Summer Days and Summer Nights (37 page)

I rest my head against her shoulder. “I kind of want tonight to be over, but then I don't, because that means we'll only have another couple of days before she leaves.”

Being around Farrah is easier now, but at first, after my mother was gone, I was uncomfortable looking at my aunt. They were sisters, and they were so much alike. Not in looks—my aunt is curvy, like me, with boobs and an ass, where my mother was tall and slim. I have my mom's russet-colored skin, brown with red undertones, and Farrah has the same medium-brown complexion as Audrey. But they share so many mannerisms that I'd never noticed before, like the way my aunt tugs on her ear when she's thinking hard about something, or how she chews on the stem of her eyeglasses when she's anxious.

Farrah probably should have been the one to take over my mothering, but Audrey stepped up before anyone else could claim the spot. She's seven years older than me, which used to seem like such a big difference, but the gap feels smaller now that I'll be a senior in high school. And maybe that's why she's leaving. Maybe she thinks I'm old enough to no longer need her.

“I know, baby.” Aunt Farrah sighs. “I keep thinking she'll change her mind or tell us it was all a joke. Howard says I have to let her go; she's twenty-four years old. But it's not that easy for mothers. It never is.”

She realizes what she's said at the exact moment my body stiffens. And I want to run away, to stop being the one who makes people second-guess what they say, but she puts her arm around me and pulls me close.

“You know I'm here for you, girl.” Aunt Farrah smells like strawberries. “Anytime you start missing her, you come over or call or do both, okay?”

The
her
could be my mother or Audrey, and I worry that the combination of missing them both will be too much for me.

*   *   *

A few minutes later, I run my fingers under the cold tap in the bathroom and press them to the sides of my cheeks, the hill of my forehead. I fluff my hands through my hair, which is short and black and big and curly. Then I rummage through my aunt's medicine cabinet, same as every time I'm at her house.

I hold my breath as I look to see if anything has changed. There's a sepia-toned bottle of melatonin. Multivitamins for women. Blood pressure medication. But still no antidepressants.

I breathe out in relief and am just replacing the orange pill bottle when the bathroom door bursts open. I startle and drop it onto the tiled floor, where the top pops off and Aunt Farrah's blood pressure meds go scattering in every direction.

“
Shit.
” I don't even look up before crouching down to collect them. It's bad enough to go through my aunt's medicine cabinet on a regular basis, but to have been caught doing so by—

“Let me help.”

His feet give him away. Black Chuck Taylors with dirty white laces and ballpoint ink winding around the sides of the rubber soles. I noticed them in the kitchen, but I was too far away to read what they said. Now I'm too embarrassed to take a longer look.

“Thanks.” I move aside the bottom of the shower curtain to rescue a few pills.

I expect Pierre to apologize for not bothering to knock, but he's become as cranky as me in the last half hour. “You know, whatever you're feeling … you shouldn't take it out on my sister,” he says, bending down to sweep his hand around the base of the pedestal sink.

“Excuse me?” That's enough to make me look at him. “She was offering alcohol to a teenager at a family party. Do
you
think that's a good idea?”

“First of all, it's not a family party—it's a party. This is for Gillian's people, too.” He stands and sets a few pills on the wide lip of the sink. “And you aren't seriously concerned about the drinking. You were being a jerk to her.”

My mouth opens to tell him he's wrong, but everyone in that room knows I was a jerk, most of all me. Still. I'm not quite ready to admit that out loud, and especially not to him.

“I'm allowed to feel how I feel,” I say, just barely holding the orange bottle steady enough to drop in the collected pills.

Pierre frowns and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I never said you weren't, but you don't have to be rude to my sister. You're not the only one who's upset about the move. You're being dramatic. It's not like they're dying.”

At that, my entire body starts shaking. I'm still able to secure the lid and shove the bottle back into the cabinet. But he notices. And he starts to say something, reaches for my arm, but I slip past him wordlessly for the second time this evening.

And somehow I manage to get out of the room without telling Pierre to go fuck himself.

*   *   *

The house has filled with a good-size crowd that's eating, dancing, laughing, and talking at volumes that confirm it is a full-fledged party. I recognize Audrey and Gillian's friends from protests and some people from Aunt Farrah and Uncle Howard's Baptist church, where I've been to a few services over the years. But there are plenty of people I don't know. I remember Pierre's comment, that this isn't just a party for my family, and it makes me cringe.

My father has arrived which should put me at ease but doesn't. He's accompanied by his new girlfriend, Bev, a secretary at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he works as an art history professor. Bev is whatever. Nice enough, I guess, but I have to wonder what my father likes about her. That she's stable? Predictable? Reserved? My mother was none of those things, and it never occurred to me that she should be.

Dad waves me over, so I join them by the record player, weaving through guests holding glasses of wine and beer bottles still dripping with icy water, freshly plucked from the cooler. I pass Gillian, who's standing by the big window behind the sofa, talking to someone I don't know. Gillian is always energetic, but I've never seen her like this—gesticulating grandly to punctuate each word of her sentence, twisting her face into expressions that I don't think are supposed to be as comical as they appear. I glance at her hands, and sure enough, the blue cup is sitting firmly in one of them.

“How was dinner?” I'm asking only to be polite.

They invited me but I declined, saying I'd agreed to come over early and help my aunt and uncle with the setup. Which was true, but by the time I got here they'd already finished cleaning and had hung the banner (
GOOD LUCK AND FAREWELL
!) and set out the food, so I mostly gnawed on pretzels and weighed in on my aunt's prospective party outfits. But my father doesn't need to know that, because standing around idly before a party celebrating the departure of my favorite person on the planet was still preferable to sitting in a restaurant with him and his girlfriend.

“Oh, we went to this fantastic new seafood place in River North,” Bev says a little breathlessly, the most excited I've heard her sound about anything. “The mussels were outstanding!”

“You missed out, Rashida.” Dad leans down to kiss the top of my head. “Some of the best oysters I've ever had.”

“I'm allergic to shellfish,” I remind him. “So it's probably good that I missed out.”

“Well, I knew that,” he says quickly, stroking his beard. His professor's beard, my mother used to call it. Silver hairs started growing in among the black ones after she died. “We only decided to go there when you said you couldn't come.”

I don't believe that. At his best my father is absentminded, but lately it seems like he's even more forgetful when it comes to me. I'll be heading off to college in a year, and sometimes I wonder if he'll be happier once I'm gone.

“So, how have you been, Rashida?” Bev tucks a piece of her light-brown bob behind her ear. “Have you started thinking about college yet?”

She looks more nervous than usual. I've watched her glance around the room at least three times, and I realize—only after she visibly relaxes when she catches sight of a blond guy—that she's anxious about being one of the few white people at the party. I wonder if she notices when she's out with my father and he's one of the only black people in the room. Does his potential discomfort ever cross her mind?

“I've thought about it,” I say, and stop just short of shrugging. I can't
not
think about it, with a college professor as a father. He's not pushing me to study a particular subject, but he brings up the topic often, asking if I've narrowed down my first-choice and safety schools yet. He'll be okay with whatever I study, so long as the program isn't based in Chicago. I think having me around reminds him too much of my mother.

“Any idea what you want to major in?” Bev presses on. Clearly not reading me, not seeing that I don't want to talk about this with her right now. Or ever, really.

“I'm not sure,” I respond. “Maybe linguistics. Or sociology.”

Or horticulture, if I'm being honest. There wasn't a week that went by in the spring and summer that my mother and I weren't in the backyard before the sun got too hot, working our fingers through the soil of our vegetable garden. Tending the garden was relaxing, and it made me feel accomplished. I let everything die after she did.

I tilt my head to the side. “What did
you
study in school, Bev?”

My father's head swivels toward me, but I don't look at him because I don't want to see his face. He knows I'm being mean, that I'm aware there's a good chance Bev isn't using whatever degree she has to work in reception.

Audrey saves me. She swoops in from out of nowhere to greet my father with a hearty “So good to see you, Uncle!” and a kiss on the cheek. She tells Bev it's nice to see her, too, then turns to me. “We're going to play bocce out back and we need another person. You in?”

I can't say yes fast enough. And as I take her hand and head out to the backyard, I wonder how I'll survive when she's no longer around to rescue me.

*   *   *

My heart only sinks further as we step outside. Audrey didn't tell me Pierre would be here.

He's standing at the edge of the lawn, a tall shadow beyond the light that spills off the porch and onto the bocce balls lined up on the freshly mown grass. His gaze shifts to me, and neither of us smiles before he looks away. Gillian is swaying to imaginary music by the deck railing, cup in hand. Her eyes are unfocused—a little wild, even, as they flit about the yard.

The air is humid and warm, scented with the sweet perfume of Aunt Farrah's rosebushes, the fat pastel blooms dotting the trellis at the end of the deck. Earlier, Uncle Howard strung white Christmas lights along the porch, and they glow softly around us, working months ahead of their usual gig. Tonight is beautiful. It could even be romantic, if I were with someone besides my cousin, her tipsy girlfriend, and a guy who hates me.

Even Audrey and Gillian can't enjoy it. Audrey is holding her girlfriend by the elbow, and I can't tell if it's to show affection or to keep her steady. Gillian slams her cup on the railing and takes Audrey's face in her hands, smashing their mouths together. It doesn't look pleasant, and my cousin pulls away quickly, shaking her head. She says something so quietly I can't hear it. Pierre stares at the detached garage at the back of the yard, mortified.

A few moments later, we're spread out across the lawn, standing in teams. Audrey started to pair off with Gillian, but the look I shot her made it clear that wasn't an option. Pierre must have been relieved, too, though he doesn't look so happy next to Gillian, either. She's wrapped her braids around her chin in a makeshift beard, prattling on about the Gettysburg Address.

I turn to my cousin. “Is she—”

I don't get out another word before Audrey snaps, “She's fine. It's fine. Let's play.”

Oh. Audrey doesn't snap at me. She's even-keeled in general, always with a soft spot where I'm concerned. But a deep groove rests between her eyebrows, and her lips are pursed tight enough to crack, and she doesn't even give me an apologetic smile.

Audrey and I win the quarter toss; I motion for her to go first. Gillian screams,
“Go, babe, go!,”
loudly enough to be heard down the block, and I think maybe her unbridled enthusiasm will make Audrey smile, but Audrey ignores her as she rolls the small white ball across the grass.

We get through the first round without incident, if you don't count Pierre shushing his sister every two seconds. Gillian talks loudly, incessantly. I glance at Audrey. She's not even trying to hide her annoyance, crossing her arms and pointedly looking straight ahead. I toss a red ball too hard and it rolls to the back of the yard, bouncing off the fence.

“Dead ball,” Pierre says in a smug voice.

I glare at him. He's probably just glad the attention is off his sister, for once.

It's her turn, but she's wandered away. Gillian stumbles through the cluster of green and red bocce balls, displacing a few in the process and cackling as she effectively ruins our game. She's a firecracker let loose too many days after the Fourth of July, a jack-in-the-box that's broken free from its prison, a toddler who has discovered her legs. Gillian is officially wasted.

Audrey sighs. “Well, I guess we're done here.”

“She's done for the night,” Pierre concludes.

Gillian leaps toward the back of the lawn and spins underneath the empty clothesline, singing a song that's so off-key and slurred it's unintelligible. Her braids fly wild around her face, swinging across her sweaty forehead as she moves to the chorus of crickets in the air. Is this what Audrey will have to put up with when they get to San Francisco? Is this new? Or maybe Gillian has never been able to hold her liquor and I'm only finding out now.

“We need to get her out of here,” Audrey says. “I could take her back to my apartment, but everyone will notice if I leave.”