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Honey Girl

Page 22

by Morgan Rogers


  The call ends. Grace blinks at the screen. Not even a whole thirty seconds later, it rings again. Colonel.

  “Explain yourself,” he says immediately.

  Grace sits up in the bed. “You didn’t listen to me,” she stresses. “I told you I needed to stop for a second, and you just wanted me to keep going!”

  “That’s what parents do, Porter,” he says calmly, evenly, but she can hear the thunder in his voice. “We don’t tell our kids to stop. To give up. To quit. Mine didn’t teach that to me, and I certainly wasn’t going to pass it down to you.”

  She feels frustration burst in her. “I didn’t give up. I went to college. I went to grad school. I got my fucking doctorate—”

  “You will watch your lang—”

  “I didn’t quit,” she snaps. “You don’t get to say I quit, because I didn’t, because I wanted to make you proud, and you still aren’t. That’s the only thing I need to give up on.”

  She’s breathing hard, the words ripped from the disturbed earth within her. It’s slow-going, hammering away at all the things that have been buried deep. But those words split through and feel like a relief.

  Now neither of them says anything. She checks to see if he hung up again. No, he’s still there.

  “Do you think that’s what this is about?” he asks finally. Grace can’t place his tone. It’s unfamiliar. “Do you think I’m not proud of you?”

  She shrugs, unsure. She angrily wipes her eyes, frustrated they’re betraying her.

  “Grace?” he calls, and she inhales sharply, because he hasn’t called her that in years. She was still a kid, a little kid, the last time Colonel called her by her given name.

  “I’m here,” she croaks. “What else am I supposed to think? You walked out of my graduation.” She sniffs. She hates this. She’s used to having that good old-fashioned Porter control, but now that she’s started exploring her feelings instead of shoving them down, it’s like they have a mind of their own. “Everyone knew you were there for me, and then you weren’t. You just left.”

  She wants to say You left me, but that isn’t true. By the time Sharone and Grace emerged from the small auditorium, Colonel was sitting right out front on the steps.

  He makes a small, aborted noise. “I didn’t leave,” he says, like he’s picking the thoughts right from her brain. “I was right outside. I could still hear them calling your name, and the way the kids in your program clapped for you. God knows, I could hear Sharone’s loud ass,” he says. He pauses, and Grace’s fingers clench around the phone. When he speaks again, his voice is rough and almost angry. “I have never left you. Not once. Not once since the war messed up my leg, and I was sent home. Not once, Porter.”

  She goes to argue, but stops short. Once Colonel was home, really home, he took her everywhere with him. To the base, out in the groves to help him work until his leg couldn’t take any more pain, and he refused her help as he limped back to the house. He took her to physical therapy, where Grace watched him push himself almost to the brink of tears, but he never stopped. He left the groves and life here, and he took Grace with him, kicking and screaming as they flew away from the only home she ever knew.

  Colonel never left Grace.

  “You want to know what I saw that day?” he asks. “At your graduation?”

  “Yes, sir,” she says. She wants to know what he thought of her that day.

  He takes a deep breath. “You were the only Black girl in that doctorate program,” he says. “You were the only Black person in that room besides me and Sharone. I saw those kids, and I saw their parents. While you were backstage preparing, I saw those parents talking to the faculty like they had known each other for years. I knew in my gut, Porter, those parents would do anything for their kids. Not—” He stutters. He never stutters. “Not just that. They could do anything. There was no resource or connection they couldn’t use to make sure their kids made it. And I couldn’t blame them, because I would do the same. That made me angry. It made me so angry, I walked out of the auditorium.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I had connections, good connections, in the medical school,” he says. “I sat in that auditorium, and I saw those parents shaking hands and schmoozing, and I knew how hard it was going to be for you. I already knew, but that cemented it for me. And I knew I couldn’t help you there.”

  Grace feels anger whip through her. “You never said. You made me think it was me. You made me think you were disappointed in me.”

  “I’ve been telling you for years,” Colonel counters. “You just weren’t listening.”

  “I can’t,” she decides suddenly. It’s too much at once, the way Colonel’s words and behaviors start to click into place. He never said.

  “I can’t do this right now. I know you’ve been calling, but I can’t—I can’t have this conversation right now. I should, but it’s too much right now, and I don’t care what Heather has to say about that.” Immediately, she bites her tongue hard. She let down her guard, and she said too much.

  Colonel latches onto it immediately. “Who is Heather?” he asks, instead of an explanation. Instead of putting into words why he left Grace to decode his fears about her future and think they were directed at her instead of her field.

  She collapses back on the bed. She stares up at her Florida-blue stars. They tell her to be brave, so she is. “Heather is my therapist,” she lets out, bracing for impact. “I got diagnosed with major depressive disorder and anxiety,” she says clinically. “I see her once a week. It’s been great, actually, so.”

  “Why do you sound like you’re waiting for me to argue with you about it?”

  “Because I tried to tell you something was wrong,” Grace says. “You told me to grit my teeth and smile through it, and I know what you meant. I still do. But now I’m sleeping in my childhood bedroom, and I see a therapist once a week, and I have to take these two little pills every day, and I wish I hadn’t pushed myself so hard.”

  Colonel is quiet, so quiet. She doesn’t know if that’s better.

  “You had a plan,” he says finally, sounding tired and human. “I wanted you to finish it. I wanted you to go further than anyone ever expected you to. That’s all I ever wanted for you, Porter. I wanted you to follow your plan, because you worked so hard for it. I can’t feel bad about that.”

  Grace inhales a shaky breath. It feels like someone has laid a stone on her chest. “I wish you did,” she confesses quietly. “I wish you felt bad, and I wish I didn’t understand why you don’t.”

  She hears noise downstairs. She hears Kelly’s and Mom’s voices.

  “I have to go,” she says. “I have to go now, okay?”

  “Porter,” he says suddenly, sounding rushed. She waits. “Call soon. I know Sharone would love to hear how you’re doing down there.”

  Grace is tired. Running away from the weight of her problems was tiring, but standing still with two feet planted firmly on the ground takes all her energy. “What about you?” she asks, feeling a surge of bravery. “Is this your way of cutting me off from the Porter name?”

  “You’re always a Porter,” he says firmly, brooking no arguments. “Porters, we—”

  “No offense,” she says, closing her eyes, “but I need a break from what Porters do. I want to figure out what I’m going to do.”

  “Okay,” he says, backing down for what could possibly be the first time ever. “I’ll save it for another time.”

  “So, you want me to call you again?” she asks.

  Colonel clears his throat. “Call soon, Grace,” he says.

  The call ends.

  She keeps the phone pressed to her ear long after the screen goes dark. Call soon, Grace.

  Hope mingles with frustration. But Colonel has never left her, not once. She holds on to that.

  * * *

  “It’s so
hard to let go of wanting to please him,” Grace says, lying sideways in a chair across from Heather. “Being angry at his unattainable expectations is so much easier than accepting that the only ones I have to meet are my own. And I am angry, you know? But then, it feels unfair to hold on so tight to my anger toward him, when I set it aside for Mom in case she decides to up and leave again.”

  Heather hums, tapping her pen against her notebook. “I’m just theorizing here,” she starts, “but it sounds like maybe it’s time to think about what you want, as Grace Porter, outside of your parents’ expectations and feelings and desires. Outside of what they want for you or themselves.”

  “I don’t even know where to start,” Grace says, voice cracking in the middle.

  “You don’t?” Heather asks. She gestures between them. “Then what do you call this, what we’re doing right now?”

  Grace closes her eyes. In her lap, she rips a piece of notebook paper into small, careful pieces. They’re still trying out alternatives for the moments she wants to pull and pinch at her skin. It’s like she can hear Heather in the back of her head like a self-help version of healthier coping mechanisms. “Holding it up to the light,” Grace recites. “Breaking it down. Making something new out of it, right? Something that’s just me.”

  She hears a satisfied noise. “You’re getting it now,” Heather says. “Soon, I’ll be the one on the couch.”

  “And I’ll be the one with the trendy suits and the immaculate braids?” She plays with her Bantu knots. It’s one of the easiest styles for this humidity.

  Heather laughs. “I know a lot of girls like the twist-outs and wash-and-gos, but I don’t have time,” she says. She fishes a card out of her bag and hands it over. “That’s the African braid shop I go to. Give them my name, and they probably won’t overcharge you. Protective styles save my life.”

  Grace remembers the feel of Dhorian’s gentle hands twisting her hair. “Yeah,” she agrees. “We’re in agreement there.”

  Kelly picks her up today. Mom gave her a key so she can drive herself around, but Grace doesn’t trust herself not to take the car and never come back. She’s okay letting them pick her up. It’s another routine. It’s something she can’t run from.

  “Hey, Porter,” he says. He’s got some Norah Jones playing today, just loud enough that Grace can guess he was singing along before she got in. Kelly’s a weird guy, but he’s got a good heart. “Doing okay?”

  She shrugs. “Been worse,” she decides, and he fist-bumps her.

  “So, listen,” he says, once they’re idling in the driveway and drinking milkshakes from McDonald’s. “I got something to ask you.”

  She narrows her eyes, trying to think of what he’s going to say before he says it.

  “Your mama makes that same face,” he tells her. “That ‘how can I outsmart you right now?’ face. Y’all look like you’re planning three ways to manipulate a conversation.”

  “Military tactic,” Grace says, slurping through her straw. “I have four, currently. Colonel says you should always have five, so give me a minute.”

  Kelly laughs. “Well, this ain’t no coup, Grace Porter. I just wanna ask you something.”

  She studies him for a moment. Crow’s feet at his eyes, his brown-and-gray hair tucked up into a little bun. Another plaid shirt rolled up to the elbows and a Dolly Parton T-shirt underneath.

  She inclines her head.

  He takes a deep breath, fingers tapping against the steering wheel. “I know you and Mel are still working out your issues, and that ain’t none of my business. But you know we’re planning on getting married here on the grove soon. And I know it would mean a lot to her if you officiated the wedding.” He gives Grace a quick look. “Only if you’re comfortable. I won’t breathe a word of it to her if you say no.”

  Grace’s eyes go big as her head. “You want me to do what?”

  “You can do it all online,” he says. “I’ll pay for it. I already googled everything. You just have to, you know, get ordained. And then the county clerk’s office will ask for some stuff, but it’s just paperwork.” He turns in his seat and stares at Grace curiously. There’s a huge rip in the knee of his jeans. She focuses on that. “What do you think?”

  “You want me to do it?” she asks. Her head is spinning. Heather would tell her to calm down, to focus, to breathe. She would tell Grace to find the source of her anxiety, like a peach pit in the middle of her stomach, and grab it tight. So, Grace grabs it tight. Her hands tremble around it. “Mom would want me to do it?”

  Kelly shakes his head. “It’s not really about me, but yeah,” he says. “And, of course, Mel would want you to do it. Do you know how much she talks about you? How proud she is?”

  Grace blinks fast and turns her head away. No, I don’t know, she wants to say. She swallows because she does not want to be overcome by the salt and the sea today. She can’t talk, because it is there in her throat: the ocean coming to claim her.

  “Would you want to?” he asks gently. “You can say no, I swear.”

  She clasps her fingers tight in her lap so they don’t shake. The last wedding she remembers is her own. The stumbling steps up to a church. A priest, dressed as bright as the overhead lights as they recited some vodka-sodden vows. A hand in hers. I do. I do. A kiss to seal the ceremony. Desert flowers. A fence. A lock.

  A beautiful girl she misses desperately.

  She reaches around her neck for the chain and key. On her ring finger, a small gold band she refuses to take off.

  Kelly is asking her to be a part of their love story. Grace was in her own love story once. She couldn’t find a way to make the love story fit in her plan. She couldn’t find a way to make Yuki fit. And now she is being asked to bear witness, to officiate, Mom’s wedding.

  She is glad, really, that Mom has found something easy with Kelly. Something that does not require a sacrifice or breaking your own heart. She wants to be a part of something good like that. It would not feel like being left behind by Mom, if she were a part of the something good and easy.

  Grace turns to Kelly and nods.

  “You’ll do it?” he asks, mouth twitching into a smile.

  “Yeah,” she whispers. “Yes. Of course, I’ll do it.”

  In the house, Mom cries when they tell her. She hugs Grace so tight it hurts. She smells like oranges and smoke. She says, “Thank you so much, Porter. I know I haven’t been around like I should. I might not even deserve it, but it means so much that you said yes. I’m so happy to share this with you.”

  Grace presses her face into her mother’s hair. It is the same way she used to press close when she was a child and hiding from monsters.

  “You’re here right now,” she murmurs softly. “We’re both here, together, right now.”

  “We are,” Mom whispers fiercely. She holds Grace as she shivers. “I am so goddamn proud of you, and I hope you believe that.”

  Grace squeezes her eyes shut. “Can you say it again?”

  Mom laughs quietly. “I’ll say it till I’m blue in the face. I’m so proud of you. You’re doing so good.”

  After, Grace finds herself sitting on the edge of her bed with her phone in hand. It’s been turned off since August, gathering dust in her drawer. There’s a voice in her head that says she isn’t ready, that she has more work to do. But Grace will always have work to do. This—being kind to herself, not trying to be perfect, not hurting herself in her quest to find the best and be the best—will always be work. It will take all that’s within her to learn that she does not have to grind her bones to dust, that needing to stop, needing to breathe, needing other people, is not weak.

  She is full to bursting with wanting to talk to her friends. Wanting to show them all what she has accomplished here, but even more, wanting to hear about them. Saying, I am getting stronger, strong enough that you can lean on me, too.


  Plus, there’s no way she can officiate a wedding without having at least one of her friends in the crowd.

  She turns on her phone. She ignores all the notifications that immediately come through, swiping away before she can read them. She opens a chat, the group chat with all her friends in Portland that have become family.

  Grace

  4:45 p.m.

  i’m here now

  are you there?

  Her phone buzzes with incoming texts. None of them call, which is a relief. She needs a little more time before she can speak any words out loud. She needs time to hold them up to the light, and make sure these, at least, do not break down.

  The messages come through, filled with comfort and outrage and love. Grace presses her phone to her chest and laughs.

  Eighteen

  She cries the first time she sees Ximena and Agnes on-screen after what feels like months and months and months.

  She rushes home from the fresh market, catching the attention of Saffiya, who runs the vegetable stand on the alternating days with her father.

  “Where are you going in such a hurry?” she asks, eyes sly under her floral hijab. “You usually stick around and try to get free food.”

  Grace frowns. “You’re exposing me so loud right now,” she says, and Saffiya laughs. “I just have an appointment, I guess? Let’s go with that.”

  Raised eyebrows greet her. “A girl?”

  “Yes, but not like that,” she says, and ignores the ache. “Some friends from back home.”

  Saffiya waves her hand. “Far be it from me to keep you, Grace Porter,” she says. “But you know Old Maria likes you best. She always gives you the best papayas.”

  “Maybe because I don’t call her Old Maria,” Grace points out, shoving her backpack on. “Try calling her by her name and see what happens!” she calls, racing for her bike.

  “No fun!” Saffiya yells back, as Grace disappears into the autumn sun.

 

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