Before I Let Go, page 34
“I didn’t want them to blame you,” Josiah agrees. “But at the time, I blamed you too. Dr. Musa’s helped me see that what I did was really no different. You couldn’t move and I couldn’t stop moving, but neither of us was handling our grief in a healthy way. What went wrong, it was my fault too.”
“Bullshit,” Deja snaps.
“Watch it.” Father and daughter stare at one another in the tight silence following her harsh curse.
“I’m not a baby.” She folds her arms across her chest. “You want me to pretend I am? Pretend I don’t curse? Pretend I don’t know what really happened between you?”
“What happened,” I say, “is that Byrd died and Henry died, and I fell down and could not figure out how to recover. Every decision from that season of my life was made through the lens of my depression. If I could go back, I would. But I don’t know what would change because that’s who I was. That’s how I coped.”
I release a huff of humorless air masquerading as a laugh. “Or didn’t cope. We were fighting all the time, your dad and me. I could barely get out of bed most days. Everything hurt so much, and I couldn’t make it stop. You and your brother kept me going, but it was hard.”
“I remember…” Deja’s voice peters out before resurging. “I remember tears on your face when you picked us up in the carpool line and hearing you cry in your room through the wall sometimes.”
It’s quiet in the kitchen, but the demons whisper that I failed my children by letting them see me that way. The poisoned vines of condemnation wind around my heart and squeeze, showing no mercy even when I cannot breathe.
“I remember you and Daddy shouting,” Deja goes on, eyes fixed on the floor. “Sometimes you’d go into the garage and try to hide it from us.”
“Kassim said he would come to your room when you heard us fighting,” Josiah says.
“Yeah,” Deja says. “We knew something was wrong, but I didn’t think you’d actually split up.”
She glances up at me. “Then I heard you arguing that night and knew you would because she wanted to.”
I swallow hot emotion and clear my throat. “You’re right. My actions did set the divorce into motion. I can’t change what happened or how I responded, so I’m asking you to forgive me for my mistakes.”
“So you think divorcing Daddy was a mistake?” she demands.
I’ve never felt more exposed than in the harsh light streaming through the kitchen window. Than in my bare feet under my daughter’s watchful stare. Than in the held breath between her question and the answer that will tell Josiah the painful truth secreted in my heart.
“Day,” Josiah says. “She doesn’t—”
“Yes,” I interrupt, forcing myself to meet her eyes and not look into his, which I feel trained on my profile. “I think it was a mistake.”
I walk deeper into the kitchen and stand right in front of her, not touching her, but looking her squarely in the eyes, praying she sees my sincerity and regret.
“People don’t become perfect when they become parents,” I tell her. “If anything, parenthood gives us more chances to screw things up, just with higher stakes. We all mess up. Sometimes we have to live with that for the rest of our lives. I can’t promise I won’t mess up, but I promise I will love you even when you do. Unconditionally. That means even if you can’t find it in your heart to forgive me, even if you hate me—”
“I don’t hate you,” she cuts in softly, eyes on the floor.
“It means I’ll always love you no matter what. And we can go on like this, not getting along, you resenting me and me not understanding you.”
I tip up her chin with my finger, waiting for her tear-drenched eyes to meet mine.
“Or we can decide today that we want something else. We can decide we’ve already lost too much to waste another day. I lost Byrd. I lost Henry.” Tears roll down my cheeks and my voice breaks. “I don’t want to lose you, too, Day.”
She may reject me, but I’m willing to risk that. I’ll keep risking it to win her trust back. To earn a second chance. Knowing she could very well roll her eyes and walk away, I extend my arms. They tremble. For a perilous second, I think she’ll reject me for the spite of it, to hurt me the way my actions hurt her. But she doesn’t walk away.
She moves toward me, her face crumpling and tears streaking her cheeks. She walks into my arms, burying her face in my neck, the wall she’s erected between us for so long collapsing. Like a cracked dam, the emotion, the tears crash through. I cry, too, but it’s as much relief as anything else. That after so much time of cutting remarks and frozen silences, I have something real with my daughter, even if it is her tears.
Chapter Forty-One
Yasmen
No school!” Kassim runs through the house delivering the news. “Mom, there’s no school!”
I walk over to my bedroom window and watch the steady drift of snow to the ground. Otis, here with us while Josiah’s in Charlotte, yawns from the foot of my bed.
“It only takes an inch for Georgia to cancel school,” I say. “Or even the threat of an inch.”
“Won’t hear me complaining,” Deja says, entering my room, still in her pajamas, and coming to stand beside me at the window. There have been awkward moments since she caught Josiah and me on Sunday. I imagine you never forget the image of your parents having sex. Not that she actually saw the act, but close enough. A few minutes earlier, and she would have seen her mom riding her dad like a roller coaster.
Even Mama’s Clorox couldn’t have scrubbed that from her brain.
But in between awkward moments, there’s been an ease, a loosening. I don’t expect her to forget overnight what she heard when Josiah and I argued or the anger she’s felt about it, but it seems like she’s trying. Like she heard me, believed me when I said I wanted things to be right between us and am willing to work on it.
“What do you want to do today?” I ask her.
“Eat? Watch TV. There’s a marathon on.”
“What kind of marathon?”
“A Different World? I’ve heard about it, but never seen it.”
“How have you never seen it? It’s one of my favorite shows of all time.” I hesitate, glancing at her from the side. “You wanna watch…together?”
Deja turns to look at me, her expression somewhat guarded, but not unpleased. “Sure, but can we make breakfast first?”
“Breakfast, yes,” Kassim says from the door, peering at us through the slits of a Captain America helmet. “Can we do sweet potato pie pancakes like Dad made?”
Deja and I share a quick look. We told Deja we would explain our “arrangement” to Kassim when Josiah returns from Charlotte. I’m not looking forward to it.
“I can’t guarantee they’ll taste like your dad’s,” I tell Kassim. “But I’ll try.”
They don’t taste like Josiah’s, but they aren’t awful. A few notches above merely edible. Kassim eats four, so I’m counting it a win. After breakfast, with the snow still falling outside, Deja and I crawl into my bed and turn on the television. The marathon is already underway, so we come in on season three and lose ourselves for hours on the campus of Hillman College.
“Is this how it was for you and Dad?” she asks, dipping her hand into the bowl of popcorn we brought upstairs. “Is this what it’s like at an HBCU?”
“I mean, this is fictionalized, of course, but yeah. It’s definitely inspired by real traditions and experiences like the ones I had at A&T and your dad had at Morehouse.”
She cradles a handful of popcorn, watching the students gather in the Pit to eat Mr. Gaines’s greasy food and digest his sage words.
“I want that,” she finally says.
My heart springs into action. “For college, you mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m still not sure college is for me, but I could have it now, right?”
“What do you mean, now?”
“I don’t want to go to Harrington for high school.”
My stomach sinks and I pause the episode, turning to give Deja my full attention. “It’s one of the best schools in the state, Day.”
“It’s the Twiwhite Zone. I want to be around more people who look like me.”
She gestures to the flat screen mounted on my wall. “Isn’t that one of the things you loved about attending an HBCU?”
“Well, of course. There’s nothing like it, but you…”
Wow. It hits me, the irony of my success being so shaped by my experience at an HBCU, and me thinking my daughter should only thrive at a place like Harrington.
“You’re serious?” I probe. “You really don’t want to go to Harrington?”
“I really don’t.”
“Where would you go?”
“The high school for our district is in walking distance. Lupe and I talked about it. She’s gonna ask her mom too. She doesn’t want to go to private school next year either.”
“Well, I do,” Kassim says from the door, holding a jar of peanut butter and a spoon. “I love Harrington.”
“You would.” Deja rolls her eyes. “They think you’re the second coming.”
“What can I say?” Kassim preens. “I keep it hot in these streets.”
“Pretty sure being on the robotics team doesn’t constitute keeping anything hot in nobody’s streets,” Deja says.
The three of us laugh, and Kassim brings his peanut butter to the bed. I scoot over so he can take one side and Deja the other. We pick back up with the marathon, but I barely follow the story line. Contentment covers me. Tucked beneath this duvet, inside this bed, is my whole world. These are the people who matter most.
Only one is missing.
“I’ll be back,” Deja whispers, glancing covertly at Kassim, who has fallen asleep after two episodes. “My cousin’s in town. I need to hit the bathroom and make that change.”
“Okay. I’ll pause it until you…”
Her cousin is in town. When was my period? Shouldn’t it be…last week? I calculate in my head, shocked that my cycle is more than a week late and I hadn’t even noticed. A few months ago, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But a few months ago I wasn’t having sex with my ex-husband like it’s FreakNik circa 1998.
In a daze, I stumble from the bed to my closet, pulling jeans and a heavy sweatshirt over my pajamas. I’m slipping my arms into a full-length puffy coat when Deja pokes her head in.
“Where are you going?” she asks, eyeing the Hunter rain boots I’m stuffing my feet into.
“Um, to the drugstore. I need to get something.”
“Now? The roads are icy. You gonna drive?”
“No.” I grab a beanie and scarf from one of my drawers. “It’s just a block or two. I’ll walk and be right back.”
“Okay,” she says, skepticism clear in her voice. “If you’re sure.”
“I am.” I kiss her forehead on instinct, braced for her to jerk away. She doesn’t, though, just leans into it. Even that small victory is invigorating. I know we have a long way to go, but maybe we’ll be okay.
I appreciate the freezing air biting through my layers of insulation and the flurry of snow dusting my cheeks. It makes me feel when my insides have gone numb, head spinning at the possibilities. I’m more than a week late. I got my shot, so I shouldn’t have to worry about birth control. Nothing’s foolproof, though. What if I really am, by some unlikely accident, some twist of fate, pregnant? My doctor clearly laid out the risks. Women who have placental abruptions are less likely to have a successful pregnancy later. When the baby didn’t survive, the likelihood of another abruption also increased. It was a point of contention between Josiah and me. He wanted to get a vasectomy, but I didn’t want him to. He wanted me to consider getting my tubes tied, but I could never take that step. What if…
I can’t finish the thought, but push open the door of Skyland’s drugstore, greeting the young woman at the register with a half-hearted smile. I speed walk past the bodywash and supplements and adult diapers until I reach the section I need.
My heartbeat stutters and the row of pregnancy tests blurs in front of me. It’s not until I taste salt that I realize I’m crying. I tug the beanie lower and glance around the store self-consciously. Because of the weather, there’s almost no one here, but I’ve been that woman who loses her shit in public places.
Public grief is tricky to negotiate. At a certain point, and it varies depending on the person and circumstance, there comes a time when you should be “over it.” You should have moved on by now. And you’re so aware of the fact that you have not, that you cannot. You don’t want others to see your past-due tears or sense the pain that has outstayed its welcome. You protect them from feeling awkward because you’re still in pain. When the facade fails and you lose it, the stares soaked in sympathy are as bad as the ones filled with contempt. I know the aftertaste of such meltdowns well, have experienced firsthand the violent vulnerability a broken mind and desecrated spirit can use against you.
There’s a civil war raging inside of me right now. I’m a city of unfortified walls and it feels like any moment everything could be laid to waste. If I’m pregnant, the list of implications is a mile long. Implications for my health, both physical and mental. After my ravaging battle with depression, can I even trust my body with those hormones? Could I carry another baby without constantly revisiting the one I lost, especially given the likelihood that it could happen again? I believe I could, but I also always assumed I was Teflon, only to find I was papier-mâché. My happiness, my wellness, feels like a tenuous ecosystem made up of therapy, coping mechanisms, and a precise dosage of meds. If something disrupts it, what would happen?
Only…is that the truth?
Papier-mâché is easily crushed, yet here I am still whole after a series of debilitating losses.
And tenuous? I’ve laid a foundation for my mental health: habits and practices that keep me well. If I feel unwell, I know what to do. When I can’t solve it on my own, I have people in my life now who won’t let me stay down. Dr. Abrams, Soledad, Hendrix.
Josiah.
I haul in a panicked breath. Josiah has been very clear that he doesn’t want another baby. Doesn’t want me taking the risk of carrying another child. Hell, this isn’t what he wanted at all. Obviously we’ve evolved from the no-strings, easy-exit arrangement we started with, but who’s to say he would want this? He’s too good a man to turn his back on me, but want it? Want something else that ties me to him even longer, even deeper?
Would Josiah move back in with us if I was pregnant?
The warmth of that thought penetrates the residual cold from my walk in the snow. A fierce desire thaws the icy fear in my heart. I want him home. How could I have ever thought he belonged anywhere else?
A young girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, walks up beside me. Without a word, she grabs one of the tests and resumes her perusal of the vitamins farther down the aisle. Barely older than Deja and she grabbed it and went on her way like it was nothing. When I pick up the box it seems to solidify two things I refuse to shy away from.
One—if I’m pregnant, I’ll deal with the risks and the hormones and the doctor’s orders. I have the tools and I know how to use them.
Two—I want my husband back, and I want him to come home. I miss him. A specific longing for touch and connection that, no matter how many girls’ nights or parties I attend surrounded by people, only he dispels.
“No time like the present,” I mutter to myself, rushing to the front to buy the test and then walking back out into the winter cold.
Chapter Forty-Two
Josiah
I’m home.
Not sure if I ever really stopped thinking of the house on First Court as home, but after days of not seeing my kids, not holding Yasmen, they’re here, so this feels like home. I didn’t even bother going to my place first, but drove here straight from the airport. Over the last few weeks of clandestine hookups, I’ve gotten in the habit of not knocking, but walking right in. With the kids home, I hesitate. We said we’d tell Kassim when I got back from Charlotte, but what are we telling him exactly?
Mommy and Daddy still like to fuck, but that’s as far as it goes.
Got it? Good.
Is that even true? Is that as far as it goes? I hid it well, but when Yasmen told Deja our divorce was a mistake, it tore something inside of me right down the middle, something still hanging in raggedy shreds. The implications of her admitting that? Tectonic. Shaking and shifting the very ground under our feet.
We didn’t discuss what she said. I didn’t spend the night. Even though Deja knows now, it would have felt weird being in Yasmen’s bedroom with our daughter under the same roof. Our whole situation feels like it’s occurring in a time warp, trapped between cycles. There are moments when we feel like the people we used to be. That passion. That connection from before. And at times this feels completely foreign, like we’re strangers discovering each other for the first time. It makes sense, though. I’m one person made of two strands. The things from my past that continue to shape me, and the person I’m slowly becoming.
My finger still hovers over the bell when the door flies open.
Deja stands there, draped in sass and a BTS onesie. Her smirk is disturbing. Knowing. Like she has something on me. She caught me postcoital with her mom, so I suppose she does.
“What happened to ‘Daddy! Daddy!’?” I ask dryly. “Aren’t you usually squealing and hurling yourself into my arms when I come home from a trip?”
Her brows lift and her smirk deepens. “Seemed to me your arms were full last I checked.”
Smart-ass. How is she only fourteen? Just how bad will this become the older she gets?
Without a word, I step past her into the house.
“How was Charlotte?” she asks, closing the door and leaning against it.
“Good. Lot of work to get the operation up and running, but we’ll make it happen.” I hesitate, shooting her a searching look. “Vashti’s moving there to be head chef.”
