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“I know I can do it, Zena, but that’s what I’m calling to talk to you about—I don’t think I want to do it right now.”
“What? What do you mean ‘want’?” Zena’s face contorted into something that looked like an angered question mark. She looked at the phone as if Zola could see her cold stare. As she had all of those times in the past, Zena felt she just needed to find the right words of encouragement to entice Zola to change her view. Should she be stern or sensitive? What would work best at such a crossroads just shy of eight weeks before the July Georgia Bar Exam?
“This isn’t about your clock, Zola. It’s not about whether now is the time for you. Now is the only time. You have to take the Bar. You have to take it this summer.”
There was silence then—the kind that signifies that there’s more information coming.
“Wait, didn’t your text say you had news?” Zena recalled. “Is that what this is about? What’s going on?” Images depicting a reel of disaster rolled through Zena’s mind—Zola had already run off to New York to dance in hip-hop music videos; she’d used all the money Zena had been giving her for rent to pay for a secret drug habit; she hadn’t even started studying; she was preg— “Are you preg—?”
Zola stopped her sister’s stream of dark thoughts with a soft and mousy revelation: “Alton asked me to elope. That’s what I’ve been trying to get out. That’s why I’ve been calling you all day. We decided to just do it—to just get married. Now.” Zola was referring to her recent status as the fiancée of Alton Douglass, her childhood sweetheart and long-term boyfriend, who’d just popped the question at Zola’s graduation in DC. While Zena wasn’t exactly hip to the idea of Alton and Zola getting married right when Zola was about to really start her career, as she watched her baby sister cry when Alton slid the stoneless silver ring he’d called “antique” onto Zola’s finger, Zena was reconciled knowing that it would be at least one year before there was even a discussion about a wedding. By then, Zola would be back in Atlanta, have passed the Bar Exam and be a practicing attorney.
“Zena? Zena? You there?” Zola called after a long pause.
“Yes. I am.” Zena’s words were void of emotion but somehow also overly laden with something else.
“So?” Zola paused awkwardly. “What do you think? No big wedding. We’re just going to do it. Get married and start living our lives. It’s a smart decision—right?”
Though there was the common glee in Zola’s tone, there was a stiffness there now, too—a covering used to veil her joy in some way. To protect it.
Zena could sense all of this.
Zena began pacing in small circles, subconsciously reaffirming the existence of her environment as she prepared to quiz Zola. She felt as if she was being sucked away. As if the smoking couple had returned and lit up new cigarettes to steal her air.
She looked back up at the oversize plastic margarita glass hovering over her. It was glowy and amber. Happy. This was her happy place.
She wished Malak was outside Margarita Town standing beside her to hear this. She’d put Zola on speaker and have her best friend there to share her disbelief, confirm this horrible mistake Zola was about to make. A mistake Zena would have to clean up. The thing was, Zena had been protecting her baby sister for so long, there was no way she would let anything like that happen. She loved Zola so much, and she’d gotten her so far. They were almost there—almost at the finish line.
“Well did you tell Mommy and Daddy? What did they say about this?” Zena asked.
“Daddy’s too busy with whatever up in New York. And Mommy loves Alton, of course. Who doesn’t love Alton?” The adoration in Zola’s voice was so absolute Zena imagined that Alton must be standing right beside her, listening in and probably laughing at Zena’s reaction. Maybe Zena was the one on speakerphone.
“Of course everyone loves Alton,” Zena said with years of knowing and, yes, loving sweet and kind Alton, Zola’s spiritual twin, laced in her words. While Zena, at fifteen, was nearly in love with the mere vision of Alton’s older brother, Adan, Alton was actually like a little brother to Zena.
“All of this seems so sudden. Like, who’s going to pay for all of this?”
“Really, Z? I can’t believe you asked me that. I say I’m getting married and you ask who’s paying?”
“It’s a perfectly reasonable question. I’ve been supporting you, and Alton isn’t exactly rolling in the dough.”
“He’s a singer. That’s just how it goes when you’re just starting out. But he is getting money for his songwriting. And he’s about to sign a deal with a major label. We just have to hold out.”
“Sure, ‘hold out,’” Zena shot nastily, though she hadn’t intended on sounding so awful.
“Z, I knew you wouldn’t take this well—especially since I’m supposed to be preparing and everything. But I at least thought you’d be excited. Like happy for me,” Zola said.
“I am happy for you. It’s just—” Zena paused and looked at the inflated margarita glass again for inspiration. She needed to say the right thing, find the right words. She needed to support her sister. Be there for her sister. But how could she do that if she felt her sister was doing the wrong thing? Marriage? It wasn’t the right time. How could she support that? Be there for that? Didn’t support and being “there” for her sister mean telling the truth? Telling it like it is? Zena looked away from the margarita glass and let go of the idea of saying the right thing. She decided to say exactly what was on her mind. “What about your life...your future?” Zena let out, and she immediately hated every word she’d said. She sounded like their mother, like their grandmother.
“My future?” Zola laughed at this assertion in a way that Zena hated. The statement and tone reeked of “my big sister is crazy and cold. She doesn’t get it.” Zola took to using the tone whenever Zena said something with which Zola found fault or could easily deconstruct. “Z, listen, Alton is my future. Not being an attorney. That’s just a job. I know how you feel about it—it’s your life—but that’s not how I see it.”
Zola’s last sentence grated against something in Zena.
“Don’t do that. Don’t go there.” Suddenly, Zena felt incredibly lonely standing out there in front of Margarita Town. Cold. Bare. Though no breeze had passed, she shuddered and turned to peek through the front window of Margarita Town to find Malak’s face. “I’m just trying to look out for you. You know? That’s all I’m doing. That’s all I’ve ever done.”
“I know. And I love you for it. And I’m still taking the Bar Exam. Just not this year.”
“What? Why not? It’s scheduled for July—that’s like eight weeks from now. You’ve been studying, right?”
“Well, that’s kind of the other thing I wanted to tell you.”
“What?”
“Alton is so excited about this whole thing—well, we both are—anyway, he really wants to do it right away. And I agree with him—I love him and I want to be his wife—sooner rather than later, of course,” Zola clattered out as if she was explaining this all to herself. “He wants to elope—now.”
Again, Zena felt herself drifting away. What was happening?
“So, we’re getting married in two weeks,” Zola went on, ignoring her sister’s silence.
“Two? Two weeks? I thought you meant like six months—three at the very least. How are you going to get married in two weeks? And where are you going to get married in two weeks? That’s like impossible. Any decent place has a waiting list of like nine months. And please don’t tell me you two are going to the Justice of the Peace. And not Vegas!” Zena felt herself growing more aggravated, so she paused for a second before beginning again with less sharpness in her tone. “Listen, Zol, why are you doing this? Is there something you need to tell me? Are you pregnant?”
“I can’t believe you just suggested that, but I already told you that I’m not pregnant. I’m just in love. And I’m not getting married in Vegas or at the courthouse. We’re going to do it in Bali. We’re getting married in Bali.”
Zena could hear the smile return to Zola’s face as she went on revealing her plan. The wedding would be a small seaside ceremony. No audience. Only two witnesses in attendance. Zola wanted Zena to be there as her maid of honor. The second witness would be the best man: Alton’s older brother; Zena’s old flame... Adan.
After more minutes of sibling emotional wrangling in the form of probing questions and slick statements, Zola was back in Margarita Town sitting across from Malak.
“You knew? You knew? All this time, you knew they were eloping and you didn’t tell me?” Zena had shifted her interrogation to Malak, who sat there buzzing from her second big blue margarita and holding her hands in the air innocently.
“She just told me a few hours ago. Right before we went into the courtroom,” she said. “I didn’t exactly want to tell you before you were walking in to give your closing.”
“But what about after? Why didn’t you tell me after? Immediately after?”
“Because I wanted Zola to tell you herself. I wanted it to be a surprise. And don’t you think you’re kind of missing the point here? The point is that your little sister is getting married? It’s great news. Right?” Malak smiled, though she knew the expression would not be returned.
“Not exactly. This is a big mistake for her right now. They aren’t ready to get married. Yes, they’re in love. But they don’t have enough money. They’re just banking on Alton getting this record deal. This is a recipe for disaster and you know it. We’re in the business of watching marriages fail. And what makes most marriages fail?”
“Money,” Malak reluctantly mumbled.
“Exactly. When money is short, people start changing. They become horrible versions of themselves. And I’m not saying they’ll always be poor. I’m not going to wish doom on Alton’s career or anything, but being a performer has its ups and downs.”
“Alton and Zola have been together forever. They’ll be okay.”
“They have no idea what they’re in for. What’s going to happen to them,” Zola said to herself as if she hadn’t heard anything Malak said. “I just can’t sit back and watch Zola do this—mess everything up that we’ve worked so hard for.”
Malak’s best attempts to placate her friend turned to annoyance. “Why do you do that to Zola? Always act like she has no clue? Like she’s stupid and can’t make any decisions without you?” Malak paused and looked down into her drink. She exhaled and grimaced frankly, as if she was about to say something she might regret. “You know, maybe this isn’t about the wedding—about Alton and Zena getting engaged. Maybe your reaction is about—you know—him. And the fact that he is going to be there in Bali.”
Him and he needed no further explanation. The words bounced from Malak’s mouth like a fireball and landed on the table before Zena. She wanted to pick it up and throw it across the room, get it away from her as soon as possible, but she was also afraid to touch it, afraid to hear it, to think it, to think of him.
“Don’t bring him up,” Zena scoffed, and she sounded like a little girl.
“I have to. Sorry, Z. But there’s no way you haven’t thought about him. His brother is marrying your little sister. That has to matter. Right? Everyone thought you guys would do it first. And now Zola and Alton are getting married and you two will be together for that. It’s been so long. When was the last time you spoke to Ad—”
“Don’t say his name,” Zena cut in. “I don’t want to hear it. And I don’t want to talk about it. And I don’t care about him. And I don’t think about him. My opinion of this disaster of a wedding that’s about to take place in two freaking weeks has nothing to do with Adan—” Zena tried to stop her diatribe before she got to the name that was flashing in her head, but out it came.
Malak was right. Zena had thought of Adan, of course. And while she’d done a grand but strategic job of avoiding him and all topics concerning him, when Alton proposed to Zola in DC, Zena knew she’d finally have to see Adan. But then she figured she had at least a year—one year to get her head together. She could even meet a wonderful, well-traveled, well-read man, who was also funny and down-to-earth and rich, and get married—at least engaged—okay, at least committed. She’d arrive at Zola and Alton’s wedding to see Adan and his NYC doctor wife and perfect children, and Zena would have to show for her own life a successful law practice, bombshell body and hot judge husband, with dimples—fiancé—okay, boyfriend. But now everything had changed.
“Okay. I won’t make you talk about Adan. If you say you haven’t thought of him and you don’t want to think of him, then we can move on to something else,” Malak agreed patronizingly, as if she was some kind of barroom therapist. “We can focus on what’s really important. And that’s Zola’s happiness. That girl loves you. She trusts you. She adores you. She admires you. She needs your support. Can you just support her?”
“I’ll support the right decision. That’s what I’ll support.” Zena rolled her eyes and waved to a random waitress who was rushing past their table. She asked her, “Can you have our waitress get our check?”
“No problem, hon,” the woman said, sounding more cheerful than she actually looked. “I’ll actually just get it for you.”
“Thanks,” Zena said as the thought of seeing Adan again suddenly hit her. After so many years of blocking painful memories, she wondered if her heart was strong enough to deal with his actual presence. Zena quietly considered that maybe they would be distant, even mockingly cordial. She’d feel like she was meeting a stranger, a stranger who maybe just happened to look like someone she knew. Someone she’d known for a very long time. But Adan was no stranger. He was once Zena’s everything. He was her past, what she’d hoped would become her future. But that was all gone now. And it was all because of him.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_af0fe555-3eb6-523e-8535-a7f6d8014a55)
The morning after drowning the news of Zola’s pending Bali wedding in the murky brown liquid of so many shots of reposado tequila she could hardly leave Margarita Town on her feet, Zena awoke to a spinning headache that released her from her morning run. She rolled over in the bed, turning her back to the bedroom window where the late-morning sun was beaming into the room. She was too tired to be fully awake and ready to enter a new day after tossing around in bed through the twilight hours, endlessly replaying worries she had no control over. Problems she’d trained herself to forget, to get away from, but now, there they were right in front of her. While her nighttime thoughts began with Zola, the prickling concern beneath her sister’s future was Zena’s own past.
Malak’s psychic ability—or good sense—had struck gold again at Margarita Town when she boldly shared that maybe much of Zena’s consternation about Alton and Zola getting married wasn’t about them finding love. It was about the love Zena had lost and never forgotten.
Zola wasn’t the only sister to fall in love with a boy who lived up the street. She actually wasn’t even the first.
Lying in bed that night, Zena’s thoughts went back—way back to the time she was a teenager and met Adan Frederick Douglass. He was the first boy to steal her heart away. He was the first man to tear her heart into tiny smithereens. She’d spent too much of her life and good money in therapy trying to pull the pieces back together.
It all started with her parents’ ruined marriage and a popped bicycle chain.
After her father’s second affair with one of the cashiers at the Sutphin Boulevard Burger King where he was a manager, Zena’s mother paid a few hundred to a pimply-faced attorney who promised “quick” divorces in advertisements on subway cars. The couple had no money, property or belongings to split up. Her mother knew there was no way her husband would petition the courts for custody or shared visitation rights for Zena and Zola, fifteen and nine at the time—he had limited funds and no place for his daughters to stay. Zena overheard her mother telling their neighbor who worked on Jamaica Avenue that she just wanted the marriage to be over and to get her girls out of Queens.
Hearing this hurt Zena beyond repair. While her parents’ marriage was mostly rocky, as her father was unreliable and could never keep a long-term job to support them and often stepped out on her mother, Zena loved her father and just wished he’d do right. During their father-daughter walks around the neighborhood, he’d often promise just that. He explained that he didn’t mean to hurt her mother and said something about New York’s poor public school system that diagnosed his dyslexia too late. His reasoning became scrambled into a massive puzzle in Zena’s head. All she wanted to hear about was how her parents and her family could stay together. But he had no solutions. No plans. “I’m broken, babygirl. I done failed ya’ll,” he’d said.
A week later, Zena was standing in a Greyhound bus line with her mother and sister at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan. Everything they owned amounted to five boxes being slid into the cargo hold of a bus en route to Atlanta, Georgia. Speaking as if she was a grown woman who’d lived a life and had the necessary scars on her soul one would need to give another grown woman advice, Zena said in her gruff Jamaica, Queens-girl accent, “You didn’t even give him a chance. He was trying and you didn’t give him a chance. And I resent you for that.” Zena thought she’d really said something. Standing in line at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, she crossed her slender teenage arms over her chest and awaited a defense she felt was impossible.
“Mothers don’t have time to give people chances. You’re my top priority. Not him. Not even me. I did this to save you and your sister from growing up and being stuck in a hole like me and your daddy. I did this so you could be happy,” her mother said.
“Happy? In Georgia?” Zena laughed the way any Queens-born girl who’d been torn from her home to live in Georgia would. “You’re making us move from our friends and school. We’re losing everything, Mommy.”
Zena’s mother paused and responded with unmistakable passion in her voice. “You may feel like that now, but I’m giving you a real opportunity to have a better life.”
* * *
Zena’s bicycle chain had popped the morning she met Adan. Her mother had just gotten the rickety red ten-speed from the Salvation Army and unloaded it from the back of the dented 4Runner some cross-eyed deacon at their new church let her mother borrow. Zena was complaining about being locked up all day in the house looking after Zola and begged for a bicycle. While she’d complained about cobwebs on the frame and the cracking fake-leather seat when they spotted the ten-speed in the back of the secondhand store, once Zena got the thing home and kicked off from the curb, she tasted the kind of freedom every fifteen-year-old knew while riding a bicycle.
At first, she heeded her mother’s instructions and only rode around the corner a few times, but then she became curious about her new surroundings and rode faster, standing up on the pedals as she pushed two and three miles from her front door. The houses got bigger and the cars nicer as she sped along. She noticed that the house she lived in with her mother and her sister was the smallest one in the entire neighborhood. She’d heard her mother mention on the phone to her grandmother that she’d gotten the rental for a quarter of the price through some pilot fair-housing project that would later be known as “Section 8 housing.”
It was late summer, and the Georgia heat kept most people indoors, but she saw some stray gaggles of teenagers entering cars and front doors and wondered if any of them would be her classmates when she started classes at her new high school in a few weeks. Walking up flower-lined driveways in bright colors and smiling, they all looked so solidly middle-class, so happy, so far away from the armor-clad, stone-faced friends she knew back in the New York projects. Right then, Zena decided that she wasn’t going to tell anyone at her new school that she lived in the smallest house in the neighborhood.
Soon, droplets of warm sweat escaped Zena’s underarms and wet her T-shirt. The precipitation seemed to descend on her brow and draw every ounce of energy from her body. Zena, going on pure zeal, continued her tour, but she was panting like a thirsty dog and she began feeling as if she’d been away from home for hours, though it had only been twenty minutes since her departure. This was her official introduction to the stifling Georgia humidity that suffocated everything that had the nerve to move before 7 p.m. in late July. Zena would never forget that feeling, that day; it was as if she’d fallen asleep in a sauna and awoke in a pool of her own sweat.
Growing concerned after considering her wet knuckles and steamy scalp, Zena decided to head home, fearing her mother must be panicked because she’d been gone so long.
She’d been resting her bottom on the prickly cracked bicycle seat but decided to get up and floor it home.
When she rounded the curb onto her new street, catching a breeze that did little to cool her off, Zena noticed a family getting out of their car in the driveway on the side of a house that looked identical to the one she lived in just seven houses down. It was a mother and father with two boys. One of the boys looked her age. The other couldn’t be much older than Zola.
While Zena was two houses away, the family stopped and looked at her as if she was an alien pushing a ten-speed up the street.
Zena’s delicate fifteen-year-old self-esteem made her wonder if she was doing something wrong. Could they see the sweat stains at her underarms? Had the wind swept her hair all over her head and she looked like a parading Medusa? What were they looking at?
The little boy started waving, but Zena was too afraid to wave back, fearing she’d lose control of her bike and crash into one of the cars parked on the street. Instead, her bubbling anxiety under their watching eyes made her want to simply disappear, so Zena decided to race home, where she’d run into the house and never ever emerge again.
That was when the chain popped.
The pedal push that was supposed to send her somewhere quickly actually split the chain. There was a click and then the bike simply stopped moving. Zena’s insistence on continuing her pedaling sent her and the bike, rather quickly and very dramatically, to the hot tar pavement, where she really hoped she would die.
“Lord, she done fainted,” Zena heard a man’s voice say, so she knew she hadn’t actually died, which was a letdown.
“No, she didn’t. I think she just fell,” she heard a woman’s voice say, and she knew it was the mother, who’d been standing by the car, because as she looked up from the ground, she could see the woman’s coral espadrilles rushing toward her.
Soon, the family of four was gathered around Zena as if she was a fallen angel. Worry was on everyone’s face. Everyone but the boy who looked her age. He was smiling. Almost laughing at the sight.
Zena was quiet, quieter than she’d ever been in life. She watched as the four fussed over her, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. The father discovered that it was the broken chain that sent her tumbling to the ground, but he kept saying something about the heat and that it was too hot for anyone to be riding a bicycle at 3 p.m. And didn’t she know that? The mother tried to quiet him after sending the little boy into the house for water.
She asked, “Where are your parents, honey? You live around here?” Her voice was Southern sweet. She sounded as if she could get anything from anyone. Zena had never heard a woman sound quite like that. It made her instantly like the woman.
Zena was listening but not speaking so the mother made the father check for broken bones. He found none and announced that Zena was just in shock. Just afraid because she’d fallen from her bike and here they were hawking over her like police officers. The couple laughed in unison at their hovering in a way that Zena had never heard her parents connect. It was as if they were suddenly alone and had heard lines in a conversation no one else could hear. Then the father kissed the mother. He said, “That’s the nurse in my baby. Always worried about somebody.” They kissed again and giggled.
The boy who was about Zena’s age, the one who’d been ready to laugh at her fall, was frowning then and rolling his eyes at his parents as if he’d seen this all before and it was making him sick. He turned to Zena and pointed his index finger into his open mouth toward his tonsils as if he was about to make himself vomit.
The little comical gesture introduced Zena to the saying, “I have butterflies in my stomach,” because some new feeling was literally tickling her insides, from her navel to her throat. At that very moment, the tough girl from Queens awakened into feelings she’d never known. It was as if those little butterflies fluttered their delicate wings at her insides all at once and sent some mellifluous whispers of what she’d later recognize as first love straight to her heart. She’d never even thought of looking at a boy the way she did at that moment. She wanted to know everything about him. To smell him. To touch his curly black hair. Kiss those full lips. And if she’d ever heard the word imbibe, she’d want that—to imbibe him. Drink him in. Soak him up. Absorb him so she could feel what she was feeling in her stomach again and again. But that would come later. Junior year in high school. In someone’s basement after a football game. Right then, she just wanted to know one thing—his name.
And without Zena even asking, he acquiesced.
“I’m Adan,” he said, struggling so hard to make his pubescent voice sound masculine as his parents came out of their love bubble and noticed the teenagers’ quick connection.
“I’m Zena,” was returned.
“She speaks,” the father said, looking at the mother with a kind of adult knowing in his voice.
“Good to hear, honey,” the mother said. “We’re the Douglasses. You’ve met Adan already. This is Mr. Roy.” She pointed to the father and then to herself. “I’m Mrs. Pam. And that little hellion who never came out with the water is Adan’s little brother, Alton. He’s probably playing his Nintendo game.”
After helping Zena to her feet and carrying her bicycle to the sidewalk as she reluctantly revealed that she lived up the street and had just moved to Georgia from New York with her mother and sister, Roy abruptly excused himself and his wife. Attempting to pull Pam toward the house, he winked at Adan and ordered him to fix the chain with the supplies in the garage. Pam ignored Roy’s clear desire that Adan and Zena get better acquainted and asked about Zena’s mother again. She wanted to make sure Zena got home okay.
“The girl just told you she lives up the street. I think they’re renting the Jefferson’s old house. That ain’t far. She’ll be fine, Pam!” Roy protested. “Let these young folks figure it out. Everything will work out fine.” He winked at Adan again and pulled his wife up the walkway and into the house.
“They’re so weird. Weird and embarrassing,” Adan said when they were gone, and with every word he spoke, Zena felt those wondrous flutters all through her body again.
“My parents are divorced,” Zena announced as if she’d been holding it in her stomach all that time and needed to let someone know. “My dad cheated. He’s having a baby.”
Adan hardly reacted. He just shrugged in his learned teenage boy way. Zena would soon recognize this as his cool routine. “My mom would kill my dad if he cheated. She told him that one night. I think he believes her.”
