“Where is Lo?” she asks. “I . . . we didn’t get to talk.”
“Is that a new development?” I ask, sarcasm thick in the air and in my voice. “I seem to remember her not speaking to you for the last decade.”
Her full lips tighten, the delicately chiseled jaw clenching. She tosses her head, the cloud of dark hair settling around her shoulders.
“Tell her I wanted to try,” she says.
“I will tell her no such thing, because if you really wanted to try, you know she’s down at the river and you’d walk down there until she listened and forgave you.” I release a cynical laugh. “But you don’t want to do that, do you?” I lean back against the counter, my arms folded across my chest. “Or at some point since that night you chose him over her, you would have actually tried.”
“What has gotten into you, Iris?” my mother demands, indignantly. “You never used to be so . . . You weren’t like this before.”
“Right,” I say with cold calm. “I never was, thanks to the two of you. Thank God Lo and I have MiMi’s blood to make up for your failings.”
“Let’s go, Priscilla,” Aunt May snaps. “We don’t have to stay here for this kind of treatment.”
“Now that I understand,” I deadpan. “Not accepting abuse or taking anybody’s shit. Again, lessons I didn’t learn from you.”
“When you are ready to be reasonable,” my mother spits with rare gracelessness, “call me.”
“If you can do me one favor, Mama,” I say to their slim, outraged backs as they head for the door. “The next time Caleb calls, don’t tell him that I’m here.”
She looks over her shoulder, and for once she can’t dissemble the truth in her eyes. Lucky guess.
“If not for me,” I say softly, “then for the sake of your granddaughter, don’t tell him anything.”
Without another word, she nods, and the screen door slams shut behind them.
I slump against the sink, relief and anxiety warring inside me. If all goes according to plan, I have nothing to worry about. If I’ve calculated properly, and I think I have, Caleb cares too much about his father’s opinion, his sponsors’ approval, and his precious NBA career to jeopardize it all chasing me.
But what if I’m wrong? What if one day, the sick obsession that drove him to hatch elaborate schemes and engage in manipulation to keep me is stronger than his desire for all those things?
I chuck that into the pile of shit I can’t control. There’s a much larger pile of things I can control, starting with what I want to do next. There’s a part of me that wants to remain here, just Sarai and me, hiding from the world, safe from danger. But I know it can’t be forever. Sarai is too bright not to be in preschool soon. Too curious to only have this small patch of the world to explore. Too social not to have friends.
I follow the path to the river, that swathe of shade and grass overseen by a cypress canvas. Every step brings my grief, carefully stowed away today in a church full of strangers, closer to the surface. Today, the slight breeze whispering through the Spanish moss overseeing the river is a swaying lament for MiMi.
Lo and Sarai sit several feet from the riverbank, and Sarai holds a Louisiana iris. My namesake.
It makes me smile and remember the day with August in the gym when he asked about my name. An ache, separate from my grief, spreads across me. I miss him. I want him, but I have no idea what to do about it.
“They’re gone?” Lo asks, not turning, facing the river.
She’s so like MiMi. Now that I’ve spent time with our great-grandmother, her influence on Lo is clear. I envy that.
“Yeah.” I pull up beside her on the bank. “They’re gone. Your mother—”
“Don’t.” Lo’s voice is iced coffee. Dark. Cold with a bitter edge. “I buried my mother today.”
I nod, not denying it.
“I wish I’d known MiMi longer,” I venture, keeping one eye on Sarai and one eye on the river. It’s not inconceivable that a gator could crawl up on the riverbank or that a snake could slither out of the thick greenery. The bayou is a calculated risk, benefits and dangers constantly on a scale.
“You knew her when you needed to,” Lo says, her voice showing no emotion but her face a ravaged canvas, painted with tears. “So did I.”
I slip my hand into hers, and silently, we squeeze. United again. I can’t imagine I let Caleb come between us. That’s a lie. I let my shame, my embarrassment, and maybe even my jealousy come between us.
“I’m sorry, Lo,” I confess. “I think I was jealous of you.”
“What?” Lo turns startled eyes to me. “When? How could you ever be jealous of me?”
I shrug, my shoulders weighted with self-consciousness and late summer heat. “When you confronted me about letting Caleb control me, I was frustrated. Maybe I regretted my choices.” I pause, assembling my words into the right order. “I resented my life, how small it had become. You were running off to New York to work for a famous fashion designer in an atelier, whatever the hell that is. Meanwhile, I was mashing baby food and wearing yoga pants every day.”
Lo’s husky laugh charms the sun out from behind a cloud, and the last flare of sunlight illuminates the regal bones of her face.
“You? Jealous of me?” She shakes her head, the long braids caressing the curve of her neck. “That’s ironic since I’ve been jealous of you most of my life.”
“What?” I snap my head around to study her fully but don’t release her hand. “No way.”
“Oh, yes way.” She throws me a teasing look, even through damp eyelashes. “Don’t worry. I have since realized the fullness of my own fabulousness.”
I laugh, mouth closed, the humor coming as short nasal puffs of funny air.
“Growing up, I loved you, but I wanted so much that you had,” she says. “I hate what happened to me, but it was good I moved away from you and our mothers.”
I’m curious but also hurt to hear this.
“I can think of a dozen reasons why living here was better than living with them, but why did you need to get away from me?”
“You’ll think it’s silly in that way that girls who never have to think about these things think it’s silly,” she says, her smile self-deprecating, her eyes knowing.
“Tell me anyway.”
“I was dark.” She lifts her braids. “My hair was coarse. I was the odd egg in our little nest, and everyone knew it.”
“What the hell do you mean?” I demand.
“You don’t think about it, but our mothers look exactly alike. Your father was white.” With her free hand, she tosses a few blades of grass into the river. “They were light and you were even lighter, but my dad was black, and I look different.”
It reminds me of August telling me how displaced he felt sometimes. The irony of me feeling like I didn’t belong because I was “too white” and Lo being jealous because she was “too dark” strikes me as funny, and I release a giggle.
“That’s funny to you?” Lo asks, one side of her full mouth tilted.
“It’s just . . . I never felt like I fit in our neighborhood because I looked so different, and the girls always said I was stuck up and thought I was better than them. I really just wanted to fit. I just wanted to look like everyone else.”