With the Fire on High(10)
“Sí, ’Buela.” Babygirl nods seriously. But I know what’s coming.
We all smile. We open the door. Tyrone aims to walk through it, and just as he’s about to pull the door shut behind him, Babygirl realizes what’s happening. She’s leaving. And ’Buela and I are not coming with her.
Her tiny face scrunches up and she begins screeching at the top of her lungs. I’m sure the row houses on either side of ours can hear her through the thick brick walls. Everything inside me wants to reach out, snatch her from his arms, and shut the door in his face, let her know I won’t ever let anyone take her from me, but I force myself to be still. This has happened the other four times he came to pick her up. Tyrone looks at me and his full lips press into a thin line. He whispers to her quietly. I know from firsthand experience how Tyrone can sweet-talk a girl out of her fears, but his own daughter seems completely immune to his charm.
Babygirl continues trying to wrestle herself away from him, but he just keeps backing out of the door and whispering calming words. He scoops her bag more firmly onto his shoulder and strides down the steps. I watch as he buckles her into the car seat in his mother’s expensive Lexus. When the car door shuts, I can’t hear her crying anymore. Beside me ’Buela lets out a small sigh. We both watch through the open doorway until the car has pulled off and is out of sight.
“She’s going to be fine, you know?” I say to ’Buela.
She nods and pulls me to her. “She’s going to be fine,” she says back to me. I inhale the scent of her vanilla perfume and begin the countdown until seven p.m. on Sunday. Only thirty-two hours to go.
I straighten up and blink away the tears in my eyes. I shut the door. “How about I make some tembleque? I was thinking of infusing the coconut with lemon verbena . . . and maybe vanilla. I have a couple of hours before my shift.”
We walk with our arms around each other’s waists into the kitchen.
Lovers & Friends
In the beginning, Tyrone and I tried to make our non-relationship work. After we found out about Babygirl, I mean. Truth is, Tyrone wasn’t ever really trying to be with only me, and he didn’t lie when he told me he didn’t want anything serious. So after we found out I was pregnant we both felt kind of stuck. His parents kept telling him it probably wasn’t his, that a fourteen-year-old who gets pregnant her freshman year probably had a few people she was letting scratch her itch. And I don’t know that I could ever forgive that Tyrone barely defended me to them, even though he knew I was a virgin before him. Even still, during my pregnancy and after Emma was born, we played at being together.
And Tyrone is a good dad, but he gets to run away when he’s done. During my pregnancy he never really could get why I was annoyed or got upset easily. Just told me to stop trippin’. And after Emma was born he kept wanting to fool around, apparently now because I had his kid it should be like that, but the two or three times we had sex I didn’t feel good about it, and although I already had a kid, I still felt like we had to sneak around to do it.
So, what do you do with a guy who’s eighteen and a better father than he is a boyfriend? I read a quote once that said, “The best thing a father can do for his child is love the mother.” But some days I think the best thing Tyrone could do for Babygirl is leave her mother the hell alone.
Returns
On Sunday evening, ’Buela and I watch reruns of Beat Bobby Flay and eat her Fairhill-famous pernil and tostones. I was too jittery all day to cook and ’Buela has been too nervous to stand still. The whole weekend when I wasn’t at work ’Buela and I have circled around each other, neither one of us wanting to say that we miss Babygirl. You’d think that finally having a day free would mean I would go out with Angelica or enjoy not having to be responsible for a whole other human, but instead it feels like a rip in the fabric of my life that won’t get stitched back together until Babygirl walks through the door.
Babygirl gets home at 7:03, and ’Buela is the one who answers the door in a mad rush and pulls her from Tyrone’s arms. She passes Babygirl to me and I wrap my arms around her little body. Tyrone gives us a brief update before heading back to the car, but I don’t hear a word.
“Mommy missed you so much, Mommy missed you so, so much,” I say into her soft cheek. It’s like our entire apartment had been holding its breath, but now that Babygirl’s returned, even the breeze coming in through the window heaves a sigh of relief. ’Buela and I sit on the couch with Babygirl between us listening to her baby-sing about Moana, PAW Patrol, and cookies. Our dinner is forgotten; Bobby Flay is put on mute. For the rest of the night Babygirl is front and center, the candlelight we read the world by.
Mama
It’s a strange thing to become a mom when the only example you ever had wasn’t even your own mother. Not that I don’t think of ’Buela as my parent, but I also know that the way she raised me was different from how she raised my own father, that she thinks she failed by him and wants to make sure she doesn’t fail me. That she’s tired, and although she loves Babygirl, she wishes things could be easier for me. For us.
If I said I didn’t have a ton of questions about my mother, I’d be lying. All the time I catch myself thinking: Would she be proud of me? If she were around, would I have gotten pregnant and had Babygirl? If she were still alive, would my father have stayed in Philadelphia?