“Better than the Supremes?”
He gasps and pretends to look over his shoulder, then leans in close. “Don’t ever let your aunt hear you say that. It’s a hot debate around here.” I smile, but only a little, so he puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “San Francisco will be nice to visit, yeah? We can get out of here when it’s all nasty and cold.”
I glance over at Audrey, who’s standing alone at the record player now, staring down at her phone. She always looks pretty, but she’s dressed up tonight in a black lace minidress with long sleeves. Her dark hair is sleek, pulled back into a tight bun. And the lipstick is back.
“Isn’t San Francisco kind of cold anyway?” I say, remembering the time my mother came back from an art show held there in August and said she’d had to buy a sweater during the trip.
Uncle Howard shoots me a smile that assures me he knows my grumpiness has nothing to do with him before he starts in on the bowl of olives.
I walk to the kitchen for a glass of water but stop abruptly in the doorway. Gillian is standing at the counter with a guy, their backs facing me, and I consider turning and walking out before they see me. This is a party to say farewell to her, too, but I don’t have anything nice to say to Gillian, so maybe it would be better if I just avoided her.
But then my foot presses on a squeaky part beneath the linoleum and they both swivel around. And I’m stuck.
“Oh, hi Rashida.” Gillian’s eyes are as bright as her voice. A blue plastic cup sits on the counter by her elbow, next to an open bottle of vodka and a jug of orange juice. “This is my brother, Pierre.”
First, I notice the dimple in his chin. It’s so perfectly sculpted that I want to touch it to see if my finger would get lost. But every part of him is worth a second glance, from his rich, dark skin to the black-framed glasses on his face to the soft brown eyes behind them.
“Hi.” He crosses the room and sticks out his hand. “Rashida? Nice to meet you.”
I knew Gillian had a brother, but I didn’t know he was my age. Or that he looked like this. I glance at his short, neatly trimmed Afro and think about how soft it must be. He smiles, showing teeth that I’d be sure had been subjected to braces except that one on the bottom is just a little bit crooked.
Gillian coughs and giggles at the sink, and that’s when I realize Pierre is still standing there, holding out his hand, and I’ve not moved or even said a word. I’m simply staring. I brush my fingers over the front of the full, flowered skirt that stops a few inches above my knees, then shake his hand. I smile at him briefly, my gaze shifting back to Gillian, who is taking a long drink from the blue cup, before I say, “Nice to meet you, too.”
Gillian gestures toward the vodka. “Want a drink?”
I give her a funny look. “You can’t be serious right now.”
“Well, I don’t mean to brag, but I make a mean screwdriver,” she says, laughing.
“Well, I think it’s a pretty terrible idea, Gillian. My family is here.”
Excluding my father, of course. He was supposed to be here by now, but he must be having too much fun at dinner with Bev. Which makes me want to take Gillian up on the offer of the drink, after all. But I don’t actually like booze that much. I’ve choked down a beer and had a couple of cocktails, stealthily made with the spoils of unattended liquor cabinets, but alcohol mostly makes me sleepy.
Pierre glances at me with a furrowed brow, as if he can’t believe how rude I was to his sister.
She doesn’t seem to take offense, though, or if she does, it’s hidden behind the vodka. She smiles the same type of smile that she wore at the beach, caps the bottle, and says, “You know where to find me if you change your mind,” before exiting the room.
I slide past Pierre to grab a bottled water and think I should say something—anything to get rid of that look on his face—but I don’t know what to say, so I walk away, too.
* * *
Aunt Farrah is sitting at the bottom of the staircase on my way to the bathroom. She’s not preoccupied with anything, just sitting and staring down at her hands, but there’s a sadness to the way her body leans into the railing, so I take a seat beside her. A huge family portrait hangs in a wooden frame on the opposite wall—Farrah and Howard and little Audrey, when she still wore pink barrettes in her hair.
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?”