On Rotation(90)

After one long minute, the woman pulled away, her expression sheepish behind her damp face.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, adjusting her sweater. She cleared her throat, dabbing her eyes. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” I said. I wanted to ask why she was crying, who those tears were for. But then I remembered that we were in a hospital, surrounded by tragedy, and decided against it. Maybe she would tell me herself, the next time we ran into each other. I pressed the elevator button again, just as the woman made a small peep of surprise.

“Oh! Look what I’ve done!” she said, gesturing to my shoulder. I looked down at my scrub shirt to find a few wet splotches, and I laughed.

“Oh, no problem, I’ve cried on this shirt plenty myself,” I said. The elevator door popped open. “I hope you . . . and whoever you love, get through this.”

As the door closed, the woman gave me a nod.

“Me too,” she said.

*

I should have suspected that treachery was afoot the moment I turned onto my street and found a car that looked suspiciously like my family’s 2009 Honda Pilot parked a block away from my apartment. All of the clues were there—the clumsy, suburbanite parallel-parking job, the dent along the bumper where Tabatha had reversed into a mailbox in her senior year of high school—but I’d ignored them out of willful ignorance. After all, my parents didn’t have keys to my apartment, and though I would not have put it past them to attempt to ambush me at home, they would need a co-conspirator to actually get inside. Specifically, they needed someone with keys. And there was only one other person who fit that description.

Traitor, I texted her when I reached my apartment and smelled the distinct scent of brown stew wafting through the air.

I’m not sorry, Nia texted back instantly. But also, yell at your sis. She’s the mastermind. I just dropped off the loot.

Sighing, I opened the door to my apartment. I should have been angrier with Tabatha for forcing this reunion . . . but I wasn’t. Distance had never been my style with my family. Even though the senior Appiahs exhausted me, I missed having them in my life.

“Angela?” my mother’s voice called from the bathroom. “Is that you?”

“Yes, Momma,” I said. My coffee table had a different kind of spread across it this time: duckbilled clips, combs, a spray bottle, leave-in conditioner, gels, braid sheen spray. Hanging up my keys, I approached it slowly, trying to put together just how many of my friends Tabatha had roped into her plot.

Dorothy Appiah emerged from the bathroom behind me, drying her hands off on her leggings. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been fully decked out for Tabatha’s Knocking: wig in place, makeup done, dress pressed. The woman standing before me now, dressed in a loose T-shirt with her hair braided straight back in cornrows, was much more familiar.

“It was nice seeing Nia,” she said in lieu of a greeting. She made a show of looking around the apartment.* “You’ve kept this place neat.”

I held back a smirk.

“Neat is a stretch.” I sagged my backpack off, then shrugged toward the coffee table. “What’s all this?”

“Tabatha said you’d decided to braid your hair again,” Momma said. “You should be saving your money, instead of throwing $250 away at the salon. I told her I could do it.” She dove under the coffee table, producing a plastic bag with a row of thank yous running down the front. “I have some hair here; you can find something you like—”

“No need,” I said. I bent to open my backpack, producing four bundles of my gray ombre extensions. I watched her eyes widen as she took in the color; Dorothy Appiah was the one person in the world who was actually stodgier than my stodgiest attending.

“Don’t you think 1B* would be better?” she started, and I cut her off.

“Momma, why are you here?” I said. She flinched, but I pressed on. “We haven’t talked in two months, and that was for a reason. It’s really nice that you’ve decided to come by and cook for me and do my hair, but it doesn’t change anything about how we got here in the first place.”

The Angela Appiah of yesteryear would have said nothing. She would have accepted her mother’s showering of love unquestioningly, happy for a return to normalcy. I wondered whether Momma had expected to meet that Angela, and if she could accept this new one.

Momma sighed, dropping onto the couch. She looked at me for a long moment, the corners of her mouth downturned.

“I didn’t cook the brown stew,” she admitted. “Auntie Abena made it. I’m just heating it up.”

“I knew that,” I said with a smile. I wandered into the kitchen, finding rice warming in my rice cooker and enough brown stew for two simmering on the stove. I grabbed plates from my cabinets and began doling out servings automatically, setting the table for us like the good eldest daughter I was.

“You shouldn’t have blocked us,” Momma said, following me as I filled our glasses with cold water from my Brita pitcher. “We’re your family. That was incredibly disrespectful of you. Your father is still upset about it, and honestly, I don’t blame him. It may take some time for him to come around.”

I didn’t respond for a moment, busying myself by gathering our utensils.

“I would do it again,” I said, setting our glasses down hard on the table. “You were disrespectful to me. I won’t tolerate that. Being family doesn’t get you a free pass to talk to me however you’d like.” I tore off a paper towel for both of us, then sat. “Let’s eat.”