I nod, not denying it.
“I wish I’d known MiMi longer,” I venture, keeping one eye on Sarai and one eye on the river. It’s not inconceivable that a gator could crawl up on the riverbank or that a snake could slither out of the thick greenery. The bayou is a calculated risk, benefits and dangers constantly on a scale.
“You knew her when you needed to,” Lo says, her voice showing no emotion but her face a ravaged canvas, painted with tears. “So did I.”
I slip my hand into hers, and silently, we squeeze. United again. I can’t imagine I let Caleb come between us. That’s a lie. I let my shame, my embarrassment, and maybe even my jealousy come between us.
“I’m sorry, Lo,” I confess. “I think I was jealous of you.”
“What?” Lo turns startled eyes to me. “When? How could you ever be jealous of me?”
I shrug, my shoulders weighted with self-consciousness and late summer heat. “When you confronted me about letting Caleb control me, I was frustrated. Maybe I regretted my choices.” I pause, assembling my words into the right order. “I resented my life, how small it had become. You were running off to New York to work for a famous fashion designer in an atelier, whatever the hell that is. Meanwhile, I was mashing baby food and wearing yoga pants every day.”
Lo’s husky laugh charms the sun out from behind a cloud, and the last flare of sunlight illuminates the regal bones of her face.
“You? Jealous of me?” She shakes her head, the long braids caressing the curve of her neck. “That’s ironic since I’ve been jealous of you most of my life.”
“What?” I snap my head around to study her fully but don’t release her hand. “No way.”
“Oh, yes way.” She throws me a teasing look, even through damp eyelashes. “Don’t worry. I have since realized the fullness of my own fabulousness.”
I laugh, mouth closed, the humor coming as short nasal puffs of funny air.
“Growing up, I loved you, but I wanted so much that you had,” she says. “I hate what happened to me, but it was good I moved away from you and our mothers.”
I’m curious but also hurt to hear this.
“I can think of a dozen reasons why living here was better than living with them, but why did you need to get away from me?”
“You’ll think it’s silly in that way that girls who never have to think about these things think it’s silly,” she says, her smile self-deprecating, her eyes knowing.
“Tell me anyway.”
“I was dark.” She lifts her braids. “My hair was coarse. I was the odd egg in our little nest, and everyone knew it.”
“What the hell do you mean?” I demand.
“You don’t think about it, but our mothers look exactly alike. Your father was white.” With her free hand, she tosses a few blades of grass into the river. “They were light and you were even lighter, but my dad was black, and I look different.”
It reminds me of August telling me how displaced he felt sometimes. The irony of me feeling like I didn’t belong because I was “too white” and Lo being jealous because she was “too dark” strikes me as funny, and I release a giggle.
“That’s funny to you?” Lo asks, one side of her full mouth tilted.
“It’s just … I never felt like I fit in our neighborhood because I looked so different, and the girls always said I was stuck up and thought I was better than them. I really just wanted to fit. I just wanted to look like everyone else.”
“And I just wanted to look like you.” Lo twists her mouth to the side. “When I came here, MiMi sniffed that shit out right away.”
A movement in my peripheral vision catches my eye. “No, Sarai.”
I pull my hand free of Lo’s and walk to the water’s edge, retrieving my little adventurer. I plop down on the grass, careless of the black dress I wore to the funeral, and sit my daughter between my legs. Lo settles in a puddle of black linen beside me, stretching her legs out on the grass.
“MiMi knew that even beyond the hurt of what Mama had done, choosing that motherfucker over me,” Lo says with dispassion, “that there was another hurt under it all. Mama choosing him only reinforced that I wasn’t good enough. Maybe she didn’t love me as much as she would have if I’d been … different.”
Memories of Aunt May complaining about Lo’s hair come to mind. She’d say she didn’t know what to do “with hair like this.” When Lo learned to press her own hair, Aunt May and my mother would complain about the “smell of burning hair” in the house. A hundred little thoughts come to me like pinpricks, piercing my ignorant bliss.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I hope I never made you feel that way, Lo.”
“No, not you.” She reaches for my hand again and smiles. “You were my hopscotch, Bo. I knew you didn’t feel that way.”