Page 118 of Lily In The Valley
“So you gave me nothing,” I rushed out.
“I thought that was better than giving you a version of me that could’ve ruined you.”
“You ruined us anyway,” I said. “Pops just now starting to move on. I can’t be with somebody unless I feel like I need to be doing something for them.”
Her face fell. She didn’t answer.
“I became the kind of man who gives everything and expects nothing. Who waits for the people I love to leave, even when I’m standing right in front of them.”
Her eyes glistened.
I kept going.
“I don’t know how to hold anything without wondering when it’s going to slip away. I give love like a warning. Like a debt. Like… if I just do enough, they’ll stay.”
Her hand was still between us, motionless.
“I did that to someone,” I added. “Someone who means everything and then some.”
Her eyes found mine. Wet. Sharp. Mother-soft. “Someone like Dr. Reid?”
I didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.
She smiled, sad. “She look at you like she already knowsyou bleed for the people you love. And she chooses you, too. Put me in my place good-fashioned when I admitted who I was.”
I swallowed hard, staying quiet.
She leaned forward, resting her hand against her chest, like she was steadying something deeper than her breath.
“You don’t have to forgive me,” she said. “I wouldn’t blame you if you never did.”
I stayed quiet, turning away.
“But don’t,” she added, voice trembling. “Don’t spend the rest of your life feeling like you gotta earn being loved.”
Silence rang. I stared out at the courtyard. That tree looked dead. But I knew better. It was just waiting. Like I had been. Still, I didn’t take her hand. I caught her eyes, let her see me hurting. She sat back slowly, like the truth knocked something loose in her spine.
“I thought about you every day,” she said, looking out into the courtyard. “Wondered how tall you’d gotten. If you still like them Hubig pies your daddy would bring home after work…I kept telling myself you’d forget me. You wasn’t old enough to remember anyway. It’d be a blessing in disguise.”
“The day you left haunts me,” I said matter-of-fact.
“I know. It haunts me, too,” she replied, her voice cracking. “But when people see a Black woman breaking, they ignore the fear. They say she bitter. Fast. Crazy. I had a baby on my hip and grief in my chest, and nobody said a damn thing. Gave a damn.”
“You want to talk about your grief,” I spat out. “What did you have to grieve? You’re the one that disappeared.”
She looked down into her folded hands resting on her lap. “I don’t know, baby”
“Khalil,” I corrected.
“I don’t know, Khalil. Maybe from being born in a house where women didn’t cry. Maybe from loving a man who loved me more than I knew what to do with. Maybe from waking up every day, knowing I wasn’t okay and still had to be a wife and mother. I needed an escape.”
“So you left,” I said. “To grieve while you killed everything in your wake.”
“No.” She shook her head vehemently. “I left because I thought I was the poison, and the people I loved kept drinking from me.” She reached her hand over the table, waiting for mine. I stared at the foreign fingers and looked back out into the courtyard. “I thought I was finally safe when I met your father. He did everything right. But I didn’t know how to be held. I didn’t know how to sit still inside a good thing without clawing at the walls. It wasn’t his love that scared me. It was being seen and having nowhere to hide. And he saw me. Saw my fear. Saw the little plastic baggies I tried to hide. Saw through my glazed eyes.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out a photo. It was me around eight-years-old, missing a tooth, eating a cold cup while talking to Xavier at a block party. I couldn’t make out the full expression on my face from the far angle the picture was taken, but I could see the happiness and laughter.
“There was one time I thought I could come back, then I saw you like this. Happy and too stinking cute. Bad as hell, I’m sure.”She laughed softly. “I changed my mind. Snapped the picture then went and got my next fix. Took me about a year before I could develop the film. I think I’d made it to Colorado by then. Told myself I was gon’ get my life together, even if I never saw you again.”
