Her nod is slow and uncertain, and I feel a bit of remorse. Maybe I was harsh with her, but it pissed me off to hear her talk about what Yas went through, not only dismissively, but with blame. I kiss her forehead to remove some of the sting, and my own words play back. Defending Yasmen to Deja. Trying to understand. There’s a voice in the back of my mind wondering if I should have done more of that when I had the chance.
Chapter Seven
Yasmen
This is the fourth year of Screen on the Green.” I grip the mic and smile to the crowd gathered on the lawn of Sky Park. “And on behalf of the Skyland Association, thank you all for coming. Now, before we start with our feature,Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Sinja Buchanan, who owns Honey Chile right off the Square, is coming to do some movie trivia with you.”
I hand off the mic and step down from the small dais, ready to head toward the spot where Hendrix and Soledad are already camped out. I haven’t seen them since brunch last week, and my lips quirk with the beginnings of a grin at the thought of an evening with my girls.
“So good to see you, Yasmen,” Deidre Chadworth says, stopping me with a hand on my shoulder when I’ve almost reached my friends.
“Oh, thanks, Deidre.”
More than once, a well-meaning neighbor stopped by, ringing the doorbell, waiting on the porch with a casserole or pot of stew. Some days I just ignored them until they went away. Deidre, one of the more persistent ones, hadn’t brought food. Being the owner of our local bookstore, Stacks, she always came bearing books.
“I stocked the new Sarah MacLean release,” she says, her smile and the wicked glint in her hazel eyes telling me it’s a hot one. “And the new Beverly Jenkins.”
“I’ll try to make it in this week.” I touch her arm, speckled with sun spots and decorated with jangling bracelets. “And I never thanked you for all the times you came by when I was…”
I’m not sure how I want to talk about my depression. My philosophy had always been to deal with shit and move on—until the thing happened that I just couldn’t move onfrom. It was like waking up every morning on a narrow window ledge and wondering…Is today the day I fall?
“Oh, honey,” Deidre says, squeezing my hand. “I understand. I lost three before I had my Charlie.”
“I didn’t realize. I’m so sorry, Deidre.”
“Two were miscarriages, and that was hard enough, but that last one.” I recognize the kindred pain flickering in her eyes. “Like Henry, he was a stillbirth.”
Unless you’ve been through it, you don’t grasp the powerful horror of that word.
Stillbirth.
Entry into a world that child has already departed. The paradox of birth and death swaddled in one soundless moment. Not the first slap on the bottom and cry of new life, but a mother’s dirge. A bell that never tolls. I curled into myself in a sterile room with starchy white sheets, hot, silent tears carving grief into my cheeks. Sinking through my pores and infecting the marrow. An inescapable pain shut up in my bones.
“You learn to live with it, ya know?” Deidre says, sympathy, rare understanding in the smile she offers. “But anyone who thinks you ever ‘get over it’ hasn’t lost what we have. I’m just glad you’re still here.”
Grief is a grind. It is the work of breathing and waking and rising and moving through a world that feels emptier. A gaping hole has been torn into your existence, and everyone around you just walks right past it like it’s not even there.
But all you can do is stand and stare.
In the still-bright evening, I blink tears away and return Deidre’s smile. “Thank you, and I’ll come in this week.”
By the time I reach Hendrix and Soledad, I’ve composed myself, dry eyes and bright smile firmly in place.
At five foot ten sans shoes, and clearing six feet in stacked-heel sandals, Hendrix wears ripped skinny jeans and a cobalt-blue halter top, coupled with oversized hoops and gold hair cuffs woven into her braids.
“You look great,” I say, reaching out to touch the silky material of her blouse.
“Thanks. Lotus Ross has this new plus-size line called Mo’ Better.” Hen chef-kisses. “Perfection.”
“Oooh. I need to check her stuff out,” Soledad says.
“Yeah, she does have clothes for your little narrow ass too.” Hen ducks when Soledad pretends to punch. “Just saying. Mo’ Better is for the mo’ bigger.”
“There may be a lot of things narrow on this body.” Soledad slaps her own butt. “But this ass ain’t one of ’em.”
It takes a few blankets spread on the grass to accommodate Soledad’s entire brood. Three girls in varying shades of their mother, with physical flashes here and there of Soledad’s wretched husband, sprawl on the grass, grabbing and passing around food from Soledad’s picture-perfect picnic basket.
“There’s quiche Lorraine,” Soledad says. “And a salad I tossed before we left the house. You’ll love it. There’s olives and spinach and feta. Tomatoes for a pop of color.”