“I’m fine, Coco. Thank you so much for calling.”
“So listen—”
Lydia hung up abruptly, and when the phone rang seconds later, she did not answer. She spent a lot of daylight sleeping, until the summer came one day. The sun coaxed her out of bed. Like a friend who won’t give up on you, no matter how many times you tell her, leave me be. Just let me be miserable. Girl, I’m grown.
There weren’t many trees in the neighborhood, but the sky was pretty when Lydia emerged from her building, blinking. She kept her head down, embarrassed, but her neighbors loudly greeted her. In the clinic, Gretchen, the receptionist, came out from the reception cubicle and hugged her.
“Girl, where you been?”
She caught Lydia up on everything. Not much had changed. There hadn’t been enough heat in the winter, but at least the air conditioner was working now. And the clinic director was trying to convince Irma Bradley to let a new volunteer help her fill out a questionnaire.
“Dr. Pillai should know better,” Lydia said. “You know Mrs. Bradley’s particular about her business.”
“Ain’t she though?” Gretchen said. “I was scared for that volunteer, ’cause Mrs. Bradley don’t play!”
They grabbed hands and laughed real loud. Then someone called her name, and there she was: Ailey. Her baby sister, all grown up. Curly hair cut to her shoulders and blow-dried. Still big-boned, but the plumpness had settled into curves.
Lydia was ashamed of what Ailey saw: a young woman who’d aged tremendously. Lydia’s eyes shot through with red, skin riddled with acne, one tooth missing from the front. She raised a hand to cover her mouth, but Ailey pulled it away. She placed her sister’s palm on her cheek, and Lydia was grateful she wasn’t high.
*
When Ailey found her, even the ghetto seemed cleaner. There was hope now. And love and family and company. The kindness of others who weren’t her blood was no longer a burden. She had introduced Ailey to the people she spoke to in the neighborhood. The waitresses at Mr. Harris’s restaurant, whose suspicious expressions gave way to surprise. This was Lydia’s sister, for real? They didn’t favor at all, but as time passed, people in the neighborhood began to remark, they held their mouths alike. And when they talked, it sounded like the same person.
Seven years away from Chicasetta was a long time, and though Daddy had relayed some of the information, he’d never remembered the same details that Ailey did about Chicasetta, the family drama and chronicles that occupied Lydia’s imagination. Who else had died since Dear Pearl had passed away? Who was married? Who had given birth? She smiled when Ailey confessed that she’d had a summer fling years ago with her old playmate, the boy everybody had called Baybay, though her sister referred to him by his government name. They hadn’t gone all the way, but it had come close.
“I bet that guy’s still sweet on you, though.”
Ailey laughed. “Oh, I doubt it! That’s been so long ago. We were just kids, and he’s engaged now.”
“That don’t matter. Who could ever get over you?”
On the days that Ailey volunteered at the clinic, they met for lunch at Mr. Harris’s restaurant. They squeezed into the same side of the booth and ate from the same plate. After the clinic was closed for business, they would sit on the stoop, and Irma Bradley would sit with them. They’d listen to her stories of the husband who had cheated but not deserted, who’d come north with her from Mississippi, accompanied by cardboard suitcases and brown paper bags stained by the grease of fried chicken. But those two deep southerners had been disappointed by the coldness of people and weather. That the bugs in the City weren’t as large as the ones in Mississippi, but seemed more sinister because nobody had said, y’all they got roaches up in the City, too.
Autumn, and a chill that settled into the tailbone, and Lydia told Ailey, don’t be sitting out on those steps, freezing her ovaries. Somebody had to give their mother grandkids, and Mr. Harris let the two sisters sit in the lobby. Technically, it was still the man’s clinic, and since he vouched for Mrs. Bradley, she came inside as well.
Ailey balanced a takeout container on her lap. She moved a large piece of meat loaf in Lydia’s direction. “Girl, eat that. You see I’m getting big.”
“No, you ain’t. That’s just baby fat.” Lydia took a morsel with her fork. “Um. That’s good.”
“How I’m gone have baby fat when I’m twenty-two years old?” She pushed Lydia’s shoulder gently.