Home and Away

by Candice Montgomery

  “You realize that from where I’m standing, it looks like … if this isn’t prejudice, then what is it?”

  Silence, then Merrick’s voice, booming in a way I wasn’t aware it could—a way that is different from the way he used it with Mamma that day. “Tell me what this is about, Dad!”

  “Everything! So stupid, Merrick. My only son. You were a stupid boy and you’ve been a stupid man.”

  “Great. Thanks, Dad.”

  Merrick walks into the kitchen and Kai and I scramble to get positioned in ways that don’t scream, We listened to all of that, bro.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  In the foyer, I’m shrugging into someone’s coat. It’s not mine, but it’s bigger and would make me look a little homeless if my dress didn’t cost three hundred and fifty dollars before tax.

  Mémé joins Merrick and me there, and she looks sad, the smile on her face not quite bringing the corners of her mouth high enough on her face.

  Merrick glances at me, and I tell him, “I’m going with Kai.”

  “Listen, Tasia, I—”

  “You had my DNA tested?”

  “No—yeah, yes, but I just—”

  “I can’t believe this,” I whisper. “When? When the hell would you have had time to do that?”

  Merrick shoves a hand into his hair. “Those few days before you moved in. I’m sorry, Tasia.”

  I looked it up once. Printed out the information for a sibling test and taped it to Tristan’s door as a joke. Mamma was pissed. Pretty sure Daddy thought it was hilarious but didn’t wanna laugh. Those results could take up to a week. An expedited paternity test could yield results in as little as twelve hours.

  I’m sorry, he says. Jesus. Sorry is such a flimsy fucking word.

  The oversize jacket scritches against itself as I wrap my arms around my middle. “Yeah, well. Sorry you didn’t get the results you wanted.” I say it to hurt him because I can and because I’m the only one here bleeding out on the floor.

  And of course he shakes his head. Says little. And then he mumbles something to his mom that I don’t hear and he takes off.

  She sighs. “Someday, we will manage to do this properly. Until then, it was a pleasure to meet you, my sweet Tasia.”

  I nod. “Nice to meet you, too… .”

  “Mémé. You can say it. You may call me it. If you want.”

  Okay. Here is one of those moments where you apply a thing you’ve learned and prove you haven’t just been sitting on your ass letting life teach you shit but not taking notes. I took notes.

  “I don’t feel comfortable calling you that.” I can’t. Not out loud.

  She looks like I struck her.

  “Not yet,” I add quickly.

  One time, when I was maybe eight or nine, I told Mamma I didn’t like it when she had wine because it made her clothes smell funny—what I would later realize was a result of the tea cigarettes she’d smoke with her drinks—and she looked at me kind of the way Merrick’s mom is now. Like I told her I didn’t like her, who she was inherently.

  I continue, “I just don’t think I’m ready for that sort of thing yet. I want to get to know you and earn the right to call you that. I want us to be close and I want you to teach me to cook French food like you made tonight and about the side of my French history that I didn’t know was there. I think I want to call you that but I can’t. Right now.”

  She nods. “So smart, my Tasia. You can call me Vivienne. Or V. My friends called me this when I was a girl. No one does now, but maybe you could?”

  I nod and I feel the smile stretch my face, push at my cheeks, and pull at my lips.

  “And,” I continue. “Can you tell him …” I nod toward the living room, where the television blares. “Tell him he hurt my feelings. Tell him he was rude, and he hurt me, but I forgive him.”

  “Okay,” she says smiling. “Kai!”

  He appears like magic and I know he listened in. I will give him shit later.

  “Be good, you two. Not too late, Kai, huh?”

  He nods.

  “My sweet Tasia, next time you’ll have to tell me all about running those marathon races, yes? It sounds intriguing.”

  We’re down the sidewalk before I pause.

  I’m literally stopped in my tracks. The football awards, meeting the mayor, the tree planting, the 5K. All clippings from the box.

  Holy hooker.

  My feet carry me back to the house faster than I’d have ever thought possible. I burst through the door and V is yelling at Henri in the most bastardized French—part English, part French, part I-don’t-even-know-what.

  “Tasia,” she says, turning. “Everything okay?”

  “No,” I say. “Nothing.”

  “What? What is wrong?”

  “The box. The box is you.”

  She’s shaking her head. She doesn’t understand. I falter a little, but then she says, “Pardon?”

  And I find I have to keep going. I’m not wrong.

  “You knew about me,” I say. “You’ve known about me since the beginning. For years. You knew I was Merrick’s and you didn’t tell him.”

  “Tasia, cher—”

  “No.” I’m not wrong. The look on her face is enough of an admission. Her expression changes slowly, like the way it feels to try walking while waist deep in a pool of water. Her expression is synonymous with sweet bite, with soft breaking. It’s the way her jaw clenches and flattens her bottom lip out even more.

  V starts toward me. “Listen …”

  “No, you listen. You ruined my life. You lit a match, tossed it at me, and let it all burn. Why would you do that? Why would you send me that box!”

  “I—it was my box. It is. And … you are right. I have known.”

  “Vivienne,” Henri says. And she shushes him, holding her hand up.

  “Please,” she says. “Let me just finish. I didn’t tell my son because he wasn’t ready to know. And clearly your mother did not want him to know. It was not my secret to tell—”

  “But then you sent—”

  “No, listen to me. I did not send it to you. I have kept it all these years and have seldom remembered it exists.”

  Ouch.

  “So … you’re saying you didn’t send it to me. Had no intention to do so? At any point? Ever?”

  “I am sorry, fleur.”

  I shake my head. Turn. Run.

  Run, run, run. When Tristan was four, he fell into the pond at our neighbor’s house. Mamma, Trist, Daddy, and I had been invited there for the Mamaya’s annual Fourth of July barbecue. Mamma spent all morning cooking, like, five different side dishes, the house smelling like hot oil and cayenne, and once finished, she wrapped them more lovingly than any Christmas or birthday present she’d ever given us.

  We were at the party for all of thirty, maybe forty, minutes when Trist ran on his wobbly toddler legs down the dock and veered too far right to course correct.

  I wasn’t far from him, standing on the edge of the grass, right at the dock’s start. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t call for help or scream. I could barely breathe.

  The pond wasn’t deep—not that any of us knew that. But it was, however, too deep for Tristan.

  Mamma screamed when she noticed, giving chaos an actual sound. And Daddy ran in his khakis and loafers and jumped in, no reservations whatsoever, to the sound of Mamma’s, “Get him, get him! The baby! Get the baby, Sol!”

  And Daddy saved him.

  My baby brother nearly drowned, and at six years old, I learned to hate myself for not having done more. Learned to fear myself for not being able to act. That feeling—that frozen, can’t move, can’t breathe, spine-numbing, hate-yourself feeling I had then—it is a mirror of everything I’m feeling now.

  Tristan had nightmares for two weeks after that. He’d wake up screaming, crying, calling out for Daddy, who—in Trist’s nightmare—had drowned. So Tristan slept in Mamma’s bed for those two weeks, because she needed him to. Needed to know her so
n was safe and not at the bottom of a shallow pond.

  And Daddy had slept in my room with me. Because I needed him to. Needed him to save me, too.

  Now I wonder if Kai, waiting for me at the end of the block, seated on the curb, is going to be the one to save me from this. To pull me out of the pond of my inky emotions.

  As we make our way down the street to the Metrolink, Kai says, “The others are already at the stop after our first. We’ll link up.” It’s the first thing he’s said since I came jogging back to him.

  “You all right?”

  I nod.

  “Wanna talk about what happened in there?”

  I shake my head.

  “Well. Good job,” he says. “Telling her what you wanted. And making sure everyone knows Henri is a dickhead.”

  “I never said—”

  “Eh, whatever, close enough. You did good,” he says, and reaches for my hand. I like walking down a public street holding hands with a boy. It’s not like I’ve never done that before. I have. But with Kai, it’s different. Like, maybe he’s letting me keep him. Letting me keep him and his weird eyes and his hideous style and his talent and sexuality and creativity.

  Confused, football-playing Black girl gets to keep something good.

  It’s a nice change.

  But given everything tonight … I don’t know how to enjoy it. How not to have my heart crumbling to pieces like a dry scone.

  I wonder if scones are French.

  Where does any of this leave me? If these are answers, why do I feel like I only have more questions? There’s nothing good about any of what I feel right now.

  “And my eyes,” he says, like he heard me thinking about them a moment ago. “Just so you know, I don’t think they’re a thing that makes me special. I can see fine. They’re nothing but trouble—I mean, as a kid they were just trouble. They made me a target for cliché, schoolyard bullying that never got policed. They made it hard for me to get adopted. They’re not some great, special thing. But I’m okay with who I am, at the very least.”

  “You change your look often,” I tell him. He is not okay with how he looks.

  “I do.” He is not okay with who he is.

  “Okay.”

  On the train, there’s standing room only. Our friends load on at our first stop. Dahlia’s there and it’s weird because we don’t speak. Cole’s there and he only speaks to Kai until I place my hand, selfishly, on the bottom of Kai’s jean vest, which now sits over a gray zip-up.

  Sam and Victory are there. Victory is wearing a simple black gele with orange geometric shapes on it. I love it. I wish I were that bold. I wish I felt that entitled. I wish I could and I know I can’t. I want to ask her to show me how she tied it.

  “Thanks for your help on the Trig bonus sheet,” Sam says.

  I shrug. I didn’t so much help him as take pictures of my own paper and text them to him. “Sure,” I say.

  “You’re done already?” Victory says. I don’t know if she’s talking to me or to Sam, but I answer anyway.

  “Yeah. I could send you what I got?”

  She looks at me so long that I can almost hear the thoughts in her head. She’s considering it. I know she is. She hates that she’s considering it. Only, maybe that doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t say yes or no. Eventually I stop waiting for her answer, knowing she isn’t going to give me one.

  My thoughts drift back to the box. Back to V and Henri and the lies I need to somehow give meaning to. I need to—

  I push that away. The need. Not now. Right now I’m here. I’m with Kai, his chest pressed against my back, arms wrapped around my waist.

  Soon we all fall silent and just listen to the swoosh and lull of the subway running against the tracks.

  A mother holds a baby in her lap.

  A homeless man sleeps with his small three-legged dog in the corner.

  Kai kisses my cheek at every stop the subway makes. I have got six kisses in my pocket so far. We’ve got one more stop and I’m sad the predictability of his kisses will end, so I make it what I want it to be.

  As we coast to a stop, I turn in his arms, push up onto my toes, and kiss him hard. Kai has to reach up high and hold on to a nearby pole to maintain both our balances. Someone takes a picture, posts it to Instagram.

  But before any of that even happens—I can feel it: we are the sort of viral that exists forever.

  Slim texts me as our small circle arrives at the venue.

  miss you, t-dot

  I text her back quickly. I know she won’t appreciate it, but I don’t want to spend all night catching up via text, not while I’m out. miss you too is all she gets.

  When we arrive at the venue, Dahlia goes in because she and Sam are the only ones in our group with fakeys.

  She texts Kai thirty minutes later that we should meet her around the back, and when we figure out where that is, she finally lets us inside and makes a big fuss about us owing her for it.

  “Did the bouncer even card you?” Victory says. “I didn’t see him look at anything but your tits.”

  “Which is a thing I have and none of the rest of you do,” Dahlia says. She’s right—we’re all either A-cups or cis males.

  But Victory just says, “Whatever,” and shoves her way around the circle, drawing an X in black sharpie on each of our wrists to signal we’re cleared to drink. There’s like zero chance that it’s believable because none of us, except maybe Dahlia, look twenty-one, but we make our way to the bar anyway and order drinks. I don’t know what’s in my cup but I drink it down quickly because it’s bitter and gross. We have two more of the same size, the same drink mixture, whatever it is. Kai laughs and kisses me firm and fast after I hold my nose and finish off my third.

  Cole looks hard at us.

  Dahlia looks hard at us.

  I kiss Kai harder to push their looks out of my mind.

  This thing with me and Kai—it seems sudden to them, I know. But not for me. It wasn’t sudden for me. It feels right. Real. Fated, if that’s a word I’m even allowed to use at eighteen.

  “Hey,” he yells in my ear. “Just you and me.” And I pull back and meet his eyes; I don’t know what he’s talking about, until I do. Then it’s all there, laid out in front of me. I nod. I agree.

  Tristan texts me too. we owe the words “assassination” and “bump” to shakespeare. cool right??

  I text him back a thumbs-up emoji. you ok?

  out, I send back.

  And he doesn’t text again. He’s been initiating our texts more and more lately, and I think that’s basically our code for a truce.

  Another band, X Ambassadors, is playing their set first and they’re ridiculously good. Worth the trip alone. Bluesy and soulful and alternative with some rock undertones. They finish right as we shove our way to the front and Kai pulls my back to his front, his height and his unidentifiable cute-boy smell covering me.

  Once Milky Chance comes on, we listen to a few songs before we all sort of branch off. Cole toward the exit to smoke with Sam, Kai and Victory to get us more drinks at the bar. Dahlia links arms with me right in front of the stage and sways a little.

  “I gotta pee! Come with me to the bathroom,” Dahl says. I glance over my shoulder. No one’s come back yet and I don’t want to lose them. I also don’t want to mention my worries to Dahlia, so I don’t, and instead I follow her.

  Once we wait in line for twenty minutes and then go into a handicap stall together, Dahlia says, “Oh my God, it’s so loud out there. You wanna pee first?”

  “I don’t have to.”

  “You should. Go ahead, I’ll turn around.”

  I mumble that it’s not that serious, she doesn’t have to, and I squat and pee.

  Dahlia babbles about nothing and also everything. How much her eyebrow pencil costs, that she’s never been outside of California, how she had sex with a boy from Canoga High, a senior named Peter.

  “He had tattoos,” she says. “I’m a sucker for tattoos.�
��

  I flush and stand and readjust my panties.

  “I think that’s why I was so into Kai,” she says.

  I pause. Maybe I’m drunk. I haven’t ever had enough to drink to make me dumb and clumsy and forgetful. But I trip a little. Not that there’s far to go in the stall—there’s literally only room for half an extra body in here and how this qualifies as “handicap” is beyond me.

  Dahlia takes a seat. Like, right on the seat with no cover. I am a little grossed out and I focus on that for so long that I wonder if I really am drunk off those three terrible drinks I had.

  “Wait,” I say, shaking my head like that’s supposed to clear the cobwebs. That never actually works, by the way. It makes things way, way worse. “Kai has tattoos?”

  “Just one, but it’s intricate, so it counts. Haven’t you ever seen him barefoot?”

  I nod. Have I? “I don’t know. What did I drink?”

  She shrugs. “It’s on his foot. You haven’t seen his foot?” She laughs and I’m so mad at her for laughing. I clam up, thinking that somehow this—my silence—will serve as some kind of punishment for her. I hate it—this feeling is stupid and ridiculous. “What kind of sex have you guys even been having? Fully clothed, huh? That could be hot. I guess.”

  I can’t hold my tongue anymore. “Shit,” I say, but it definitely wasn’t the word I wanted to let out. I meant to think it. I want Kai. “Are you done?”

  “You’re so cute. We haven’t even had that much to drink, Tasia.”

  I shake my head. Am I drunk? “Can we find Kai?”

  “Jesus, you guys are attached at the hip. Always together, or always talking about each other. Here’s a hint. People hate that. It is annoying.”

  I walk out and leave her in the bathroom, and she laughs as the water runs and she washes her hands and I don’t look back because if I do, I’ll get frustrated that I didn’t wash my hands.

  I don’t go back toward the stage. I walk outside. If I can find Sam and Cole. Or just Sam, maybe. Then it’ll be fine. I just need someone who’s on my side.

  God, I wish my mamma was here. Or not here, but around. I wish I was around her. I can’t find Sam and I can’t find Cole and I’m so angry. I sit down on the curb and hang my head. A strange guy, some redhead with a beer belly, gives me a bottle of water, but I can’t twist the cap off.