I furrowed my brow. What an odd thing to say.
She shook her head. “Here you go.” She placed the book in my hand. I took it and we rounded the corner. Out of habit, I glanced up at the security mirrors placed in corners and under the stairs so you wouldn’t run into someone coming around the corner.
My eyes widened. Impossible. I dropped the book.
Though I was there, clear as a sunny Mainville day, she was not.
She glanced at me, taking in the confusion warping my face, then quickly moved out of the mirror’s view. “I should get going.” She stumbled backward.
“Wait,” I said. I grabbed the book from the floor.
When I turned around, she was gone. Vanished. As if she’d never existed.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
When I got back home, it was dinnertime. Mama was in the living room, sitting at her desk behind the couch, and Daddy was in the kitchen humming to himself.
“Could you quiet down in there?” Mama demanded. “These bills aren’t gonna pay themselves.”
I cleared my throat to announce my presence. Daddy gave me a small smile, but the light didn’t reach his eyes. It hadn’t in a long time. Not since we left Chicago, and his friends and job there. Not since we moved here—for me.
Mama said he’d find a job. Hadn’t taken her long—she was a doctor. He had started at his old company right after college and quickly worked his way up to the senior staff position he held when we left. He never said so, but I knew he missed it.
I adjusted my jacket, fumbling with the zipper. The guilt gnawed at me. I took a deep breath to calm myself. It’s not your fault. But it was. It was my fault my friends stopped talking to me. My fault Mama became so worried about me and moved us here. It was—
“What grand adventure did we have today?” Dad interrupted my thoughts, grounding me back in the now.
I half rolled my eyes. “I’m seventeen, not five, Dad.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t still have grand adventures.”
“Never mind grand adventures,” Mama said. “She needs to be thinking about college. Did you consider that internship Shayla mentioned?”
Her best friend in Chicago had offered to let me shadow her for the summer at the law firm where she’d recently made partner. Shayla was the first Black woman there to do so. I guess they both thought I could be another.
“No, ma’am,” I said finally.
“Well, you can’t just sit around here all summer. Dr. Freeman said you need structure, and I think that—”
“Samantha,” Daddy interrupted, “she just got in the door. Can she remove her shoes? Take off her jacket? She’s your daughter, not one of your patients.”
Mama flinched.
That was my cue. “What’s cooking here?” I asked too cheerily. “The food smells great.” I placed my bag, stuffed with all the books I’d checked out, on the floor.
“Welcome to Chez Dad.” He made a grand gesture toward the pot of chili. Mama laughed. Another argument averted.
Mama made the table, setting out plates, and Daddy served the chili in big scoops. “So what are you reading now, Ayanna?” Mama nudged the books on the floor with her foot.
“Oh, nothing,” I said quickly.
She’s trying, said a voice in my head. So I took a deep breath. “Uhh, just Interview with the Vampire and the next books in the Sookie Stackhouse series. The hold came in for them.”
“Sookie Stackhouse? Is that the one about the werewolves?”
I shook my head. “Well, there are werewolves—there are a lot of creatures actually—but it focuses on this waitress who’s telepathic and falls in love with a vampire, and the hot mess that ensues.” I explained the series to her between bites of chili. “The series wrapped up a while ago, but I’m just now getting into it. I’m also rereading some favorites, so I have those books, too. I’m thinking about reading Salem’s Lot—” I stopped as I caught Mama’s frown. “What?” I said, already dreading her answer.
“Have you considered calling any of the other girls in your class?” Mama wrung her hands. “I met a girl named Veronica who was visiting her grandmother at the nursing home today. She seems nice; maybe you can invite her over sometime and—”
I cut her off. “I’m fine, Mom.” It always came back to this. Me needing to make friends, as if I hadn’t tried.
Crease lines settled on her brow. The room grew silent save for the scraping of our spoons against the bowls.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Mama likes to say that we moved here to be closer to her mother. Mama grew up in this town, and my grandmother had been living alone since my grandfather died two years ago.
Truth is, Grandma didn’t need us around. Mama didn’t start to worry about her “being alone out here” until my friends stopped talking to me, until I quit sports and spent more time in my room with books than I did with “people my age.”
Grandma had her own life here. A social calendar so full we barely saw her. As for me, my classmates had their groups, their cliques formed since pre-K. Books became my lifeblood.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“Thanks,” I said, gobbling down the rest of my meal. When I finished, I took my bowl to the sink and washed it off, then grabbed the book bag. “I’m going to go read.”
Daddy placed his hand on Mama’s. She quickly removed it. The facade was starting to crack again.
“Don’t stay up too late,” she said.
But I was already up the stairs to my sanctuary.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
My therapist, Dr. Freeman, once told me that some people are just sadder than others. That some of us are naturally sensitive. More in tune with our feelings, our emotions. That it’s okay. Normal.
But try telling that to middle-class Black parents who were one generation away from segregation. One heartbeat, one connected thread to sharecropping and slavery. Who gave up so much so their kids could have more.
Try harder.
Stay busy.
Be strong.
To them, whose parents broke their backs to put food on the table, who remembered moments of having no food in the fridge, nothing “in your head” was hard to overcome.
That was always their advice.
And it worked for a while. I joined sports team after sports team. I studied hard to be at the top of my class. I even made friends, but I never quite fit in. I was always the black sheep of my friend group, just as I was in my family.