Page 31 of Your Soul to Keep

I’d been broken before. Again and again, I’d gotten back up because Nan didn’t give me a choice.

Who would be there for me, now?

I pressed my palms into the gloss of the floor beneath me, floors Nan and I refinished the summer after my first year of college.

Above my head swung the chandelier I talked her into buying to brighten up the coat check closet.

On the counter across from me rested the hand-carved candy bowls we bought on our Caribbean cruise.

She was here.

In every pot and pan, the artwork on the walls, the twinkling lights and crystallized décor that reflected her favorite holiday all year round, she lived on.

As long as I had this, I had her.

I couldn’t ask for more.

Could I?

8

Witness

WithMother’sDay,oneof the busiest days of the restaurant year, nipping at the heels of Nan’s passing, I barely had time to breathe never mind grieve.

At Ayana’s, we offered romance and intimacy. With vintage lighting and soft decor, glittering crystal and flickering candlelight, crushed velvet, curvy chairs, and music that very nearly reached up under your skirt and teased your panties down your thighs, in short, a sensual snow globe.

We strove to deliver a tantalizing feast for the senses.

Except on Mother’s Day.

On Mother’s Day, like everyone else, we met the demand of our regulars by booking and running double time.

The kitchen clamored and pulsed with sound and energy. Rudolpho bellowed at regular intervals, his orders interspersed with hollered warnings from the others of ‘behind’ as they marched back and forth.

With our regular hostess stepping in to help serve, the responsibility for the front of the restaurant fell to me.

It should have been easy, the easiest of all the jobs but my spirit wilted by the hour. Even Gabe’s texts couldn’t hold off the onslaught of grief.

Every woman who walked in surrounded by her children came with a sword, skewering me even as I smiled and wished her a happy Mother’s Day.

They were part of a club I’d pledged my entire life savings to join and still I’d been denied. Yet, I was the one who felt the need to apologize, as if my very childlessness was an act of judgement against them.

The more children they had, the harder I had to grovel.

If the sight of the happy mothers skewered me, their words laid me out on the altar and flayed the skin from my flesh, leaving every last one of my nerves raw and defenseless.

I lost count of the number of women who asked if I had children.

A simple ‘no’ did not suffice.

Their easy, smiling, dismissal of my ‘no’ was the instrument that cracked open my chest as they encouraged, “Go ahead and jump in! You won’t regret it!”

As if I had a choice.

Their furrowed brows and curious eyes at my ‘no’ were the wedge set against my heart as they prodded, ‘‘Don’t you want children?”

With every cell of my being.

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