CeCe switched the phone to her other ear, picking up her fork. Her mother was talking about the new knitting class. Or was it crochet? CeCe used her tongue to flatten the bites of cake against the roof of her mouth. She didn’t suckle the rich flavor. She let them rest, feeling the sweetness of indulgence ink into her.
“It’s fine, Mama,” CeCe said, sipping her coffee. She approached the golden edges of the cake, her favorite part. “Yes. It’s fine. I’ll get it. Yes. Don’t worry about it. OK. I’ll see you later. Yes. Bye.”
CeCe disconnected the call and tucked the phone back into her purse pouch.
“Whatchu goin’ to get?” Misha teased as she refilled CeCe’s coffee cup. “Something sexy for yo’ motorcycle man?”
CeCe snorted at the mention of the bike, and gave a theatrical sigh. “Nah, my mother needs green yarn.”
Misha raised her dramatic penciled eyebrow. “Yarn?”
CeCe shrugged. “If green yarn will keep her off the ledge this week, then I need to get the woman green yarn. Everybody wins.”
Misha laughed. CeCe ate her cake.
TWO
LIONS
AS A SMALL GIRL, CRIMSON would walk herself around the apartment, muttering rhyming words for the things she could name. Crimson, or CeCe, liked the way the letters sounded against each other, couch . . . ouch . . . bed . . . head . . . key . . . see . . .
Rhyming words. Mrs. Castellanos taught her the rhyme game, and they played it in the courtyard all the time. CeCe wondered if her mother knew about rhyming words. CeCe had learned a lot of things from Mrs. Castellanos that her mother didn’t know, like the alphabet song, the Berenstain Bears, and gingersnaps. CeCe had rushed inside one day to tell Mama about the rainbow color no one could see.
“If they can’t see it, how do they know it’s there?” CeCe had asked.
CeCe’s mother, Carla, sat in their kitchen with lake-water eyes fixed on the table. She nudged her left shoulder into a weak shrug.
“They just do, CrimsonBaby,” her mother said.
CeCe couldn’t remember when her mother became too weak to carry anything but tears. When the Sad started to come, pressing her mother to their bed, her mama cried slick, silent tears for a long, long time. Longer than a game of hopscotch. Longer than singing the alphabet in her head five times. Longer than a nap, even. The Sad made her mother cry all the time.
CeCe wasn’t big enough to pry the Sad away from her mama. Instead, she started to remember for them. After the building manager lady fussed at Mama about their overstuffed mailbox, CeCe remembered to pull the letters every day, even though Mama seldom opened them. When she snapped the last roll of toilet paper on its rod, CeCe remembered to pull the bills with the 20s on them from the bed stand and tuck them in her shoe for her walk to the store. When CeCe could see the Baker family through their apartment window leaving in their dress-up clothes, CeCe remembered to gather Mama’s underwear with hers and cover them with soap bubbles in the bathtub.
CeCe remembered to make sandwiches and open cans of fruit cocktail for lunch; she snapped rubber bands and barrettes around thick handfuls of her hair; she whisked their floor with the broom; she sniffed the milk; she wiped the dishes; and she arranged her small troop of dolls into their corner each night.
CeCe’s mother was slender with elfin features, to include a spray of cinnamon freckles across her light brown skin. She was not an animated woman by nature, but her density filled the house. When her mother was filled with air and words and winking, CeCe loved the way everything about her mother would soften. There were still exceptional days, like today, when her mother tickled and ate sandwiches with her. CeCe didn’t hope for those days anymore, though. Hoping made her ache on the inside of her skin.
“I think there’s extra sunshine out there today,” her mother said, pulling her hair into its usual ponytail. “Let’s go outside to get some!”
CeCe hadn’t noticed any extra sun, but nodded in agreement anyway. She watched her mother at first. Ever since the flowers started to push up from the ground in the courtyard, her mother’s light might only last a few minutes, instead of the whole morning. Definitely not the whole day anymore. Sometimes, her mother wouldn’t last for a whole game of jacks.
CeCe counted to a hundred, listening to her mother chatter while she floated about the apartment—bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, kitchen again. When she reached 101 and her mother was dressed in jeans and a button-down, CeCe allowed the giggles to spread down her elbows and knees. She kept smiling as her mother snapped two Afro puff ponytails on the top of CeCe’s head.
They decided to drag their two kitchen chairs out onto the porch slab to eat Cheerios with extra sugar. They watched the sun pull itself above the wall of their apartment complex. The residential building had been converted from a senior citizen community to low-income housing the year before CeCe was born. Some of the elderly residents remained, like Mrs. Castellanos, the second-floor widow who befriended CeCe. Most of the residents were young veterans, some with wives and preteens, some with screaming girlfriends, and many with only bottles and brown paper bags.
The building was fashioned like an old motel, an open rectangle lined with all their front doors. CeCe had counted twenty-four doors on the first floor one day and twenty-four doors on the second floor. She knew a little something about the households behind every door. For some, she could peek past their curtained windows when she walked her imaginary pet dragon or chased a toy. Others she observed from their porch slab or the window.
CeCe didn’t know most of their neighbors’ names, but she recognized all of their faces. Sometimes, the grown-ups said hello to her when they passed, but most had learned she would only reply with a stiff wave. She would have asked their names, but they were strangers. Speaking to them wasn’t allowed. Waving, on the other hand, was different.
Her feet swinging beneath her chair, CeCe scooped her cereal and listened to her mother coo about fresh starts and bright beginnings and healing wounds and buried shadows and such. CeCe didn’t know what these words would look like, but her mother had been waiting for them to show up for a long time. She was about to turn up her cereal bowl and drink down the sweetened milk when her mother took the bowl from her hands and declared they were going to pick some flowers along the courtyard square.
“You walk that way, and I’ll walk this way,” her mother said, standing.
Between watching her mother flit along the other side of the courtyard and searching the sidewalk cracks for flowers Mama called “Danny Lions,” CeCe hadn’t noticed one of their neighbors waving through the window. Mr. Big Mole on His Chin tapped on his windowpane to get her attention. CeCe liked Mr. Big Mole. He had thick auburn sideburns, sparkly eyeglasses, and the coolest bellbottom colors ever. CeCe thought there must be music playing inside his head when he walked, the way he bounced and bumped along their walkway. He didn’t have children, but he did have a girlfriend who wore earrings so big, CeCe imagined them as Hula-Hoops. CeCe saw them kissing all the time.
Mr. Big Mole had his thumbs tucked under his armpits, flapping in a funky chicken dance. CeCe burst into tickles of laughter. CeCe looked over to see if her mother was laughing, too. She had rounded her second corner in the courtyard and was moving toward her daughter. Her eyes were cast to the ground, but it didn’t look to CeCe like she was looking for flowers anymore. As CeCe got closer, she could see the light in her mother’s face being consumed, once again, by textured shadows. When their eyes met, CeCe saw no trace of the smile that had greeted her an hour earlier.
The inside of CeCe’s skin began to hurt again and the small clutch of “Danny Lions” seemed woefully misplaced inside her hand.
“Let’s go inside now, CrimsonBaby,” her mother said. As CeCe took her mother’s hand, she looked over her shoulder to wave good-bye to Mr. Big Mole. He