Seventy-one.
Quickly, I did the math.I might have 44 more years left. I’m not even at the halfway point of my life yet.
I knew it was odd for a healthy 27-year-old to think about how many years she had left to live. But after losing my mother, my father, and my brother along with countless others in my family far too soon, death seemed almost imminent…until that very moment.
I’d only half-played the games on my phone afterward. And I’d even let Big put extra salt on her chicken. I figured if she’d made it to the ripe old age of 21, she should be able to eat whatever she wanted.
I took Big to her room, took my own shower, and got into bed.
Sleep, however, didn’t come to me.What will I look like when I’m seventy-one? Big will be dead by then. Where will Jazzy and I live? What’s Jazzy going to do for work then? Will I need to get a job, too?
Then, I did the math on the idea of me getting a job. If I got a job making eight dollars an hour and Jazzy had a job making eight dollars an hour, we’d have almost two thousand dollars a month. We could afford to stay anywhere we wanted. We might even get a car together. And driver’s licenses. And insurance.
For as different as Jazzy and I had always been, I still thought of my life as “our” life. I couldn’t imagine not being with her.
Jazzy snuck in the house a little after ten. I turned on the lamp on the nightstand between our beds so I could see her hair.
She entered our room with a smile on her face and braids down to her behind. “You like?”
“Yeah,” I said, admiring how the tiny braids flowed over her shoulder as she bent to unsnap her sandals. “Who did it?”
“Shayna.”
“How much did she charge?” I inquired.
“Eighty-five, but I had to buy my own hair. Five bags.”
“Oh,” I nearly growled, adding the figures and realizing the style had cost anywhere from $120-$150.
“Big ate?” Jazzy asked.
“Yes.”
Before she could ask about the salt, I changed the subject. “Did I tell you I saw Sean the other day?”
“Yeah. You told me.”
“Oh. Okay. Just wanted to make sure.”
“And I saw thatgleamin your eye when you told me about him,” she teased.
“I didnothave a gleam.” I shook my head. Though I didn’t appreciate her teasing me, I reveled in the fact that Jazzy and I were having one of our rare closed-door, sister-to-sister moments.
“Whatever. Don’t get your hopes up. Lakesha Billings is trying to either get with him or get back at him,” Jazzy said. She carefully slid her sling purse over her head and under the mass of what had to be 22-inch braids. She set the purse back in its place on the closet doorknob.
I sat up. “Wait—what? Lakesha Billings? Sean was withher?”
“He’s notwithher. At least not now. But he might have been with her in the past. Shayna said Lakesha was there earlier, before I got there, getting an updo. I guess Shayna knows you don’t like Lakesha so she assumed I don’t like her either, that’s why she waited to text me and tell me exactly when to come, so I wouldn’t run into Lakesha.”
“Shayna assumed right. Right?” I cocked my head. Even though Jazzy and I were two very different people, she was still my sister. My twin. She was supposed to like who I liked, despise who I despised.
“Yes. I don’t like Lakesha because you don’t like her, if that makes you happy.” Jazzy wagged her head. “But I mean, personally, I don’t have anything against her.” She continued undressing down to her underclothes.
I let my head slip back onto the pillow, though I was still listening.
“Anyway, Shayna said Lakesha told her that Sean ran out of church when she showed him his son.”
“Is it his kid?” I asked as though Jazzy should know the answer.
