Almost Crimson (19 page)

THIRTY-ONE

WISHES

 

 

CECE STOOD WITH HER WRIST draped over the open refrigerator door. She stared at the containers and bowls covered with aluminum foil, measuring the depth of her hunger against her willingness to cook. She decided to finish the rest of the sloppy joe mix, even though there were no more hamburger buns. CeCe had a civics paper to write—well, to start—for the next day. She would read a chapter of her novel instead. From the first day of school, her mood had soured from foul to rancid. Schoolwork was an evil she managed. Humans, on the other hand, persisted in chafing her nerves.

She heard her mother's slow shuffle in the hallway as she set the range dial to medium. CeCe picked up her library book from the counter and leaned against the sink to read while dinner warmed. Her mother stopped in the kitchen archway, a weathered elf in sweatpants. Her mother was present most days now, sweeping and rinsing, but CeCe still didn't hold the lunar strength to draw her mother far enough away from those dark shadows.

“Here,” her mother said.

CeCe looked up, puzzled at the sound of her mother's voice. Her mother floated about the house to “lay eyes” on CeCe, as Auntie Rosie would say. She floated in the hallway while CeCe prepared for school in the morning, in the afternoon when she read or did homework, and, again, at night before most of the windows in their apartment complex went dark. Aunt Rosie urged CeCe to see the love in those efforts. CeCe saw nothing inside of nothing.

“Here,” her mother said again. Her tan cardigan sagged from daily wear and constant tugging. She clutched it closed with one fist. With the other hand, she held out to CeCe a fifty-dollar bill.

“What's that?” CeCe said, her book spread open between her fingers.

“For your pictures.”

“What pictures?” CeCe asked, closing the book over one thumb to stir the bubbling meat sauce.

CeCe's mother stepped one foot into their small kitchenette and stretched an arm toward the table. She always seemed uncertain about being allowed in their kitchen. She laid the bill on the table and returned her feet, side by side, to the hallway carpet.

“Senior pictures,” her mother said, turning her shoulders to return to her bedroom. It was
7
p.m., and CeCe knew this would be the last time she'd see her mother until morning. CeCe had never known her mother to stay up later than
8
p.m. It wasn't odd when they were going to bed at the same time. As CeCe grew older and needed to stay up with her homework or finish a book, she slept in the living room until the couch became her regular bed.

CeCe turned off the stove and moved the pan to a cool eye. She opened a cabinet next to the fridge and pulled down a bowl.

“I didn't order any pictures, Mama,” CeCe said as she spooned the mix into her bowl.

“Thursday,” her mother said.

CeCe turned to look at the fifty dollars, wondering how her mother knew about picture day, of all things. CeCe planned to sit for her photo, like every year, but had no intention of hauling wardrobe changes, testing alternate sweeps of her bangs, or allowing herself to be excited. Her yearbook photos were little more than record keeping. Since Neil Armstrong Elementary, CeCe knew that photographers' props and cheerful attention were reserved for the kids who purchased the photo packets.

She pulled a fork from the dish rack and remembered the mail. Her mother usually didn't open it, but the school logo might have enticed her, or maybe the envelope had been oversized. CeCe exhaled to push away the annoyance.

“Yeah, I know,” CeCe said, dismissing the topic. She took a seat at the table with her bunless sloppy joe and flattened the paperback on the table with her forearm.

Her mother remained fixed in the doorway. “Get the big one,” she said. “The eight by ten.”

“I'm not ordering pictures,” CeCe said, already sinking into the lines of her book. She lifted several heavy forkfuls to her mouth. Her mother continued to loom.

CeCe sighed and looked at her mother. Her mother cast her gaze down the hallway, as if deciding whether to escape back into her bed.

“Please get them,” her mother said, clearing her throat and turning to CeCe again. “For me.”

The hairs on CeCe's arms lifted.

“For you,” CeCe repeated. Her mother lowered her eyes to the carpet.

“Order
my
senior pictures for
you
?” CeCe said. A scream began to claw from her gut. She closed the book, harder than she intended, and its force ignited a fuse.

“You, too,” her mother said.

She sat back in the chair, her hands clasped over her stomach. “How are you doing this for ‘me, too,' when I don't want the pictures?”

“You'll wish you had them,” her mother said, planting herself for the tsunami crash.

“Pictures. That's what you think I'll wish for?” CeCe said, straightening in her chair. Her brows crumpled into a scowl and her neck grew hot. CeCe felt the pressure of combustion beneath her skin.

“What about a birthday party, Mama? Why didn't you wish me one of those?” CeCe said icily. Her mother turned to face the bedroom, but did not retreat. CeCe swept aside her book and nudged the bowl of sloppy joe mix to the center of their table.

“How about real cooking?” CeCe continued. “No? Then how about having a
parent
at parent-teacher conferences? Or maybe having a parent show up in the emergency room when I'm getting stitches? How about showing up for anything?”

CeCe leaned her forearms against the table edge. She moved to the edge of her chair with all of her weight on the balls of her feet. CeCe made tents on the table with her fingers, the table keeping her from springing into the air.

“You should wish me a few more strangers to help me understand tampons and racism and sales tax and bra sizes and incest and gentrification and mascara and yeast infections and—”

Her mother mumbled and CeCe stood, pushed back her chair. Her fingers were still pinned to the table. “What was that?” she asked her mother. Her voice filled the kitchen. “What? Were you wishing me Easter eggs and Christmas presents? Were you wishing me Santa Claus, Mama?”

“Crimson, I said I'm sorry!” her mother croaked, her voice dense and dry, like prying open an old shed door. She remained in profile, she kept her eyes and her words pointed away from her daughter's unwinding fury.

“You're not
sorry
,” CeCe said, spitting out each word. The pressure beneath her skin and throbbed. “You're
pathetic
.”

CeCe's mother lowered her head.

“All these years, I've waited for you to apologize for all this,” CeCe said, her voice cracking. She looked at her mother shrinking in the hallway, disappearing in front of CeCe's eyes. CeCe thought of all the times she blinked and the light in her mother's eyes would be gone, giggles and sing-alongs forgotten. CeCe had learned to continue their games and songs without her mother. She was incensed that her mother was cowering now in the hallway. Her mother had no right to be sad or angry. She had no right at all.

CeCe slammed her palms onto the table. The thunderous sound radiated from the kitchen into the hallway, the living room and, CeCe hoped, beyond the moon. She continued to slam her hands on the table as she screamed louder and louder at her mother.

“You left me to figure this out all by myself!” CeCe screamed. “You left me all by myself ! You are not allowed to be sorry! You're a goddamn coward and a quitter! You are not allowed to ask me to forgive you for that!”

Her mother's shoulders shuddered and CeCe watched her sink onto the floor. CeCe picked up the bowl of sloppy joe and hurled it where her mother's profile had been.

“Shut the fuck up!” CeCe said. A smear of tomatoes and grease glistened down the wall. Her mother lay on the ground, turned away from the meat sauce, her face messy with tears.

“Don't you dare stand there and cry for me now,” CeCe hissed, pulling back her shoulders and staring down at her mother. “You didn't leave any options other than this life you made for us, and I'm stuck here in it until I go crazy too or you decide to completely give up and die.”

The words leapt from CeCe's lips and rolled across the floor tiles until they rested in front of her mother. CeCe glared at her mother and her mother gawked back at her. CeCe's entire body remained rigid with adrenaline.

Her mother slowly rolled herself to her feet. She did not survey the mess of meat on the wall and carpet. She did not hold her daughter's gaze for long. CeCe waited for guilt to begin gnawing at her, but remorse did not come. Instead, she felt sated. Like eating Sunday dinner at Pam's house. She turned away from her mother to lean against the countertop.

Her mother's voice sounded like a gargle at first and she said, “Just wanted you to have them.” She gathered the collar of her worn cardigan sweater with both hands and stared at the floor. “Always wished for mine.”

CeCe kept her eyes on the money as her mother retreated to her bedroom. Her mother would cry for hours inside that little bedroom, CeCe knew. She thought, then, about sedatives, therapy, emergency clinic admissions, Dr. Harper, and progress. She pressed her fingertips to her temples, hoping to squeeze the last of the thick sludge from inside her mind. CeCe stood there for some time, leveling her breathing. Allowing her rage to drain away.

CeCe lowered herself into the kitchen chair and watched a clump of ground beef travel down the wall. Her screams still seemed stuck in the air, and she thought and she thought about the absurdity of choices. CeCe folded her arms across her chest and fixed her eyes on the overturned bowl in the hallway. She let out a slow breath and decided she would wear a lavender top for picture day.

THIRTY-TWO

LURE

 

 

“I DON'T WANT TO GET in over my head, Pam,” CeCe said into the receiver, exasperated with her friend's relentless campaign about the types of jobs CeCe should pursue. Pam's voice sounded stripped and compressed to CeCe from so far away. Their conversations had become clipped and sporadic in Pam's first few years in Seattle, but they had settled into a satisfying rotation of bimonthly phone dates. CeCe knew her friend missed her, but CeCe would always miss and need her much more.

“I just want to find a job, Pam, not win a lifetime achievement award,” CeCe said, pressing the receiver against her ear with one hand and stacking clean bowls in the kitchen cupboard with the other.

“That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard,” Pam said. “I'm done with you.”

“Fine,” CeCe said, grinning. “Talk to you this weekend.”

Pam ended the call.

CeCe had started job hunting toward the end of spring when she learned the frame shop where she'd worked since high school was going out of business. She'd worked full time as an office assistant there for two years. She had less than two weeks until her last paycheck and no prospects in sight. In addition, her apartment building had devolved into thug-land; Rocky and Pam had moved even farther away; and her mother had adopted a new slate of troublesome habits for CeCe to monitor and manage. Picking at the tender flesh around her nail bed. Subsisting on cups of coffee unless CeCe made her eat. Napping in cooling baths with the door locked. CeCe was in a foul mood most days, a storm cloud visible above her head.

She half-heartedly scanned the papers and responded to want ads with defeat heavy on her voice. Her job search didn't become earnest until midsummer, and she found herself standing slack-jawed in the lobby of their apartment complex.

“Coretta?”

Her cousin leaned against the lobby desk flipping through a magazine. She wore a gray suit, brilliant white shirt, large pearl studs, and shiny kohl heels. Coretta checked the time beneath the peek of her shirt cuff when CeCe called her name.

“Thank God,” Coretta said, standing up straight. “I've been leaning on this buzzer for twenty minutes.”

“Mama doesn't ever expect company, so she doesn't answer the bell,” CeCe said.

Coretta furrowed her brows. “You know that's crazy, right?”

CeCe cringed a little, but shrugged her shoulders.

“I figured you wouldn't be gone too long,” Coretta said resting one manicured hand on the desk and the other on her hip. “Since you're not doing much with yourself these days.”

CeCe's eyes rolled before she could harness them. Coretta laughed.

“Suck it up, sister,” Coretta said, crossing her arms. “You're going to take this chin checking, and then you're going to get your shit together.”

CeCe stared and let her handbag fall to the floor. She knew Coretta well enough to know there would be no way to shorten or sidestep whatever speech she'd planned.

“What the hell is on your mind right now?” Coretta asked. “Why are you sitting around with no job, no classes, not doing anything?”

“I have a job,” CeCe mumbled.

“For about ten more minutes, the way I understand it,” Coretta said, crossing her arms to mirror CeCe's defiant stance. “What's your plan, CeCe?”

CeCe tried to form a rebuke. Her cousins must have reported her situation back to their mother because CeCe hadn't spoken at length with Coretta or Aunt Rosie in months. She'd grown weary of the random pep talks about her potential and questions about her goals. As if she didn't know she could be a college graduate like Pam and Rocky and her cousins. As if her fate hadn't been carved for her.

“I'm looking. I just haven't found anything,” CeCe said.

Coretta unfolded her arms and returned a manicured hand to her tailored hip. “Crimson Celeste Weathers, don't give me that bullshit,” she said. “You can't be looking too hard. Uncle Frank's son found a job in less than a month, and you know he ain't good for a damn thing.”

With her sassy cadence, crisp lipstick, and an elegant wag of her finger, Coretta reminded CeCe in that moment of Phylicia Rashād's character on
The Cosby Show
—classy, professional, lovely, and not one to be played with. Except Clair Huxtable didn't curse at her kids.

“Of course I'm looking hard,” CeCe said, snapping her hands to her hips.

“I interview applicants every week and you cannot tell me you're not able to outshine half of the weed-heads trying to find jobs all of a sudden.”

“I'm looking, all right?” CeCe said, letting her arms fall. “How you gonna tell me what I'm not doing?”

“Because I know better,” Coretta said. “You can do better.”

“Stop trying to tell me what I can do!” CeCe yelled. “I can't do anything! Why am I the only one willing to face that? I am not going to do anything more than what I've always done, stuck in this apartment with my fucking mother.”

CeCe stopped yelling before she realized Coretta had slapped her. She'd never been hit before. Her cheek burned and her eyes sprung with tears. CeCe put her hand to her face and stepped back from her cousin.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she screamed. “You can't put your hands on me!”

“Hush,” Coretta said stepping boldly to CeCe. “Don't you ever disrespect your mother like that. Ever. I don't care what you think she's done or hasn't done. Don't you ever fix your lips around her name that way again, do you hear me?”

CeCe's face and entire body twitched with rage. She still held her cheek. Coretta reached out and swatted CeCe's hand away from her own face.

“Do you hear me?” Coretta said.

CeCe nodded and began to cry.

Coretta took a deep breath and took a step back. She backed herself all the way to the check-in desk, leaning back on her elbows.

“Look, CeCe, your life hasn't been fair. I get it. Now, get over it,” Coretta said. “Your father is dead, your mother is sick, your friends have moved away, you're shy and awkward, and now you're out of a job. And you're only twenty years old. None of that shit is fair, but you have to find a way to get over all of it.”

Coretta patted the counter space next her and CeCe walked reluctantly to stand beside her.

“You're not the first person to get dealt a fucked-up hand, and you won't be the last,” Coretta said. “But you have to keep playing the game, sister. You have to figure out how to keep playing the game.”

CeCe opened her mouth to protest, but Coretta raised one silencing finger. She lifted herself from the counter and brushed at the back of her jacket. She hefted the strap of her leather work bag to her shoulder and moved toward the door.

“More than anything, CeCe, you have to figure out how to live your life. I know Carla doesn't want you trapped in this little apartment with her forever.”

“How do you know that?” CeCe said, her voice small.

“No mother would,” Coretta had said.

 

CeCe redoubled her search efforts after Coretta's visit. Pam had even teased in their phone call about tattling to Coretta. CeCe laughed when Pam disconnected their call. Immediately, the phone rang again. CeCe smiled at the receiver, laughing at her friend in advance.

“Bitch, don't make me stop this car,” CeCe squealed into the phone, parroting a line from one of their favorite movies. There was no laughter or sassy comeback, just a heartbeat of silence.

“I'm sorry,” the un-Pam voice said. “I'm looking for Crimson Weathers.”

CeCe gasped, smashing her own forehead with the palm of her hand.

“Oh, my God,” CeCe said. “I—um, this is—um, oh, God. This is—um—Crimson.”

“That's a little disappointing,” the woman said. “This is Margaret Sorensen from Capitol Properties. I'm a district manager for the Hip Pocket.”

CeCe wanted to hang up the phone, but her hand wouldn't cooperate.

“Ms. Sorensen, I am so sorry. I was talking to my best friend . . . and she . . . I thought,” CeCe stammered, stunned as the broken words continued to tumble from her mouth. “Ms. Sorensen, if you would please bear with me, I'm a little mortified right now. I was really hoping to hear from your store. I could really use a do-over right now.”

“That's not usually how life works, Crimson,” Ms. Sorensen said.

“Better than anyone, I would know,” CeCe said, “but I'm positive I could redeem myself.”

CeCe heard the woman take another heartbeat pause. Then she heard a dial tone.

She returned the phone to its cradle and dropped her head, sputtering curses down to the floor.

The phone rang.

CeCe's heart jumped. She crossed the fingers of her left hand, hoping it wasn't actually Pam this time, and picked up the phone again with her right.

“Good afternoon, Weathers' residence,” CeCe said brightly, adding the foreign salutation in hopes of scoring a few extra points.

“Yes,” Ms. Sorensen said. “May I speak with Crimson, please?”

“This is she.”

“Hello, Crimson. My name is Margaret Sorensen.”

 

When CeCe received the call, three weeks and two interviews later, to join the company's management training program, Ms. Sorensen confided that the “Weathers' residence” line had won her over.

CeCe's mother sat outside watching the courtyard when the call came in. Her mother had broadened her realm from the kitchen table to include the square slab of concrete outside their back door. CeCe never knew what prompted her mother's change of habit, but was glad to see her getting fresh air and nodding to the neighbors passing by.

CeCe pushed open the screen door and it whined on its springs, making CeCe cringe. She spent so many years as a kid being careful not to let the door bang shut, careful to maintain quiet for her slumbering mother. CeCe sat down beside her mother. She knew her mother appreciated these visits, for their sentiment and their brevity.

“It's not bad out here today,” CeCe said. “We don't have many more of these days left.”

Her mother raised her eyebrows, nodding in slow agreement.

“Guess what?”

CeCe's mother turned to face her. Her eyes were so weary now. They seemed distant from this apartment slab, from this moment. Growing up, her mother's eyes had always been far away from their life. Sitting here now, however, it wasn't terror that leapt and rolled in the back of her mother's gaze. Now, her eyes were emptied. CeCe didn't allow herself to wonder what her mother thought about now that her mind seemed cleared of the brush and thorns that had consumed so much space.

“I got the job,” CeCe continued.

She had stopped sharing her news with her mother a lifetime ago. Knock-knock jokes, poems, A-plus papers, herself, they all garnered the same blank reaction. Even with a canon of research, DSM definitions, and properly affixed labels of major depression disorder, dysthymic disorder, and catatonia, CeCe could never shake feeling of profound rejection. The therapists tried to help her cope. The books tried to help her understand. CeCe could never accept that her love and devotion would never be enough to lure her mother from such a consuming sorrow.

With deliberate effort, CeCe refused the hateful thoughts that once claimed so much of her mind and heart. With deliberate effort, she refused.

“I start next week already,” CeCe said, stretching out her legs in front of her. Her mother took a sip of coffee, and watched her daughter without expression.

“There are six of us, I think,” CeCe said. “We'll each get placed as assistant managers and then, if we're good, we'll be managers of our own store within two years.”

CeCe saw something brighten against the shadows of her mother's eyes. Just a flash, and it was gone. CeCe looked at her mother for a long, long moment. The color of her skin reminded CeCe of baked bread, but now looked dry and textured like bread, too. She worried for her mother, in spite of herself. It had always been this way. CeCe admit to herself that her worrying was a crutch of its own. Coretta had been right. Living with her mother in their tiny, starter-sized apartment would not keep either one of them safe. Sane. Alive.

CeCe felt a bolt of resolve rocket through her gut.