Honey Girl

by Morgan Rogers

  “Why is it all on you?” Yuki asks quietly. “Maybe it means they’re not fighting hard enough. Maybe it means they aren’t the ones that should get your best work.”

  Grace squeezes her eyes shut. “You don’t get it,” she says. Her arms sting with red scratches. She feels Yuki trace gently over them.

  “You’re hurting yourself,” she says.

  Grace laughs, and there is no joy in it. “I’ll survive.” She runs her thumb over an irritated welt. “Porters are tough. I’m supposed to be tough. I’m supposed to be—”

  “The best,” Yuki finishes. She takes a step back, letting Grace’s arm go. She takes another step back. Then another. “Can I ask you something?”

  Grace sniffs. She’s sure she looks disgusting right now. She feels it. She feels it under the weight of Yuki’s disappointment. “Yeah.”

  “Were you ever going to stay?” Yuki asks. “This summer, were you ever going to make the decision to stay here. With me? Or was I just a stop-gap in the incredible life of Grace Porter? Did you even—do you even—” She blinks up at the ceiling. “Was I ever part of your plan?”

  Grace feels something break within her in this moment, the moment where Yuki has moved far enough away that she can’t just reach out and touch her. All she can think about is stars, brilliant and glittering and wished upon, and watching them die. A supernova that would echo in her ears if it could. It would reverberate to the core of the earth and shake the foundation.

  “I want to stay,” Grace tells Yuki. This has been her mantra of the summer. All of the moments of holding on tight to this good thing—Yuki—and not letting go leading up to this, right here. “I want to figure out how to keep all of it, my career and my dreams and you.” When she takes a breath, it hurts. “I don’t know how.”

  “And will you even try?”

  Grace looks away. “I want to,” she says again. “But if staying here means I have to settle for something less, how can I? I had a plan, Yuki, and it was perfect. Being an astronomer that never accomplishes anything great because I settle for easy, just because it means staying here, with you, was not in it.”

  Yuki nods, mouth trembling. “I think maybe your definition of best doesn’t fit anymore,” she says. “I think that’s because the parameters of your grand plan have changed. It’s okay to admit that. It’s okay to admit that something can be best just because it makes you happy, and not because you had to tear yourself apart to get there. And I’m—I’m sorry that’s not me. I’m not what’s best for you, am I, Grace Porter?” She runs fingers through her hair and turns toward the door, her back to Grace.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know,” Yuki says. “I just don’t think I can be here right now.” She holds herself like a fragile thing guarding her soft guts from the claws of the lonely creature in front of her. “Happy birthday, Honey Girl.” And with that, she walks out of her bedroom. The front door shuts not soon after, and there is silence from the living room. Even the video games have gone quiet.

  Maybe this is the universe’s answer to her wishes. No, she cannot have all of it. No, she cannot have easy.

  Grace feels sadness and frustration and hurt. She feels shame and anger, and she doesn’t know where to direct it all. Her ears are echoing with the distant roar of a silent supernova.

  She decides she does not want to be here when Yuki gets back. Colonel said it, months ago, that she was so much like her mother. That she ran when things got hard. Well, this moment, this collapsing star moment, is hard. She does not want to know the aftereffects of an eradicated star. She does not want to see it reflected on Yuki’s face.

  There are many things in space Grace Porter wants to explore. Galaxies and voids and formations and births.

  This is not one of them. A supernova is a silent and resounding and terrible thing. She does not feel brave enough, strong enough, Porter enough, to linger in its wake.

  Fifteen

  Florida feels unfamiliar and alien after a summer in New York.

  She stumbles outside Miami International Airport, about an hour from Southbury, and crouches down to watch the cars and taxis. She doesn’t know what kind of car Mom drives now. It used to be a hand-me-down pickup truck. Grace hopes she upgraded to something more comfortable.

  The conversation in the hours leading up to her flight were quick and messy. It was held in whispers, Yuki’s door locked to keep her roommates out even as they knocked persistently and tried to coax Grace out. We’re your friends, too, Porter, they said. Are you seriously going to leave? Wait for Yuki to come back. Just stay. Just talk to us, Space Girl. It was Grace, struggling to speak as she packed up her bags, throat tight as she told her mom she was coming down.

  Please, Grace said. Please, Mom, I just need to get out of here. No, not Portland. Can I just tell you when I’m there?

  Eventually, it is a pickup that comes to idle in front of her. It’s not the old rusty thing that Grace remembers, but a newer, gunmetal-gray truck. A young white guy gets out, hair pulled into a bun and torn jeans and a flannel shirt. With his sleeves rolled back, she can see he has tattoos all the way up his arms and creeping up his neck.

  Grace is leaning against the wall by Arrivals, shoulders hunched and eyes down. His eyes find her anyway, and he takes a few steps closer. “Hey,” he says, a Southern accent drawing the word out. “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting,” she says shortly. She is used to the aggressively liberal white people of Portland. In Yuki’s small corner of Harlem, no one talked like this. No one looked her up and down, as if they were trying to figure out where she belonged. “I’d like to get back to it, if you don’t mind.”

  She knows her eyes are red and swollen and puffy. Her hair, only half contained under Yuki’s cap, has frizzed up under the humidity. She doesn’t want to have to remember all of Colonel’s lessons. Stand up straight. Meet their eyes. Talk clearly. Don’t back down, but don’t be too aggressive.

  Grace is tired. She doesn’t want to fight. She wants to be left alone.

  “You don’t recognize me, huh?” he asks, coming closer. She leans back. “I’m Kelly. I guess people really do look different over a video.”

  She eyes him warily. “Mom sent you?”

  He smiles, putting his hands in his pockets. “She did. You know, video didn’t really do your hair justice, either. Gold as anything.”

  “Yeah,” Grace says. “Okay.”

  In the car, Grace damn near breaks her neck keeping her eyes trained out the window. Kelly fiddles with the radio, going from country to pop to some old-school jazz. She can feel his eyes on her.

  “Mel talks about you all the time,” he tries eventually. “She spends more time taking pictures to send to you when we’re traveling than she does looking at things herself.”

  “Cool.”

  He clears his throat. “You know how long you’re staying?”

  “Nope.” The scenery passes by in a blur. Trees and earth and blue skies. “Sorry.”

  He makes a surprised noise. “Don’t apologize. It’s your home.” He looks a little older up close. Not by much, but there are laugh lines by his eyes and mouth and little wrinkles in his forehead. She noticed gray around his temples when he leaned down to get her bag. “Mel and I are glad to have you here.”

  Grace closes her eyes and doesn’t answer.

  They don’t talk the rest of the ride.

  She doesn’t open her eyes again until the truck comes to a stop. Kelly turns the engine off, and she peers out the window. Somehow, she expected the house to change just because she has. But it looks the same, nestled behind big green trees.

  The orange grove trees line up in neat rows. They spring white flowers and orange starbursts that will soon be ripe enough to pick. It’s almost harvest season, and Mom and all the seasonal workers will be out in the sun for hours. Grace is too
old now to watch from the tops of the branches. She is too old to hide between the leaves and brambles.

  The front door to the house swings open, and Mom comes running down the steps. “Grace Porter, you had me worried sick!”

  Grace is enveloped in strong, tanned arms. Mom smells like citrus and weed, and Grace relaxes in the hold. She leans into it, inhaling deep, and she doesn’t want to let go.

  God, it shouldn’t feel this good just to get a hug.

  “Kelly, take my kid’s stuff up to her room,” she murmurs, still not letting go. “Don’t just stand there.” She huffs when he disappears into the house. “He better not touch anything on that stove while he’s in there.”

  Grace laughs softly into her mom’s bright blond hair. It feels like coming home. It feels like all the memories have sprung to life. It feels like she is skidding to a stop, and she can take that breath.

  Mom rubs her back, and Grace squeezes her eyes shut. “You haven’t turned my room into an office or something?” she asks, her voice soft. “I don’t visit enough to keep it.”

  Mom finally pulls back. Her eyes are a little red, too. “What do you take me for? It’s always your room, whether you’re here or not.” She pulls her toward the house. “Come in,” she says. “Enough standing around out in this heat. Come in here, my beautiful Sunshine Girl.”

  In the house, Grace sits while Mom works at the stove. She peers at the oven. “What did you make?”

  “Started getting it together when you called,” she says. “That’s why I sent Kelly to the airport. Easier to let him do that then mess with my recipe.” She pulls out a pan. “Made some good ole-fashioned lasagna. Used to be your favorite thing to eat when you were feeling down.” She looks over, hesitant. “It still is, right?”

  Maw Maw, Colonel’s mom, taught Mom how to cook. You can’t give my grandbaby that bland-ass food. Mom got really good at lasagna. She made it when Grace brought home grades that were less than stellar. She ate it the night she broke her arm falling out of a grove tree, and the night she whispered, voice trembling, There was a girl at school, Mom. She’s really nice, and she has pretty clothes, and we held hands at recess. Mom cooked lasagna that night, while Grace hiccupped over her plate, and even Colonel had some.

  She remembers Mom making lasagna the last time she was here. Grace was working on a project; she doesn’t remember which one. She kept her head buried in her textbooks the entire time. Mom made lasagna for her the last night, and it was the first meal they shared the whole visit.

  In the time between, whenever she had a bad day, she had other things. She curled up at one of the tables in the tea room and split gulab jamun with Meera until they had to get back to work.

  She had wine, and movie nights, and tearful confessions on their little rusting balcony. She had a voice on the radio telling her stories of scary things. But no lasagna. None of Maw Maw’s cooking passed down.

  “Yeah,” she says, voice strained. “It’s still my favorite.”

  Mom sits across the table as Grace tucks in. It tastes good. It tastes like warm nights and full bellies and comfort.

  You’re going to ruin that girl, Colonel used to say. She’ll be soft, and then what? She’s got to face the world one day, Mel.

  Those were whispered arguments in the living room. They were unaware that Grace lurked in the doorway, fingers clenched around the frame.

  Mom had asked, What’s so bad about being soft?

  Grace waited, but she never heard Colonel’s answer.

  Now there’s just Mom, blond-haired and brown-eyed and tanned from being outside. There is just Grace, swollen-eyed and summer-freckled. There is a ball cap that does not belong to her, but she can’t take it off, not yet.

  She opens her phone and scrolls past all the messages until she gets to just one.

  Yuki

  1:34 a.m.

  i didn’t know when you said

  you didn’t believe in monsters

  you meant you didn’t believe in me too

  Grace bites her tongue. It could be easy, Yuki said. As if Grace hasn’t worked over a decade to get here. It could have been easy, if Grace’s perfect plan had worked the way it should. But it didn’t, and it wasn’t.

  Yuki knows that things are not easy, not for either of them. Not for girls like them. All things cannot be as easy as their summer was, hidden from reality. Grace believes in them, believes in Yuki, but she does not know how to believe in the world around them.

  “You wanna talk about it?” Mom asks.

  Grace looks up. She’s being looked at with patience and kindness she doesn’t feel she deserves. “Not really,” she mumbles, shoving food in her mouth.

  Mom sighs. “Wanna tell me why Sharone and Colonel had no idea you were flying down here until I called them?”

  She swallows. “Not really. Not yet.” Grace has been ignoring those calls.

  “Shit, kid. You’re really gunning for me to win Parent of the Year, huh?”

  She shrugs. Mom could send her home. Home, back to drizzling Portland. Grace isn’t really in a position to argue.

  “So,” Mom says. “You don’t wanna talk about it, and your father doesn’t know anything.” She stares at Grace, looks at her long and hard. “How about we really lean into this, then?”

  Grace looks up. “What do you mean?”

  “It was your birthday yesterday.” She smiles at Grace’s shocked look. “I’ve never forgotten your birthday, even if I’m in a different country for it.”

  “Okay,” Grace says quietly. Okay, sometimes I thought you did. Okay, I did not think my birthday was as interesting to you as Prague and Auckland and Madrid. “So, what?”

  Mom exhales heavily. “You might as well take advantage of me being the cool, laid-back parent,” she says. Grace follows her toward the cellar stairs. “Wanna split a bottle of wine and forget all our problems for a little bit?”

  “Yes,” Grace says, shoulders loosening. “I really want to do that.”

  “Tomorrow,” Mom says, pointing a finger at her, “you fess up. Today, we drink. Fair?”

  The freedom is a welcome reprieve. “Fair,” she says.

  None of it is fair, not for her or the girl she left behind, but Grace picks out a bottle of red and pops the cork. Everything else can wait for now.

  * * *

  Mom wakes Grace up just before dawn hits. She was dozing lightly anyway. There are no glow-in-the-dark stars for her to count, and she has grown used to the constant, rhythmic sounds of New York City. Here in the groves, there is no city noise. There is just a bit of a breeze through the windows if you’re lucky, and the bugs chirping all night.

  “You getting up?” Mom asks. “It would be mighty nice to go for a walk with my daughter and catch the sunrise.”

  She rolls over, blinking in the early light. “Do I have to?” she asks, even as she gets up. “I would rather stay in here and feel bad about myself, honestly.”

  Mom sits on the edge of the bed as Grace stumbles around the room, looking for something to put on over her flimsy sleep top. “That’s not very good for you,” she says. “You wanna hear a little story?”

  Her first thought is no. She’s done with stories. She’s done with stories that say she is made up of the same stuff as the cosmos. She’s done with stories that say she is a lonely creature looking for more.

  But Mom used to sit in that same spot and tell Grace stories to get her to sleep. She used to tell Grace stories about the roots of trees, and how they found friends beneath the soil and dirt and earth. How they held hands and became strong, strong enough to grow like lightning out of the ground and reach to the top of the clouds.

  Grace does not want to hear any more stories, but she sighs and says, “Yeah, sure,” as she pulls a T-shirt on.

  “My therapist gave me the idea, actually,” Mom says, and she w
inks. “What? Kelly got me into it. Drinking away my problems only works sometimes, Porter. It’s just not sustainable. Anyway, this was, I don’t know, maybe a year, year and a half ago. I was thinking of selling this place.”

  “You never told me that,” Grace says, sitting down hard on the bed. “You never said anything.”

  “What would you have done?” Mom asks her. “That steel-backed Porter will is good for a lot of things, but it wouldn’t have changed my mind. Not much could.” She leans back, eyes distant, like the memory is drifting right in front of her.

  “What did?” Grace asks quietly. She always thought Mom had just as much a connection here as Grace did. Even while she tried to find herself in spiritual healing and wellness retreats around the world, Grace never thought she would want to leave this place behind for good. “What made you change your mind?”

  “It was so funny,” Mom says. “My therapist said, ‘If you go, what will happen to all the oranges?’ And I said, ‘Lady, I don’t care, honestly.’ I just wanted to get away, I think. I’ve never been like your father in that way. Too much rigidity and planning and rules make me run for the hills. Make me feel crazy, you know that.”

  Grace snorts, pulling her knees up to her chest. “Yeah,” she says. “I know.”

  Mom looks at her. “But it got me thinking. What would happen to the oranges? Whoever I sold this place to, they’d still sell to the grocers, I’m sure, right? But would they still go to the fresh market in town? Would they haggle with Mrs. Pinkerton, or Tracy, who’s got those three little boys all by herself? Would they peel a few of ’em and let the kids get juice all over the stand? Would they help their parents get some fruit and vegetables that won’t leave them broke until the next paycheck?”