But her hand is at her throat.
Tears sting my eyes, but I won’t let them fall. Lo and I won the lottery with MiMi, but our mothers are a pair of snake eyes.
“You ‘bout ready, Sil?” Aunt May asks from the kitchen doorway. She meets my eyes with difficulty. “Great service, Iris. You did MiMi proud.”
“Your daughter planned most of it,” I reply, my voice a quiet accusation with a million how could yous puckering beneath the surface.
She stiffens, tilting her chin, a picture of defiance and grace. She and my mother are almost mirror images of one another separated by just a couple of years. They’ve always been close, covered for one another, chosen one another even over their own children.
“Where is Lo?” she asks. “I … we didn’t get to talk.”
“Is that a new development?” I ask, sarcasm thick in the air and in my voice. “I seem to remember her not speaking to you for the last decade.”
Her full lips tighten, the delicately chiseled jaw clenching. She tosses her head, the cloud of dark hair settling around her shoulders.
“Tell her I wanted to try,” she says.
“I will tell her no such thing, because if you really wanted to try, you know she’s down at the river and you’d walk down there until she listened and forgave you.” I release a cynical laugh. “But you don’t want to do that, do you?” I lean back against the counter, my arms folded across my chest. “Or at some point since that night you chose him over her, you would have actually tried.”
“What has gotten into you, Iris?” my mother demands, indignantly. “You never used to be so … You weren’t like this before.”
“Right,” I say with cold calm. “I never was, thanks to the two of you. Thank God Lo and I have MiMi’s blood to make up for your failings.”
“Let’s go, Priscilla,” Aunt May snaps. “We don’t have to stay here for this kind of treatment.”
“Now that I understand,” I deadpan. “Not accepting abuse or taking anybody’s shit. Again, lessons I didn’t learn from you.”
“When you are ready to be reasonable,” my mother spits with rare gracelessness, “call me.”
“If you can do me one favor, Mama,” I say to their slim, outraged backs as they head for the door. “The next time Caleb calls, don’t tell him that I’m here.”
She looks over her shoulder, and for once she can’t dissemble the truth in her eyes. Lucky guess.
“If not for me,” I s
ay softly, “then for the sake of your granddaughter, don’t tell him anything.”
Without another word, she nods, and the screen door slams shut behind them.
I slump against the sink, relief and anxiety warring inside me. If all goes according to plan, I have nothing to worry about. If I’ve calculated properly, and I think I have, Caleb cares too much about his father’s opinion, his sponsors’ approval, and his precious NBA career to jeopardize it all chasing me.
But what if I’m wrong? What if one day, the sick obsession that drove him to hatch elaborate schemes and engage in manipulation to keep me is stronger than his desire for all those things?
I chuck that into the pile of shit I can’t control. There’s a much larger pile of things I can control, starting with what I want to do next. There’s a part of me that wants to remain here, just Sarai and me, hiding from the world, safe from danger. But I know it can’t be forever. Sarai is too bright not to be in preschool soon. Too curious to only have this small patch of the world to explore. Too social not to have friends.
I follow the path to the river, that swathe of shade and grass overseen by a cypress canvas. Every step brings my grief, carefully stowed away today in a church full of strangers, closer to the surface. Today, the slight breeze whispering through the Spanish moss overseeing the river is a swaying lament for MiMi.
Lo and Sarai sit several feet from the riverbank, and Sarai holds a Louisiana iris. My namesake.
It makes me smile and remember the day with August in the gym when he asked about my name. An ache, separate from my grief, spreads across me. I miss him. I want him, but I have no idea what to do about it.
“They’re gone?” Lo asks, not turning, facing the river.
She’s so like MiMi. Now that I’ve spent time with our great-grandmother, her influence on Lo is clear. I envy that.
“Yeah.” I pull up beside her on the bank. “They’re gone. Your mother—”
“Don’t.” Lo’s voice is iced coffee. Dark. Cold with a bitter edge. “I buried my mother today.”