Last night, I could hardly sleep thinking about what I needed to say to Tye, wondering what he wanted to say to me. I’m glad we set the time for morning. There’s no way I could wait all day to talk with him. It is just before noon and I am sitting on the stoop when I see Tye walking up the block. My heart was beating fast until now. Now it feels stuck, like when someone is holding you up on a seesaw and you have no control. This feels like that.
“Hey,” Tye says. He barely looks at me, so I look away from him too.
“Hey.”
Tye sits down next to me, but not as close as he normally would. We don’t jump in right away, but we don’t do pleasantries either. We just sit. A few people walk by, nod or say hello, but mostly, the block is quiet and we are alone.
“I’m sorry, Tye,” I finally say. My heart still stuck, still held in suspense. “I want you to know that I never meant to hurt you or make a fool of you. Or—well, I don’t know how you’re feeling. I just know that I didn’t mean to make you feel anything negative.”
Tye takes a deep breath but doesn’t say anything.
“I . . . ​when I met you, I was just so impressed by you and I wanted to impress you too. I wanted to be on your level. I just said whatever I thought you’d want to hear because I wanted you to like me.”
Tye is still breathing his deep breaths. In, out. He is still not looking at me.
I tell him everything I’ve lied about, every stretch of the truth. And then I say, “I understand why you don’t want to be with me anymore.”
“Who said I didn’t want to be with you anymore?” Tye says. He looks at me now, and like always his eyes pierce right through me. “I just, I needed time to think. That was a lot.”
“Wait. You—you don’t want to break up with me?” I ask.
“No. Do you want to break up with me?”
“I thought we were already broken up.”
Tye takes my hand. “I mean, I thought about it. I was really upset, Nala. I feel like I don’t know you at all. I wanted to talk today, find out what is actually real about you, about us. Did you ever actually have feelings for me?”
“Of course. I, yes. I still do.”
Tye looks relieved when I say this. We are quiet again, and this time I don’t know what to say to get the conversation going. After a while Tye says, “Well, I do have a lot of questions and there’s a lot we need to talk about, but, Nala, spending time with you is good for me. You open me up, have me doing stuff that, I don’t know—I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have fun with you. I feel more like myself with you than with anyone else.”
I never thought that maybe Tye isn’t always being himself, isn’t always sure of who he is. I wonder what parts of himself he hides. “You feel more like yourself with me? Who are you when you’re with everyone else?”
“I, well, it’s just that when I’m with you I feel like I can put my guard down. That I don’t have to be perfect.”
“Who makes you feel like you have to be perfect?”
“Everyone. My mom, my uncle, my teachers, Ms. Lori.” Tye lets out a sigh and says, “I’m a Black boy—there’s not a lot of room for error.”
“That’s a lot of pressure,” I say.
“Tell me about it. Pressure to talk right, dress right, get good grades, do the right thing. No mistakes, no second chances.” The clouds shift and for a moment there is relief from the sun. “That’s why I love spending time with you. I don’t feel any pressure with you. I can just be.” Tye takes my hand. “I don’t want to let that go. I just want to know who you really are.”
“That’s just it, Tye. I don’t know who I really am. I mean, I think I know . . . I’m—I’m learning who I am.”
A man walking his dog passes us. I wait until he is far enough away that he can’t hear me. I don’t want anyone to know this yet, just Tye. I whisper, “I don’t think we should be together right now.” I expect tears to come when I say this, but they don’t. My heart is relaxed, it’s off the seesaw, released from suspense. “This isn’t because I don’t love you, it’s because I need to learn how to love myself. For myself.”
Part of me is screaming inside, asking what is wrong with me, why am I letting go of someone who cares about me, wants me, forgives me. But I yell back at her, reminding her what Grandma said.
Self-love is radical love.
Self-love is radical love.
Self-love is radical love.
Today, I’ve started my own revolution.
24
REMEDIES TO A BROKEN HEART
1.Ice cream. Any flavor. In a sugar cone, or waffle cone, or cake cone. In a bowl or cup, soft-serve, hand-dipped. With pie, or cake, or cookies, or fruit, or all by itself. A scoop, two scoops, maybe even three—not more than a pint, at least not all at once, because even if it heals your heart, it will definitely hurt your stomach.
2.Reality TV. Pick your guilty pleasure. Home makeover marathons, singing competitions, cooking competitions, dating experiments, true life crime, behind the scenes with celebrities. Sometimes paying attention to someone else’s drama helps to put your own in perspective.
3.Spa treatment. Okay, “treatment” sounds fancy. All I mean is, I am painting my own nails and giving myself a pedicure. Usually I rush when I do my nails—I hate waiting for them to dry. But today, I’ve lit a candle, I’m playing music (Blue, of course), and I’m taking my time. After all, a spa treatment should feel like a treat, not a chore.
4.Cry. I don’t know why people try not to cry, why we hold it in. I have decided to cry as much and as hard as I need to. Sometimes it is a snotty nose sob, the kind that bellows out, echoing off the high ceilings. An earthquake cry that shakes my insides and makes my shoulders tremble. And sometimes, it comes in silence. Just tears bubbling up in the corners of my eyes, sometimes falling, but sometimes just swaying in the ebb and flow of sorrow. Sometimes the cry comes without tears, comes in the shake of my voice, the hoarseness. Sometimes it comes camouflaged as laughter. (See number 2 to know what I’m laughing about.) I laugh to keep from crying. A belly laugh, even. But still, the tears are there. And the afternoon goes on, crying and laughing, crying and laughing. And that saying I laughed so hard I cried takes on a whole new meaning.
I get a text from Sadie: what are you doing?
Me: crying.
Sadie calls me, asks me what’s wrong, and when I tell her she says, “I’m coming over,” and hangs up the phone before I can tell her not to. Knowing Sadie is coming over makes me get off my bed, wash my face, and go downstairs. My head hurts from all the sobbing, so I don’t feel like doing much but I am glad I will have company. Aunt Ebony and Uncle Randy are gone for the weekend to the Poconos, and Imani is with Asher (surprise, surprise).
An hour later, Sadie is at my door, and when she comes in she doesn’t ask me how I am doing or do I want to talk about it. Instead, she says, “Have you heard Koffee’s new song?” and we spend the rest of the night eating pizza and listening to music. I start putting a playlist together: Koffee, Shenseea, Masika, Lauryn Hill. Listening to the music makes us look up videos online, and we dance and we are singing so loud, dancing so hard, so free.