Chapter 3 #2
AJ’s probably had Blake call Uncle Kenny and ask if he’s heard from me.
That’s probably why Uncle Kenny has that look on his face.
Blake always does AJ’s dirty work. Maybe they called the cops too, but what can the cops do?
I’m grown. I can leave when I want. I can go wherever the wind blows.
I can do whatever I want. I can want something different.
It’s like the mantra I read in one of those pamphlets Yesenia handed me last month on the train.
You deserve different.
“Where’s your suitcase?” Aunt Faye asks.
“I didn’t bring it. I’ve got clothes here.”
“Yeah, clothes you ain’t worn in two years.”
“And I’m sure they still fit just fine.”
“But you’re smaller. Are you losing weight for the wedding—”
“How’s AJ?” Uncle Kenny interrupts, setting his mug down.
He has that look again, like he knows it hurts when I breathe, or that hearing somebody say AJ’s name makes my mouth dry.
“He’s okay,” I reply sharply. “Why?”
“You came by yourself. It’s the first time you visited since y’all left and he didn’t come?
I wanted to see him. I wanted to talk to him about Family Fun Day.
He said he’d come when I texted him about it last month.
And I wanna ask him about that AC unit he said he’d donate to the gym through his charity. ”
“I told you Rich can get one and install it,” Aunt Faye hisses under her breath.
“And I told you I ain’t want him to.”
I don’t know who Rich is, but based on their tense faces and strained voices, I can surmise that he’s the “project.” Those projects always brought out the worst in them.
My eyes volley between them while I clear my throat. “Well, I missed y’all. I don’t think AJ needs to escort me every time I want to visit.”
Aunt Faye stops dragging the dishrag across a plate, and Uncle Kenny takes a long slurp of his tea. The silence lies between us like a thick, wet rug.
Uncle Kenny scratches the back of his bald head like he used to do when Aunt Faye needed to ask me something delicate, because I scare them. I always have.
Aunt Faye says it’s because I’ve always had “some sense,” but what I think she means is that there are some things I can’t forget.
My old therapist called them “traumatic memories.” She said they might fade with age, but eighteen years later, I still remember the tart scent lingering on Mama’s breath while she used to coo at me to “hush” and sometimes I still hear the last few words my daddy, Tony, uttered to her before they left.
“Is AJ okay with you staying a while?” Aunt Faye asks.
I pull my bottom lip into my mouth. “Yeah. He’s…he’s okay with it.”
“Good. Tell him not to worry. We were home for you before he ever was. I’m glad he’s letting us get some time with you before the wedding.”
Uncle Kenny’s lips lift into a satisfied smile. “Yeah, too bad he couldn’t have tagged along for at least a night, though. He could’ve caught a red-eye from Pittsburgh and left here early in the morning to make it back in time for practice.”
I catch the side-eye Aunt Faye gives him before she turns around.
She’s still tiptoeing around me and this relationship I convinced her was solid, but I’ve done stranger things like major in fashion design at a state school, forgo an MFA at FIT for AJ, and I’ve left home so many times without telling them that I’ve lost count.
But I know she won’t keep poking because she always says she’s trying to let me do the one thing Mama didn’t get to do.
“I wish you would’ve told us you were coming. We could’ve at least taken some days off work,” she chirps from over her shoulder.
I wave my hand. “It’s fine.”
“Maybe you can go by Terrica’s tomorrow? I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you. Y’all can go to one of those wedding boutiques and try on some dresses. I know you’re still looking for a reception dress. Vera told me about a place her daughter found her gown at in Montrose—”
“I was actually hoping I could come to work with you tomorrow.”
She turns back around, tossing a tight smile my way while sitting the plate she’d been drying in the dish rack. “I know you ain’t come home to clean houses.”
Actually, there’s nothing I want more than mind-numbing cleaning. I want to steam linen, scrub toilets, and shake out duvets. I need to clean. I need to douse my brain with so much bleach that all of my memories from the past five years disappear—even the good ones.
“I didn’t, but I don’t mind it. I used to do it all the time with you. Besides, sitting in the house while you and Uncle Kenny go to work would be kind of lonely, don’t you think?”
“Well, that’s why I suggested you go to Terrica’s.”
Go to Terrica’s and say what?
I’m sorry we haven’t talked in over a year, now how ’bout some wedding dress shopping?
I scoff. “I said I didn’t mind it. I can see Terrica this weekend.”
Her thin eyebrows wrinkle. “So you’re at least staying until the weekend?”
“Ye…yeah.”
“Well, I guess you can come with me…” she says in that sing-song tone I missed.
“I have a packed day tomorrow, though. Vera needs a deep cleaning this week—walls and baseboards. She’s got a new cat, so she has me coming twice a week now.
Then I got a new client way out in Manvel.
They want me to come out for an initial consult, so I’ll be sitting in traffic for God knows how long.
I’ve been crazy busy between cleaning and prepping for Family Fun Day. ”
“Since when do you take clients in Manvel?” I ask. “What happened to the fifteen-mile radius you put in place after I left for New York?”
“That was back then. Things are different now. We need a few things around the house and that AC unit ain’t gonna buy itself.
” She shrugs, then her eyes light up. “Oh! You can clean Rich’s house while I do the consult, and then I’ll pick you up and we’ll head on over to Vera’s to tackle that together.
Then I have one more clean after that. Sound good? ”
Yes!
I almost jump out of my chair with my fist in the air.
I want to clean until my eyes water from ammonia. I want to nudge away Ms. Vera’s annoying tabby while I empty her litter box. I wan—
“Ehh…” Uncle Kenny groans, pushing back from the table and shuffling over to the kitchen sink with his mug. “I don’t know ‘bout that.”
My stomach sinks.
I feel like I’m back with AJ, rattling off my weekly plans until he knocks the wind out of my sails with his favorite word.
Aunt Faye shuffles to the side as he gets closer and drops a hand on her slender hip. “What you mean you ‘don’t know ‘bout that?’”
“The girl is saying she wanna spend the day with you tomorrow, not have you abandon her at some dude’s house while you run across town. And what if somebody sees her going over there? Imagine what they’ll say about us. It’s bad enough he’s at the gym.”
“Excuse me?” she squeals, making the hair on my neck shoot up. “What did you just say?”
He sucks his teeth. “You know what I meant, Faye.”
“I don’t. Everything you just said was so problematic that I don’t even know where to start. If you don’t want her down at Rich’s because of what you think he is, then man up and say that.”
“That ain’t what I’m saying.”
“It sure sounds like it to me.”
“That’s really not—”
“If you gon’ keep thinking Rich is some bad seed, then you shouldn’t have agreed to work with him.”
“I did not say that.”
“You might as well have.” She points her long fingernail in his face.
“Look, I believe you when you say that Rich is…is…a decent dude.” His husky shoulders lift, and mine tense as they stare at each other.
“He’s a good man who’s in an unfortunate situation. He ain’t like these other boys that come running up on that porch looking for you!”
“Yet he’s in an ‘unfortunate situation’ just like those other boys.” He snorts, looking away.
“Kenny, I’m not doing this with you tonight.”
I can tell by their tense expressions they’ve had this argument about this Rich guy hundreds of times since I’ve been away.
It’s the same argument they’ve always had about the other “projects,” but this time something simmers beneath their jabs and expressions.
It feels like I’m floating through an alternate reality where Aunt Faye is weirdly invested in one of Uncle Kenny’s “projects” in a way she’s never been.
I look between them, waiting for something to happen.
I don’t know what, but I feel the something that’s simmering is boiling over.
Maybe he’ll bury his fist into her face for having the nerve to twist his words around.
Tony always said Mama had a bad habit of doing that, and AJ says I’m so good at it I don’t even realize I’m doing it sometimes.
I shake my head to get rid of the morbid thoughts, but Mama and Tony planted seeds for them to stay and grow.
They linger a lot longer than they used to.
When I was little, I could make them go away by pinching my eyes shut, but that doesn’t work anymore, so I suck in a harsh breath as Aunt Faye’s finger gets closer to Uncle Kenny’s nose.
He balls his fists at his side so I grab the edge of the dining room table. She curls her upper lip so I claw my nails into the wood. Together, they breathe hard until Uncle Kenny’s plump cheeks lift and he reaches out for Aunt Faye.
He wraps his long arms around her middle and nuzzles her neck with his nose until she giggles, swatting him away.
“Get off me, Ken.” She laughs. “Lovebug, tell him you don’t wanna see all this.”
They rock back and forth until she pulls her face from his chest and looks over at me. The frown that forms on her face makes my ugly, morbid thoughts wilt and shrivel into nothing until I’m just left with those traumatic memories of Mama, Tony, and now me and AJ.
“Lovebug…” Aunt Faye whispers, clearing her throat. “Are you alright?”
A nasty throbbing rolls across my nail beds. It’s just as bad as the throbbing in my side. I slowly follow their eyes down to the kitchen table where blood trickles around my nail beds and across my burnt orange nail polish.
Aunt Faye doesn’t gasp in shock, and I appreciate it because she usually loses her shit at any semblance of trouble thanks to Mama. I can only imagine how it’ll be when I tell her the real reason I intruded on her and Uncle Kenny’s lives for a second time.
She gingerly unravels herself from Uncle Kenny’s arms and picks up the rag she’d been drying the dishes with. She stalks over to me and wraps it around my broken, bloody nails.
Now my last manicure is ruined, and I can’t feel enough to mourn it.
Aunt Faye squeezes my fingers while running her other hand along my back without asking the questions I know she really wants to ask.
“She’s alright, Ken. I got her. It’s just another one of those moments we haven’t had in a while,” she mutters.
Uncle Kenny doesn’t move from in front of the sink because he’s too busy staring at my bloody fingers.
“She should clean at Rich’s tomorrow morning while I take care of that Manvel consult.” She pats my back. “Rich is going to the doctor to get that mouth handled so he’ll be gone anyways. She’ll be there alone.”
“He told you that?” he asks, swallowing so hard that his Adam’s apple jumps.
“I heard him checking his voicemail when he came in the other day. The nurse said tomorrow morning at nine. I know what I heard. I’ll make my consult quick so she won’t be there long.
He might even stop to go for a quick walk at the park before he goes home.
He likes to go before the kids get out of school and it gets crazy down there. ”
They keep talking back and forth, and I open my mouth to join in and ask why Aunt Faye knows so much about this man’s life even though I still don’t know who the hell he is or why any of this matters.
All I want to do is clean to get back to some sense of normalcy.
I swear I’m telling them all this until I realize I’m actually not saying anything at all.
“I think she’ll be fine,” Aunt Faye utters, patting my back again and giving my throbbing fingers another squeeze. “Ain’t nobody gon’ bother her over there.”
My eyes shoot up to Uncle Kenny to see what he has to say, but he avoids both of our gazes.
“And look on the bright side, maybe Rich will talk to you more now since he’s getting those wires out his mouth,” she says. “I imagine it’s hard to communicate with your mouth wired shut.”
“I don’t think it even matters anymore. We ain’t got to get along.” He sighs, staring at my fingers again. “Mouths don’t win fights no way—fists do.”