Page 13 of Lily In The Valley
Her fingers traced the tattoos littering my chest, spending extra time on the peace lily with 1Corinthians16:14. For once, she wasn’t trying to fill the silence. She wasn’t making jokes. She wasn’t running.
She was here.
I kissed her forehead.
“I’m done playing games,” I whispered, brushing my hand down her back. “You’re a firecracker to the world. Let me be the soft spot to rest your head.”
She didn’t say anything. She stayed wrapped in my arms quiet, warm, vulnerable. And that said more than anything she could’ve come up with. Minutes later, her breathing slowed. She struggled to keep her eyelids open as she lay on my chest, her legs intertwined with mine underneath the thick comforter.
I swept my thumb over the delicate skin of her cheekbones, my other hand smoothing circles over her back. “Go to sleep, Lily-girl.”
What little tension left in her body dissipated as her body melted into mine. Soft snores escaped her lips. I reached over to turn off the lamp on her nightstand. Staring at the ceiling, my feelings were set in stone. Lily-girl was mine. I’d crash out before I let another steal her away.
Chapter 4
Kelly
Summer 2010 - MawMaw’s House, New Orleans, LA
The sun had nerve today.Light-blinding, skin scorching audacity. It clung to everything–my scalp, the back of my neck, the swell of my cheeks–as if its mission was to remind people the world kept spinning, even when people stopped breathing. The stretch of street in front of my grandmother’s house shimmered in the heat, save for the few potholes and jagged cracks in the pavement. Cicadas harmonized in the thick air, competing with the grumbling churn of the AC unit in desperate need of freon.
I sat on the top stoop with my knees pulled to my chest, my chin resting on top. I should have had a Kool-Aid pickle and a bag of Hot Cheetos with cheese and jalapeños in my hand. A card table should have been unfolded behind me, squeaky chairs holding the weights of my grandmother and her friends as they laughed and cussed each other out. Only now, there were no sodium rich snacks or sour sweet treats to stain my teeth. No smoke streak of Virginia Slims’ fragrance in the air. Nobody sending me in the house for a cool can of malt liquor. Justa sagging silence wrapped around me, like the humidity. Too heavy to ignore, but too familiar to fight.
Inside, my parents were arguing again in hushed tones that didn’t do a damn thing to hide the sharpness of their words. Mama was trying. She was trying so fucking hard, but you could only stretch grief so far before it snapped. And with Daddy and Uncle PJ circling each other like vultures battling for the decaying carcass since we made it to town, who could blame her. You could only take so much of being blame for something outside of your control. What was it today? Something about her not coming down enough, especially once MawMaw got sick. How that gave Mama no right to say what happened with her affairs now that she was gone.
Gone.
Everybody tiptoed around it. Around the growing reality. That the one who held the final thread of keeping her family together was gone, and none of us knew what to do with that. Especially me.
When one of my grandmother’s friends stopped by after the funeral, she hugged me tight, rasping into my ear, “You’re so strong, Kelly. Sonya would be so proud.” And they kept saying it. Like it was a compliment. A badge of honor. As if it weren’t a secret code instilled from my parents for,keep your shit together so we don’t have to.
I stared out at the solar powered lights that lined the walkway to the mailbox. Watched as the heat made them bend at their necks to the drying grass. I knew people were wary of summer storms here, but today of all days I needed the reprieve from the beaming sun overhead. I was sure the oak trees and dry dirt would appreciate a little rainwater bringing to surface the old stories that lived in the cracks of this neighborhood.
A soft rumble of tires pounded down the street too fast, then eased up when it hit the dip near the corner. I looked just as ablue Maxima turned onto the block and slowed down in front of a house a few doors down. Khalil aunt’s house.
I recognized him immediately as his tall frame stepped out of the car. Not because I paid attention to him like that, or wrote my name with his last name in the backs of my notebooks, or daydreamed about him when I became annoyed by the pretentious boys of my private school. Not like that. He just had a way of stepping into the world like it was made especially for him. All limbs and confidence. His usual wide coils tamed into braids that reached past his shoulders. Skin baked just right from what I was sure was his time playing football and training all summer.
When he got out, he stretched wide and glanced toward me before his dad popped the trunk. When our eyes met, the noise in my chest quieted. His face was all smiles as he waved to me from his aunt’s driveway. He said something to his dad and started jogging toward me, leaving behind whatever his dad was unloading behind like it could wait.
Her heart. It had to have been my grandmother’s heart that gave out. I wondered if it was genetic the way mine roared in my chest as Khalil got closer.
“Hey,” he said when he got close, his voice low and noticeably deeper than I remembered. He stood at the edge of the stoop, eyes shaded under his lashes, hands in his pockets.
“Hey.”
He didn’t hesitate to sit next to me on the bottom step, close enough to bring the air around us up another 400 degrees. Heat stroke.She went out in a literal blaze of glory. That’s what my obituary will say.
“I heard about Ms. Sonya,” he said, his gaze fixed on me, reading my expressions so he could gauge my emotional state. “I’m sorry.”
I nodded. Swallowed.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His fingers toyed with the tips of mine.
“You wanna talk about it?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
He bit his lip as he peered into my heart. “Cool. We don’t have to.”
