Page 27 of Quiet as Kept
Xarielle telling me that she loved my girls hit me in the chest. They didn’t deserve the hand that life had dealt them, having an absentee mom. And I knew that Xarielle could never take Jayla’s place, but I appreciated the shit out of the fact that she would offer them her love.
“Thank you for that.” I managed to get out over the lump in my throat.
“You’re welcome.” A few moments of silence passed. “How many nannies have they had, Kept?”
“You’re only the second one. Jayla was with them until Destin was eight months old. After that, Trinity and I each adjusted our schedules so one of us was always available for them. When Trinity started looking for work outside of South Carolina, we hired the first nanny. You know what happened with her. Then we got you. I hope not to have any nanny besides you.”
“I mean, unless I meet Prince Charming and he whisks me away from here, I don’t plan on leaving until I have to. Destin’s two, so it’ll be at least a couple of years before she heads to kindergarten.”
“Stop counting down your time, Xarielle. Let’s just take it one day at a time.” I picked up her right foot and began massaging it.
Her leg jerked involuntarily, and she snatched her foot from my embrace. I eyed her.
“Uh, my feet are ticklish.” She told me what was an obvious lie. “Whew, I’m so tired. I’m going to call it a night. See you in the morning, Kept.”
I watched her walk across the deck. She turned around once, looking back at me, and our eyes met. Hers were pleading, almost like she was begging me not to come for her. I kept mine blank because she was right. It could be potentially disastrous for me to come for her. But I wasn’t sure that even that would deter me.
Nine
Kept
My family flew in for Dakota’s fourth birthday—Trinity, my dad, Yahirah, Ayden, Nehemiah, his wife, and even my Aunt Sherise. I went to the office that day. I received word the day before that the village trustees of Atterson, South Carolina had approved my subdivision within their city limits. I was able to complete a lot of the paperwork, but I had to leave early because I promised to pick my dad up from the airport.
Gannon Boudreaux wasn’t alone when I pulled up to the curb to gather him outside of the airport, and I was shocked to see who was standing beside him. It was Vivienne Russell. I hadn’t seen her since my great-grandmother’s funeral back in undergrad, but I would recognize my mother anywhere.
I threw the truck into park and jumped out. I rounded the front of the car and embraced my father in a hug.
“Sorry I didn’t give you a heads up. Your mother really wanted it to be a surprise,” he said before we separated.
A surprisewas the understatement of the frigging millennium. I was shocked as shit. That lady had never laid eyeson either of my girls. I couldn’t understand why she would want to surprise me by showing up for Dakota’s fourth birthday. The moment my father released me, Vivienne was in my space. She threw her arms around me and pulled me into her body.
“Kept!” Her voice cracked as she buried her face in my shirt.
As both a child, and a young adult, I had dealt with a measure of social anxiety. I was never sure about the expectations of certain interactions. In those situations, I tended to retreat inside myself and shut down.
As an adult, I’d gone to therapy and had received suggestions and strategies about how to deal with the feelings of overwhelming stress. Now, I was able to walk onto a job site, walk into a board meeting, walk into any number of unknown situations and manage to present myself as a talented, capable, and experienced professional. But being held in my biological mother’s arms with her face pressed against my chest was causing me to feel like the little boy I used to be, like the little boy who just wanted his mother to want him, who wanted to be enough, who wanted to matter more than the pull of her social life.
My father must’ve read the panic in my expression as our eyes met over the top of my mother’s head.
“Come on, Vivi. Let the boy breathe. We’re here all weekend. You’ll have plenty of time to talk with him.”
I didn’t know why my father was lying to my mother like that. My focus and attention was going on my girls and on being a better parent to them—than the one she was to me. It would probably take decades to unpack the impact of her absenteeism in my life. And if she wasn’t in therapy or willing to get into it, there was no way we could even begin to scratch the surface. The most I could offer was for her to try to build some type of relationship with Dakota and Destin. But even then, Iwouldn’t let her do that if she was still self-involved and pulling disappearing acts.
“Uh, let’s put the bags in the truck and head out. I see the airport cops looking over this way,” I told them.
“I know you were probably surprised to see me standing with your daddy at the airport,” Vivienne said from the passenger’s seat as I maneuvered my way out of the airport.
“Well, he said that was your goal—to surprise me,” I told her.
“It was. We haven’t seen each other since . . .” She seemed to think about when we’d last seen each other.
“Since Granny Bernie’s funeral. You and Patricia were both at the funeral.” Patricia was my grandmother, Vivienne’s mother.
“That’s right. Wow. That was ten years ago.”
“How’s Patricia?”
She sucked her teeth. “That lady is over seventy years old and still hanging in the streets.”