“Um… they dropped.”
“You better go pick them up, then. Do I look like I have money for a new pair?”
“I think I dropped them in the classroom.”
Mummy huffs in frustration. “School’s locked up for the weekend now. Better hope they’re still there come Monday.” She marches to the back of the house and the wooden floor shudders under her sure step. “You’ll have to make do. Hurry up, I want us in Rawson Square when the protest starts.”
I fumble around in the kitchen drawer for my old pair of glasses and cram them on. The glasses I lost aren’t even new, I’ve had them almost three years, so this pair is probably from when I was nine or ten. The arms strain against my face. The lenses are scratched, but the house clicks into some type of clear—square table stacked high with books, chairs tucked under the skirt of the yellow tablecloth, sink polished to its best shine in the light filtered through the thin floral curtains, a garden of tiny daisies strung against windows that let in a steady billow of breeze. The view is imperfect, though, the world slightly curved at the edge of my lenses, my eyes unused to the outdated prescription. On the fridge, the last issue of Pinder Street Press, my neighborhood newsletter, rustles, as if the baby-blue paper is alive, then falls back into place. I grab the tape recorder from its perch on the counter beside the radio and cram it into my purse. Mummy reappears, sliding her feet into her loafers. I push my school shoes back on. I feel her gaze on my back as I step outside again and imagine my missing glasses looking down at me from some secret high place, smug with freedom, just out of reach.
KEEKEE
“Put some laundry on for me, babes,” Angel says from the truck’s passenger seat. “Dark load.” She lifts her eyebrows ever so slightly, perfect crescent moons.
“Whose?” I avoid looking at Sammy, his seat tilted back behind the steering wheel. He stares across the street, squinting into the bush, like he can see through the trees and to the beach. He scowls, as if trouble’s coming in on the tide.
“Iris. She need her delicates.” She blinks her lash extensions one time more than is necessary, though Sammy’s still looking away. He’s too dense to catch on to anything even if we laid out the whole box full of pads and tampons and condoms and lined up all the girls in the neighborhood to collect their stashes, even if we stapled every receipt together and smacked him across the face with it. “It’s urgent.”
“If it’s urgent, she could do it herself.”
“Hey. Don’t backtalk your mummy.” Sammy doesn’t bother to look at us as he inserts himself where he hasn’t been invited. He clamps a hand over Angel’s leg like she’s a Guinness in a bar short on beer. Love you, Angel mouths at me before I step away. I duck under the clothesline, heavy with stiff-dried clothes. The hem of a skirt grazes my elbow like an oversized moth and I swat it away. Sammy wouldn’t be rushing to Angel’s aid if he knew where a third of the laundry money goes. I slip around the back of our house and onto the path again. It still vibrates with the memory of our racing feet, the air thick with our fear.
I scan the beach for some sign of Baseball Cap. I didn’t catch his face, coward-shaded under the brim. Beach closed. Like he owned the place.
There’s no one on the sand except me. No sign of Nia’s glasses, either. I step farther out onto the shore, though I won’t find them here. The sand is still indented from our footprints—Faith’s small and slim, Toons’ large and close, Eve’s wide ones trailing behind, Nia’s and mine overlapping with each other so sometimes it looks like two girls and sometimes a single being with oddly shaped hooves. Growing up underneath each other, you get to know footprints like shadows, like the shape of someone seen from behind, like a voice.
I walk along the beach until I’m in line with Eve’s daddy’s church. The roof to the low green building is crumbling slowly, but it still casts shade on the porch that wraps all the way around like a story so long it never really ends. I head toward the steps like I’m going in, then veer off and pull myself up into the guava tree on the south side, my toes gripping the bark. A long, smooth strip peels off under my feet and I kick it away. My fingers find holds, my arms pull me up into its canopy. There it is, right where I left it, wedged in the cleft where a branch separates into two directions; a freezer bag zipped tight, and a sun-bleached exercise book that used to be red, tucked safe inside. I open the bag, flip open the book, and find the pen holding my place, its clip tight around the form, folded in half. I lean my body against the tree’s trunk and let my legs dangle over either side of the branch. A heron passes overhead, its croaky call pulling my attention after it like an invisible trail over the sand, and then over the water. It lowers its legs as it nears an outcropping of rock that juts out of the sea, and I let out a long breath I didn’t know I was holding.
I unfold the pieces of paper. The letterhead blares at me: NewBeat Summer Arts Program Application. Out here, I’ve filled it all in. Kimberly Grace Hepburn. Age: 16. Current school: East Gardens High School. GPA: 2.8. I flip the page over to the side that says Art medium and sample of creative work. I’ve already written in poetry, but under that is nothing but a sandbank of space. If I want to go, I have to get out a net and catch the words, pin them down to the page. I return the pages to their hiding place and lower myself to the ground.
Beach closed. The shout echoes in my ears.
These are not the words I want.
FAITH
I turn my music off as I pull up to my house. The driveway is empty—Daddy’s working late again. I’d give anything to be back on Pinder Street, in that truck, sitting across from Toons, our knees bumping, nothing more on my mind than the flush that comes from running and the feel of his skin against mine. I’d even be glad to stay out here behind the wheel till evening comes, until Daddy pulls up behind me. Let him be the one to go in first. Let him call out my mother’s name like a wish. Let him pray for an answer.
The car whirs oddly as it idles. I sigh and turn off the engine. It isn’t the only thing awry in my life. I walk up the driveway to the front door and slide my key into the lock, slow. Daddy’s been threatening to fix the front door, but I like the cheerful squeak it makes as I open it, an announcement other than my voice. A warning of someone trying to escape.
From somewhere in the house, I hear a sound. “Mummy?”
No answer. I lock the door behind me and venture deeper in. I check the cool, empty kitchen that smells of—nothing. Then I look in the sitting room, under the dining table, through my room, and the side room opposite, where Daddy sleeps. In the corridor, her portrait catches my eye, a head shot from her last year in dance school—wide eyes, long, elegant neck, a subtle smile. I carry on to the master bedroom, the last place she could be.
“Mummy?” Empty bed, sheets tossed back, closet open, shoes strewn, bureau drawers vomiting clothes onto the floor. “You there?”
The bathroom door is closed. I try the handle and the door swings open.
My mother is perched on the toilet, her panties around her knees, teal skirt pooled around her ankles. She glares up at me from an open book. “What? You can’t knock?”