We Are Not Like Them(3)
I leaned over and whispered to Jen right then and there. “I’m gonna be her, Jenny. I’m going to be the next Candace Dyson.”
For weeks after, I spent every day after school staring in the bathroom mirror, wearing the plaid blazer Momma had bought me for mock trial and a mouthful of metal braces, practicing my sign-off. “This is Leroya Wilson, for Action Five News.” But it never felt quite right. It was rare enough to see someone on TV who looked like me, and when they did, they definitely didn’t have a name like Leroya. And so I became Riley.
By the time I’ve elbowed my way to the bar, Jenny is standing, waiting to greet me.
“Whoa, mama!”
“I’m huge, right?” Jen arches her back and cups a hand under the bump to exaggerate its size.
“Well, I meant your hair!”
“Oh yeah! Surprise! I did it last week. I wanted something shorter and easier, but not a mom cut.” Her hand floats up from her stomach to run through what’s left of her hair. “It doesn’t look like a mom cut, right?”
“No, not at all,” I lie. “It’s very chic. Come here.” I pull Jen into a hug and flinch a little at the odd sensation of her hard belly pushing against mine. When I press my face into her hair, the familiar smell of lavender is so strong I can taste it. The nostalgia is like a warm blanket. Thank God I didn’t cancel. It had crossed my mind more than once today, but standing here in Jen’s embrace and a haze of memories, the stress about Gigi, work, my never-ending to-do list, the exhaustion—all of it recedes and there is only Jenny, exactly what I needed. I’m already more relaxed knowing that for the next few hours I don’t have to try so hard or impress anyone. Sometimes you just need to be around someone who loved you before you were a fully formed person. It’s like finding your favorite sweatshirt in the back of the closet, the one you forgot why you stopped wearing and once you find it again you sleep in it every night.
The press of Jen’s belly against mine does remind me of one thing I need to do: call Cookie back. I’m supposed to be cohosting Jen’s baby shower with her mother-in-law, a brunch on New Year’s Day, and Cookie has left me three messages this week. But every time I pick up the phone to call her back, I find a reason to procrastinate. Mainly because Cookie—a woman who uses “scrapbook” as a verb, constantly references her Pinterest boards, and refers to Chip and Joanna Gaines by their first names—keeps saying things like, “It’s the Year of the Baby!” as if “Year of the Baby” is a thing people say. Her last voice mail was an agonized two-minute monologue about what color balloons we should get, since Jenny “refuses” to find out the sex.
“Isn’t it so selfish that she won’t find out?” Cookie asked in the recorded rant.
Well, maybe it’s selfish for you to demand to know, Cookie. It’s what I want to tell her, but of course I won’t. My tongue may well fall out with all the times I’m going to have to bite it with her. I guess that’s the price I’ll have to pay, because Jenny deserves a fun shower, and if the tables were turned, I know Jen would be on the phone with my mom every night trying to convince her that rum punch served in baby bottles would be hysterical!
If there’s one thing Jen loves it’s a party, but she also always goes out of her way to be thoughtful, which makes you feel adored when it doesn’t make you feel undeserving.
Case in point: The day I moved back from Birmingham this summer, anxious and bone-tired from driving thirteen hours straight, there was Jen bounding out of the coffee shop next to my new building, where she’d been waiting for me to arrive for who knows how long. Her hands were full with not one but two housewarming gifts—a spiky houseplant and an eight-by-ten framed picture of us from when we were kids.
“You can’t kill a succulent,” she insisted, hugging me tightly before thrusting it into my arms.
I did kill the plant in record time, but the picture is still there on my mantel. It’s one of my favorites, taken when we were six or seven. We’d spent the afternoon running through the Logan Square fountain with a hundred other sun-drunk kids and the camera caught us lying on the wet cement, side by side in matching pink polka-dot bikinis, clutching each other’s hands.
While we waited for the super to get my new keys, we sat on the curb in the sticky heat. Jenny reached out to wipe my face. “You’re here,” she said.
I hadn’t even realized I was crying. I was just so… happy, or maybe it was more relieved. After everything that had happened over the last year, my fresh start was real. Sitting there together on the warm concrete, it was one of those rare times when, for a brief, glorious moment, the pieces in your life fall into place. I was home.
Jenny gestures now toward two stools to her left. “Here, sit.” She removes the denim jacket she’d spread across the top, oblivious that the man next to her is irritated to have been so abruptly robbed of her attention. She’s already forgotten him. “I saved three seats. One for you and two for my fat ass.”
“You wish you had a fat ass,” I joke. “You look great; you’re glowing,” I tell her.
“You too. But you always look camera-ready, so no surprise there. Your bangs are growing out. That’s good.” She reaches over to touch them. Jenny is the only white woman in the world I would let get away with that. Or talk me into cutting bangs.