by Mia Mckenzie
Usually, I’m traveling when my birthday rolls around, without actual friends to throw me a party or even just buy me drinks. Today, I’m right here in Philly, where I’ve been for almost two months now, and there are people in my life who know it’s my birthday. Thus, there is a candle in my pancakes.
“You shouldn’t have,” I say to Viva across the table.
“You only turn thirty-nine once,” she replies.
“You only turn every age once.”
“You know what I mean. It’s the last year of your thirties. Es importante.”
“Why?”
She frowns. “Girl, just blow out the candle.”
I blow.
“Are you excited about your party tonight?” Viva asks me.
“You might want to lower your expectations,” I tell her. “Three women and a twelve-year-old isn’t really a party.”
“So, you’re not excited, then?”
I sigh. It’s an unintentionally long sigh.
Viva squints at me. “Why do you sound like you’re going to the electric chair and not to a birthday dinner with your loved ones?”
I chuckle. And shrug.
I invited Viva to Faye’s for birthday festivities because she’s my closest friend and that is the kind of thing you do. But I haven’t told Viva that Faye and Nick broke up. In fact, we haven’t talked about Faye since Viva accused me of being in love with her. I don’t want to tell her she’s right, and that I’m too damaged to do anything about it, even though I’m pretty sure Faye is in love with me, too, or, at least, that she like likes me. The idea of dinner with the two of them makes me a little anxious.
I spend most of the day working in the courtyard. There’s still a ton to get done for the Bali-Sydney trip, which is now in five weeks. I get distracted a few times, thinking about Faye. About her breasts. The smell of her hair when I cried on her shoulder. And the heat of her body when she’s close to me. When I can’t take it anymore, I run up to my room to rub one out and then get back to work. A little before seven, Viva and I walk the six blocks to Faye’s house.
It’s been a week since Vicky knocked over the bookcase. As penance, she was confined to the house and backyard for the whole week, allowed to leave only to go to school. We’ve only chatted a couple of times, via landline. The first call, Vicky was mostly quiet, perking up only when complaining about what a raging bitch Faye is. By the second call, a couple of days ago, she was her normal, chatty self, like the whole fight never happened. Now, with her grounding completed, she bounces up to me and Viva as we enter the house, looking excited to see us. “Happy birthday!” she says, throwing her arms around me.
“Thanks, kid.”
Viva and Faye have met but they’ve never spent time together. Still, like most Black women from Philly, even those meeting for the first time, they hug like homies. Nick was right. Philadelphians really are friendly people.
“I love your house,” Viva tells Faye. “It’s so pretty and warm. I sense good energy.”
Faye thanks her. “I’m really glad you’re here,” she says.
Birthday dinner is hot sausages, sweet potatoes, onions, peppers, and corn on the grill. We eat together with the fading sun on our shoulders. Faye asks me what my goals are for my fortieth year on earth.
“I’ll just be glad if everything doesn’t fall apart.”
She smiles. Whatever worries I had about things being weird between her and me disappear. She’s the same as always: warm, curious, open. It’s almost as if that whole awkward I’m glad we’re friends moment never happened. So much so that I start to think maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe she wasn’t about to kiss me; maybe I just made the whole thing up in my head. Which is fine. Really.
“Viva,” Faye says. “Tell us what Skye was like in high school.”
“Ooh, yeah, tell us!” Vicky says.
“She was a goofball,” Viva replies. “She was always making us laugh. When she wasn’t being moody. Emocional. Like most poetisas. She used to like to read Lucille Clifton out loud to us and cry.”
“Really?” Faye asks, interested.
“Don’t let the walls she’s built up fool you. She’s a real crier underneath all that.”
“Oh my God, Veev.”
“You are,” she says. “Remember how mad you used to get when Tasha and I didn’t cry, too?” Then, to Faye, “She told us we didn’t have the souls of poets. She called us barbarians.”
They share a laugh at that. I shake my head at Viva, but I feel happy. I think about Tasha. I wonder if we’ll ever be friends again, if we’ll ever be close the way Viva and I are.
Faye asks Viva what her major was at CAPA. Viva tells her it was dance and we reminisce about our junior year collab, when I wrote a poem about our enslaved ancestors breaking their chains and read it aloud while Viva performed a dance she choreographed for it.
“That sounds so cool,” Vicky says.
“It was probably very corny,” I reply.
“Sí,” Viva agrees, putting her arm around my shoulders. “But we had a good time.”
Viva brought a bomba y plena mix and we listen to it, dancing in our chairs while we eat, until we can’t stay seated anymore and the music pulls us onto our feet. We dance and eat and dance and eat, talking and laughing until moonlight and streetlight replace sunlight on our shoulders.
“Can we eat cake now?” Vicky asks. “I have to go soon.”
“Vicky,” Faye says, giving her an annoyed look.
“Wait, where are you going?” I ask.
“Jaz’s. It’s her birthday, too, remember? She’s having a sleepover.” Then, to Faye, “What? Everybody knows there’s cake on their birthday. It’s not a surprise.”
“I did suspect there would be cake,” I say in Vicky’s defense.
“Fine. I’ll get the cake.”
The cake is all chocolate everything, with candles shaped like a three and a nine. Faye starts to sing that Stevie Wonder “Happy Birthday to Ya” song and Vicky and Viva quickly join in.
When the kid leaves for Jaz’s, Viva says, “I have to go, too. I have guests checking in late this evening.”
“I’ll walk back with you.”
“You will not,” she says. She gives Faye and me each a kiss on the cheek, Puerto Rican style, and bounces.
When it’s just us, Faye says, “I’d offer you a drink, but I’m out of bourbon.”
“No worries.”
“Let’s go out?”
I’m already full of cake and sausages, but a little bourbon to end the evening doesn’t sound bad.
Faye changes out of shorts and flip-flops into something more bar-friendly—black sweater, white denim capris, and strappy white sandals.
“You look nice.” She looks incredible.
The Swank is only a few blocks away but Faye wants to take me to a new jawn she went to with Angie last week. She thinks I’ll like it because they have a hundred different bourbons and they do flights. It’s in Cedar Park, on Baltimore Ave, which is pretty much gentrification station at this point. “But it’s Black-owned,” she says. “So, we’re good.”
The spot, which opened just a few weeks ago, is called Tender and it’s already busy when we arrive. There’s a jazzy band playing on a small stage. I see two seats opening up at the bar and I head for them but then Faye takes my hand and leads me to a table.
“This is reserved.” I point to the card in the middle of the table.
“It’s reserved for us,” Faye says.
I’m impressed that she called ahead but before I can say so, a server appears at my side with bourbon flights for me and a Belgian beer for Faye.
“I’m starting to think this wasn’t really spur of the moment.”
She smiles. “I’m not sure I’m a spur-of-the-moment person. But, even if I was, I’d still
have a hard time playing it by ear on your thirty-ninth birthday. It’s a big deal.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I assure her. “On the other hand, I don’t mind reserved tables and speedy drinks. So, cheers to you.” I raise a tumbler of bourbon in her honor.
“To you,” Faye corrects me, clinking her beer against my glass, “on your birthday.”
We drink.
The jazzy band ends its set and is followed by the rail-thin singer from Floetic, who belts out a rendition of “A Song for You” that rivals Donny Hathaway’s. When I look over at Faye, she’s teary. “Cynthia loved this song,” she says. “She used to sing it to Vicky when she was a baby.”
I take her hand and squeeze it.
She looks at me. “I didn’t tell you this before, but raising Vicky was my idea. I convinced Cynthia to let me do it. I thought if I could take care of my niece, it would make up for not taking care of her mother.”
I let out a long breath. “That is a lot of pressure to put on yourself, Faye.”
“And that’s not even the half of it,” she says. “When you first started spending time with Vicky, I felt like I was betraying Cynthia. It’s been so hard to figure out how to let you into our family without feeling like I’m being a bad sister again.”
“I know Cynthia didn’t want anybody to know about the eggs. But do you really think she wouldn’t want me here, in Vicky’s life, now that she’s gone?”
Faye shakes her head. “It’s not just Vicky’s life you’re in. You’re in my life, too. You’re at our house almost every day. You cook with us and eat with us. You’re part of our family.”
When she says this, that I’m part of their family, I get that weird feeling of happiness again.
“And you think Cynthia wouldn’t like that?” I ask.
“Maybe she would,” Faye says. “Or maybe she would feel like she was being replaced. I don’t know. I’ll never know.”
This is when I realize that it was never Nick between us. It was Cynthia all along.
“So, what?” I ask her. “You’re just going to feel guilty forever?”
She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I’m not.”
We stop talking and listen to the rest of the song. I imagine Cynthia singing to baby Vicky. It’s a nice thing to imagine.
When the singer leaves the stage, a chubby brother in a porkpie hat and sagged jeans starts a jazz-hip-hop-fusion number.
“Bathroom,” Faye says. “Back in a minute.”
Porkpie has finished a couple of jazzy raps, but Faye is still not back. Another dude takes the stage. “How y’all doing tonight?” he asks the crowd. He looks familiar. But he has a shiny, bald head and graying goatee, like eleventy-thousand other Black dudes his age, so I can’t place him. “I’m T. Winston Turner,” he says. “Y’all can call me Win. I own this place. I want to thank y’all for coming out tonight and introduce a very, very special guest performer. I first met this dope sister back in ninety-four when ‘Rock This Jawn’ dropped.”
There’s whooping from the crowd.
I’m like: WAIT.
T. Winston Turner smiles, nods his head. “Yeah, I know y’all remember ‘Rock This Jawn.’ ”
I stand up. I don’t know why, I just can’t stay in my seat. Because WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?
“She doesn’t rap anymore,” says T. Winston Turner. “But it’s a special occasion. So, y’all give it up old-school style for MC Faye Malice.”
I can’t tell you whether or not the crowd gives it up old-school style, or even exactly what that means, because the moment Faye takes the stage, everything that exists in the universe that isn’t Faye disappears.
She’s taken off her sweater, so she’s all in white now, and her hair, unpinned, falls in a thick, woolly cascade against her shoulders. There’s an energy radiating from her that I have never seen, something more than her usual in-control-ness, something way past confidence. It’s swagger. There’s fire and hubris in her dark eyes as they find me in the crowd.
A drumbeat starts. It’s instantly familiar, a whole memory in a few pulses of sound. For a few seconds, I’m fourteen again, on the stoop with Tasha, connected and happy. Then MC Faye Malice starts to rhyme.
Yo, I’m West Philly born
’Bout to rock this jawn
Get close, lend me your ear
So I can put you on
It’s not a party ’til I get here
Party’s over when I’m gone
So, yo, get you a drink
We gon’ be here ’til dawn
And it’s perfect. Her raspy voice. Her body language, all tough lady rapper, her shoulders and hands moving in rhythm with every verse, every beat.
It’s Faye, the illest rapper in the two-one-five
These niggas wanna sweat me cuz I’m fly and I’m live
But you ain’t got the gravitas for a girl like me
I need somebody who reads
Not somebody who just smokes weed
I’m talking Baldwin, I’m talking Brooks
Show me your Hansberry plays
And your bell hooks books
The crowd roars so loudly that I remember there is a crowd, and for a moment, their presence pushes in, and I can see people jumping up and down and waving their hands in rhythm with Faye, and I can hear them rapping along, loud and so happy, and I know this is a memory we share, we who came of age in Philly circa 1994, and for the first time in a very long time, I’m glad I’m from here.
MC Faye Malice absolutely brings down the house and when the song ends, Faye’s eyes find mine and she grins at me and says, “Happy Birthday, Skye.” It’s barely audible over the din of the cheering crowd, but that’s okay because it’s all mine.
When she comes offstage—a little bit breathless, her skin glistening with sweat, her eyes twinkling—several people lean in to tell her how much they love that song, how it took them back, how good she looks after all these years, how she’s still got it. She’s smiling, confident and gracious. And then she’s standing there in front of me, reaching for my hands, saying “happy birthday” again.
And I don’t know. I just can’t stop myself.
“I’m in love with you.”
I say the words just as some annoying dude with terrible timing taps Faye on the shoulder and she turns to said dude as he begins to loudly explain that, while Rock This Jawn was his shit, his favorite album was actually All the Way Faye, which
he’s wrong; All the Way Faye was ill but still second-best;
nobody cares what he thinks, and by that I mean I don’t care; and
THIS IS NOT THE MOTHERFUCKING TIME.
But now Faye is distracted, thanking Captain Interruption Pants for his unsolicited opinion, affable and oozing charm, and I’m standing there with my metaphorical dick in my hand.
When this annoying dude finally goes away, Faye turns back to me.
“What did you say?” she asks me loudly, over the crowd and also the drummer who’s beginning a set.
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
She takes my hand and leads me away from the table, past the bar, to a door marked Private. The large man standing next to it moves aside without a word. Faye opens the door and leads me through it, up some stairs, then up some more stairs, and then through another door. We come out on the roof of the building.
The night is warm and very humid and the smell of rain hangs heavy and thick in the air. We stand at the edge of the roof. To the east of us, the Philly skyline winks and sparkles.
“This is nice,” I say.
Faye takes a step closer to me. “What did you say?”
“I said ‘this is nice.’ ”
She shakes her head. “Before. Downstairs.”
I can t
ell by the way she’s looking at me that she already knows.
“I said I’m in love with you.”
She nods, a little smile spreading across her face. “That’s what I thought you said.”
“Are you in love with me?”
She gives me a look, like, Really? “I just got onstage in front of two hundred people and risked potentially humiliating myself, which I said I would not do, all for you on your birthday.”
“Okay. Say it, though. So I’m sure.”
She moves closer to me than she has ever been, pressing her body against mine, slipping her arms around my waist. “I’m in love with you,” she says in her little-bit-raspy voice. And she kisses me. Her mouth is warm and tastes of beer with a hint of peppermint. Her breath is glorious. After we’ve been kissing for a minute, she says, “Do you want to take me to your room?”
“Yes.”
She grabs my hand and starts leading me back to the door. This is when I remember there’s something I have to tell her.
“Faye. Hold on.”
She stops, turns to look at me.
“Nick was cheating on you.”
For a second, I’m not sure she’s comprehended what I’ve said. She stands there blinking at me. Then she’s like: “What are you talking about? How do you know that?”
“I met him at a bar. Before I met you. We were drinking and some things happened. Not sex, but things an engaged-to-be-married person shouldn’t be doing with a strange woman. When I confronted him later, after I knew he was your fiancé, it sounded like it was a regular thing for him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” she asks.
I don’t want to say. Because the answer, the honest answer, makes me look like a selfish asshole. But I know I have to. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think I could handle you being single. Which is very weird. And very selfish. And I’m sorry.”