Chapter 70 Georgia
Georgia
Now that Cece has posed the question, now that I’ve realized I won’t ever be the perfect Star Child I’ve been trying to be,
it feels inevitable. Even if there is a part of me that won’t completely, not fully and entirely, give up the quest to meet
the expectations my mother left behind for me, I’m already marred with mistakes. And every time one of these mistakes has
been revealed to these women, my people, my family, they seem far less bothered than I expect.
Forgiveness is quick for them. So very unlike my own is for myself.
I’m trying to learn from them, still.
I say a silent prayer to Mama. Please don’t be mad. If they love me as is, like this, current state, no repairs, could you too?
“Here it goes.” I stop for one final look around the group. “I lied. So many times, y’all. I’m not the VP of customer experience;
I’m his secretary—a fairly good one, but still. I— The car I drive.” I massage my palm into my forehead at the absurdity of
it now that I prepare to say it out loud. “I can’t really afford it. I pour my paycheck into it, so it looks like success.
I live in a junky apartment and barely do anything outside of work. Nothing about my life is glitzy or glamorous.”
Junie’s brows lift in concern, but without an ounce of doubt I can tell it’s all for me. Poor Georgia.
Tina squeaks. “Oh, sweetie. But why?”
“Why else? June,” Cece says. Her arms are crossed, but her eyes are gentle. She’s really been putting in an effort with me.
“Let me finish,” I say. “Cece is right. All I wanted was to live up to Mama’s vision for me. For her and for everyone else.
Because if I was just sitting around here being underwhelming and shooting daggers at my baby sister because she got the shop,
how would that be? It would be another loss. And then everyone loved me so much for being good at things, bragging around
town about how I was a softball star or won an academic scholarship to college. I was able to make y’all proud and admitting
it all went off the rails meant forcing you to admit you didn’t have much to brag about to begin with. I didn’t want to let
you down like that, or embarrass you either.”
Tina cocks her head and shoots me a sassy look. “Sorry to burst your bubble, honey, but we mostly did that for your benefit—talk
you up and everything. See, I brag about all of y’all regardless of whether it’s warranted or not because I love ya and want you to feel good.”
Cece smiles. “Remember when we talked up June at the talent show in high school, Tina?”
Tina nods. “She was really quite a terrible singer, but she loved it, and so we loved her for it. Anyway, there wasn’t a person
I saw around town that I didn’t tell, ‘You just wait for my sister to win first prize.’”
“She wouldn’t have ever in her wildest dreams won,” Cece says.
“Not without an act of God,” Tina says.
Dad shakes his head, his face folded into an earnest smile. “Wish I was here for that one, but I can attest that her singing
skills were not touched by the hand of God in the time I’ve known her.”
I let out a puff. “So y’all weren’t proud of me to start with?”
Tina and Cece shake their heads fiercely.
“’Course we were!” Tina gasps. “It’s just, we were proud of you because you’re ours, you’re you, not because of any one accomplishment or the other.”
Cece shrugs. “We were excited about anything you were excited about. Didn’t need to be one thing or the other for us.”
I let out an exasperated groan all for myself and my jumping to conclusions. “So no one’s embarrassed by me?”
Cece and Tina scoff, looking at each other as they swap looks.
Dad comes to my side and wraps me in a hug. “I’m so sorry you felt that way. You don’t need to be bigger, better, not anything
but you.”
I pull back. “But that hasn’t really ever been the deal.” The room falls silent. “Mama gave me this name, against tradition,
and with it all this pressure to go beyond this place. This shop but also this town. I felt like beyond the family. When all
I really wanted was to stay, to be part of the group. And these past weeks here, I’ve been pretending to work, but I left
the job to stay. I could go back, but”—I look around slowly—“even if Junie wasn’t sick and I didn’t want to be at her side
in every step, I’m not sure it’s possible for me.”
Tina leaps up and takes a turn to hug me. “I can’t believe you struggled all along. You didn’t let us help you. You know we
would’ve. We’d want to. Always want to.” I let the warmth of her arms around me slow my racing heart, calm my racing mind.
When Tina finally releases me, Junie is looking at me, happy tears in her eyes.
“All I’ve ever wanted, all I’ve ever wished for, every birthday candle wish, every time I saw 11:11 on a clock, every stray
eyelash I blew onto the breeze, it was for my Georgie to come home,” Junie says. “I wished for us to live in the Clementine
together, like we’re doing now, but permanently. I wished you would go to beauty school and come work at the shop. Or just
be a businessperson, but come home and run the shop.
Come home and not run the shop, whatever you needed to be here.
If it takes a June to call the shots, to rename something, to remake tradition and expectation, then so be it: Georgia, there is no place on earth for you like right here, among us, welcome. You are free, like every Louise.”
Happy tears threaten to fill my eyes to match my baby sister’s, and in this moment I wonder if all of us got it wrong. About
Junie too. She wasn’t ever floundering or rogue or disorganized or struggling to follow through. She was as mighty as she is here in her beauty shop declaration, standing up and filling the shoes our mother left behind
that have sat cold far too long.
She’s a leader too.
“Alright,” Cece announces. “Now that we’re spilling the beans, I’ll go next.”