Editing. It’s called editing, Toni with an i. But I swallowed my flip retort.
Toni continued. “But I loved that about her.”
I’d loved other things: her humor, her ability to talk to anyone, her glass-half-full attitude. The problem was that it was usually a glass half full of vodka. It was why I had decided to love it all from a distance.
“She had so much potential,” Toni said, and at least that was true. She sucked in a breath, as if trying to keep it together, and started sniffling. I looked up to see if she’d actually cry. Her eyes were as dry as my sex life. I looked back down. “She was beautiful. Too beautiful to die,” Toni finally said through attempted sobs. As if ugly people got first dibs on tragedy. “Too beautiful to be assaulted like that.”
My eyes jumped to Stuart, the throbbing in my wrist back with a vengeance. “She was raped?” I could barely get the words out.
Stuart shook his head and the throbbing stopped. “No signs of sexual trauma.”
“No rape?” Toni sounded disappointed. “But I heard she didn’t have on any panties.”
I wasn’t surprised. Desiree had been known to go commando, considering it a lifestyle choice.
“She didn’t,” Stuart said, casually, like he was discussing the weather. “My source at the precinct is saying there was bruising on her legs but nothing to indicate foul play. They don’t know how she got here, but they’re working on it. So am I.”
He watched me as he spoke, his chest puffed out like he was Superman sent to save the day. But it was too late. My sister was already gone.
“She musta been really needing a hit to come all the way up here.” That was Toni again, working my nerves like a street corner.
“You know that’s some bullshit.” I shook my head as I cut in. “There are better places to get coke in the city. So I’ve heard.” From Desiree, in fact. “She didn’t come up here to score drugs. Not if she had been in Manhattan.”
I stared her down like a bully in fifth grade, and she didn’t say anything. Just looked away. And for the first time that day, I wanted to smile. So I kept at it. “She was last seen in Manhattan?”
Stuart nodded. “SoHo. Omni hotel rooftop.”
“Latest hot spot?” I said.
“Yeah. You haven’t been?”
“As a rule, I don’t travel below 110th. Look, if a reality star”—I made sure not to use the word “former”—“with a rich father is going to get her hands on some coke, it would be at the hottest spot in Manhattan. Right?”
A miffed Toni grabbed Stuart’s arm. “Police said she overdosed,” she said. “If she didn’t come up here for drugs, then why? A girl like that don’t belong in the Bronx.”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” said Stuart, star reporter. “How did a woman like Desiree Pierce end up dead in a park above the Major Deegan Expressway?”
I could have told them both. I’d known from the moment I saw the headline.
She’d been coming to see me.
POSTED JUNE 4, 2019,
11:08 p.m. Eastern @TheDesireePierce212
The cell’s camera turns on to find Desiree Pierce in selfie position, left arm fully extended and raised just enough to make her look up at the screen. She turns her face slightly to the left. Pauses, then faces right. All in search of the perfect light.
Her brown face is beautiful and freckled. Her hair is long and pitch-black, in the kind of beach waves that most Black women get from Bantu knots. Her diamond necklace catches the light.
Behind her are the tasteful yet stark decorations of a hotel suite that’s littered with clothes, shoes, and cups. Desiree turns again, stops, then moves a few centimeters to the left.
She smiles, showing off perfectly aligned white teeth.
Someone unseen takes in a long sniffle. Desiree’s too busy smiling to notice.
“Freck, can you get your beautiful-ass face out of the camera for once?” The voice is female and teasing. It’s impossible to tell where it comes from.
Desiree pretends to roll her eyes. “Let the record show the birthday girl is the first one ready.”
The voice again. “That’s ’cause you don’t have to do all the shit I do! Your skin is perfect.”
Desiree shrugs, pretends to look demure. “Black don’t crack.”
A second later she’s finally joined by Erin Ambrose. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Surgically enhanced lips. She crowds into the frame. “I don’t crack either.”
“Yeah, you just do everything else.”
“No comment.” Erin holds up a white mug with OMNI printed on it in thick black letters. She raises it in mock salute. “To Desiree Pierce on the occasion of her twenty-fifth birthday. A toast.”
Desiree does the same with her free arm, holding another hotel mug. She tips it just enough to show what’s inside. It’s filled with a clear liquid. “A toast…with water.”
Erin nods. “That’s definitely water.”
“It is!”
“Right.” Erin nods double time. “We’re good clean girls who don’t drink, don’t do drugs, and sure as hell don’t fucking curse. So that is definitely not vodka.”
“It’s not.” Desiree chugs it, then flashes the empty mug. “See!”
It takes just a moment for Erin to roll her eyes. “Like you’ve never done that with vodka.”
They both laugh as Desiree speaks. “My family might be watching this!”
“I thought I was your family!”
“You are. Just like a sister.”
They finally clink mugs. Erin talks to Desiree while looking dead at the lens. “Happy birthday, bitch.”
Two
Gram died five years ago in February, a stroke as sudden as it was painful—for her and everyone who loved her. And that truly was everyone. Gram always lit up the room. Especially for me, as she was the only grandparent I knew. My mom’s parents died when I was a baby, and my paternal grandfather was never in the picture.
But if you could have only one grandparent, Phyllis Pierce was perfect. I wouldn’t have gotten through her funeral without Desiree. We moved in tandem all day, only separating to go to the bathroom and even then just long enough to flush. I remember her doing my makeup, loading us both up on waterproof mascara and a healthy dose of setting spray.
My mother, on the other hand, had let me cry for half a day before informing me I needed to get it together. Phyllis Pierce and Olivia Scott had never been close, but that wasn’t why she told me that. It was just my mother’s way. We’d even joke about it, say she was putting on the Super Black Woman cape. You handle your business, and only then do you turn back into the ordinary girl who’s allowed to cry. And there was indeed work to be done, a funeral to help plan.
So when my mom lost her battle with breast cancer three months later, I knew what to do, how to behave.
My mom had known her diagnosis for a whole year but hadn’t told me. She knew I was enjoying my first job—as a project coordinator in DC—and she didn’t want her diagnosis to be the end of my new life. She planned to survive cancer like she’d survived everything else, waiting until she was on her literal deathbed to tell me.