Chapter XXXVI. Things Fall Apart.
XXXVI.
THINGS FALL APART.
LOS ANGELES.
The first Friday in September, after we’ve returned from two weeks in France but before school has begun, Julien hosts a party at the tree house.
He planned on it being a blowout, but only fifteen or so kids show up.
Mostly Bancroft boys. They mill in the courtyard, occasionally spilling into the living room where Julian is blasting hip-hop.
Francois, Lucie, and I have been instructed to stay in our rooms.
At some point in the early evening, I slip out to grab a drink from the kitchen, excusing myself as I navigate the teens who’ve taken over my home.
Julien throwing me a disapproving look from his spot in the corner where he is chatting up a pretty blond.
Pants riding low on his narrow hips. My father would not approve.
And as I cross into the dining area, I hear it. Some artist rapping about nigger this, nigger that.
Nigga. Nigga. Nigga.
It stops me in my tracks.
My eyes scan the partygoers, both in the living room and the courtyard.
My son is the only noticeably Black one.
There are two boys who look to be mixed with Asian.
One Asian American girl. The others, including Eryx Barlow and Topher, are all white.
None of Julien’s friends from the track team are in the bunch. Not even Isaiah.
This is not okay.
I abort my trip to the kitchen and scuttle back into the bedroom.
“We have to turn off the music.”
“Pourquoi?” Fran doesn’t look up from where he’s reading a book on screenwriting by Blake Snyder, Leelou curled beside him on the bed.
“I don’t know what they’re listening to. Kanye or something. And he’s dropping the N-word all over the place, and Julien is the only Black kid out there and this is not okay. Where are his Black friends? Did he not invite any of his friends from track??”
My husband looks over to me then, not sufficiently concerned. “He said they were all away somewhere.”
“Somewhere? Where?”
“Some island, I think. On the East Coast. With their families.”
It takes me a moment. “The Vineyard? Martha’s Vineyard?”
“Oui. C’est ca. You know it?”
The Vineyard is where many of my wealthy Black friends from Yale summered in their youth. It’s where they still summer. Along with the Obamas.
“Not personally,” I say. “Please make the music stop.”
He closes his screenwriting book then. “What do you want us to do, Cile? All the kids listen to hip-hop these days. You can’t tell him to stop playing his music. He worked on this playlist for a week.”
“I don’t care. It just doesn’t feel right. I’m going to tell him to turn it off.” I can feel my chest constricting, my temples growing warm.
Fran exhales, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It’s just a song, Cecilia. It’s just a word. Don’t give it so much power.”
“Are you kidding me right now??? Do you know what country we’re in?? It’s not just a word, Fran. You know that. I’m stopping the music.”
“Okay, I’ll go talk to him,” he says, rising from the bed. “You stay here. You’re too emotional right now.”
“I’m what??”
“Fucking Kanye,” he mutters, heading out.
“I’m what??”
I am livid. There should be a guide for such things. A support group where I can consult with other Black parents in interracial relationships raising kids in predominantly white communities about what to do in such situations. I need resources. I need backup. I need a drink.
It dawns on me then that Francois has a tin of gummies somewhere in his closet, and I slip in there to find them. Deep breaths, Cecilia. Deep breaths.
When I return to the bedroom, I can hear that the music has changed. R&B, more pop, less angry. It’s familiar. Soothing for a moment, until the chorus kicks in and I realize.
It’s the freaking weekend, baby, I’m about to have me some fun.
I am in the living room before I know it, yelling at my fourteen-year-old, “NO R. KELLY! NO R. KELLY! NO R. KELLY IN THIS HOUSE!!!”
Julien looks at me as if I am completely deranged. The pretty blond does as well. It is possible I am. The deranged Black mom of the Westside.
“What’s wrong with R. Kelly?”
“Everything. Everything.”
Francois speaks up from the other side of the room. “Your mom doesn’t want you to play R. Kelly either,” he says in French. “How about some Drake?”
Much later, when the gummy has kicked in, and the kids have all gone home and Julien has cleaned up the cans of soda, pizza boxes, and chips, something jolts me from my sedated state. A sick feeling in my gut. Francois snoring beside me, the tree frogs croaking. A coyote bays. Leelou.
She is not at the foot of the bed.
I lurch upright, trying to recall when last I saw her. In our bed, wasn’t it? But how long ago? During the party? After?
I whisper her name. Softly, at first. Then louder. Willing myself out of my THC haze, out of the warm covers. I search the room. Under the bed, the closet, the corners, my mind racing. Oh dear God, Leelou.
I make my way to the living room, the dining area, the kitchen, around the corner toward the main entrance, down the wing with the kids’ rooms, the media room, the guest room, opening doors and calling her name.
Every closet, every cranny. No Leelou. And then I wake Francois.
Panicked. He retraces my steps as I head out to the courtyard.
The garden, the pool, around the back to the creek.
Floodlights from the house guiding my way.
The frogs quieting as I approach. Twigs snapping beneath my sneakers. Leelou. Leelou. Leelou.
No Leelou.
I am crying now. My heart racing. My brain unfogging. My cat. My cat. My beloved cat.
When I return to the house, both kids are awake, searching closets and beneath beds and the front yard. Lucie is crying. Fran is in the street calling Leelou’s name. All to no avail.
And in my heart, I know.
We’ve lost her.
In the days after, when the posters we have plastered throughout the canyon and our endless canvassing of the neighborhood lead to no response, and when the entire house has fallen into despondency, Lucie quits ballet.
That Thursday afternoon, she gets into the Lexus and before we’ve even left the driveway she begins to cry.
I assume it’s because of Leelou, but I’m wrong.
She sits there, shaking in the front seat, her narrow shoulders heaving, tears streaking her face.
Her hair secured in a polished bun. Gone were the little-girl fuzzies.
“I don’t want to go to class today,” she says.
“Okay,” I say. “We don’t have to go. Nothing’s wrong with taking a day off.”
“No, I don’t want to go … ever.”
“What do you mean, Luce? Nutcracker auditions are this Saturday. We thought you had a good chance of getting the Clara role this year, remember?”
“I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to audition. I don’t want to do ballet anymore, Mom.”
She says the words through sobs, and I am crushed. For as long as she’d been able to walk, all Lucie wanted to do was ballet. Nothing else completely defined her in the way that dance did. For her to make such a pivot was almost unfathomable.
I shift the car into park. Kill the engine. “What happened, hon? What’s wrong? Is it because of Leelou?”
“No. I just don’t want to do it. Please don’t make me go.”
“But why the change of heart?”
She shrugs, palming her wet lashes. “I don’t know, I just … I know you love that I do this, and I don’t want to disappoint you, Mommy, but I just don’t want to do it anymore. I just don’t.”
“Oh, Luce. Oh, little Ladybug.”
Her words break me. I lean over the console to hold her, to inhale her, to absorb all her sorrow and pain.
“Please don’t worry about disappointing me. You can absolutely take a break. It’s not the end of the world. Ballet isn’t going anywhere. You can take a few months off and reassess in the winter.”
“No,” she says. “I don’t want to reassess. I’m not going back.”
She says it so definitively, I feel it in my gut. The grief. The loss. The end of something beautiful.
In the weeks following, she does not talk about it.
And I do not want to push, for fear of her hardening her position, making a return less likely.
We continue to put up signs for Leelou. We kick off a new school year.
She attends the first of several bar and bat mitzvahs.
But for the time being, ballet remains in the past.