“Now. Him helping you with Micah. Whatever ride-home arrangement y'all have. Him being there. That is nice. I am not going to pretend it isn't nice. You enjoy it. But you listen to me… Don't get used to it.”
There it was. The Carter women gospel. Want nothing too much. Need nobody too deeply. Keep your own keys in your hand.
“Ma, I don’t ne?—”
“Let me finish. You enjoy it. You don't lean on it. Don't build your life around it. You let it be what it is right now, and don’t assume it's going to be there tomorrow. Because men are fickle. Black men, white men, poor men, rich men, fine ones, and the ugly ones too. Every kind. Fickle as hell. And the moment you start counting on them, expecting them tokeepshowing up? That’s the moment they don't. All the sudden they remember they got somewhere else to be.”
I sighed and shook my head.
“You think I don't know what I'm talking about? Look at your father. Look at Malik. You should know better than I do at this point, hell.”
“Julian is not Malik, or my father.”
“I’m not saying that. I am telling you Julian is aman. And listen to me, Alyssa. Black women? We don't get the fairytale. You hear me? We don't get it. The white girls get told their whole life some millionaire is coming to save them. Some prince is climbing a tower. Some Mr. Big is buying the block for them. We don't get told that, baby. We don't get put on the pedestal. We don't get rescued. So when a man like Julian walks into your kitchen looking like the answer to a prayer you didn't pray, don’t you go getting fairytale-eyed about it. Do you remember what I always told you girls?”
“Nobody’s coming to save you. You have to save yourself.” I resented that the words still fit so neatly inside me.
“That is right. I have raised five children on that. I have survived sixty-plus years on that. You’ve already been through enough. I don’t want you forgetting it because a man brought your son home from football practice.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You do not bet your life on a man showing up. You bet your life on what you are doing foryourself. Be a woman who’s doing fine on her own and letting himaddto it. Not a woman leaning on him to make her okay.A man like that can feel the difference. He’ll respect the first one. He’ll lose interest in the second. You hear me?”
“I hear you, but I’ve already told you we are just friends. You act like I said I’m marrying the man or something. My God.”
She looked at me and finished her water. “I have to get back to Raschad’s to watch the babies. He’s taking Simone out for dinner. Walk me down.”
I walked her to the car Raschad gave her to use whenever she was in town. She kissed the side of my face, got in, and rolled down the window.
“I love you, Alyssa.”
“Love you too.”
She drove off, and I stood in the lot until I couldn’t see her anymore.
Then I went back upstairs to the condo I was still trying to believe I deserved, her greens waiting to be eaten, and her gospel playing in my head, wondering which one would keep me fed.
10/
someone who worshipped you
julian
I hadn't stayedwhen I dropped Micah off. It wasn't my place to sit in the middle of that. But I’d caught Alyssa’s face at the door before I left, the careful flat look she put on when something had gotten to her and she’d decided not to let it show. It stayed with me upstairs. I gave it a couple hours, long enough for the visit to be over, and texted.
You survive?
Barely. She counted my bedrooms.
Did you eat?
I made chicken and rice. There's a plate down here with your name on it if you want it.
On my way down.
From a woman who didn’t ask anybody for anything, that was Alyssa asking for company. She opened the door in sweats with her hair tied up in a head wrap, a glass of wine poured, a plate for me already fixed. She handed it to me curled into the end of the couch. I took the other end.
“Micah?”
