Southern Charmed

by Melanie Jacobson

  Mom didn’t say anything for so long that I had to peek to make sure she hadn’t fallen asleep. She was watching me. “Why did you do that?” she repeated. “That’s a good question to ask yourself.”

  “I don’t know.” It was a groan straight from the pit in my stomach.

  “You need comfy pajamas and a good night’s sleep. Go on up to bed. That’ll fix you up better than anything.”

  “Max seems to think we’re going to wake up and this’ll be better too. It won’t.”

  “So he’s not mad?”

  “No. I don’t know. He’s frustrated but thinks this will work itself out.”

  “That makes you the only holdout.”

  I didn’t want to argue with her or defend myself. Unless she had the whole picture that I did, she would wait for this to blow over and for Max and me to straighten ourselves out. But she couldn’t see herself the way I had for the last two years. I didn’t want her to know how hard it had been to hold her together, and she definitely didn’t need to know that not following Max to Houston was more about keeping her together still than it would ever be about roots. “I’m going to leave my phone with you. Kate will probably text. Will you tell her what happened and let her know I’ll catch up with her tomorrow?”

  “Of course, sugar.” She stood and pulled me up, giving me a hug and a pat on the bum to send me toward the stairs. A half hour later, when I’d washed the dried tears and makeup from my face and changed into some LSU sweats, Mom didn’t say a word when I knocked on her door and climbed into her bed and cried until sleep overtook me.

  * * *

  I went to Mom’s ward in the morning instead of mine. I called one of my counselors and asked her to handle the day and spent the afternoon back in bed reading a book about the slave trade in South Carolina. Exactly twenty minutes after our ward would have ended, the doorbell rang, and I had no doubt it was Max. Mom’s muffled voice floated up, and I dragged myself out of bed to save her a trip up to get me.

  I slunk downstairs in my sweats and caught my breath when I saw him standing in the foyer. This was why I hadn’t wanted to see him; the only thing that had ever hurt more than this was watching Daddy’s casket lowered into the ground.

  “Hey,” he said, his eyes soft with concern. “How are you?”

  I swept my hand down to indicate my amazing post-breakup Sunday-afternoon couture. “Awesome. Super on top of my game.”

  “I was—” He broke off whatever he was going to say. After an infinite minute, instead of opening his mouth again, he opened his arms. I could have resisted a tractor beam more easily. I was inside them in two seconds flat, his hug warm and familiar as he tucked me against him. I tightened my arms around his waist, making him my life preserver in a sea of feelings trying to drown me. I didn’t know how long we’d stood there. At some point, he shifted his weight on his feet, and it broke the spell enough for me to pull back over his murmured protest. “Let’s walk. It’s warm. I’ll go barefoot with you.”

  He slipped his shoes and socks off at the deck doors and rolled his pant legs up. Mom had disappeared, maybe into her room, to give us some space to figure things out. When we got down to the rock path leading to the lake, I slid my hand into his, and he sighed like our clasped hands were the thing that let him breathe again.

  He didn’t speak again until we’d reached the lakeshore. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been this miserable.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Isn’t it? I’m the one who won’t agree to leave.”

  “And I’m the one who won’t agree to stay.”

  Neither of us spoke again until the pier. A new energy crept in between us—a noisy, uncomfortable buzz. When I let go of his hand to settle myself at the end of the dock, I didn’t reach out to take it again.

  “Is it won’t leave?” he asked, breaking a silence as thick as the humid air. “Or is it can’t leave?”

  “Can’t.”

  “Can’t makes this all so much harder than won’t.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Won’t implies a choice. Can’t is about things I can’t control, things I have no choice in. I can’t leave my mom. I feel like you won’t stay. It makes me angry on top of sad. Am I wrong to feel this way?”

  “It’s not a choice for me either. I can’t pass up this promotion. It could permanently change my future, and I have way too much college debt to walk away from something like this.”

  “Even if that means walking away from me? From us?” He dropped his elbows to his thighs and buried his face in his hands. “You’re the one who won’t take a gamble on us. Marrying you, raising a family with you, all makes me even more sure that I need to take this job. It’s because it’s not about me for once. Suddenly, I’m thinking in real terms about kids, about providing for them and making sure they’ll have the opportunities I did, about taking care of all of you.”

  “Please stop,” I whispered. The pain of imagining the family we couldn’t compromise to make tore through me. It was an evisceration.

  “I can’t,” he said, straightening to look at me. “I can’t give up on us. Please don’t give up on me. Please, baby.” He reached out a hand and threaded it through my hair, drawing me close enough to brush a kiss against my lips.

  It hurt worse than anything.

  I placed my hands on either side of his face, brushing my thumbs over his cheekbones before I pressed a kiss against his mouth and let go. “I can’t leave her.” I stood and walked halfway up the dock before I stopped and turned to see him on his feet, staring after me. I loved him. I loved him so much. But the fact that he would ask me to turn my back on Mom made it the tiniest bit easier to turn my back on him.

  * * *

  I’d been saved by my students more than once, and Monday was the clearest illustration of the fact that it had been total ego to think I was saving Kiana. In the same way that throwing myself into my work had let me swim through the thick sludge of grief after Daddy died, throwing myself into the last-minute prep for Kiana’s presentation kept me afloat in the pain trying to swamp me.

  Max had disappeared without another protest. I’d gone straight up to my room from the dock, and Mom had sensed enough not to ask me about it before I’d left for work this morning.

  Kiana bounced into the room, wound up and overflowing with words. She wouldn’t need a protein bar to bribe her to life this morning. “Miss Guidry, I gotta show you something. I have a new idea.”

  “If I remind you that you already have an amazing project you need to present in less than two weeks, is it going to stop you from trying to throw something else into the mix?”

  “Nah. Now listen.” She pulled some earbuds from her backpack and thrust them at me.

  “Like, literally listen?” I took them from her.

  “Yeah, like literally.”

  I adjusted the earbuds while she fiddled with her phone. “You ready?”

  I nodded, and a second later, a hook-heavy beat filled my ears, followed by rapid-fire lyrics. It took me a second to realize I was listening to an intricate rap about . . . “Hamilton. This is from the musical,” I said, finishing my thought out loud.

  Her face fell. “You already heard of it.”

  “I’ve listened to the soundtrack a million times. If I win the lottery, I’m going to use the money to go to New York and see this on Broadway.”

  “It’s dope. And it gave me an idea. I listened to this thing all day yesterday, and I’m going to write a rap into my project. Don’t worry, I can get it done. And my brother Andre? He’s only thirteen, but that kid comes up with beats like you never heard. He’s going to help me.”

  I pulled the earbuds out, sad to part ways with Alexander Hamilton. “If you think this is what your project needs, go for it. One question: what are you going to do about the time?” The rules set a strict limit for how long the presentation could go. Any presentations that ran over would be disqualified.

  “I’m taking
a bunch of the slam-poetry sections out and turning them into this rap and keeping the time the same.”

  An original score with barely over a week to pull it together? It sounded impossible. I smiled. “That sounds amazing. I can’t wait to hear it.”

  “You gonna love it, Miss Guidry.” She called that last part over her shoulder because she was making her way toward Tasha Miller. Interesting. They weren’t close friends, and I hadn’t seen Kiana go out of her way to talk to Tasha before, but now she was waving her arms and thrusting the earbuds at her. A smile spread over Tasha’s face as she listened.

  I made it through the day by teaching like a woman possessed. My students would never see such a forceful presentation on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution again in their lives, but throwing myself into it kept me functioning all day.

  Brother Lewis and Bridger came over again for family home evening, but when Max texted me, I left Mom and the Lewises in the middle of a game of Scrabble where Bridger, the ringer, was whupping both of them.

  I went upstairs to read the text. I don’t know how to do this.

  That made two of us, and that was exactly what I texted him. I don’t either.

  Are we done?

  I stared down at the question. We didn’t feel finished, but there was literally no way to move forward. When I didn’t answer, Max texted me again. I don’t want to be done.

  I tapped out an answer. I don’t think we have a choice.

  How can loving each other not be enough? For either of us?

  My only answer was to curl up and cry.

  Chapter 28

  Kiana quivered. Her lips, her arms, the bangs across her forehead all trembled like end-of-autumn leaves in a November wind. She was pacing, the shaking stopping as she mouthed her lines over and over, then she stood still, and the trembling started again.

  She had paused in front of me and was now holding out her brown leaf hand. It shook like mine did when I skipped lunch, but I couldn’t fix this with a granola bar. “How I’m gonna stand out there and say anything when I can’t even keep my hand still?”

  I reached out and took it, wrapping both my hands around hers. “I don’t know how you’re going to do this.” Her eyebrows flew up. She’d clearly been expecting a different pep talk. “I don’t know how you do anything, how you get yourself to school every day, how you get your brothers out the door, how you run a business now, how you made all this happen. But you do it. So no, I definitely don’t know how you’re going to do this. I just know that you will because that’s what you do. You dig down, and you find something, and you make it happen every time. And when you figure it out, explain it to me because I could use a big old dose of whatever your secret is.”

  Her hand tightened around mine. She nodded, and the quivering stopped.

  “You’re up next.” The two students on stage were doing a mock debate about the merits of Louisiana having thrown off Spanish rule in the eighteenth century. It was thoughtfully researched and well-prepared. “Have you been watching these other projects? They all did good work, but none of them has the pure, raw spark of genius that lights yours up. Not even close. You saw it in class.”

  A small smile broke out on her face. She’d presented her project yesterday, and they’d nearly lost their minds in the cheering. It had gotten so loud that Mrs. Santana across the hall and Mr. Deng next door had both come running over to make sure everything was okay. Mr. Deng had left with an annoyed shake of his head, but Mrs. Santana had grinned at the whooping, cheering class and shot me a double thumbs-up before racing back to her own classroom.

  “I’m going to sit in the audience now. I can’t wait to see their reaction. You’ve got this.” I gave her a quick hug, just long enough to feel her stiffen and relax, before I hurried out to the auditorium. Man, if ever a kid needed more hugs, it was that one.

  Mom smiled when I slid in next to her, and I leaned over her and patted Kate’s belly. “For good luck,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not the Buddha.”

  The seat next to her sat empty. It was hard not to stare at the spot where Max should have been. He’d become the master of the empty seat. He hadn’t shown up at church yesterday, and even though I’d known he wouldn’t come around for dinner, his unset place at the table, his chair pushed in with no air of waiting had made it impossible for me to choke down more than a few bites of the roast Mom had made.

  Bridger had been happy to eat extra helpings to make up for my pitiful efforts, but I hadn’t even stayed downstairs for Mom’s pecan pie. That might have worried her more than anything else she’d seen me do all week. Every part of my life suffered from the Max-shaped hole in it.

  As I leaned back in my padded theater seat, I caught Mom watching me. “He won’t come even for this?” she asked.

  I shook my head and clapped as the debate onstage finished and the presenters took their bows. Max had tried to convince me to let him come over for days, but by Thursday he’d quit asking, and by Saturday he’d stopped texting all together. “It’s fine. Kiana’s next.”

  The curtains closed, and a murmur of interest rippled over the audience. No one had started with a closed curtain so far. The murmur changed to confusion, then worry as nothing happened. I tried to peer up into the control room. The Kiwanis Club had rented the theater at the performing arts high school for the competition, and I didn’t know how much the different venue was going to throw the drama kids Kiana had recruited for handling the technical stuff.

  A moment later, a series of lights clicked on and off, ending with the large spotlight coming on and staying on. The curtain opened and showed Kiana’s simple set washed with cool-blue light. She stood in a long muslin skirt and shapeless blouse, a drab muslin scarf covering her hair. As her gaze fixed on the ground, I held my breath. I’d seen her rehearse this several times. If she could hold herself together, the prize was hers.

  “I was born for more than this,” she said, staring at the almost barren stage around her. And just like that, she had them, every last listener drawn in. Who was she, and what was she born for? I could almost hear the question in the way Mom leaned forward, caught up in Kiana’s spell.

  “My name is Sarah Breedlove, and though the war ended two years before I was born, I can’t honestly tell you I have felt one day of freedom. I grew up under the tyranny of my brother-in-law, married at age fourteen to escape him, and now, at twenty, I’m a widow and a mother making a dollar a day taking in wash. It’s not enough to hold body and soul together, much less a mother and her child.” Suddenly her head shot up, and she stared out at the audience instead, her gaze defiant, her shoulders drawn back, and her bearing proud. “But I done told you I was born for more than this.”

  A heavy but simple beat started, one her brother had put together for her, and the rap Tasha had helped her revise, Hamilton style, poured out of her, a monologue of longing and steely desperation. Mom’s fingers bit into my arm, but I stifled my protest when I realized she didn’t even notice she was doing it, all of her attention on the stage, caught up in CJ Walker’s story. “I’m the child of slaves/life tries to keep me chained/but I rise above/and I’ll use my pain/My daughter deserves better than the start I got/When my last rites are spoken/she will know I fought/To be more, Live more, do more with my life/to show her that there’s a point to this strife.”

  Kiana’s delivery was raw and fierce—angry, desperate words rapped out of an angry, desperate place. The rap ended, and immediately the stage went dark except for a single rectangle projected onto a blank space on her set. A video played, with Kiana narrating about how Sarah’s scalp bothered her and she dealt with constant skin disorders. “We are poor,” Kiana explained. “So few of us have indoor plumbing. We can’t afford it. We don’t get to bathe often, and the soaps we can make or afford are full of harsh chemicals, like lye.”

  A shot of a pile of hair filled the screen. “That’s mine,” she said. “It’s falling out. My daughter Leila worries about it, pats
the bald patches on my head and asks if it hurts. Every spare cent I have goes to making sure Leila gets her schooling. I have nothing left for fancy tonics. But my brothers, they own a barbershop. And I’ve been asking questions. I’ve learned so many things about caring for African hair, and mine is getting better. So much better, in fact, that I’m going to work for Annie Malone, selling her hair care to my neighbors and friends.”

  The video cut off at the same moment the spotlight came on to reveal Kiana on the stage again, now in a trim, long black skirt and tailored white blouse. A new beat began, a lighter beat with a horn-heavy Dixieland jazz hook, as Kiana began a new rap about becoming an expert in working with black women’s hair, about how she could sell honey to bees, about how Charles Joseph Walker, a smooth-talking newspaper man charmed her into marriage, and she became Madame CJ Walker.

  She continued to switch between rap monologues and video clips as she changed outfits and spun out Madame CJ Walker’s story, how she expanded her empire and trained other women to become beauty experts and gain their own financial independence. When Kiana appeared in front of the set after the final video montage, the audience gasped. She’d been slipping her other costumes on and off over her regular street clothes, ducking behind the set during video montages for the quick changes. Now she stood in her own clothes, discount store jeans and a T-shirt that had been washed too many times to look anything other than worn out.

  A new beat came on, this one starting slow with a melancholy piano hook playing over it. “I wasn’t born to privilege/I live in North BR/Ain’t no silver spoons or German cars/Schools are falling down/homes are doing worse/Some say my street number ain’t an address but a curse/Crime stats are high, opportunities low/but I’m not, because I look around and know.” The music stopped, and her backdrop lit up again with a series of images: a snapshot of her good test scores, blank scholarship applications, buildings on the LSU campus. She stared straight out into the audience, her chin up, her stance firm, like an MMA fighter taking the ring. “My name is Kiana Green, and like Madame CJ Walker, I was born for more than this.”