Page 75 of Exquisite Things
Tobi grunts in frustration. “But ignorance and greed are the problem. Don’t matter how many lifesaving medicines we discover. How much water we clean. Is it too much to ask for a world without ignorance and greed?”
Archie puts his thin arm around Tobi’s powerful young shoulders. “Tobi, what you’re asking for is a world without humans.”
Tobi laughs at that. Looks at the others sheepishly. “Sorry, friends. We should keep moving.”
“Forward we go,” Maud says with a wink to Tobi. She leads them to 103 Railton Road, where Pearl’s shebeen once welcomed us. Pearl’s is where Maud truly found herself. Only in community can we find ourselves and that was hers. It’s gone now. Just one more nondescript forgotten building. The trash bin outside has the numbers 103 written on it in white. If only the tourists and teenagers walking by knew the magic this place once held. But then, each generation makes their own magic, in their own ways.
Tobi turns toward us. Bram quickly pulls me behind a truck. “We should go,” he says. “We know where they’ll end up. We can see Lily off there.”
“Then what?” I ask.
“Then I don’t know,” he says. He pulls me down Shakespeare Road. Takes his veil off. I put my sunglasses in my pocket. Throw my hat in my bag.
Poets Corner, they call it. Of course, it’s where we made a home. In a neighborhood where the streets are named after Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, but where the people were Black and brown and queer and defiant. There’s a poem on Shakespeare Road commemorating the Brixton Uprising.
“You always know, though,” I say. “You always have a plan.”
He leads me into Brockwell Park. Green everywhere. A glorious spring. Seasons, like us, never get old. They arrive every three months fresh and new.
“I don’t have a plan anymore. I want to be with you. I know that. But I’m done chasing you. Done trying to convince you that we’re enough.”
“But we’re not enough. We would have been enough if only we could age. I could have loved you until the day I died.”
“I would have died first,” he says. “I would have made sure of it. I could never handle seeing you pass.”
I shake my head. He’s ever the morbid romantic. “This way is doomed though. Never aging. We’d get bored with each other because we’d never change.”
“I was never bored of you. Not in Boston. Not in Brixton.”
I lean against an ancient oak tree. Gaze out at a large open meadow. Families play together. Parents coo over their babies. A very young mother sings Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games” to her newborn like a lullaby. Perfect pitch. F sharp minor. Adagio.It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you.She turns a song about romantic love into one about parental love. I feel every ounce of her love for her child.It’s Mother’s love, which Lily taught me how to feel in a new way. It’s Lily’s love. It’s every parent’s love.
Grandparents walk their grandkids. Couples hold hands. The cycle of life is everywhere, like the seasons. Change. It’s essential to happiness.
“I didn’t last two years in Brixton,” I say. “You didn’t have me long enough to get sick of me. Maybe if you hadn’t been so stupid. If only you had left well enough—”
A heavy hand on my shoulder.
My heart sinks.
I was about to blame Bram for what happened to us that last night in London, but I don’t need to.
Because we’ve been found.
Whatever freedom we thought we had ends here.
But when I turn around, it’s not some goon I see. It’s Tobi. His eyes are misty and confused as he asks, “It’s you two, innit?”
“Sorry?” Bram asks.
I clutch Bram’s hand tight, afraid of being found out. In the calmest voice I can muster, I say, “We should get going. We have an appointment, remember?”
We try to walk away but Tobi follows us. “It’s you. I know it’s you. I’ve heard all about you. Look at your eyes. You look just like how Lily described. Except... you should be ancient by now. It makes no sense.Youdefy the laws of time.”
I look at Bram. We could run away from London like we did decades ago. But then, it’s not our family we were running from, and Tobi is family. I feel Lily’s presence around me. I close my eyes and feel her like she taught me to feel Mother. Lily tells me to let Tobi in. When I open my eyes, I say to Bram, “We’re brothers, aren’t we?”
Tobi takes his knitted scarf off and ties it around his waist. “That’s what Lily told me. That you were my oldest brothers.”
I smile. Of course Lily said that. Of course she considered us her children long after we deserted her. “Walk with us,” I say to Tobi. “It’s a long story.”
