“I don’t know, I was talking to Dee and I just—I wanted to know if you’d tell me why you did it.” I need an answer, need Mama to patch together the pieces of these lives we’ve made for ourselves, give me a reason that would make her feel like mine again, like someone I might know. I need her to tell me mamas can change, that there is hope for Trevor, for Marcus, for me.
“Alright, chile. Let’s go on a walk. I gotta show you something anyway.” She holds her sleeved hand out, like the emptiness is an offering. I take it and she steps out into the hallway, closing the door behind her, and leading me back down the creak of stairs, out of this warehouse coffin.
The chill from outside creeps into me. “You sure you wanna be out here? It’s late, Mama.”
“It won’t take too long. Promise.” She nods her head toward the street.
I don’t know if this is a good idea, but the damage is done; I’m here now, holding Mama’s hand like it’s going to dissolve right into mine. I follow her, give Mama her last wish. We walk until I can smell ocean, somewhere just close enough to leave traces in the air, but too far to see.
“Before I answer you, baby, will you tell me something?”
I shrug.
“Why you start fucking with the cops, especially after what your daddy been through? I saw it on the news and I ain’t mad at you, I just want to know.”
I can’t look at her. “I don’t know, I didn’t really have no choice. I just kind of ended up in it and then there wasn’t no way out, you know?”
Mama pauses before a crosswalk, waits for a car to pass. “Then that’s why, baby. That’s why I did what I did. After your daddy died, I felt like I didn’t have no mind of my own, no body of my own, and that turned into something I couldn’t get out of. Some part of me must have remembered the door didn’t lock but I couldn’t handle breathing another minute in that pit your daddy left, so I tried to stop it all without thinking about the lock or you or Soraya, but I didn’t cut deep enough and then they told me Soraya had gotten out and drowned in that pool and I couldn’t handle nothing no more. It was like something shut down in me that ain’t never gonna come alive again and I still feel like I never made it past that day, like I haven’t lived a minute since.”
Mama’s hand is warm in mine. For the first time, I see something about her that isn’t familiar, but it’s soft. It’s the most honesty that’s come out her mouth in a real long time.
She starts talking again, a wispy voice this time. “Soraya took her first step right down by the pool, remember?” Here we go again; Mama always comes back to her spiral. I let go of her hand, slip mine into my pocket. “We was out there listening to the radio ’cause the game was on and it was a nice day and Marcus was out with the boys and you was complaining about how all the other girls in yo class was going to some party and I wasn’t about to let you go on a Wednesday. And I swear you was about to throw a fit and I was ready to give yo ass a beating and I turned around and she was standing, bubbles coming out her mouth, lifting one foot up and setting it in front. Then she moved the other and did it again and I just wanted to watch that child forever but she was walking straight toward the water, like she was tryna dive in, had this look in her eyes like all she wanted to do was taste it.”
“And you picked her up and set her down further from the pool, but she dropped right down to her hands and knees, back to crawling,” I add, image clear as the sky that day.
“Never got to see her walk again.” Mama’s tears are running again and we’re on International Boulevard, but it looks different tonight: Mama’s face, my skin covered, not knowing where I’m walking. Following. She walks slightly in front of me, quiet. Don’t know the last time I saw Mama this quiet, and even though she says she’s showing me something, the pace is slow enough you’d think we were walking aimless.
At Foothill Boulevard, Mama reaches for my hand again. I wrench my arm away from her and then let it slowly trickle back down to my side. Mama tries again, this time looping her hand around my fist so hers is like my fist’s shell. I don’t bother trying to move it, let Mama shuffle us forward toward where the streetlights go hazy. It ain’t no shock that Camila is standing there, that she is so easy to see in her silver flash, arm looped with a girl who I know is at least twenty years younger than her simply from the way she walks: zigzagged and tender.
The intersection runs wild with cars that are so beat-up they don’t even have speedometers. Camila doesn’t see me, probably because I blend into the night. I tell Mama to hold up and she releases her grip on my hand tentatively, like she’s worried I’m gonna run.
Camila has her friend half jogging to keep up with the stride of her legs, their length amplified by heels I couldn’t dream of walking in without tripping. She reaches up into the air in front of her and swats, closing her fist around some invisible fly or bit of fuzz that only she can see.
I run across the street, Mama quick-walking to keep up with me, and shout out Camila’s name. She spins, her smile already telling me she knows exactly who’s calling her. Her arm is unlooped and springing toward me in seconds, wrapping around my waist in the tightest hug.
“Mija.” She’s got silver hair to match, with bangs that flutter right toward her eyelashes, adorned in glitter flakes.
I ask her how she’s been and she ignores the question. “Seen you all over the news. My baby ho didn’t tell me she got a whole ring out here, shit.” I don’t know if she’s proud or impressed or jealous, but I don’t think it matters with Camila. She don’t really give a shit if it ain’t hurting her, gonna help you till she can’t no more and she doesn’t mind leaving after that. Never met someone who could love you that hard and leave you without a second thought.
I shrug. “Didn’t mean to or nothing.”
She looks me up and down, at my sweatpants and sneakers. “You really ain’t about to get none tonight looking like that.”
“Not doing that no more,” I say, nodding my head toward Mama. “My mama and I just taking a walk.”
“In that? Girl, I always knew you was crazy.”
I glance toward the other girl, who is fidgeting with her necklace and bending her knees like an old woman trying to regain mobility. I scan the area for one of the cars always nearby Camila: tinted windows. I don’t see anything even close to that nice out here, look back at Camila, and ask her again, “How you been?”
“Things been a little rough since Demond got taken in. Lot of the girls got put in group homes and some of us got locked up too. I spent two days in one of them cells, but they fined me and let me go, prob’ly ’cause I’m old as shit and it ain’t no waste having me out here.” She laughs, combs her fingers through her wig. “Lost most of the regulars so I’m back to escorting. I ain’t mind but hard to keep ’em from getting too handsy, you know?” She tugs at her skirt. “Been a little rough.”
I hadn’t even noticed the bruising until she started pulling at her skirt, trying to cover up the blue that spots her thighs: the constellations of finger to finger pressed deep. I don’t feel or think much of anything besides oh. Of course this is the way it plays out. Of course Camila is silver and bruised. Of course.
I nod and Camila smiles through her ache. I lean in to hug her again. “You be good, okay?”
She touches my cheek and nods. “See you soon.”
This time, I am the one to give a pat on the back and walk in the other direction. And we both know there will be no soon, no running into each other on the streets in a week or a month or a year. Maybe there will be a sideways glance from a bus window, a could that be her behind the wrinkles, but there will never be another seeing, another embrace. When I walk back to Mama, I take her hand voluntarily and she lights up from the chest outward.
She takes us beyond Foothill, beyond International, down the hill toward the underpass.
“You lost?” I ask Mama.