Grace thinks, Can you see these, too? Wherever you are, can you look up and think of me, hidden behind a heart made out of clouds?
Agnes grabs her hand. It pulls Grace from her daydreaming, the grounding squeeze of Agnes’s fingers. She grabs back.
What happened in Vegas is tucked away in her suitcase. It is under her shirt in the shape of a key. It is hidden in her hair with the last little bits of dried petals. It hides in the gold ring wrapped around her finger like a brand.
It travels back home with Grace. It does not stay.
Two
How is the job search coming along? The text from Colonel burns hot in Grace’s hand. She puts her phone away in her apron pocket.
After eleven years of chasing the brightest stars and relentlessly working toward her PhD, she was done.
She’d stood in front of her panel of professors. They did not know her as Grace Porter, tall and freckled and raised by a soldier to be the best. They knew her as Grace Porter, Doctor of Astronomy. Hardworking, detailed, Black.
Her deep brown skin dotted with sweat while Professor MacMillan and her peers, all white, studied her as she hid her trembling hands after defending her dissertation. With Colonel’s voice in her ears, urging her forward, she’d grappled to the top of this mountain. Mom urged her to follow her dreams, so she chased the stars. She poured blood and sweat and tears into her work and here was the proof. Here was her vow of success to Colonel completed.
Professor MacMillan had asked her a final question with a wide, completely unprofessional smile, and Grace had answered, holding her bound defense against her chest. She waited with choked breath as they validated what she already concluded. There was more to be seen in the sky; there was more to be seen in her.
Congratulations, Dr. Porter, they’d said, and there she stood, feeling as expansive and terrifying as the universe itself.
And now she stood in this tea room, wiping sweaty palms on her stained apron and not responding to her father’s messages.
“Are you okay?” Meera asks, and Grace blinks back to the White Pearl Tea Room. “Are you daydreaming about the end of your shift, too? If I make another masala chai for a white guy I’ll scream.”
“I’m fine,” Grace says. “Daydreaming, like you said.” She blows her curls out of her face, and Meera squints. “I’m going to do an inventory check. Be right back.”
She escapes to the back room and stares at her metal reflection in the large fridge. “Get it together,” she mutters, palms pressed to her eyes. “Stop thinking. Do your job. A Porter always does their job. A Porter does every task with precision.”
“Grace!” Meera hisses from the door. “I have a code red customer. He might get his tea dumped on his head.”
“That bad?” Grace asks, carefully pulling herself back together. She folds it all up into something small, something she can tuck between her ribs and feel its sharp edges poking her, but no one else will be the wiser. “Taking down the patriarchy one third-degree burn at a time.”
“Baba would love that,” Meera says. She moves closer. “You sure you’re okay, Space Girl?”
“Hmm?” Grace asks, not looking up. “Yes. What makes you ask?”
Meera scoffs. She opened this morning, and Grace can see exhaustion around her eyes. The bitter smell of loose tea leaves clings to her dark umber skin and hair. Up close, you can see she is young and tired and hardworking, and Grace sighs. She doesn’t want to burden Meera with more worries.
“It’s nothing,” she tries. “Nothing I can’t handle, at least.”
“You’ve been so quiet,” Meera points out. “You didn’t gossip about customers at all today. Not even that woman that tried to smuggle her dog in with her coat.”
“Really, that spoke for itself—”
“A goddamn bichon frise! Under her coat!”
“Emotional-support bichon frise?”
Meera groans, grabbing two of the tea containers. “You’ve been like this since you got back. Not even talking my ear off about your space stuff.”
Grace raises an eyebrow. “I just got a PhD in my space stuff, you know.”
“I know,” Meera says meaningfully. “And then you left me here all alone while you celebrated in Las Vegas. You haven’t even mentioned it! You haven’t given me any details! Did you get super wasted? Gamble away all your savings?” She moves even closer, voice low and eyes big. “Did you score?”
“Absolutely not, Meera.”
“Meera!” Baba Vihaan calls from the front. “We have customers.”
“God,” Meera says. “Pray I make it through the day. Baba would hate it if I threw a fit.”
“Which god am I praying to?”
“Pick one,” Meera tells her, straightening her kurti as she steps out of the kitchen. “Choose wisely.”
Grace stays in the back most days. She lets Meera be the face of the tea room. The white liberals of Portland flock to the White Pearl to aggressively compliment Meera on the tea selection and the jeweled bangles that wrap around her wrists like planetary rings. They love her thick, arched brows and her intricately decorated kurtis and the way she smiles as they leave.
They do not care about Grace in the back: not Indian, not draped in beautiful fabric. A Black father and a white mom. Old news for the diversity quota in Portland.
Today, it’s good. It’s quiet. No one is going to ask why Grace presses the key and gold ring at the end of her necklace tight in her palm. Can you feel this? Did you keep yours, too? She sends her thoughts into the universe, and she hopes someone, her someone, is listening.
It remains calm and quiet until closing. Meera lets out mournful little sighs between the MONSTA X playlist she blasts out of the speakers.
“You sound like a broken record,” Grace teases while they tag-team the last of the dirty dishes.
“I’ve given you, like, ten chances to open up to me today! I’m being emotionally available.”
Grace snorts. “I don’t think that’s how it works, but thank you.”
Meera crosses her arms in a childish pose. “Whatever it is, did you at least tell Ximena?”
Grace puts down the dishrag. “I’m not confirming there’s anything wrong, but why would Ximena have to be involved?”
Meera gives another frustrated huff. “Because,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “Ximena is beautiful and smart and can fix anything.”
“All true,” Grace concedes, “but why do you think I need fixing?” Meera lifts herself up onto the counter and shrugs. It’s another surface they’ll have to wipe down, but for once, Grace doesn’t complain. “I’m good,” she says.
“If you say so.” Meera frowns. “But something is going on. People are supposed to be relaxed after vacations, but you came back so on edge. I’ve known you too long. I can always tell.”
Grace grits her teeth, then forces her jaw to relax. “I just have—things on my mind, okay?” Things like rose pink girls and blooming flowers and a man that held their hands together while Grace said yes and I do. Things like pieces of paper with Dr. Grace Porter on them with no directions on where to go next. She wonders how those things intersect, and if she can find herself in the point between. “I’m fine,” she says, and the folded-up edges of her feelings poke at her ribs.
“Okay,” Meera says quietly. She opens her arms. She smells like bitter tea and steam water and soap. Grace rests her head against Meera’s chest and for a moment, the world stops spinning. She lets herself breathe as Meera starts to lament about yet another customer and “Did you see the shoes she was wearing? Suede pumps in the rain. Is this her first time in Portland?”
Eventually, Raj emerges from the back office where he and Baba Vihaan have been reconciling the till.
“Ready, Gracie?” he asks. He grins when Meera makes a face at him. She’s always hated that nicknam
e for Grace.
Grace extracts herself. Meera gently shoves her toward the door, even though the dishes aren’t done, and they haven’t swept the floors yet. “You can owe me one,” she says. “Go tell Ximena I said hi.”
Grace flicks the end of Meera’s braid and kisses the side of her cheek as a goodbye. She follows Raj outside. “You know you don’t have to walk me home. I’m a big girl.”
It’s raining, and he pulls an umbrella out of his front hoodie pocket. His wavy, black hair hangs in his eyes, and his nose ring shines in the dark. “Now that you’re a doctor, you don’t need any company walking home?” he asks.
Grace rolls her eyes and pushes closer so the two of them can fit underneath the umbrella. She’s tall, but Raj is taller. “I don’t need you to walk me home, because I learned self-defense when I was eight.”
“Okay, Danger,” he says, linking their arms together. “If someone runs up on us, I’m fully expecting you to protect me. I’ll be your damsel in distress.”
“That’s not a new thing.”
“Ouch.” He clutches his chest. “Will you tell me what’s up, or are you just going to roast me?”
The two of them have come a long way. He didn’t always like Grace, but once he did, once he started calling her “little sister,” they could talk about anything on their walks home. Even still, she hesitates.
Raj and Meera are so alike as brother and sister, and they both know her too well.
“I’ve been thinking too much,” she says eventually. “It’s just—” Have you ever gone to bed thinking of someone you only knew for a night? Have you ever stared up at the sky and wondered where it was you saw yourself, all those years ago? Which star it was you followed here? She doesn’t say any of that.
She tries to find the words to encompass her tangled thoughts. The words for missing sheets that smell like sea salt and wondering if the girl that left it behind misses her, too. If she regrets leaving or is glad to have escaped when the sunrise and sobriety revealed what they’d done. The words for not wanting to talk to Colonel about jobs and the future when her pride is still stinging from the interview she has not gathered the nerve to tell anyone about yet. The words for wanting things to be as simple as they were on a desert night with just two girls and a locked promise.
“Sometimes I wish,” she starts, staring blankly out at the road in front of them, “I didn’t have to have everything figured out. I wish I could turn off the part of my brain that needs perfectly executed plans, you know?”
Raj laughs lightly, his mouth curling in his beard. “I thought the great Grace Porter loved her plans.” He bumps her shoulder. “Colonel had one set out for you, and you were determined to follow it.”
“It wasn’t just that,” Grace says, looking at him.
“You were gonna make sure your dad was proud of you,” he says. “A Porter always does their best.” His voice goes wry with Colonel’s echoed words.
“Yes. A Porter always does their best,” she repeats, staring down at her hands. “Maybe I don’t know what my best is anymore. Maybe my best is doing something completely reckless Colonel wouldn’t approve of.” Her fingers tighten around the umbrella. “Something absurd and ridiculous and all mine. What if that’s my best?”
They stop in front of her building, and Raj searches her face. “If it’s your best, then it’s the best,” he says, voice sincere. “You need to talk more?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I can handle it. I always do, don’t I?”
She looks up at the apartment. The lights are on. Everyone is home but her.
“Thank you,” she says, getting her keys out. “For listening or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” he teases. “If you change your mind and do wanna talk, call Meera instead. I need my beauty rest.”
“Will do.” She salutes from the door. “Night, big brother.”
“Night, little sister,” he says, and he disappears into the night, as Grace heads into her apartment.
The stars glimmer above her. They gleam under the gaze of people like Grace, searching for meaning in their formations. They are doing their best for all the people that stare up at the dark and do not know that they, too, shine brilliantly.
The door shuts behind her. The universe says, Places, everyone, and its inhabitants gather. They are doing their best.
Three
Grace didn’t grow up in Portland.
She grew up in Southbury, Florida, on family land turned into orange groves. There were always people out in the early morning with sticky citrus fingers, dropping fruits into basket after basket until the picked oranges were trucked away.
Grace remembers playing hide-and-seek in the groves. Giggling behind big, wide trees as Mom called her name. She remembers the smell, oh, the smell of oranges in the evening. When the sky turned pink, then purple, then midnight blue.
Mom called out for her, and Grace hid for hours in those grove trees.
She was thirteen when she and Colonel jumped in the rumbling pickup truck and left. Mom stood on the veranda with a trembling smile on her face.
“You be good for your father,” she said, as Grace held back angry tears. “Listen to what he says.” She pulled lightly on one of Grace’s curls, and it sprang back into place. “Call me as soon as you land.”
Grace remembers worrying about the trees. Would they still grow big and strong without her there to watch them? Would they still grow plump fruit? Would it still taste as sweet?
She asked Colonel about that once, about the trees.
“Your mother will watch over the trees,” he said carefully, as gentle as he knew how to be. “They’ll be fine.” He said, “They’ll still grow as long as she’s there.”
Grace looked at him. “And who will watch over her?” she asked, and Colonel went silent.
Eventually, she stopped asking Colonel about the trees. She listened when Mom talked about the grove on the phone. She waited at the mailbox for letters with pictures of the harvest. Those didn’t come as often. Mom was busy, after all, taking care of all the oranges and trees and the earth beneath her feet. Then, she was busy during the off-season, traveling around the world in search of meaning and spirituality and holistic retreats that made Colonel scoff when the postcards came.
Soon enough Grace was busy, too.
So, she didn’t grow up in Portland. But Colonel’s house, with its winding driveway and pebbled walk and Victorian porch, eventually made itself home.
Sharone answers the door with fresh box braids, her dark brown skin gleaming in the setting sun. She smells like shea butter and vanilla when she leans in for a hug.
“Porter,” she says, smile in her voice, and Grace relaxes into her embrace. From her mouth, her name has a different harmony. Porter doesn’t sound like a rebuke, a resignation, a demand, like it does from Colonel. From her stepmom, it just sounds like a name of a person you love. “We miss you. I wish you’d spend some time here now. You graduated in January, and we still barely see you. I know Colonel would enjoy it.”
Grace rolls her eyes, following Sharone into the house. “Right,” she says. “He enjoyed my graduation, too. Must have been ecstatic when they called me Dr. Porter, and he stormed out.”
Sharone sighs. There’s a process to dealing with Colonel: excuses, rationalization, defeat, attempting to change the behavior, sighing and finally acceptance. Grace is still trying to reach acceptance. She thinks she might always be trying to reach acceptance when it comes to her father.
“Is he home yet?” she asks. He was the one who invited her for dinner. A formal email, signed off with all his military honors and titles, as if Grace needed reminding.
In the kitchen, Sharone has her famous butter rum corn bread laid out on the counter. A pan of mac and cheese sits heavy on the stovetop.
“You know damn well he gets home at five thirty on
the dot,” Sharone says, pouring an oversize glass of sangria. “He’s in his study, but he can wait. I need wine first.”
“Cheers,” Grace says, cutting into the corn bread. “You know, you could always come live with me. I am Dr. Porter now. I’m a catch.” Sharone rolls her eyes. “Is that a no?”
“It’s also a hell no,” she says, humor twisting her lips, “unless you start making the same money he makes.”
Grace shrieks, the laugh carrying through the echoes of the big home. She and Sharone fall into each other, laughs eking out into little cackles. “After almost ten years,” Grace says, “you’ve finally outed yourself as a gold digger.”
“Oh, honey.” She lifts her glass. “That was never a secret.”
A cleared throat announces the arrival of another person, and instinctively Grace straightens up, brushes the crumbs from her mouth and her lap. Colonel stands tall in the doorway, leaning against the frame as he rubs at the titanium that makes up most of his right leg.
“I heard laughter,” he says. It still takes Grace aback after all these years, the deep bass of his voice. He can still command her attention. “Thought we agreed that wasn’t allowed in this house.”
“That’s just you,” Sharone says, but she moves gracefully toward him, reaching up on her toes to give him a quick, chaste kiss. She offers her arm, but Colonel brushes it off, limping stiffly inside. “Porter and I know it’s laughter keeping us young.”
“Is that right?” he asks. “What do you think? Is it laughter keeping you young, Dr. Porter?”
“Don’t start,” Sharone says, hovering as Colonel lugs himself onto a stool at the kitchen island. “Ain’t nobody tell you to come out of your study to nag.”
Grace picks at the remains of her corn bread.
“All right, sweetheart,” he says. He’s like a pod person sometimes, with how normal he is with Sharone. “No nagging. We’ll have a nice dinner.” He winks at Grace, and she squints back. “What are we talking about, then?” he asks while Sharone starts bringing over pans of food.
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