3. The Life I Built
CHAPTER THREE
THE LIFE I BUILT
A niyah took attendance while the kids colored their name plates. She kept her tone light and warm, and her focus tight on the moment. That was how she did everything here. It was why the room always felt like a place kids wanted to return to.
Still, her mind drew a quiet circle around Trevor Porter.
“Lord ,” she thought, “ if life did not have a sense of humor .”
She remembered him in flashes more than scenes.
The sound of a laugh that came from the chest. The way light liked his butterscotch skin.
The dimples girls wrote about in group chats.
That ridiculous swagger he wore like it was sewn into his jeans.
She had rolled her eyes and taken notes.
She had told herself he was not her business.
Then senior year came and went. Years had folded over the memory like sheets.
She glanced toward the door and saw the empty space he had left behind. She exhaled and pressed her palm against the desk. Focus.
“Alright, scientists and authors,” she said, clapping once. “Let us talk about what we need to feel safe and brave in this room. Who has an idea?” Hands flew up. The day had officially begun.
The classroom emptied in waves after dismissal, the last echo of tiny sneakers fading down the hallway.
Aniyah erased the day’s objectives from the whiteboard and stood for a second with the marker poised in the air, letting the quiet settle.
She loved this part. The soft after of a room that had been loud with possibility all day.
On her desk sat a basket of apples, this had been her thing since her first year of teaching three years ago.
Her friends had joked on her first day that she needed to have apples to fit the “Teacher Bae” aesthetic.
What started as a joke was now a daily tradition.
She had handed the apples out at the end of each day with a smile and a reminder to wash them at home.
One rested on a stack of handwriting sheets now, perfect and red, catching the late light like it knew it was being admired.
She capped the marker and reached for her water. The cool hit her tongue and pulled her mind to the current state of her life. After the amazing day she had, she wished there was someone—outside of her friends—that she could call.
Her relationship with her parents was estranged, at best. It began with her initial diagnosis of Hidradenitis Suppurativa at twelve—after she got her period, that was the first chip in the perfect picture they had of her.
A daughter with a disease they couldn’t control, one that left horrible scars behind.
Aniyah spent years as a child hating her body and its imperfections because of how they treated her.
She quickly progressed from Hurley Stage One to Hurley Stage Three between the ages of thirteen and fifteen.
She still remembers the nights she cried herself to sleep because the pain from the boils was so bad and all she had to take was Tylenol.
Looking back, she should’ve left then to be with her Grandpa. Even now, dealing with keloids throughout her body and the occasional flare, she still remembers the insecure teenager who just wanted to hide.
As an adult, she loved her body. She loved her scars. There were over seventy-five of them hidden on her breasts, beneath them, across her lower abdomen, thighs, and ass. She was a walking masterpiece of the pain she endured. That only made her love herself more.
When she decided she wanted to be a teacher instead of a doctor like her dad, he all but lost it.
That was the final straw. Her senior year of high school was rough.
She ended up moving in with her grandpa, Earl Henderson, the light of her life, after a particularly nasty argument with her parents where her father, in his no-nonsense tone, stated that if she did not want to be a doctor, she was cut off.
Imagine being a fresh eighteen and your parents already disowning you, even after overworking yourself to be the perfect daughter and student.
None of that mattered because she desired something different from the life they had planned for her.
It didn’t take Earl any time to come get his granddaughter, curse his son out, and change Aniyah’s life forever.
During the short time she had with her grandpa, she quickly regretted not leaving her parents’ house earlier.
Earl was her gentle giant. He had been a bus driver for forty years and had recently retired when Aniyah moved in with him.
He cheered her on during the rest of her senior year, throughout her college years, and was the loudest person at her graduation.
Her parents didn’t even attend. Whenever she had a flare, Earl was diligent about taking care of her and making sure she had everything she needed.
There was a time she had a flare so bad under her arm that she couldn’t lift it.
Earl would fuss whenever he saw her trying to raise it to complete her usual chores.
He would also speak life into her whenever she felt down because of it.
“Firecracker, this only adds to your beauty. You are perfect. Plus, dealing with this pain now? You’ll be ready to kick life’s ass when you’re outta my house. I already know you won’t let some bullhead boy try to run over you, but if it happens, let him know your Grandpa Earl will whoop his ass.”
Aniyah went on to get her MEd directly after and received that degree a year later.
She landed a job at P.S. Johnson a few months after graduation and it felt like everything had fallen into place.
Moving from her grandpa’s house to a studio on Long Island felt like moving across the country and she felt worried about leaving him alone.
Earl quickly shot down her fears letting her know he had been alone for decades before she was even thought of, and he would be just fine.
Even so, she made sure they kept their Saturday movie and dinner date standing.
She loved her grandpa with everything that was in her and he adored her just as much.
It was Aniyah’s first Christmas break as a teacher, and she had decided she was going to spend a few days over her grandpa's. When she walked up the stoop late in the afternoon, there was a churn in her stomach that let her know something was wrong. She had just talked to him that morning, but that did not put her at ease. She walked in to see her grandpa laid out on the floor and immediately went to help him, but it was too late. Hours later she would find out that he suffered a major heart attack, it was quick, he wouldn’t have suffered.
That did nothing to bring Aniyah any comfort.
The days that followed felt like they all rolled together.
Earl was a very particular man, so he already had his funeral arrangements done.
All Aniyah had to do was show up. That’s when she saw her parents for the first time in six years.
They were haughty and ready to leave but stuck around to settle Earl’s estate.
To everyone’s surprise, a year prior he changed his will and left everything to Aniyah, which pissed her father off.
A small smile graced Aniyah’s face as she thought about Earl continuing to be her savior from beyond.
That had been two years ago, life had since changed drastically.
She sold the brownstone because she couldn’t bear to be there any longer without her grandpa.
She went through and made sure to get the items from him that she wanted to cherish for the rest of her life, records, artwork, his lucky tie, sweatshirts, jewelry and an evergreen bucket hat that he adored.
Everything else, she sold in an estate sale.
Then she did the most reckless thing, bought a condo on Long Beach, a barrier island off of Long Island’s South Shore.
It sat high over the boardwalk, floor to ceiling windows framing the ocean like it had been put there for her alone.
She had bought it with a chunk of the inheritance Grandpa left her, the rest tucked away because he taught her to be steady in a world that was not.
Her place was earth tones personified and brought a sleek comfort that made Aniyah’s body relax every time she stepped through the front door.
Plants crowded her living room now. Monstera with leaves as big as dinner plates.
A rubber plant in the corner. Trailing pothos that had figured out how to flirt with sunlight.
She watered them on Sundays. She read them poems sometimes, not that she would admit it.
She wrote her own too. Lines that came at midnight and refused to leave until she set them down.
Her mind snapped back to the present taking in her empty and quiet classroom.
On its own her mind trailed to Trevor, she was still in shock about seeing him yesterday.
She was sure it would wear off as time went by.
Her next thought was to him being married.
Just by looking at Zara, she knew that Katelyn was her mother.
The thought of that woman took her mind to another place, toward the city summer just past, hot air and rooftops, and a face she had not expected to see again…
It was August in the Lower East Side. A rooftop party where the dress code read carefree and the DJ understood that R&B at sunset could fix most things wrong in the world.
Aniyah did not always say yes to invitations, not since Grandpa passed and the quiet got into her bones, but Mya had dragged her out with promises of tacos and a view.
She had been leaning on the railing, taking in the skyline when she saw her.
Katelyn, in a slip dress the color of champagne, laughing with a tall white man who wore his shirt too tight and his confidence even tighter.
No ring on her finger. The kind of laughter that made other people look and wonder what joke they had missed.