"And how will I make him love me?" I questioned, “I look nothing like Cinderella.”
"You will not have tomakehim love you, Armani, he just will, he will love you and your every breath will be enough. You will be his very light in this dark world and him yours." She smiled and so did I.
I couldn't wait for the day that I too was someone's light.
"You've got such beautiful hair nne, you remind me of your mother when she was your age." Bibi said and I huffed picking at the bright green grass in passive aggression, "What is it?"
"I amnothinglike mama, I don't like to be compared to her and it is only you who thinks my hair is beautiful." I expressed and she tisked adding in more of the extensions to another patch of hair,
"And who are these people who have convinced you that your hair is not beautiful?" Bibi asked, and my mind travelled back to that day at the park.
I was playing with my friends from school and two boys began to pull at my hair and ask me why I didn't have straight hair like the pretty girl they saw on the television. Which got me thinking, who exactly is this 'pretty girl' I kept hearing about, does she only look like the girls with light skin and straight hair? Why was it that every time I heard the boys talking out their dream girls it was always the girls with blue eyes and blonde hair?
"It doesn't matter, why can't I have pretty flowy hair too?" I sighed and bibi stopped braiding my hair and turned me to face her,
"I don't want to hear you speaking like that of yourself again, do you understand me?" Bibi declared, "Why would you want the easy hair of the white woman when you already have this, there is power in your curls, the hair of your ancestors is knotted with the struggles of our people and you must carry that with pride!"
"But what am I to do if no one cares for it?" I retorted with tears in my eyes and she immediately used her wrapper to wipe them away.
"Then you hold your head up high and you prove them wrong with your every breath," Bibi said and it was the most serious I'd ever seen her. "You may not wish for me to compare you to your mama but I assure you that you will soon see that you are one and the same."
A week had gone by and I wasn't able to go to her funeral back in her village in Nairobi, to say that I was devastated was an understatement, I was completely empty and I felt as though every last bit of happiness had been drained from my very soul.
I'd been staying at River's because I didn't want to be alone, our friends came over a few times to check on me- I didn’t even remember when they came or what they said because it'd all been a blur to me.
I didn't even get to say goodbye.
Yesternight I remembered wandering into his art room when I'd discovered he left in the middle of the night, I found him crouched over a box I hadn't even noticed was there before, I hadn't seen it. It was made of cherrywood and had silver latches and something engraved on the side that I couldn't exactly make out. The second he saw me he shut the box and acted like It was somehow okay to be up at 2 AM, I didn't have the energy to ask any questions I was just tired,sotired.
"Go to bed." He said softly and I did just that.
I was seated on a chair on the balcony watching the sunset, it reminded me of how my Bibi loved sunsets. Everything reminded me of her, her laugh, her smile, her stories. River came over to the balcony and watched the sunset with me in silence for a little while until he finally said.
"If you want to eat something I ordered takeout just in case, it's your favourite." He said but I could only give him a weak smile, a poor excuse of one at that.
I didn't want to eat anything, I had no appetite despite feeling so empty. He tried to feed me some spaghetti but I didn't want it, he basically hadn't left my side since I got the news. I cried all day that day, and he held me every soul-wrenching minute of it. I didn't expect him to be so patient, but he was, he didn't even once ask me if I'd be okay, because I think a part of him knew I wouldn't be.
Once midnight came around I soaked in the bath and watched as time went by slowly. Just then I heard River knock on the door but I was way too weak to even reply, he knelt before me by the bath and reached out for my hand, and pressed his lips against it.
"Does it ever get easier?" I asked, my voice small and in need of an answer,
"No, no it doesn't." He replied honestly,
"Then what next?" I asked,
“Sometimes Armani, you have to learn to just let there be scars. To let them hurt, and etch themselves into you. To learn from them and grow, It may not feel like it at the moment but there will come a time when you will look back at them and recognize that all that pain, all that hurt built you into the person you became.” River told me.
"You will move on, the pain will get a little more tolerable, you’ll carry your grandmother with you and in a way, she will never really be gone. Let me show you something?"
"River I don't think-" I began but he cut me off,
"Let me, please." He insisted and I let him lead me out of the bath and into my pyjamas and out onto the street with nothing but a glass bottle, a paper, and a pen.
"What's all this?" I asked simply, wanting to go back home and crawl under the covers and hide just a little longer.
"When Jace died I-" he paused, I don't think I'd ever heard him ever acknowledge the fact that Jace was dead out loud before, I reached my hand out to hold his in a way that saidit's okay, "I didn't get to say goodbye either, so I wrote letters to him in bottles and tossed them into the river in the hopes that maybe, somehow, somewhere he'd get them."
"And you wish for me to do the same for my Bibi?" I questioned and he nodded silently in response, I sighed and took the paper and pen, sat on the curb and began writing my letter.
