Everything OK? she texts her father. To her grandmother she simply writes: Thinking about you. Love you. If it’s a good day, her grandmother can still read her texts, might even send a bizarre reply, co-authored by autocorrect. Lemonade constrict.
Ryan, however, has written. Hey Angle, what’s happening? As she taps away at her screen, another beeps through. You busy lately? It would be great to see you guys. I could come see Connor anytime after school!! He makes liberal use of exclamation points and grinning emojis. He even stopped by last week, sat chatting with Yolanda in the living room. Yolanda loved him, smiling spacily at him from under her crocheted blanket, offering soda that Angel had to get up to pour. Ryan just took Yolanda’s interest in him for granted. “You’re a good boy,” Yolanda said with effort, and Ryan replied, “Thanks!”
Angel pauses with her fingers above the screen. The bathroom door swings open and, fearing it’s Brianna, Angel quickly snaps up and turns on the tap.
“Hey,” says Lizette, as the door wheezes shut behind her. Lizette holds Angel’s gaze in the mirror, unsmiling, and Angel’s heart pounds. She swallows and turns off the tap.
Another text chimes through. Angel glances at her phone. LMK!!!!!
“Who’s that?” Lizette steps behind her.
“No one.” Angel silences the phone and slips it in her pocket, glad Lizette sees that she has other people in her life. She grips the wet edge of the counter to steady herself.
“I bet.” Lizette pulls her in and hooks her chin over Angel’s shoulder. Angel wants to close her eyes and surrender against that softness at her back, but there’s something rigid in her that she doesn’t understand. Lizette’s chin digs into her shoulder, her arms are tight around her chest; Angel presses her nails against the counter. She forces herself to look at their reflection, to meet those green eyes. Lizette’s lips—soft lips, dry lips, pink without gloss or color—are challenging. Her loose hair falls down Angel’s throat and sweater, but Angel is immovable. If breath were possible, she knows she would inhale the citrus of Lizette’s shampoo, the warm, salt smell of her skin.
It occurs to Angel that love doesn’t feel good to her. It’s truly lovesickness: malarial, systemic. It’s left her shaky and unable to eat, unable to sleep, unable to concentrate.
“Who was that?” Lizette’s voice is low, almost dangerous, and Angel wonders for a moment if she’ll wrest the phone from her pocket and find her out. But somehow, in speaking, Lizette has broken the taut enchantment; whatever was keeping Angel immobile has vanished.
“No one.” This time a smile tugs at her mouth. She turns in the embrace to face Lizette, but when Angel moves to kiss her, Lizette pulls away, swats Angel’s ass.
“Good.” Lizette walks to the door, her Pumas scuffing along with indifference.
Her hand is on the knob when Angel calls out. “My grandma is dying.” This is the first time she’s said the words, and Angel is surprised by how easy they are to say, how simply the situation can be summed up.
Lizette pauses. Under her gaze Angel backs against the bathroom wall. She slides down the tiles and hugs her knees to her. Her belly is still full against her thighs. She can’t look at Lizette, can’t bear to be rejected again.
Lizette sits heavily beside her. “That sucks,” she says, cold.
“Like, really soon she’s dying.” Angel can’t keep the desperate pitch from her voice. “Really soon.” She hates her tone, as if she’s pleading, trying to convince. She’s using this information as a kind of currency, spending it on sympathy, to get what she wants, which is for Lizette to hold her and care for her and to want to take her out in public. She wants Lizette to be her girlfriend.
“Sucks,” Lizette says again. She stares straight ahead, emotionless as wax.
“Yeah.” Angel thinks of all the people Lizette has lost: her mother, her father, that network of family that fell away after what her uncle did to her. In the face of all that loss, a dying grandmother is nothing. A dying grandmother is normal, expected, even right. It’s impossible to explain to Lizette what Yolanda’s dying means, how the natural order of her world is about to be upset, how Yolanda is like the keystone of an arch, and without her, everything will collapse to rubble.