Later, she cannot come up with a reason why, but she texts him the address. Friday night movie dates without her mother. White papers spread over a mahogany table: math homework with her daughter. Feet cozy beneath his thigh while watching television. But the vision is there: Bare muscles flexing with every push-pull of the iron. If they married-wait, Keke scolds herself, don’t start that mess. The brilliant one he gives every morning she enters her office, his security guard’s uniform so crisp, it could stand on its own. One of the few gifts she’d ever gotten from her daddy before never seeing him again, the baby’s synthetic hair singed slowly as it sat against the kerosene heater. Her baby hair reminds Keke of the doll she accidentally set on fire at six. Or maybe what she remembers is the picture on her mom’s wall: sixteen-year-old Lynette’s profile, short afro, mouth open (probably yelling at someone off camera), the back of Keke’s little head covered in matted black curls balled into the cleft of Lynette’s neck. They say memories don’t form until after four-years-old, but Keke swears she remembers resting her head there as an infant, cocoa butter and sour milk widening her nostrils. And when they fight - bodies squared, arms flying, fingers in faces, faces red, sweaty messes - Keke has an urge to stop and press her nose against Lynette’s collarbone. Lynette yanked the wire hard from the jack, yelled, slut! Her mother’s fire palm was a lightning clap knocking Keke against accordion closet doors.īut they always fight. No way, she thought until the phone, snatched, disappeared from her hand. Between their tinny whispers, a faint click preceded another’s animated breath. Three in the morning, she touched herself beneath sheets, moaned into the receiver, mimicked what they did alone after school at his grandmother’s. She considers calling, yet an old memory holds her back: Keke, sixteen, caught while phone-sexing Rasheed.
Ignoring Lynette, Keke texts: At my mothers watching a movie Lynette says, “Don’t act like it ain’t one of them sorry men of yours.” “And you see, Keara, that’s the problem.” Yesterday, a man outside looked at her “funny.” Lynette’s talking, upset about the weed smell in the hallway of her fifty-five-and-up condo building. A Styrofoam box drips moist heat from wings with mambo sauce and fries. So Keke and her mom, Lynette, are going to eat carry-out and watch Imitation of Life. Today is Friday and Keke’s daughter is with her daddy.
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