The Black Kids(85)

I nod my head. She plops down on the couch next to me and starts to rub her feet. She’s always wearing heels, so the sides of her pinkie toes have little bumps on them where the heels have created little hills. Her toenails are a dark magenta, which matches her fading lipstick. When I was little, I thought she was supertall, like a giant or a superhero; now I know she’s only kinda tall, like a human.

“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” she says.

“Yeah. I feel so sad for Grandma Shirley. And Daddy…”

“Your father’s been through a lot…”

I bend down, take her foot into my hand, and start to rub it. She leans back against the couch and closes her eyes.

“You don’t tell me anything about your friends or school anymore. You used to tell me all sorts of things…,” she says.

“I was little. Little kids talk a lot.”

“Trevor’s parents called the other day.” My mom opens her eyes and looks at me. “They say you stole his car during prom.”

“I didn’t want to be there anymore,” I say.

“Why?”

“It’s complicated.”

She stares at me intently, as though she’s trying to figure me out.

I could tell her everything, but I don’t think she’d understand, or maybe she would; I don’t know.

As though she can hear my thoughts, my mother reaches over and brushes my hair out of my face before gently grabbing my face in her hands. “We’re both secrets to each other. But maybe one day we don’t have to be.”

“Yeah… okay.…” I don’t know quite what to say, but I don’t pull away, and she doesn’t let go.

“We worked so hard to give you girls everything… to protect you from everything… maybe too hard. I’m not sure. The world doesn’t let black children be children for very long. We wanted you to have as long a childhood as possible. We only meant to protect you girls, never to lose you. Your father and I both grew up long before we should’ve had to. Both of us, in different ways. Do you get what I’m saying?”

She holds her hand to my cheek as though she’s trying to give me her thoughts through her fingertips.

“I think so.”

She pauses for a moment as though she’s going to say more, but instead exhales deeply, like she’s been holding that same breath ever since I was born.



* * *




My mother walks over to the bookshelf and pulls out a photo album. “Your father and I have been putting together your yearbook page. It’s supposed to be a surprise, but I want you to see this one photo.”

She pulls out a photo of the two of us in front of a sleek glass building that looks really familiar. In it, she cradles fat baby me in one arm and holds Jo’s hand with the other. Jo looks up at her, and I drool all over myself toward the camera.

“This was the first building I was the lead architect on. I started it when I got pregnant with you, and I was so scared I wouldn’t be able to finish it. It was already a huge deal that I was the first and only black woman at the firm, and young, and a lot of people thought I didn’t deserve to be there. I thought that once I told them I was pregnant, they’d make me hand the project over to somebody else. And I kept being afraid the entire time. At one point I even wanted to quit, to spare myself the indignity of being taken off the project, which I just knew was coming. But you kept me going—because I wanted to prove something to myself, but also to show you girls that I could. That one day you could. That one day you can. We drove by it that one day; do you remember?”

When I was little, we went on a field trip to a place out in Riverside called Jurupa Mountains Discovery Center. I was very excited, because field trips meant that we got to go on school buses and eat junk food like Lunchables and Fruit Roll-Ups, chased by Hi-C that came in bright boxes, yellow as the buses themselves. Our school required that parents put in a certain number of volunteer hours every year, so my father and mother drew straws, and she either won or lost. When we all started to pile onto the bus, she wanted to sit next to me, but I wanted to sit with my friends. So instead she sat next to Nancy Chang’s mother, who also worked for a living. When we got there, we ran around in the dust and touched dug-up dinosaur bones, and at the gift shop I bought shiny, colored crystals dug from deep in the earth.

On the bus on the way back home, Heather and I were chatting about horses when my mother walked up the aisle and knelt down beside me.

“Look, Ash!” she said, and excitedly pointed out the window at a building, tall, gleaming, and new. “I designed that. That one is one of mine!”

I glanced at it.

“Cool,” I said.

My mother waited for a second for me to say something else, but when I didn’t, she walked back over to Nancy Chang’s mother, and I turned back to Heather, held my Fruit Roll-Up with my mouth, and let it dangle out like a tongue.

I didn’t know it had meant so much to her then. I wish I had.

“I remember,” I say.

She grabs my hand and beams like Christmas.

“You can do anything, Ashley. Be anything… But first, you’re gonna have to pay for Trevor’s car yourself… get a summer job…” She laughs.

“I guess I’ll see if Hot Dog on a Stick is hiring again. I still have my hat around here somewhere. I forgot to give it back.”