by Brit Bennett
She clamped a hand over Aubrey’s mouth as she shuttled her inside the dark house. Floorboards creaked underneath them and she stepped lightly, ushering Aubrey down the hall, her hand moist from her breathing. Inside her bedroom, Aubrey flopped onto the bed, stretching out like a starfish. Nadia wiggled out of her dress. She glanced into the mirror. Behind her, Aubrey propped herself up on her elbows, watching her undress.
“You’re so pretty,” she said.
Nadia laughed, rummaging through the drawer for a T-shirt to sleep in. She felt uncomfortable, knowing that Aubrey was looking. She’d never liked anyone watching her undress, not even Luke. She pulled on a faded Chargers T-shirt, piling her hair into a sloppy bun.
“You are,” Aubrey said. “You are so pretty, it’s not even fair.”
“Come on. Let’s go to bed.”
“But I’m not tired.”
“Want to change into shorts? You’re not sleeping in that, are you?”
“We’ll talk, right?” Aubrey said. “When you’re in college.”
Nadia’s throat tightened, but she didn’t say anything, shielded by the dark and the quiet. “Of course,” she finally said, unsure if she was trying to comfort Aubrey or herself.
Down the hall, the air conditioner hummed loudly, but her mind refused to settle, not even after Aubrey grew quiet and still beside her. She slept on her stomach, like a baby, and in the darkness, Nadia rested a hand on her back, feeling it rise and fall.
“Remember the trampoline?” Aubrey said. “That I told you about? The one in my neighbor’s yard?”
“What about it?”
Aubrey clenched her eyes shut, her voice dropping to a whisper. “That was the first secret I ever kept.”
—
IN THE MORNING, Luke’s bum leg burned. An unusual type of pain. He knew other types well, a side effect from a reckless youth. A broken arm after accepting a dare to swing across the monkey bars blindfolded, sprained ankles and jammed fingers from pickup basketball games taken too seriously, cracked ribs from drunk fights with friends. In college, he learned pain intimately, the tautness of sore muscles, the feverous push beyond all points of reason, the weight of a hundred pounds on your back, digging into your shoulders, cutting off your breath. The pain of too-tired, can’t-get-up, no-thinking, just-surviving. After football, he didn’t think he could ever unlearn pain. He felt violence still in his body, echoing against his bones.
The leg hurt differently, not the sting or swell he knew, just a dull, seasoned pain that felt hot when he stepped, especially in the morning after hours of not moving it. So when his mother banged on his door early one Sunday morning, he took a minute to untangle himself from his covers and shuffle barefoot across the room. Golden shards of light slanted through the slats of the blinds and across his carpet. He eased toward the door, gingerly opening it and poking his head out. In the hallway, his mother stood in a peach skirt suit, her purse clutched under her arm. He squinted into the sunlight, clearing his throat.
“What you need, Mama?” he said.
“Hi Mama,” she said. “Good morning, Mama. It’s so good to see you, Mama . . .”
“Sorry, I just woke up.”
“Let me give you a hug since I don’t do nothin’ but work and hole up in my room all day . . .”
He stepped forward lightly, putting an arm briefly around her shoulders.
“What’d I tell you about going to see that doctor?” she said.
“It don’t hurt that bad.”
“Can’t hardly walk and still won’t listen to nobody.” She shook her head. “Why you standing like that in front of the door?”
“You don’t wanna go in. It’s messy.”
“You think I don’t know that already?”
“C’mon, Mama, what you need?”
“I don’t need anything. I just want to see my son.”
“I been busy,” he said.
She scoffed. “Busy. I know you’re still thinkin’ about that Turner girl. You just like your daddy. Can’t let the past be the past.” She touched his cheek. “Look, what’s done is done. You got yourself in this mess and you should be on your knees thanking God for getting you out of it. Don’t everybody get another chance, you know that?”
“Yes,” he said.
“What you need to do is come to church,” she said. “If you’d listened to the Word a little more, maybe none of this would’ve happened.”
Luke leaned against the doorframe. He hadn’t meant to get his parents involved but he needed the money quickly, and part of him had hoped that they would scold him for even considering aborting the baby and refuse to give him a dollar. Then he would’ve returned to Nadia, hangdog, his hands thrown up, and told her that he’d tried his best but couldn’t find the money and maybe they should take a moment and think this over. But his parents, who didn’t drink or swear or even watch rated-R movies, had helped Nadia kill his baby. He had asked them to.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll try to make it.”
—
IN OCEANSIDE, seasons blended together into year-round sunshine, but fall came regardless: cheerful welcome messages now flashed on Oceanside High’s electronic marquee, and backpacks and binders had been pushed to the front of Walmart. Nadia had received e-mails from the University of Michigan informing her of orientation. She tried to swallow her nervousness each time she passed those generic back-to-school images framed in red and orange leaves. In Oceanside, leaves didn’t burst into red and orange; they withered and faded into a pale green that filled the gutters and lined the streets. But for the first time in her life, by the time the trees hung empty, she would be living somewhere else.
The Sunday before she left for Michigan, Upper Room took up a love offering to send her on her way. She was the first one in the congregation to earn an academic scholarship to a big university, but it didn’t cover everything. She would need little things—like a real winter coat—so the pastor asked Nadia and her father to stand at the altar with an empty paint bucket by their feet. Second John tossed in his cigarette money; he’d promised his wife he’d cut back anyway. Sister Willis gave the cash she’d set aside for her Powerball ticket and whispered to Magdalena Price that her numbers better not win that week. Even the Mothers tossed in a few dollars, long used to stretching Social Security checks like watered-down dish soap. Nadia had been so distracted by member after member who rose to give that she almost didn’t notice Luke at first, sitting in the back pew. He wore a gray suit that dug into his shoulders and when her eyes flicked to his, her father’s arm around her shoulders felt tighter.
After service, while her father stood in the receiving line to thank the pastor, she felt Luke sidle up behind her in the lobby.
“Can we talk?” Luke asked.
She nodded, following him past the congregation gathering in the lobby, out the front door, and around the church to the garden in the back. Violet African daisies bunched around the fountain and a bitter-leafed acacia spread over the stone bench where Luke sat, stretching out his bad leg. She lowered herself beside him.
“Heard you got in a wreck,” he said.
“Months ago,” she said.
“You okay?”
She hated his fake concern. She pushed herself to her feet.
“I don’t have the money,” she said.
“What?”
“The offering. My dad has it. But I’ll pay you back.”
“Nadia—”
“Six hundred, right? I’d hate for you to feel like you ever did me any favors.”
“I’m sorry.” Luke glanced over his shoulder, then leaned toward her, lowering his voice. “I couldn’t go to that clinic. If someone had seen me—”
“So you didn’t give a shit if someone saw me?”
“It’s different. You’re not the pastor’s kid.”
“
I needed you,” she said. “And you left me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, softer. “I didn’t want to.”
“Well, you did—”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t want to kill our baby.”
She would later imagine their baby growing up. Baby takes his first steps. Baby throws his bottle across the room. Baby learns to jump. Always Baby, although sometimes she wondered what she would’ve named him. Luke, after his father, or Robert, after her own. She even thought of more distant family names, like her mother’s father, Israel, but she couldn’t imagine a baby bearing the heaviness of that name, its biblical sternness. So Baby he remained, even though in her mind, he grew into a boy, a teenager, a man. After Luke had said, for the first time, “our baby”—not the baby, not it—she couldn’t help wondering who Baby would’ve become.
That night, the Flying Bridge was mostly empty, except for fishermen sharing a round at the bar, their thick backs hunched in flannel. She pushed through the front door, toward the booth in the back where Aubrey was waiting. Sometimes she thought about telling Aubrey everything, about Luke, about the abortion. She imagined the two of them in a dark room, how she would take a shaky breath and confess, how Aubrey would tell her that she had been forgiven. Sometimes she wondered if this was what had drawn her to Aubrey. If some small part of her thought that by gathering near to Aubrey—with her purity ring and her good heart—she would somehow be absolved. She would close her eyes and feel Aubrey’s hand on her forehead, all of her sins lifting out of her body.
“What’s wrong?” Aubrey said, as soon as Nadia sat.
Maybe Nadia could tell her how she hadn’t been ready to be a mother, to forfeit her future, how she couldn’t imagine how she could live any longer trapped in a house that only reminded her of her mother. How she’d thought she and Luke had both agreed it would be for the best, but how she hadn’t really cared because she was granted the right to be selfish this one time, wasn’t she? She would be the one sharing her body with a whole new person, so she should get to decide, right? But then Luke’s face today when he’d told her that he’d wanted the baby—not the baby, our baby—which had gutted her, since she’d never imagined that he might. What young man did? He was supposed to be relieved that he’d been freed of his responsibilities, that she had handled the difficult part and resolved their problem. But maybe Luke was horrified by what she’d done. Maybe he’d left her at the clinic because he couldn’t even stand to look at her after.
She could tell Aubrey all of this, and Aubrey would understand. Or she wouldn’t. Her face would fall the way Luke’s had—in horror, in disgust—and she would back away from the booth, unable to conceive of how anyone could kill a poor, defenseless baby. Or she would say she understood, but her smiles would tighten, never quite reaching her eyes, and she would call less and less until they stopped talking altogether. She would disappear, like everyone eventually did.
Nadia pushed away from the booth, suddenly feeling trapped. She wandered to the pool table, tracing her hand along the green felt. Her father had taught her how to shoot pool when she was young. He’d brought her to his commanding officer’s house for a Christmas party, and while his friends drank spiked eggnog, he’d spent the evening in the back with her, teaching her how to shoot pool. After, they’d driven home slowly, circling through neighborhoods to look at the Christmas lights. Despite her pleading, her father never bothered to put up Christmas lights at their house, but he still drove her around to show her the beautiful designs other people had created.
“Do you play?” Aubrey asked. When Nadia shook her head, she said, “Wanna learn?”
“You play pool?”
“Kasey taught me.” She grabbed a cue stick, handing Nadia the other one. “Don’t worry. I’ll show you.”
She patiently guided her through the basics, then stood behind her to correct her stance. Aubrey’s hair tickled the back of her neck as she guided her hand back for her first stroke. Nadia wanted to feel the soft, constant pressure of another person’s touch. She wanted Aubrey to hold her, even if it was a fake embrace.
“Can you show me again?” she said.
SIX
We left the world.
Each in her own time and way. Betty left when her husband died. On a business trip, he fell asleep one night and never woke up. Didn’t seem right to her for anyone to die in a Motel 6, alone until a maid pushed in carts of clean towels. She thought of that moment often, how the maid must’ve shrieked, backing into the metal cart until it tipped, laundry flapping into the air; Betty imagined herself wrapping her husband in one of those fluffy white towels and holding him in her lap. But he had already left the world, so she left with him. Flora left the world when her children fought over who would care for her. She had wet herself again, and listened to them argue while she sat in her own mess. Agnes left the world long ago, when she’d gone to the store with her children and the white man behind the counter said, let’s see how much money you got there, gal. He made her empty her pocketbook on the counter, her few coins spiraling out, while he laughed and her children watched.
Chile, she says, this world ain’t got nothin’ good for me. Nothin’ that I want, that’s for sure.
We tried to love the world. We cleaned after this world, scrubbed its hospital floors and ironed its shirts, sweated in its kitchens and spooned school lunches, cared for its sick and nursed its babies. But the world didn’t want us, so we left and gave our love to Upper Room. Now we’re afraid of this world. A boy snatched Hattie’s purse one night and now none of us go out after dark. We hardly go anywhere at all, besides Upper Room. We’ve seen what this world has to offer. We’re scared of what it wants.
—
IN MICHIGAN, Nadia Turner learned how to be cold.
To wear gloves, even though she couldn’t text with them on. To never text and walk because you might slip on a patch of ice. She learned to wear a scarf, to always wear a scarf, they weren’t just decorative like the ones she wore in California with her tank tops. To always get her free flu shot at the student health clinic. She started taking cod-liver oil pills that her boyfriend Shadi swore by, or at least his Sudanese mother did, sending them to him by the boxful. He’d grown up in Minneapolis, so he knew how to be cold. He told her about stuffing heat warming packs in her pockets, how it was better to melt ice with sand instead of salt, how she should start taking a vitamin D supplement because she was black.
“You think I’m joking,” he said. “But it’s unnatural, being colored in all this cold. We need more sunlight than these white people.”
She looked it up on her phone. He was right, people with darker skin did need more vitamin D, but he was also right about feeling unnatural in Ann Arbor. She had never lived in a place so white. She had been the only black girl before—in restaurants, in advanced-placement classes—but even then, she was surrounded by Filipinos and Samoans and Mexicans. Now she looked out into lecture halls filled with white kids from rural Michigan towns; in discussion sections, she listened to white classmates champion the diversity of their school, how progressive and accepting it was, and maybe if you had come from some farm town, it seemed that way. She felt the sly type of racism here, longer waits for tables, white girls who expected her to walk on the slushy part of the sidewalk, a drunk boy outside a salsa club yelling that she was pretty for a black girl. In a way, subtle racism was worse because it made you feel crazy. You were always left wondering, was that actually racist? Had you just imagined it?
She’d met Shadi at a Black Student Union meeting her friend Ekua dragged her to in the fall of her freshman year. Barack Obama had just been elected president and the BSU and Gay-Straight Alliance were cohosting a forum to discuss whether high black voter turnout also caused the gay marriage ban to pass in California. By then, Nadia had already grown tired of town hall meetings, but she’d gone because she was homesick. She stood in the back, piling her plate w
ith free Boston Market, when she noticed Shadi on the panel. He had deep brown skin and a smile that broke his face in half, turning his already slanted eyes into crescents. He was nerdy in black horn-rimmed glasses, but his body seemed lean and athletic even under his sweater. He had boxed growing up, she would later learn, which seemed so unlike him, so needlessly dangerous for a man who still swallowed cod-liver oil pills because his mother told him to. He was nothing like the boys she usually liked—brash and showy boys who didn’t even carry book bags to school, only tucking the thinnest binder under an arm as if to advertise how little they cared. Shadi was, she could already tell, About Something. He out-debated everyone on the panel, even though he raced through so many different points, she often couldn’t tell which side he was on. He challenged the idea of there even being sides.
“What’s with this black versus gay bullshit?” he asked at one point, leaning into the table. “There are black gay people, you know.”
For a second, her heart sank. Was he talking about himself? But after the meeting ended, he wandered over to the back and asked what she thought. He stuck his hands in his pockets, head bowed as she spoke, and she realized that he had noticed her in the back the whole evening, that he had been showing off for her. Maybe he was like the boys she normally liked, at least a little.
Shadi was passionate about human rights, and their sophomore year he started a campus newspaper dedicated to reporting news about political movements in Palestine and Sudan and North Korea. She found herself reading about places that had always seemed vague and distant to her. When she told him she’d received an e-mail about studying abroad, he urged her to apply, and the winter of their sophomore year, he went to Beijing and she went to Oxford.
“Is it safe?” her father said, when she’d called to tell him she’d been accepted.
“It’s England, not Afghanistan.”
“How much does it cost?”
“My scholarship covers it,” she said, not mentioning that she’d picked up a job at Noodles & Co. in addition to her work-study to pay for it.