Home and Away Read online

  2. She said everything is going to be just fine. As in—it’s not right now, but it will be. She sounded desperate. Like an addict telling himself he could totally have “just one.”

  It felt like a lie.

  Slim steps closer to me, grabs my wrist. “Hey. Everything cool?”

  I nod slowly even though it’s a blatant lie. I don’t know why I lie. “She wants me home right now. She needs to talk to me about something or tell me something, or, I don’t know. But I think I really have to go.”

  Slim squeezes my wrist where she’s got it gripped. It grounds me a little bit. It’s why she’s my best friend. She always knows the right move to make. “Did you do something? Think she knows we ditched Rawlerson’s class again?”

  I shake my head. “No, I just. I have to go.”

  “Yeah, it’s fine. I can catch a ride with someone else,” Slim says. “Go, go.”

  My stomach fills with this hurry up feeling, urgency sitting in the tops of my thighs and right up under the bridge of my nose. I both want to get home and don’t. It’s weird and uncomfortable in the same way as clothes that fit wrong.

  Slim says some other stuff about texting her after I know what I did, and I think I agree to do that, but I’m so preoccupied with having what I’m pretty sure is an anxiety attack that I can’t be certain.

  I don’t even know how I get home. But I’m heading up the steps of this too-big-for-our-family-of-four McMansion and my Jeep is cooling down in our circular driveway.

  Once I’m inside, I don’t hear any voices. It’s not totally abnormal, but typically at least Tammy, our live-in, is singing in the kitchen where she always just has to fold the laundry.

  I drop my keys in the crystal dish on the table like I have every other night this week. That’s normal.

  I realize I forgot my gym bag and my football pads in my car. That’s not.

  I don’t know where my phone is. Nor is that.

  Once, I read in Teen Vogue that in the event of an anxiety attack you should play a game with yourself called “Threes.” You find, focus on, and name three things you can feel, taste, smell, see, or hear.

  I do that now as I walk upstairs.

  And honestly, it helps.

  Smell. The cinnamon Glade plug-ins that Tammy loves. The remnants of detergent in my shirt that my sweat didn’t do away with. Mamma’s too-heavy perfume in the air, indicating she’s recently been down this hallway.

  Hear. The ticking of the foyer’s grandfather clock. The neighbor’s dog barking at nothing, as usual. The washing machine running its fast cycle.

  It helps so much that I’m nearly breathing right by the time I make it up all the stairs and walk on sure feet into Mamma’s room, where I can hear someone wrestling with papers.

  Taste. The calm. The clarity. The feeling that I am probably overreacting.

  No one’s inside the room as I walk in. The bed’s made and Mamma’s purse is on top of it along with her keys and some brown postal wrapping paper.

  It’s got our address on it in big blocky letters.

  It’s got my name on it too; only, whoever’s written that portion took their time. Curved the “T” into its “A” and “S-I-A” with care.

  It’s the sound of someone sniffing that draws me into Mamma’s walk-in closet.

  I pause just inside the doorway as she rifles through a dingy shoebox.

  It’s the hard consonant that falls out of her mouth as she swears that shocks me into movement.

  “Are you okay, Mamma?”

  Everything—and I mean everything—falls in that moment. Mamma, the high shelf she’s reaching up to, the box she’s trying to shove onto it.

  We both yell, “Oh, God!” But it’s Mamma that springs into action.

  “Tasia!”

  I can’t move.

  “You’re home.”

  The box. The papers have spilled everywhere.

  Mamma’s talking almost as fast as her hands are reaching for the box’s spilled contents. “I thought you were going … somewhere.”

  Photos, clippings from the local newspaper with my name on them, a copy of my birth certificate?

  “To Josiah’s or Slim’s or … where? Where did you say?”

  I lean down and grab the crumpled photo of me as a kid out of her hands.

  I can tell it was taken from afar and then zoomed in on. The most immediate details are clearest, and me? I am the hazy outline of a child that wants to blur into the background.

  I look happy, though. That much is clear. Unaware. Carefree. Gap-toothed—probably because I’d had, like, three of my bottom teeth extracted—and mid-run at the local playground. I was six, maybe seven years old?

  “Angel,” Mamma says.

  I’m breathing heavy and I know they say you should definitely not do that when you’re in the middle of an anxiety attack, but, like, who can help it? Who ever has control over this type of thing? No one, I bet!

  “What is all this?”

  There’s this super-old Polaroid of a smiling Mamma clutched up tight to some white guy, very nearly pressed into a kiss. They’re smiling into each other. They’re happy. They’re everything I’m not right now.

  “Let’s go downstairs, angel.”

  My mind works double time, a computer on the verge of overheating, as it puts things together.

  “This was in that brown paper?”

  “Tasia, hold on, honey.”

  “Did someone send this stuff? Poppa and Gram, or …?”

  Mamma stands. There’s another paper in her hand. It’s the photocopy of my birth certificate.

  It takes me the space of two seconds to note there’s no one listed on the line designated Paternal.

  I take it from her and hold it up close to my face as if that’ll help me make sense of this. It’s like when you turn down the music on the car radio when you’re lost and trying to follow your map’s driving directions.

  My eyes glance up from the paper and find hers.

  “What is this?” I step backwards, right onto a newspaper clipping about the time Slim and I tied for thirteenth place in the city’s annual 5K NH Lymphoma run. We were thirteen at the time. They thought it was comedic.

  “Tasia—”

  “Who sent this stuff, Mom!”

  She hugs me tight. So tight I feel like she’s trying to break me instead of hold me together. I wonder how I might solder steel into my spine. It’s working, this break-you-apart hug. Of course it’s working. It’s Mamma. And I am a quickly deteriorating cliff’s edge.

  I hear Mamma saying something. It’s like she’s a radio that is losing its signal. She fades in and fades back.

  “Angel,” she says. “I don’t know how to tell you …”

  Fades in and fades back.

  “Didn’t know how to tell you …”

  Fades in. Fades back.

  “I’m so sorry—what I’m trying to say is …”

  Fades in.

  “You had a right to know who you are. You have a right to know … .”

  Finally, I push her away from me. She’s crying.

  “Tell me what this is.”

  She nods. She’s caught. Slowly, she bends down to pick up what I originally thought was a shoebox. It is, instead, a memento box. There are flowers, patterns of plants and herbs, covering its top. “I think …” she begins. “No.” She’s choked up again, and I just need her to come out with it. Patience has never been my strong suit.

  “Mamma!”

  “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry I lied. To you.”

  The fading is back. I catch more bits and pieces. But it’s enough.

  “… about who your father is.”

  “Daddy wasn’t there …”

  “… love you so much and—”

  “He never knew …”

  “… been watching you.”

  My legs, already Jell-O from the game, give out beneath me.

  I shake my head. But something in me is just trying to rearrange al
l the puzzle pieces it already has. Has probably always had. The puzzle piece that says my skin is lighter than Mamma’s and Trist’s and Daddy’s. That says I don’t share quite as many features with them as I should.

  I chalked up my coloring and my hair to Mamma’s Creole background. There’s a huge discourse within the Black community about the varying skin tones within immediate family. It’s not uncommon to have a family of six where both parents have tawny skin and two out of the four kids are an umber sort of brown. It’s not a happy discourse. It’s a result of slavery. It’s the reason light-skinned girls with “good hair” get asked what we’re mixed with. And because it’s common to see this skintone diversity within Black families, I never had any reason to question why I look so much lighter than both Mamma and Daddy. And Mamma and Daddy—they just let me assume it, let me hold it as gospel.

  Once when I was nine, I swallowed an ice cube out of a cup of soda my Auntie Sandra gave me. Tristan and I were never allowed to have soda, but Auntie Sandra had given us one to share, so I guzzled it as fast as I could. Until that ice cube. Swallowing it hurt. I panicked in the few seconds it took to half melt and then slide down my throat fully, thinking it would get lodged there or freeze my insides. I didn’t know how to call for help. What could anyone else do, except tell me to calm down and that it would melt eventually? It would pass. The skin above my upper-lip began to sweat, my underarms started to prickle, and I was a few seconds away from tears when Tristan grabbed my hand and said, “Use the straw next time. It’ll melt but it kinda hurts, huh?”

  All I could do was nod and swallow repeatedly like a gasping fish out of water. Trist kissed my cheek, took the cup of soda from my hand, and threw it into the nearest garbage can. I think he knew I was done with soda after that.

  Fuck a straw. All I could think was good riddance. I never drank soda again. Neither with nor without ice cubes.

  And that’s always been my relationship with Tristan. He’s been my protector in so many ways, despite being the younger of the two of us by two years.

  That ice-cube-in-the-throat thing kind of reminds me of this feeling.

  “But Tristan …?”

  Through tears and a sob, Mamma whispers, “Your half brother.”

  “Did he send that to me? My … this other man? Did he send that box to me?”

  She’s quiet a moment before she says, “I don’t know.”

  I turn, running back into the room where the brown postal paper with my name and address on it lies.

  “There’s no return address,” she says from behind me. “I checked.”

  I turn to her. Crumple the paper. Throw it at her.

  And I run. I run as fast as my legs will take me down the hall, down the stairs, through the foyer, to the crystal dish with my keys in it and out the door.

  In the distance, I think I hear Mamma alternating her sobs with her shouts of my name.

  As I drive away, I think I maybe even hear her scream, “I’m sorry!”

  Chapter Four

  I don’t end up driving far before Mamma texts me and my home training kicks in.

  PLS LET ME KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING.

  slim’s is all I send in reply.

  WHEN WILL YOU BE HOME

  I don’t answer that one because I really don’t know. I can’t think straight.

  And then I’m pulling up at Slim’s place. It’s as much of a monstrosity as my house. Honestly, it could be an exact replica. No one in this city has any originality, so naturally, all the McMansions look the same and sell the same, and make you feel the same—dead and rich and unoriginal—and that’s just that.

  Slim’s housekeeper, formerly known as her nanny, lets me in. Gracie speaks like four languages—that I know of—and whichever she greets you with at the door is typically an indicator of her mood. She’s been chasing us since we were in diapers and spends a good amount of time chasing us around these days too.

  “You’ve eaten?” Gracie says.

  I nod.

  She tsks and pinches the skin at my ribs. “Go upstairs. I’ll bring you something in a minute.”

  Gracie says this every time she sees me. “Go upstairs. I’ll feed you in a minute.” I don’t understand how she can look at me now and think I’d want food. As if food is the great fixer of all things.

  Well, it’s not. People go through breakups and girls eat their body weight in Ben & Jerry’s. Know what it does for them? It increases their pant sizes and reduces the amount of room they have in their freezer.

  When I let myself into Slim’s bedroom, she’s on her balcony taking selfies with the starless blue-black sky behind her.

  “Oh, hey!” she says, and then pulls me into a picture with her that catches us from the lips down, skyline behind us. She captions it #north and then posts it to Snapchat even though my grimace just screams she wasn’t ready. “Did you get in trouble?”

  “North?” I ask her.

  “Yeah, like north of Sunset. It could be, like, A Thing you and me do. Hashtag-north-vibes. Hashtag-north-bitch.” I get it. Because we grew up and live north of Sunset Boulevard.

  I nod. “And when we go over the hill—hashtag-south-as-fuck.”

  “Yes! And our parents could be, like, the hashtag-OG-norths.”

  I start to laugh thinking about how Mamma would take that sort of thing and run with it. She doesn’t use social media aside from Facebook, but she’d make it work there, too.

  It strikes me hard and hot to remember why I’m even here, and I run into Slim’s bathroom and throw up until my body heaves repeatedly off the floor, empty.

  “Whoa. What in the heck was that about?” Slim says from the doorway. “What a waste of pancakes.” She pulls a tiny bottle of water from the mini-fridge in her bedroom and then moves behind me, quickly undoes my braids, and ties my 3C mess back with one of her thick scrunchies.

  I swig some water, spit it into the sink, and swish her cinnamon toothpaste around my mouth.

  I meet her eyes in the mirror. “I think my dad’s white.”

  Slim doesn’t laugh or gasp or anything like that. She just says, “Oh, yeah?” Like it’s a joke. Like I make jokes about this type of thing all the time. I don’t.

  “Slim.”

  She pulls her bundles of curls into a messy topknot, assesses herself in the mirror.

  “Slim,” I say again as she turns up the song on the radio. Some rap song where the guy repeats pipe it up over and over again. I think the song is about anal sex.

  “Stacy, Jesus Christ, will you listen to me? I’m having a meltdown because my parents are liars and I think my biological father is blond Christian Bale and I lost half a brother and my only living grandparents aren’t my actual grandparents.” I choke on the breath I’m trying to pull in. “Oh my God.”

  No, no, please don’t hyperventilate again because hyperventilating sucks and is really uncomfortable. Poppa and Gram aren’t my actual grandparents. Do I even have grandparents? Mamma’s parents died when she was thirteen. Her sisters raised her. Daddy’s parents are all I have. Had.

  Had?

  And then I’m in Slim’s arms and I think it’s supposed to be comforting, but really, it’s just getting harder to breathe. I hold completely still, like that time my front tooth came loose after Trist hit me in the face with Mamma’s car door. The thing was going to come out either way, but I was convinced staying absolutely still would protect me from having it fall out prematurely.

  Gracie comes in quiet like a breeze, delivers not food but Kleenex. It’s like they want me to be crying, but tears aren’t really my dig. At least, they weren’t before now.

  “If she’s light-headed, she needs to put her head between her knees,” Gracie says.

  “I thought that was for vertigo?”

  “That’s for vom,” I say. And they both nod like I’m an authority on vomiting or vertigo or having your head between your knees.

  But the vomiting’s over, so I’m not really sure what’s supposed to help me
now. I pull away from Slim after the feeling of suffocation starts to bleed its way across my face and cloud my vision.

  “There was a box.”

  Slim picks lint off my shirt. “What?”

  “There was this box of, like, stuff. Pictures of me as a kid and a copy of my birth certificate and clippings of that time Mamma and I got featured in the paper for the tree planting stuff and, like, some articles from the local paper about my football awards—”

  “Maybe it was old stuff your mom just had?”

  “No,” I say sharply. “No. She was trying to hide it from me. Like, up at the top of her closet. I caught her trying to hide it. And there was this old pic of my mom, like, all hugged up on some white dude from back in the day.”

  I feel like I should be stumbling over these words but I don’t. They come out smooth and raspy the same as all my other words. And Slim, bless her heart, she doesn’t bat an eyelash.

  “You ever met him before?”

  “Who, white dude? No.”

  “So where’d this box come from then?”

  “I don’t know! That’s the problem. Like, maybe he sent it? Or maybe he didn’t …” I pause for one long beat. “Slim, do you think … do you think maybe he doesn’t know?”

  “About you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But then who the hell sent you that lurker box?”

  Exactly what I’d like to know. I mean, Mamma clearly wasn’t worried about whoever sent this thing. So it doesn’t necessarily make me feel unsafe.

  I can still trust her at least that much.

  “So white Christian Bale, huh?” Slim says.

  I nod. “White Christian Bale.”

  Slim sits on her floor and pushes into one of her bendy-girl cheer stretches. “What’re you thinking?”

  I shake my head. “I can’t believe she’d lie about something like this.”

  “Does your dad know? Solomon, I mean.”

  Oh, Jesus, the differentiation kills me a little bit. “I think so? I ran out of there before I got any real answers and I kinda, like, tuned out a lot of what she was saying.”

  “Tuned out?”