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He’s picked up on Zora’s vibe with women and is worried. He’s not wrong. Some of her happiest consorts were women.
“I thought I lost you,” he said.
Desdemona said no more and turned away from them. “Who’s that, babe?” he asked.
“I don’t know her,” Zora lied to him.
In truth, she doesn’t. Hell, do I even know myself?
Desdemona left the party, ready to leave the celebrity and the fanfare behind. Once in the back of her Lyft Lux Black XL, she looked out the tinted window at the city still vibrant and alive with lights, noise, and movement, but her thoughts were on her disdain for the type of pretense and falsehood in which Zora and her husband dwelled. She’d had enough of that growing up . . .
“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray to God my soul to take,” six-year-old Desdemona said with her eyes pressed closed tight and her hands pressed together beneath her chin as she knelt by her bed. “God bless Daddy, Miss Zena, my teacher Miss Scott, new black Barbie doll, and the braids Miss Zena gave me today, and my momma up there with you in heaven.”
“A-men,” she said in unison with her father and stepmother, Zena, before lovingly stroking the heart-shaped locket she wore around her neck.
“Okay, up in bed,” Zena said, folding back the covers of her twin-size bed in her princess-themed bedroom in shades of pink.
Desdemona did as she was bidden, smiling up at her father and Miss Zena as each bent to press a kiss to her forehead. She missed her mother and talked to her in heaven so much that people thought she had an invisible friend, but things had turned out to be nice at her father and Miss Zena’s. Never enough to make her forget her mother, but enough to make her loss a little easier to take.
“Good night,” she said, before turning on her side and hugging her sweet-smelling pillow close.
Miss Zena turned off the castle-shaped lamp on her nightstand.
They left the room together, leaving her room door slightly ajar, and Desdemona closed her eyes, falling asleep.
Desdemona blinked, pushing the sweet and tender memory aside as the car hit an infamous NYC pothole and jostled her body back and forth a bit on the back seat of the SUV. She was thankful when it pulled to a stop before her building. “Have a good night,” she said to the burly driver before opening the back door.
“Same to you,” he said.
Desdemona tucked her clutch under her arm as she crossed the sidewalk to the double doors of the building. She smiled and nodded at the doorman as he held the door for her. In the elevator she leaned back against the wall, lightly patting her clutch against her thigh.
I wish I didn’t care. But I did. I do.
Once in her apartment, she didn’t bother with many lights, preferring the beauty of the lit nightscape through her windows. She stepped out of her shoes, removed her artsy cape and let it drop to the floor, and pulled the pins from her knot now to let her hair free as she walked across the living room and leaned against the sill to look out at the reflection of the city against the Hudson River.
Crossing her arms over her chest, she lightly stroked her clavicle as her memories of her past reclaimed her attention. Loneliness was something she thought she had gotten used to. The death of her father just five years after her mother had been tough. The treatment of her by her stepmother after his death had made her mourning even worse.
Another death. More change . . .
Ten-year-old Desdemona stood in the doorway of Miss Zena’s bedroom, hating the nervousness she felt about talking to this woman who had become a stranger to her again. Her eyes darted to her father’s side of the bed, and she missed him like crazy. It had been just a month since he died, but everything was different.
She is different.
Desdemona eyed her stepmother sitting on the foot of the bed in her nightgown rubbing lotion on her arms. She stopped suddenly, and her face became tight with annoyance. Desdemona stiffened.
“What?” she snapped, looking straight ahead as if avoiding even laying eyes on her.
At that moment she wished she didn’t have to bother her at all. But she did. She had no one else to rely on. “Could you do my hair?” she asked, her voice soft and hesitant.
She didn’t bother to add that her fuzzy and unkempt braids were drawing too much attention from classmates.
Zena released an agitated breath before rising from the bed to retrieve the hair comb, brush, and hair grease from the adjoining bathroom. “Come on,” she said with barely concealed irritation.
That’s how it always was. The new normal. She would do what was required: cook, clean, wash clothes, and send her to school, but every second of it was laced with her annoyance. Her coldness. It was clear she did what she did out of obligation and not love.
She hates me.
Desdemona walked into the bedroom, her feet bare and her steps padded by the plush carpeting. She sat down on the edge of the bed, already knowing to hold her neck stiff because Miss Zena’s rough movements would cause her head to jerk back and forth. It was why she waited to remind her about her hair for two weeks.
