Jesse sat in a chair by a wall of framed photos. She was smiling, with her hands resting on her belly.
“You’re having a baby too!” I exclaimed.
She smiled wider than Otis. She was beautiful, with high cheekbones and big soft eyes. I wanted to tell her. Instead I touched her shoulder.
“No need to be shy. I’ve been wanting to meet you,” Jesse said, pulling me into a hug as warm as Marguerite’s. “I hear Mama Irving hates you almost as much as she hates me. I’m too dark, you’re too white.”
She was darker skinned than Joshua, Marguerite, Otis, than their parents. She was darker than Eula.
Colour struck, Marguerite had said. Now I knew what that meant.
“That’s why she hates you? Because you’re dark?”
“And poor and not from Harlem.”
“I’m trash,” I told her. “She said so.”
But Mrs Irving let me stay in the house. She thought white and poor was better than dark and poor. It made my head spin.
“Me too.” Jesse laughed.
“Whatcha gunna call the bub?”
* * *
Mrs Irving unbent after her first grandchildren were born.
Enough to let Jesse, Otis and Ebony move into the third floor.
But not all the way. She spoke to me and Jesse only about our children. She asked for translations of what I said, long after all traces of the Hills had worn away. She recommended Jesse bathe in lemon juice and didn’t speak to her for a month when Jesse laughed.
But sometimes, almost accidentally, she’d look at me or Jesse and smile.
When Joshua returned—from Paris it turned out—he took our baby in his arms and the grin didn’t leave his face for weeks.
“Did you name her like I asked?”
I nodded.
“Lisette,” he whispered. “She’s perfect.”
“You’ve changed,” he said, hours later when Lisette was asleep on our bed. “You look like a Harlemite.”
My hair was up in a rag the way Eula did, because I’d been helping her in the kitchen. I was wearing Marguerite’s scent and her way of walking too.
“You shouldn’t’ve done it,” I said. “Dragged me all this way to spite your ma.”
“I know,” he said. “I wanted to hurt her the way she hurt Otis. I shouldn’t have dragged you in. Not without telling you.”
He looked at me, and it felt like he was truly seeing me.
“I’m sorry.”
I bit my lip to keep from blubbing. I blubbed anyways.
Joshua held me till the waterworks stopped.
“I’m glad,” I said, between sniffles. “I like your sister and your brother. Jesse, Eula and Zee too.” Better than my blood family, not that that meant much. “I like Harlem. I love our baby.” I loved Joshua too. “But you shouldn’t’ve done it.”
“I’m glad too.”
We held hands.
“I’m a proper Harlemite now.”
He laughed. “Close enough, sugar. We won’t ever leave.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Justine Larbalestier is an Australian-American author of eight novels, two anthologies and one scholarly work of nonfiction, many essays, blog and Instagram posts, tweets, and a handful of short stories. Her most well-known books are My Sister Rosa, Liar and the Zombies Versus Unicorns anthology which she edited with Holly Black.
You can find her on Instagram @DrJustineFancyPants.
FROM GOLDEN STATE
Isabel Quintero
THE PART WHERE
MARLENE FIRST SPEAKS.
My father and tíos with bloody hands. That is the first memory I have access to. It was my birthday, and I was turning four. I remember a red dress, swollen with crinoline and satin, the kind my parents would have bought at the Chino swap meet on a Sunday after mass. The kind I would’ve begged for, because the shape of the dress made me feel like one of the dolls my dad was always bringing me from his long trips away from home. The hard plastic dolls with movable arms and legs, eyes that opened or shut depending on whether the little baby was lying down or up and about. About five feet from the bloody mess of a dead pig that my father and uncles were cutting through, I watched my tío Jorge carve a smile into the pig’s throat. A horrific version of the ones I’d seen spread on the faces of cartoon pigs. Pero la niña, my dad says looking worried. This is my first slaughter. ¡A la verga pariente! Si estuviéramos en el rancho ya nos estuviera ayudando, Tío Reynaldo, Marlene’s favorite tío (second cousin really) teases his youngest primo. But we are not on the rancho, we are in my backyard in Riverside. My legs were so slow to move that I believe I turned into one of those dolls my dad brought me. My once alive arms and legs froze in the upright position. I wasn’t able to look away. My large, unblinking, brown eyes opened wide enough to take in every inch of the butchering. That memory, that scene, now reminds me of The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt—a careful dismembering of a life by hungry hands. A delicate procedure. But that’s a more recent connection. Before, I associated that memory only with the last squeal heard before the silence; before carnitas. Back when my tíos made clear their disappointment for the way their youngest brother was raising his American-born daughter—pobre y delicada.
THE PART WHERE THE NARRATOR TELLS
YOU A BIT ABOUT LA MARLENE,
THE MAIN CHARACTER IN THIS STORY.
The girl in this story does not speak Spanish very well. She doesn’t really speak it at all, but her tongue lolls its way over ñ and rrs, hoping to land on correct pronunciations. It dips its tip in accents twice removed. The girl in this story calls herself Mexican even though she was born in the United States. She calls herself Chicana. She calls herself American. She calls herself whatever she wants to, because she doesn’t believe in borders or other people naming her. The girl in this story is brown. Brown like her father. Arched eyebrows and freckles like her mom. Small brown eyes like the great-uncle she’s never met, whose voice she’s heard only on the telephone and through letters. The one who lives in a jacalito in a pueblo whose name her mouth trips over when she tries to pronounce it correctly. Her mom’s favorite uncle with the peacocks and incense. She has her grandmother’s thick brown hair and her great-grandmother’s sternness. She does not smile on command. Her grandmother didn’t, her mother doesn’t, and neither will she. The girl in this story could give a fuck what you think and less fucks about the labels you think she should adorn herself with. She doesn’t care if this makes you uncomfortable. She is not here to make you feel good.