“Not what I’d call quality time. It’s like it’s physically painful for her to look at me. I mean, I get it. I ruined her future. But why does she bother? Why do I?”
“Because there is love there, even if it’s hard to see.”
She didn’t have to keep me.
The thought left me with a cold shiver in my heart, because no doubt, my mother must’ve had the same idea. Looking at her sometimes, I’d feel a strange, remembered vertigo, as if I’d once teetered on a razor’s edge between here and oblivion.
“Don’t go there, Shiloh.”
Bibi might’ve been legally blind, but she saw everything.
“Can’t help it,” I said softly. “Why did she have me if it was going to be so hard for her?”
Bibi thought for a moment. “A woman’s heart is not a single room with her feelings and choices stark on white walls, like an exhibit. It’s a deep catacomb we spend our entire life mapping. Your mama is navigating her way, but it’s slow and hard. Because she’s lost.”
I turned to face my great-grandmother, the woman who raised me, whom I trusted and loved more than anyone else. “What happened, Bibi?”
She heaved a sigh, her shelf of a bosom rising under her housedress. “I wish I knew, honey. But Marie is closed off to protect herself.” She gave me an arch look. “Just like you.”
After seventeen years, I was used to Bibi’s gentle lectures on how I needed to open my heart to other experiences. But as wise as she was, she didn’t understand. I had to work hard to make something of myself and prove that I was worth the choice Mama made to keep me.
Opening my heart is how the pain gets in.
“Did you see your boyfriend again this visit?” Bibi asked after a minute.
“Jalen isnotmy boyfriend. We have an understanding.”
“An understanding. Howromantic.” She frowned over her knitting. “I’d feel better if you came home crying over how you were going tomiss that boy and wondering how you’d survive until the next time you saw him.”
“Ugh, no thanks. I don’t get mushy over boys.”
My mother’s rejection was enough to contend with, thanks very much. Bibi said a woman’s heart was like a catacomb. Mine was more like a trashed hotel room I was trying to keep locked. No way was I going to let some guy move in and wreak his havoc too.
Bibihmphed. “You two were careful, I presume.”
“Of course.”
Careful to use protection and careful not to let Jalen think I was about to get serious. But I didn’t need to worry. He and I had known each other for years, our friendship growing into experimental messing around since we were fourteen. He was the quintessential friend with benefits: hot, smart, not interested in catching feelings. Just the way I needed him to be.
“Always careful, my Shiloh,” Bibi said to her knitting. “Careful, driven, ambitious.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. And on that note, unless you need anything, I’m going to hit the garage.”
“Already? You just got home.”
“I have online orders waiting to fill.”
She heaved a sigh. “Working day and night. My very own Tiana.”
I grinned.The Princess and the Frogwas another of Bibi’s favorite themes. The cute Disney movie had somehow become a metaphor for my life.
“She got her restaurant, didn’t she?” I said.
“She also learned to make room for love along the way.”
“Might I remind you that Tiana was also—briefly—a frog. It’s a fairy tale. This is the real world.”
Bibi sniffed, needles hooking and poking. “Be that as it may, I don’t like the idea of you in that garage all day, every day. It’s not healthy and has to stop.”