Audre & Bash Are Just Friends(81)

“I only read the prologue.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s not okay, and it’s never been okay.”

“One might argue you left the laptop out on purpose so I could find the file. A classic case of projected self-sabotage.”

“What you won’t do is therapize me.”

Audre threw up her hands. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

Eva breathed out slowly. “I’ve been dreading this moment since the day I found out I was pregnant with you.”

“Nice that you felt dread when you found out you were pregnant.”

“Don’t twist my words. I was elated to be pregnant with you,” she corrected. “You’re my greatest gift.”

Audre let out a huff of frustration. “I push myself so hard, Mom. To please you. I’ve always felt like if I stopped being perfect for one second, the world would end. You put me on a pedestal! Your greatest gift. Your golden child. Your perfect daughter. So-called ‘golden’ children become anxious adults with inferiority complexes. Haven’t you ever read Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic by Jennifer Wallace?”

“No, but I need to. I clearly have a lot to learn,” she admitted. “I never meant to put unrealistic expectations on you. You were always so driven, so ambitious. I thought you liked the pressure.” She placed her chin in her hand, her fingertips tapping her cheek.

“Why did you lie to me?”

“I wouldn’t say I lied. I simply perpetuated a useful fiction.”

Audre shot her an exasperated look.

“I was terrified that if you knew the truth,” said Eva, “you’d absorb it and repeat history.”

“But what is our history? ’Cause right now I feel like aliens dropped me from the sky.”

“That’s not too far from the truth.” Eva angled the Cheerios box in Audre’s direction, and Audre shook her head. She was so unsettled, she might never eat again. “I’ve rehearsed this moment for years. And now that it’s here, words escape me.”

“Okay, writer,” said Audre under her breath.

Eva breezed past this snark. She had a story to tell. “Most families have a sprawling family tree, with several branches. Ours isn’t like that. We don’t have branches, just a trunk.

“Your great-great-grandmother had one daughter, who had one daughter, who had one daughter, and so on. No siblings; no dads that stayed. Just women and our generational trauma. The trauma ended with me. But when I was around your age, it almost won.”

Pausing, she reached down to the chair seat next to her and pulled out an old shoebox. “This is my Back to Belle Fleur box. Things I’ve collected while researching.”

The box was filled with all sorts of old-timey miscellanea. Newspaper clippings and invitations to long-ago parties. Faded ribbons, satin gloves, and a few loose pearl buttons. Three black-and-white photos caught Audre’s eye. Each one had a name and date scrawled on the back.

The first pic was Audre’s great-great-grandmother, Delphine, 1922. She was posed with an ancient Ford, her bee-stung lips and flapper hat signifying wealth.

The second photo was Audre’s great-grandmother, Clothilde, 1945. A bright-eyed beauty lounging in the grass wearing a WWII-era rolled hairdo.

The third photo was Grandma Lizette, 1977. It was a pageant shot, torn out of a newspaper. She was wearing a tiara, a winner’s cape, and fluffy disco hair.

All three were wearing Audre’s cameo ring. It wrapped her in warm, cozy pride.

“Wow, how did Grandma Lizette get her hair so big?”

“She’d tease her hair at the crown, stick a folded-up maxi pad in the center, and then pin her hair all around it.”

The warm, cozy pride ended there. “Gross.”

“You asked.” Eva returned to her story. “Honey, you come from a line of very powerful but very… tricky women. Complicated, challenging women. Delphine was tortured by pain in her head, back when no one knew what it was. Belle Fleur is a Catholic town. So, the local priest decided she was possessed—and gave her a public exorcism when she was thirteen. Years later, she shot her husband for singing too loud in the fields. Relatable, to be honest. But not good.”

“An exorcism? You can’t be serious. There weren’t any doctors in town?”

“You weren’t raised with Jesus, Audre. People get fanatical when they believe their religion is fact,” she said, arching a brow. “Clothilde escaped from a turbulent home and fled to New Orleans—where she passed as a fancy white socialite, fooling everyone in town. But she exposed the truth in the suicide note she wrote in lipstick on her bathroom wall. And my mom, your grandma Lizette? She’s not who you think she is.”

Audre was hanging on her mom’s every word. A sick, misunderstood teenager getting the “witch” label. A Black woman tricking high society into thinking she’s white. Broken families, race shame, haunted, murderous women. They sounded like characters in a movie, not real life.

“By the time I started school, she’d aged out of pageants. That’s when she started escorting. Wealthy men would… well, they’d hire her to be their date.” Eva paused to gather her thoughts. “In exchange, they’d gift us an apartment, pay the bills. And when one arrangement was over, we’d hit the road, looking for the next guy. At first, the men were nice enough. But as she got older, they got meaner and cheaper.” Eva chewed a nail. “And they got handsy.”