“Yeah, but how can you do it alone? The fact remains that we all have jobs we still have to do. You said it’s our legacy—it wouldn’t be fair for you to be the only one working here, taking this on all alone,” Lucas said.
Just then Kerry stepped back into the main room with Errol. She walked the boy to the front door, letting him out with a wave, then flipped the lock. Turning to all of them, she looked at Jesse, then switched her gaze to Lucas, breaking the silence and rocking their world. “He won’t have to do it alone,” she said. “I’ll stay on and work with him, at least until he gets the hang of how the shop runs.”
Jesse blinked. The woman standing before him was Kerry, but suddenly she bore little resemblance to the quiet, shy Kerry who had always hovered in various corners of the shop, a shadow to Mama Joy. No, this woman was all confidence and intelligence underneath her curly twists and thick-rimmed eyeglass frames. He looked at her deeper. There was something new and different behind her all-knowing chestnut-brown eyes. The corner of her lips quirked up, twitched ever so slightly as if the secrets of the world were hidden behind their full lusciousness just itching to escape.
Wait. Luscious lips? Secrets? What was he thinking, and what was she talking about, staying on? This was Kerry. Their Kerry Girl. Why was she doing this? And how could he let her? She had just finished school—a few years late, but she’d received her degree and now had her own plans and dreams lined up. This was her chance to get out. To move on. Why wasn’t she taking it?
It was Damian who voiced Jesse’s concerns out loud. “Why would you do something like that? You’ve just finished school, Kerry, you’ve gotten your degree. Why would you put your plans on hold to help us?”
Kerry was quiet as she seemed to be thinking while she looked around the shop, her already soft brown eyes growing wistful and slightly sad before she focused back on them. The look she gave Jesse went through him and seemed to reach down deep, past his heart even, all the way to his soul, before she blinked and turned to Damian to answer his question. “Maybe it’s like you said. Maybe I’ve learned a lot more from Mama Joy than you all even know. And I think it’s time for me to share that before I take the next step and move on. I know it’s what she would have wanted.”
4
Shit! Dammit, and shit once more!
Kerry couldn’t believe what she’d committed to.
What if Damian was right? She found herself still wondering hours later as she made her way to her afternoon job at the community center. Though she didn’t want to admit it, she was putting a portion of her life on hold for their needs. Or were they her needs? Wait, who truly needed who in this convoluted situation?
The whole thing made little to no sense, and if she had any sense at all she would have just kept her trap shut and stayed out of their business. Mama Joy was gone. And during the woman’s life, though she had given lots of her time and energy to Kerry, Kerry had been just as good to her. It wasn’t as if there was some sort of karmic debt that she had to pay, so why was she still so intent on inserting herself into the Strong family’s life?
“The daughter I never had,” she’d heard plenty of times. Kerry knew she’d made Mama Joy happy in life. And now that Mama Joy was gone, in a way it did feel like Kerry had lost what was essentially a second mother to her. The woman had helped raise her in ways that her own mother hadn’t and maybe could not. But if she really wanted to make Mama Joy happy, she’d not hold her sons up in their moving on, and she also wouldn’t hold her own life up. She’d take her degree, go harder on LinkedIn, Monster, Indeed and every other redundant-ass app and site out there and up her job search. Kerry let out a huff. Not that she hadn’t already been doing that. But come on, it wasn’t like they were dropping dream positions from the sky into overdue do-gooder graduates’ laps.
Kerry frowned. When she’d started on her degree work, it did seem like all she thought she wanted, but somewhere along the way things started to get muddled. Yes, she still had a passion for the kids, and sure, there was still a simmer of a dream in her heart of doing more, getting out of the shop and making things better for the community. However, after working at the center and seeing firsthand the setup and system of things, the frustrating bureaucracy, the way it—dammit—felt like every freaking deck was stacked against Black and brown kids, she wondered if she could truly be effective. And honestly, she wondered if she’d ever feel as fulfilled as when she was giving knitting classes to the children side by side with Mama Joy.
But would this make Mama Joy happy? Kerry knew it sure as hell wouldn’t make her mother happy. Both she and Mama Joy agreed on the fact that her degree would take her out of the shop, and if her mother had it her way, further than their Harlem neighborhood. It was her mother’s dream for her. Not that it was something new. A version of that dream was dreamed by just about every low-income mother from every low-income urban neighborhood. But why was that the ultimate dream?
Kerry frowned. She knew she couldn’t stay outside in the heat mulling over it all much longer though and made a swift turn at the corner of 145th and Eighth Avenue and started up the hill, breaking into even more of a sweat. The comfortable morning had morphed into an uncomfortably hot afternoon, and perspiration crept down the center of her back. Kerry shifted her tote from one shoulder to the other to prevent the digging from making too deep a mark in her flesh as she let her questions and uncertainties rattle around in her head.
She didn’t know what had made her walk out from the kitchen like she had, nor what had caused her to make her declaration in front of the brothers. It was as if she was hopped up on some sort of superwoman ego trip. Marching in there in the middle of the four Strong brothers and making her declaration like she was some sort of female supreme ruler. She shuddered. Just thinking about it gave her a slightly heady feeling. Still, she must have been out of her damned mind.
Who knew? Maybe it was the emotion of the past week, the photos in the kitchen that morning, little Errol Miller, or maybe it was Jesse and those dammed body-hugging briefs. Either way, all of it worked together and put her in the uncomfortable position of not wanting to let go of her present life without at least some sort of fight.
If only Mama Joy had had the same option. Kerry stilled as the memory of Jesse and his brothers arguing that morning came back to her. Who knew, maybe the dead woman did, in a weird, roundabout kind of way. Kerry felt it when she heard Jesse fighting so hard against his brothers and all their reservations. His strong words and fierce determination were what gave her the final bit of courage she needed to step out from the back of the shop and propel herself forward to the front.
Still, she couldn’t help but have serious doubts. Doubts and at the same time a strange sense of hope. When she’d gone into the shop that morning, she’d thought the brothers would surely make the decision to close. That Jesse would be the main one behind that decision. To her, though she didn’t doubt his love for Mama Joy, he seemed the main one who would want to take his share of the proceeds, then cut and run. Go on to sunnier, possibly more beachy pastures. The type where the women were plentiful and wore fewer clothes in the winter months. Hearing him talk about Mama Joy and what she meant to them, as boys and as men—it touched her in the most profound way.