“It may not make sense to your self-preservation-obsessed Scorpio ass, but believe it. And there’s something to be said for partners who can have conflict and work through it. As long as there’s repair and communication, it’s no bad thing.”
“Well, it’s notmylove language,” I say. “I mean, even if I was interested in a romantic relationship with someone again, I wouldn’t want there to be conflict in it.”
“You can’t avoid conflict in life, Loncey,” my mom says after a beat that feels heavy and charged. “No matter what you do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I cock an eyebrow.
Mom studies me, and that’s exactly what she’s doing, her eyes drilling into me. There aren’t that many people who know me as well as my mom does and I don’t like it.
“Fish tacos okay?” I ask before turning on my heel and walking into the kitchen. I point a finger up the stairs as I call out to my mother, “And they get ten more minutes of this racket and then I’m going upstairs to tell them to turn it down and I swear to God, if I see either of them with their masks off…”
*****
Cooking dinner achieves what I hope it will in terms of keeping a certain Irish woman out of my mind. It also stops me from wondering what my mom was trying to say with all the words she didn’t speak. It’s not like her to not share what she’s feeling but more and more recently I’ve felt those silent looks dig their way inside me, as if she’s trying to excavate a part of me that I don’t know exists.
But I’m an open book too. I don’t hide my feelings or my thoughts. I’m always honest about the work I do. I chronically overshare on my social channels in the hope that my experience as a Black, pansexual, aromantic and polyamorous non-binary sex worker may help someone. I meditate. I read. I journal and I go to therapy when I feel the need. I show my love freely and enthusiastically.
Which is what I plan on doing when I climb the stairs to invite my sister’s friend to stay for dinner. Jessica struggles to eat the extra calories she needs at mealtimes, or at any time of day, and often having something, or someone, to distract her can help her put more food away than usual.
I didn’t tell them to turn their music down after ten minutes. I was too busy chopping and marinating and making tortillas from scratch. But in the end, the volume was lowered aroundtwenty minutes ago, so I didn’t have to endure much more of the pulsing bassline bruising my eardrums through the ceiling.
I knock on the door and I hear the giggling that was happening behind Jessica’s bedroom wall come to a sudden halt. A few moments later, the door opens and my sister is standing in front of me, and she is not wearing a mask.
“Jessica!” I exclaim.
“What?” She challenges me as she leans against the door, and it is a challenge, her dark eyes lighting up and the corners of her mouth twitching.
“Your mask?” I say, my hands rolling into fists by my side.
“I’m wearing mine!” A voice calls out from inside the room. I can see Taylor’s feet wriggling at the end of Jessica’s bed.
“It was getting stuffy in here.” Jessica shrugs. And then she coughs. She tries to swallow it down, push it away, but we all know that’s useless. It bubbles up again, rattling her lungs and making her bend with its force.
Yeah, fuck this.
I push the door open and grip my sister’s arm, effectively holding her up as she continues to cough. As I fully expect, it gets worse before it improves.
“It’s okay, Jess,” I say, stroking my thumb against her skin and the hem of her T-shirt. I notice then that she’s wearing make-up. A lot of make-up. So that’s what they were doing.
Stuff like this kills me. My twenty-six-year-old sister still doing makeovers with her childhood best friend. She shouldn’t be spending her time like that. She should be out working, chasing her dreams, whatever they are. Not stuck inside playing around with eyeshadows and body glitter like a teenager.
Jessica continues to cough and she gasps for each breath in between.
“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” I ask, really questioning whether she needs to cough up some of the mucus that isclogging her lungs and airways. Sometimes she doesn’t like to do that in front of other people.
She shakes her head.
“Shit,” Taylor says behind us, and I look up to see her sitting on the edge of the bed her eyes wide. “I haven’t seen her this bad for a long time,” she says to me when my gaze find hers.
“She’s still recovering from an infection,” I say as if to explain it, but really, that’s not the whole truth. Sometimes Jessica just coughs and coughs and coughs and needs long, desperate minutes to find her breath again.
And I hate it. I hate not being able to stop my sister from coughing. I hate not being able to make her breathe without wheezing, which is what she’s doing now the coughing is slowing. I hate that this happens to my sister daily, and the fact Taylor hasn’t seen it for a while is simply because she doesn’t see Jessica every day. Taylor has her own life. She works full-time and is studying to get her real estate license.
For all the loyalty she has shown my sister, Taylor still has a full life of her own, one that keeps her busy and active in a way I know my sister can only dream of.
And it’s not fair. It’s so unfair the injustice of it all hits me like an uppercut to my diaphragm, winding me and making me feel uncomfortably alert.
“You’ve got this, Jessica.” My hand moves to start stroking her back. Her breathing is still labored, each wheeze thick with effort and mucus, but she’s stopped coughing. She nods toward one of her spit bags near her bed and I lead her to them. Taylor and I both look away as she hacks up into the open paper bag.
