“I’m her sister… and her daughter.” I laugh. “Um… I’m gonna graduate this year.”
Harrison looks at me intently. His eyes are the color of dirty ocean water, refracting blue and green and brown all at once. His hair can’t decide if it’s red or brown. Everything on his head is indecisive. Also, he has three big red pimples on his left cheek that I know my mother will mention as soon as we’re alone.
“What do you like? Who do you want to be?”
His probing seems earnest, but I don’t have answers for any of it. My mother and sister look at me expectantly, like they’re waiting for answers, too.
“I don’t know,” I mumble. “A doctor, maybe.”
That answer usually gets adults off my back.
“It’s okay. I didn’t know at your age, either,” he says.
“How old are you again, exactly?” my mother says.
“Twenty-one, same as Jo.”
“A regular font of wisdom.” My mother finishes her second glass of champagne.
“Have you been following the trial?” Harrison asks me.
There’s only one trial to be following right now.
“Not closely,” I say. I haven’t really been following it at all.
“There’s no way they won’t convict them,” Harrison says. “The evidence is right there, on video camera. That’s the best thing about this new technology: It’s so small that it democratizes the act of documentation. You can’t just cover things up and lie to the people. Thank goodness that dude went to KTLA with it.”
I nod. It’s a very enthusiastic way to talk about grainy camcorder footage. The wound on my foot is starting to pulse like it’s got its own heartbeat. If before it felt like a dull ache, now I’m convinced there’s a chance I might have to amputate the whole thing.
“If they don’t convict them, all hell’s gonna break loose,” Jo says. “The people are angry.”
“The people?” My mother squints and somehow also raises her eyebrow practically all the way up to her scalp.
Jo ignores her and continues. “We have friends who are already planning on protesting if they don’t convict those assholes. ’Cause, like, it’s not just about the cops, right? It’s all of it. Yes, the LAPD is racist as hell, and black and brown communities get policed differently than white ones. That’s a fact. But also, the schools suck. There’s no jobs. You don’t give people any opportunities to make something of themselves or to see a way out of the shit they’re dealing with every day. There’s no hope. And when kids turn to gangs or drugs, people act all surprised. Like, what the fuck did you think was gonna happen?”
She pauses for emphasis, and I’m pretty sure she threw the “fuck” in there just to fuck with our mother. I think my mother’s gonna say, “Language, Josephine!” but she doesn’t. After a sufficiently dramatic length of time, Jo continues.
“You can’t disenfranchise a huge portion of the population and not expect shit to go down. I mean, what they did to him is awful, but really, Rodney’s just the tip of the whole goddamn iceberg.”
Harrison nods enthusiastically and adoringly. The way he looks at her makes me want to gag a little bit. She’s just my sister, not Che or Mother Theresa or, like, Naomi Campbell or whatever.
“Yes, Josephine.” My mother sighs.
This is how we spent a good number of dinners in high school: Jo ranting about her injustice of the week, the rest of us agreeing with her and occasionally interrupting to say “Please pass the peas/salt/hot sauce.” There are so many battles Jo and I don’t have to fight. We’re lucky black girls. My parents worked really hard to make us so. It’s like Jo feels guilty for all that good fortune. Why can’t you just be lucky? Be happy? Be grateful, they think. Harrison’s a white dude, so maybe all our good luck he just thinks of as his birthright. Maybe that’s why Jo can be indignant with him, why they can be indignant together, without all the business of being too grateful getting in the way.
“You know, you haven’t asked to see my ring yet,” Jo says to my mother.
“I didn’t know there was anything to see.”
Jo reaches her hand across the table. My mother looks over at the ring and takes my sister’s hand in hers, bringing it in closer. It seems that right there, in that moment, the full weight of my sister comes crashing down on her head.
“It belonged to my mother,” Harrison says. In the center of the ring is a big pearl from some prize oyster. It looks like Harrison dove into the depths himself to pick it out special for Jo, it fits her so perfectly. It’s ornamented with a halo of tiny diamonds and sapphires that rests on a simple gold band. It doesn’t look particularly expensive—at least not compared to the mass on my mother’s hand—but it is elegant.
On the wall above Harrison’s head, there’s a simple framed photo of Harrison and Jo at the courthouse. He wears an ill-fitting blue suit, something grabbed last minute at the big and tall store. She wears a simple white minidress with long sleeves. I know that dress, like I know nearly everything beautiful in my sister’s closet, but I can’t remember why. I know it like I know the blue satin dress that looked like the sky and nearly showed her ass. It was ruined when she got too drunk and spilled wine on herself at my father’s office Christmas party. Or the black suit with the slightly cropped shirt she wore to my grandma’s funeral. My great-uncle Wally’s wife, Evaline, made a fuss about how disrespectful Jo was for wearing pants and a crop top to Grandma Opal’s funeral, but Grandma Opal was a sassy old bag herself—her words, not mine—so Jo looked straight at Great-Aunt Evaline and said, “Grandma thought you were boring.”
“Your parents are okay with this?” My mother shakes a bit as she speaks to Harrison, a soda bottle about to blow.
“My mother is dead, and I don’t much care what my father thinks,” Harrison says. There’s an edge to his politeness now.
This is not going to end well. I’m glad my father isn’t here. Once he yelled at some guy my sister was seeing the summer after her freshman year of college just for bringing her home too late. “Nothing good happens after midnight!” he said.
“I’m an adult! We were just talking,” Jo said.
“You can talk in the daytime. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck!” he said.
I swear, sometimes my parents sound like the white people in a 1950s sitcom—minus, like, the segregation, etc. I wonder what Harrison’s parents and grandparents were doing then, which side they were on. Did they sign petitions or hold up signs and fight alongside us, or did they stand idly by? Or worse? I wonder if my mother’s wondered the same thing, or Jo. Maybe that’s what my mom really meant by “Your parents are okay with this?”
Anyway, in moments like these, I’ve found that it’s best to provide a distraction. I take my foot out of my shoe and lift it to the card table.
“I ditched school and cut myself on a dirty beer bottle today. I should probably get a tetanus shot, right? It kinda feels like my foot could fall off.”
“Get your foot off the table, Ashley,” my mother says. “Now.”