a licking for it later. I couldn’t help myself though. Her face called to me and so I went, looking over every inch of it, memorizing every pore, wondering how someone so perfect-looking could walk around like normal people and let barbeque sauce drip on her dress. Even after I realized she wasn’t perfect, I couldn’t stop looking at her. Her smile was like a slow song after a long day. It just hit the spot.
Adrian didn’t mind me looking at his mother. He was used to people staring. She wasn’t. She’d always turn to me and say, “Baby, is my slip showing?” Adrian was proud of her beauty because it meant so much to me.
I was proud, too. Of Daddy, who never stared at Adrian’s mother like all the other men. It would have been easy and nobody would have thought bad of him for it—Mama stared at her, too—but he kept his eyes glued on Mama until the last dish was washed and the last chair emptied. Only when we took the middle leaf out of the table and shoved it back to its normal size, did his heart scamper away from us.
I sometimes wondered if Daddy didn’t stick around because of those Sundays, if he didn’t swallow each Sabbath evening like a pill, gulping every second, hoping that some morsel of that love would protect him from the war to be fought in the same kitchen over the next week. If Jordan hadn’t left, the Sundays may have kept things going. Tided us all over with a little hope.
But Jordan did leave, and when he did, Mama took the middle leaf out of the table and covered it with a white plastic cloth and stuffed letters under it. Letters marked “Return to Sender.” I’d tied them all up and set them in a box in case Jericho ever wanted them. Until today, the table had graced my foyer, cherry wood gleaming under a burgundy linen cloth and mats of forest green. I never found the middle leaf. That Daddy had known where it was all along had never occurred to me.
Until now.
The scent of hot fish caught me on the stairs. I’d stopped at first, my heart galloping, trying to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. The coconut oil Daddy used to cook it—his secret ingredient—floated into the hall and lingered around my head. I stepped cautiously to my door. Laughter and music greeted me from the other side.
He didn’t. Surely not.
Before I could turn the knob, the door swung open. Jordan’s girlfriend, whatever her name was, opened the door. “It’s her!” she squealed, her makeup bunching up into a blur of beiges, greens and blues.
“Yes, it’s me. At my own house. What a surprise,” I mumbled.
Licking his fingers, Jordan appeared behind MissTammy Faye. “Surprise!” he shouted as I stumbled into the foyer. The spot where the leaf table used to be, waiting quietly, burdened with flowers, too afraid to remember what wonders it had once beheld, was now bare. The old table, bold and full of memories adorned the living room. All twelve original chairs circled the oval of cherry wood.
I swallowed hard and forced my feet toward the smell of hush puppies rolling in a vat of olive oil, taken from my soap supplies, no doubt. He’d probably borrowed the coconut oil, too. I ignored Trevor and Dahlia, intertwined on the couch. My couch.
It’s her house, too. Let it go.
Sure she’d grown up here, but I’d redone the place, helped Mom buy it from the co-op. And here Daddy had gone and done this? Just as I was about to melt down, my niece bounded out of the bathroom with those antenna pigtails and Trevor’s chocolate-drop eyes. She was beautiful, like Adrian’s mother. I could hardly take my eyes off her.
The little girl matched my steps and took my hand. “Hey,” is all she said, as if she’d been waiting for me.
“Hey yourself.” I saddled her on my hip—though I hadn’t planned on it—and considered how I’d fix her hair so that gravity could do its work. We shuffled past Rochelle and her driver friend. I tried to smile, but I’m sure it came out more like one of those Gary Payton smirks from the NBA finals. You know, the “How you doing? Well, I hope you’re well because I’m about to kick your behind” look? That one.
Sierra clung to my neck. “You have a pretty house,” she said. “It’s happy.”