What's Mine and Yours(20)

Linette sighed, and Jade could see now that she was crying.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, Jade. Ray gave you a life once. Maybe he’s giving you life again, one last time. Maybe there’s a little piece of him that’s still here.”



At the supermarket, Gee darted ahead of her in the aisles, pulling down the things she’d said they would need. She wanted to get home and make him lunch so that she could sleep a few hours before dropping him off with her cousin Carmela. She didn’t like leaving him with her, but there was no one else anymore. She wasn’t talking to Wilson. When Jade arrived in the morning, she usually found Carmela snoring on the floor, the TV still on, and Gee huddled on the edge of the couch, as if he hadn’t slept at all, chasing off bad thoughts by keeping his eyes open.

Gee had piled the cart with cereal, milk, bananas, and everything she needed for her specialty: chicken cutlets, roma tomatoes, a box of spaghetti, bread crumbs, a can of sauce.

“You know, before I met your daddy, I used to make dinner for myself, and there was only one thing I knew how to make. Chicken Parmesan. And it was the only thing I made because I never needed to learn to make anything else—it’s that good.”

She kissed her fingers for emphasis, and Gee giggled. She collected his laughter in her ears. It was the greatest accomplishment of her day.

“Go on and get me some cheese,” she said, and he took off again. He was a good boy.

He returned, waving a green canister. She thanked him and did some quick math, counting up what was inside their cart. They could eat the leftovers for days, stretch the sauce over spaghetti, put the chicken inside sandwiches. She told him to return the tomatoes and meet her at the front.

In the pharmacy, Jade inspected the pregnancy tests. She felt foolish for even taking Linette’s words to heart. She had always looked at Jade as if she had no right to be a mother—lots of women did that to her, especially when she was younger, carrying Gee around wherever she had to go. If she’d gotten an abortion, they’d have called her a murderer, but now they looked at her and Gee as if they were a waste of life. Why bring another child into this world?

She had been pulled over once for a broken tag light. She was five minutes from home, and four cops got out all at once. They shone flashlights in their faces, made Gee lie on the ground next to her, his cheek against the grit of the road. She had felt anger surge through her, an electric strength in her limbs. They sent her off with a warning. On the drive home, her leg thumped uncontrollably beneath her, the car lurching as she shook. Her anger gave way to terror, for her son, the world she’d never be able to shield him from. And all of this was before they’d lost Ray.



At the register, the cashier was a gaunt-faced man with chin-length hair. He wore a neon-yellow vest over a tattered plaid shirt. He asked her how she was doing, and she grumbled hello and turned back to the register to see if she’d been right about how it would all add up.

“That’s a pretty little boy you got there.”

Jade nodded at the cashier in thanks.

“He got all his good looks from his mama, didn’t he? But it’s not really right to call you good-looking. You’re a lot more than that.”

“Don’t you talk that way to me in front of my son.”

“I was just giving you a compliment.”

“Any more compliments and I’ll have to ask to talk to your manager.”

The skinny man laughed and pointed to a tag on his shirt. It read TEAM LEADER.

“That’s me, sweetheart. Would you like to file a complaint?”

“Just ring me up. I’m not your goddamn sweetheart.” She handed him the twenty-dollar bill.

“You’re short,” the man said, and Jade saw it was by seventy-nine cents. She started rummaging in her wallet knowing she wouldn’t find anything there. She picked up the box of cereal to leave behind.

“Easy there,” the team leader said. He scooped a handful of change out of a plastic container beside the register. “I’ve got you.” He spoke in a low voice, magnanimous, as if he didn’t want to embarrass her. She wasn’t embarrassed. He dropped the extra change into the register, withdrew her receipt, and handed it to her.

“What’s your name anyway?”

“Onyx.”

“Well, Onyx, next time you’re in here, you come find me. This is my register. I’m here almost all the time. Come see me, and I’ll take real good care of you.”

He winked at her, and Jade felt her stomach turn. She knew what she wanted to say, Fuck you, you nasty arrogant fuckface. She wanted to drive her palm up into his nose.

Instead, she told Gee to step up on the cart. She pushed him toward the exit and made sure not to turn around. She was sure he’d be watching them.

“Mommy, you weren’t very nice to that man. He gave us money.”

“He didn’t do what he did out of kindness.”

“Why’d he do it?”

“There are bad people in this world, Gee.”

“Like that man?”

She wanted to say, Like him, like the man who killed your father, like my father, like Ray’s father, like your father, like Wilson, like a lot of people. She cleared her throat.

“Maybe. I don’t know. But sometimes you’re better off not sticking around to find out.”