Like a Sister(3)

Her brown face is beautiful and freckled. Her hair is long and pitch-black, in the kind of beach waves that most Black women get from Bantu knots. Her diamond necklace catches the light.

Behind her are the tasteful yet stark decorations of a hotel suite that’s littered with clothes, shoes, and cups. Desiree turns again, stops, then moves a few centimeters to the left.

She smiles, showing off perfectly aligned white teeth.

Someone unseen takes in a long sniffle. Desiree’s too busy smiling to notice.

“Freck, can you get your beautiful-ass face out of the camera for once?” The voice is female and teasing. It’s impossible to tell where it comes from.

Desiree pretends to roll her eyes. “Let the record show the birthday girl is the first one ready.”

The voice again. “That’s ’cause you don’t have to do all the shit I do! Your skin is perfect.”

Desiree shrugs, pretends to look demure. “Black don’t crack.”

A second later she’s finally joined by Erin Ambrose. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Surgically enhanced lips. She crowds into the frame. “I don’t crack either.”

“Yeah, you just do everything else.”

“No comment.” Erin holds up a white mug with OMNI printed on it in thick black letters. She raises it in mock salute. “To Desiree Pierce on the occasion of her twenty-fifth birthday. A toast.”

Desiree does the same with her free arm, holding another hotel mug. She tips it just enough to show what’s inside. It’s filled with a clear liquid. “A toast…with water.”

Erin nods. “That’s definitely water.”

“It is!”

“Right.” Erin nods double time. “We’re good clean girls who don’t drink, don’t do drugs, and sure as hell don’t fucking curse. So that is definitely not vodka.”

“It’s not.” Desiree chugs it, then flashes the empty mug. “See!”

It takes just a moment for Erin to roll her eyes. “Like you’ve never done that with vodka.”

They both laugh as Desiree speaks. “My family might be watching this!”

“I thought I was your family!”

“You are. Just like a sister.”

They finally clink mugs. Erin talks to Desiree while looking dead at the lens. “Happy birthday, bitch.”





Two



Gram died five years ago in February, a stroke as sudden as it was painful—for her and everyone who loved her. And that truly was everyone. Gram always lit up the room. Especially for me, as she was the only grandparent I knew. My mom’s parents died when I was a baby, and my paternal grandfather was never in the picture.

But if you could have only one grandparent, Phyllis Pierce was perfect. I wouldn’t have gotten through her funeral without Desiree. We moved in tandem all day, only separating to go to the bathroom and even then just long enough to flush. I remember her doing my makeup, loading us both up on waterproof mascara and a healthy dose of setting spray.

My mother, on the other hand, had let me cry for half a day before informing me I needed to get it together. Phyllis Pierce and Olivia Scott had never been close, but that wasn’t why she told me that. It was just my mother’s way. We’d even joke about it, say she was putting on the Super Black Woman cape. You handle your business, and only then do you turn back into the ordinary girl who’s allowed to cry. And there was indeed work to be done, a funeral to help plan.

So when my mom lost her battle with breast cancer three months later, I knew what to do, how to behave.

My mom had known her diagnosis for a whole year but hadn’t told me. She knew I was enjoying my first job—as a project coordinator in DC—and she didn’t want her diagnosis to be the end of my new life. She planned to survive cancer like she’d survived everything else, waiting until she was on her literal deathbed to tell me.

Even once she passed, the tears didn’t come right away. Scotts weren’t criers. I hated it, how it made me feel, how it made me look, turning my nose as red as Rudolph’s. Besides, I was too busy with arrangements.

I’d been surprised when Desiree told me Mel planned to pay for everything. He’d left my mom and me going on twenty years at that point. We hadn’t even been in the same room since before I graduated high school. My mom hadn’t wanted his money when she was alive and she sure as hell wouldn’t want it now. So I politely begged off, pointing at her insurance, and hid behind my Super Black Woman cape.

Unlike the Angry Black Woman label so many tried to make us wear, Strong or Super Black Woman was one we often gave ourselves. We wore it as proudly as a designer brand. It protected us from a lot of shit—earning sixty-three cents for every dollar that went to our white, male counterparts, or raising children not able to step outside without risking their lives. I don’t know if it was always a good thing, but it was most certainly our thing, passed down by both nurture and nature from generation to generation, like a recipe for sweet potato pie.

And I wore it proudly—until the night after my mom’s funeral. I insisted I was okay, sent everyone home so I could barricade myself in the house where I grew up in South Orange. But Desiree refused to leave. I cried so hard and so long my sister almost called an ambulance. Instead, she held me as I got snot on her Chanel dress, wiped my red nose, and swore it would be okay.