He said it like a joke. Somehow, I knew it wasn’t
The lot was smaller than I remembered. Or maybe I’d just spent too much time in a big city where everything was turned all the way up. Either way, it felt kinda cozy. Strings of lights draped over rows of trees while a little Bluetooth speaker belted out R&B Christmas covers. Kids ran around while their parents looked and chilled and smiled. The scent… I smelled pine trees every day on my hill, but this was different.
Aziza inhaled like she’d just discovered oxygen. “It smell like… a forest. But happy,” she whispered.
And it made sense.
“Ground rules,” Jabali began as soon as we were out of the truck, crouching so he could look her in the eye. “You in charge,but you glued to one of us at all times. No running off. If we can’t see you, we leave. Everybody clear?”
“Yes, sir,” she responded solemnly.
He glanced at me. “You?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t run off. People have an annoying habit of finding me.”
A voice called his name before he could answer—Mr. Abe Hargrove, the husband of the lot’s owner, Primrose Drake-Hargrove. He was glad to see Jabali, of course. The old men around here remembered everybody. They did their handshake thing, caught up in three sentences. He gave me a little nod and a half smile. I could feel eyes brushing over me from the next row, that kind of awareness of being recognized before anyone said my name.TheGrindley. The woman who “shut down Christmas.”
I lifted my chin and marched right into them trees.
Aziza took her assignment as “in charge” extremely seriously. She walked slowly down each row, touching branches, narrating like she was making a tree documentary. “This one too skinny, Mama.” “This one too bald; it ain’t got no needles on it!” “This one too crooked, huh, Mr. Jabali?” “This one look sleepy.”
Jabali played along, adding silly stuff like “shol’ look like it’s got osteoporosis” and “patchy like my cousin’s beard” and making her giggle. I hovered close, arms wrapped around myself, trying not to feel too much at seeing them together.
At one point I pointed to a smaller tree. It was neat, compact, reasonable. I could almost ignore it. “This seems fine. We could actually live with this,” I tried to persuade them.
They both looked at it and then at me like I’d suggested a potted plant.
“That look like a sad broom. We need a tree that stand up like a… like a… like one of the dresses Granny wears when PopPoptakes her dancing. You know, it be having all that hard, scratchy stuff under it!”
I couldn’t help it; I smiled. “Crinoline, baby,” I offered the word before moving to kiss her forehead. She was so adorable.
We turned down another row, and she stopped dead. The tree she’d found was… a lot. Tall and full, it was the kind they used in fancy foyers in movies and in engagement photos. I felt my whole body saynobefore my brain had the chance. She walked up to it carefully, pressed her cheek into the needles, and closed her eyes like she was listening to it.
“I love this one, this our tree,” she said softly.
I had to grab the nearest trunk to steady myself at that word.Our.“That thing is enormous. It’s going to swallow my foyer. And we’d have to hire a lumberjack to get it in the house. Pick something smaller, Zi. We not running a department store,” I finally managed.
She deflated, just got small, and I swear I could feel it in my own bones. Jabali narrowed his eyes at me.
“It’s a lot of tree,” he agreed slowly, looking between us. “But your foyer is alotof foyer.”
“I don’t care how big the foyer is; That is too much,” I snapped.
His eyes slid to Aziza. Her shoulders were pulled in now, hands in her pockets, trying to look like she didn’t care either way. And I had a really sad thought… look at me, of all people, teaching my child how to shrink.
“Ky—” he began.
Before he could argue, one of the Hargroves’ workers came around the corner. He was young, wearing a hoodie and work gloves, and moving with that lazy swagger Emancipation boys got when they thought they were something special.
“Y’all picked a big one,” he said, eyeing the tree.
“Yes,” Jabali responded, like I hadn’t just said no.
The young man’s gaze skated over Aziza, then stuck on me for a second. A sneer curled his top lip as he addressed Jabali. “You hauling this up to that mansion on the hill? What they call it now, The Grindley? Down here tree shopping like she ain’t shut the gate on folks’ Christmas.”
My face felt hot and cold at the same time. It wasn’t the worst thing anyone had ever said about me, but hearing it out loud, in front of my child andhim, hit different. I opened my mouth, tried to remember not to do him too badly in front of my baby, but Jabali moved first. He stepped in so smooth I almost didn’t see it until the younger man’s back hit the trunk of a small tree.
“I know that ain’t what you meant to say. Try again,” he said, his voice low and dark with an edge I’d never heard.
