While I waited for the PI, I went out to the car. Julian was in the passenger seat, reading something on his phone. He peeped at me as I got in, embarrassed, though by now the tearstains had faded and his eyes were only a little swollen.
“I’m sorry I lost it,” he said. “It’s been a really stressful day.”
I waved the apology away and said, with no preamble, “What if I hired you for the rest of the summer?”
He let out a startled bark of laughter. “Yeah, because today has gone so well.”
“I’m serious,” I said. “You could come in on your off days from the pizza place, once or twice a week. We could get to know each other a little more naturally, over time.”
He looked uncertain. “I’m not sure I’d be good in a, you know, cutthroat kind of environment.”
I realized I didn’t even know what he’d been studying at Berry, and felt ashamed of how little I’d asked Julian about himself. Not at this morning’s meeting, or even earlier, on Facebook. So I said, “What’s your major?”
“Psychology. I want to be a therapist, eventually. I’m sure not cut out to be a lawyer.”
“It’s not always this high stress,” I told him. “Take the internship. It’s only until the end of summer. I can promise you some delightfully bland phone answering when Verona goes to lunch. There’ll be quite a lot of very dull filing.”
“Okay, now I’m sold,” he said, but I had gotten a smile out of him.
“Did I mention it pays twenty bucks an hour?”
“Holy crap, I suddenly love filing!” He cut his eyes at the ugly colonial house. “For twenty an hour, I might even love Ms. Winkley.”
Money was so relative. It was a fortune to him, but I could pay him out of my pocket, like Catherine did when she hired her oldest son for the summer, and never feel it. The job would let me funnel cash to him. If the water got too cold, too deep, too full of sharks—hell, just too wet—he’d have the means to flee back to the sheltered world of Berry College.
I didn’t think he would, though. The kid had metal in him, and he shared my driving urgency to find Hana. I had to respect that and find a way to merge our visions of the future.
“Deal?” I asked.
He nodded, and as we shook hands on it the guy from Nick’s PI firm pulled into the drive behind us.
Turned out, Clark had removed an alarm contact from an upstairs bathroom window and reprogrammed the system not to register it. To reach the window, he had to sneak through a neighbor’s backyard, climb a tree, and slither and roll across the back of the perilous, steep roof. The PI tested the route and found it possible, but dangerous as hell. Clark had to be both in good shape, physically, and in bad shape, mentally, to take it. He’d literally risked his life, more than once, to pee in Oakleigh’s makeup case and spoil her shoes.
I had them plug the hole. As much as I’d love to install nanny cams, I didn’t trust him not to creep in one night and strangle her. And that was assuming that she wouldn’t get another gun and shoot him right on camera first.
The next morning, I took Oakleigh’s check and contract to the office. I tossed them on Nick’s desk, casual, as if I were the Paula of yore, who delivered BANK clients and retainers on the regular, and I was rewarded with his familiar grin. In this brave new world where finding Hana might have an after, I needed to mend fences with my partners, stat. I’d need time off when I had a sudden sister to resettle. I spent the next ten days getting current on our every open file, reconnecting with our client list, and billing monstrous strings of hours. As I got my files in order, I had a disturbing thought: perhaps this was what nesting looked like, when I did it.
I felt eyes on me all the time, though, that faint electric skin-crawl that haunted the watched, as Nick kept popping by to check things that did not need checking. As the days rolled past with zero panic attacks, and I took on exactly zero pro bonos, both my partners relaxed. The chilled air of our offices rewarmed.
When I felt anxious, when my heartbeat sped up, beating out the call to find her, find her, find her, I reminded myself that I was not alone in feeling it. Julian was waiting, too, and Birdwine was on the job.
But when word finally came, it wasn’t good. Birdwine sent an email, no title. Not even “Here is the information,” because there wasn’t any. I could tell he was ashamed, because he didn’t even sign it:
I traced their route through four states before I lost the trail. There’s nothing. It’s dead cold, Paula, and I can’t do any more from here. I’m coming home.
CHAPTER 8
Joya is sitting sideways on my bed. The rooms here are small, just enough space for two twin beds, a shared dresser, and a closet. There’s a common room downstairs with desks for doing homework, an old navy-blue sofa and loveseat, and some big donated beanbag chairs, but Shar, Karice, and Kim have practically peed in a circle around that territory. Joya rooms with Kim, so we default to my room. We can kick Candace out and lean on the wall, shoulder to shoulder, feet hanging off into space. After a year and a half, my place on this bed is so established I can feel a faint, butt-shaped dent in the mattress where I fit.
I’m out of place today. I have moved up, much closer to the scratched headboard, and put some space between our shoulders. Joya either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. She’s so happy she’s having a hard time sitting still. I look down at our bare feet, my two, then a space, and then her two. She has doll feet, very small with round toes. She flexes them, back and forth, like they are waving. Happy feet, waving good-bye.
“You’re bouncing the whole bed,” I say. My feet are bonier and longer and very, very still.
“Well, you’re bitching up the whole room,” Joya fires back, but she’s smiling and I’m not.
Our voices sound so loud in all the quiet air. We are truly alone, with the whole cabin to ourselves. It’s rare to be the only two people in a building here, but everyone else has gone to the dining hall in the center building. Mrs. Mack said she’d bring me a sandwich if I wanted to skip the meal and hang with Joya. Joya’s going to a real restaurant with her mama. They will have a celebration meal of fried steak and mashed potatoes and pie, because Joya is not coming back. Everything she owns is packed up, sitting in two bags in our cabin’s common room.
The longer we wait, the more bitter and dark-hearted I become. It’s like I am steeping in something awful. I should have given her a quick squeeze, said bye, and gone to dinner.
But that would have meant sitting alone in the dining hall. At meals, the black kids and the two white boys who talk and dress black have the tables near the windows. The white kids, including Candace, have the tables by the door. There are only four Hispanic kids. They keep to themselves, sitting on one end of the eight-top nearest the kitchen, talking Spanish. We Gotmamas own the other end of their table. We’ve been a tiny nation to ourselves for over a year, but the problem of being a Gotmama is now clear to me: Someone’s mama is coming. It isn’t mine.
Sitting alone in the dining hall, I would at least have hot garlic toast. Here, my guts twist, hungry in all kinds of ways, watching Joya get what I want most.
“I’m missing spaghetti night,” I say, mean enough to spark her back.
“Can’t you be happy for me?”
“I am,” I say. I wish I were.
“The way they’ve worked my mama over, it could have been you leaving first just as easy.”
“I know.”
Her mom got out of rehab months ago, but they made her move into a halfway house. All Joya got was supervised visitation. Her mama had to get a job, keep it, pass her weekly pee tests, save a certain amount of money. Every time she hit a goal, it felt like they’d add on another. But now she has her own apartment down south of the city with a dedicated space for Joya. Last month she got Joya for an overnight, and then for two weekends. Now, tonight, she’s finally taking Joya home for good.
“So stop being a piss,” Joya says.
“I’m not,” I say, pissy. Kai still has
three months to serve, and who knows how long we’ll get jerked around when she gets out. “Or if I am, maybe it’s because you’re leaving me with such a pile of shit.”
“What does that mean?” Joya says. She’s too deep-down happy to get snippy fast, but I keep pushing.
“I mean Shar and Karice. You’re the one who beat them down, but Shar never got you back. When you go, they’ll come at me.”
She dismisses that with a wave of her small hand. “Bitch, please, like you can’t take them?”
I could take the two of them, actually. I’m pretty sure. Joya did, and I’m taller and stronger and almost as mean. But they aren’t two anymore. “They have Kim now, too.”
“Kim’s not so tough. Just take your earrings out. Don’t wear even studs until you settle with them.” She sits up and curls her legs under her, getting into it. Joya likes tactics. “You have to hit Shar first, right off, hard as you can. Go for the face, she likes being pretty. You get her down, the other two will scatter off like bugs.”
“I can handle myself,” I mutter.
“Yeah, you can,” Joya says. She looks at me, sizing me up, and then nods. “You be all right.” It isn’t an assessment. It’s a command.
“You be all right,” I order her back, and it comes out only a little bit resentful.
Shar and Karice don’t really matter. I’ve been in fights plenty. They aren’t what’s wringing out my guts. I want Kai. I want Kai to come for me so bad it feels like a hundred mean hands twisting every organ in my abdomen.
I don’t want to talk to Joya anymore, at all. I should move back down to my habitual place, sit shoulder to shoulder with her like always. If I would do this simple thing, we could run out the minutes in silence. Joya’s not one for tears and speeches.
I can’t, though. I can’t make myself sit close to her. She isn’t Joya anymore. She’s some girl who is leaving me, some girl who’s getting everything I want.
Joya seems to think we’re good, though. She’s helped me plan a Shar defense, so we must be golden. She creeps a little closer. Her eyes are very dark brown, but they look black in the dim light.
“Paula? Imma call you, okay? We’ll still see each other.”
I twitch one shoulder, noncommittal. She’s throwing me a crumb, but I’ve been moved around enough to know it isn’t real. She might call once or twice. She might ask to visit. But her apartment is forty-five minutes away, in a different school zone, and her mama has a full-time job. Time is short and gas is pricey. The truth is, we are finished with each other. She wants to pretend different and have some kind of moment? Screw her.
“I mean it,” she says, pressing.
“We’ll see,” I say, with some finality. I need her to shut up now.
“My mama’s got a car. She’ll drive me here to visit.”
A lashing blackness rises in me as she says what her mama has; what her mama, who is coming for her now, will do.
“You won’t come back here,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t, and you won’t, either. Not unless your mama fails a pee test, and they drag you back.”
Joya’s eyes narrow. It’s the thing we’re both most afraid of, and I’ve named it. We never do that to each other, talk about how her mama could go back to the pipe, how mine might not get early release. These things could take our mothers from us, and we don’t invoke them.
We talk about how mamas are, and what we’ll do and say when ours come for us. I’ve heard a thousand times about this dinner Joya’s going to eat tonight at Demy’s Blues-N-Burgers. I know Demy’s has signed pictures of Hound Dog Taylor and Muddy Waters on the wall. She’s described the potatoes mashed with Cheddar and chives so many times, it’s almost like I ate them myself a long time ago. She knows when Kai comes, our first meal will be her famous pancakes with the orange zest in the batter. Kai always helps me paint my room, and we’ve endlessly debated the color I should choose. We plan our lives with mothers in great detail, as if their coming is dead certain. Nothing else is bearable. It is a silent pact that binds us, makes us into Gotmamas. I’m breaking our most secret and unstated rule.
“She won’t, though,” Joya says, and it’s more than a warning. It is a window, an offering. She’s made a space for me to take it back.
“I hope not. But, damn.” I shrug, all world-weary, like I regret her mama’s chances are so slim.
Joya scrambles up onto her knees and rears as tall as she can go. It isn’t very tall. “She won’t though, and you know she won’t. Say she won’t.”
I have a bitter flavor in my mouth, but it’s rich, too, as savory and sharp as lemon butter. I rise to my knees as well, taller than her, and I tuck my hair behind my ears, so she can see I didn’t need her stupid tactics. I already have my earrings out.
“I’m just being honest,” I say. “It’s dumb to have this big good-bye, when you’ll be back in six weeks. If your mama even makes it that long.”
She shakes her head. “I’m smoke, bitch. I am gone, and your sorry ass is stuck here.” Her voice is loud and her black eyes shine, welling in her weakness. I’ve gotten to her, and I can’t help how good it feels.
“For now, but you don’t see me crying about it,” I say, sneering. I say it like I’m tougher, though no one is. Not anyone I’ve ever met.
She leans in, closer. So close I feel her hot breath touch my face. “You will cry, though. Your lesbo mama likes that prison. She don’t want to come for you. She’d rather stay dyked out in jail.”
My lips peel back, inadvertent. She knows the thing with Rhonda hits me low. I don’t want Kai to be so lonely that she needs a prison boyfriend, or worse, for her to trade her beauty and her sex for more phone time and outsize orange envelopes and stamps. That’s why this fight is so very dangerous. We know all each other’s soft places. I hit her back in one of hers.
“Well, your mama will go back whoring. They always do.”
“Who always does,” she says. It is a challenge, not a question. She is daring me to say it. There is the promise of pain in her voice, and I want it. I want her to come at me with tooth and claw. It would be better to feel this tearing outside, on my skin.
“Whores,” I say. It’s low and it feels good to be low. “Whores like your mama, the whore.”
I am ready in my body for her to come at me. I want her to hit and hit me. I deserve it. I’ve said the lowest thing that can be said.
I can’t imagine a force strong enough to keep her from launching, but she finds one. Her eyes gleam like chipped onyx. She tilts her head sideways and leans in, taking five long seconds, like she’s coming in slo-mo for a kiss. She slips sideways though, putting her mouth near my ear.
“You take it back. You be so sweet and kiss my ass, because I know what you did. You snuck your mama’s poem to her boyfriend.” This is harder than fists, this hot whisper of breath brushing my ear. “I could tell. I could beat you down right now, take that footlocker. You kept that poem, and it’s proof. Then she won’t get early release. They’ll keep her ass. You’ll be here until you age out.”
Everything in me goes dark. I don’t breathe or speak. She could do it. I’ve pushed her too hard.
Her body stays close and feels coiled, ready now for me to make it physical. I am bigger, but she is so damn tough. If I lose, I have no doubt she’ll do it. She’ll take the footlocker, and she’ll screw Kai to the wall.
I lean back, so she can see my eyes. I show no fear. I know Joya. Her instinct for finding soft spots is unerring. So I can’t have any, and that’s all. I stay cool, and shake my head, wry, like she’s said something so weak it’s funny. I make my mouth curl into a little smile.
“I don’t care if my mama dies in there. I’m the one that put her into prison in the first place.”
I say it soft, but even so, it comes out powerful. The truth always sounds so very, very true. She hears it, ringing clear and loud as bell song under my words. The truth at the center is the thing that sells the lie.
“What?” she says. She
even blinks. I’ve shocked her out of the advantage.
“I called the cops, dumbass,” I say. These are the words I’ve never said out loud. This is the biggest truth, the secret one, alive in the bitter depths of me. It feels so good to say it, to confess it to this girl who will not give me absolution. She will hate me for it. I’ve done a thing that she would never do. “I turned Kai in.”
She rocks back all the way onto her heels, kneeling on the bed now. “Why?”
“Because she fucked with me,” I say. I let that sit there. Joya already knows one secret that could ruin us; now I am handing her another, even worse. It is a risky strategy, and this is the part I have to sell to make her back down. I lean in close. Each word is barely more than breath. “I kept that poem to be my leverage. I’ll show it to Kai’s damn parole officer myself if she tests me.” I pause. I want to be sure Joya understands this last part. This is the part that matters. “There’s no limit to what I’ll do to somebody who fucks with me. You understand? No limit. I sent my own mama to jail because she moved me out of Asheville, and I kept that poem so I can do it again. If you start with me—what do you think I’m going to do to you?”
She stares into my eyes, uncertain, teetering on the cusp of disbelief and violence. I don’t blink. Not at all. I don’t move or waver, and then her eyelids come down, shuttering closed.
“You a stone col’ narco bitch,” she says, her grammar and inflections gone into that way she talks with other black kids. It’s the way she talks to Candace to scare her and to shut her out. She’s never talked like this at me. She opens her eyes, and she is a stranger, waving a hand between us. “We done. I don’t need your sorry ass for nuthin’ anyhow, because I’m gon’ go home.”
I sink back, too, shrugging like it makes no nevermind, but there is truth inside her blow, weighting it. All Joya really has to do to win is leave me here, and we both know it. She jerks her chin down in a single nod, and we are done with each other. She gets up off my bed and goes downstairs to wait with her bags. I am Rome, burning behind her. She doesn’t look back, and I don’t cry. The Gotmamas are char and ash, so wrecked it’s like we never were.