If It Makes You Happy Read online

  My phone rang—one of the few personalized ringtones I had bothered to program.

  “Mom!” I never knew why I shouted like that. Every time she called, I turned five years old again after my first day of kindergarten, excited to see her, go home, and tell her all about my day. I sat up, situating the phone on its stand so I would be in frame. “Hello, Mothaaaa.”

  I also tended to use accents when I talked to her. Making her laugh made me feel good. A buoyant shot of dopamine straight to my brain cells. But she didn’t laugh. She stared at me with her you got me fucked up face.

  “Uh-oh.” My upper body began to curl inward, a reflexive move to brace myself for the incoming tirade.

  “You haven’t even been there two weeks. What are you doing?”

  I winced and let out a high-pitched whine. Nothing made me squirm faster than my mom could when she used that tone. Shame, nothing but shame, as far as the soul could feel. “You see, what had happened was—”

  “I know exactly what happened. There are better ways to get your point across than insulting people. You promised to stop being so hostile when you disagree with someone.”

  “I didn’t insult him. Why is everyone saying that?”

  “Stop lying,” she said, voice tight. “His ‘little Podunk practice’? Really? And that thing about his wife? God help me, you always go straight for the jugular.”

  A laugh bubbled in the back of my throat. I pressed my lips together, cowering while trying to hold it back and look contrite. “I do not recall saying that. Lots of words were said in various sentences and I didn’t, I mean I may have, but I don’t think—”

  “Why do you always have to go straight to ether mode?”

  According to my mom, because she likes to make sense of things by placing them in pretty little boxes with pretty little labels, I have three modes.

  Saint.

  Combat.

  Ether.

  In that order.

  “You have such a beautiful, giving heart,” she continued. “I don’t understand where that nastiness comes from.”

  It’s a statement, but she’s asking. She’s asked it before and I knew she’d ask it again. I wanted to say, This is just how I am! I’m not a fairy! I can have more than one emotion at a time! but she’d never accept that. I think she convinced herself that I was hiding some irreparable hurt or trauma and it was her job to dig it out of me. Maybe I did have something like that—I thought most of my generation did. We’ve gone through a lot of traumatic shit and it had to end up somewhere, I guess. But right then, I didn’t have an answer that would make her happy, so I did what I always did in that situation: deflect.

  “Hey, well, you know, I’m just doing what Dad said. He told me not to let anybody punk me, so I don’t.”

  “I did what?”

  “Oh, Dad! Hi! You’re here, too.” I looked off into the distance. “Oh, this is happening. Oh God.” Both of my parents present meant I had reached the ultimate levels of deep shit. When I dragged my gaze back to my phone, they were sitting together.

  “I taught you to talk back to adults?”

  “I, too, am an adult.”

  “You are a child.”

  “Almost-adult,” I countered, nearly under my breath, but they heard me.

  “Winnie.” I hated when they said my name in unison like that. A united front against their unruly daughter.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I just don’t think being an adult means you automatically get my respect. I don’t care how old you are. If you act out of pocket, Imma put you back in it.”

  My dad laughed, covering his mouth and shaking his head.

  “Charles! Don’t encourage her.” My mom’s glare could shatter windows. “That’s your daughter. Do you see? Do you see what I’m talking about?”

  “Imma be real: I don’t give a shit what you said to that doctor. I really don’t,” my dad said. “But what you not gone do is disrespect my mother. Your grandma doesn’t have to earn your respect. You are in her house, which means you respect her rules, and you know exactly what that means. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Dad.” I did know. It meant unconditional obedience for me.

  “How many times are we going to have to do this with you?” Mom sighed, angry and weary at the same time. Watching her strain to keep her temper under control made my shame intensify.

  My mom and I almost never fought, because when we did it turned into Apocalypse Now: Woodson Edition. We both refused to back down, screaming at each other until my dad stepped in to separate us.

  So far I’ve been metaphorically kicked out three times and actually packed my bags once for dramatic effect, been on punishment more times than I could count, had my phone taken away twice—but given right back because the unthinkable could happen, and had my car—that I bought with my own money—my car use restricted to school trips only.

  Punishments never stuck because my mom was too good. She always apologized later, vowing to be a “better mom.” I can admit I probably deserved at least a smooth ninety-five percent of my mom’s wrath at any given time, but her apologies never felt less than genuine. It wasn’t some parental manipulation tactic to make me feel bad and promise-lie to do no wrong ever again. She felt bad for failing to shape me into a decent human being. She took on that burden. Lead by example meant something to her.

  My mom took three deep breaths with her eyes closed. I did the same, eyes open, and decided to cut her some emotional slack.

  “I don’t like it when people talk down to me.” I spoke through my teeth, hands digging into my thighs. Those feelings belonged inside of me, not out in the open where anyone could hear them. “It—upsets me when people don’t listen. But I was fine. I was in control. Everything was fine until Granny got upset, and then I just lost it.”

  I could practically see the light bulb click on behind my mom’s eyes. My dad swore under his breath. “Now, that’s your daughter,” he said.

  Wholly inappropriate considering the death-drop mood, but them doing that had always made me laugh. They each pushed off the “worst” parts of me onto the other, and neither could deny where it had come from.

  I had a powerful voice because I was my father’s daughter.

  I stood up for others because I was my mother’s daughter.

  They might have been mad, disappointed in me, but I never stopped being theirs.

  “It might not seem like it, but everyone feels that way.” Her soft tone soothed the wound that telling the truth ripped in me. “I know you meant well, but the way you express those feelings? It doesn’t just push people away—it launches them into the next dimension. It’s okay to be honest with people. It’s okay to let them know how you feel, how you really feel. If you’re upset or hurt, it’s okay to say that. You don’t have to be so cold and hard all the time.”

  I knew what to say to make her happy. “Okay. You’re right.” Because she wasn’t completely wrong. That did work for some people if they looked a certain way, like her or Sam or Kara.

  My mom understood the rules were different for my dad, my uncle, and Winston. But she didn’t understand that the rules were different for people like me—who looked like me and sounded like me, moving through a world like ours.

  When you’re too soft and expose your underbelly, people would see that weakness and choose to slice you to shreds because they could. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally. In all the ways that mattered.

  So I fought hard. I fought dirty.

  That part was all me.

  Kara (Kara Kara Kara Kara) Chameleon

  Winnie: I talked to Dallas.

  Kara: So?

  Winnie: Must you continue to be like this? It’s been two days! Forty-eight whole hours! I’m going through constant contact withdrawals

  Winnie: I swear I didn’t put my name in the Goblet of Fire. He entered because he wanted to be king. Not for me.

  Winnie: [picture message]

  Winnie: This is Ron. Don’t be like Ron. I know gi
ngers have to stick together but COME ON

  Kara: I’ll give you points for the A+ reference but that’s all

  Winnie: I bought you candy

  Kara: extra credit awarded

  Winnie: I also talked to my parents.

  Winnie: Well, they talked at me. The Shame Talk

  Winnie: And Granny’s not talking to me at all.

  Winnie: She (temporarily) kicked me out

  Kara: woman what did you do!?

  Winnie: SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LEAVE ME???? EVERYTHING IS IN SHAMBLES TAKE ME BACK I’LL DO ANYTHING

  Kara: you give me gray hair I swear

  Kara: I’m on my way

  Kara: I’m still mad so it better be GOOD candy

  Twelve

  Sam had agreed to watch Nadiya’s kid, Malachi, while she worked her evening shift downstairs. We sat on the floor with him, teething toys and stuffed animals spread around him in a semicircle to trick him into crawling.

  Kara had walked in a few minutes ago, sitting next to me without a word, but with her hands out.

  “Are we okay? I swear I didn’t have anything to do with Dallas volunteering.”

  “We’re not not okay. That’s all you get pending the tiebreaker.”

  The tiebreaker Dallas planned to win. Not telling her things gave me instant heartburn. “You’re lucky I’m desperate.”

  After I paid up as promised, she asked, “So what’s up? Your granny seemed upset when she answered the door. I was expecting Reign of Fire, not The Mopening.”

  Granny’s mood had finally downgraded from furious to unbearably sad.

  “You don’t know?” Sam asked.

  “Obviously not,” Winston said, lying on my bed with one earbud in as he watched a movie on his phone. I still didn’t know what he was so mad about, but he hadn’t been upset enough to sit in his room alone, scowling and raging against the machine, so that was a good sign.

  “Mrs. Lemon came home completely scandalized.” Sam pitched her voice, clutching her neckline. “What is wrong with Winnie? I almost don’t believe she said something like that. You three have never been like those—others.”

  “Oh joy,” I said. Racism in Misty loved to pop up like a jump scare in a horror film—the whole time you’re on edge waiting for it to happen, and yet it somehow always happens when you least expect it.

  “She seriously said that?” Kara’s mouth hung open in shock. “To your face?”

  “Yeah, and for some reason”—she pitched her voice again—“Sam is mysteriously no longer available to watch my kids this summer. It’s just so strange. Is someone paying her double again? We agreed no one was allowed to do that.”

  I grinned at my cousin. Unlike me, Sam never caused a scene. Her job had always been to smooth things over, because adults loved her. She smiled, and Aphrodite herself descended from Olympus to bestow an enchanted flower crown on her head as a tribute. We started calling her “the Goddess” after the time Kara thought it’d be a good idea to convince one of the church deacons to let us “borrow” a bottle of wine and get drunk with the other Sunday school kids. Granny yelled about “sacrilegious shame” for about an hour, until Sam did her goddess thing, even though she’d been just as drunk and guilty at the time.

  Kara tapped my foot with her own. “Tell me.” Once I finished she said, “Well, damn. Remind me to key his car.”

  “Is it weird how much the thought of you committing acts of vandalism on my behalf warms my heart?”

  “That’s called love.” Kara shot me with a finger gun. “Embrace it.”

  “She’d probably get away with it, too. Do white kids get prosecuted for that kind of thing?” Winston asked.

  “Probably not,” Kara admitted. “Definitely not here. All I’d have to do is cry and Sheriff Mills would probably fall over himself to make me feel better.”

  “That’s messed up,” Winston said.

  Kara shrugged. “At least I don’t deny it.”

  “No cookies for you.”

  “I make my own. Baker, remember?” she joked, then turned to me. “So that’s it? Granny’s upset because you put Dr. Wannabe Know-It-All in his place?”

  Winston said, “And our parents are mad because she’s hardheaded.”

  “Only a little bit.” I lowered my voice and added, “I think she wants me to lose weight.”

  Present company, while loved, weren’t exactly the people I wanted to have that particular conversation with. I trusted them not to laugh, but not a single one of them had ever been fat in their lives. Winston got all the beanpole genes. Sam had the body of someone Granny would call “this big” while holding up her pinky finger. And Kara had what the internet declared to be the acceptable slim-thick shape, with curves in all the right places. Fat and thick weren’t the same thing—one had arbitrary superiority. Chances of them, my people, truly understanding my side?

  Slim to none.

  “Do you want to lose weight?” Sam asked.

  “No.”

  Kara turned, eyes tracking from my head down to my legs and back again. I didn’t care what anyone thought. Not really. But. Like.

  An adrenaline rush hit me anyway.

  You could see someone every day without actually seeing them. A sense of familiarity took over once you got used to the way they looked. They became a vague insert-person’s-name-here-shaped thing that could be spotted at a distance from a quick glance out of the corner of your eye. Tiny changes didn’t register, but maybe a new hairstyle did.

  Had I changed since last summer? Did I look older? Better? Worse?

  “You’re fine. Strong,” Kara said. “Not that my opinion matters.”

  Fine.

  What kind of fine? Fine as in okay? Fine as in fine? Why did she have to use such a loaded word?

  “It does to me. I mean, you’d tell me if I didn’t look okay, right?”

  “No, because that makes zero sense,” Kara said. “What you’re asking is absolutely not the same as you wearing a tacky outfit and embarrassing all of the fashion gods, forcing me to be the person to tell you about yourself.” She poked me in the thigh.

  “Although,” Sam said, “if you’re worried about your health, that’s a different conversation, too. You’d be surprised how many people with ‘perfect bodies’ can’t even walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded, but no one cares about that because they ‘look okay.’”

  Malachi wiggled, happy and drooling, until he turned himself around and promptly tried to eat my big toe. “Come here, you little cutie.” I snatched him up, helping him stand on my thighs, and made him dance to a song I made up on the spot.

  Everyone loved a fat baby. The internet lost their collective shit over pictures of fat cats and dogs, and God help their feels if a chubby-cheeked rodent graced their timelines. But fat people? Fat kids and fat girls, especially? It might as well have been open season on our right to exist.

  “I don’t think you’re unhealthy,” Sam continued. “No one who can lift sacks of rice or run around Goldeen’s the way you do needs to be worried about cardiovascular disease right now. But you do kind of have a high percentage of body fat.”

  And things had been going so well.

  Sam had been in a committed long-term relationship with fitness for years. Someday they’d have babies in the form of expensive pieces of paper called diplomas.

  “Uh, thanks? For the first part anyway?” I love my cousin. I love my cousin. I. Love. My. Cousin. Yes. I do.

  Breathe.

  “I’m not saying that to be mean!” Sam whined a little. “This is why I didn’t want to say anything. I’m not saying fat as in you’re fat and there’s something wrong with you, but like you have extra fat you could get rid of if you wanted to. Does that make sense?”

  “Kind of.” I exchanged a look with Kara, who treated Sam the same way I did—protective and tolerant except with oven mitts and the occasional soft pat on the head.

  Murphy’s Law didn’t only apply to early morning cinnam
on roll massacres. Nine times out of ten, Sam trying to be helpful, or even thoughtful, twisted itself into something supremely ugly.

  I was the only one who took Sam head on, for better and for worse. She didn’t have anyone else.

  “We talked about this in one of my online AP classes. There’s this worldwide problem of understanding the difference between being fat, which is seen as a negative, versus having fat, which is something that’s a part of the body. The professor was really amazing.”

  “Okay.”

  Sam sighed. “I’m messing this up, aren’t I?”

  “No, it’s cool. I get it,” I said. “I have extra fat, which makes me fat.”

  “It sounds so bad when you say it like that.”

  Maybe Sam should have paid better attention in class. Clearly, she still didn’t understand either—I wasn’t insulting myself.

  “The good thing is, it’s easily fixable. The weight would fall right off if you started to exercise.”

  Kara turned her head, whispering, “My God” into my shoulder.

  “W-what?” Sam asked. “I’m just saying—”

  “And Winnie just said she didn’t want to lose weight. It’s like it’s impossible for you to listen to anyone except for yourself,” Winston added. “I like the way you look. You look like my sister. That’s good enough.”

  “That’s not true,” Sam said quietly. “I listen.”

  “We know that,” I said before Winston really opened fire and made her cry. I didn’t want them to fight because of me since I’d end up being the one to fix them later anyway. Besides, I didn’t need Winston standing up for me. I appreciated it but I didn’t need it, not when I understood what Sam thought she was doing. “And you”—I pointed at Winston—“no taking your bad mood out on Sam.”

  “I’m not in a bad mood.”