by Kennedy Ryan
“What?”
“Half their kids were mixed like me. Literally white moms and black dads everywhere.”
“Professional basketball players marrying white women? Shocking,” she says with a laugh. “So you fit right in, huh?”
“Well, I was still me, so I’m not sure I’d ever ‘fit right in’ anywhere.” We chuckle. Basically a case of it’s funny because it’s true. “But there were people who understood my in between-ness—who’d faced some of the same challenges living in America that I had. It was the perfect situation for me to be in at that time.”
“How long were you there?”
“Four years. All of high school. My parents actually stayed a few years after I returned to the States for college.”
“What school?”
“Howard for undergrad. UCLA for my master’s and doctorate.”
Her brows elevate. “An HBCU. Another thing I didn’t expect.”
“My mother made sure I understood my Jewish heritage, but when I look back on my childhood, besides your family, I didn’t have a lot of influences from that other part of me. I needed that, too, and Howard proved to be the perfect incubator to grow my confidence—my understanding of myself. The whole me.”
“And then grad school in Cali?”
“Right.”
“Is that where…” She glances down, runs a finger around the rim of her glass. “You met Aiko in California?”
“Yeah. I had just started my doctorate at UCLA. She was taking pictures at a party not far from campus.”
“She’s beautiful. I mean, I only saw her briefly at the funeral, but she was beautiful. There’s a lot of her in Noah, too.”
“She’s an amazing mother.”
Kimba runs her finger along the condensation of her glass. “So she doesn’t believe in marriage?”
“No. I did ask when we found out she was pregnant, but she turned me down.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.”
She gives me that look again, full of speculation and a tiny bit of censure. “Look, Kimba, there’s something I want to tell you.”
“Whoop! Whoop!” Mona says, plopping her oversized bag onto the table. “Hey, good people. Sorry I’m late. I had one nerve left, and Alicia worked it. Late ass. I love her, but she can’t be on time to save her life.”
“Must run in the family,” I say dryly, forcing down disappointment that my fifteen minutes alone with Kimba are up.
“Watch it.” Mona points a warning finger at me. “Sorry I’m late, Kimba. I promised you a good time and then stuck you with this guy.”
Kimba breathes out a laugh, shrugging. “It wasn’t so bad.”
We look at each other, and it feels to me like the width of the table between us pulses. It pulls on my senses so strongly. Kimba lowers her lashes, sips her water and picks up her menu.
“Well I, for one,” Mona says, “need a drink. Where’s our server?”
I nod to Cherise, who is even now approaching, pad in hand and smile in place. “Here she comes, but you do realize it’s only noon.”
“I told you Alicia drained me,” she sighs heavily and turns on a beatific smile for Cherise. “How’s your margarita?”
Cherise snorts. “Strong.”
Mona splits a smirk evenly between Kimba and me. “I’ll have two.”
Chapter Sixteen
Kimba
I’m in head-to-knee pose when my phone starts buzzing.
Not now. I was just starting to get all centered, dammit.
It takes most people time to unplug. Me? You basically have to jerk the plug from the wall and toss it into a furnace before I can relax. It’s the nature of what I do. It’s how I’m made, but the homeopath Dr. Granden recommended suggested I try yoga to alleviate any mild hot flashes, mood swings and insomnia as a result of perimenopause. So each morning, I’m on the mat.
My phone buzzes again.
I thought I was being smart putting it out of reach. The hope was that if I couldn’t reach it, I wouldn’t answer it.
All the possible scenarios crowd out what little peace I was taking for myself. Could it be Congressman Ruiz? Maybe Piers with new information? Are Lennix and the baby okay? Mona?
Ezra?
Not Ezra.
Stop it with the Ezra.
The man is fine AF, yes, but he’s taken. I’m not trying to walk on Aiko’s grass, though to be clear, it is a beautifully maintained lawn. Yes, there is an attraction between us. I’d have to be a tree stump not to feel it, but that’s perfectly natural. In addition to the bond of being best friends years ago, we’re both healthy adults with typical needs.
Do not think about Ezra Stern’s needs.
He needs to look at his wife the way he was looking at me over pulled pork yesterday. Wife…girlfriend…whatever someone is when they have your baby and live with you for ten years.
Her.
Resistance is futile. I hop up and rush across the small guest bedroom Mama converted into an exercise studio. Homegirl has a Peloton up in here. I snatch the phone from the granite counter where I left it and scan the text.
Kayla: What are you doing? It’s hair wash day. Don’t you want to come help your big sister?
Blessed assurance. Jesus is mine.
I shudder. Kayla has four girls and one boy. That’s FOUR heads to wash with hair as thick and unruly as Kayla’s when we were growing up.
Me: Couldn’t I just give you a kidney? That sounds less painful and with a quicker recovery.
Kayla: Get your ass over here and help me. Besides they want to see their auntie. They don’t know you’re mean as a snake. I shield them from that truth. You’re welcome.
Me: Then I won’t tell them how their mother tortured me as a child either.
Kayla: You think I don’t torture them? I would not be Janetta Allen’s daughter if I wasn’t torturing my children. I learned from the best.
Mama’s speaking at one of her charity luncheons, so I am here at the house alone.
Me: Alright. Give me an hour.
Kayla: You have thirty minutes.
Ugh. Drill sergeant.
My Uber drops me off at Kayla’s Brookhaven home approximately thirty minutes later. When I ring the doorbell, she answers with a child on one hip and another holding her hand.
“You’re late,” she says, turning and striding back through the marble tiled entrance with its soaring ceiling and dramatic staircase. I follow her slim figure back into the living room. It’s a zoo, toys everywhere, children in various stages of undress, hair in disarray, and a collection of sippy cups congregating on the glass coffee table. In contrast, Kayla in her luxury loungewear and brightly colored silk head wrap looks completely serene and unbothered.
“I’m not late,” I tell her, bending to hug my niece Triniti, who’s working on a Rubix Cube. “Hey, Trin. I didn’t know kids still played with things that don’t require Wi-Fi.”
Triniti looks up, her expression morphing from serious to less serious when she sees me. Ever since she was a baby, this girl has made you work for her smile. It makes them all the more beautiful and worth it. She flashes me a small one now, standing and wrapping her arms around my waist.
“Hey, Aunt Kimba,” she says, her voice low and sweet.
A boy, the spitting image of Kayla’s husband Lawrence, runs up to me. He’s six now, if I’m keeping them all straight. I take inventory and make sure they each get a hug. In ascending order there’s the oldest, Triniti, the twins Ida and Gwendolyn, the one boy Joseph, named after my father, and finally the youngest, still in diapers, Zaya.
“You hold Zaya,” Kayla says, thrusting the baby at me. “I want to get Ida over with. She’s tender-headed.”
“I am not,” Ida says, sitting on the floor between her mother’s knees.
Kayla tugs the comb through one swathe of Ida’s wild hair and the poor child screeches, catching the comb before it can go any farther.
Kayla gives me a what’d I tell
you look, and moves Ida’s hand.
“Tender-headed,” she mutters.
I bounce Zaya on my lap. I didn’t grow up thinking about how many children I would have. I don’t remember Kayla doing that either, but she and Lawrence got right down to the business of making babies soon after they married and haven’t stopped since.
“I have two sinks down here,” Kayla says. “I can wash Ida if you can get Trin.”
“Crazy thought,” I say, “but ever considered taking them to a salon? They’re all the rage these days.”
“I do sometimes.” Kayla shrugs. “It’s not just about getting the hair done. It’s about the doing. Don’t you remember how we’d complain when Mama did our hair, but that was at least an hour where I had her undivided attention? She was always teaching, doing something with Daddy or out in the community. When she did my hair, though, she was all mine.” She kisses Ida’s forehead, the usual stern lines of her face softening. “I want my girls to have that sometimes.”
Even though the lavishly decorated living room looks like a natural disaster struck, Kayla has this ecosystem, like every other thing in her life, under control. She probably doesn’t even need my help.
She doesn’t need my help but wanted me here. She doesn’t just want me to bond with the kids. I could be wrong, but I think my sister wants to bond with me, too.
She’s allergic to sentimentality, so I downplay my discovery.
“Cool, cool, cool,” I say with a little grin that she returns after a pause.
“Lawrence always says he has no idea how we ended up having your baby,” Kayla says wryly, smiling over Ida’s volcano of hair.
“My baby? What do you mean?”
“Zaya. She looks just like you, Tru. You have to see that, right?”
I glance back to Zaya on my lap. Dark, curious eyes stare back at me. How did I never notice that Zaya has my eyes?
She reaches for one of the curls resting on my shoulder, pulls it and releases, letting it spring back into place with a bounce. She squees and does it again and again as if that is the funniest thing. She’s the most beautiful little girl with her satiny brown skin and slobbery smile. How does Kayla not give her every single thing her heart desires every day? I would. I’d be that mom.
I’d be that mom?
Since when?
I’m not even sure I want kids, and my body is doing its best to take the choice away from me. I’ve been following the specialist’s instructions. The yoga, the pills and herbal teas, but I’ve had no tangible image of what I was fighting for.
Until now.
This is why I’m doing those things. This bundle of exuberant unconditional love bouncing on my lap is why I’m making room in my already overflowing life for the things they say may give me a chance to have a baby. The crushing weight, the possibility that I’m too late, that I can’t do it, that my body won’t let me, falls on me.
“T-t-take her,” I stutter, my tongue and lips tangling, my stomach roiling like I might be sick.
Kayla glances up from a stubborn tangle in Ida’s hair. “What?”
“Take Zaya.” I extend the baby to her, my arms trembling so badly I almost drop her. “I-I-I…just take her, Zee.”
“Put her down on the floor,” Kayla says, her frown deepening. “She can crawl, but what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” I carefully set Zaya down by a pile of stuffed dice. “I just… God, it’s hot in here. I need some air.”
“Go to the patio.” With her comb, Kayla points to a floor-to-ceiling wall of windows leading to a flagstone terrace.
I flee the house, the hot breath of anxiety panting down my neck. I step through the sliding door, close it hastily behind me and walk to the edge of their patio, stopping next to the aqua liquid glass of their pool. Humidity clogs the Georgia summer afternoon, and even when I draw in huge gulps of air, nothing cools me.
Is this a fucking hot flash?
A panic attack?
The warfare my body is waging, is it psychological, biological? Is hormonal warfare a thing?
I cannot breathe. Sweat sprouts at my hairline and on my top lip. I fan hot air into my face, pressing my lips tight against a scream scraping the inside of my throat. The sun is too bright and the sky isn’t wide enough, the clouds seeming to drop and loom over me. I need to run, but I can’t escape my own body. I’m tethered to this flesh and bone, and these ticking-time-bomb ovaries.
A chorus of laughter floats out to the patio on a song of childish joy, and it squeezes my heart until my lungs must be drowning in my own blood.
I don’t need this shit.
The door opens behind me. I stiffen. Kayla is the last person I want to see me like this. She has a fundamental lack of tolerance for weakness, and I’m weak as a lamb inside right now. I hate it.
She walks up beside me but doesn’t look my way, choosing to instead squint up at the sun.
“What the hell was that?” she asks, her voice a low, insistent shovel primed to dig.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did I ask if you want to talk about it?” Kayla is leader of the won’t-let-up crew.
“Zee, could you just leave it alone?”
“I don’t think I can.”
She takes my hand in a strong grip. I jump, startled. She’s holding my hand? I hazard a glance at her profile.
“What exactly are you doing?” I ask, a little laugh managing to squeeze past the rubber bands tight at my throat.
“We’re having a moment, Tru.”
“Did you schedule this? You know you can’t just make moments happen, right?”
“Well, I am. It’s happening.” She turns to me, not letting my hand go, and when I glance over at her, the real concern in my sister’s eyes dissolves my reservations.
“I’m sorry I freaked. I was…and then Zaya…and it just hit me. I haven’t dealt with it, I guess.”
“Please stop speaking to me in half-formed thoughts. I really can’t bear it.”
“I’m in perimenopause.”
A shocked silence absorbs the sounds of laughing and screeching from the living room. I can’t tell if there’s any crying mixed in.
“Are they okay by themselves?” I ask, glancing back to the glass doors.
“Yes. Trin, Ida and Gwen can make sure Joe and Zaya survive me leaving the room for five minutes.”
Five minutes? Jesus. I have to do this for that long? Could we have a shorter moment?
“Perimenopause.” She says it slowly, turning the syllables like they’re a foreign tongue and she’s repeating them, having no idea what they actually mean. “You’re not even forty. Isn’t this early?”
“Yes, but it happens.”
“I know it happens, but why is it happening to you? Are you sure? Who diagnosed you? Should you get a second opinion?”
“My GP diagnosed me initially but did refer me to a specialist who confirmed through additional testing.”
“What do they recommend? Hormone replacement? I have friends going through this now, and there are some real risks with those treatments. Are you on medication? Will they harvest your eggs?”
“Zee.” I squeeze her hand, laughing and pleased to find my breaths coming less laboriously now. “Please slow down.”
“Slow down? Do we have time to slow down? What about kids?”
The girls are singing a verse of Beyoncé’s “Halo” …badly.
“What can I say?” Kayla shrugs. “I have one shortcoming, my awful voice, and they got it.”
I snort and roll my eyes, but smile. “I haven’t had a period in four months. So the first thing is to get it back. The homeopath is shipping a new detox treatment to see if that helps. I’m not doing hormone replacement for now. Trying alternative routes to manage the symptoms. We’ll see what happens.”
“We should figure out if there’s a family history.” Kayla’s brows gather together. I recognize that frown. It’s mine whenever a candidate puts his dick in the wrong
place or says something stupid into a live mic. Problem-solving mode.
“Look, you have five kids and the foundation and God knows what to take care of. I got this.”
“See, that’s your problem,” she snaps, fire igniting in her dark eyes. “You always got something all by yourself. I’m your sister, Tru, even though you haven’t been around for years, and we are every one of us damn proud of you.” Her smooth throat moves with a hard swallow. “Daddy would be proud of you.”
We stare down at our linked fingers and seem to hold the burden of grief in our two hands. And it does feel good not to carry it alone.
“Let me be there for you,” she says. “I’m actually really good at it.”
I nod, swiping at a renegade tear slipping from my eye despite my best efforts to stem them. “Okay, Zee.”
The door wrenches open, and a wide-eyed Triniti stands in its frame. “Joseph threw up.”
“Lord above,” Kayla mutters. “I don’t do vomit. Lawrence better be glad his ass is out of town.”
“I have a strong stomach,” I assure her with a chuckle. “You get back to hair and I’m on clean-up duty.”
“Okay, but you know you’re still washing at least one of those heads, right?”
Busted.
We’re at the door when my phone buzzes in my pocket.
Mona: Cookout at my place this weekend. You’re coming.
I did enjoy lunch with Mona and Ezra. It was like old times, but with a lot more innuendo and alcohol. And Ezra’s fine ass. It’s quite irritating how attractive he’s become, and how my body seems to have this Jones for brilliant, nice Jewish boys with African violet eyes.
But I knew that already.
It feels good to actively be attracted to someone and not have to force myself to like him, to fuck him, to whatever. There’s something delicious about the tension of the forbidden, how you dance around its edges, like caressing a trip wire. I shouldn’t because it’s obvious the attraction is so damn mutual. I don’t think he’d ever act on it. He’s a good man. Hell, I’m a good woman. We have a past. Shared our first kiss, for goodness’ sake. It’s probably just phantom crush pains. I’m strong enough to resist and Ezra’s good enough to keep us safe.