Chapter Ten
CHAPTER
TEN
Jae
Uncle Rowan’s voice roars from the dining room. “Janeeeelle!”
“Coming!”
He’s sitting with papers spread out in front of him on the table. His back is toward me, his head gleaming from a fresh shave.
“Where have you been?” he asks without looking up. His pen is frantic against a yellow legal pad. He opens a giant tome and the hard cover smacks against the table. He wets his finger and flips through the pages. “Well?”
“I had a club meeting.”
“Oh, yeah?” He stops now and looks at me and there’s a whisper of approval in his eyes. He clicks the top of his pen twice. “What club?”
My stomach clenches. “The Free Verse Society.”
“The what?”
“It’s the poetry club,” I say, looking down at my pants and ironing out invisible wrinkles.
When I look up again, his shoulders drop and he rubs his face with both hands. “We’ll talk over dinner,” he says, shaking his head and turning back to his work.
I shouldn’t be surprised by his complete lack of enthusiasm, but I am.
Mom would be happy I joined any after-school club at all.
She worries that I hide behind books because of social anxiety.
But I hide behind books so the real world can’t disappoint me.
When I read, I can skip the chapters I don’t like, or close the book altogether and move on. Life isn’t like that.
Halfway up the stairs to my room, Ms. Rosette’s voice calls from the kitchen.
“Ja-neeelle! Please, come, come.”
I pause, not sure what this could be about. She’s already in the middle of cooking dinner.
I head back toward the smell of food downstairs.
I step into the vast white of the kitchen, its granite countertops shimmering in different shades of pale.
The light from the bay window hits the gold retro lanterns hanging over the kitchen island.
Ms. Rosette is standing at the stove, her apron tied over her blue dress, her hair pulled into a puff at the nape of her neck.
Her hair could never hold a perm because when she cleans, she sweats.
She yells at stains as she kneads fabric between closed fists and she scrubs the floors with a vengeance.
Right now, her arm is muscling like she’s stirring cement. I see the white dough and immediately know what it is.
“Come. Va,” she says, and I stand beside her body, tinged with the smell of a sweet citrus cleaner.
I stare into the pot. Her arm turns and turns the deceptively fluffy dough.
Wap, wap, wap. She’s breathing through her nose, lips pressed together, focused.
A slight sheen of perspiration crowns her forehead, from the work or from the heat or both.
“Uncle Rowan eats this stuff?” I ask.
“Ke? This stuff? Fufu?” She gives me a glance. “You cannot take this stuff from his hands.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I mutter.
“Do you speak E?e?”
“No.”
She continues the wap wap wap without taking her eyes off the pot. “You should learn it. Your name. A?enyo. You know the meaning?”
“Home is good.”
She looks at me sideways. “So. Home is good for you?”
Oof. I suck in my breath. Why does it feel like I’ve been hit in the chest?
Her dark eyes sink into mine. “You don’t want to talk about home?
I can talk about mine. I left Togo two years ago,” she says over the sound of bubbling soup on the far burner.
“My husband and I, we came here. We left our girls in Lomé. Three beautiful girls. I worried for them so much.” She stops pounding the fufu and wets a small bowl to gather its stickiness, then drops the round mounds into several serving bowls.
“We worked, and then when we could, we sent for them. They were very angry with us. With me. They did not understand the sacrifice.” Her voice trails off. “Mothers have to leave sometimes.”
I swallow a lump in my throat and watch her open the lid of the bubbling pot and stir.
She scoops into it and brings the spoon to her mouth, closes her eyes, and smacks her lips.
“Home is good, but a country cannot hold all that you are. A language, too. Try,” she says, blowing on the hot ladle and offering it to me.
“It’s good,” I say, savoring the ginger, the anise, the pepper. “Very good.”
She nods. “It tastes like home. Do you know why home is good? Home is with your people. Now, you go rest before dinner.” She leans in and whispers, “I do not think dinner will be easy for you.”
I want to hug Ms. Rosette, to feel the same warmth in her arms that I feel in her voice, but I step back. I don’t need another mother. Mothers don’t stay.
She was right about dinner.
Uncle Rowan rests his forearms on the side of his plate and stares at me as I cut fufu with my spoon—a sacrilege in Dad’s book. He ate it with his hands, and the hotter the soup the better. Wincing and blowing on his torched fingers was part of the ritual that made it delicious.
Uncle Rowan clears his throat. “Where do you think a poetry club is going to take you?”
I scoop a mushroom cap out of the okra soup and stare at it. I don’t know where the club will take me, but everyone needs to belong somewhere. At least there’s a misfits collective at Bellwood.
“I’ve always wanted to be a writer,” I tell him. “Since I was little, remember? I wrote that Christmas story for you when I was twelve—”
“‘An ATL Christmas Tale,’ yes.” He leans back in his chair. “It’s a cute story. I still have it, you know.”
My jaw drops a little.
“But that’s all it is, Janelle. Cute. It won’t get you anywhere. Now. You left your mama in Atlanta and came all the way here for a fresh start. Is this the amazing fresh start we were hoping for? What are you going to do with your life?”
My whole life? I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow.
“When it’s time for you to move out and make it on your own, what are you going to do? Write poems and tack them on telephone poles? Fold them into origami and sell them at craft shops in the Bahamas? I mean, how are you going to support yourself?”
“I don’t know!” The words burst out like flames from a blowtorch and I quickly cover my mouth. We’re staring wide-eyed at each other like time has frozen us both. I slap my hand over my heart. “I’m sorry, Uncle Rowan. I’m so sorry.”
And I am. Maybe Derek has me all wound up because I’m not the talking back or yelling back type. I think Uncle Rowan knows this, so the anger in his eyes abates almost as quickly as it rose.
“Hm.” He shakes his head and picks up his spoon. “You’re a lot like your mama. You can’t tell a dollar from a cent.” He pauses and clears his throat. “Your grades start slipping, you won’t be in that Kumbaya club anymore. You hear me?”
I bite my lip. Doesn’t he know that I’ve always been a straight-A student? Even during the years when I lost the people I loved?
“Janelle.”
“I hear you, Uncle Rowan.”
I retreat to my room without dessert again and close the door with a sigh. I need to make sense of things. I need to read and write. I need to let words flow through and spill out.
I’m making a beeline for the bookshelf when I notice a courier envelope sitting on the desk. I pick it up. The from address reads Anne Lawrence.
When the envelope rattles, I notice my hands shaking. I drop it onto the desk. It’s what I’ve been waiting for. For three months. So why can’t I open it?
I stare again at the name scribbled on the outside.
I pick it up and head over to my bed, sit on the edge, and feel the envelope for what I know will be there.
Slowly, I pull the tab, taking in a deep breath and letting it out, and when I reach inside for the picture I know I’ll find, there’s June Baby, as small and juicy as a plum.
The photo is taken from right above her, and she’s on her back with her feet in the air.
It feels like I could reach down and pick her up.
She’s smiling so wide. Do babies that small smile so big? Is her joy that big?
My lips start shaking and I press them together. June Baby. I breathed and she breathed. I ate and she ate. I slept and she … well, she did everything but sleep. I kept her for nine months, and then the world took her away.
I mean, I gave her away. I did that. I gave her to somebody else.
Someone I didn’t even know. And I never got a formal goodbye.
My adoption counselor, Sherry, suggested an entrustment ceremony.
It would give me a sense of closure, she said.
But June Baby had her new parents, and her new parents had each other, and I had no one.
How could I get through a ceremony like that without anyone by my side, on my side?
So after forty-eight hours of holding June and rubbing her soft stomach and kissing her soft cheeks and smelling how sweet she was, I handed her over to Anne and Jermaine Lawrence and she was no longer mine.
I didn’t even give her a name. I called her June Baby because that’s what she was. The sweetest little joy born in June.
I tell June over and over that I’m sorry. I whisper Lucille Clifton’s words, and I wonder if anyone will ever read poetry to my lost girl.
But June doesn’t worry about poems and apologies. She smiles back at me.
I reach into the envelope again and find a letter from Anne, her adoptive mother. Her mother.
Dear Jae,
You’re holding this letter, so you know I got your email. And Sherry at the agency got your email and your call. I know you were worried about not getting the picture, or it getting lost in the mail, so I rushed it to you. I don’t want you to ever worry about not having contact with Sarah.
I stop reading. Sarah? How could she be anything but June Baby to me? I know she needed a name, a real name, but Sarah doesn’t capture that gummy smile or those bright black eyes.
This letter is hard to write because I don’t have the words to thank you for what you did for me and Jermaine.
We are so blessed that you chose us to take care of your sweet baby girl.
I know it’s hard for you sometimes. If I’m honest, it’s hard for me.
Because you will always be Sarah’s mother, no matter what I do for her.
No matter how much of a mother I am. You brought her here.
You gave her life. And for that, I can only thank you.
Sarah loves her tummy time. She drools and pees and poops and cries, and Jermaine dances with her to Bob Marley and the Wailers, and they both wail together.
She is everything to us. I wish I could explain what a joy you’ve given us.
The least I could do is send you her smile, which she gives us every day.
For such a young girl, you had to make such an adult decision, and I know it wasn’t easy.
I hope you find your peace. And when you are ready to be a mother for the second time, if you are, I hope you know that you are worthy of that joy.
We will love you forever.
The three of us.