“Yeah, they are.” I clear my throat. “I wasn’t sure you were gonna make it.”
“I almost didn’t come.” Her laugh is reluctant, reserved. “I probably shouldn’t have.”
“I’m glad you did.” I brush her fingers with mine and turn my head to look directly into her eyes. “Really glad.”
“Ez.” She pulls her fingers away, lowering her head so her hair falls forward to partially obscure her profile. “Don’t.”
“We need to talk.” I reset my attention on the step team, on Noah sitting on the edge of his new trampoline wearing wonder all over his face. “Don’t leave, okay?”
Her chest heaves with the weight of her sigh. She’s wearing skinny jeans and one of those stretchy, tube top-y kind of strapless shirts. It outlines the fullness of her breasts and the dramatic dip of her waist and ass.
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “Mona was right. She—”
“Mona doesn’t know what I need to tell you. Not yet. Stay. I want to talk to you after everyone leaves.”
She hesitates, but she finally nods.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Kimba!” Noah runs up. “You came!”
“I told you I would.” She smiles down at him. “Dude, your party is amazing.”
“Thank you.” He bounces on the tips of his toes. “We’re about to open gifts.”
“My favorite part!” Kimba says. “I hope you like mine.”
“You got me a present?” Noah’s eyes stretch and his mouth falls open.
“Of course I did.”
“Let’s go over to the gift table and check out your birthday haul,” I tell him.
It’s quite a lot. I don’t even remember getting this many gifts at my Bar Mitzvah. I think of the eighteen Pixie Stix Kimba gave me and can’t help but look over at her and smile. She’s standing a few feet away with Mona and lifts one brow.
“What?” she mouths.
I shake my head and mouth back. “Later.”
Her gift is one of Noah’s favorites, and one of mine, too.
“Ezra’s Big Shabbat Question.” Noah reads the title of the book once he’s torn off the wrapping paper. The book isn’t that large, but my name leaps out at me immediately, of course. There’s a brown boy on the cover wearing a yarmulke. I go completely still and don’t think I’m even breathing. What a book like this would have meant to me thirty years ago when no one at my synagogue resembled me. A book like this would have reflected me when the only place I saw myself was in a mirror. That she found this book and shared it with my son? It means everything.
“Wow.” Noah’s small face sobers. “This is…it’s great, Kimba. Thank you so much.”
I think he knows this book really means something. For him, maybe for me. His blackness hides deeper in his pores than mine, diluted even further by Aiko’s Vietnamese heritage, but I make sure he knows my history, my father’s history, and his father before him. I make sure he knows about all the influences, cultures and ethnicities that came together to make him who he is. It’s a rich, varied heritage, and I wouldn’t shortchange any part of it.
“I’m glad you like it.” Kimba shrugs, smiles. “I saw it in the bookstore and just thought…”
“It’s perfect,” I say.
She drags her eyes from Noah’s face to mine, and if I could kiss her right now I would. She looks away and chews at the corner of her mouth.
“Noah!” one of his classmates calls. “Trampoline.”
“You go on,” I tell him, taking the book from him. “I’ll hold on to this.”
He runs off, leaving Kimba and me in an electric storm of silence.