“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Just thinking about something Rita said earlier.”
He studied me for a second with that half smile that did things to my blood pressure. Then he winked. Just once, casual, barely anything, and walked out the door.
The wink went through me like electricity and I hated myself for it.
“Grandma,” I said the second the door closed. “You are going to get me-tooed.”
“Been there, done that, baby.”
“You are OUT OF CONTROL.”
“I’m eighty-five years old. What are they gonna do, arrest me? I’m already in a state I don’t live in babysitting a fugitive. What’s one more charge?” She settled back into her chair looking pleased with herself. “Besides, that man has a wonderful behind. Don’t act like you haven’t noticed.”
“I’m not having this conversation with my grandmother.”
“You’re right. You should be having it with HIM.”
I shook my head and tried to wipe the grin off my face and couldn’t. Rita was ridiculous and she knew it and she didn’t care and somehow that energy was exactly what I needed right now. Laughter over longing. Joy over the mess. Even if the mess was still right there waiting for me.
I let the laughter settle. Let the apartment go quiet. Sarai was still sleeping. Rita had closed her eyes in the chair. And the lightness faded because I knew what was coming next.
The last time Kayla and I talked it went better than I had any right to expect. She asked me surface questions, safe ones, testing the water before she waded in. How old was I? Where did I live? What was my favorite color? Twelve-year-old questions from a twelve-year-old girl who was trying to figure out how to talk to a stranger who shared her DNA. I answered every single one and didn’t push for more because she was setting the pace and I owed her that.
But at the end of the call she said something that stayed with me long after we hung up. “Next time I want to see you. Like FaceTime. I want to see your face when we talk.”
Next time was tonight. We’d agreed on eight o’clock. It was 7:56.
I picked up my phone and stared at it and felt my heartbeat in my throat. She was about to see her birth mother for the first time and I was sitting on a couch in an ankle monitor with postpartum bags under my eyes. I looked nothing like the version of myself I’d imagined for this moment. I was supposed to be put together. I was supposed to be someone worth finding.
I opened FaceTime and pressed her name and waited.
One ring. Two.
The screen connected, Kayla’s face appeared, and the air left my body. She was sitting on her bed with her braids pulled back and a volleyball hoodie on and the door closed behind her andshe was looking right at me with eyes that I recognized because they were mine.
“Hi,” she said softly.
“How are you?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she replied as I studied her. I saw where her father and I converged. We had the same eyes and nose but she had his mouth. Instantly, I regretted that he was her father.
I know that men groom young girls, but somehow I felt like I was the stupid one for falling for my teacher. Yet it resulted in this gorgeous young girl.
For the rest of the evening, we talked a little bit about everything. I mostly tried to keep the focus on her. I wondered about her goals and hobbies. What life was like. Her parents were doing an amazing job. Better than my 16-year-old self could have done.
I’d spend the rest of my life making it up to her… and Sarai.
36
Rodrigo
My mother’s screams could be heard from every room in the compound.
She was in the upstairs bedroom clutching Manny’s high school graduation photo against her chest, rocking back and forth on the edge of the bed with a rosary wrapped around her wrist so tight the beads were leaving marks in her skin. The saints on the dresser watched her fall apart. They were supposed to offer comfort but my mother was inconsolable.
“Mi bebé,” she kept saying between sobs that came from somewhere deeper than her chest. From her gut. From the place where she’d carried him for nine months and raised him for twenty-one years and fed him and yelled at him and prayed over him and sent him to Georgetown so he could be something better than us. “Mi bebé, mi bebé, mi bebé.”
