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  The door flies open and slams against the wall, announcing the fact that I am done being bamboozled and hoodwinked. I snatch my bag from the chair that I will never sit in again and damn near trip over Stella’s legs as I march to the door. “Let’s go,” I snap.

  “I still gotta get my reading,” Stella protests.

  I give her a look that has her following me out the door like she is hypnotized and I am the only one who can snap my fingers and bring her out of it.

  “You know you ain’t right, Lucky,” she says, hopping up into the driver’s seat and rolling her eyes in my direction. “I was gone ask that bitch for some winning lottery numbers.”

  I don’t say anything and she pulls out into the street, a speed demon pushing the truck to the limit. Taking out her disappointment on a fifteen-year-old Chevy that has done nothing to deserve the abuse. She leaves me alone though, knows I cannot take anymore. That I am struggling against becoming like the woman we saw earlier and struggling hard.

  We only make it two blocks down and one block over and then I give in. I fist my hands in my locks and push my chin into my chest. Scream at the top of my lungs and rock myself. Then I let the tears come. I cry until there is saliva down the front of my shirt and snot dripping from my nose into my mouth. I make savage noises because I am angry and feeling violent and then I scream again.

  The loss of control frightens me in a way that I haven’t been frightened in a long time. It isn’t that I have never cried like this before, because I have. And that is precisely it. I am frightened because of what happened the last time I cried the way I am crying now. History could very easily repeat itself.

  Stella doesn’t know what to do with me, so she does the only thing she can think of doing. She knows who and what I am, knows that if she does anything more I will not accept it.

  She pulls the truck to the curb and lays a warm hand on my back.

  “Aw, Lucky,” she says as if I have just broken the code. I am not as together as I have led her to believe.

  Chapter Nine

  Slumber parties are for children and silly teenage girls who think they have secret business to attend to after grown-ups are asleep. I have never cared for them, have never willingly been to one. Not once in my entire life. I think about Madonna and wonder how many young girls use the event as an excuse to satisfy sexual curiosity, exactly how far curiosity takes them before sexual orientation kicks in. I relive being corralled with hundreds of women at once, a perpetual slumber party, a feast for the senses and death for the soul. I know exactly how far motive, means and opportunity can push a person.

  Beige is a typical teenager, wanting to order pizza and indulge in buttery microwave popcorn as we watch one rented movie after another. We let out the futon and lay on our stomachs, pushing the popcorn bowl back and forth, and I tell her three different times that I’m sure I don’t want a slice of pepperoni pizza. She cannot conceive of not eating meat, of not tearing into flesh and loving every minute of it. She teases me about what I am missing, and I educate her on clogged arteries and insane cholesterol levels. She aims the remote at the television and adjusts the volume to tune out the lesson.

  I listen to the way her personality has evolved as she kneels behind me and plays in my locks, her mouth going a mile a minute. There is a boy she likes but she isn’t sure if he likes her. She has kissed another boy once, on the mouth, and she doesn’t know if she appreciates the feel of human tongue in her mouth. She doesn’t hate it, she just doesn’t know if she appreciates it. She is considering studying drama and becoming an actress. Otherwise, she wants to be a dancer.

  Beige giggles like the little girl I once knew as she whispers that she can’t dance worth crap. Then she comes up with a brilliant idea. “I brought Vicky’s makeup bag with me,” she says, hopping off the futon and racing across the floor to her overnight bag. “Let’s make each other’s faces up.”

  I look at her and silently quiz her. Does she remember that I am her mother? That I am pushing forty and not fifteen? Does she feel that I love her so much I can smell it, thick in my nostrils? The desire to be a mother again is like undigested food, stuffed inside my intestines and adding ten extra pounds. It won’t be eliminated because it is not waste, but I can’t absorb its healing properties either. I notice that she calls Vicky Vicky and not Mom, but I don’t point it out.

  She slathers my lips with gloss called Red Hot Seduction, and I frown as I inspect her handiwork in the bathroom mirror. It is not my color, and she has neglected to apply lip liner first, before painting me up like a two-dollar whore. I scrub at her artwork with a wad of toilet paper and reach for the makeup bag. I spy a razor blade and pull it out.

  “You can’t start painting on all that gunk without laying the foundation,” I say to my daughter in the mirror. She watches me arch my eyebrows like a pro, like I have been doing it every day for the last eight years. If she knew what I can really do with a razor blade, she would run like hell.

  “Oh, you have to do mine next,” she whines prettily and her reflection is gorgeous. “I hate this unibrow thing. Can you cut it off for me?”

  I finish with my brows and then I sit her on the toilet seat and do hers. I show her how to apply skin cleanser to her face, how to let the tingle of pores emptying stimulate her senses, and then I talk to her about patting her skin dry, instead of rubbing it. I go through all the motions with her—moisturizer, a light blending of foundation and then translucent dusting powder to set her makeup. I pencil in the outline of her heart-shaped lips and blend two colors until they are shimmery and gold tinted.

  She nearly faints when she sees what I have done with her eyes. I watch her watch herself in the mirror and laugh, shaking my head. “You played dress up all the time when you were little,” I say softly. “Used to dance around the house like a little diva. Had so much blusher on, it was crazy.”

  Her eyes swerve over to mine in the mirror and lock. “You still do the best lips. Make your face up for me.”

  Vicky is a shade or two lighter than I am, somewhere around butter, where I am coffee with creamer. Medium brown. She has occasional acne in her T-zone, and foundation creates the illusion of flawless skin. For me, good health and the consumption of plenty of water means I have no need for illusions. I add liner and earth tone shadows to my eyes, stroke mascara on my lashes and take the longest time with my lips. When I am done, Beige and I have matching pie holes. I step back and look at the stranger staring back at me in the mirror. I try to remember who she is and where I know her from, but can’t.

  Beige moves up beside me and stares. “I remember you,” she says.

  I take my first hug from her since I have been home. I pull her into my arms and hug her so tightly that she struggles to breathe. She wraps her arms around my waist and pushes her face into my neck. I don’t care about the makeup she is smearing onto my nightgown, don’t care that it probably won’t wash out. All I care about is that she is touching me and not flinching. That she is pulling my scent into her nostrils and feeling me do the same.

  “I remember you too,” I say and kiss the side of her face.

  We do hair next. I sit her between my thighs and do cornrows across her scalp, send her to the bathroom to shriek and coo at herself in the mirror. She tells me that I have created a work of art on her head, and my fingers cosign with her. Then she fiddles with my locks until they are twisted together against my scalp in a complicated-looking contraption that I think I like.

  On her toes she puts nail polish called Mango Fever, and for mine I choose Tiki Punch. I paint her fingernails after I give her a manicure, and then I shift around impatiently when it is her turn to shape and buff and polish for me. We put another movie on and blow our nails as we watch, sitting close together on the floor.

  She falls asleep before I do, pushing her freshly cleansed face deep into the pillow and her knee deep into my back. She has always slept like a hurricane, no telling where she will land or how much devastation she will leav
e in her wake. I scoot closer to the edge of the futon and hope I won’t have to scoot any more. But the night is long and the probability that I will wake up on the floor is strong.

  Just before I start falling asleep, I start to feel something I haven’t felt in a long time. It taunts and teases me, this feeling, and for the longest time I can’t grab hold to it and make it be still long enough for me to see what it is. I watch it flutter around the room, land on my skin, and then dance away again. It pisses me off that it can be so cruel, and I curse it under my breath. Then it finally settles around me, and I realize that I don’t want it after all.

  This is when I start to feel like a woman.

  My phone hardly ever rings, and when it does it’s usually Vicky or Beige, so the unfamiliar voice on the other end throws me off balance. It is male.

  “Lena?”

  “Yes,” I snap. “Who is this?”

  “Aaron. I need you to get down here quick.”

  I look at the clock and curse like a sailor. He laughs. “It’s eight o’clock in the morning and I just laid down. What the hell is it?”

  “There’s been a death in the family. Come now.”

  I am looking a mess, and he whistles under his breath when he sees me on the other side of his door. I am wearing my nightgown with a pair of jeans pulled on underneath it and no shoes, locks all over the place and pre-sleep crud in the corners of my eyes. Breath kicking like Van Damme. I push past him into his world and look for dead bodies. “I know some places you can hide a body and buy yourself some time,” I say, only halfass joking.

  Aaron lays his head back and cracks up. “Not that kind of death, but damn, are you serious?”

  “Shit yeah. Out by the freeway. Who the hell died, and why do I give a damn?”

  “That’s cold, Lena.” He closes the door and locks it, checking out my sleepwear. Thousands of little pink flowers greet him, and possibly my nipples, too. “I think Sophia is dead.”

  “Who?”

  “Sophia.”

  “And you got me out of bed because you think she’s dead? You don’t know for sure, you just think.” I pause and think about what I’m saying. I’m about to get riled up about a possible death and I don’t have all the facts. “Who in the hell is Sophia?”

  “My computer.” He is barefoot too, and the soles of his feet kiss hardwood noisily as he crosses his living room, motioning for me to follow. He leads me to the second bedroom, his home office, and points accusingly at the archaic machine set up across the room. “She’s dead.”

  Even from where I’m standing I can see that Sophia is old and tired. Once upon a time she was top of the line, but now she is about to cross the line into extinction. She is so old that she has wrinkles and age spots, but there is something regal about her. She deserves respect.

  I approach her slowly, reverently. I am a third of the way in love. “They don’t make these babies anymore. Where did you find her?” I stroke the ridiculously large monitor and then I push a few letters on the keyboard.

  “My first computer. The love of my life. Had her for I don’t know how many years. Can you save her?”

  “Might need to call the morgue,” I say. But I am pulling up a chair. “She sign a DNR order?”

  “You’re funny.”

  “And you’re a sentimental fool. How many overhauls has she had?”

  He shrugs, trying to think up a lie. “Two, three.” Then, “I don’t know, ten?”

  “Tell me what she was doing before she died.”

  “She was fine one minute,” he says, and I wonder if he is actually about to start crying over Sophia. “I was typing and then she made this funny noise. After that, the screen went black and she wouldn’t do anything else.”

  “What kind of noise?” He tries to imitate the sound and makes me laugh. I look at Sophia and we share a moment of silent female communication. Let me die in peace, she begs me. And like a doctor playing God, I tell her that I think I might be able to gift her with a little more time among the land of the living. I think I know what ails her. She calls me a heartless bitch. I tell Aaron, “Go away and let me work. Don’t come back in here until I call you. This could get ugly.”

  He leaves me alone with his pride and joy, and I go to work, losing myself in a strange kind of nirvana. An hour passes, and I don’t even notice him sneaking back into the room and peeking over my shoulder. By now I am sitting on the floor, with the heart of the computer exposed to my prying eyes and fingers, in seventh heaven.

  “Lena . . . what the hell?”

  “Shhh,” I say, shooing him away. “I think I know what the deal is. Give me a minute.”

  “She has PMS?”

  “No, menopause. You need a new hard drive. Matter of fact, a new computer.”

  “Can we put a new one in?”

  “We could, but no telling how long it’ll last before you’d have to do it again. Read my lips, Aaron. Sheila is tired. She wants to die in peace.”

  “Sophia.”

  “Whatever. Let this pile of crap die. Damn.”

  “Why are you objectifying her?”

  “Can’t objectify an object.” With a flick of my wrist, I pop the hard drive out and set it on the floor beside me. He flinches like I’ve slapped him. “What do you want to do? Because I can help you haul her out.”

  He looks like he wants to hurt me. “I’m getting a new hard drive. Don’t touch another hair on her head.”

  “You know you’re taking this way too seriously, right?”

  “I don’t play when it comes to my woman.”

  “Again. Whatever. Who’s popping the new hard drive in?”

  “You,” he says as if it is a foregone conclusion.

  We stare each other down. He says Sophia is the love of his life but he trusts me to save her, believes I have the power to do so. I don’t have to talk him into it, don’t have to give him a spiel about my qualifications, and he doesn’t point out the obvious discrepancies. Like, why am I squeezing goo into snack cakes if I am a computer guru? He doesn’t concern himself with any of it. I said it and he believes.

  I stretch out a hand and he takes it, pulls me to my feet like I weigh two pounds. I wipe my hands on the seat of my jeans and look at Sophia one last time. We will meet again and I can’t wait. “Thanks,” I say.

  Even now I cannot stand to watch it, but I am unable to look away. Here, three decades later, I see it and I still can’t digest all that is rolling around in my gut. I want to get up from where I sit, frozen on the sofa, and help my sister, but I do not know how to help. Don’t know what I can do or say that will make a difference. Part of me suffers because she is suffering. The other part suffers because I know that tomorrow will most likely be my day, and I feel the guilt that comes along with being relieved that today is her day and not mine.

  Vicky is like a wild animal, kicking and screaming, her language barely intelligible. I think I must be the only one who understands what she is saying. One word: No. Loud and clear, no. But my grandmother is a force to be reckoned with. Vicky’s strength is nothing to her. Vicky’s cries fall on deaf ears. My grandmother has a job to do and, like the worst Jim Crow Negro imaginable, she will do it. Yessuh, she says in her mind. Right away, suh.

  My hate is visceral. It fills every empty space inside me, until there is no place left for it to go. It pushes itself out of my body through my eyes. Makes itself water and slides down my cheeks like a river. I watch and pray that some hidden shred of goodness in my grandmother will finally take over and make her do what is right. What is not sick.

  “No, no, no!” Vicky screams. My grandmother has Vicky’s hands trapped inside hers, pulling Vicky up from the sofa. Huffing and straining to catch her breath when Vicky will not be lifted. “I don’t want to. Stop it. Please, stop it. I don’t want to.”

  “You stop this foolishness, Victoria. Right now. You hear me? I said stop it!” Vicky kicks out at her, swings her legs wildly and almost dislocates my grandmother’s kneecap. I
can’t help wishing she would drop dead of a heart attack or a stroke, right then and there. I pray harder than I have ever prayed in my life, but she doesn’t drop dead.

  She slaps Vicky so hard that I feel the impact myself and Vicky is momentarily stunned into submission. Her tongue darts out to taste the blood in the corner of her mouth and then she loses it completely. She goes insane on my grandmother, scratching and clawing, kicking and swinging her fists. She leaves the couch willingly, to face off with her nemesis and win the battle. Instinctively, I stand too, ready to jump into the mix and help my sister take the old woman down. I ball my fists and take a step toward them. Then I freeze.

  Another slap knocks Vicky on her ass, right back where she started, on the sofa. She holds the side of her face and cries a pitiful cry. She knows she will not win. Not today and not any day. She is not big enough and not strong enough. I watch the fight drain out of her.

  “Now get your tail up and do what I told you to do,” my grandmother snaps. She is winded and breathing hard. Feeling like she has been rammed by a Mack truck when it was really a compact car. She is too old to be tussling with children and she knows it. “Get up right now and go, Victoria.”

  Vicky gets up and goes. Her head is hung low and her spirit is crushed, and a few seconds later, a door closes down the hallway. My grandmother heads for the kitchen, has a thought, and then she turns to point a last-minute finger at me. “Don’t you get no ideas about clowning like that, Leenie. You so small I can break you in two, and I’ll do it, too. So don’t even fix your mind to think about trying me, you hear?”

  Behind a closed door, Vicky screams and I don’t think about trying her. I think about killing her.

  “Oh, that feels so damn good.”

  “You like that?”

  “Shit,” I pant. “Love it.”

  “What does it feel like?”

  “Like good sex.” We giggle together and catch each other’s eyes. “I heard.”

  “You heard right.”