While Hendrix digs out some shiny change for Kassim, Soledad’s oldest daughter, Lupe, joins us, explaining that her two sisters are still eating barbecue with Edward. She is, even at this young age, stunning. Soledad’s mother is Black and Puerto Rican. Her father is white with rich auburn hair, and Lupe gets her deeply waved, bright copper from him. With Edward’s green eyes and Soledad’s smooth, tan skin, she’s tall, already standing higher than Soledad’s five feet four inches. Everywhere this girl goes, heads turn. Already. And she’s only thirteen years old.
God bless Soledad.
“Hi, Mrs. Wade,” Lupe says and smiles. “Hey, Ms. Barry.”
She really is a great kid. Conscious of her grades, polite, and kind. I’m glad that since Soledad and I became friends, Lupe and Deja have gotten closer too.
“Hey, Deja,” Lupe offers with an even brighter smile. “Missed you in English today.”
Deja’s eyes widen, snapping to my face and then back to her friend’s. Lupe’s smile dies with a quickness and she covers her mouth, obviously realizing too late she put her foot in it.
“Why weren’t you in English class, Deja?” I demand, feeling my mother’s hand on my hip and her stern frown possessing my face.
“I had something to do,” she answers. I can tell she’s trying to brazen it out, but she knows she’s in trouble if she doesn’t come up with a better excuse than that.
“Sorry, Day,” Lupe says, chagrin all over her face.
“Mom, can we go now?” Kassim interrupts, borderline whining. “Me and Jamal are supposed to playMadden.”
“And I need to record some videos,” Deja says, glancing at her phone. “I can get one done tonight and the rest tomorrow.”
“What kind of videos?” Hendrix asks.
“I’m a natural hair influencer,” Deja says without missing a beat. “@KurlyGirly.”
“I need to see the video before you upload,” I remind her.
And to hear where you were during English class.
I don’t say that part out loud, but the look we exchange lets her know she won’t be doing one without the other.
“How could I forget?” Deja mutters, returning to her phone.
I know kids are way more web savvy than we were at that age, but Josiah and I still have protections on our kids’ devices and monitor their connections very carefully. We let Deja do this hair thing on the condition that her father or I have to see and approve everything she posts. We have all the passwords, and she already knows I will shut that thing down at the first sign of some grown man sending dick pics.
“I think we can start heading out,” I tell them. “Things will be winding down in a few. Let me just alert one of the association members who offered to close since I handled the opening.”
Before I can take one step, the DJ starts a song I’d recognize anywhere.
“Oh, no, they didn’t!” Hendrix says, jumping up from her seat on the lip of the fountain. “Not my song.”
Sure enough, the opening of “Feels Good” by Tony! Toni! Toné! blares across the Square.
“Come on, girl.” Hendrix grabs Deja’s hand. “Put that phone down and dance with me.”
And amazingly…shockingly…beautifully…my petulant daughter dances. Not with theI’m too cool for thisattitude I usually see these days, but with abandon. With joy. She and Hendrix throw their hands in the air, swivel their hips, drop it to the ground. Hendrix is completely unhindered by her vertiginous heels, matching Deja drop for drop. I’m not even sure Deja has heard this old R & B classic before, but she takes to it like it’s BTS’s latest hit. They’re laughing so hard trying to outdance each other, they clutch their bellies. By the end of the first verse, Lupe and Soledad are up twirling around too. Watching those I love enjoy themselves, I’m transfixed, and for these glorious seconds, so happy. I’ve had some dark days the last few years. Days I wasn’t sure how I’d make it.
But today.
Tonight.
Now, this is joy. I taste it in my laughter as Kassim grabs my hand and tries his best to twirl me around. I feel it in the spray of water on my face when we dance too close to the fountain. It leaps in my chest when I almost fall in, almost topple into a well full of wishes. I fix my eyes on the sky above, a blue-black quilt stitched with stars. With my arms stretched toward infinity, it feels for a moment like worship. Like a collection of sacred seconds consecrated to say thank you for friends and family and hope, that elusive emotion I didn’t realize was such a rare commodity of the heart until I had none.
People talk about the stages of grief, but there is a stage of depression—at least for me—where you go from feeling pain so acutely you can’t bear it, to feeling nothing at all. A blessed numbness after debilitating sadness. It’s like laying a thin film of steel over your emotions. So thin it’s diaphanous. You can see everything through it, but nothing actually touches you. I couldn’t feel a thing, but I embraced it because at least I wasn’t feeling pain. At that time, joy didn’t stand a chance, but tonight I feeleverything. And it is finally good.
Even after the song ends and Tony! Toni! Toné! has done it again, the laughter doesn’t leave us. It bubbles up in me as surely as the water gurgles in the fountain. I glance over to the DJ, planning to give him a thumbs-up, and am surprised to see Josiah standing beside him, arms folded, a slight smile on his face when his eyes meet mine.
He was standing there when Hendrix said how much she loved this song. Did he…