Sarai’s sweet voice startles me and forces me to turn away from the bayou. She’s learning more words every day, half of them French, because people speak that here more than anything else, and the rest of them English, because that’s all I know to teach her.
“Hi, princess.” I bend and scoop her up. “Did you walk down here by yourself?”
She nods, bobbing the pigtails I scooped her dark curls into.
“Eat.” She clumps her fingertips together and presses them to her lips, making the sign.
“Time to eat?” I ask, waiting for another nod. “What’s MiMi got for dinner? Wanna find out?”
The patch from MiMi’s to the river’s edge is short, safe, and well-worn. This arch of trees provides the coolest spot for miles, and I find myself down here every chance I get. In the summer, humidity is the sultry breath of the south. I’ve given up on taming my hair since the moist air coaxes it into tight coils that hang down my back and around my shoulders. There’s a freedom to it.
Caleb liked my hair straight. He wanted everything a certain way. Wantedmea certain way. With distance and time, I realize I probably initially gave in to many of his preferences to make up for the fact that I just didn’t love him. Didn’t. Couldn’t. I’m not sure I ever did. If I hadn’t gotten pregnant, Caleb probably would have been “that guy” I dated in college who ended up in the NBA. Maybe we would have had a long-distance relationship for a little while that eventually ran out of steam and followed a path to a natural end.
But I did get pregnant, and everything changed.
I barely recognize the woman I’ve become, so different from that girl, fresh from college, driven to achieve whatever she set her mind to.
“Affame?” MiMi asks, lifting the top from a pot on the stove and smiling through a cloud of steam.
“Yes, starving.” I grab three plates from the hutch against the wall, silverware, and three of the linen napkins MiMi still eats with each night. At two years old, Sarai can barely reach the table, but she strains up on her little toes to set the forks down by each plate. She’s mature for her age. Bright. Observant. And so beautiful.
“Etouffe!” she says when we sit down to eat, her smile pegged with baby teeth.
“Grits,” I correct gently. I raise my spoon to taste and close my eyes to savor. “And shrimp. So good, MiMi. Mine never turn out this good.”
She has taken up my culinary education, which my mother never really bothered to do.
We eat in relative silence for the first few moments, but that won’t last. At MiMi’s age, her mind still races with questions, and her curiosity makes for lively conversation.
“You like Jerome, eh?” MiMi’s silver brows lift and fall suggestively over mischievous eyes. “He likes you so much, he may start delivering the mail on Sunday soon.”
“Oh my God.” My cheeks flush with embarrassment, and not from the heat in the non-air-conditioned house. “He’s our mailman, MiMi, so I like him fine as far as mail goes, but nothing else.” I attempt a stern tone, but my lips twitch at the corners and so do hers.
“You are beautiful, young.” MiMi narrows one eye at me before taking a bite. “You have needs.”
“I haveneeds?” I cock a dubious brow. “So . . . Jerome, the only man I see on a consistent basis, qualifies to meet these supposed needs of mine because he delivers our mail on time?”
There’s nothing like MiMi’s laugh. It starts as a cackle then swells to a guffaw, the sound booming from her small body and floating through the air like bubbles that settle around you and pop with energy. It’s the kind of laugh that invites you to join in.
“Besides,” I say when our laughter fades and we turn our attention back to dinner. “I don’t know if I do have those needs. I’m satisfied with a good meal and my princess.” I lean over to kiss Sarai’s silky mop of curls.
“You buried your needs with your pain,” MiMi says, her voice sobering and her eyes probing. “But they are still there.”
“Are they?” My index finger makes a circuit around the porcelain rim of my bowl. “Maybe once, but . . .”
I shrug and hope she’ll leave it alone. I have aches and scars from my life with Caleb, some visible and some hidden from the naked eye. This body kept all my secrets. My shame took sanctuary in its crevices and cracks. I’m not sure this body’s capable of pleasure anymore.
“Tell me,” she persists. “Your boyfriend, he hurt you, yes?”
The scorching summer’s day and boiling soup in the kitchen make the air like a wool blanket around my shoulders, hot and heavy, but I still shiver. Caleb is far away and has never so much as sent a text to the pre-paid phone only Lo knows about. He doesn’t have my number, and I don’t think he knows to search here, but I find myself on alert.
Some people are afraid a gator will crawl out of the swamp and emerge as a threat. My nightmares star a different predator. I dream Caleb will rise out of the bayou some day and eat me whole, and next time I won’t be able to pry his jaws open and escape.
“He took from you.” MiMi says it like she knows for sure. She probably does. “He took, and you think you’ll never want a man again.”
I glance self-consciously at Sarai, but she is too young and oblivious, chewing on crusty bread with her little teeth and eating the grapes I put on her plate.
There was a man I wanted once, but if he knew all that’d happened to me . . . God, the thought of August finding out about Caleb and all that he did. I touch my neck. The idea of wanting a man again is hard to swallow when I still feel Caleb’s hand at my throat. Only it’s not his hand cutting off my breath, choking me. It’s shame.
