Finding Jupiter, page 14
I move a seat cushion from beside where Momma sits on the couch and place it on the floor in between her feet, where I’ve been sitting for the past hour. I lean back down and return to pinching off small sections from a bundle of synthetic hair and passing them to her to add onto individual braids. I picked soft, wavy, shoulder-length black-to-lilac ombré hair this time, for a mermaid bob effect—switching it up for my senior year.
I wore my hair parted down the middle in two French braids most of my life, including my freshman year at Crestfield. There was something about suddenly being one of few Black girls in a white community that changed me in subtle ways that I didn’t notice until well after I’d already changed. I don’t think I would have noticed if Cash hadn’t said anything.
When I came home for the summer after ninth grade, Cash pointed out that I kept running my right hand over my right ear, swiping away phantom long, loose hairs from my tight French braids. After a year surrounded by white girls constantly tossing their hair out of their faces or sweeping it over from one shoulder to the other, I realized that I had picked up that behavior—like when I got my braces off in eighth grade but kept licking my teeth and closing my lips over braces that were no longer there.
I wasted no time getting box braids installed that summer. I’ve taken them out and gotten them reinstalled every winter and summer break since then. My natural hair is only about eight inches long, stretched out. I keep it trimmed short because it’s easier to wash and go in between styles. I love the way I feel between braid installs on school breaks, when I can finger-comb it and let it air-dry into a fuzzy Afro. I get to be one hundred percent just me under the sky for a few weeks out of the year. At school, I just don’t have time to do the daily maintenance required to keep my natural hair healthy, so I keep it in fly protective styles with braids.
For me, that’s a big deal.
“Well? I’ve been trying to let you bring it up, but you’ve been mighty quiet about Mr. Orion,” Momma says, surprising me.
“I didn’t know you were interested in hearing about him. The last time I said his name, your whole vibe changed.”
She also acted like that when I brought up the accident again. But I’m not saying that yet. One thing at a time.
“The first time you said his name, you said you might never see him again.” She pulls the braid tight and loops in another piece of hair, the feathery lilac ends hanging over my shoulder. “You’ve seen him three times since, and you’ve given him your cell phone number, which is a far cry from never. So what’s going on with you two?”
I haven’t stopped thinking about what’s going on with us…what went on with us the night before last. My body is still buzzing from the way we touched. “Nothing out of the ordinary, Momma. He’s a cute boy who likes me. We’ve hung out a few times. Typical.”
“Do you plan to hang out some more?”
I hold up a section of hair. She takes it and starts another braid.
“Maybe.”
She stops braiding my hair, and I can feel her side-eyeing me through the back of my head.
“Okay, yes. Jeez, Nosy. Yes, I plan to hang out with him again, as much as possible, actually, before I go back to school.” I chuckle, but she doesn’t.
“I see. Tell me about this Orion who moved your hang meter from never to as much as possible in the span of one week.” She sounds chill about this compared to how she was the last time Orion came up, but she’s restarted this same braid three times now. She never has to start a braid over.
“He’s nice. He loves his cats. He’s an amazing swimmer—he went to Junior Olympics when he was fifteen. He’s going to the US Open in a little over a week. He plays guitar.” I stop talking because I’m beginning to feel giddy, but I don’t think Momma’s trying to hear all that.
I wait for her to respond, but after a few moments of nothing, she goes on braiding quietly and the silence lingers, aside from a few deep sighs from her that I don’t think I’m supposed to notice.
“Well, I don’t have to ask how you feel about the boy. I can hear it all in your voice. I have to be honest, baby, I’m not thrilled that you’re getting involved with some boy right before he goes off to college. It seems like a lot of buildup, just to drop off in a couple of weeks. I want to be there whether you sink or swim with this thing, but to do that, I need to know you’re in the water. Promise me you’ll let me know if it starts to get serious. We don’t keep secrets from each other.”
The one time I actually like a boy, a decent boy…This could be my first love—why can’t she just encourage it?
“We don’t keep secrets from each other?” On top of everything else she hasn’t said over the years, she’s hidden the journals. I went back to search them again the other day, and they were gone.
“What is this tone?”
“I’m just saying, I didn’t know we were so open with everything in this house.”
“Ray?” Her voice is all I know the hell you not, but I have to keep going.
“I saw your journal.” As soon as the words escape me, I wish I could stuff them back in, but fear and I-don’t-know-what-else propel me forward. “The one you kept after I was born. That’s what my text was about.” I take a deep breath and brace myself for whatever she might come back with, but she just keeps braiding, which agitates me. “If we don’t keep secrets, why did you never mention the journals? Who did you have to forgive?”
She reaches her hand out for another section of hair.
“Baby. Whatever you saw…that notebook was therapy and recovery work. It’s full of made-up details to help jog my memory. Writing prompts—homework between sessions. There’s nothing to…whatever you think you saw. There isn’t anything…”
Whatever I think I saw? “Please don’t do that, Momma. I went back for another look at the journal and it was nowhere to be found.”
She stops braiding as I continue.
“Whether there’s anything to what I definitely saw or not, you didn’t answer my question. Why didn’t I know that you remembered? I’ve asked you for details before. You said you don’t recall. The faceless angel with dreadlocks who fished you out of ‘the sea of darkness’…the mermaid-tail sketches…Those might be made-up things from a writing prompt. But you clearly wrote that you met and forgave the EMT. That’s a big deal. I’m just saying, it’s weird to keep that from me. And you’re hiding it from me still, because you moved the box when you saw that I’d disturbed it.”
She starts braiding my hair again without a word. My heart is racing—accusing my mom of things—but I can’t carry these questions around inside anymore.
“Ray, one day, when you’re a mother…” She takes a long pause. “There are things we keep from our children, not to deceive them, but to protect them.”
“But I’m not a child anymore. I’m seventeen.”
“I had no reason to share it with you. It’s just ramblings of a grieving widow and a scared mother. I don’t know who the man was. There’s nothing in that journal that would have added anything good to your life.” She tilts my head down for the next braid and mutters, “Especially not now.”
“What does that mean?” She’s so committed to keeping those journals shrouded in secrecy.
What else is she hiding?
“And you’re never old enough to think it’s okay to rifle through my personal things. That was a messed-up thing to do. You’d have a fit if you thought I’d been in that tree house of yours looking through your art journals.”
Wow. She’s trying to turn this around on me.
We sit in silence as she finishes the rest of my hair.
* * *
When she finished my braids she couldn’t get out of here fast enough. She jumped right into the shower and told me not to wait up. As soon as she leaves for her night out, I go to the Hoarding Room. I’m never going to see that journal again, but there must be something else from those days that could hint at why the hell she’s being so tight-lipped. I start with the box of journals, and, as expected, the used ones are missing.
Next I thumb through a box of old pictures. Every year she goes through these plastic photo albums of her and my dad, spanning their entire relationship. I stop on a picture from their nursing-school graduation. They look so happy. I’ve never seen my mom smile like that in my entire life. I load the books back into the box, and before I close it, I notice a loose picture sticking out from below the albums at the bottom. I tug on the corner of the photo and it slides right out.
It’s a photo of me at my dad’s graveside when I was five or six. I have the same one—Momma framed it and gave it to me before I left for boarding school. Except this one isn’t cropped. My mom is at the top of the hill, leaning on the car, watching me. She doesn’t seem to know someone is taking our picture. I flip the photo over.
Thank you for meeting with me. I hope this helps.
I don’t know who took this photo; obviously my mom does. She never mentioned that the photo framed for me had been cropped. I’ve always assumed she took it. She’s never told me otherwise. More secrets.
* * *
I toss and turn most of the night. I listen to the radio for a while, but all the love songs just make me think about Orion and our date and everything we did in the tree house. Every time I close my eyes, I see his long eyelashes, just inches away from mine, and the texture of his skin, which makes me think about the way he asks me to say his name sometimes. How urgently he held on to me. How amazing his body felt against mine.
I need to see him again.
Like. Now.
But it’s after one in the morning, and it’s not happening. I reach for my cell phone. Orion texted me our selfies. I flip through them and wish for a miracle. When I see a text notification pop up with Orion’s name, I believe in magic.
My thumbs fly across my phone screen, faster than my brain can comprehend.
Me: Can’t stop thinking about you!
Too eager. Delete.
Away at boarding school, on breaks at Bri’s, whenever I get to feeling some kind of a way, I text Cory, who lives near her. He doesn’t ask any questions. He gives me what I need and doesn’t expect any keys to my secret parts. I’d never in a million years message him “I can’t stop thinking about you.” Our thing has never really been about him…it’s always been about it.
With Orion, it’s different. He’s different.
Curious, I look for Cory’s name and scan our old messages—his last text asking me if I was up, sent the night before Bri and I returned to school from Memorial Day weekend, unanswered. He’s miles away, but even the thought of him touching me or seeing me makes me squirm in my blankets. I feel like I’m on a train with no stops in sight, flying full speed ahead toward a brick wall. I don’t know if I could get off this ride even if I wanted to at this point. I try to think of something that’s honest but a little less thirsty to send Orion.
Me: Can’t stop thinking about the tree house + you + me.
I wait for several seconds, but it feels like an eternity.
Orion: Hey! Same. What are you doing up?
Me: Thinking about the tree house…
Orion: Ok. Now you got me thinking about it too…
I chew my lip.
Me: I want to kiss you again. What are you doing tomorrow?
Orion: lol I want you to kiss me again. I’m on lifeguard duty at the Davis YMCA until 3.
Me: I’m coming to see you. Will you take me home after?
Orion: Yeah
Me: Good. I’ma try to go to sleep now so tomorrow can get here faster.
Orion: I don’t think I’m going to sleep at all tonight. lol
Neither am I.
NINETEEN
Ray
12 DAYS
The bus stop is right in front of the Davis YMCA. I arrive an hour before Orion’s off work. I walk through the pool entry and it’s like walking into a Gordon Parks photograph, except in full color. Like most places in Whitehaven, the pool looks like it hasn’t been remodeled since the sixties, but is really well-preserved. Three lifeguards are working, all near carbon copies of each other: tall with deep brown skin made ebony by a summer spent in the sun, and mops of wet, tightly coiled hair atop their heads.
I have no intention of actually swimming today, but I’m dressed for the pool. Specifically, I’m dressed for Orion. On a mission. He’s conducting swim tests for little kids, all in matching camp T-shirts, near the big waterslide. He hasn’t noticed me yet. He’s hyping the kids up before it’s their turn to swim. He’s all high fives, exaggerated tiny splashes, and fist pumps in the air. Something about seeing him this way makes my heart flutter.
I drag an empty chaise into a shaded area beside the pool, spread my towel over it, and sit down. I situate my book and my bottle of water on a table next to me and stretch out on the lounger to get comfortable. I glance over to see if Orion has spotted me yet. He hasn’t. I put my earbuds in, and Beyoncé and Luther Vandross sing “The Closer I Get to You.” My eyes find Orion again.
It’s hard for my mind not to wander into what-ifs. There are girls at school in long-distance relationships with boys back home or boys at other schools. It wouldn’t be terrible to be one of those girls, I guess. I open my book to one of my favorite short stories but stare at the pages and daydream while my Beyoncé Every Day playlist runs. Could Orion and I do this? Could we be a real thing? That would mean letting myself get even more wrapped up in him, and we only have about two weeks left together. It’s like emotional suicide. Maybe Momma is right.
I look up from my book and Orion is smiling at me from the water.
He waves and I wave back. We spend the next few songs glancing at each other every few minutes and smiling like goofballs. When he has high-fived the last kid in line, Orion climbs out of the water and disappears into the locker room. I fluff my braids and tug at my outfit, making sure everything’s sitting right when he reemerges.
He relieves another lifeguard in the high chair overlooking the pool. He mouths thirty minutes to me, making a three and zero with his fingers, and I give him a thumbs-up.
A song intro begins and I already know it’s “Daddy,” a love song from Beyoncé to her father. Hard pass. I tap my screen to skip it.
Thirty minutes fly by.
“Crazy in Love” blasts in my ear as Orion climbs down from his post and walks my way. I pretend I don’t see him approaching. As gracefully as I can, I tug the headphone cord resting between my lips and remove my earbuds one after the other and wrap them around my phone. I pick my book back up moments before he stands beside me. I look up and make sure I smize before blinking into a full smile. Bri would be so proud.
“You changed your hair,” he says.
“Yeah. You like it?”
He nods enthusiastically with a big ole grin. He clears his throat. “What, you over here pretending to read?”
“Reading,” I say, and hold the cover of ZZ Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere up to him, which proves nothing.
“Let me guess: a single woman has various encounters with strangers at different coffee shops around NYC.”
“Not even close, but I would totally read that book and watch the movie. It’s a collection of short stories. The one I’m currently reading is about the only all-Black Girl Scout troop at camp. It’s hilarious.” I’ve read this book so many times—never mind if I was just staring at the page in a daze today. “I was hoping I’d get to see you be a hero.” I try not to ogle his body, but he laughs and his chest flexes and I almost drop my book. He was shirtless the entire time we were at his pool party, but something about seeing him in his official red lifeguard shorts and knowing he could totally save my life if I was drowning makes him ten times hotter.
“There’s plenty of day ahead of us. I’ma save you later…give you all the mouth to mouth you need.”
“You just said that with a straight face. Um, wow, okay. Smooth,” I say, cool as a cucumber.
He slides a chair over next to me and sits down in a spot that gives him a full view of my stretched-out body. I’m wearing a turquoise tank suit with a white zipper down the front, which I know makes my melanin pop. He very deliberately gives me the once-over. He wants me to see him look.
“Nice swimsuit,” he says.
“Thanks. I’m glad you like it.” He reaches for my hand and I give it to him. He caresses my palm with his fingers, drawing circles. I’m melting into a useless heap when a group of kids cannonball at the same time across from us.
“We should take a selfie.”
This guy and selfies, I swear. He runs into the locker room to get his phone.
He kneels beside me and flips the camera around. With our faces pressed together, he counts down, and on three he kisses my cheek.
“You know what I liked the most about the other night?” he asks.
I shake my head, dazed.
Orion’s smoldering face morphs into a toothy grin as his eyebrows dance up and down. A laugh escapes me that is way too loud, because every nerve on the surface of my body is tingling. I slap his shoulder playfully, and my abs ache.
“So, Jupiter”—Orion playfully draws out my name—“have you talked to your mom about me?”
