I genuinely want her to show herself, even though Cherish is listening, too. My lip is sweating again, and so are the palms of my hands, and abruptly the clenching returns so that any minute I might have to run to the toilet. I stay where I am because my mother is more than a boardroom beast; she can be merciless. I know that, even if I’ve only ever seen it glint in her eye. I know that even though she’s refused to let it show. I always thought she was holding it back to teach me how, but that was before she started criticizing the glint in mine.
Brianne didn’t understand her disparaging me, so maybe my mother will show herself now. Maybe all it took was Mrs. Whitman speaking on a subject that she couldn’t possibly know from experience. She’s raising a Black daughter, but she’s never been a Black woman. There’s no class for that. She’s echoing my mother’s very personally experienced concerns, but when Brianne Whitman talks about unequal pay, she means between herself and white men; I doubt she’s ever seen the salary disparities that favor her. She has no idea what it costs for women like my mother to lean in.
Control.
If my mother unmasks right now, I will trust her again.
I will forgive without reservation.
All my mother has to do is tell Brianne LePage Whitman a truth. That her family’s stability is not the result of good financial planning and choices. That one catastrophe can cost some people everything, while others have more safety nets than they could’ve possibly earned.
It’s something I hadn’t known until my parents’ finances flatlined, so why should Brianne be assumed any wiser?
I want my mother to uncoil herself. But she doesn’t say any of that.
“Neither of us can afford our life without the other,” she says instead, and whatever I was looking at, I look away. “I knew that. I knew the strain I was putting on Ben, to take that risk.”
“But you were right when you said Black women are overqualified and underpaid, Nichole. Of course you didn’t want to lose ground.”
And the queasy churning immediately calms. Because my mother is always smarter than I give her credit for.
Of course she chose those exact words to elicit that exact response.
Of course the point was getting Brianne Whitman to remind herself that my mother lives with a double bind.
If only she’d paired it with honest contrition for her attack on me.
“No, I didn’t want to lose ground,” Mom repeats through a sigh. “But the gamble didn’t pay off. Which I’d stupidly convinced myself wasn’t an option. And now we’re here.”
“So, what? He’s going to force you to change everything? Move out of state, pull Farrah out of the academy, separate the girls, and—”
“No one wants that.”
Cherish and I lock eyes, and then we take turns closing them in relief.
“But,” my mom goes on, “if that’s what it takes to get on our feet again, how can I refuse?”
It’s quiet inside the bedroom for a minute. Cherish is gaping at me, wanting me to give her some sign that I heard it, too, but I can’t.
It isn’t just that my parents think I’ll accept being separated from Cherish. It isn’t just that they’re telling someone else before they told me.
They lied.
On top of everything, my parents have been lying to me.
My father isn’t working overtime in a last-ditch effort to get our house back. He’s looking for work somewhere else. No, he’s found it. Which means he’s already given up on the life they promised me they were going to save; they both have.
“Nicki, I know it’s cliché, but you’re the strong one,” Brianne begins.
“I know,” my mother snaps, too familiar with that particular brand of encouragement to accept it with good humor. “Which is why it’s important that I side with him. Farrah has to know we’re united on this.”
The heels of my hands suddenly hurt and I unclench my fists to find deep red imprints where my fingernails were digging in. A little more pressure and I could have broken the skin. Because my mother has always chosen my father over me.
Control, I tell myself and force my fingers straight.
“You don’t have to decide today, right this minute,” Cherish’s mom is saying, because Brianne Whitman doesn’t know when she’s lost. “There’s no reason you have to tell Farrah until he gets an official job-offer letter—”
“He did,” Mom says, and it’s quiet again for a moment.
Outside the door, Cherish’s eyes snap back to mine, but I’m unmoved. She’s surprised because she doesn’t always know how to put the pieces together. Cherish doubts the proven, even when I try to warn her. She says things like, “Not everyone is out to get you, Farrah,” because her parents lovingly debilitated her.
She really is a masterpiece.
“I’m not supposed to tell anyone until he gets back,” my mother says, “and we have a chance to sit Farrah down together . . . but it’s already done.”
“I didn’t realize,” is all Brianne Whitman replies.
“I should find Farrah,” Mom says, and then there’s a shuffling sound. “Have you seen my phone?”
“Oh. I think I was sitting on it, I’m sorry.”
Amid more sounds of movement and rearranging, I hustle back down the stairs with Cherish right behind me, just in case my mother’s about to respond to my text.
When my phone vibrates, I’ve just pulled the front door closed behind Cherish and me, and my mother’s calling.
“RahRah? Are you gonna answer it?”
I look down at my phone, and the picture of my mom glancing back at me over her shoulder. I took this picture while she was standing in what used to be our massive kitchen watching my dad cook, her nightly glass of rosé in hand.
“RahRah?”
I reject the call.
I pull Cherish away from the house and toward the perpendicular three-car garage, all of whose doors are open, as though for display. “Pick a car, any car.”
IV
Less than a five-minute drive from the Whitmans’ sprawling Greek Renaissance homestead is the cul-de-sac where I learned to ride a bike.
I don’t know why that’s the first memory that comes to mind. It’s something a parent would say. If Jerry Whitman were telling a heartwarming story about the house at the end of the street, nestled in the curve, it’s something he would include. It’s a brief detail that would convey exactly what this place means to me.