“I don’t know,” and then Nichole Turner whispers it again. “I don’t know. I wish I were seeing things sometimes. I tell myself I am. But I know my daughter. I know there’s a look she gets in her eyes . . . and I know it scares me sometimes.”
Control.
Even though that surprised me. Even though that wasn’t enough, it was too much. That was more than tug-of-war.
There’s silence between her and Brianne Whitman, but my mother can’t wait it out.
“You don’t believe me,” she says, and it doesn’t sound like she’s surprised.
“I,” Brianne starts to answer, and then takes a thoughtful moment. As though to demonstrate to my mother what she should have done. “I haven’t raised any white daughters. But, Nichole, something tells me, if I had, and I could say the same about them? No one would raise any alarms.”
The curling cloud stops flowing out of the bedroom. It pauses abruptly and then it rewinds; it pulls back the other way and goes back inside Cherish’s room.
“I’m not saying you aren’t worried about your daughter,” Brianne continues. “I’m not even saying you don’t have cause; look at everything you three are going through right now.” I’m not in the room, but I know that Cherish’s mom has laid her hand over my mother’s. “All I’m saying is, Black girls don’t get to be difficult without people accusing them of something far worse. I’m not preaching at you, Nicki, I know you already know this. But even if she is. So what? I say . . . let her be.”
It takes everything in me not to laugh out loud.
This family is exquisite. Every imperfection more perfect than the last.
I want to show myself now. I want to press the doors open and let both women know I’ve heard them, to see whether there’s the appropriate amount of shame on my mother’s face. Whether her dimple infantilizes her attempt at an unrepentant expression and makes it clear that Brianne Whitman has just eviscerated her attempt to slander me. Brianne, who has made her identity protecting and mothering a little Black girl, so that she cannot fathom what my mother is describing or that it does not have something to do with Brianne Whitman’s hard-won expertise.
I don’t walk inside the bedroom, and I don’t walk away.
I am two of me. I’m shivering with the euphoria of knowing that Brianne Whitman cannot see me, and I am still because I know. Nothing will mitigate my mother’s betrayal.
There’s silence, but it’s too complete. There should be the dull echo of footsteps elsewhere in the house, the dim and distant sound of quiet conversation and instructions between the staff. I should be able to hear Brianne and my mother adjusting on the bed, or Cherish’s breathing. The fact that I hear nothing means I haven’t just disappeared Cherish; I’ve muted the world. I am alone with my mother’s failed confession, and I’m deciding what must be done.
The answer never changes.
Control.
Cherish’s breath returns first. Even across the expanse of the open doors, I hear the air flow in and out of her, as I have so many times before. She is visible again, and when my gaze slides to her throat, I fix it there until I am so attentive to the soft brown skin at her neck that I can faintly make out the beating of her heart. I believe that I can see her pulse beneath her skin. It ticks, like the trembling hand of an alarm clock. It is skittish, not steady. Uncertain instead of strong.
Cherish draws my eyes to hers, and instead of confusion, or perception, or inquisitiveness over the way I’ve been studying her, her gaze offers me a familiar vacancy. The void that only I have identified. I have given it a name, and still she doesn’t understand. I’ve told her in so many words—in three, to be exact—that she is adored to the point of coddling to the point of infantilization to the point of arrested development. The Whitmans set out to change the world for her, but they have loved her to the point of transformation instead. She couldn’t see or understand the world no matter how close it stands.
It is remarkable. A feat, on a child that looks like her. A triumph, though they don’t even know it.
Because Cherish is still who she is. She’s white girl spoiled, but she isn’t white—which is why I can fill that void. It’s why she doesn’t just let me—she wants me to. She wants me close, and no failed confession will change that.
She is perfect, and she is mine.
I’ve forgotten there was anything else my mother came to say until Brianne Whitman speaks again. “You don’t have to be the one to tell her,” she says, and though her voice is gentle, it’s also slightly charged. Maybe she’s implying that my mother disparaged me as an excuse to avoid whatever news she doesn’t want to deliver, but that is far too merciful.
“I can’t make Ben do it,” my mother answers, and I’m pleased to hear her so deflated. Her voice sounds weak, like one of her lungs has collapsed. “He’s just doing what he thinks is best. It has to come from me; otherwise . . .”
I’m sure my mother shakes her head, pretends to be careful or discreet, though the damage has already been attempted.
“Farrah won’t accept it unless it comes from me,” she says conclusively.
“What makes you say that?” Brianne asks, because she has not heard a word.
I wish I could see my mother’s face, to see what expression conveys that she has resigned herself to being the only one who knows the truth.
“I don’t want this getting framed as something he’s doing to us,” she says, but I know it isn’t in reply. She’s pivoting to a conversation Brianne can understand. “No one could have foreseen these past eighteen months, least of all him.”
“And it isn’t your fault, Nichole.”
My mother lets out a heavy breath. “I don’t know. I’m the one who got laid off.”
That part, I knew.
“I was the one who spent six months trying to replace that position rather than take a pay cut.”
That part, I didn’t.
“Which was totally understandable,” Brianne insists. “You and I have talked about it. Nobody wants to go backward, Nichole.”
“Yes, but, Bri. Our situation isn’t like yours.”
For a moment, I think she’s going to mention the Whitman trust. For a moment, I think the woman who just tried to unmask me is going to show her dear friend that like mother, like daughter.
I want her mask to slip. I want her to unhesitatingly tell Brianne Whitman a simple truth, and see if she doesn’t sound as difficult as she accused me of being.
Because my parents didn’t inherit a family home, which they then sold to Mr. Whitman’s younger brother before buying the one they really wanted. That is Jerry and Brianne’s story.