I smoke Brett on the way to the top, but she gets me on the down, even though we’re both creeping. The other side of the hill is unduly treacherous with a couple gallons of water at our backs, like shooting down a water slide attached to an anchor. A few times I grip the handlebars out of fear, causing a sudden surge forward. How counterintuitive, I think, smug at last knowing Brett has been running game too. Brett upped the stakes of SPOKE’s mission—the bikes will certainly improve the quality of life for the women of this village, but they aren’t the getaway vehicles for fourteen-year-old virgins she made them out to be. But you know what? Of all people, I get it. It’s not tragic enough that boys get to travel to big cities to learn and work and experience life while illiterate women mule tanks of water on their backs in their third trimesters. The truth won’t make people listen unless it is sufficiently awful.
It wasn’t awful enough that I grew up fearing every day would be the day I wouldn’t find my mother’s car in the school pickup line, would be the day she decided it was all simply too complicated. It wasn’t awful enough that I used to change the channel when Family Matters came on after Full House on Friday nights, telling my mother, I don’t really like this one because I was afraid it would hurt her feelings if I showed any interest in the mores of this nice, normal black family with the pretty daughter just a few years older than me. I put that memory and others like it on the page—the constant, small indignities and my constant, asphyxiating silence. It didn’t feel like lying when I said I was choked, though I only said that later, after I handed in those first few honest chapters and my editor’s response was unequivocal: It’s a little slow.
So I self-inflicted some battle wounds, no worse, no better than my best friend.
The valley resolves, revealing the outline of the group, cheering us on, so far and so miniature I could contain them between my thumb and index finger and squish. I roll the handlebars forward another turn, arcing around Tala. Brett appears at my hip, and for a few seconds, we stay parallel but staggered, on a collision path with a clump of wooly evergreens. To be safe, I should lean right and Brett should lean left. To win, I should play chicken and stay the course, force Brett to go wide.
“Steph!” I think I hear Brett call, but the wind has its hands cupped around my ears. I spin the handlebars until they catch, heading rock-ribbed for the trees. Brett swings a wide left, exactly like I hoped she would, leaving a narrow slit between her bike and the trees. I zip through, brakeless, so close a branch cat-claws my arm. I release a wild laugh, glancing over my shoulder, expecting to see Brett in my dust. But she’s not far behind at all. She’s coming up on me, which is impossible, because I’m at max speed. The group is just a few yards before us, forming a chanting, dancing finish line. The cameras track Brett as she crosses half a body before me. She jams a fist into the air; the victor.
We swing around and park our bikes, noses facing the direction from which we came.
“I never took you for such a daredevil,” Brett says, releasing the chinstrap of her helmet and shaking loose her wet, gnarled hair. She round-kicks one leg over the handlebars, walking over to me with her hand outstretched. “You almost had me.”
“I would have if I’d gotten the faster bike,” I say, refusing to shake.
“Steph,” Brett drops her hand with a laugh. “Be serious.”
“You were behind me,” I say. “I was going full speed. How could you pass me if you were behind me?”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” Brett’s fingers get stuck trying to flip the rat’s nest she’s made out of her hair. No woman should flip her hair past the age of sixteen. “Then you weren’t at full speed. Full speed is really fast.”
“I was going really fast.”
Brett picks a few of her long hairs out of her engagement ring with a small, discrediting smile. “Well, for you, yeah.”
For you The uptight, rule-abiding, scared-of-her-own-shadow princess. I abandon my bike without staking the kickstand. It topples on its side, clipping the backs of my ankles as Brett yells after me, “These are expensive bikes, Steph.”
You know what else is expensive? The lava stone in my guest bathroom, which Brett—au naturel Brett—stained dark with hair dye. Oh yeah—that glossy brunette mane? Not real, but Brett can’t risk going to the hair salon and being found out so she DIYs it. Also expensive, the antique silk runner in the hallway, which Brett spilled coffee on and attempted to clean using soap and water, which got the coffee out but tie-dyed the pattern. And the candy dish that belonged to my mother’s mother, which Brett shattered, drunk, trying to take off her shoes? That wasn’t expensive. But it was priceless.
I aim my big toe at the kickstand of Brett’s bike, flinging my leg over the saddle, determined to prove she gave me the lemon. I assumed the motor was off, and I’m ill prepared when it bolts forward before my feet have even touched the pedals. Instinctively, I tighten my grip on the handlebars, and before I know it I’m careening toward that cluster of trees again, my heart flung between my shoulder blades.
I don’t know why I don’t pull back. I think about it later and it’s not a blur. It doesn’t happen so fast. If anything, time seems to slow down as I speed up, according me an infinity during which to make a different choice. But still I choose to drive straight for the trees on Brett’s winning bike.
At the last moment, I make another choice. I lean right, even though the right path is not the clear one. Layla is standing in my course, witless and unmoving, a jerrican in her hand, no doubt on her way to the river by foot just so she can say on Instagram that she lived like a poor little village girl for two measly hours of her life. She is her aunt’s niece. The force of the impact throws her onto my handlebars so, for a moment, we could be one of those pictures that already comes in a frame on the top floor of Bloomingdale’s Fifty-ninth. A black-and-white stock photo of an adorable mother-daughter outing, the girl riding the handlebars in peals of laughter while her mother pushes the pedals in discomforted joy. Because that’s what it takes to be a good mother, right? Relishing your unhappiness. They thought we were related, when we got to the private hospital in the Gueliz district, because anyone who is not white must be related. The nurses and the doctors, they were all wondering why my daughter was bleeding from her ears and I wasn’t crying.
CHAPTER 16
* * *
Kelly: The Interview Present day
“I’m okay,” I tell Jesse, my heart swelling in my throat.
“I think it might help,” Jesse says, motioning to someone off camera.