It was in Gigi, and only Gigi, that I’d confided when one of Lou’s boyfriends pulled me onto his lap, slid his filthy hands under my shirt, and asked if I was “a good girl,” if I liked the way he touched me. It had left me with a sludgy, confused feeling oozing through my body.
“Some men ain’t kind, sweetie. Some men are. We need to protect each other from the bad ones, because no one else will,” Gigi whispered as she rocked me gently. “So if that man ever touches you again, so help me God I’mma go to your mama’s house to give him a beatdown he won’t forget. You tell him that, you hear?”
The next time he went to tickle me, I looked him straight in his beady eyes and said, “I told my grandmother that you were a bad man. You better not touch me. Or else.” I’d never felt so powerful, never mind that he laughed in my face. He also never touched me again.
Some nights Gigi and I would wander to the dark kitchen and snack on string cheese or slices of deli meat. Or I’d convince her to make her famous miracle bread—slices of white bread soaked and fried in butter, a mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon on top, then sprinkled with bacon bits. Suddenly, that’s all I want. I’m desperate for some miracle bread. I make my way over to the fridge. Please, please let there be what I need.
Thank God. There’s a half loaf of white bread frozen in the freezer. I don’t even remember buying it or putting it in there, but there it is, and that’s a miracle itself. I have plenty of butter and sugar. I’ve been baking cookies for Kevin’s overtime shifts at the Eagles game to make all the extra hours a little more bearable for him.
As long as I’m cooking, Gigi is still right here with me, telling me I need to put some meat on my bones. The bread sizzles in the pan and I dump another pat of butter over it, exactly the way Gigi would’ve done. It’s all brown and bubbly on the edges now. I pull it out of the pan right before it burns and spoon sugar and cinnamon a half inch high on top. There aren’t any bacon bits in the house, but this will do. Butter drips through my fingers onto my sweater as I bring the slice to my mouth and shove it in, letting the sweet mixture coat the back of my throat like cough syrup.
I need to find out when the funeral will be. Probably this weekend. I press my fingers on my phone screen, leaving greasy smudges. Gigi once told me she wanted to be buried in Alabama. Can I swing a ticket? Would Dr. Wu even let me fly?
I open one of those travel websites on my phone and do a quick search. Fifteen hundred dollars for a last-minute flight, and it’s not even direct. The check from the Order of the Kings seems to glow on the table. Ten thousand dollars would cover a plane ticket—and a whole lot more. I can’t though. We aren’t those people.
Not having the option to go to the funeral is a relief in a way though. It means I don’t have to confront the real question, which is almost too much to bear—would I even be welcome? I mean, no one told me she died. Are they mad at me too? Is everyone mad at me? Shaun’s Instagram had pictures of the Wilsons at Justin’s march. Mr. Wilson held a sign that said, IT COULD HAVE BEEN MY SON. Shaun had one that read, WHITE SILENCE IS VIOLENCE. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. White silence is violence. I thought back to Blazer again. How I didn’t say anything when he called the Wilsons niggers. How I never stop Cookie from saying “those people” or Matt from calling them animals. Was my silence as bad as their slurs? I’ve always tried to make the Wilsons love me. Whenever I stayed over at their house as a kid, I worked so hard to get on Sandra’s good side, carefully washing any dish I used, painstakingly folding my sleeping bag with perfect corners in the morning. I even volunteered for weekend chores. There was no greater feeling than waking up Saturday morning, watching cartoons around the kitchen table—and when Mrs. Wilson mentioned that day’s activity and Shaun would say, “Jenny’s comin’ too, right?” Even if Sandra didn’t always look fully enthused to have a scabby-kneed little white girl tagging along to the fountain or the zoo. But I was family. Right? And okay, I haven’t been by the Wilsons’ since last Christmas Eve, when I was a hot mess, and I didn’t make it to the hospital to visit Gigi, and I’ve been slacking when it comes to acknowledging holidays and birthdays, but that doesn’t make it less true. Yet here I am, like a dog left on the doorstep when the owners move away to some nice new place that doesn’t allow pets.
I don’t know what to do. Should I comment on Shaun’s post? Should I text Riley? I open our text chain and see her last message, checking in about my thirty-week appointment. I’d been too pissed off about her interview with Tamara to respond. Now I can’t find the words. This shouldn’t be so hard. I scroll further up and see how long our text chain stretches, a blur of white and blue bubbles. I might never reach the end, or the beginning. The stream is a veritable time capsule of every aspect of our lives—proof of our friendship, our closeness, our connection. There have been moments where Riley has disappointed me over the years, or frustrated me, but she has never, until now, broken my heart. The phone itself is painful to look at. I want to throw it out the window. I settle for turning it off completely, in effect turning off the world of bad news, my bittersweet memories. Maybe I’ll never turn it on again.
I hear a rustling outside and instinctively crouch down, move slowly to the back of the house. It’s become more of a tap; maybe I’m imagining it. I make my way over to the patio door. The curtains are drawn. I pause, crouched, listening. There it is again, louder this time. I dare to peek behind the curtain into the backyard. A shadowy figure stands less than a foot from the glass. My scream is so loud the door rattles.
“It’s just me, hon.”
The stranger’s features arrange themselves into Mrs. J, bundled inside a long puffy coat, her little yappy dog tucked beneath one arm. Shocks of bright red hair peek out around the fur-lined hood wrapped tightly around her face.
“I was up watching Jimmy Fallon and saw the light and figured it was you,” Mrs. J says through the door as I fiddle with the lock.
A blast of frigid air slams into me when I open it, though the snow seems to have stopped. I should take advantage of the lull and get the hell back to Cookie’s. Mrs. J hands me a small box. “I grabbed this when the UPS guy came the other day. I opened it. Just in case…”
Neither of us needs her to finish that thought. I pull up the cardboard flaps, look inside. Neatly folded on top of delicate tissue paper is the onesie I ordered after seeing it for 50 percent off on one of my mommy blogs. The fabric is as white and soft as a newborn bunny. Across the front it reads, “Hello, World!” in a graceful script. I’d forgotten all about it.
I turn on the porch light so I can show Mrs. J, and accidentally flip the backyard switch at the same time. The adorable little onesie falls to the floor as the sight behind her comes into focus.
Across the back fence, the fence Kevin and Matt spent an entire weekend building, there are three-foot-high letters, in bright red paint that drips like blood: MURDERER.
Mrs. J doesn’t even turn to look at the fence—she just stares at me, pained. “I already called my grandson. You remember—Bobby. He’s going to come paint over it this weekend.”