by Mia Mckenzie
“Did that work?”
“Three or four times, I think, before she caught on.”
I think about a smaller version of Vicky, standing by the slide with her arms folded, and it makes me smile. “Do you have pictures? From when she was little?”
Faye walks into the living room and I follow her. There’s a built-in cabinet in one corner of the room and she opens its small doors and takes out a brightly colored photo album. On its front cover there’s a photo of baby Vicky, all cheeks and bright brown eyes, smiling toothlessly at the camera. I feel a little flutter in my chest.
Faye sits down on the sofa and I sit beside her. She opens the album and points to a photo of baby Vicky sitting in a high chair, with what looks like sweet potato all over her face. She’s wearing a bib that reads: I’m Famous Around Here.
“She’s about six months old,” Faye says. “This was her first solid food, so she hadn’t exactly learned how to eat it yet.”
I’ve never been around babies much. Their ways are very much a mystery to me. The idea that a baby has to learn how to eat food is kind of mind-blowing, right?
Farther down the page, there’s a picture of Vicky on Kenny’s lap. She’s holding her dad’s fingers in her chubby little hands. Kenny is looking at her with tired eyes that are nonetheless brimming with affection. In the background, Cynthia is sprawled on the couch, her head back and her mouth slightly open. Her right tit is dangerously close to escaping her bra. She looks like every new mom I’ve ever seen: exhausted. For a second, I imagine myself in her place, imagine what it might have been like if I had given birth to Vicky, if I had been her mother. It’s silly, because even if I’d had a kid, that kid wouldn’t have been Vicky. Cynthia’s doctors chose that one egg and it was fertilized by Kenny’s sperm, and it became Vicky, under those very specific circumstances. But still. I imagine what it might have been like if I had nursed her and sniffed her little head and soothed her when she cried. It’s kind of a nice thing to think about. Until I realize I also would have had to get up eleventy times a night to feed her, and change her poopy diapers, and listen to her scream for I-wouldn’t-know-what-reason until my ears bled. That would be me, passed out on the couch with a rogue titty, without a good night’s sleep in months. Which: Nah. I’m good.
On the next page, there’s a photo of Vicky sleeping with her head on Faye’s shoulder. Faye is looking directly at the camera, her dark eyes bright, half a smile on her face. She looks very much the same, except for her hair, which, in the photo, is shaved almost bald.
“Very nice look,” I say.
She smiles. Then sighs. “This photo makes me feel so old.”
“You’re not, though. I mean, what are you? Like, forty?”
“Forty-two,” she says. “Forty. Fucking. Two.”
I shake my head. “That’s not old. Old is like…forty-three.”
She punches me in the shoulder. Playfully, but also kind of hard. I like it so much.
“I’m just messing with you,” I say, laughing.
“Well, how old are you?”
“Ask Miss Newsome. I’m sure she has my date of birth and Social Security number.”
She punches me again.
“Okay, okay. I’m almost thirty-nine. Which, according to Vicky, is actually forty-five, so.”
Faye laughs and I feel like I’m winning.
She turns the page again and there’s a picture of Vicky around a year old, standing up on her own and looking so very thrilled about it.
“Is this what you looked like when you were tiny?” Faye asks me.
I nod. “There’s a resemblance. But Vicky was way cuter than I was.”
“I’m sure you were cute,” she says. “All babies are cute.”
“You really think that?”
“Yes,” she says. “Of course.”
“Even white babies?”
She thinks about it. “In their own way.”
Ha.
“Well, I was definitely one of those ‘cute in their own way’ babies,” I tell her. “Honestly, it took like thirty years to grow into this face. And I’m still only barely managing it.”
“I like your face,” she says.
I look at her. “You like my face?”
She nods. “Yes.”
Okay, remember when I said that thing about how my desire to put my hands and mouth on Faye’s parts is now buried under the weight of all the potential drama, and something about humidity and thunderstorms and blah blah blah? Bitch, I lied. It’s not buried. It’s right here where it always was, pulsing like a heartbeat from the depths of my clitoris. THIS IS THE MOMENT IN WHICH I SHOULD LEAN OVER AND KISS HER. Isn’t it? Or, like, at least try? If I don’t, I could look back and regret it for years to come. It’s been my experience that you don’t always get another chance to kiss someone you really want to kiss. Sometimes the universe just doesn’t ever line up that way again.
But I don’t try to kiss her. Not because I’m not sure I should but because, right then, I hear a key in the door and the next second, Vicky is standing there.
“What are y’all doing?”
“Looking at your baby pictures,” Faye says.
Vicky drops her backpack with a thud and bounces over to us, squeezes herself between us on the sofa. COCKBLOCK MUCH?
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I glance at it and see the beginning of a text from my brother. Come see Mom tomorrow…Jesus, he’s relentless. I put the phone away without opening the message.
Faye flips to the next page and points to a photo of Vicky around three years old, sitting between Cynthia’s knees, getting her hair done in plaits. Her little face is twisted into a frown.
“That’s a familiar expression,” Faye says, smiling at me.
I smile back, deciding to just accept the passing of the moment, and nod. “That’s the look of every Black girl getting her hair done since the dawn of Black girls.”
“Your mom did your hair like that?” Vicky asks me.
I touch my head with the tips of my fingers. “I can feel the tightness in my scalp just thinking about it.”
“I actually miss it a little,” Faye says.
“Why on earth?” I ask.
“It was done in love,” she says, reaching out and touching one of Vicky’s braids, rubbing it gently between her fingers, the way she often does. It’s such a tender touch, and suddenly I feel a longing, almost a jealousy, though I’m not sure which of them, Vicky or Faye, I want to be in that moment. Either of them, I guess. The longing is for the closeness itself.
I remember myself, at seven or eight, sitting on sofa cushions on the floor between my mother’s knees, while she parts my hair with a large comb, then gently rubs oil on my scalp all along the part. I feel her fingers in my hair. I hear her laugh and then my kid self is laughing, too. I feel happy and cared for.
“Our mothers just wanted us to look nice,” Faye is saying. “Think how bad it must have been for them. Sitting there for hours, their backs and arms and fingers aching, and us complaining the whole time. I never appreciated how much work it was until”—she points at Vicky—“this one.”
“Me?” Vicky asks, incredulous. “What did I do?”
“You told me I was ‘child abusing’ you the last time I put cornrows in your hair.”
Vicky laughs. “Oh, yeah. That was funny.”
Faye pushes her and she falls on the floor in a fit of giggles.
My phone vibrates again. For a second, I think about texting my brother back. But only for a second.
18
The next morning, I wake up at the ass crack of dawn. I’m talking seven a.m., y’all. An ungodly hour. If I’m not working, I don’t get up before ten and, in this case, it’s worse because I only fell asleep in the first place around four, after tossing and turning for hours. I finally drif
ted off and was dreaming an excellent dream about getting my head massaged and then—BAM—I’m suddenly awake again, staring at the bedside clock.
I lie there with my eyes closed, refusing to even entertain the notion of getting up. I think hard about head massages, hoping I can get my dream going again and settle back into sleep that way. The massage I was dreaming about was being done by my Philly hairdresser, Rhonda, who always rubs my scalp when she’s tidying up my locs. I have this dream about once a month, no matter where in the world I am, when I’m overdue for a trip to the hairdresser. It’s how my subconscious reminds me to keep my edges tight, so I’m not out here looking raggedy. Only, this time, I’m not overdue. I just had my locs tended to a couple of weeks ago. So, I don’t know why I’m dreaming about it now. But whatever. It still feels good. So, I sink farther down into the covers and try to concentrate on Rhonda’s fingers on my scalp, rub rub rubbing. It works. At first. I start to feel myself being pulled back into dreamland. But then the image changes. I’m eight, sitting between my mother’s knees, and she’s braiding my hair.
I open my eyes. It’s now seven-ten. I sigh and get up.
* * *
—
Fifteen minutes later, I’m showered and dressed and standing in the dining room. There are other guests already there, enjoying breakfast. At one table, a couple that’s staying in the Julia de Burgos room sits eating pancakes. At another, three pretty flaming gays I haven’t seen before sip Bloody Marys. I grab a seat by a window and peruse the little paper menu. Viva comes out of the kitchen with a cappuccino, which she sets in front of one of the gays. When she spots me, she looks surprised, then suspicious. “What are you doing down here?” she asks me, coming over to my table.
I hold up the menu. “I came down for breakfast.”
“Pero you never come down for breakfast.”
“Sí. Pero I felt like company this morning.”
She looks around at the other guests.
“Not them,” I say. Ew. As if. “You.”
“Oh. Well, that’s nice. ¿Quieres café?”
“Espresso, por favor.”
“And to eat?”
“Grits. And this frittata sounds good.”
She takes out her phone and starts thumbing the keyboard. “I’m texting your order to the kitchen. Jason’s on chef duty this morning.” When she’s done, she sits down across from me. She’s fully dressed, in a matching skirt and top, yellow with tiny red flowers all over. Her hair is bouncy and lustrous. She’s wearing makeup. It’s impressive, considering I barely brushed my teeth.
“How do you look this good at seven-something in the morning? You get up at, like, four-fifteen?”
“I still do yoga at five, most mornings.”
“Five…o’clock? Girl, is that even a real time? That sounds made up.”
“You know I love mornings.”
“Yeah, you always have,” I say. “I remember you used to get up early to meditate before school. Which was weird.”
“It wasn’t weird. It was the closest thing I had to therapy back then. I had to do something to prepare myself for a school day surrounded by cis people.”
“Fair enough.”
“But only morning persons really understand other morning persons,” she says. “Which begs the question…”
“What am I doing up at this hour?”
“Equelecuá.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Also, I’m considering visiting my mother today and I feel like I need a buffer of several hours, some strong coffee, and possibly a little bourbon first.”
“Well, you’re full of surprises this morning. What brought that on?”
I sigh. “I don’t know. Looking over other people’s fences, I guess. Which I have a hard and fast rule to never do. I guess I’m becoming less diligent in my old age. I had a disturbing memory, too.”
“¿De qué?”
“My mother caring for me.”
Viva draws her eyebrows together. “Why is that disturbing?”
“Because nostalgia is a lie, Veev. Obviously.”
She frowns. “All of it?”
“Yes. I mean, that’s the nature of nostalgia, isn’t it? The scene I remembered was incomplete, it was pulled from my cerebral cortex without context. It’s just the good stuff, without the traumatizing bits.”
“If the scene was incomplete,” she says, “how do you know there were traumatizing bits?”
“There were always traumatizing bits.”
“That’s not true, Skye. You know I was there, ¿verdá? We have shared history, remember?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, nostalgia is good for us. You could use a little more nostalgia in your life.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Why do you pretend tu madre es toda mala? Isn’t it important to see the full picture of a person? If I were going to pick and choose only the worst angles, and ignore the rest, I would’ve stopped talking to your self-centered ass years ago.”
“I’m self-centered now?”
“Now?” Viva laughs. “Chica.”
Jason arrives with my espresso and a hot tea for his wife. “Hi, Skye. Frittata will be out in five.” Then, to Viva, “The espresso machine’s being weird again.”
“Did you jiggle the thing?” she asks, sounding annoyed.
“Of course,” he says. “Why are you snapping at me?”
Viva gets up. “I’ll be right back.”
They disappear into the kitchen.
While she’s gone, I think about that shared history. Viva transitioned sophomore year of college, and the following summer, when we were twenty, she was working at the front desk of one of those super swank hotels in Rittenhouse Square. She got the job by being charming, and also by pretending to be her sister, Val, who’d given Viva her ID and Social Security number to use, because Val had a doctor husband and no kids and, thus, could spend her days getting manicures and shopping for housewares, not nine-to-fiving like some chump. I spent most of that summer at school, taking extra classes, but when my classes and summer job ended, I had to come home for a week to bridge a gap in housing. My father, who had been gone for six years, was back living with my mother temporarily, and I couldn’t stand being in that house. Viva, who comes from a family of nurturers, of caregivers, and has always been those things herself, used her employee perks to get a free room at the hotel and let me stay there with her. We stayed up late watching home improvement shows—Viva fantasizing out loud about buying an old house to renovate and turn into a bed-and-breakfast—and travel shows that helped me push Philly far from my mind.
We told each other everything back then. Cried on each other’s shoulders. Defended each other. Viva was the reason I came out to my mother, sort of. It was Thanksgiving 2003. I was twenty-three. My whole extended family was over for turkey dinner and games. During a break in Scattergories, Viva, Slade, and I slipped away to smoke some weed on the back porch. Somehow Viva and I got reminiscing about high school. About our junior prom, specifically, and how much fun we’d had in the back of our limo, sipping vodka miniatures we’d stolen from Viva’s dad’s liquor shelf. When we went back in the house, high and ready for more Scattergories, my mother took one look at Viva and started screaming. She’d been eavesdropping on our prom nostalgia and she remembered that night. She remembered me and my friends getting into the limo together and she connected the dots.
“Oh, Lord, it’s a man!” she shrieked. “Oh, Lord! Oh, Jesus!”
I looked at my brother, who was dating Viva at the time, and we exchanged oh shit glances.
“I should go,” Viva said, looking mortified.
“You don’t have to go,” I told her. “Mom, please chill.”
Slade, disloyal jackass that he is, didn’t say shit.
Before then, our mother had lo
ved Viva. Like the daughter she never had, you might even say. She didn’t recognize Viva from my high school days—she was pretty unrecognizable after her transition, and I’d never brought my friends around my house much, anyway, since I didn’t even want to be there myself—but she always said Viva looked familiar, that she was sure she’d seen her before, she just couldn’t put her finger on where. Our mother had been happy when Slade started dating this smart, considerate girl who brought her homemade arroz con gandules and tembleque. But in that moment on the back porch, things changed. Our mother assumed Viva had tricked Slade while he was minding his normal, non-deviant business. When Slade—after much prompting from me—told her he’d known all along, she pretended to faint and our grandparents, aunts, and uncles—who were watching the whole thing play out over second helpings of stuffing and candied yams—collectively gasped like a live television audience. It was then that I decided to come out to my mother. Like, right then. I figured
it would take some of the heat off Viva;
it would save me the trouble of doing it later and having to endure another fake fainting scene; and
lesbianism would seem ho-hum in comparison.
I was wrong on all counts. As soon as the words “I’m gay” came out of my mouth, my mother started screaming about Viva being the devil come to corrupt her children, and pretended to faint a second time. Viva left, swearing she’d never set foot in my mother’s house again. My mother spent the entire next week in bed, only getting up to go to church, where I assume she prayed for my brother and me at length. When I came home a few months later, for spring break—which I only did because I didn’t have money to go anywhere else—and was holed up in my room, depressed over some white girl I’d fallen for at school, I called Viva. She brought over butterfly shrimp and the first two seasons of Sanford and Son on DVD to cheer me up. She knew my mother might come home any minute and freak out on her. She risked further humiliation for me. Luckily, when my mother did arrive home, she didn’t freak out. She knocked on my closed door and said, “I ordered some buffalo wings for y’all. Those ones Viva likes. I’ll holler when they get here.”