Such a Fun Age

by Kiley Reid

“Girl,” Zara said, “That could have been bad.” Emira laughed and said, “Z, it’s fine,” but then she put the back of her hand to her mouth and silently started to cry.

Sometimes, when she was particularly broke, Emira convinced herself that if she had a real job, a nine-to-five position with benefits and decent pay, then the rest of her life would start to resemble adulthood as well.

Other children were easy audiences who loved receiving stickers and hand stamps, whereas Briar was always at the edge of a tiny existential crisis.

Underneath her constant chatter, Briar was messy and panicky and thoughtful, constantly struggling with demons of propriety. She liked things that had mint smells. She didn’t like loud noises. And she didn’t consider hugging a legitimate form of affection unless she could lay her ear against a welcoming shoulder. Most of their evenings ended with Emira paging through a magazine while Briar played in the bathtub. Briar sat with her toes in her hands, her face a civil war of emotions, singing songs and trying to whistle. She’d have private conversations with herself, and Emira often heard her explain to the voices in her head, “No, Mira is my friend. She’s my special friend.”

Kelley Copeland was so tall that he could press his hands flat against the top of the subway car, which was what he did in front of Emira. Emira thought this was both a painfully obvious show of masculinity and also insanely attractive.

Briar did that nervous and uneven breathing Emira saw other children do when they skinned their knees or popped their balloons. It was alarming to know that this type of crying had been inside Briar all along, that she’d always been capable of it and just chosen not to.

“I don’t—I don’t like when Catherine bees the littlest favorite to Mama. I don’t like that.” Briar had stopped crying and she said this with a calm and specific certainty, both that she had explained it correctly and that this was in fact how she felt.

As she formulated her words, Emira held Briar’s knees in both of her hands and thought, This is the littlest your knees will ever be.

The car rolled along in the glittery snow, and for the first time since they’d been dating, Emira felt that Kelley was acting particularly white.

She wanted to shake him and say, No no no. You’re Kelley, remember? You think videos of dogs who can’t catch anything are hilarious. You take pictures of mirrors you see on the street, and send them to me with the caption, “Hey, A-Mira.” You still put a glass of water by my side of the bed even though I’ve never drunk from it. Not even once.

“For twenty-one hours a week, Briar gets to matter to someone and you want me to just pick up and leave? When would I ever see her if . . . It’s not that simple.”

Or that there are times our daughter should stand up for herself, and times to pretend it was a joke that she didn’t quite catch. Or that when white people compliment her (“She’s so professional. She’s always on time”), it doesn’t always feel good, because sometimes people are gonna be surprised by the fact that she showed up, rather than the fact that she had something to say when she did.

“What am I gonna do?” The tears came so easily that through her sobs, Alix thought, Thank God. It felt like Emira really was hers. And that Alix’s intentions must be good after all.

But there was something about the actual work, the practice of caring for a small unstructured person, that left Emira feeling smart and in control. There was the gratifying reflex of being good at your job, and even better was the delightful good fortune of having a job you wanted to be good at.

Emira loved the ease in which she could lose herself in the rhythm of childcare. She didn’t have to worry about having interesting hobbies. The fact that she still slept on a twin bed meant nothing to Briar or any of their plans. Every day with Briar was a tiny victory that Emira didn’t want to give up. Seven o’clock was always a win. Here’s your kid. She’s happy and alive.

She was furious, but she couldn’t stop focusing on how attractive his face was when he was confused. How could she hate someone so much and also want him to think she was sexy?

On the other hand, he assumed she’d broken up with people? More than one? Did this mean that he still found her attractive? Was it a completely inappropriate time to clarify, So you still think I’m pretty?

But now she sat in Philadelphia, participating in a losing game called “Which One of Us Is Actually More Racist?”

Of course you’re hiring black people to raise your children and putting your family crest on them. Just like your parents, who you were so ashamed of. And of course you sent Emira to a super-white grocery store, at midnight, and expected everything to be okay.”

Each time, it was like she was meeting Emira all over again. She’d never seen her sitter talk so much and she’d never realized how pretty she was and she’d never seen Emira so bright and quick. Alix knew the ending. She knew that everything eventually turned out alright. But watching the events play out and listening to Emira’s voice change over into fear made her heart beat as if she were watching a horror movie. Alix found herself thinking, Yes, Emira. Tell him, and Watch out, he’s right behind you! But mostly she just thought, Ohmygod, was that only a few months ago? How in the world was Briar so teeny?

First of all, no one got hurt. Briar was adorable and agreeable and bored with the situation, and Emira’s quick retorts often masked her fear. This was a video about racism that you could watch without seeing any blood or ruining the rest of your day.

Emira was annoyed, rather than delighted, by the fact that a viral video seemed to make her more qualified than reference letters and a bachelor’s degree.

“Okay, no . . .” Emira was saying no to this accusation, but mostly she was saying no to the idea of having another conversation in which she had to examine who loved her least: Kelley or Mrs. Chamberlain.

The idea of scouring the Internet and checking Craigslist and seeing disgusting children on the street and thinking, Could I learn to love you? put a twist inside her chest that brought her shoulders forward.

As Zara and Emira quietly jumped up and down, Emira suddenly realized that there would be a day, probably quite soon, when Briar would no longer remember her.

But whether she said good-bye or not, Briar was about to become a person who existed without Emira. She’d go to sleepovers with girls she met at school, and she’d have certain words that she’d always forget how to spell. She’d be a person who sometimes said things like, “Seriously?” or “That’s so funny,” and she’d ask a friend if this was her water or theirs. Briar would say good-bye in yearbook signatures and through heartbroken tears and through emails and over the phone. But she’d never say good-bye to Emira, which made it seem that Emira would never be completely free from her. For the rest of her life and for zero dollars an hour, Emira would always be Briar’s sitter.

Alex was alone, and the one thing she still had was the freedom to follow the narrative that suited her best.

But Paula seemed disappointed in Emira’s contentment.

“It’s my job to make you so miserable that you’re forced into finding something that brings you joy, and then I help you seal the deal. So . . . your goal for the next year is to learn how to properly hate your job, and find something else that you wouldn’t hate doing. Got it?”

Forming a relationship again would somehow dictate that he could be right about everything else, when really, he had a lot to learn. Emira never texted him again. His name in her phone remained Don’t Answer.

In another lifetime, Emira would have texted Mrs. Chamberlain to let her know she’d run into Kelley. She would have typed, You won’t believe who I saw, and Mrs. Chamberlain would have texted back, Tell me everything. Because even though Kelley been right about her, Alix had been right about him too.