I hadn’t seen my father in several days, not since Sunday dinner. He had been quiet, like he’d been for months. Not his usual laughing self. I’d tried to get some banter going, putting my fork in a huge piece of meat loaf, and teasing that I deserved it more than he did. But he didn’t catch on: he’d told me, sure, darling. Take it. He knew he needed to lose some pounds: his last two checkups, his doctor had been angry.
Aunt Diane pulled me into a hug, and I wept, my face mashed against her hair.
“What happened?” I asked when I’d calmed down enough to speak.
“I don’t know, darling. But he’s going to be just fine. The good news is he was finishing up his shift volunteering at the clinic. The other doctor arrived just in time to help him. Geoff’s at the hospital now.”
She put a blueberry muffin on my plate and told me Veronica was asleep upstairs in the guest room. They’d come in last night but hadn’t wanted to wake me. I took a small bite of my muffin in between sips of the coffee she poured for me. I knew from past experience that my aunt didn’t believe in overeating. I needed to make my muffin last, though she’d allow a second cup of coffee.
I breathed in the steam from my mug and thought everything would go my way finally. And no, I wasn’t a bad person for thinking that! My daddy was going to be fine, and I could go to the Vineyard like I’d planned. I sipped my coffee and tried not to smile.
“Are you packed?” Aunt Diane asked. “Do you have enough toiletries? I always forget and leave something behind whenever I go back to Maine. My parents live in the tiniest town, out in the woods. It’s thirty miles from the closest drugstore! Do they have a drugstore in Chicasetta? You’d think I’d know, as many years as Belle’s been going. And I went there once, when you were very little, but for the life of me I don’t remember.”
“Um . . . I thought I’d be spending the summer with Nana. You know, up on the Vineyard, since Mama is looking after Daddy and can’t come. I don’t, like, want to be selfish. I know he needs her during this very difficult time.” I tried to sound as convincing as I could. To be mature and understanding.
My aunt told me I was so kind and considerate, but I was going down south by myself in two days. Mama already had called a travel agent. “And it’s going to be so fun for you on the plane! Your first time! I’ll drive you to the airport!” Her voice the same exclamatory singsong as when she talked to Veronica.
I was too cranky to appreciate my first ride on an airplane, or the way the blond flight attendant hovered over me, making sure I was taken care of. She gave me extra packets of nuts and let me keep the whole can of soda when she passed by my seat. But she wouldn’t pour me a cup of coffee, even when I reasoned that I was sleepy. It was very early in the morning.
“Coffee will stunt your growth!” she declared.
“I’m five seven and a half and one hundred and sixty-five pounds. I’m done growing.”
She patted my shoulder and told me there was enough caffeine in my soda. Drink up.
At the arrival gate in Atlanta, Uncle Root walked toward me with open arms. “Welcome, sugarfoot! How’s your daddy?”
I didn’t return his embrace. “He’s fine.”
“Excellent! God is good!”
“Uh-huh.” I was determined not to be friendly. Just because I’d had to go to Chicasetta didn’t mean I had to be happy about it. He took my bags, and I trailed him to the parking lot and his long, black town car. He unlocked the passenger door and it groaned open.
“That door is loud,” I said. “And this car is a gas guzzler.”
“That’s the point,” he said. “Negro men like big cars. We don’t believe in conserving energy. After all we’ve been through, we deserve to be wasteful.”
Uncle Root laughed, chucking me under the chin. I wanted to laugh, too, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. When he turned on the classical station, the radio man solemnly whispered, “It’s ninety-nine degrees in the Atlanta metropolitan area,” before he introduced “The Flower Duet” from Lakmé.
“How was your flight, Ailey?”
“Like a ride at Six Flags. I thought I was gonna throw up and then die when the plane crashed.”
“I will take that to mean your journey was unpleasant.”
I leaned against the car window, closing my eyes.
“Ailey, did I ever tell you about the time I met Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois? You know who that is, right?”