“Literally since we were babies,” I say, smiling as memories over the years run through my mind. I’ve always had Ezra and he’s always had me. I can’t imagine it any other way.
“Yeah, well, he’s a guy, and he’s gonna have to get used to sharing you with friends who are girls. I mean, he’s got Hannah now, and you don’t have a problem with it, right?”
“Hannah?” My smile dims then fades to nothing. “Ezra barely knows her. They don’t have any classes together or anything.”
“Weren’t they in that Bar Mitzvah thing, or whatever together at the synagogue a lot?” Mona nods even though I don’t respond. “That’s when it started. He didn’t tell you?”
“Um, well, I’m not sure there’s anything to tell.”
“From what I heard,” Mona says, looking around like the empty hall might be bugged before looking back to me, “her brother was mad about it.”
Stay away from Hannah.
That’s what the boy yelled that day they attacked Ezra.
“Ezra better be careful,” Mona says. “He might be all ‘Bar Mitzvah,’ but this is still Georgia, and Hannah is still white and Ezra is still black.”
Mona’s grin tips to one side, and she leans against a locker. “Well, semi-black. Her daddy would say he’s black, though I doubt she’ll be taking him home to meet the parents.”
“He’s black when it’s convenient for other people, and white when it’s not,” I say. “If Hannah can’t introduce Ezra to her parents, then she doesn’t deserve him.”
She doesn’t deserve Ezra, period.
“I’m gonna go.” I shift the backpack on my shoulder and tug on the sleeve of Ezra’s coat. “I need to call Mama and have her pick me up. These pants are ruined.”
“Okay.” Mona’s mischievous smile returns with a vengeance. “What are you gonna tell Jeremy?”
An image of Hannah comes to mind, a memory from Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah. Hannah dressed in pink, her face pretty and smooth and sprinkled with freckles. Her long, curly hair had been loose and hanging down her back. Is that what Ezra wants? Someone who looks more like his mother than like me? A lump burns in my throat like lit coal, and I have trouble swallowing past it.
“Yeah.” I turn and head toward the office to call Mama. “I’ll go to the dance with Jeremy. Whatever.”
I call and leave a message at the elementary school front desk since Mama’s teaching.
How long will she take?
In the hall, I lower my eyes every time a student walks by. Even seated and with the safety of Ezra’s jacket, it feels like they can see my stain.
“Kimba,” Mrs. Stern says from the office door. “You ready?”
I grab my backpack and tighten Ezra’s windbreaker at my waist. She climbs behind the wheel of her green Camry and I take the passenger seat. Mrs. Stern pulls carefully out of the school parking lot like she’s testing for her driver’s permit.
“Your mom’s in class, obviously,” Mrs. Stern says. “So she asked me to come.”
“Thanks,” I mumble.
We ride in silence. It’s not awkward exactly. More like the kind of quiet where you don’t have to say anything and it’s okay. Mrs. Stern often makes me feel that way. Maybe that’s where Ezra gets it.
“So I heard you had a little accident,” she says, shooting me a quick glance when we come to a stoplight. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but if you do…”
I shake my head and fix my gaze out the window, staring at the trees dressed in their brightest colors, celebrating spring.
“Well, just know it happens to all us girls at some point,” Mrs. Stern says. “Anyway, having just Ezra, I don’t get to deal with the girl problems. I thought we’d have another, but we haven’t been able to.”
She doesn’t sound sad exactly. I can see how Ezra would be enough for anybody.
“I do have a question,” I say after another few seconds of silence.
“Oh, of course.” Her voice is eager, and she flashes me an encouraging smile. “Anything.”
“Why do you want to move so much?”
The smile slips and falls, and she presses her lips together like she’ll only let so many words out at a time. “I miss my family, Kimba. I want to babysit my sister’s children. I want to be in the synagogue where I grew up. I want meat from the deli around the corner and all the things that made New York not just a city, but my home. I want the little part of it where my faith and my community and the things that made me who I am all live.”
She looks at me with sad eyes, with Ezra’s eyes. “I was so glad to leave, to set off and do my own thing, go my own way, but my mother died and I wasn’t with her. I want the wandering to be done.”
I think about my grandfather, my parents, our huge family having dinners together every Sunday. Borrowing Kayla’s things without asking. Cleaning the house together on Saturday mornings with my siblings, music blasting, and Mama singing Earth, Wind and Fire’s “September” at the top of her lungs. Daddy’s secret stash of cigars. The gazillion-piece puzzles Mama insists we do together sometimes when we’ve been going our own way and haven’t been at the same table at the same time all week.
“I get that,” I say. “But I don’t want Ezra to go.”
We pull into her driveway, and she stares at the garage door, the flowering bushes standing guard at the bottom of her porch steps, a hard little smile on her lips. “Don’t worry, Kimba. I doubt we’ll ever leave.”
Chapter Five
Kimba
It’s been two weeks since my cousin came to town unannounced and showed out in Mrs. Clay’s class right through my white pants. Ezra came over that night to get his windbreaker. There was a time when he would have barreled up the stairs and barely knocked before barging into my room. That night I faked cramps, asked Kayla to take his windbreaker down to him and say I’d see him later. She looked at me strangely. It was the first time Ezra had ever come over when I’d refused to see him. Maybe growing up means growing apart. And maybe it’s other people meaning more to you than the ones who used to mean the most.
Like Hannah.
Jeremy is kind of taking me to the dance. Technically, Daddy isn’t having it, so Kayla’s driving me, Mona and Ezra to the dance, and I’ll meet Jeremy there.
“Your hair looks good,” I tell Mona in my bedroom while we get ready.
She peers into the mirror and pats her new asymmetrical haircut. “Ya think so?”
“Better than mine.” I blow out a long breath, rustling the frizzy bangs hanging past my eyebrows. I should have waited to get it done. I got a fresh relaxer yesterday, and even slept with my head hanging off the bed to preserve the curls our hairdresser put in, but they’re still kind of smushy. They have frizzed and retracted with the humidity.
“Maybe Kayla can help?” Mona asks, but doubt colors her voice. We both know Kayla can’t be bothered half the time.
I wish Mama was here to do it, but she and Daddy are at an event with the mayor. As usual.