Lies We Bury(87)

Her voice starts talking to some other voice and when they get going I lift up a corner to see. Mama Rosemary talks to a woman behind a desk and the woman’s eyes get real big and she speaks into a—a phone—a telephone. When she puts the phone down she says something to Mama that makes her start crying again.

We get moved into a room with a table and toys and green blankets. All the walls are brown but there’s a wall made of glass again with our faces in it. A mirror. Once me and Sweet Lily find a corner we like we sit down and stare around us. It’s not home. It’s too big.

Mama hugs us both and kisses us. She strokes my hair and I get nervous. “You girls are going to stay here with Officer Chopra. I’m going to go get your sister.”

“No, don’t leave!” I grip on to Mama Rosemary’s arm and make red marks on her skin.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes, I promise. Your sister needs me.” She strokes my hair again and Sweet Lily’s hair waiting for me to say okay. I don’t want to.

“Okay. But will you get something for me?”

Mama Rosemary looks at me her eyebrows all high. “We have everything we took with us in the backpack here. Go ahead—you can open it.”

I shake my head. “Can you make sure and—and grab Petey the Penguin? I know Jenessa’ll want him later and she didn’t pack him. I’ll carry him until she wants him.”

Mama Rosemary’s eyes get watery again and her face pinks. “I think she’d appreciate that. I’ll be right back.”

I watch her walk to the door then turn back and blow us a kiss. When she goes behind the mirror wall she disappears.

Sweet Lily scoots in closer to me her skin so hot from the fever still. It’s the first time we’ve ever been without a mama or Mama Rosemary before in our whole lives. I feel sad but I know she had to go. I feel sad but I know this is what Jenessa is feeling ever since we left.

“Girls? Should we have some juice?” A lady looks at us from the doorway. A real one with wood.

Me and Sweet Lily nod.

The lady gets us cups made out of paper. Inside is pink juice not the orange juice we had at Christmastime but I drink it all. She gives me another. Sweet Lily doesn’t want hers so I drink that, too. She goes and lays back down on a blanket in the corner still hot from fever.

“You girls have been so brave this evening,” the lady says. “Your mother, too.”

“My sister, too. Other sister.”

“So I hear.” The lady makes a noise in her mouth. “Your whole family has been through a lot.”

I gulp back my cup then hold it out for more pink stuff. “Yeah. Then there’s Mama Bethel and Mama Nora. But they’re gone.”

“Who is Mama Bethel?”

I pick at my cup since she’s not putting more juice in it. “Sweet Lily’s mama. But she died.”

“Does that make you sad?”

I think about it. Scrunch my face up to my nose in what Mama Rosemary always says is my sneeze face. “No. Not anymore.”

“And Mama Nora? Who is she?”

I don’t say anything for a minute. I remember Mama Rosemary saying we don’t tell no one about Mama Nora for now. That we keep quiet so we can all be together after.

Then I think about how Mama Rosemary left me and Sweet Lily to go back and get Jenessa. Left us even though I didn’t want her to.

And Mama Rosemary always said to tell the truth. “Mama Nora is Jenessa’s mama. But she’s gone for a long time now.”

The lady writes stuff down on paper. She looks at the mirror wall and holds up her thumb. “That’s very good, honey. Thank you for telling me. Now what do you want for your first meal out here?”

“Oh! Croissants like my bracelet. See?”

“Very pretty. I think we can do that.”

She gives me more juice then I lie down next to Sweet Lily. I hope Mama Rosemary gets back soon with Twin. I can’t wait for us to go home. Even though Mama says we’re never going back there again. I just want us to be together again. The four of us.





Thirty-Five

A woman in a sleek black dress leads me to a dimly lit room in the back of the restaurant. We pass tables of couples sharing a romantic meal and a few quartets in suits. The city is beautiful from the thirtieth floor through the wall of windows. Lights twinkle along the freeways heading into the suburbs and in the reverse direction toward the city, likely in search of entertainment this Friday night. As I’ve done.

When Shia first asked me to mark this evening on my calendar, I hesitated. He was welcome to celebrate the launch of his book, do whatever he wanted with it, but the idea of voluntarily embedding myself among the vultures and eager rubberneckers eleven months after the murders struck me as masochistic. Then I remembered my therapist’s words and what she termed the “healing process”: taking control of our fears and internalizing our agency. We don’t have to be subject to anyone’s desires or expectations of us; I’m no longer a child or a woman struggling to get on her feet.

The hostess escorts me past a drooping palm frond, behind velvet curtains tied to each side of a wide doorframe, and the noise of conversation rushes my ears. Sergeant Peugeot stands out with his crew cut and striped green-and-beige jacket, stark against the scene of somber colors. I once read somewhere that people mimic the weather in their clothing choices, and it has been a monochromatic winter indeed.