“No!” I yelp. “Stop it!”
I can barely breathe. We’re both wheezing with laughter, struggling to catch our breath. When he finally relents, I lie limp against his heaving chest, breathing as hard as he is.
“I love you, Button.”
It’s even sweeter the second time. I can’t hold back my tears. They roll of their own accord over cheeks still aching from laughter. “I love you, too.”
His arms tighten around m
e and I lean back to kiss him again, but my phone rings, disrupting the moment.
“Leave it,” he mutters against my lips. “Don’t go.”
“First of all, it’s freezing in here.” I leave one last quick kiss on his lips before scrambling over the side to grab the phone from my dress pocket. “And second, it’s Iris’s ringtone.”
“Nice view,” Kenan says from behind me.
“No more reverse cowgirl for you,” I warn, glancing over my shoulder and wiggling my naked ass.
“Oh anything, but that.” His smile drops. “No, for real. Anything but that.”
I smirk and answer the phone. “Hey, Bo. What’s up?”
“Lotus, where are you?” The solemn tone of her voice sobers me right away.
“What’s wrong?” I reach for a towel hanging on a nearby hook. “Is it Michael? Is he okay? Are you—”
“We’re fine,” she rushes to reassure me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . we’re fine.”
There’s a hesitation, a pause before she resumes.
“My mom called,” she says.
“Aunt Priscilla?” A frown knots my eyebrows. “What’d she want?”
“She didn’t have your number.”
“Neither of them do. Why would they?”
“She was calling to let us know your mom’s in the hospital, Lo,” she says. “Mama says you need to go home.”
37
Lotus
Home is not New Orleans.
And home certainly isn’t anywhere near May DuPree, the woman who abandoned me thirteen years ago for a piece of shit named Ron Clemmons.
I haven’t called Aunt Priscilla back. I don’t know if I will. Iris’s relationship with her mother isn’t quite as bad as mine, but it’s not much better. It was a coincidence Aunt Pris called the day her new grandson was born. Iris hadn’t shared any of the details of her pregnancy with her. They have their own drama.
I’ve chosen to have no contact with my mother, and don’t see any reason to change that. Iris thinks if it’s as serious as Aunt Pris says, I may want to try making some kind of peace before it’s too late.
It’s taken me years to be as healthy as I am now. What if seeing my mother, revisiting that place and that time, sets me back? What if all the ground I’ve gained over the summer, I lose chasing some idealized peace that seeing a dying woman won’t actually give?
My mother gave birth. Whoop-de-do. Cats and dogs give birth to entire litters. There is no miracle to birth, from what I’ve seen. The miracle is what follows. The miracle of selflessness. The phenomenon of nurturing self-worth and sacrificing for a child—feeding not just their bodies, but their souls. Oh, I know what a mother is, and it is not May DuPree. I had a mother. When I was dead inside, a walking, catatonic open wound of a child who refused to even speak, MiMi gave me life.
That’s a mother, and mine is already dead.