She’s been gearing up to tell Colonel about her big interview. Professor MacMillan set it up with a private company in Seattle. They’d discussed for weeks ahead of time. Grace wore her best suit. She slicked her hair back and practiced answering questions in the mirror. She showed up twenty minutes early.
She doesn’t quite know the Porter way to say, I put on my best voice. I sat up with my back straight. I made eye contact, but not enough to seem threatening. I said ‘yes, sir,’ and ‘yes, ma’am,’ and I hated every second of it. She doesn’t know the Porter way to say, They picked me apart, questioned me until my eyes stung and I stormed out. I saw one person of color on the way to the door.
Maybe instead she could say she got drunk-married in Vegas. How she drank away the memory of her interview. And at the bottom of a cocktail she discovered the world did not end, it just felt like it did. There was so much more work, more climbing to be done. And then the rose-petal girl took her alcohol away, and they danced, and they got married.
Colonel breaks the silence. “Okay,” he says, looking at her over the rim of his glass. “I’ve been wanting to talk about what’s next for you.”
“Well, we’re watching Waiting to Exhale when I get home,” she says. “It’s movie night.”
Sharone lays a hand over Colonel’s, straightening out his clenched fingers. “What he means, baby, is what’s next for Dr. Porter? You worked so many summers doing research for Dr. MacMillan’s lab. Are you going to stay with her for a while? What were you working on last year?”
Colonel would have her head if she slumped at the table, but she wants to. “Using Gaia’s data for high-speed observation of white dwarf binaries,” she mumbles.
Sharone squints. “Will you keep doing—that?”
Grace exhales deeply. In her head, she thinks of the most efficient way to get through this. Colonel taught her how to turn a stressful situation to her advantage. Sometimes you do that with deflection, with questions, with subtle manipulation. Sometimes you just lie.
“I had an interview before I left for Vegas,” she admits. “With a company in Washington. Kunakin.”
Colonel narrows his eyes. “How did it go?”
Grace almost shrugs before she catches herself. “They said I wasn’t the right fit for the company culture.” She looks down at her plate. They didn’t say that, but they thought it. They probably said it aloud when they checked back in with Professor MacMillan. “But, it’s fine,” she says quickly. “They were good, but not the best. A Porter always goes for the best.”
“We do,” Colonel agrees. “Perhaps you and I should sit down with your mentor. She advised me—”
“You talked to Professor MacMillan? Why would you do that?”
Colonel blinks. “Admittedly, I know less about the trajectory of employment in—” he pauses here, mouth twisting “—astronomy than in medicine. I wanted to know your degree isn’t being wasted. It’s not as stable a field as medicine would have been.”
“No,” Grace says, voice rising, “but it’s mine.” She hides her clenched fists. The way she pinches the thin skin on her wrists. Sharone watches the two of them carefully. “It’s mine, Dad.” Dad, not Colonel. Not some distant military figure that sends her a formal email for dinner at the house she grew up in. No, it’s Dad, who taught her how to ride a bike, who dropped her off on her first day of high school. Dad, who let Grace cry into his uniform when no one else looked like her, sunshine hair and brown freckles on brown skin. “Dad,” she says, and he jerks back, surprised.
“Porter, I just want to know—”
“It’s mine,” she says. “All of it. My degree and whatever fucking—”
“Your language—”
“—mistakes I make, they’re all mine. Whatever I decide to do, it’s mine.”
“Okay,” Sharone cuts in. “Colonel, don’t you remember being young? You didn’t have everything figured out all at once, did you?”
“I did,” he says firmly. “The army recruited me out of high school. It’s not like I could afford college. I had no choice but to figure out what success looked like with the hand I was dealt, so I did the work to get it. Then I had a family to take care of, and I did that, too. I just want to know Porter is doing the work to get what she wants.”
“I don’t know what I want,” Grace says, and she watches his face with a repressed sort of satisfaction. “I worked for eleven years to become a doctor because I wanted you to be proud of me.”
“We agreed you would do medicine—”
“You agreed I would do medicine,” she corrects, voice trembling. “And I didn’t. I did something that disappointed you. I didn’t get the job Professor MacMillan set up for me, and I know that disappoints you, too. But my career is mine to figure out.”
Colonel sits stone-faced and unmoving. Finally, he pushes back from the table and refuses help getting up. “Then that’s what you need to do,” he says. “Next time, you will figure out what the best is, and you will get it. That is what Porters do.”
The kitchen is quiet when he leaves. Perhaps this is where Grace figures it out. In the silent gravity of her father’s home.
“That went well,” she says, finally slumping down and sipping her wine. “He didn’t disown me, at least.”
“He would never,” Sharone says. “Your father has his own shit to deal with, but never doubt he wants the best for you.”
Grace nods. “I know,” she says quietly. “But I don’t even know what’s best for me, so how the hell does he?”
“You know how he is,” Sharone chides. “He thinks he knows everything.”
Grace sighs and checks her phone, filled up with messages from Agnes and Ximena in their group chat. “I should go. Want me to help with the dishes?”
“Girl, this is not my mama’s house. You know I use the dishwasher.” She shoos Grace away. “Want me to drive you home?”
Grace shakes her head. She feels hollowed out, her insecurities laid bare for Colonel to poke and prod. But they are hers to examine, hers to shove back into the pit of her stomach, hers to hide. “No,” she decides. “I’ll take a Lyft. It’s fine.”
“Be careful,” Sharone tells her, kissing the top of Grace’s head. She’s tall in her heels. Grace doesn’t know how she wears them all day. “Call when you get home.”
“I will,” Grace promises. “Love you. Thanks for not letting Colonel eat me alive.”
Sharone laughs. “I love you, too,” she says. “You’re a good kid, Porter.”
The words feel like a balm, a cold compress to the raw feeling of exposure.
Spring nights in Portland are breezy, and as Grace sits on the porch swing and waits for her car, she lets her mind wander. She is not here in a home she needs an invitation to visit. She is in the stars, bold and bright and beautiful. She is strong and unwavering, and not filled with the sour taste of failure and the weight of unknowns.
She thinks, I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay, like a mantra. She has to be okay, because there is no other option. She is okay because she must be, to muster the strength to set up more job interviews. She must be as formidable as the black, swirling universe. It keeps going, and so shall she. She has to.
The door swings open, and Sharone steps out holding a bulky envelope.
“From your mom. I didn’t tell Colonel,” she says. “Looks like it’s been to hell and back, but it got here.”
Grace opens it with careful fingers. She and Mom spoke on FaceTime two weeks ago, and she hadn’t mentioned she was putting anything in the mail. She’d been in Thailand this time, and the connection was spotty.
The paper is wrinkled, the ink smeared in places like it got caught in the rain. Mom is always traveling on some spiritual retreat or holistic voyage, and Grace has become used to receiving letters and packages from all over the world.
“She’ll be home soon t
o start doing prep for harvest season,” Grace reads. “Should be ready to start up in a few months. She expects it to be a big one.”
“Oh wow,” Sharone says. “Running those groves sounds like so much work.”
In the envelope, tucked in the bottom, are a few crumpled bills.
“For my Porter,” is scrawled at the bottom. “For my wandering star girl. Hopefully this helps you find your footing on this green earth, too. Don’t get too lost in the big, vast universe.”
Mom sends a little money along every few months. Grace never touches it, so the amount grows in her savings, and so does the pit in her stomach. She doesn’t make a lot at the tea room. She already feels enough guilt that Colonel helps her out so much. It doesn’t help that Mom does, too, from running the orange grove Grace barely finds the time to visit.
Her failed job interview leaves a sour taste on her tongue. People would kill to have the cushion of their parents’ money, but it makes her anxious. They won’t support her forever. They definitely won’t if they find out she’s been storming out of sterile, white interview rooms and leaving sterile, white interviewers gaping behind. When they find out she got drunk and happy and hitched to a girl whose name she does not know.
Sharone rubs her back. “Car’s here,” she says. “Go home, Porter. Everything else can wait.”
Grace says, “You don’t have to worry about me. Promise.” Her stepmom becomes a distant shadow as the car pulls off. Grace texts the license plate and picture of the driver to her group chat and stares out the backseat window.
She picks a star and wonders if her rosebud girl can see it from her radio station in Brooklyn. Are you listening? There are so many things I don’t know how to say. Can you hear them? Is it just me out here, sending messages into the void?
The drive is silent, but Grace listens the whole way home.
Four
This is the thing: for as lonely and solitary as Grace feels, she is not alone. She has Raj and Meera. She has Agnes. To the very marrow of her, down to the studs, she has Ximena. Raj and Meera are her family, not blood, but flesh and spirit and heart. Agnes is her best friend. Ximena is who she will grab on to when the world ends, and they will watch it burn to ash before they follow. They are two girls with their backs against the wall, and on the very good days, Grace likes their odds.
She meets Ximena for the very first time at the hospital where Colonel is recovering. Ximena wears lavender scrubs and a Dominican Republic flag pin on her name badge. They’d told Colonel just a few days before they would need to amputate above the knee. It’s been years of braces and canes and gritting his teeth against the pain, being a Porter, and suddenly being a Porter means losing another piece of himself.
Grace knew his leg wasn’t right when he came home from his last service tour overseas. He’d been gone eighteen months that time, and he came home like the shadows were waiting to engulf him. His leg buckled underneath him when he walked, and it kept him bedridden for weeks at a time. So, he sat, and he waited for the shadows to come, and eventually they did.
The doctors take his leg. They slice through it like meat for a butcher. The hospital assigns him a companion to help with his recovery. A companion is not a nurse, they say, but someone who keeps you company in the aseptic, miserable rooms. Grace visits, but she is not a companion to Colonel. She is an unwanted witness to his weakened state.
The companion’s name is Ximena Martínez.
She stays with Colonel while Grace juggles working at the tea room and graduate classes. When she makes her daily appearance at the hospital, Ximena is always there, sitting at Colonel’s side reading a book or texting on her phone or engrossed in a telenovela on the hospital’s mounted TV. She gives Grace a smile when she comes in. Sharone is usually there, too, and they leave to let Grace and Colonel have their fifteen minutes of stunted conversation alone.
“I’ll call your Mom back,” Sharone murmurs quietly on her way out, squeezing Grace’s shoulder. “She’s been worried about you, too.”
“Porter,” Colonel says once they are alone. He looks more like himself each day. Grace hadn’t recognized the drugged up, pain-ridden man that inhabited this hospital bed before. He says, “You know you don’t have to come visit every day. I’m sure your studies keep you decently engaged.”
Decently engaged, he says, like Grace doesn’t spend every stolen minute at work shoving printed words into her eyeballs. Math and science and numbers and the minutiae of the universe in perfect size-twelve font for her consumption.
“It’s nothing,” Grace says. Sharone comes every day, and he never tests her resolve to visit. “Porters have a responsibility to family,” she says, like a recitation.
Colonel lies back in the hospital bed and makes a satisfied noise. He glances toward the TV, still in Spanish. “That girl,” he says. “I don’t understand her.”
“Ximena?” she asks. “She’s supposed to keep you company.”
“Unnecessary,” Colonel says, voice bland. His hair and beard have grown out. He looks unkempt and human. “She keeps turning on these soap operas. I can’t understand them, but she seems to find them riveting.”
Grace had a roommate in undergrad who watched telenovelas religiously. She came back to the dorm between classes and found herself immersed in story lines that were universal in content, if not language.
“They’re not bad,” she says. He watches the drama unfold with poorly disguised interest. “Do you want me to turn it up?” She is careful to keep her amusement to herself.
Colonel looks at her. His face has never given much away, but she sees his eye twitch. “Give me the remote, Porter,” he says, “and then get out.”
Grace smiles and slides the remote over. She pauses for a moment, as she does every time she leaves. Should she hug him? Should she rest her hand on the thin gown that covers him up and reassure him she’ll be back tomorrow?
I love you, Dad, she pictures herself saying. Get some rest, Dad. It’ll be okay, Dad.
She sighs and lugs her backpack over her shoulder. If she hurries, she can eat in the hospital cafeteria before class. Maybe she has time to look over her research notes. She hovers in the doorway. She will leave, and Colonel will still fight his shadows. There are no words of reassurance for that.
“Good night, Porter,” he says finally, and she ducks her head and hurries out. She hears him huff and shift in the bed. “Turn this TV up, my ass,” he mutters, but as Grace leaves, the volume goes up. Slowly, but it does.
She looks for a table in the cafeteria. She has work to review for class, and research for Professor MacMillan’s lab, and an opening shift at the tea room tomorrow. There will likely be no sleep, so she takes solace in the quiet now. Not a substitute, but all she has come to expect.
Ximena is sitting at a corner table. She has a book on her knees, something small and worn, and she smiles at Grace when she walks over.
“Hello, army brat,” she says. “You can sit down if you want. You’re better company than the tech that keeps trying to touch my hair. It’s like she wants to die or something.”
Grace sits. Ximena is in those lavender scrubs, and she smells like sharp, chemical soap and something soft and calming, like jasmine. She wears her hair in two haphazard buns, some of the textured curls framing her face. She looks warm and kind under the constellation of freckles. Grace can see why Colonel likes her.
“Reading anything good?” Grace asks. She holds her bag across her chest like a shield.
Ximena sets the book down. “Trying to read more Afro-Dominican women authors. Gotta support my culture, you know,” she says. “You speak Spanish?”
“Sorry, no,” Grace says, and then, to fill the silence that makes her skin prickle, “I’m Grace, by the way. Or Porter. Whichever.”
Ximena nods, but she takes her book and sits back. “I know,” she says. “Colonel talks about you all
the time.”
Grace blinks. “He talks to you?”
Ximena shrugs, playing with her food. “Not much,” she says. “But he says you’re busy with school. Says you’re gonna be a big-time doctor soon. I figured maybe I should shoot my shot and see if you’re single and rich.”
Grace huffs. “Not quite.” She turns her textbook around. “I’m getting my master’s in astronomy. Then starting my doctorate in the fall.” In a fit of courage, she plucks a fry from Ximena’s plate. “I think he’s still in the denial phase.”
“That’s too bad,” Ximena says. “He talked you up real good. Are you at least single? I can work with a doctorate.”
Grace feels her face heat up. Ximena watches her, openly teasing. “I don’t have time for—girls.” She gestures at Ximena’s plate. “I barely have time to eat.”
Ximena pushes her food over. “Eat, then,” she says. “And maybe you can tell me about—” she tilts her head to look at Grace’s notes “—vector light fields. Talk dirty to me, baby.”
She lets Grace eat her cold fries and the other half of her sandwich. Grace talks astronomy to her, and Ximena listens. This is how it begins.
Ximena waits for her when she leaves Colonel’s hospital room. They eat lunch or dinner at their table in the cafeteria. She sits on the same side as Grace and asks, “What, do you work at Starbucks or something? Why do you always smell like Canelita tea?”
They get comfortable with the weight of each other. Ximena invites Grace to her apartment after she gets out of class, and they stay up late watching straight people on Hallmark.
Ximena practices her tarot readings on Grace, her face lit up by the blue light of the TV.
“My tia taught me this,” she says, carefully setting up the deck. “She’s a real badass witch, like does hexes and shit.” Grace watches, fascinated. “Okay, what I think it’s saying is you’re going to meet important people.” She stares at the cards. “They’re going to change you.”
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