by Aya De León
“What’s wrong?” her mother asked.
Tyesha didn’t know where to begin. She looked up to see the meteorologist standing beside an illustration of sun and clouds over Chicago. She picked up the remote and muted the TV.
“Is Zeus my daddy?” she blurted out.
Her mother knelt down, closed her eyes and began to pray.
“No, Mama.” Tyesha walked over and pried her mother’s hands apart. “You’ve had almost thirty years to talk to Jesus about this. Especially if you count the time you were pregnant. So now it’s time to talk to me. Is Zeus my father?”
“Yes,” her mother said in a voice barely above a whisper.
“And he was with Jenisse before he was with you?” Tyesha asked, towering over her mother.
“Yes.”
“Are you kidding me?” Tyesha asked, her forehead puckered, her eyes blinking in disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Of all the things I ever did, I don’t think there’s anything I’m more ashamed of,” her mother said. “I wasn’t even thirty. Here comes my fifteen-year-old daughter with a grown man. I thought I was gonna show her he was bad news. Not right for her. I was gonna break them up. Gonna save her.”
“By fucking her man?” Tyesha asked, incredulous.
“I remember going to her and telling her what had happened, what the fool she called ‘her man’ had done. A man who would be with her own mama. But it didn’t work that way. She took it in stride. ‘He has other women. So what?’ Jenisse said to me.” Her mother looked out the window. “He told her it didn’t mean anything. He would have other ladies, but she was the queen.”
Tyesha collapsed onto the sofa, but her mother didn’t seem to notice. She was still on her knees. The monologue became almost a prayer of its own. “I was so young when I had her. Not done being cute and silly. I competed with her when she was young. Mostly I won. This time she was determined to win.”
Behind her mother, Tyesha saw the image of a doctor’s office on the TV, which cut to a newscaster with the headline “MEDICAL MALPRACTICE.”
Her mother went on: “Was a couple of trifling niggas I was seeing at the time.” Tyesha blinked. She couldn’t ever recall hearing her mother use the n-word. “I just said you must be one of theirs. When they found out I was pregnant, they stopped coming around. Didn’t none of them come forward trying to claim nothing. I don’t think Jenisse knew until Deza was born and she looked so much like you had looked as a baby.”
“I was nine,” Tyesha said, a sudden, sharp recollection.
Her mother nodded. “Still a few baby pictures I don’t know which is which.”
“She started being so mean to me,” Tyesha said. “I was always trying to figure out what I had done wrong. I could never understand it. We had been close and then . . .”
Years later, when Tyesha had learned about post-partum depression, she had clung to that as an explanation.
“I apologized to her so many times,” her mother said. “I insisted you weren’t Zeus’s, and I begged her not to take it out on you. At one point, she threatened to get a DNA test. But I think she didn’t tell him, because she was trying to keep him focused on her own kids. Lord knows there were always plenty of other baby mamas coming around in tight dresses with they hands out.” She shook her head. “I certainly didn’t wanna be one of them, so when I found out I was pregnant, I just started going to church. I asked Jesus to forgive me.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” She couldn’t look at her mother. Instead, she looked at a silent TV segment with elementary school children doing jumping jacks.
“Like I told you, I was just plain shamed,” her mother said.
“I had a right to know,” Tyesha said.
“I never knew who my own daddy was,” her mother said. “It don’t kill you not to know. Though I always told myself I wouldn’t do that to my kids. Jenisse’s dad was locked up, so she didn’t have him, but she knew where to find him. But you having a daddy I couldn’t claim? I wasn’t no teenager. I was older than you are now. I sowed spite, and I reaped shame.”
“But I was gonna find out eventually,” Tyesha said.
“I kept waiting for Jenisse to tell you in a moment of evil,” her mother said. “But she never did. I just figured if it didn’t come out when you were a teenager, it never would.”
“Jenisse wanted a DNA test for Amaru,” Tyesha said. “So Zeus would pay for her athletic boarding school.”
Her mother pursed her lips. “Around the time Jenisse got pregnant with Amaru, they were kinda broken up. I know she was seeing other men. He was never sure if Amaru was his. And then, when she grew up to be gay, well, he wasn’t sure he wanted her to be his.”
“Well, that’s fucked up,” Tyesha said. “And she’s definitely his. We all are.”
Her mother began to cry. “All these years I begged Jesus to forgive me. And I seen how good your life was going, and I assumed He did. But now I know it’s you I need to forgive me. You and Jenisse.”
Tyesha looked at the screen. A slender white homemaker was smiling and wiping the counter with some miraculous cleaner.
Tyesha shook her head. Her mother was fourteen when she had Jenisse? Amaru was fourteen. She imagined Amaru with a baby, suddenly responsible for another person’s life. Amaru could barely remember to put the lid back on the toothpaste. Her mother, competing with her own daughter, setting out to spite her and getting caught in her own trap.
She wasn’t sure she felt it, but she couldn’t deny her mother the clemency.
“I forgive you, Mama,” she said, and embraced her. Tyesha held on, as her mother shook with sobs.
* * *
Tyesha felt lost. She couldn’t get a flight out until midnight, and it was only afternoon. She had borrowed a pair of her mother’s old sneakers and found herself wandering around the neighborhood with her ruined fancy New York shoes in her hand.
And then, without realizing it, she found herself at the burned-out remains of the Urban Peace Accord youth center. Almost fifteen years later, it still hadn’t been repaired. Except the basketball courts, which had only been minimally damaged. They had gotten new nets later that same year, but by now they had frayed into ragged strings. A Boys’ and Girls’ Club had popped up next door.
Tyesha stood by the edge of the court. The memories flooded in from the night she had stood there with her aunt.
“Hey, girl,” a throaty woman’s voice said from behind her. “Tyesha, right?”
She turned around to see Sheena Davenport, Amaru’s mentor from the WNBA, grinning at her out of the driver’s side of a white luxury car.
“I thought I told you to look me up if you ever came to Chicago,” she said, taking off her shades and looking Tyesha up and down.
“It was an unexpected trip,” Tyesha said, returning her smile.
“Well, how long are you here?” Sheena asked. “I’m waiting on this girl, a great player, but I don’t think she’s gonna show. At one thirty, I’m outta here. Wanna come have a drink with me? I know a place near here with a great lunchtime cocktail menu.”
“Sure,” Tyesha said, and walked around to the passenger side. Her mouth smiled, but she still felt numb inside. The car’s interior was the color of chocolate. She slid into the plush leather seats.
“Your niece has definitely got talent,” Sheena said. “I’m just sorry she wasn’t able to go to that athletic academy.”
“There still may be hope,” Tyesha said.
“So what brings you home to Chicago?” Sheena asked.
“Some . . . family business,” Tyesha said.
“Are you staying long?” Sheena asked. “Can I invite you out on a proper date?”
“I leave at midnight,” she said.
“Maybe an improper date then,” Sheena said and grinned, putting a hand on Tyesha’s knee.
For the first time since getting the DNA test, Tyesha felt something familiar. Being turned on. She breathed it in. Sex. If nothing else mad
e sense, sex always did.
She leaned in and kissed Sheena.
“Hold up,” Sheena said. “I’m still on the clock waiting for this girl for the next fifteen minutes. I can’t have her come here and see me kissing somebody while I’m supposed to be waiting for her.”
“You said she’s probably a no-show,” Tyesha said. “Let it go. Let’s get out of here.”
She pulled Sheena into an intense kiss. Sheena kissed back, and Tyesha’s scarf slipped off.
Sheena peered more closely at Tyesha, then took her hand off her thigh.
“Are you okay?” Sheena asked.
“I’m fine,” Tyesha insisted, and slid closer on the long bench seat.
“Uh-uh,” Sheena said. “This ain’t gonna work.”
“What do you mean?” Tyesha asked.
“I mean, you got something going on that a little lesbian moment isn’t gonna fix,” Sheena said.
“I’ve been with women before,” Tyesha said.
“This isn’t about—” Sheena broke off. “What’s up with your hair?”
“My hair?” Tyesha said. “You don’t want to get down because of my hair?”
“I don’t want to get down because something ain’t right with you, girl. You don’t look sexy, you look upset.”
“I’m not upset,” Tyesha said.
Sheena’s mouth slowly opened. “Oh, that’s right,” she said. “You a Couvillier.” She gave Tyesha a quizzical look. “How you gonna be standing on the spot your auntie died and not be upset?”
“What do you know about it?” Tyesha asked.
“I know there were flowers and candles at the base of that telephone pole for nearly a decade,” Sheena said. “I know your mama was the one bringing the flowers for years, til she got too sick.”
“My mama?” Tyesha said.
“This ain’t New York,” Sheena said. “This part of South Shore is like a small town. I don’t just know Amaru, I know all your people. And I knew your aunt.”
“Well, you don’t know me,” Tyesha said, and stormed out of the car on the traffic side. A driver swerved and honked at her.
She took off walking fast down the street in the opposite direction of the traffic, so Sheena couldn’t follow in the car.
* * *
She remembered that night. She had stood beside her aunt as she spoke to the crowd assembled on the basketball court. She was nearly as tall as her aunt by then. Tyesha held the megaphone aloft, while her aunt held the microphone in one hand, and her carefully prepared speech in the other.
They stood on the court because the center had been burned to the ground. Their auditorium, their chairs, their sound system, all reduced to rubble and char. The stench of gasoline and flames was still so strong that they stood with their backs to the street, against the chain-link fence at the far end, because the smell was just a little better.
Her aunt had rescued the sign: URBAN PEACE ACCORD, spray-painted on a piece of plywood. On the very bottoms of the letters the wood and paint were singed. This was likely because they had balanced the sign on a plastic ledge above the door frame and glued it in place. Her aunt had always meant to secure it better, but had never gotten around to it. When the building burned, both the plastic ledge and the glue melted. The sign fell down just beyond the reach of the fire.
Her aunt held up the sign during her speech. She held it up as a talisman that they shouldn’t lose hope.
“You can’t burn down an idea,” her aunt had bellowed. “You can’t burn down the desire for a better life, a better community.”
The assembly offered yeses and amens.
“People wanna come and tell me that some gang members did this,” she said. “I don’t know any gang members. I know young men with names. Young men I’ve known for decades. These are our young people. Some police gang task force is not the solution. The police are part of the problem. Sometimes I think the police are the biggest gang. We are the solution. This center is part of the solution and I will rebuild it as many times as I have to!”
Later, Tyesha would hear stories about high-level gang leaders who had been won over by her aunt. They wanted to leave the life, they insisted, but they had too many ties to the police department. Even if they could convince the drug kingpins that they wouldn’t snitch, the cops weren’t about to let them walk away.
But that came later. All that Tyesha knew from that night on the Peace Center’s basketball courts was the smell of burned building and that giving a speech makes you a target.
Tyesha recalled the screech of tires as the car came around the corner. The quick whip of dreadlocks brushing against her face as her aunt looked over her shoulder. And then her aunt had pushed her down, pushed her away. And Tyesha had been down on the concrete when the bullets sprayed from the car window.
She had screamed. Kept her head covered. And then had stood to find her aunt lying in a pool of blood. “Auntie!” Tyesha had shrieked and run to her. Had gathered her in her arms, the best she could. The blood had soaked her clothes.
Around them all were screaming and scattering. Several other people appeared to have been shot, as well.
“You okay, baby?” her aunt had asked. Even dying, she was worried about someone else. “Did they hit you?”
“I’m okay,” Tyesha had assured her aunt through her tears. “You gonna be okay, too.”
By then, her mother was running up to them. Someone had called and told her.
“Please, Jesus, oh please, Lord Jesus,” her mother begged, her body rigid, clenched in prayer.
But her aunt was dead by the time the ambulance came wailing to where she lay, only a few minutes later.
Tyesha screamed as her mother pried her hands from the ambulance gurney.
They sobbed together as the ambulance took her aunt quietly away.
A week later, Tyesha stood in the church for the memorial. She had her carefully written speech in her hand. She had on a blue dress, stockings, and low-heeled black pumps. She had white gloves and even a small blue hat. Her mother didn’t insist she go to church anymore, but when she did choose to go, she needed to dress up.
She stood beside the pulpit, waiting for her turn. And then the pastor introduced her. He ran down her list of accomplishments: valedictorian of her class, on the track team, tutoring younger kids in math. “We expect great things from her, just like from her aunt Lucille. Please give a warm godly welcome to Tyesha Couvillier.”
The applause thundered, but she felt frozen, her feet planted in place as if they’d grown roots.
“Go on.” One of the boys gave her a little push, and Tyesha could move again. But instead of going up onto the platform and reading her speech, she turned back toward him, pushed past all the kids, and ran out of the building. Later, she would overhear her mother talking to some of the other church women: “It was just too soon.”
* * *
Tyesha had never spoken in public since that day. It wasn’t just the memory of her dying aunt, but also the terror of speaking up. It made you a target. Not just for gang violence. Once, when she googled Aunt Lu in college, she came across a blog post by an anonymous investigative journalist who claimed he had a mountain of circumstantial evidence that the cops were behind her aunt’s murder. And the arson, too. Nothing could ever be proven, so the story had been killed by the journalist’s editor. But there was a PDF file with evidence. Tyesha’s heart beat hard as she considered clicking on it. But instead, she closed the window on her browser. She didn’t need some anonymous journalist’s evidence to corroborate what she knew for sure: Her aunt was dead, the center was burned to the ground, and she would forever connect speaking in front of crowds with that terrible day.
* * *
Tyesha couldn’t recall where her aunt was buried, but she did know where she could find another shrine, this one more durable than the one that had been on the street next to the basketball court.
Two blocks down, she came to her mother’s church. Since she had left Chicago
, it had expanded from a single storefront to take up half the block, and they had redone the façade with stained-glass windows and a large golden cross.
But in the front hallway she knew they had a low glass cabinet with a small shelf dedicated to her aunt. She had been a deaconess in the church. There she was, smiling, surrounded with artificial flowers. All her awards and plaques. Her deaconess gloves folded in front of the picture.
Tyesha pressed her hand against the glass.
One of the women of the church came out from the office. She was sixtyish, light-skinned, and thickly built. “Are you here for choir rehearsal?” she asked. “It doesn’t start until—”
Tyesha opened her mouth, but all that came out was a howl of grief.
She sank down onto the goldenrod carpeting, keening and weeping. The woman managed to lower herself down onto one hip and squeeze in next to Tyesha. She patted the younger woman’s back as she wailed and wailed.
Tyesha wanted to shriek with rage for losing her aunt, with terror from the shooting and the burning and the bone-chilling knowledge that the killers weren’t local teens, but men in uniforms who killed with the full blessing and protection of the state. She wanted to shriek for her mother who had been a teenage mom, stealing her teenage daughter’s man, and twenty-nine years of lies, with two sisters who had been at each other’s throats for twenty of those years. She wanted to rail for her own broken heart, and Thug Woofer, whom she could never trust again, but somehow he kept haunting her, even beyond his number-one rapper status, she was unable to get over him; unable to have him; unable to move on.
So Tyesha just crumpled in this stranger’s arms and sobbed. Her face puckered with inarticulate wailing, her face coated with tears and snot, smearing into the flowered print of the woman’s dress.
“He’ll fix it for you,” the woman promised, unconcerned about her clothes. “Oh, won’t He fix it.”
* * *
Two hours later, Tyesha stood in front of Jenisse’s door for a second time that day. It was evening now, still light, but with long shadows. Tyesha still had her designer pumps in her hand. Her makeup was cried off, and she had left her scarf in Sheena’s car. The mess that was her hair was revealed for all to see. She had been wearing the same clothes for more than thirty-six hours. She smelled like she needed a shower.