“Cold hands, warm heart,” she intoned, a relic from her childhood that I, too, knew from my own. In a lot of ways, things hadn’t changed in the Caribbean since she was a girl. “Baby, you’re going to stay here until you’re ready to go home. Don’t worry about your mom, okay? I’ll handle her.”
Little tears started slipping from the corners of my eyes. “I never want to go back home.”
“You will, one day. But right now you can just stay here until you feel ready. Don’t worry. You’ll be my little girl until then. And this can be your home.”
I buried my head in her shoulder and cried.
After a while my sobbing stopped. I wiped my face with the back of my hand and just lay there smelling her spicy, warm perfume. I sniffed. “What’s that you’re wearing?”
“Patchouli. It’s an herbal perfume. Very hippie-dippy,” she said, winking and grinning.
“Are you a hippie?”
The grin stretched farther. “Nah, just a good environmentalist. Nobody does animal testing for patchouli,” she explained. “Like any good lesbian I have to believe in a cause.”
The way she said it was funny but I could tell she was partly serious.
“What does that mean?”
“Well, I was joking,” she said, resting her cheek on my head. “It’s a thing people say about gay people. That we identify with causes—animal rights, the environment, homeless people, immigrant rights, the poor.” She thought about it for a second. “I guess, because we know what it’s like to be in the minority and the underclass. We know what it’s like to have no voice so we try to speak for others who don’t either.”
I digested that for a while. “What’s it like?”
“Patchouli?” she asked, pretending to be serious. “Okay, okay,” she giggled as I pinched her arm. “What do you want to know?”
“Well…what’s it like being…you know. Gay.”
“I don’t know what it’s like being anything else, so that’s a really hard question for me to answer. It’s just normal for me. What’s it like being straight?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. Normal, I guess.”
“See what I mean? But I do feel sometimes—not so much anymore, but I used to feel like I wished I were like you and like Cynthia. I do want babies and a ‘normal’ life. So it’s kind of weird not having those things, but I couldn’t really imagine myself any other way.”
“Did you ever have a boyfriend?”
“Yup. Did you forget I told you Nathan and I dated? Way before I knew I was gay. We stayed friends, though. And Josh is my godchild, as you know. I wish I saw more of him. Sweet kid. Josh, I mean, not Nate. Nate’s a pain in the—”
We laughed at the same time. I was glad she shared my opinion of Nathan. He was arrogant and self-centered and I didn’t like him one bit.
“Was he always like that?”
“A jerk?”
I nodded.
“Uh-huh. He grew up very privileged and I suppose he never had to think about other people. He likes ‘exotics’ because they give him a glimpse into the other side but—” She shook her head. “Why am I having this conversation with a fourteen-year-old?”
“ ’Cause I asked?”
We laughed again.
“Are you an ‘exotic’?” I asked.
“Yup. So are you, to people like him. You’ll meet lots of people here who think that you’re some kind of collector’s item just because you have a Caribbean accent and dark skin.”
I already had. I thought about the young policeman who tried to talk to me at the bus stop, and others I had met at the library and the gym. “White people are always surprised that I speak English and wear normal clothes and stuff,” I said. Then I thought about Julie’s version of “normal,” the clothes she called “Desi high fashion,” and reconsidered my language. “Western clothes, I mean.”
“Right. Not everybody’s like that but some people are. Nathan married a Jamaican, that’s Josh’s mom, and I think Nate was always surprised that she was brighter and better educated than he was.”
I chuckled.
“But Josh seems like a good kid,” she repeated. She looked slyly at me. “What do you think about him?”
I blushed and bit my bottom lip. If the earth had opened up right at that moment it would have been awesome.
“Ooh! Looks like somebody has a crush!”
“Aunty!”
“Oh, all right. I’ll stop teasing. I have to give you fair warning, though: I’m inviting them over to the barbecue.”
“Not the barbecue!” I said in dismay. Maybe it wasn’t too late for them to change their minds. Alas, they were following the doctor’s advice and taking life back to its ordinary level. I didn’t have to participate, my aunt told me, but I’d be expected to come out of my room and say hello at least once. Hesitantly, I agreed. “But don’t tease me about the boy, okay? It makes me feel bad.”
“Agreed,” she said. No teasing, but I had to get ready to talk to the most gorgeous boy I had ever seen, in my temporary home. This time, I hoped I could do it without having a complete collapse.
I called Akilah as soon as Jillian closed the door.
“Ki-ki!” I wailed.
“What? Are you okay?” She had obviously prepared herself for the worst. It had been ages since I had talked to her. She looked scared, her eyes open wide and her mouth trembling. “I was so worried!”
After apologizing for ghosting her, I calmed her down and told her about the awful past week, the sleeping pills that knocked me out, Dr. Khan and his advice to exercise and his threat—um, I mean promise—that I would seriously start talk therapy soon.
“Why are you hating on therapy so much?” Akilah asked.
I was scared of what the therapist would say when I told her or him about my deepest secrets. When normal people hear that you want to kill yourself, they treat you like you’re crazy. But when you’re crushed under that monster and you can’t breathe for the pain, nothing makes more sense than wanting to die and make the pain stop. Talking about it was almost as scary as feeling the feeling itself. “I just don’t want to. Julie’s already made the appointment,” I wailed. I was being dramatic, but it was a front for real fear.
She sat at her kitchen table. Her mom was cutting up vegetables in the background; I heard the rapid whack of a blade on a chopping board and could imagine the kitchen redolent with pungent chadon beni, the dark green leafy weed we use for seasoning food in Trinidad. A wave of homesickness hit me. There were so many things I wanted to say but didn’t want Aunty Patsy hearing. And top of the list was the gorgeous kid, Josh. Gesticulating to Akilah that she should leave the kitchen had no effect. I typed in the message bar, GO TO YR ROOM!!! WE HAVE TO TALK!!!!