Finding Jupiter, page 19
Killing the engine, I try to stop crying. “Breathe,” I whisper. But my brain won’t quiet long enough to think. I exhale and a scream comes out instead.
I have an impulse to get out of the car and run, but run where…and from whom? My father’s headstone comes to mind, the grass between my toes.
I can’t run from myself anymore.
No more tiptoeing around Momma’s feelings. I deserve to know the whole truth…so I can fully free myself from this bullshit.
My father’s grave site plays in my mind and blurs into Orion’s face.
I shake off the thoughts of Orion. His touch. The sweetness of his love. Was any of that even real? If he could hide his dad’s connection to me and my mom—whatever it is—could he have faked his interest in me too? Was this some kind of twisted curiosity of his?
My hands shaking, I start the engine and drive toward the hospital where Momma has just started her night shift. She should have told me. Those flowers on Nora’s grave…she knew who Orion was and said nothing. Just let me fall for him. The anger simmering in me boils as I park.
In seconds I’m walking through the hospital doors. I don’t wait for the elevator and take the stairs to her floor. The nurses’ station is steps ahead when someone gently grabs my arm.
“Ray? You’re Rosalyn’s girl, right?” An older Black woman in scrubs who looks vaguely familiar is caressing my arm now like I’m some kind of wounded bird. I look over at my reflection in a glass interior window beside me. I’m soaked to the bone and my eyes are swollen. My flower crown is sideways, and bits of lavender dust my shoulders like snow.
“Yes,” I say, looking at her badge. “Ms. Davis, can you tell her that I need to see her, please?”
“She’s tending to a birth right now, sweetie—is it an emergency? Are you all right?”
“No. No, I’m not all right. But I can wait until she gets home.” I take off my flower crown and offer it to the nurse. “Can you please give this to her, and let her know I stopped by?”
Ms. Davis nods. I head down the hallway and don’t look back.
* * *
Part of me is glad Momma was busy, because I probably would have started to cry all over again. I walk into my house and don’t bother turning on the lights. I find my way through the dark into the den and crash onto the sofa. Suddenly, I’m exhausted. I close my eyes, but sleep doesn’t come. I’ll just get in my bed—deal with all of this in the morning. I head to my room as questions flood my mind.
How could she let me walk into Orion’s house tonight, knowing whatever it is she knows…knowing that I didn’t? Why did Mr. Roberson take that photo of me? Why did he give it to her? How long have they—
I jump when the house phone rings.
I blocked him on my cell, but now Orion is blowing up my house phone. My heart is racing. Twice more, he calls without leaving a message. It rings again and my fingers flinch. What could he possibly have to say?
Brriiiiiiing.
Ugh. I rush over, hand hovering over the receiver.
Brriiiiiiing.
But what would it change?
The ringing stops, and I bite my lip. I just want…I don’t even know what I want. I’m so confused. I’m heading back down the hall when the phone rings a fifth time. Ugh! Fine. I dash back and reach for the phone, but before I answer, the voice mail picks up.
Beeeeeeep. It’s my mom.
“Ray. If you’re there, baby, pick up. I’m so sorry you found out this way. I heard from Douglas—Mr. Roberson. I was gonna tell you in your tree house, but you ran off. I really messed things up. So many things should have gone differently. You don’t deserve any of what’s happened to you. Are you there?”
don’t feel
from known things.
Don’t talk.
Let the moon shine down.
Papa and mama and nobody else.
Silence. Waiting.
Think about her.
Cut the darkness. Spark a fire.
Her shadow, black, open.
The feeling of absence and nothingness.
closed in.
Every sob flew out the top of pine trees.
He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Ray
6 DAYS
It’s almost six a.m. when my mom comes home from work. The house is dark, but I’ve turned on a lamp in the den. She closes the door behind her and sets her bag down. She freezes when she sees me awake and waiting on the sofa.
She retrieves the flower crown from her bag and sits on the sofa next to me. The flowers and tattered stems fill the space between us. If I look anything like I feel, I’m a colorless hag with eyes red and swollen from hours of crying and restless sleeping.
“I need answers, Momma.” My throat is sore from sobbing, and the words come out in a whisper. She closes her eyes. “Please. Don’t make me ask any questions. Just…tell me.” By the lamplight, I can see tears wet her face. “Please, Momma. No more silence. I can’t take it anymore.” Inside I want to yell, scream, demand. All the things. But I’m so tired, I don’t have any more fight in me.
“My Jupiter. I wish there was some way…someplace to start that would make all of this…”
As angry and as confused as I am right now, I still need her to comfort me. So when she extends her palm to me, silently asking for my hand, I place mine in hers reflexively. It takes everything in me not to fall into her arms.
“Let me start at the beginning.” Her hand tightens around mine. “The night your father died, I was exhausted and about to pop. I hadn’t wanted to go, but he’d insisted since it would be our last time going anywhere, just the two of us in the world. We went to our favorite spot about an hour outside the city.
“On the way back, I was supposed to talk to him….” She closes her eyes, and a tear slips down her face. “I—I was supposed to keep him company, b-but I fell asleep.” She takes a big breath and I squeeze her hand.
“The next thing I remember are labor pains, staring at the sky, praying that Ray would answer me when I called his name, and praying that help would come soon. Then I woke up in the hospital. And everything in between has always been a little fuzzy. But in therapy I did remember a man.”
“Orion’s father.” Of course. He was the angel from her journal.
Her eyes widen. “Yes, but there was so much going on—so many details. I didn’t put it all together until years later.” This doesn’t comfort me.
I take a deep breath. “Go on, Momma.”
“The next year, on your birthday, I visited your daddy’s grave. His presence was so powerful there, and you were so peaceful when I laid you down on the grass. I left a bundle of lavender that year and every one since. The year you turned seven, the honeysuckle showed up.” She wipes another tear. “F-from Douglas, Orion’s father, even though I didn’t know it yet.
“I met Douglas for the first time when you were in middle school. He’d seen the news about that mural contest you won for City Beautiful. He wanted to offer a gift to you, for your future…for college. A city bus had struck and killed Nora while he was away, and he’d seen it as his karma—for causing the accident that killed your father. Seeing you, all those years later, felt like his opportunity for redemption.
“He gave me the photograph of you at the grave and assured me, quickly, that he wasn’t a stalker. He confessed that he’d been there that night. He knew details, like the way your father’s cell phone had been wrapped in silver duct tape. He knew, because he’d used it to call nine-one-one. See, Douglas had been driving a long distance on too little sleep and drifted over the double lines—just enough to see the car in the oncoming lane swerve out of the way. We crashed…flipped.”
Tears well in my eyes and I try to swallow them back down, but they come anyway. My daddy didn’t live to call the ambulance. He died…he died right then.
“I don’t have to tell the rest, Ray. Really we don’t have to do this.”
“No, please, I need to hear it.”
She tucks a hair behind my ear and laces her fingers back between mine. “He kept driving initially. He was terrified. He had a family at home. Orion needed surgery. He didn’t want to lose his job—go to jail. But his conscience wouldn’t let him leave. So he pulled over and ran back to us. Your father was taking his last breath when he reached us. He said he still wasn’t sure he would stick around. But he did. He thinks his hesitation to help caused your father’s death. He believes if he had stopped sooner he could have saved him. That’s why he thinks losing Nora was his karma.”
She’s talking to the flower crown resting between us. “Your tuition. Douglas asked if there was any way he could do right by us. At first I didn’t want anything from him. We weren’t going to get your father back. But you wanted to go to Crestfield so bad. Your school counselor had said you, more than any other student she’d seen, were ready to thrive. So I told Douglas about Crestfield and he insisted on paying for all of it. I couldn’t have afforded to send you there without it.”
“So the scholarship wasn’t really a scholarship…and the journal. You did remember. Why—”
“Until I met him, I thought those images were hallucinations. By then you were so detached from the graveyard visits, I didn’t think it was worth opening the old wounds again.”
“But Orion. You knew who he was. You knew I was about to…you watched me fall for him, and you said nothing.” I pull my hand away from hers and find the window. The sun has just started to rise, casting a gray light over everything. “Only you did do something. You erased his messages.”
I wait for her to deny it but she doesn’t.
“Why do that, instead of just warning me? Why did you let me walk into this situation that has wrecked me, Momma? Orion’s dad killed your husband and left you—left us—to die, and you made a deal? You put flowers on his daughter’s grave? You took care of his feelings, but what about mine?”
I don’t wait for her to answer. I run to my room, but stop myself from crashing onto my bed. She would just follow me in here, and I can’t hear her voice one more second. I grab my bag, check it for my cell, and dart back down the hall, out the patio door, and up to my tree house.
I can’t believe I’m here. After all that I go through to avoid drama.
“What the fuck?” I ask the empty walls of my tree house, and sob.
TWENTY-NINE
Orion
4 DAYS
I slam my swim locker closed. Heads snap my way, but I ignore them and find a seat on a bench in the corner of the locker room, far away from everyone else. A swim locker room: the smell of chlorine, the echo of everyone’s voices, and even the far-off sound of the announcers calling the races over the loudspeakers fry my nerves. My jaw is sore from grinding my teeth. I usually have to listen to music through my headphones to drown out the noise and stay calm. When I’m in a locker room, it’s about to be showtime. I’m about to be at my best. But today, no matter what I do, I still feel on the verge of screaming. Everything rubs me the wrong way.
“O-Dog, bro, save some of that for the race,” Hollywood yells.
I don’t look around to see him. I don’t answer. I don’t respond at all. My insides are wound up so tight, I’m just not in the mood to play around. I thought I would feel better by now. Prelims went well. Our relay team advanced. I’m hoping for a good showing at the 100 freestyle prelims today. I still woke up feeling like shit. All I can think about is Ray. Usually, I’m loose after warm-ups, but I’m restless thinking about how my dad screwed everything up. I raced through this nightmare yesterday. I hope I can do it again today.
My parents and I barely spoke to one another on the flight to New Jersey. My dad had just blown up our family, my relationship with Ray. Mom was livid that Dad hadn’t told her the whole story—kept her in the dark all these years. I was surprised that my mom still wanted to come, but she told me that nothing would keep her away from nationals.
Swimmers start filing into the locker room and more eyes move my way. Everyone’s being friendly, but from a distance. I guess word got out that I’m not in the best mood. Somewhere deep down, I’m proud of making it here today, but how am I supposed to pretend like things are normal when I just found out that my dad is a liar and possibly a murderer? How am I supposed to race when my mom has one foot out the door? How am I supposed to breathe when Ray is at home feeling hurt and betrayed by everyone—including me? The last place I want to be is in this locker room. I’d rather be with Ray, but she won’t even answer my calls.
My watch says it’s almost time to report to the pool. I hop into a hot shower to keep everything warm. I take deep breaths until the only thing in the world is the sound of the water crashing against the floor.
The locker room is empty by the time I towel off and put on my team joggers and jacket. A buzzer sounds in the distance. Ten minutes to race start. I sit and rest my head in my hands. Tears fill my eyes and I let them fall.
I lost her and it’s not even my fault. She doesn’t see it that way. She thinks I knew. Even if by some miracle we stay together, how can she come around and be in my house knowing that the man who ended her father’s life lives upstairs? My tears come faster. He never said anything. All this time. How could he lie to Mom and hide this and—
“Aye, Orion, you good?”
I didn’t even hear Ahmir come in.
“Ahmir, hey,” I say, swiping my face—unable to hide that I’ve been crying. Mercifully, Ahmir ignores it.
“Hey. Coach said you haven’t been yourself, so I just came to check on you. It’s almost time.”
“Yeah. Thanks, man. I’m good. Knock on wood.” I clear my throat, still trying to pull myself together.
“All right, you sure? Aye, you got this….” He puts his hands on both my shoulders and gives me a shake, raising his eyebrows reassuringly. “You good?”
I stand up straighter and nod. “Thanks, man. Thanks for checking on me.”
“Cool. See you out there.” He fist-bumps me, then leaves.
I pop on my headphones and cue up my race playlist, hoping it gets me in the zone. The bass pumps through the headphones and energy buzzes through me. It helps. Some. Outside, there isn’t a cloud in the sky and it’s hot. The stands are packed with spectators, and I’m slowly getting into it.
A horn blares and a group of swimmers dive in, beginning the freestyle races. My group is up next. I run through a series of quick stretches and warm-up exercises in preparation for my race. I scan the stands for my parents, but finding them here is impossible.
The crowd roars, and I bend down and flick the water. I scoop a bit on my face and hands and inhale the chlorine scent. It usually transports me to the right headspace, where I feel ready to dominate. But scents of lavender are wrapped around my every thought and feeling.
I’m on the block now, about to race. My toes teeter on the edge and I wait for the buzzer. I steady my breath and visualize myself in the water, swimming; then Ray appears in my mind, swimming beside me, her hair wild and beautiful.
I can almost hear my dad: Focus. I shove away the images of Ray as best I can.
The buzzer cries and I dive.
Muscle memory takes over. I swish through the water like a shark. Hit the wall and flip. Again. Up for air. Ray’s face. I shake it off and reach, arm over arm; my form is off. I can tell. I straighten up and push.
When I hit the wall and the race is done, I know before I check the scoreboard that I blew it.
I didn’t hit my usual time. I was the last to the wall, and last out of the water. That’s it for me. My shoulders sink and I paint on a smile, congratulating the guys who are going on to compete in the finals. Lifting my chin, I look for my parents. No luck. The crowd’s stirring as the next heat of swimmers takes the blocks. I shower, dress, and go to meet my parents at our rendezvous spot near the exit.
“I know you did what you could, Orion,” my mom says. “You worked hard to get here, and you competed under some pretty tough circumstances. I’m proud of you.” She kisses and hugs me.
“Thanks, Momma.” Hard as I try to be cool and chill, something about my mom makes me beam with pride and blush. She’s right. I did work hard to get here. I did it. Even if I didn’t win. I made it this year; I can make it again. I got full scholarships—academic and athletic—to most colleges I applied to, and I have more medals than I can count. I’m gonna be a Howard Bison, swimming with all bruthas at the best HBCU. I have plenty to be proud of. I gas myself up before meeting my dad’s eyes. Hoping it’s enough armor for the disappointment I’m sure awaits me, even though he has no right.
“Yeah, good swim, son,” my dad says, surprising me with a compliment, “but I can’t remember the last time you came last in a heat.”
And just like that…he’s back.
“I don’t need this from you right now, Dad,” I say, looking him dead in the eyes, shocking even myself. “Not today.”
“Watch yourself, son. I’m giving you—”
“I don’t need anything from you. I know what this is, Dad. I’m the one doing the swimming. I don’t need you telling me anything.” I’m sweating bricks. I never backtalk my dad, and we’re in public: a double sin. People are walking around us, oblivious that our family is falling apart.
“Orion…,” my mom starts.
For a split second I feel a twinge of guilt. But I’m not apologizing, not to someone who has yet to apologize for so many things that I’ve lost count. No. I snap. “And, you know what, I’m not sorry for speaking the truth. Maybe speaking the truth is what we should all be doing more of.” Dad looks both pissed and shocked.
