Chapter 4
Miriam
Three years later
Moving to the tundra in the dead of winter was a choice.
I have no one to blame but myself for the three extra hours it took to navigate winding roads coated in ice with the fumes of my frustration sputtering out of the exhaust. Marcela warned me not to make the six-hour expedition—that’s without the scenic slowdowns and my curses wrapped in prayer—by myself.
We drove my car up after New Year’s, and in the spirit of I got it, I flew back solo, rented a moving truck, and was on my way.
Tall pines bordering a long stretch of two-lane roads finally gave way to the Rust Belt city that’s home for the foreseeable future. It’s much colder than the six months I spent in Panama after graduation.
The decision to trade Baltimore for Buffalo wasn’t rooted in logic or theory. I did some preliminary research, but the truth is, I wanted a change after earning my PhD.
I’m starting a new chapter, and it comes with wings and a mafia of football fanatics who hurl themselves into tables in subzero temps.
Marcela and her constituents can take turns rolling the dice on whether or not their next stunt will land them in the ER with internal bleeding and unnecessary co-pays.
The tailgate leader in question sifts through my collection of dish towels.
She’s in a deep squat, like her knees won’t crackle from the wear and tear of tossing all that booty we inherited in the club.
Her slim-thick frame, E-cup breasts, and five-eleven height are compliments of our mother, who’s living her best life in Panama City.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” She lifts a “When in doubt, pull it out” towel. It was a gag gift from a white elephant party years ago. There’s an oven in the center, not a penis.
I shrug. “It adds personality to the room.”
“For all the entertaining you do, right? Nobody but you and Jesus will see this.”
“If I recall, I’m not the one who keeps the lights in front of her house off so people won’t know she’s home.” You’d think she was dodging a process server the way she video called me in the dark. “At least I can sit in my living room with the blinds open.”
“It was one time!” I dodge a swat to my overalls.
Marcela broke Buffalo’s longstanding legacy of men in power as the first female city councilmember. She still goes toe-to-toe with fragile egos, but she’s smashing the patriarchy one pair of stilettos at a time.
If she’s anything like how she was growing up, her colleagues will learn not to question her authority. She got it from our parents before they split when I was eight. Now she bosses her colleagues around in a city with potholes deep enough to touch the earth’s crust.
Cussing out the last Jefferson District councilmember—in English and Spanish—is how she won her seat.
Her complaints about city budget allocations and a lack of community investments on the East Side fueled a growing resistance to the status quo.
Her seventeen years of living here after graduating from Buffalo College had her fed up, and she left the corporate world for public service.
It’s a third of her old pay and longer hours, but she loves it.
Fresh Marley twists sway across her backless sweater as she disappears into the kitchen. The space is a small swatch of natural oak cabinets and banana-colored walls, but it’s mine.
“Have you considered my offer?”
“For you to boss me around more than you already do between nine and five? No thanks,” I say.
A cork pops. “Don’t forget the occasional evening and weekend for community events,” she adds. “It’s something to hold you over until you decide what to do.”
Jobless with a PhD. That’s me.
Walking across the stage for the last time changed something in me. I was done, yet all I thought about was turning thirty-four and not fully knowing the real me.
School was my safe space for so long, it became my shield. But you can’t live life out of a textbook. It will still pass you by, with or without a curriculum and an advisor.
My graduation dinner was a feast of shock and tension. I waited until after my mother flew up from Panama for my commencement ceremony to tell my family that the youngest Beckford daughter turned down three job offers because she was tired. You could have cut the fruitcake with my father’s glare.
Every offer was in Northern Virginia and dangled a meaty six-figure salary. On paper, they were perfect. In my gut, they didn’t feel right.
I wanted a fresh start, to find the part of myself I put on hold.
“You picked a cute spot.” Marcela’s eyes glide over worn hardwood floors and blank white walls.
The two-bedroom, two-bathroom house I’m renting is a canvas of charming quirks. There’s wainscoting, reclaimed doors, and a backyard space buried beneath accumulated snow. I lived in an apartment on campus that was more of a rest stop, a place to wash and eat. This will be home.
“It is.” I smile and sip red wine from one of the glasses she brought from her house. Mine are carefully wrapped in one of the many boxes lining the living room I plan to unpack.
Marcela spins in a circle to manifest a couch that isn’t here and lands on a blanket of newspapers. She stretches out her legs in distressed jeans. “No regrets?”
“None,” I say.
She shakes her head. “You actually moved. When you told us you wanted a change, I expected a haircut”—she gestures to my shoulder-length bob of natural curls—“not uprooting your life to come up here. And with no job? Our father must still be staring at the wall.”
It’s not funny, but it is. I could’ve reenacted Angela’s STD confession from Why Did I Get Married? without him batting an eye. So long as his baby girl has financial stability and a roof over her head, Benjamin Beckford won’t worry.
I have one of the two, and the savings account I fed from a lack of a social life should last me nine months.
“Change was overdue,” I confess into my wineglass. Everyone else evolved. Why can’t I?
The occasional texts from the few friendships I managed to sustain are now family holiday cards with matching outfits, Kierra included.
She met a viscount during an international rugby trip and traded DC life for French luxury.
Two kids and a dog later, her new net worth could solve famine in smaller countries.
I have no Bridgerton fantasies to live out, but I want more than my degrees.
“Are you sure a certain ‘friend’ didn’t inspire your relocation?” I roll my eyes at Marcela’s Cheshire Cat grin and push down the memory of chicken wings and kissing that’s creeping out of its lockbox.
No one knows about my failed attempt at a one-night stand, the one that ended with Antonio’s head propped in my lap inside an ER. He did have a broken nose from my attempted rescue mission to free my wig from his watch.
We were both a mess. I looked like I got into a bar fight with my “Set It Off braids,” as he called them.
My skintight dress and his high-tops, three sizes too big, did me no favors in avoiding stares.
Neither did the burly man I was cradling, who had a tampon up his nose and the fragrance of dried semen coating his dress pants.
I vowed to never see or speak to him again out of pure embarrassment. That didn’t stop him from asking around for my number after we parted ways and texting me until I responded.
The Been to any good bars lately? messages turned into weekly check-ins.
Over time, we just clicked. We became friends, communicating through frequent messages and video calls I accepted when he was too excited to text.
I still kept my distance from DC when I lived in Maryland, but it was nice to have someone to talk to who wasn’t a PhD candidate.
I was Antonio’s second call when he got the news that a developing rugby team in Buffalo was interested in him playing professionally. The subsequent offer came out of the blue, but I had my noisemaker ready once the deal with the Buffalo Steel became official.
He was my first call when I had a moment to myself after obtaining my PhD. Antonio never asked to come to the ceremony, and I never offered. That didn’t stop bouquets of flowers from finding their way to my doorstep.
Aside from my sister, he’s the only person I speak to on the phone weekly. Our friendship was the surprise I never saw coming.
“We’re just friends,” I tell my nosy sister. Since our New Year’s Eve in the emergency room, Antonio and I never kissed or made attempts to hump body parts again.
Our platonic relationship aside, I’m no fool.
Antonio is repent and put a little extra into the offering plate fine, but he’s also a player.
I’m neither arrogant nor ignorant enough to think a one-night stand would’ve meant more to him.
Erasing his scent, those eyes, his lips, and that body took more time than I’d care to admit, but I did it.
I’m not the kind of woman to trip his radar anyway. Not that I want to be.
“Where is Muscles? I’m not carrying another box upstairs,” Marcela huffs. She’s never met a form of physical labor she didn’t cuss out.
“Probably at practice. Their season starts in a few weeks. I didn’t want to bother him.”
“Bother him?” She laughs. “That man would’ve driven down to get you and that moving truck, blizzard or not.”
It’s true, which is why I’m taking my time to acclimate myself to these disrespectful temps and to us being in the same city.
Antonio left DC to start his professional rugby career two years ago. We’ve both been in moments of transition at different times. Now that our foundations are settling, I don’t want to make it weird.
He’s a friend and will only be my friend.
Then why are you so nervous to see him?
Hush.
“What’s on your agenda next week?” My subject change flies under Marcela’s BS radar and incites a scowl.
“Too much,” she says. “We’re having an MLK celebration for the kids at the community center on Monday. You should come and help with the engineering station.”
I grab my glass and resume pulling books out of a box. Add “build a bookshelf” to your to-do list. “My calendar is open. A perk of being unemployed,” I say.
We manage to sort through the boxes designated for the living room and kitchen. Marcela leaves, and I end the night with a shower and some light reading on my mattress on my bedroom floor.
No thoughts of Antonio whatsoever.