Page 2 of Quiet as Kept
She huffed out a sigh at my lack of response. “Ugh! Well, because you’re opting not to participate, you’re making everybody else have to come up with more money. I divided the cost of the gift by twelve. Now, it’ll need to be divided by eleven.”
“In the future, don’t count my money, Cassandra,” I told her. “I never said I was contributing to no group gift, so I shouldn’t have been included in the number.”
“As much as Mama has done for you, I thought you, of all people, would want to contribute. I mean, she could’ve let you go into the system, but instead, she took you in when Tasha just dumped you on her?—”
I cut her off because she’d been using that as ammunition against me for decades. As if it was my fault that LaTasha got in the wind.
“And she took in Meechie and Mookie too. When you dumpedthemon her for two years without a visit or a call.”I reminded her about her own less than stellar parenting missteps.
“Fuck you, you little uppity bitch.”
She looked like she wanted to hit me, but another thing the Simpson family had taught me as a collective was how to defend myself. I didn’t have much in life, but I definitely had hands.
“Fuck you right back, with your big back ass,” I told her, completely unbothered by her name calling.
The Simpson family was big on name calling, signifying, and playing the dozens. However you identified it, they were the kings and queens.
“Not too much on my mama, Xari!” Her younger son, Mookie, called out from the dining room.
“Yeah, you don’t want this work, cousin,” Meechie, her older son, added.
“Ain’t nobody finna jump on my baby cousin,” Nisha told them as she dusted the excess flour off of a chicken leg. “You need to be cool, Aunt Sanny.”
“Sheneeds to be cool,” Cassandra insisted. “You know Xari’s ass has a bad habit of acting superior and shit.”
“You do be acting superior,” another of my cousins, Harper, said as she moved past me to get to the refrigerator.
“And I never understood why she thought she was better than us,” Cassandra’s daughter, Zatoria added. “She’s working that penny-ante ass job, driving that trap ass car, and living in that trap ass building on the corner of Broke Avenue and Bitch Boulevard.”
Chuckles went up around the room.
“I do not need this shit,” I mumbled to myself as I turned on my heel.
“That’s right. Run off, bitch,” Cassandran taunted me. “Just like your stanking ass mammy. Any time shit gets tough, she runs off.”
“Fuck you,” I told her as I made my way back down the long hallway. Once again, I couldn’t help thinking that they were probably the reason my mother left. I just don’t know why she would leave me with them.
I was almost to the front door when her voice stopped me.
“You’re gonna leave without even wishing me a happy birthday?”
I looked to the left, and there in that ancient La-Z Boy recliner sat my grandmother.
“Hey, Granny. Sorry. I can’t take your oldest daughter . . . or her children.”
“Sometimes, family is the most contentious relationship on Earth.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Which is why I stay away.”
I was fourteen years old, when for all intents and purposes, I moved out of Granny’s house. I never told her I was moving. I just started spending more and more time at my best friend, Yahirah’s, house. It was just Yahirah, her mother, and her brother, Nehemiah. Their house was calm. Peaceful. Yahirah’s mother didn’t down talk me or try to make me feel less than. She just loved on me and treated me with the same tender kindness that she gave to her children.
“You definitely stay away,” Granny agreed with a nod of her head.
Because of her tendency to disassociate and distance herself emotionally, I wasn’t even sure that she noticed I stopped sleeping at her house as a teenager. She never mentioned it. She never asked me why I stopped coming home. I felt like I could’ve run off with a pimp, and she would’ve been unbothered. I never felt like anybody who shared my blood was concerned about or invested in me—even her.
“Your family is toxic.”
“We’ve made some mistakes.” She shrugged her shoulders. “But nobody is perfect.”