The Black Kids(75)

* * *




Jose pulls into our driveway, and Lucia grabs him by the face. She kisses his mouth like they’ve successfully robbed a bank or fled an assassin together. I wonder if this is how she used to kiss Arturo. For some people, a little bit of trouble makes life interesting, Jose said. But when does it become too much? When are you a good person who did a few bad things? When are you a bad person?

“Thank you,” Lucia says. “Let’s do this again sometime.”

When we get inside the house, Jo runs upstairs to her room.

“Wait!” Lucia says, but it’s too late.

Jo walks back down the stairs and sits on the top step. “They’re getting rid of me?”

“Just your stuff,” I say, and sit down next to her. “They want another guest room. They have Morgan in there now.”

“We already have a guest room.”

I shrug.

“I should call Harrison and tell him I’m safe. I’ll have him come pick me up, I guess.”

I grab her hand. “Please don’t go, Jo. Stay. You owe me that much.”

She squeezes my hand back and it’s an answer, but I don’t know which one. Then she disappears upstairs. I hear the shower turn on, then I hear her yelp, and I laugh, because that shit’s always too cold until it’s too hot. It takes forever to find normal.



* * *




While Jo is on the phone with Harrison, Lucia and I collapse onto the couch. I kick my shoes across the room, where they narrowly miss the TV stand. Lucia takes hers off and places her feet on my lap. I pick up a foot and begin to rub it for her, and she moans like people do in the movies when they’re having sex; then I guess I hit a pocket of pain, because then she yelps like people do in the movies when they’re being killed.

“I like Jose. You like him?” I say.

“Yes. A lot. He’s a very nice man.” She sighs. “Too nice.”

“How can he be too nice?”

“When you get used to bad men, you start not believing in good men. Even when they’re right in front of your face. You think maybe he’s hiding the bad for later, like the last one.”

“If he’s too nice, why’d somebody wanna break both his arms?”

“People from complicated places sometimes have complicated pasts. Or maybe he was a little wicked then.”

She laughs, and I switch feet. Then she leans back and closes her eyes like the day’s finally caught up to her.

Lucia never talks to me like I’m just a dumb kid. My parents sometimes seem like they don’t know what to say to me, like they think their words don’t translate to teenager.

“I bet your sons are good men.”

“I hope so,” she says, eyes still closed. “Do you like that boy you were with? The basketball boy?”

“?‘Basketball boy’? Jesus, Lucia.”

“You still didn’t answer me.”

“He’s nice.” My voice rises several octaves, and I feel the heat burning through my entire body.

“He’s nice!” Lucia squeaks, and laughs. “Ay, babygirl…”

Jo comes down the stairs wearing a familiar dress that’s as pale blue as a summer sky. Not the kind of thing I’d think she’d normally pick for herself, but I guess I’m not sure exactly who she is these days. Neither is she, it seems.

With her in the pale of her blue and me in my red, we look elemental, fire and air. In chemistry we learned that they need each other to thrive. They keep each other going.

“Thank you,” Jo says, and kisses Lucia on the cheek. Then Jo pats me on my knee.

“That’s my dress,” I say, and she shrugs.

Jo sniffs at the air around me, then takes a piece of tulle and raises it to her nose.

“Why do you smell like smoke?”

Before I can answer, we’re interrupted by the opening of the front door.

“Lucy, I’m home,” Morgan shouts into the house like Ricky Ricardo.

She skips into the living room and freezes awkwardly when she sees Jo. My parents aren’t too far behind her.

“You’re here,” my mother says. “You came home!”

She runs over to Jo and hugs her, and the force of her love takes them both by surprise, so much so that Jo loses her mind and chooses that exact moment to tell our mother that she’s been arrested.

“Are you okay?” my father says, and Jo nods.

“It was totally not a big deal, really.”

“What were you thinking?” My mother pulls away and looks at Jo like she has two heads.

“What the hell happened to your teeth?” Morgan says.

Before Jo can answer, my mother sighs. “I’ll have to call your aunt.”

Auntie Carol’s a judge, which means she knows judge-y things and court things and law people, and maybe she can be Jo’s ruby slippers and with a click of her heels keep her out of prison, bring her back home.

“I’m sorry,” Jo says.

My mom and her sister aren’t close, and when I was a kid, I didn’t understand why. How do you go from seeing each other every day for eighteen years to not even visiting each other when you live only a handful of miles away? I thought. But now I understand it, I think. Sometimes the act of growing up cleaves you apart, and even though you walk through the world made of the same stuff, you can’t quite make your way back to the start. There’s too much matter between you. I don’t want Jo and me to be like Mom and Carol—only Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter siblings. Pass-the-turkey sisters. Somebody’s died, let’s reminisce and then go our separate ways family.