwarded your letters to him there. This last letter landed on my desk because your father passed away in March, just before his birthday. Please forgive my invasion of your privacy, but I opened your letter because I knew something wasn’t right. I don’t know why you weren’t informed of his passing by Carla Weathers (our contact of record). I also couldn’t say why your father stopped writing you.
What I am certain of, though, is that your father loved you more than anything in this world. He kept your letters in a box on his nightstand all the time. All the time. It’s not unusual for residents to withdraw from their families when they get sick, to protect them somehow. But I’m only guessing at what Quentin might have been thinking.
I am deeply sorry for your loss, Crimson. Not having your father will be hard enough (trust me, I know. My father died when I was just a little older than you). The last thing I would want is for you to go another day thinking he didn’t adore you. His body eventually lost to the illness, but I want you to know that his heart was entirely devoted to you, his only daughter.
My prayers are with you and your family, Crimson. Thank you for bringing a spectacular man such spectacular joy.
Sincerely,
Anna Schultz
TWENTY-SEVEN
TETHERED
CECE SAT ON AUNT ROSIE'S porch for the rest of the summer. Coretta’s had too much light for her now. Laughter, movies, skating, pancakes, all of it too much.
Between her checklists of chores, CeCe gave small pushes to the swing with her bare heel. Sometimes she read. Sometimes she stared at the seam of field and sky. Sometimes she succumbed to violent weeping. And sometimes she watched the chase of wind through Aunt Rosie’s pecan trees. Before summer ended, CeCe called Anna Schultz to thank her. They spoke for a few minutes, both admitting to feeling lighter in spirit before disconnecting the line.
CeCe next phoned Dr. Harper, who explained, again, that he could not divulge anything her mother had or had not told him about CeCe’s father. CeCe began to unfasten. When the scream rocketed from her throat, vile and sick, CeCe collapsed against the kitchen table and fell to the floor.
CeCe took the glass of water in Coretta’s outstretched hand. She gave CeCe a soft smile and small nod before turning to leave the living room. CeCe sipped and placed the water glass on the couch’s end table. The telephone waited. CeCe picked up the phone and balanced it on top of her legs. She wore a skort, convinced by another cousin that her shapely sprinter’s legs were showcase caliber. The base of the blue Princess phone sat heavy and hard against her skin.
CeCe dialed her house number as Coretta and Aunt Rosie listened to the rotary’s spinning clicks from extensions in the kitchen and master bedroom. Since CeCe had refused to wait for her return to Prescott and an appointment in his office, Dr. Harper insisted CeCe have family around when she called to confront Carla. CeCe would have phoned her mother the night before if the meds from the ER hadn’t put her to sleep. Four stitches. She awoke stringing together beads of venom for this call.
CeCe sat on the edge of the couch, the phone cradled in her lap. Her sutures pricked at the hardening gauze. CeCe hadn’t taken any medications that morning; she wanted all of her pipes and circuits to be open and clear. The phone clamored its first ring. On the fifth ring, they heard Carla’s voice.
“Hello?” she said. Her voice was hollow and dry.
“It’s me, Mama.”
“CrimsonBaby,” her mother said.
CeCe snorted, repelling her mother’s shorthand affection.
“CeCe?”
CeCe scrambled to block the vicious words from leaping in front, moving them to rear flanks like she’d practiced. Everything in CeCe teetered, like wobbly table legs. She couldn’t predict the wreckage of this collision, but resigned herself to fly directly into it.
“Daddy died,” she said.
Silence.
“Four months ago.”
Silence.
“You knew and didn’t tell me,” CeCe said, her voice climbing.
Carla cleared her throat.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” CeCe asked, fervor flooding into her mouth.
Her mother hesitated again, and said, “I di
dn’t know how.”
“You didn’t know how?” CeCe repeated, incredulous. She expected “I wanted to protect you,” “There never seemed to be a right time,” or “You’re going through so much right now.” But not this. Not a complete lack of effort. Another failure without even trying.
“What did you need to know how to do?” CeCe mocked. “I don’t know how to keep us alive, but I do it. I figure it out, don’t I? You couldn’t figure this one thing out?”
“CrimsonBaby,” her mother started, letting her voice trail away and fill the phone line with quiet.
“What?” CeCe demanded. “CrimsonBaby, what?”
All of them listened to Carla’s silence. They could not even discern her breath.
“What, Mama? What could you possibly want to say to me right now?” CeCe asked. Volume pushed her vocal cords against the inside of her neck, blood against the inside of her veins, and a thick gurgle of rage against the inside her skull. CeCe bolted onto her feet, the powder blue base crashing to the floor.
“Exactly!” CeCe said again and again, louder, to a shrill scream. The tethered phone base tumbled alongside CeCe’s feet as she stomped a furious circle into the living room carpet and emptied her venom into the receiver. By the time she screeched, “I hate you,” Aunt Rosie stood in front of CeCe mouthing for her to hand over the phone.
“At least Daddy wanted to be here with me,” CeCe screamed at her mother, the velocity pitching her forward onto her toes.
CeCe disassembled into hysterical tears while her mother kept mumbling her name. Rosie swiped the phone but not swiftly enough to dodge CeCe’s parting words to her mother: “You should be the one who’s dead.”
CeCe spent the last three weeks of summer with her temples and flesh pounding. The rage eked from her pores like a film of sweat. She was furious with everyone: her father for leaving her alone for the last and final time, her mother for being inept at living, the social worker for not seeing the forest for the trees, Rosie and Coretta for not finding the legal loophole to retain her in their care, and her cousins for enjoying their tennis classes and mascara while she waited for two sets of failed genetics to implode inside of her.
TWENTY-EIGHT
SILENCE
CECE GOT HOME FROM HER date with Eric after 11 p.m., hours beyond either of their expectations. Changed into her nightshirt, CeCe padded to the kitchen and traded text messages about the date with Pam.
Pam teased about a grocery store wedding and CeCe joked about asparagus bouquets. CeCe poured a glass of juice and leaned against the counter as she sipped. The phone dinged an alert once. Twice. The first text was, indeed, a clever reply from Pam. The second message was from Eric.
“Got the ‘great time’ text,” she typed to Pam. “Swooning.”
“Leaving nothing to chance,” Pam typed back. “Smart man. Me like.”
CeCe toggled messages to Pam and Eric. She placed her empty glass in the sink, giggled at a text from Eric, turned off the kitchen lights and moved into the hallway. CeCe liked the way he gently teased about her enormous car, and she had liked the snow-soft kiss on her cheek. She typed and smiled when her mother’s voice startled her.
“Nice?”
CeCe still started at her mother’s voice sometimes. She was braced for their familiar silence when CeCe moved her mother into Terri’s vacated room three years prior. The tradeoff for her mother’s rediscovered speech had been the anxious phone calls triggered by spasms of panic over CeCe’s whereabouts and well-being. CeCe decided the exchange had been an even one, but the sound of her mother’s voice could still catch her off guard.
“Didn’t hear you, Mama,” CeCe said into her mother’s darkened room.
“Your date,” her mother’s voice said. “Was he nice.”
CeCe grinned a little. She had stewed in their early years here, at her mother’s deliberate gall to ask about her days, after so much time, to remember a big client event or notice a new pair of earrings. CeCe admonished herself for scowling when her mother’s voice would whistle from the dark bedroom.
“Yeah,” CeCe said into the bedroom shadows. “He was really nice.”
CeCe leaned her entire right half toward the doorway’s yawning darkness, listening for speech or light snoring.
“Good,” her mother finally said. “That’s good.”
“Good night, Mama,” CeCe said, waiting. Her mother did not reply.
CeCe shuffled to the end of the hallway and into her bedroom. Her phone dinged with a new message. CeCe closed the door and switched off the lights. She gripped her phone and slipped into bed. After activating her alarm clock, CeCe felt along the ledge of her headboard shelves to find her charger cord. She plugged in her phone, anchored an elbow into her spare pillow, and smiled down at the small screen.
“Was at a conference,” read the message from Rocky. “Sacramento. Call you tomorrow.”
CeCe’s heart lurched. She still had no idea how to make that stop.
TWENTY-NINE
BATS
ONLY FRESHMEN ATTENDED SCHOOL ON the first day at Maclin High. CeCe appreciated the early chance to navigate the enormous building, practice opening her very first locker, and share her new classmates’ nervous energy. In their orientation assembly, their freshman guidance director, Mr. Meadows, introduced the head principal, the nurse and head secretary, cheerleaders, graduating seniors, class presidents, and yearbook editor.
CeCe kept turning to look at the sea of the freshman faces. Six hundred, the size of her entire elementary school and triple the size of her middle school. Her nerves settled a bit more each time she spied a Valmore face. They were blended into a population of academically strong students from throughout the district. Many of their classmates had advanced to private high schools, as expected, but CeCe looked forward to Maclin’s honors classes and, of course, adjusting to the expanded social network of high school.
When CeCe spotted Jesse, she froze. She was pulling out her lunch bag and a library book but folded into her locker when she saw him. CeCe made a silent wish not to have any classes with Jesse, and to spend the next four years passing him in the halls as infrequently as possible.
In the cafeteria, CeCe sat down at an empty table with her brown bag and book. She was reading Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, a title the public librarian had suggested. CeCe thought she might not enjoy the novel, but she was immediately engrossed.
“You like it?” a voice asked.
CeCe looked up to face another brown-skinned girl standing at her lunch table. CeCe recognized her from the assembly. The girl was tall and lean, with wide-set eyes and fleshy, pink lips. She looked, to CeCe, like a grasshopper.
“So far,” CeCe said.
“I couldn’t finish it,” the girl said. “It was too depressing.”
CeCe nodded in understanding. She noticed the girl had a book tucked underneath her arm, too. “What are you reading?”
“Cujo,” she said, placing her lunch bag on the table, freeing her hands to show CeCe the book cover. CeCe nodded again. Stephen King was one of her favorites. “My name’s Laurita.”
“CeCe.”
The girls sat together in a cocooning silence. They munched and sipped and turned pages with the din of their new cafeteria scattering behind them. Mr. Meadows’ voice in the PA speakers jerked them from their stories and instructed them to prepare for the bell and their afternoon classes. The girls tossed their trash, but Laurita folded her lunch bag, just like CeCe.
“Which bus do you ride?” Laurita asked. CeCe was relieved that her new friend asked about the city bus. At Valmore, everyone else had a yellow bus, minivan, or Volvo to pick them up.
“Clark, then I change to the Kennedy,” CeCe said, walking with her new friend out of the cafeteria.
“I take the Clark bus, too,” Laurita said. “Then I go the other way, on the Fourth Avenue bus. Want me to meet you after school and we can walk together?”
CeCe nodded, hoping she didn’t look as spastically
excited as she felt on the inside. At the end of the day, CeCe stacked books into her locker when she saw Laurita at the far end of the hallway. Her new friend came toward CeCe, lanky limbs bending and knocking like a marionette. The two made their way through the ebb of students pouring out to school buses, bike racks, and idling cars and continued walking another block to the Clark Avenue bus stop.
In their short bus ride and while waiting at their shared transfer stop, Laurita managed to tell CeCe about a lethargic cat named Chitlin, her summer in the country backwoods of Alabama, the roller skating rink near her house, her straight As in math, a big brother in college, the time her father had gotten them lost driving to Busch Gardens, and the vacuuming she needed to do before her mother got home from work. As Laurita’s Fourth Street bus came into view, she finished a story about Chitlin and paused to smile at her new friend.
“It’s me and you,” she said, placing a hand on CeCe’s shoulder. “We’re freshmen, we’re black, we’re kinda nerdy, we’re small—well, I’m skinny and you’re short—and we’re not one of the cool kids. But we’ve got each other, OK?”
CeCe heard herself agreeing with Laurita, sharing a hug as the bus reached their stop and waving as Laurita boarded. CeCe’s smile crashed once the bus pulled away.
Not one of the cool kids.
The next day was a madhouse. CeCe noticed an electricity in the hallways she hadn’t felt the day before. Navigating her small form in between the hundreds of stalklike upperclassmen affirmed to CeCe that she was truly a high school student now. Nudging along to their lockers, CeCe thought of all the high school montages she’d seen on TV: girls walking in pairs, hugging textbooks to their bosoms; letterman’s jackets raucously chasing each other through the halls; beautiful people with lip gloss and moussed hair; quirky-looking kids with black clothes and heavy boots; adult voices spiking above the roar of students to direct one to the office, another away from that locker.