My Name Is Venus Black(99)

Yeah. Pretty funny, me giving Inez lectures on pride.

I finally started reading You Can Heal Your Life, and I think it’s beginning to make some sense.

I still can’t see a future with little miracles like butterflies floating around. But I can imagine being a beached starfish that, given a second or third chance, finally makes its way back into the welcoming sea.



* * *



—

THREE DAYS AFTER my visit to Sacramento, Inez is making me a cake. “I told you that we don’t need to have a party, Inez! It’s three months late—and that feels dumb.”

“I want to have a party,” she says, emphasizing want. “Heck, this is the first birthday party I’ve had for one of my kids in seven years! Why can’t you stop objecting and go along? It’s happening,” she says happily.



“Okay, Inez,” I say. “But I still don’t get it.”

“I told you not to call me that,” she says. It’s a joke with us. She pretends not to like being called Inez, but she knows I’m not going to start calling her Mom at this late date.

“Okay. But let me frost my own damn cake.” I take her shoulders and forcibly move her toward a kitchen chair. She lets me. I’ve noticed she seems really tired lately, but she resists going in for a checkup. It could be that she’s just not sleeping, because she’s trying to quit drinking and she says without her wine she lies awake all night. I feel bad for her, but she needs to get sober. With all the stress around Leo, when she first arrived in California she was drinking vats of wine and was worthless by 7:00 P.M. every night.

I pick up the spatula. It’s the same one from my childhood in Everett. It has a wooden handle with a white plastic top that is slightly bent from being burned in the dishwasher.

“What time is Piper’s flight?” asks Inez. I could be imagining it, but I think she feels a bit of trepidation about meeting Piper. Maybe because she can tell Piper is so important to me.

“She arrives at the airport in an hour,” I tell her. I still can’t believe Piper is coming for my belated birthday. We talk all the time on the phone, but it’s her first visit since I officially moved to Oakland back in March.

Leo comes out into the kitchen. “The smell.”

“The smell? It’s cake, Leo.”

“Why?”

“Remember, it’s Venus’s birthday,” Inez says.

“Oh.” Leo flaps his left arm three times, a new quirk his doctor attributes to adolescence.

“Do you want to help frost, Leo?” I ask him. Of course he won’t. He never does anything in the kitchen.

He walks over to where I am frosting the cake. I see his eyes flit across my hands. “Like peanut butter?” he asks.

I laugh. “Yes, it is just like when you put your peanut butter on the bread and try to cover up all the white.”



He keeps staring. “Do you want to try?” I offer the spatula. He considers. Takes it. I am too stunned for words. I look over at Inez. This is the first time since we got Leo back that he has wanted to do something outside his normal routines.

I watch Leo carefully dip the spatula in the frosting bowl. There’s about half a cake left to frost. I’ve done the bottom part. He slowly lifts the spatula with icing on it and touches it on the top of the cake at the very center. I’m guessing that’s how he’ll do it. Spiraling outward, like he does with peas.

I turn on the faucet and start to clean up. The enchiladas I made earlier are in the refrigerator. I’ll put them in the oven when company starts to come.

After the kitchen is presentable, Leo is still working on the cake, and given his rate of speed, it could take all night. I go to my bedroom and change. I pick out a new pair of jeans—the first I have bought outside of a thrift store since I left Echo. They’re white, fit like a glove, and they’re just the right length. As I pull them on, I flash back to that day of my release from Echo. The weight of my layers from the charity bin. The flash of cameras. How I covered my face and changed my name and tried to escape my past.

The doorbell rings, but we know Leo will answer it. This is a new routine. Now he always answers the door in case it might be Tessa or Tony. It is Tessa. I hear Leo’s strange squawks of delight. It still stings a bit that he doesn’t do that when it’s me at the door.



* * *



—

AS WE ALL hoped, the charges against Tony were reduced to interference with custody. He received a two-year suspended sentence, along with probation. The fraud charges—Leo’s fake birth certificate and Social Security card—were supposed to cost him six months in jail, but he got out after two.

When Tony offered to pick up Piper, I was grateful because I still feel overwhelmed by airports. But I wasn’t sure how Piper would feel about being picked up by a stranger instead of me. She’s never met Tony. But Piper didn’t hesitate. “I get to meet Tony? Leo’s dad?”



“Is that okay?” I asked.

“Yes!” she said. “I want to! But how will I know…He doesn’t know me.”

“He’ll be holding a sign that says ‘Piper.’?”

“Oh! That’s kind of cool,” she said.

Piper doesn’t have a shy bone in her body.