Cherish Farrah, page 17
There you are, she says, without speaking at all.
So you do exist.
And the longer she watches me, in this moment that seems to drag on beyond the normal rules of time—I see you.
“What are you doing here?” I finally ask, but even I barely hear it.
Cherish, on the other hand, squeals like my mother’s arrival is a happy surprise.
“Mrs. Turner!” Despite how time stalled in my mother’s gaze, it skips now. Cherish is on the other side of the room before I untangle my feet from the mound of pillows and the sheet.
At her welcome, my mother comes fully into the bedroom and gives Cherish a hug.
“You girls aren’t up yet?” she asks, before she kisses my head and pulls me into her arms.
“Not all the way,” Cherish says, and plops back down on the pallet we made beneath the window, like she’s inviting Nichole Turner to join. Like she doesn’t know that Black parents who don’t believe in proper sleepovers for sure don’t see the whimsy in sleeping in.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” I say, and hold my mother’s gaze for a moment before lowering back down beside my best friend so she remembers where we are.
“I haven’t heard from you in quite a few days, so I thought I’d better come crash the party.”
“I told her to call you,” Cherish says, like they’re on the same side, and she looks at me with a raised eyebrow that’s playful but still serious.
“No, you didn’t,” I say, and she starts.
“Yes,” she says, her eyes drifting and then returning like I’m the one lying. “I did. When you got sick.”
The inside of my chest goes cold. It’s bad enough what she just dim-wittedly confessed to my mother, but now I don’t even know if she’s lying. I have no idea if Cherish is being malicious right now or not, because I can’t say for sure what she did or didn’t say to me when I was ill. I have no idea what she’s doing, or why, so I can’t stop it. Just like last night in the pool before a very uncharacteristic baptism, I am at my best friend’s mercy.
“When were you sick?” my mother asks, and she’s subtly more alert. Her brow ticks up, but slightly. I could swear her pupils expand, just a little. Nichole Turner is just as gifted as I am at deciding what to wear on her face, but I know that just below the surface, there is rage.
And Cherish keeps talking because she doesn’t know any better.
“The last couple days of school,” she says, opening one of the yogurts she’d buried beneath a pillow to keep them away from me. “That’s why we didn’t go—I mean, not that I cared. Everybody was already gone. What I did care about was that she basically destroyed my bathroom. No, Mrs. Turner. I’m serious. Like, vomit, everywhere. And my mom made me clean most of it up. It was bad.”
My jaw is starting to hurt, but I can’t relax it. I am watching Cherish with an intensity that should burn through her. Her skin should swell with dozens of inflamed boils and then pop, leaving holes like Swiss cheese up and down her arms. Amber-colored blood and puss should ooze from each one so that it looks like Cherish is melting in a searing, painful mess. But my gaze can’t even get her to shut up.
Now she’s done, and eating like she didn’t pull a pin and my mother isn’t a grenade preparing to detonate. Cherish won’t know when that happens, either. She doesn’t know that it’s happening now, quietly.
I know my mom better than my best friend does, so I know what the silence means. I know all the restraint that goes into what she says next.
“I didn’t hear about any of that.”
When she looks at me, there’s an entire conversation passing in the taut space between our eyes. A tug-of-war. She is already pulling, the way only my mother and I can. She’s issuing a silent command, compelling me to move, to give in. It’s how I know she and I are alike, that Nichole Turner is just like me, even though she doesn’t show it. Even though I’ve never seen her hand down a worthy consequence when her compelling is refused, I never doubt her. I never take her inaction to be inability, because I know it’s much worse than that.
Nichole Turner refuses to prove herself to me. She has mastered self-control, and I am shrewd enough to see it. It’s almost bright, the way it makes me want to squint, to seek some respite from the apparent calm of her gaze—but I won’t.
Control.
Cherish is too far away to pinch, so I dig my nails into the palm of my hand and keep my mother’s gaze until a tight smile breaks on her face.
“Your dad’s downstairs, too, Farrah,” she says, and Cherish just keeps eating like she’s only now discovering how hungry she’s been all morning. She has no reason to find my father’s presence interesting—and on his own, neither do I. Except I know what it means that my mother brought him. It means she is setting things right, the way she does for him. She has brought him so that all the pieces are present, and she can put us back in line.
When she’s certain she’s made herself clear, her smile loosens. It looks natural now, even to me.
“You girls get dressed and come down, okay?”
She waits until I nod my agreement and then she stands up, and when she looks down at me before leaving, she clenches her jaw.
“I need to talk to Bri and Jerry,” she says, but it’s like she’s telling me in particular. There’s a threat in her innocuous words, and I hear it the way she wants me to.
When she’s gone, I want to leap on Cherish. I want to slap the small container out of her hands, to shake her, to bury her in the pillows the way she buried the food.
My mother is here, so I won’t. The freedom from the gazebo and the baptism and the haphazard, false attempts at cleaning up last night—the attempts meant to demonstrate that we knew we didn’t have to succeed, that we could be brazen about our adventures in the middle of the night and no one would discipline us—are gone. Everything I’ve let uncoil is painfully rewinding itself. I thought I’d already put away the slivers of myself I set free in front of Kelly, but in my mother’s presence, I see that I’ve been too lax. Now the rest of me curls too quickly and too tight. It’s receding deep, back where it came from, and I don’t know when I’ll ever get to let it back out.
“She’s here to take me home,” I tell Cherish, and I don’t hide the way I’m biting down on my teeth.
“What?” She looks up from the soft, pale yogurt she’s scooped onto the edge of her spoon, as though any more would be too much. As though it doesn’t have the lightest texture and a delicate flavor, or as though it’s all she’s used to. Anything else would be too strong. “You said you won them over. They were gonna let you stay.”
“They were,” I snap. “Before you opened your mouth.”
She looks like she’s trying to press the creamy substance between her tongue and palate, but I can tell from the way she furrows her brow that she’s confused. Or she’s pretending to be.
“All I said is that you were sick,” she argues. She missed the entirety of what passed between my mother and me, but when I clip my words and refuse to say more than the bare minimum to show her my annoyance, Cherish can always tell. “I didn’t know it was a secret, Farrah.”
“Right,” I say, calm but serious so she stays uncomfortable. “Because we don’t have any.”
I don’t stay. I don’t tell her what I mean. I leave her with her spoon hovering between the yogurt and her mouth, and I dress to meet my parents downstairs.
* * *
—
WHEN I FOLLOW the voices into one of the more formal sitting rooms on the main floor of the Whitman home, four adults are trying very hard to camouflage what is really going on.
This is a confrontation.
This is a refusal to be ignored.
This is my mother’s brand of ambush, and it’s too polite to be countered or refused.
My dad’s sitting all the way back on the auburn leather sofa, his hand swallowing one of Jerry’s short glasses. There’s a set in three different rooms of the house, by my count, and Mr. Whitman’s holding one himself. They’re both wearing weekend attire, competing for most relaxed in a pair of respectable shorts, the kind that brush just above their knees and range in color from tour-guide tan to eggshell white. My father’s paired his with a day-off polo while Jerry’s chosen a V-neck that even from a distance looks soft and expensive, yet simple and noncommittal.
Brianne Whitman cannot be caught off guard. However long Cherish and I have been sleeping, Brianne looks like she’s showered, gardened, had a leisurely breakfast with Jerry, jogged, showered again, run errands, and met my parents as they were all approaching the front door.
My mother’s my reminder that something’s wrong. I noticed her small earrings, the studs she wears with her hair up when she has to make a first or intentional impression. No fringe or bangs, her hair is swept away from her face, and she’s wearing a gloss instead of lipstick, and a pair of flat, closed-toe sandals instead of her favorite summer espadrilles. This isn’t what she wears to spend time with friends; this is what she wears so that the opposing party gets the subtle message that she means business and that she’s capable of it. A Black woman in business can’t afford to neglect either. My mother’s been out of her primary field for a year somehow, but nothing dulls the knowledge that she must always be the most prepared. It’s something I’ve heard Brianne Whitman admit to more than once.
This is my mistake. I gave myself too much credit. I left too much silence between the night at my parents’ place and now. I thought that I was masterful in the words I chose, and maybe I was. Maybe they carried just the right amount of sting, but I should’ve known Nichole Turner would recover. Even with my father to focus on, she would clear her head sooner. It was never going to be a one-and-done discussion, and a new life with the Whitmans—and I’m almost glad.
I thought she’d chosen my dad, the way she always has, that she would coddle him through the entire process of moving to a new city and finding him a new home, and forget about me. I thought she’d expect that I could take care of myself, the way she knows I can, and I would slip away into the back of her mind for a while, just until my dad was comfortable in his new position, and he was stable.
I thought she’d forfeited our war games.
I would never have forgiven her, but I was prepared for that. I was resigned to carving her out of myself, the way I’m convinced must inevitably be done with most people.
But here she is. Nichole Turner is dressed for a conference with my teachers, or an escrow closing, or something where she’s approachably no-nonsense, and whoever is depending on her knows they can. She’s here to collect me and bring me home, and I appreciate it.
But I’m still staying.
I want my mother to refuse to give me up and I’m not going anywhere.
She should’ve chosen me before I chose Cherish. Before the Whitmans chose me. She should have imagined that they would.
“Are you sure you don’t want something, Nicki?” Brianne hasn’t sat down. She’s been balancing out my mother’s tension by floating around the room like a cloud despite the fact that my mother’s perched at the sofa’s edge. Finally, Brianne drapes herself over the arm of Jerry’s chair, ready on a whim to rise again. “It’s so good to finally see you two. I know things must be hectic at the moment.”
I sit down just inside the wide threshold of the room’s double doors, so that I’m outside the invisible borders set by the four adults, and try to blend in with the rest of the furniture. Cherish wanders in, and I tug her down beside me so our presence doesn’t interrupt whatever Nichole Turner has planned here. I might not be willing to give in, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see it. It doesn’t mean I’m not hoping she finally bares her teeth.
“The kids say Farrah was sick,” my mother says, brushing past Brianne’s frivolous pleasantries. “It sounded serious.”
“It wasn’t terrible,” Brianne says with a shrug. Her ethereal poise is uninterrupted; she’s even opted for cool reassurance. She manages to sound compassionate without validating my mother’s concern. Impressive.
“To be honest,” Jerry interjects, “it was pretty bad.” And he does a shrug of his own in my dad’s direction, as though inviting him to the conversation.
“Jer, you’ll scare them,” his wife says just a bit more quietly. She moves a small section of his hair though it wasn’t out of place, but the gesture succeeds in lending the exchange a misleading triviality.
“What scares me is finding out something like that after the fact.” Nichole Turner doesn’t blink. She’s looking at her dear friend with a resolute stare that makes no attempt at softening. “I can’t imagine why no one thought to call us.”
And then she looks at me. She lets me know I haven’t disappeared into the background. I’m not eavesdropping. I’m here because she told me to be. Something’s getting settled here and now, no matter how quiet I remain—so I choose a side.
“I would’ve been just as sick if I were with you,” I say, and I don’t blink, either, but Brianne laughs nervously.
“That’s true,” she says, though it’s timid. Or at least it can be interpreted that way. “And we took good care of her, Nicki, just like we promised. Honestly, we were only trying to take some of the strain off Ben and you.”
When she smiles between the two of them, my dad smiles back like a reflex, and ordinarily, I’d shift my focus to him. He’s the easy target. He’s the person who taught me there is such a thing. But he’s not the one in control, and sometimes there’s no escaping it. Sometimes you have to face down the strong one.
“I’m sorry, I know there’s nothing more frustrating than feeling out of the loop—especially when it’s your own kid. I take full responsibility for that, Nichole, I do.” Brianne’s humble and apologetic, and there’s clearly an air of expectation, like the matter requires nothing more than a gentle touch. She’s certain of her strength in that department, and I wonder whether this woman has ever tried to handle my mother this way before. Something tells me she hasn’t; otherwise Nichole Turner wouldn’t have thought so highly of her all this time.
She needs to know that acting out gracious contrition won’t work here, but I can’t very well tell her. I can’t communicate to Brianne Whitman that it won’t satisfy or obligate my mother, not now that she feels there’s something wrong. Not when she might finally sense that the Whitmans are drawing close around me, adopting me the way they did Cherish. Or worse, that I’m adopting them.
I leave Cherish on the outside and come sit beside my mother on the Whitmans’ leather couch. I can feel the way Brianne and Jerry watch me, soft smiles etching across their faces. It looks like I’m drawing near to my parents, to my mother, because I’ve missed her, or to let her know that I’m okay.
“I’m fine, Mom,” I say, opening my arms and wearing a playful grin, as though teasing her or telling her she’s free to inspect me. As though she’s being overprotective and I’m goading her toward reason. I smile past her at my dad to remind her that he’s there and they are not a united front. He hasn’t matched her concern or her resolve, and I’m not the only one who can tell. I look between them to drive home my point, but only so much that she can tell. Then I tuck into her, so that she’ll wrap her arms around me, and she does.
It must look heartwarming.
I couldn’t have scripted my dad better. He reaches over and does his equivalent of a hair tousle, sinking his fingers into my thick hair and then massaging my scalp a few times so that it isn’t mussed.
“Glad you’re feeling better, Fair. Your mom and I were just worried,” he says, like he’s forgotten that until just now, neither of them knew. “Next time, don’t forget to call.”
“We’ll make sure of it,” Jerry says, and drinks what’s left in his lowball glass. “We’re supposed to be the grown-ups, I think,” and the two men chuckle.
They’re acting like that’s the end of it, but I know it isn’t. I drew closer because I’m sure. There’s a stiffness to my mother’s embrace, especially when my dad unwittingly hangs her out to dry. When his behavior confirms the message I was silently sending with my eyes, she looks at me out of the corner of hers, like it’s my doing. Like I turned him, even though my focus has been on her.
“Ben and I have made up our minds,” she says, and I don’t leap out of her arms because I know what’s coming. “We’ve decided to take you home with us.”
A lesser person might point out my father’s recently implied position, the way there’s no reasonable interpretation of his words that fits with hers. They’d be right, but it wouldn’t matter.
Your father and I are a united front.
She’s already told me once; it doesn’t matter if it’s true.
We both know the problem with a turncoat is that they’re easily turned back.
In my mother’s case, she doesn’t even have to do that. The upside of being his partner is that she can simply speak for him—the way I got in trouble for knowing she so often has.
Still tucked inside my mother’s embrace, I don’t look at a gaping Cherish, or fly into hysterics. I don’t recoil from my mother’s arms or begin spouting complaints. That’s what the room is waiting for, though, because everyone goes still.
That’s what she expected, or what she thought was possible. Like I’m not smarter than that.
She’s testing my restraint. Loosening her hold of me as though encouraging me to flail or fling myself away. It’ll be easier to sweep me up and out of the Whitman home then. It’ll be understandable to hurry out, haul me over my father’s shoulder like a misbehaving toddler whose tantrum can’t be managed, so their parents just whisk them away.
