What's Mine and Yours(95)

It was hard to watch you lose your way. You were the one who kept us steady, who held it all together. Your strength was a fact of my life, and I passed it off as my own. I am sorry about that. Sometimes I think I’m still that little boy looking for proof I’m as good as everyone else. I’m that little boy waiting for the white people to come and kick me out. I’m that boy who can’t remember his lines. But I can’t let myself get too pessimistic either. I don’t regret very much—it’s all led me to this life I could never have imagined.

Anyway, I’m at this café, overlooking the river, and it’s not like the States. You don’t have to keep ordering things for them to let you stay. Just one little cup of coffee and they leave you alone for hours. Even me. And the waiters are rude to everybody, so you don’t have to worry if it’s just you.

I started writing to you because I was here, drinking my coffee, and I saw a man come in with his wife. He was black, and I couldn’t tell with her—Egyptian, maybe. Who knows? But they had a little girl with them, green eyed and brown skinned. She had her hair in twists. They ordered cake for her. They had wine. And it was sweet because the little girl really occupied herself, taking the cherry off the cake, peering out at the water, chattering every once in a while to her parents, who were very quiet. They watched her, and they watched the water. They held hands under the table and, only once in a while, took sips of their wine. It was like they were in their own world, and the girl was a part of it, but, really, it was mostly the two of them. I thought of the girl growing up, passing in and out of their lives, as all children do when they’re grown, but they’d still be at that table, holding hands, glancing over at each other from time to time. It was beautiful. It broke my heart.

Noelle closed her eyes and tried to imagine the child Nelson had described in the letter, but she saw only herself as a girl: spindly, long haired, and indignant, waiting for her father to show up and wrench them all away, to take them home. And she couldn’t picture the child they’d lost: he had been a mound in her stomach, a thing with no life outside of her.

She checked to make sure Bailey was still asleep. He was. Noelle kissed his forehead, felt herself swell with gratitude. She slid a pillow under her hips, then another, tilting her pelvis toward the ceiling. She braced herself, turned back to her phone, and read the rest.

I guess what I’m trying to say is the only time I’ve never tried to prove anything was with you. I didn’t worry about what other people would think or what it said about me. It was simple. I wanted you for myself.





16



December 2002


The Piedmont, North Carolina

The parents were meeting in the back room of a restaurant just north of downtown, on Beard Street. One of the mothers knew the owner, and he had provided them all with pitchers of sweet tea and platters of lemon bars on the house. The committee members sat around a long table underneath a crystal chandelier and ordered lunch off the menu. Mrs. York would call them to order eventually, but Lacey May couldn’t wait that long. She blew into the room, without looking anyone in the eye, and went directly to the chairwoman.

“Lacey May, you didn’t RSVP,” Mrs. York said. “I thought you weren’t coming.” She looked smart in her blue blazer, a ballpoint pen stuck behind her ear. Lacey May admired her, and she knew she had to say what she had come to say quickly, before she changed her mind.

“I wanted to tell you in person that I quit.”

A dozen heads turned toward Lacey May, but she didn’t let the attention deter her.

“The campaign is causing too much trouble with my family. I can’t go on like this.”

A few other members spoke up all at once, trying to talk her out of it. Her daughters would thank her in the long run; they were shifting gears. They needed Lacey May; why didn’t she just sit down for a while and see?

Lacey May had never had many friends. She didn’t tend to get along with other women, or they didn’t tend to get along with her. She didn’t go to church or participate in any neighborhood associations. This had been the first group she had belonged to since high school, and they had welcomed her. They had asked for her help finding the right words for their flyers; they had asked her to sign the op-ed in the paper. They had walked shoulder to shoulder with her to tack up posters that day in the hall. She hadn’t told them much about her life, but it didn’t matter. They had stood together, stood up for their children. Lacey May didn’t want to leave them, but she knew Noelle wouldn’t come back as long as she was involved in the campaign. There was no other way.

“Well, stay for the meeting at least,” Mrs. York said. “We’re talking about how to move on from that poster fiasco. It didn’t move us one step closer to what we want. There’s even talk of a reprimand from the mayor. It doesn’t mean anything, but it’s embarrassing. He says we were trespassing, vandalizing.”

Mrs. Gray, a young mother with bobbed hair, chimed in. “Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous?” In the beginning, Lacey May hadn’t been sure about her. She had a tiny diamond nose ring, a tattoo of starlings across her chest. But she had proven one of the most dedicated to the cause, and Lacey May liked her. She worked at a preschool downtown.

“We’re changing our focus,” Mrs. York went on. “There’s a way we can win.”