“Abreak? Abreak! What’s abreak?” She sounded like a cawing parrot. “Either you’re together or you’re not.”
I turned into the bathroom.
“Don’t shut that door while I’m talking.”
I let the door hang open and washed my face with her watching me. My dad ambled down the hallway asking what was going on. My mom angrily moved a curl from her face. “Your daughter and her boyfriend of seven years are on a ‘break’ and now she’s polygamous. As if there’s not enough going on in the world.” She brought her wrist to her forehead.
“A what?” my dad said.
“I’m not polygamous, but whatever.”
“It means she’s running around like a little hussy. It means she doesn’t realize a good man when he’s in front of her. I told you to just marry him, didn’t I? You wouldn’t be on a break now had you listened to me for once.”
My mom had some of the worst logic I’d ever encountered, as if divorce didn’t exist.
My dad turned to me in his wrinkled shirt. “Why’s your mom calling you a hussy?”
Flapping her arms, “Joel, I just told you! She’s polygamy!”
“Is that the they/thems?”
I cried, “Would you fucking stop!”
They barked, “Watch your mouth.”
Bowing over the sink, I stared at the thread of black hair stuck to the bowl.
My mom was in the doorway now. “Some women would’ve moved to LA years ago. They never would’ve let him roam around that city alone in the first place.”
“Why are you talking about him like he’s a baby antelope?”
“I’m telling you, if you mess this up, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. I know you don’t know how that feels yet.”
“I’m not gonna mess it up.”
“You will if you keep this up.”
Finding my resolve, I sped past them and ran down the stairs. My aunt had come to stand at the top of the staircase, drinking tea in a teal kimono, like all this wasn’t her fault.
The three of them looked down on me like a Greek chorus preparing to deliver my fate from a scroll while I shoved my work shoes into my bag. My mom boomed from over the railing, “I can tell you right now I already know how this story ends. And it’s not the ending you want.”
Chapter 44
The sky was a milky seafoam green like something had gone beautifully wrong in nature. Milan and I were eating family meal out of containers on the fire escape—sliced half-smoke on a bed of chili, dollop of sour cream. I told myself I knew my parents would act this way and therefore I shouldn’t be upset. Milan was hardly a comfort. While quartering a peach with a pocketknife, she said, “You already know what I think,” then popped the juicy wedge into her mouth. All this judgment was getting tired, but I didn’t know how to avoid it without keeping everything to myself. This couldn’t be the rest of my life: this non-choice between absorbing an endless supply of stupid opinions or conforming to vanquish them.
Nia texted me. My spirits lifted even before reading her message, just from seeing her name.Do u wanna come by the studio this afternoon?
I was smiling down at my phone. Milan leaned over my shoulder. I slapped the screen to my chest.
“Isn’t that the girl from that art thing?”
“No.”
“You messy bitch.”
“What! She’s doing my portrait.” This wasn’t wholly true, though I hadn’t told Nia I wouldn’t do it. She was busy anyway—it wasn’t hard, avoiding the topic when I saw her. I honestly thought she might’ve forgotten about it. But even saying it aloud to Milan brought back that buzzed delirium I felt when I first agreed to let her paint me.
Milan flung her fuzzy peach pit across the alley to the trash can and missed. It landed in someone’s yard. “A portrait of what? Your titties?”
