Like a Sister(5)

“Ahh.” I drew the h out as I crossed smack-dab in the middle of the street, not even bothering to look both ways. I reached the sidewalk still searching for something else to say. Something more appropriate. I had nothing.

Mel and I barely knew how to talk to each other on a normal day, much less this one. We communicated best when not communicating at all. Our relationship had always been conducted through one intermediary after another. My mom had first taken up the role. Then, once they were no longer on speaking terms, it was Gram. After she died, it became Desiree. And two years ago, we’d switched to Mel’s executive assistant, Tam.

When you never really have to speak to someone, you never learn how. Normally that suited me fine. Just not today, not when there were so many things I wanted to ask.

Did you too know this was going to happen? Does it still feel like someone sucked the air out of your lungs? Are you also kinda relieved you don’t have to worry about her anymore? Do you feel guilty about it too?

And things I needed to ask. The why.

Why had she been coming to see me?

But I didn’t say any of that, just waited for him to take the lead, as usual. There was a voice in the background and then he spoke. “Look, I gotta get to the office. The police are stopping by at two. I want you there.”

He hung up before I could tell him no thank you. I was not in the right mental space. He’d barely registered when Desiree and I had stopped talking, so I knew he couldn’t tell me what I really wanted to know: if she’d been ready to make amends.

“Hey, mamí,” a voice called. Wally, the stock guy at the market on the corner where I always turned to get home.

Usually I was happy to see him. He looked out for me, just like Hector, who knew my breakfast order at the deli, and Malika, who made sure to ring the doorbell when she dropped off an Amazon package.

I wasn’t just in my neighborhood. I realized I was at my street. My body had gotten me there while my head swam.

“You good, mamí?”

I was not, but did Wally really need to know? Did he really care? Or was it just some automatic greeting tossed back and forth like a game of catch? I glanced down at my Jordans. For a moment, I wanted to tell him the truth. That I’d been an only child for two hours now. That I was not handling it well.

But that seemed like too much to yell across the street, especially with the Latin trap music blasting from the car at the light. I rubbed my left wrist and smiled while I lied. “I’m good.”

The smile instantly disappeared, and I scrambled to bring it back, making sure the follow-up was brighter, better, longer—because that’s really all he wanted. He went back to unpacking strawberries, and I continued the two blocks home.

Someone once told me you can tell how gentrified a neighborhood is by the supermarket. When you see the Tom’s of Maine on the shelf, you know Becky of Midtown will soon follow. Shopping. Jogging. Waving at the men drinking nutcrackers on their front stoops.

We weren’t there. Yet. No cabs. No food carts. No tourists. The only interloper was me, and I’d like to think, given my family history, that I didn’t count.

One of ten and the bookend, Gram’s place—my place—was yellow brick like in Oz and probably as narrow as Dorothy’s favorite road too. Inside were twin two-bedroom apartments, each taking up a single floor—combined living room and kitchen and then bedrooms. Gram and Aunt E had lived on the first floor since Mel was a teenager. Even now I spent so much time in Aunt E’s unit that she no longer bothered to lock the door, and I no longer bothered to knock. We also had a basement that wasn’t good for anything more than storing things and forgetting where you’d put them.

Aunt E was sweeping the front step when I got to our gate, wearing her usual T-shirt and yoga pants. A preference for comfort over sophistication was one of the things she’d passed down to me even though we technically weren’t related. She was only my aunt in the way so many other Black people have play aunts and play cousins. Family created from bonds rather than blood.

Aunt E and Gram had been “roommates.” Another Black euphemism instead of calling them what they actually were. What they actually had been since Mel was a teenager and they’d met at his high school, where Aunt E had been in charge of the cafeteria. If she’d been born white and male, she’d have a Michelin star by now. Luckily for the thousands of us who’ve eaten her food, she was not.

Family legend had it that Aunt E moved in soon after Mel’s basketball team lost the finals and then stayed. This was Aunt E’s home as much as Gram’s, even though Aunt E refused to let us put the house in her name—saying she was too old to be a homeowner and that she didn’t need a deed to know it was hers.

She was family. Period. So it wasn’t any surprise she immediately knew something was wrong. “What happened, baby?”

Seeing her, I couldn’t even speak. I stopped and stared and scratched my wrist. She doesn’t know. She really doesn’t know. “Desiree,” I said. “She finally did it.”

Aunt E rolled her eyes. “What that girl do now?”

“Died.” It was the first time I’d said the word aloud. It scared me to think one day I’d get used to it. “Killed herself. Accidental overdose. Coke.”

Her mouth morphed into an O, the broom banging to the ground as she rubbed a deep brown hand through her short gray hair. She didn’t notice the dust settling back. It was soon joined by her tears.