Needy Little Things(42)

“Yes. We do. It’s just dinner and Deja would do it if it were either of us. Our moms probably wouldn’t have even had to ask her.”

He plants his feet. “Our moms wouldn’t have bitten her head off the way she did us at the police station.”

I get behind him and push his back until he starts walking again. “Are you sure about that?”

All he offers is a noncommittal grunt.

“Plus, the things she said that day—they weren’t wrong. I did leave Deja by herself.”

“No, you didn’t. You said she walked off.”

“That answer wasn’t good enough for you on Saturday.” I don’t know why I say it. It makes me feel dirty and needy, fishing for an apology.

“It is today.” He picks up a rock and tries to skip it down the sidewalk. It lands with a bored thud a few yards away. We take turns kicking it. “You think Ms. Jasmine even remembers yelling at us?” he asks after we lose the rock under a parked car.

“Yes, and I think it’s why she asked us to come over.”

“To apologize?”

I snort. “Her generation doesn’t apologize. They feed you and act like nothing happened.”

“True. Let’s get on with it, then.”

We walk up the driveway of the duplex, dandelions sprouting up through cracks in the concrete. Ms. Jasmine opens the door before we reach the front step.

Lip balm. Lip balm. Lip balm.

She dabs her nose with a wadded-up tissue. “Y’all come on inside. Get out of this heat,” she says, even though it’s not especially hot today.

It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to how dark it is inside. Unlike the night Deja disappeared. The heavy burgundy drapes are drawn. The lamps are shrouded. The house itself seems to grieve Deja’s absence.

“Y’all hungry?” she asks. “Food’s hot.”

“I could eat,” Malcolm says in a way that I know stirs up something primal in the hearts of all mothers.

She leads us to the dining room where a few Styrofoam containers of chicken wings sit on top of the smiley face plastic bags they came in.

Malcolm’s body goes rigid with the effort to hold in his laugh.

“Don’t start,” I whisper through clenched teeth.

Ms. Jasmine disappears into the kitchen and I dig a sealed tube of cherry lip balm from Santa Bag.

“Mm-hmm,” Malcolm says. “She sho needs that.”

“Malcolm,” I hiss. “Really?”

“Listen to me good, Sariyah. I don’t care what I’m going through. If my lips are dry, if my hands are ashy, if my breath is stank, you better tell me. You can have empathy and still be straight with folks.” He takes the lip balm from my hand and tosses it into a little glass bowl filled with keys and pens and coins.

I stare at the nickels and dimes, as the seed that planted itself in my brain last night finally begins to sprout.

“I thought this woman was cooking,” Malcolm says, peering at the wings. “Where she get these tiny things from?”

“Malcolm!” I whisper-shout. No time, place, or situation is safe from his jokes, especially when he is even remotely uncomfortable—which is what these comments are really about.

“I’m just saying, if you’re—Oh, shh. Here she come.” He straightens up and tries trading his wing-judging eyes for sympathetic ones, but if I had to pinpoint an emotion in them, it’d be … shame?

Ms. Jasmine tosses a small stack of dessert-sized paper plates on the table before easing herself into a creaky chair. She has a rash on her cheek and her tiny frame looks even smaller than usual. “Y’all go on and help yourselves.” Her fingers twitch as she motions toward the takeout bags.

We take five or six wings each and sit across from her.

She clears her throat and I peek at Malcolm out of the corner of my eye. She’s preparing for her non-apology.

“Y’all are Deja’s best friends. All she ever talks about.” She fidgets in her seat like she can’t get comfortable. “I’ve been hurting, and Malcolm, I know you’ve been here before. You’ve been here for years.”

It hurts my feelings that she excluded me. I feel like a jerk for it, but I love Tessa, too. I lost her, too.

“Wouldn’t wish this on nobody,” Ms. Jasmine continues. “It’s a good thing what y’all been doing to spread the word, get folks looking for her, talking about her. Keep it up for me, because I need my baby home.” She gives her scalp a few hard slaps and a vigorous scratch, grabs the lip balm from the bowl and smears some across her lips. “I need y’all to help me raise some money, too. That’s what I really need.” She says this, but all I’m sensing is a fresh need for painkillers. Again.

“I want to hire one of them fancy private investigators, you know? Someone paid to put all their time on Deja. Those cops, they are overworked. They got a dozen cases exactly like Deja’s.” She lets out a little sob and all I can think is that Josiah had a point. This woman cries without tears.

The front door squeaks open and heavy boots clunk across the floor. Ms. Jasmine smooths her blouse and pats her dry face.

“Jas?” A deep, irritated male voice booms. A need for a black light comes with it.

“In the dining room!”