Honey Girl(23)

Miss Debbie stood up and reached a hand across. “Hello, Porter. Aren’t you a beautiful thing? Everyone calls me Miss Debbie.”

Grace was angry and lost. Her parents were divorced, and Colonel had moved her across the country. She looked up for orange groves and only found towering, terrifying redwoods. She could climb those forever and never reach the top.

She kept her hands by her side, she remembers. Colonel’s hand tightened on her shoulder, and Grace liked it. She liked the feeling of provoking him, of causing that downturn of his mouth. No more people smile.

“My name is Grace,” she said, with all the force she could muster, “and I am not a thing.”

The impression was lasting and brutal. Grace Porter made a lifelong enemy out of Miss Debbie that day.

They walk. The office is full of people but still hushed, like even the conversations in the little kitchenette are confidential. It’s mostly white men with the same haircut, suits and ties buttoned up so tight their necks bulge. No one bats an eye at Grace. Her gold hair and her amber-brown, freckled skin and her mismatched parents are no longer worth gossip. That’s just Porter, they probably think, while they engage in global warfare at their computer screens like it’s a game of Tetris. Just Colonel’s daughter, nothing special.

The door to Colonel’s office is closed. Miss Debbie knocks and waits. Grace peers into the office and waves through the glass wall. Colonel holds his finger up, gesturing toward the phone.

Miss Debbie glares, huffing at she turns away. She points at the row of seats outside the office until Grace picks one and sits. “You will wait there,” she says sternly. “Very important things happen in this office, Grace Porter, and I will not be responsible for you interrupting your father and jeopardizing security.”

Grace crosses her legs and smiles. “Yes, Miss Debbie,” she says. “The nation’s enemies won’t hear a word from me. God bless America.”

Miss Debbie starts to walk away. She pauses in front of Grace, leaning down just enough to ensure her voice won’t carry. “Your father had such high hopes for you,” she says softly. “It’s a shame.”

Grace looks up and meets her eyes. “A shame, indeed,” she says, and Miss Debbie leaves. Grace lets her shoulders drop like she’s shedding heavy armor.

“Porter?” Colonel calls, sticking his head out of his door. It takes everything in Grace not to feel like she’s picking all that armor back up, heading into the battlefield of Colonel’s office. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

“I’m okay,” she says. She sees his desk is pulled up to a standing position, and try as he might, he can’t hide the stiff way he limps as he walks toward her.

It’s better now with the metal leg. He might stiffen up, but the thing doesn’t buckle underneath him or make him immobile. Even still, she can tell it’s one of his Pain Days.

Colonel gestures toward one of the chairs. Grace sits and folds her legs up in it. He stays standing in front of his computer, pushing his glasses to the top of his head to stare her down.

Finally, he clears his throat. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“You are?”

“I’ve been talking to Sharone,” he says, “about what you said to us at dinner. She made me realize—” He looks at Grace. She doesn’t know what he sees. “You know I love you, right?”

She freezes. She sits up straight, suddenly self-conscious of her ripped jeans and ratty sweatshirt she stole from Raj. “Yes, sir,” she says, wiping her hands on her pants. “Yes.”

Colonel gives her a wry smile. “Good,” he says. “Sharone said maybe I’m too hard on you. That I expect too much.”

Grace remembers being a kid in Florida. She remembers running through the orange groves and getting caught up under people’s feet and climbing too high. She remembers falling.

She remembers the blood that dripped from her palms. Mom fretted, considered driving into town to the hospital. Colonel, stoic and calm, knelt in front of her as she wept. He could still kneel then, and he did, right down to her line of sight and grabbed her hands.

“Porter,” he said. “Hey. Hey. Look at me.”

She looked at him. When Colonel said jump, you jumped. When he said look, you looked.

“You’re a Porter,” he said. “Porters fall, they get back up. Porters bleed, they don’t cry. They bandage themselves, and they get back up. That’s what we do.”

Grace sniffled. “But it hurts.”

“That’s life,” he said. “But I expect you to be able to handle it. Do you know why?”

Grace, tearful and bleeding, knew. Of course, she knew. “Because I’m a Porter.”

“Because you’re a Porter,” Colonel reiterates. “So, hold your hands out, and I’ll bandage them, and it’ll be done.”

Grace thinks back to that day while she sits in her father’s office. He says, “Maybe I expect too much,” and Grace, still remembering the hurt in her hand, says, “I’m a Porter,” the way she knows she should. “There’s no such thing.”

He nods. “That’s what I told Sharone. I said I didn’t know what she was talking about.”

“You don’t expect too much from me,” she says. “I just—”