“Che, can you come here, honey?” Mr. Whitman beckons her from my side, and a few of their guests clap like she’s receiving an award.
“As you all know, this is our baby girl, our universe, our shared heartbeat, Cherish.” Mrs. Whitman is already dabbing at her eyes, but she’ll keep it together. Brianne LePage Whitman has never flubbed a speech or an auction yet.
“You surprise me, every year,” Brianne’s saying directly to Cherish now, and when I see them standing together, they just look like a family.
Mr. Whitman’s the kind of fit dad whose abs you can make out through his polo, and he doesn’t even have the decency to be graying or thinning yet, which my dad says is like hitting the white-guy lottery because it’s hard for them to look corporate professional with a shaved head. What’s worse, Jerry doesn’t seem obsessively conscious of his full head of hair, rarely reaching up to flaunt or confirm its thickness. He never looks like he has a worry in the world, especially not right this minute, while he smiles down at his daughter and lovingly tugs on one of her braids.
“I know people hate us,” Brianne jests to gentle resistance from her audience, while Cherish’s attention volleys between her parents. “But we say it because it’s true. You have never given us a day’s worry or trouble.”
This is where someone could’ve quipped that Cherish never gave her a contraction or stretch mark, either. It’d be shocking, but only because the Whitmans do not keep tasteless company. As adoptions go, transracial ones leave pretty few doubts, on sight. But the Whitmans don’t casually talk adoption, which I’ve come to appreciate. Cherish is their daughter; they’ve made sure of that.
“You’re brilliant, and beautiful.” And then Brianne looks at me for longer than her trademark engaging-the-audience glance. “And an amazing judge of character. Farrah, honey, you come over here, too!”
“Crap,” I mutter through a smile when, as expected, all eyes descend on me. If I were more myself, I would’ve seen this coming. I would have decided ahead of time which way I wanted to play it, and why. Without forethought, I’m forced to settle for the most remedial and cliché response.
I gingerly make my way across the expanse of lush green, not letting my eyes land on any particular partygoer for too long. The key is letting my smile fluctuate as though I’m trying to convince myself I shouldn’t be self-conscious. I do know a few of them. My hair stylist and my pediatrician are here, the former because I referred her to Cherish, and the latter because Mr. and Mrs. Whitman convinced my parents it was a big deal for me to have a Black doctor, given what Black girls and women face with the healthcare industry. Cherish’s pediatrician became mine, too; same with her orthodontist in eighth grade. Brianne said raising a well-adjusted and protected Black girl takes intentionality, and she and my mom were pretty close friends after that.
When the walk to the Whitmans genuinely begins to feel longer than it should, I realize I do actually feel exposed. It isn’t part of the act. I’m not myself. I’m not in control, which was proved upstairs with Cherish, even if it was only a small break. And even though it’s my parents’ fault, it’s made worse by the fact that they aren’t even here. Out of a queasy stomach, a hot bolt of anger flashes up my spine because I really wanted them to be.
They were supposed to be here for this. They were supposed to be here so that, at the very least, I wouldn’t look orphaned. They were supposed to be here so that I would not be facing the side glances and too-gentle smiles on my own.
Polite society is a misnomer.
In this community, there’ll be no rounding a corner to find someone heatedly exchanging details of the Turner family’s foreclosure—but that’s because everyone already knows.
My parents are supposed to be here so it doesn’t look like they’re trying to save face. Especially when I don’t get to. But they aren’t here, and I get no reassuring squeeze from my mother, no forehead kiss from my dad. I ball my hands into tight fists at my sides, but it’s not for comfort. It’s for control.
It’s because I am tired of feeling betrayed, and it’s getting harder to keep my mask in place.
Finally, I reach Brianne Whitman, and when I tuck into her extended arm, she pulls me into her side the way she clearly wanted to upstairs. And I do feel better.
“For those of you who don’t know, this is Farrah Turner, and she and Cherish have been best girlfriends—sisters!—basically since the day they met. What was that, fourth grade?”
“Third,” Jerry corrects her without even consulting us, but he’s right, and Cherish and I both laugh. “But fourth grade is when it happened.”
“Oh my gosh,” I say, and put my face in my hands, to everyone’s amusement.
“Dad,” Cherish whines.
“Oh, you have to tell it. Is it okay if he tells it, girls? It’s so precious!” Brianne gives the microphone to her husband, putting her other arm around me and lacing her fingers together at my hip before she starts the unconscious mom-sway. I let my head drop against her shoulder, face still in my hands, but fingers splayed so I can see Mr. Whitman getting ready to tell the family’s favorite story of Cherish and me.
“Hi, all, I’m Jerry Whitman,” he begins, and his friends laugh. “Better known as Cherish Whitman’s dad, you know how it is.” He’s a natural, just like his wife, but he makes you feel like he hadn’t planned to tell you anything, and now he’s just charmingly rambling in a way that makes perfect sense. “That started at church when Cherish was about four years old. People stopped greeting me and just spoke to the adorable little girl in my arms, which, I mean, I couldn’t blame them. She had these huge eyes.” He stops, like he just realized his daughter’s right there and he can look into the eyes he’s describing. “She still does.”
Cherish does what she always does under the warmth of her parents’ adoration; she glows. Her dimple is at maximum deepness, and her hair moves like a cloud over her shoulder when she dips her head.
“Anyway.” The mic rests against his chin and he scratches his forehead. “So, Farrah and Cherish met in third grade, and it was obvious that they adored each other, but when they were in fourth grade,” he emphasizes, as though to remind us that he had it right, “that’s when Brianne and I really fell in love with Farrah. I was still flipping houses back then.”
A murmur carries through the yard, and Jerry waves it off without looking.
“I know, I know, everybody did it. We all did. HGTV destroyed a generation. So, I was going to check on a property in renovation, and I took the girls with me—they probably had some rehearsal or something.” He glances between us. “Dance? Were you still doing ballet? Anyway, I had them both with me, and we go to the property, and of course, I get totally sidetracked with the workers and putting out a half million fires. And there was a bunch of base moldings that had been torn out and stored on the side of the house, because the dumpster also hadn’t been delivered yet. I know, flipping is a nightmare from start to finish,” he says, as though he can actually make out the playfully annoyed murmurs of friends who’ve apparently gone through house-flipping phases of their own. “So, as kids do, Cherish and Farrah found said base moldings, complete with probably an inch and a half of nail shooting up from them every so often. And before you report me, this was the first and last time I ever brought either of them to a renovation site. Because, of course, the girls decided to make a game of stomping the nails to the side. Not their brightest moment, but they really are smart girls, I promise.”