“I would’ve been just as sick if I were with you,” I say, and I don’t blink, either, but Brianne laughs nervously.
“That’s true,” she says, though it’s timid. Or at least it can be interpreted that way. “And we took good care of her, Nicki, just like we promised. Honestly, we were only trying to take some of the strain off Ben and you.”
When she smiles between the two of them, my dad smiles back like a reflex, and ordinarily, I’d shift my focus to him. He’s the easy target. He’s the person who taught me there is such a thing. But he’s not the one in control, and sometimes there’s no escaping it. Sometimes you have to face down the strong one.
“I’m sorry, I know there’s nothing more frustrating than feeling out of the loop—especially when it’s your own kid. I take full responsibility for that, Nichole, I do.” Brianne’s humble and apologetic, and there’s clearly an air of expectation, like the matter requires nothing more than a gentle touch. She’s certain of her strength in that department, and I wonder whether this woman has ever tried to handle my mother this way before. Something tells me she hasn’t; otherwise Nichole Turner wouldn’t have thought so highly of her all this time.
She needs to know that acting out gracious contrition won’t work here, but I can’t very well tell her. I can’t communicate to Brianne Whitman that it won’t satisfy or obligate my mother, not now that she feels there’s something wrong. Not when she might finally sense that the Whitmans are drawing close around me, adopting me the way they did Cherish. Or worse, that I’m adopting them.
I leave Cherish on the outside and come sit beside my mother on the Whitmans’ leather couch. I can feel the way Brianne and Jerry watch me, soft smiles etching across their faces. It looks like I’m drawing near to my parents, to my mother, because I’ve missed her, or to let her know that I’m okay.
“I’m fine, Mom,” I say, opening my arms and wearing a playful grin, as though teasing her or telling her she’s free to inspect me. As though she’s being overprotective and I’m goading her toward reason. I smile past her at my dad to remind her that he’s there and they are not a united front. He hasn’t matched her concern or her resolve, and I’m not the only one who can tell. I look between them to drive home my point, but only so much that she can tell. Then I tuck into her, so that she’ll wrap her arms around me, and she does.
It must look heartwarming.
I couldn’t have scripted my dad better. He reaches over and does his equivalent of a hair tousle, sinking his fingers into my thick hair and then massaging my scalp a few times so that it isn’t mussed.
“Glad you’re feeling better, Fair. Your mom and I were just worried,” he says, like he’s forgotten that until just now, neither of them knew. “Next time, don’t forget to call.”
“We’ll make sure of it,” Jerry says, and drinks what’s left in his lowball glass. “We’re supposed to be the grown-ups, I think,” and the two men chuckle.
They’re acting like that’s the end of it, but I know it isn’t. I drew closer because I’m sure. There’s a stiffness to my mother’s embrace, especially when my dad unwittingly hangs her out to dry. When his behavior confirms the message I was silently sending with my eyes, she looks at me out of the corner of hers, like it’s my doing. Like I turned him, even though my focus has been on her.
“Ben and I have made up our minds,” she says, and I don’t leap out of her arms because I know what’s coming. “We’ve decided to take you home with us.”
A lesser person might point out my father’s recently implied position, the way there’s no reasonable interpretation of his words that fits with hers. They’d be right, but it wouldn’t matter.
Your father and I are a united front.
She’s already told me once; it doesn’t matter if it’s true.
We both know the problem with a turncoat is that they’re easily turned back.
In my mother’s case, she doesn’t even have to do that. The upside of being his partner is that she can simply speak for him—the way I got in trouble for knowing she so often has.
Still tucked inside my mother’s embrace, I don’t look at a gaping Cherish, or fly into hysterics. I don’t recoil from my mother’s arms or begin spouting complaints. That’s what the room is waiting for, though, because everyone goes still.
That’s what she expected, or what she thought was possible. Like I’m not smarter than that.
She’s testing my restraint. Loosening her hold of me as though encouraging me to flail or fling myself away. It’ll be easier to sweep me up and out of the Whitman home then. It’ll be understandable to hurry out, haul me over my father’s shoulder like a misbehaving toddler whose tantrum can’t be managed, so their parents just whisk them away.
I don’t do any of that. I don’t give her an excuse. If she wants it escalated, my mother will have to do it herself. I won’t go willingly, but I won’t be unreasonable, either. If I’m dragged back to my parents’ sterile rental home, it’ll be because Nichole Turner lost control of everything in her life a year ago, and she’s trying to restrain the one thing she still can. It’ll come with pitiful glances and compassionate conclusions about there being only so much she could take.
It would humanize her. Her breakdown would debunk the myth of the stalwart, inexhaustible Black woman, carrying the weight of the world without need of rest. In any other household, it might be worth it, but the Whitmans already understand. That’s why it would work so well—because they are raising a Black woman of their own. Because they refuse to lay the weight of the world and society on her shoulders with the expectation that—despite or because of all the ways the world has tried to break or betray her—she alone can fix it. Instead, they spare her every burden, and because she’s a Black girl, it’s a revolutionary act.
So I elect to use them instead.
I look up at Brianne. Her mouth is open like she’s ready to launch into some shapeless, half-baked plea, and I lock eyes with her before the useless words come tumbling out.
I need her to follow my lead. I need to show Cherish’s mom how to compete with Nichole Turner, what works once my mother’s guard is high and her mind is made up. I need to show her how to spare me, the way she’s so accustomed to sparing her daughter.
But it’s more than that. I need to know if the connection is real. I need Brianne and Jerry Whitman to be on my side, the way I think they are, and I have no time to test it. I just have to leap and hope they catch me.
“So I don’t get a vacation this year?” I ask, and collapse my shoulders. I sink out of the embrace, and my gaze falls to the side, first toward Cherish, and then to the floor.