Chapter 23 #3
Sometimes it still feels like he never left our lives, and today is one of those days.
He stole all of Arnez’s tears this week and left her with a hot anger that bubbled inside her.
It hangs onto her words as they fly out of her mouth.
She didn’t even cry this past Sunday at Lucky’s—just cursed me out every time I threw a punch that didn’t land as hard as she thought it should’ve.
I pull a folding chair from under the TV, drag it next to her, and sit down. A loud silence settles between us while Faye fills in the boxes for November even though we’re still in October.
“You still clean Ms. Farris’ place, Faye?” Arnez asks, leaning forward and smoothing a wrinkle out of the blanket wrapped around Senior.
“I do.”
“Oh. I pass by it all the time on my way to the parking garage on Frost. I never see your car there anymore.”
“My niece is here, and she’s been helping me out again. I’ve been sending her over there and to a few other houses while I take care of some odds and ends for Ken.”
“Hm…yeah. Lovie, right? She’s the one Daddy said you took in after her mama died.” Arnez turns and looks at me. “I heard she’s getting married.”
She lets her words hang in the air until Faye lets out a disinterested hum that makes my throat dry.
“When’s the wedding?” Arnez asks, reaching down into her purse and digging out a piece of gum.
“I don’t know, Nez,” Faye replies, scribbling on the calendar. “I don’t think they’ve decided on a date yet.”
“Oh. I saw her on some NFL WAGs page on TikTok talking about how stressful it was deciding on the perfect reception dress—a custom Dolce & Gabbana or an Ala?a mini dress.” She keeps staring at me while unwrapping the gum and popping it into her mouth.
“I ain’t know people had reception dresses, but I’ve also never been to a wedding outside the courthouse. ”
“Yeah…she likes clothes.” Faye shrugs. “She used to turn all the bedsheets into halter tops with matching skirts. She can turn just about anything into an outfit. She gets it from her mama because I have never had a fashionable bone in my body. Old Navy works just fine for me.”
I bite into my bottom lip to control the smile that fights its way onto my lips at the thought of a baby Slim designing clothes, even though Faye’s skirting around the strange fact that she had been home for weeks with an empty ring finger and even emptier eyes but none of that is Arnez’s business, anyways.
“You know when the date is, Pup?” Arnez asks.
“Huh?”
She juts her chin out with a goofy expression. “‘Huh?’ I asked if you knew when their wedding date was.”
“Why the fuck would I know that?”
“That’s your friend, ain’t it?”
Faye’s fingers relax, and the word she’s writing on the calendar turns into a messy jumble of letters. She turns back around with her eyebrows wrinkled.
“Did you know they were friends, Faye? He brought her here to meet Daddy the other week.”
Faye stares at me.
I wanna look away, but I can’t. Instead, I bite down harder on my lip, and the smile that tried to fight its way out sinks into a pitiful frown.
“You…you brought Lovie here, Junior?” Faye stutters out, pointing at the floor.
I haven’t heard that name come out of her mouth since she explained to me that Briana Russell from the fourth grade wouldn’t be the only girl in my life. It was the first time anybody ever called me that. She said it in a soft tone like somebody teaching a puppy its name for the first time.
A tiny click comes from the back of my throat while we stare at each other with Arnez smacking on her gum and looking between us.
I shake my head until Arnez blurts, “I mean, I just assumed y’all were friends because you ain’t never introduced nobody to me or Daddy, but you randomly introduced Faye’s niece to him. That’s such an odd thing for you to do.”
Faye’s brown face turns pale, but Arnez doesn’t even react.
One time Faye told me she used to pray that her and Arnez would get closer—not like mother and daughter, but close enough that Arnez would see how much she cared about her. She always said Arnez had a lot of hurt bottled inside of her because of how her mama left her. She called it “mother hunger.”
“That’s such an odd thing for him to do, right, Faye?” Arnez purses her lips. “Why would he bring your niece here to meet our daddy?”
She slaps her thigh and looks back at me.
“Since you and Lovie are so close, Pup, has she told you why Faye keeps making her clean Ms. Farris’ place by herself every week?
I see her there sweeping the porch when I pass by on my way to class.
I mean, realistically, how many errands do you have to run to plan Kenny’s rinky-dink family fun day, Faye?
Lovie and Kenny never notice that you’re never where you’re supposed to be?
Or are you still as crafty as you were when you were with Daddy?
I remember I heard you lie to Lovie’s mama on the phone one time.
You told her you left Daddy and was dating some dude from Clinton Park who worked at the Port because she thought we were low class—whole time you were still laid up with Daddy and she was over in Pearland getting her head knocked between the washer and dryer.
I remember hearing Daddy tell Smit what happened to her—”
“Get out,” I rasp.
Faye lets out a tiny choke, and Arnez crumples the gum wrapper in her hand.
“Why should I have to leave? This is my time with Daddy. I’m the only one around here who ain’t telling lies and keeping secrets, and I’m getting punished? I’m the only one being real about what’s going on.”
She looks as hopeless as she did the day she told me she tripped and fell at Jamari’s apartment when I asked about a bruise on her arm, and her tears are back. They shoot down her cheeks while her knees fall into each other.
She sucks in a gasp. “You’re fucking her niece and she still thinks she’s Daddy’s. She’s tryna save our family and…and stick her nose in our business. This is none of her business.”
“Get out, Arnez.”
“Jamari was my man—mine. And you’re my brother. We ain’t hers—”
“Get the fuck out.”
She shoots up from the bed, snatching her purse off the floor. “Fuck you, Pup.”
Senior doesn’t even let out a sigh as her feet pound against the floor and she charges toward the door. She yanks it shut on her way out, and the dream catcher she bought him slams against it with a loud clank.
“Everything all right back there?” Beatrice yells.
“Yeah!” I answer. “We straight.”
Me and Faye stare at each other like two strangers meeting for the first time.
She pushes the cap back onto the Sharpie she’s holding, and the quiet click echoes throughout the room. She folds her arms, leaning against the console table and letting her eyes brush the floor in front of my feet.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I know it’s Slim, and I don’t know how to tell Faye that Slim was the first thing on my mind when I woke up this morning—not what I did, not Arnez, not Melo, not Senior—just her niece.
“I thought it was Terrica that wanted you,” she mutters. “I thought it was the same as it was back in the day when Lovie would plot with Terrica because Terrica called herself liking one of the guys from the gym.”
“I ain’t…we ain’t sleep together,” I stutter, leaning forward.
She rubs the back of her neck, and her eyes trace the scratches across my face from Slim’s nails.
Rasheeda had looked at them the same way when I met her on 288 to fix her flat tire yesterday.
She tilted her head then folded her lips under her teeth as the cars on the freeway sped by, and I stuttered while telling her I couldn’t follow her home to fuck her and listen to whatever problems she had with her husband this week.
“I…I told her we shouldn’t be hanging out,” I mumble.
“You know, I saw the look on her face on your birthday and I knew something felt different.” She pulls her arms tighter against her chest. “She was asking a lot of questions she’s never asked before, but she’s been acting strange since she came back—stranger than normal.
I mean she’s always been a strange kid, but I don’t mean that in a nasty way. She’s just been through a lot.”
She mutters the last part to herself as if she’s trying to keep all the shameful parts of Slim’s life from me, but I probably know more than she does.
She sighs. “I just thought—”
“That she wouldn’t be interested in me even if we did cross paths.
Because you raised her like her mama wanted her raised—away from here and away from people like us.
You sent her off to private school, college, then let her go off to New York.
You kept her as far away from the Bottoms as you could. ”
Her eyes touch mine for a second, then dart back toward the floor.
“But you been distracted lately.” I glance at Senior while a hot pang stings my throat.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she utters.
“Come on, Faye. Ever since you popped back up at the house, you been easing back into your old self. You telling Kenny that you cleaning my house, but you come here instead. You telling Lovie you running errands for Kenny, but you here feeding Senior and keeping up with his appointments. I ain’t judging you because I do my best to not get in you and Senior’s business, but…
” I huff. “Your life is different now. You got other shit to tend to.”
“I’m just trying to help. That’s all.”
“You said you would help with my problem even though nobody asked you to—not with this.” I point behind her toward the calendar.
“Look, I told your daddy I’d never go far, and I meant it for this very reason.” She glances at the bedpan on the floor beside his bed. “He can’t even get up and use the damn bathroom anymore.”
“That’s why B is here. She’s here with him twenty-four seven.”
“But Beatrice ain’t share a life with him. I did.”
I rub the back of my head and sigh. “Faye…c’mon, man.”