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curmudgeonly self, and it’s kind of freaking me out. Jada and I are helping her and Mrs. Searles, her self-appointed wedding planner, make little sachets of birdseed for the occasion, and she’s grinning and blushing like—horror of horrors—a true bride. I am blocking visuals of her and the pastor on their wedding night. I might just need to bleach out my brain when all is said and done.
“So, now you just need something borrowed and something blue,” Jada says. “Ooh, I have a silk pashmina my mother bought me when she and Daddy went to Indonesia. It’s all these variations of purple. I think it will go perfect with your lavender gown.”
“And this time of year you’re going to need a hat.” Mrs. Searles gets up and rummages in a bag she brought in earlier. “But here’s your something blue.” She hands Mama a white and baby blue garter with a little blue bow on it.
Mama, Jada, and Mrs. Searles giggle while I look at all of them like they’ve lost their minds.
“Don’t you come back from your honeymoon with a dislocated hip or a bruised pelvic bone,” I mumble.
“Keisha Anarosa! My bones are in good shape, I’ll have you know. Y’all might need to be worried about Pastor Johnson, not me,” Mama says and laughs again.
“Ooh, Mama Beale,” Jada says.
“We are not dead,” Mrs. Searles interjects. “We may be old, but we still have needs.”
Jada and I laugh. Me moreso to keep from throwing up in my mouth a little. I feel like running to the Gold Coast to find Tristan so he can erase the image of my mama making the “beast with a couple of decrepit old backs” with Pastor Johnson.
Oh my God, I’m going to die and go to hell, thinking such thoughts about my mama and the pastor.
“She’s just jealous,” Jada singsongs.
Mama puts the circles of tulle she just cut on the table. “I know she’s been sulking about Tristan.”
“She even had our employees at KSR walking around on eggshells,” Jada chimes in. I glare at her, and she shuts up.
“What she is, is pathetic,” Mama says. “You might as well just take him back and put us all out our misery.”
I whip my head up. While I should be perturbed about her speaking about me as if I’m not in the room, I glom onto what she said about Tristan. “How can you say that? I may not want to take him back for that matter.”
Mama clamps her lips shut and begins to fiddle with the tulle and ribbon in front of her on the table again as if I’d never spoken.
“Mama?”
She ignores me and shows Jada a department store circular. “Jada baby, what you think about this dress and these shoes? Ain’t no sense in spending extra money at a bridal boutique for yours and Keisha’s stuff.”
I put on a full-on sulk then. If Mama wants to ignore me, I can join her in her game.
     
~*~
     
It’s a rare Saturday afternoon that I’m in the Studio alone, and Tracey buzzes me to tell me I have a phone call. I pause the music I’m mixing and turn off the board.
“ Coração! ”
I know this voice. “Carmelo?”
“ Olá, querida . I heard somebody’s living the dream.”
Carmelo Rojas was my brother from another mother when we were on campus at DePaul together. Just the opposite of me, the child of a Brazilian mother and African American father, Carmelo and I became friends when he was dating one of my suitemates in our freshman year. A year ahead of us, he graduated and went on to tour with a local band after college.
“ Ei bonito , you heard right. So, are you here? In Chicago?”
“Yeah, you know I can’t stay away from Chi-town forever.”
“I understand. How long are you here for?”
He sighs. “Indefinitely.”
“What happened? You and the band part ways?”
“Something like that. Hey, want to get together tonight and catch up? I promise to tell you all about it over drinks and a little dancing.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“I hear this new club, Wicked, is banging.”
“Uh... no.”
“Why not? You know I like to check out new