Envy

by Victoria Christopher Murray

  At the top, I turned toward Bella’s bedroom and paused at the door, peeking in and my warm heart returned. I watched Keisha kneeling beside Bella’s twin bed, her hand rubbing my daughter’s hair as Bella slept.

  “You’re so precious, Bella,” Keisha whispered.

  She was so good with my daughter, and I looked forward to Keisha and Bella really bonding. I had a feeling it was going to be good for both of them.

  She said, “So precious.”

  I smiled.

  “So precious, my precious daughter.”

  Now I frowned.

  “My precious daughter, my baby, my love.”

  Why was she saying that? I stepped into the room, then stopped. The way she stroked my daughter’s hair, I could tell she was having a moment.

  So I began to step away. But what was this moment about? I backed up and turned to my bedroom.

  For the rest of the night, I couldn’t get Keisha’s words out of my mind—not when I was awake, and not even while I slept.

  19

  Keisha

  I looked at myself in the mirror, then turned off the bathroom light before I strolled back into the bedroom. One of the Real Housewives shows was on, but it wasn’t Atlanta nor Beverly Hills, so I really didn’t care.

  I rolled onto the bed, then put the TV on mute because I needed the quiet to think.

  Yesterday, Regan had tried to blow my world up, but it had still turned out to be a pretty good day once Gabrielle got me out of there. Between some good hamburgers and then hanging out with the best person in California, I thought it would all go down smooth from here. I thought that today, my second full day in California, would be even better than yesterday.

  But something had gone left. Something was weird. And that something weird was Gabrielle, who showed up to my room first thing this morning:

  The knock made me sit up straight in the bed. It sounded like the police were at the door.

  I said, “Come in,” although Gabrielle was already stepping into the bedroom. She didn’t wait the way she always did before.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “That’s okay.” As I pushed myself up, I checked out the black pantsuit she wore. It was designer for sure. But one thing she wasn’t wearing was a smile.

  Her eyebrows were tight, almost coming together when she said, “I just wanted to let you know that I’m taking Bella to school, and then I’ll be going into my office.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I was a little surprised; she wasn’t acting like she wanted me to go with her. She wasn’t even acting as if she liked me.

  “I’ll be back.”

  Even though her face was still in a frown, her words made me feel a little better. “Oh, okay. I’ll get ready and maybe I can go with you.”

  She paused, looked down, then raised her eyes to stare straight at me. “I’ll be back because I’m going to make an appointment with one of the clinics.”

  I didn’t blink.

  “For the test. The paternity test.”

  I stayed still.

  “You’re still fine with it, right?”

  “Yeah.” I was glad that my voice wasn’t trembling since everything else inside of me was.

  She stood there as if she thought I was gonna get up and give her a hug or something. But I stayed in that bed and stared and didn’t breathe until she said, “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  WHEN SHE’D LEFT the room, I had tried to figure out what was going on. Yeah, I had told Gabrielle I would take the test, but I’d only said that because I thought she was on my side. I didn’t think that she would make me do it.

  What happened? It had to be Mauricio; he’d told her something. What had he talked about with Elijah, Regan, and her husband after we left? And if Mauricio was acting this way, was Elijah doubting me now, too? Had Elijah and Gabrielle joined the side of Regan and Mauricio? Did I have four foes and no friends?

  The creaking sound of the garage door lifting up snatched me back from my thoughts. I jumped from my bed, ran to the window, as Gabrielle’s Lexus rolled into the garage.

  I backed up and paced from the window to the door and back again wondering what I should do. I’d have a much better idea of how to make my moves if I knew what had changed with Gabrielle.

  And then, “Keisha?” she yelled up from downstairs.

  I grabbed my purse, my cell phone, my sweater, took a deep breath, and then stepped into the hallway. She was already halfway up the staircase.

  She said, “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah.” I tried to read her, but all she gave me was a nod before she turned around.

  When I followed her through the kitchen, she asked, “Did you eat breakfast?”

  I shook my head because I hadn’t even thought about food. I hadn’t thought about anything except trying to figure out why Gabrielle had turned on me.

  My mind stayed on that until . . . I got inside her SUV. When I sank into that soft leather seat, my thoughts were put on hold. Because this car? Was fire! Not only was everything in this joint leather with wood that looked like chocolate candy, but with the push of one button, I felt like I was a passenger in a spaceship.

  But once we backed out of the garage and the car was quiet, I went right back to wondering. As Gabrielle drove, I thought about it so much that I finally just came out and said, “Are you mad at me?”

  Even though she kept her eyes on the road, I could tell my question made her frown—or at least frown a little more than she’d been doing. “No.” She glanced at me for a second. “Why would you think that?”

  I shrugged as I looked out at the ocean. “You seem kinda quiet. Like something is wrong.”

  “No.” Then, with one hand, she reached over and squeezed mine. “I just have a lot on my mind. Business.”

  There was only one kind of business that concerned me. “The paternity test?”

  She was quiet for a moment, then said, “Are you concerned about the test?”

  “No.” I said that as strongly as I could just so she would know. “It’s not like I lied about anything. You guys came to me so I’m not concerned about it. It’s just that . . . yesterday you seemed like you were on my side.”

  “I was then, and I am now.”

  “So why do you want me to take the test? I mean, you said that I look like Elijah and he said that I look like his mother.”

  “I don’t have any doubts,” she said. “But I want to make sure that no one else has any either. I want everyone to not only look at you and know, but have the science to back that up.” She squeezed my hand again. “This is as much for you as it is for everyone else, okay? It’s a good thing, I promise.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t have too much time to think about what she’d just said because about a minute later, she swung into a small parking lot with a sign: Beach Cities Lab. By the time she pulled up next to a truck and turned off the ignition, she was back to being serious. So I opened my door and slid down the leather seat. But when I looked up, there was Elijah.

  He closed the door for me. “Hi, Keisha.” He hugged me before I could say anything, then added, “I hope you’re feeling better . . . after yesterday.”

  “Yeah.”

  Gabrielle came from around the front of her car. “Hey, Daddy.” After a hug for him, she said, “So, y’all ready for this?”

  Elijah and I nodded and Gabrielle led the way—she was in front of me; Elijah was behind me. Inside the clinic, I moved right to the chairs lined against the wall as Gabrielle and Elijah walked to the receptionist.

  As I watched them, it became harder to breathe. I mean, I knew what this test was going to say; I’d known about Elijah Wilson for years before he’d ever heard my name. But still . . .

  Then I looked down at Elijah’s shoes. And that made me laugh. He actually had on a pair of Timbs. Really? That old man had on Timbs with his jeans. Just looking at his Timbs made me forget . . . until Gabrielle and Elijah came toward me.

 
Gabrielle said, “This isn’t going to take much time.” She sat on one side of me, and Elijah sat on the other. It was funny the way they always put me in the middle. I didn’t know if they were trying to protect me or gang up on me.

  Gabrielle kept talking. “All they’re going to do is take a swab of your cheek and then a swab of Dad’s.”

  I frowned. “Like a cotton swab?”

  She nodded. “To get cells from inside your cheek.”

  “And then?”

  She shrugged. “That’s it.”

  That seemed like too simple a thing for all of this trouble. I said, “I hope they don’t charge a lot if that’s all they’re going to do.”

  Gabrielle and Elijah laughed even though I wasn’t trying to make any kind of joke.

  “Well, we could have done this at home through the mail,” Gabrielle explained. “But this way, we’ll have the results faster . . . in two days.”

  “Yeah,” Elijah said. “We’ll get this behind us.”

  Gabrielle nodded at his words. I just shrugged because I didn’t think this was going to make any difference for Regan and Mauricio.

  “Ms. Jones.” A lady wearing a lab coat nodded when I stood up, then asked me to follow her. I did what she told me as if this were no big deal, even though it was probably the second-biggest deal since I’d been born.

  She led me into a room, had me sit in a chair while she ripped open this little tinfoil-looking package, told me to open my mouth, and then in less than a minute, I was walking out just as Elijah was going into another room.

  Ten minutes after that, we were back in Gabrielle’s car, and this time she was smiling the way she’d smiled yesterday. Another ten minutes, and we parked on the street in front of a restaurant that was right on the beach.

  I got out of the car feeling kinda excited. I’d never been to a beach before.

  “We can go on in and get a table,” Gabrielle said as she hit the fob of her car. “Daddy will be here in a minute.”

  Gabrielle told the hostess that we wanted to sit on the deck, and she led us through the entire restaurant before we stepped outside.

  “Wow.” It felt like I could reach out and touch the water.

  While Gabrielle sat down, I walked to the ledge, inhaled and took in the fragrance of the Pacific. Right now, it smelled better than any of my mama’s perfumes.

  “Hey, Daddy,” Gabrielle said.

  I didn’t want to turn around, but I did. Then, Elijah pulled out a chair for me to sit down, and even though I didn’t want to, I did that, too.

  He said, “This is my favorite restaurant, and I wanted you to see it.”

  This girl who looked like she was way younger than me came out with the menus; I read over mine, but I couldn’t figure out any of this fancy food: spinach pappardelle pasta, Dungeness crab enchiladas, seared crab cakes. On the other side of the menu was the one thing I recognized, but not even that was regular: it was an eight-ounce Angus sirloin cheeseburger. At least I would recognize the beef patty and bun when it came out of the kitchen.

  I told the waitress that I wanted the cheeseburger—and Gabrielle and Elijah stared at me as if I’d just broken the law.

  “What?”

  “This place is called the Lobster House.” Elijah asked me, “Don’t you like seafood?”

  “I like fried catfish.”

  Gabrielle said, “Would you like to try something different?”

  No. What was wrong with a cheeseburger? I shrugged, and I guessed Gabrielle took that as a yes.

  She told the girl, “Get us two lobster rolls.”

  When Elijah said, “Make that three,” the waitress took our menus and went away.

  Gabrielle said, “If you don’t like the lobster roll, then we’ll order the cheeseburger for you. But I have a feeling you’re going to love it. Everyone does.”

  I didn’t bother to ask her what a lobster roll was. I guessed I’d see soon enough. For a little while, we just sat at our table not saying anything. It felt like we were supposed to be quiet here, just looking at the waves hitting the sand.

  “This is so cool.”

  Elijah said, “Your mother always dreamed of going to the beach.”

  My eyes had been on the ocean, but now I faced him. “How do you know that?”

  “She told me a long time ago.”

  “Wow.” I knew this man was my father, but I’d never thought about him with my mama. I mean, yeah, I knew they’d been together—like that—but I’d never spent a whole lot of time thinking about my mama with Elijah or any of the other men. I certainly never thought that she did any talking.

  “Keisha . . .”

  When he said my name like that, I knew something serious was about to go down.

  “If you have any questions about your mother . . . and me, I want you to feel free to ask, okay?”

  I shrugged. I nodded.

  He waited another moment before he asked me, “Is there anything you want to know?”

  It sounded like he wanted me to ask something, so I asked the first thing that came to my mind: “Did you like her?”

  He leaned back in his chair and repeated what I’d said. Then, “Yeah, I did like her.” He smiled. “That’s a good question, Keisha. Because I didn’t know Daisy well enough to love her, but I did like her. She got me through some trying times on the road.”

  I nodded, and then another question came to my mind. “Did you know about me?”

  He slowly nodded, but right when he parted his lips, Gabrielle reached all the way across the table and put her hand over his. “Daddy, maybe this should wait until . . .”

  “Until when?” he interrupted her. “Until we get the results? I don’t need those, sweetness. She’s mine.”

  She’s mine. Going back in my head, I tried to remember if anybody had ever in my life said that about me.

  Elijah said, “I didn’t know about you. But . . . I did know that your mother was pregnant.”

  I tilted my head. “So if you knew she was pregnant, then you did know about me, right?”

  He raised his hand. “Let me explain. The last time I saw your mother, she told me she was pregnant, but I didn’t think that had anything to do with me. I’d only passed through White Haven five or six times, and I knew what your mom . . .”

  When he took too long to finish, I said, “Did for a living?” and completed the sentence for him.

  He nodded. “So when she told me she was pregnant, and that I might be the father, I . . .” He stopped again.

  “Didn’t believe her.” I said what he didn’t want to say.

  It took him a moment, but he nodded again. “Keisha, if I had known then . . .”

  “When did you find out?”

  He squinted as if he were thinking back. “How long has it been? Two weeks maybe. I gave your mom’s letter to Gabby so that we could find you. Your mother didn’t leave a good trail, not a phone number or any way to reach her.”

  “She was in a hospice; she didn’t really have a phone.” He nodded and I could tell he wanted to know what had happened but was too polite to ask. So I told him, “She died from complications from HIV.” Now I nodded. “Folks don’t know people still die from AIDS, but the problem with Mama was she didn’t get treated for a long time, so her immune system was shot—at least that’s what the doctors told us. She ended up with every infection in the world, poisoning her blood, but it was her heart that killed her. It just stopped. It was too weak to go on.”

  He put his hand over mine. “I’m sorry.”

  I shrugged. “I’m sorry, too. ’Cause my mama was a really good person.”

  “From the short time that I knew her, I could tell that she was. No matter what . . .” Then he snapped his mouth shut like he was sorry for something he was about to say.

  So again, I finished for him, “No matter what she did for a living?” I didn’t let him answer. “I’m not embarrassed by that. People tried to embarrass me my whole life, calling my mama a whore. And yeah, sh
e was. But I know that what makes you good is not what you do but who you are. And who my mama was, was a great woman who loved and took care of me.”

  I looked at Elijah and then over at Gabrielle, and without saying a word, I asked them if there was anything else they wanted to know about my mama.

  At first they didn’t say anything, but then Elijah glanced at Gabrielle and said, “Well, what do you think?”

  It wasn’t until then that I realized Gabrielle had tears in her eyes. This time she was the one to reach for my hand. “I think . . . I’m really proud to have you as my little sister.”

  When she leaned over to hug me, that put a few tears in my eyes, too.

  20

  Keisha

  I hoped Gabrielle didn’t live too far away from this restaurant, because this here lobster roll was the truth and I wanted one every single day.

  “So you like it?” Gabrielle smiled.

  This time when I nodded, I nodded for real.

  “Do you want another one?” Elijah asked.

  Even though I did, I shook my head. I’d figure out a way to come back here.

  “So yesterday, when I asked you about California, you hadn’t seen all of this”—Elijah waved his hand toward the ocean—“right? What do you think now?”

  “I can’t believe the beach is like right here in front of me. I’ve never seen a beach in person before.”

  “Did you travel much out of White Haven?”

  I nodded. “We’d go to Little Rock and Pine Bluff sometimes. Especially since the bigger malls were there.”

  He asked, “Have you ever traveled outside of Arkansas?”

  I shook my head. “Not until I got on the plane with Regan.”

  He nodded. “So what do you do down there in White Haven?”

  Okay, this was like the third question, which meant he was leading up to something. That made me put my guard up, though I kept a smile on my face.

  “I don’t do too much,” I said, being careful. “I spent the last year taking care of my mama. She had just died when Regan got there.”