Such a Fun Age(55)

Kelley leaned up against the wall behind him and closed his mouth. Emira wasn’t finished, and she felt she was finding her thoughts and recollection of the evening as the words and cold found her body. “You’re not better than anyone,” she said, “when you hang up your own coat and take your plate to the trash. I’ve been those girls helping out tonight. I fucking am those girls helping out tonight, and you’re not making anything easier by giving them less to do. It’s like eating everything on your plate ’cause you think someone else won’t go hungry if you don’t. You’re not helping anyone but yourself. But that’s not even the half of it. You’re not seeing the whole situation for what it is. Of course I want a new job. I’d love to make real money and not have spit-up on all my clothes. But I can’t . . .” Emira thought, Oh God. She did what Shaunie called “the ugly cry lip” and looked down to her boots. The toes were wet from melted snow. “I can’t just fucking leave her,” she said.

Kelley closed his eyes for a full two seconds, as if he’d been punched in the stomach, and had also seen it coming.

“For twenty-one hours a week, Briar gets to matter to someone and you want me to just pick up and leave? When would I ever see her if . . . It’s not that simple.” Her voice cracked again. Emira shook her head and crossed one knee over the other. They stood there like that for what seemed like a long time.

“I messed up,” Kelley said. “I’m not—I wasn’t trying to . . . even though it’s exactly what I did, I’m not trying . . . Emira, look at me. I more than just like you.”

With her coat pressed into her gut, Emira stood frozen against the door and felt her heart beat into it. She said, “Okay.”

Kelley pressed his lips together. He stuck his hands in his pockets and bent slightly to meet her eyes. “Do you get what I mean by that?”

Emira nodded and looked back to her shoes. She wiped her eye with her pinky finger, looked up, and said, “Fuck.”

An hour later, Emira sat in Kelley’s bed. In the living room, Kelley Skyped with his family in Florida and she listened to the way his voice changed from parents to siblings to grandparents to nephew, and then to a very old dog who wandered into frame. Emira grabbed her phone and texted a list to herself. When she heard Kelley say good-bye, she walked with the lit-up screen into the living room. It was dark and the snow sent spots from outside the window over her bare feet.

“I have things to say.”

Kelley closed his laptop and swiveled his chair to face her. Emira stood pantless and held her phone in both hands.

“I know I have to quit,” she said. “I know that I can’t stay there, and that . . . raising Briar isn’t my job. But I just need to do it on my own terms. I turn twenty-six next week.” Emira grinned sadly. “And . . . I’m gonna be kicked off my parents’ health insurance. I’ve known for a while that this wasn’t exactly sustainable, but I just . . . yeah, I need to figure it out on my own.”

“I completely understand,” he said. “And I didn’t forget your birthday.”

“I’m not done yet,” Emira stopped him. She looked back to her phone. “Number two. You gotta stop bringing up that tape from Market Depot.”

Kelley placed his elbows on the desk behind him.

“Like . . . I get it,” Emira said. “You have a weirdly large amount of black friends, you saw Kendrick Lamar in concert, and now you have a black girlfriend . . . great. But I need you to get that like . . . being angry and yelling in a store means something different for me than it would for you, even though I was in the right. And I get that you wanna stick it to Mrs. Chamberlain or whatever to avenge your high school friend, but her life wouldn’t change at all. Mine would. And I don’t want anyone seeing it, especially as I start to look for a job.”

Kelley nodded in long, slow dips. “Okay . . . I don’t exactly agree,” he warned. “I remember that night very well, and I really thought you kept your cool much more than anyone would expect . . . but I also respect that. And I won’t bring it up again.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Okay, and last thing . . . ?” Emira put a hand to her neck. “You can’t take me to bars like that anymore.”

Kelley squinted. Then he tipped his head back, and she watched him appear to realize what he’d done, and why she was bringing it up now. “Okay . . . that was another mistake. But if it makes a difference, I’ve been there twice before, and I wouldn’t have taken you somewhere uncomfortable on purpose.”

“Well, yeah, but, that’s the point. You think it’s comfortable because it’s always been that way for you.”

Emira and Kelley talked about race very little because it always seemed like they were doing it already. When she really considered a life with him, a real life, a joint-bank-account-emergency-contact-both-names-on-the-lease life, Emira almost wanted to roll her eyes and ask, Are we really gonna do this? How are you gonna tell your parents? If I’d walked in here when they were still on the screen, how would you have introduced me? Are you gonna take our son to get his hair done? Who’s gonna teach him that it doesn’t matter what his friends do, that he can’t stand too close to white women when he’s on the train or in an elevator? That he should slowly and noticeably put his keys on the roof as soon as he gets pulled over? Or that there are times our daughter should stand up for herself, and times to pretend it was a joke that she didn’t quite catch. Or that when white people compliment her (“She’s so professional. She’s always on time”), it doesn’t always feel good, because sometimes people are gonna be surprised by the fact that she showed up, rather than the fact that she had something to say when she did.