Such a Fun Age

by Kiley Reid

“We definitely wait for birthdays. Or even an ice cream. Like [my daughter] has to earn it. Yesterday we promised her an ice cream, but then she behaved horribly. And I said, ‘Then I’m sorry, ice cream is for girls who behave. And that’s not you today. Maybe tomorrow.’” —RACHEL SHERMAN, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence

I better not be pregnant. She was, and two weeks later, Peter cried on the corner of University and 13th when she confirmed the news. He immediately asked, “Should we move?” Moving back to Philadelphia, Alix’s hometown, had been a distant plan since they’d met four years prior. She’d wanted a backyard and children to put inside it; she’d wanted them to one day ride their bikes in a familiar cul-de-sac, or a street where no one was selling counterfeit purses or pulling down a large grate as they locked up a bodega. But at the height of her new career, one that she never knew was possible, Alix backed away from Peter. “No no,” she said, “not yet, not yet.”

Peter wanted to move. His vision of becoming a news anchor in New York City had been hit by reality: he appeared on television five nights a week to a Riverdale audience of no more than eight thousand, doing stories of charity dog marriages, toys being recalled, and Times Square tourists completing obstacle courses for the chance to win Best Buy gift cards.

Philadelphia had always been the plan, but Alix Chamberlain was just getting started.

And two days later, after a letter arrived from the corporation that would be purchasing their apartment complex, Peter announced, “I’m calling a broker in Philadelphia.” What was she supposed to do, say no? There was a gap in New York housing so large that it would have been insane to suggest buying their place or renting a bigger one.

This was one of the things Peter had liked most about Alix: that she didn’t need to be at every event, that she liked getting out of the city, that she was an excellent driver, and that she wanted her children to trick-or-treat at houses, rather than apartment lobbies and Duane Reade.

“Well.” Peter shook his head. His teeth showed as he winced at the camera and said, “Let’s hope that last one asked her father first. Thanks for joining us on WNFT and we’ll see you tomorrow morning on Philadelphia Action News.” The backlash was immediate.

Ummm, why would the black guy need to ask her dad, but the white guys don’t? That’s a bit sexist. Is this the 18th century? WTF? Why would he even say that?

Alix caught herself thinking, If it didn’t happen in New York, honestly who cares?) But Peter was mortified. “It just came out,” he said. “I don’t even know why I . . . it just came out.” Alix assured him that it really wasn’t that bad. And suddenly it was.

What if Peter got fired? Peter had gone straight to the producers of the show to apologize for his fumble, and they’d chalked it up to something between “things happen” and “you’re still the new guy.”

she told herself to wake the fuck up. To write this book. To live in Philadelphia. To get to know Emira Tucker.

There’s a town in Maryland called Sewell Bridge, where 6.5 percent of the population (5,850 people) are deaf. This is the town where Emira Tucker was born. Emira had perfect hearing, the same as her parents and younger siblings, but the Tucker family had a proclivity toward craftsmanship that was so dogged that it leaned into religious territory, and Sewell Bridge served this philosophy well. The Tucker family worked with their hands. Mr. Tucker owned a bee store with a long rooftop where the buzzing beehives were often kept.

Mrs. Tucker bound books in a shaded screened room attached to the front of the Tucker home. She made baby albums, wedding books, and Holy Bible restorations, and her worktable was consistently covered in leather swatches, needles, bone folders, and closures.

Emira didn’t love doing anything, but she didn’t terribly mind doing anything either.

But more than the racial bias, the night at Market Depot came back to her with a nauseating surge and a resounding declaration that hissed, You don’t have a real job. This wouldn’t have happened if you had a real fucking job, Emira told herself on the train ride home, her legs and arms crossed on top of each other. You wouldn’t leave a party to babysit. You’d have your own health insurance. You wouldn’t be paid in cash. You’d be a real fucking person.

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.

If Emira had a real job, she’d look at her wardrobe full of clothes from Strawberry and Forever 21 and decide it was past time for an upgrade.

Briar went to bed with her new fish on her nightstand, one of the few gifts Alix didn’t place in a donation bag. Newly three-year-old Briar promptly named the fish Spoons, and watched it swim in circles until she fell asleep.

“You have nice things.” She was loose and tired and delighted. She looked around the room and took in the record player set, a chair that looked like it wasn’t from IKEA, a black coffeemaker on the kitchen counter that looked like it was from a wedding registry, and a bike and a tire pump leaning against the wall. Her head rolled to her left. “You have nice, adult things in here.”

“Allentown,” Emira said. She stared, upside down, at the name of the city above her head and blinked as the letters went in and out. “Who do I know from Allentown?” “You know me from Allentown.” Kelley made his way over to her, placed a bag of popcorn in her lap, and said, “Let’s start with your area code.”

On the blueprint behind her, two streets over from where her pinky hung, was the place Kelley Copeland completely ruined Alex Murphy’s senior year. Back in the spring of 2000, before she became Alix Chamberlain.

In the past few weeks, Alix had developed what she knew was an awful and invasive habit of returning home, closing the door quietly behind her, bending at the hip, and looking at Emira’s phone.

the lock screen of Emira’s phone was always filled with information that was youthful, revealing, and completely addicting.

three times a week she scrolled with her middle finger as she listened to Emira cook dinner upstairs and tell Briar to blow in case it was hot. A month had gone by since the night at Market Depot, and in that time, Alix had developed feelings toward Emira that weren’t completely unlike a crush.

It seemed—and this was just her opinion that was backed by Zara’s confirmation—that Kelley was still slightly hung up on their age difference. In the same way that white women were often overly accommodating to her when she found herself in specific white spaces (dental offices, Oscar parties in which she was the only black attendant, every Tuesday and Thursday at the Green Party office), Kelley was overcompensating for the implications of their age difference by taking Emira to places that were completely unsexy, and ending the night kissing the space next to her ear.

Emira said, “Hi, Mrs. Chamberlain, thanks so much for—” But then Mrs. Chamberlain said, “Ohmygod,” with both panic and recognition, as if she’d almost walked into a very clean glass door.

With her hand on the door, Mrs. Chamberlain seemed to brace herself as if she were preparing to be hit, or as if she already had been and barely made it out alive. Kelley seemingly woke up, blinked twice, and said, “Alex?”

When she heard Kelley say good-bye, she walked with the lit-up screen into the living room. It was dark and the snow sent spots from outside the window over her bare feet. “I have things to say.”

“I know I have to quit,” she said. “I know that I can’t stay there, and that . . . raising Briar isn’t my job. But I just need to do it on my own terms. I turn twenty-six next week.” Emira grinned sadly. “And . . . I’m gonna be kicked off my parents’ health insurance. I’ve known for a while that this wasn’t exactly sustainable, but I just . . . yeah, I need to figure it out on my own.”

“I’m not done yet,” Emira stopped him.

“Number two. You gotta stop bringing up that tape from Market Depot.”

I need you to get that like . . . being angry and yelling in a store means something different for me than it would for you, even though I was in the right. And I get that you wanna stick it to Mrs. Chamberlain or whatever to avenge your high school friend, but her life wouldn’t change at all. Mine would. And I don’t want anyone seeing it, especially as I start to look for a job.”

“You can’t take me to bars like that anymore.”

You think it’s comfortable because it’s always been that way for you.”

When she really considered a life with him, a real life, a joint-bank-account-emergency-contact-both-names-on-the-lease life, Emira almost wanted to roll her eyes and ask, Are we really gonna do this? How are you gonna tell your parents? If I’d walked in here when they were still on the screen, how would you have introduced me? Are you gonna take our son to get his hair done? Who’s gonna teach him that it doesn’t matter what his friends do, that he can’t stand too close to white women when he’s on the train or in an elevator? That he should slowly and noticeably put his keys on the roof as soon as he gets pulled over?

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.

You get real fired up when we talk about that night at Market Depot. But I don’t need you to be mad that it happened. I need you to be mad that it just like . . . happens.

Just try to remember that we have different experiences. John Wayne said a lot of fucked-up shit and I’d rather not stare at his face while I have a drink.”

If I were you, I’d take the money and show that kid a really good time before you leave.”

Emira pointed her toe on the dark wood floor and said, “That’s an interesting way of looking at it.”

Emira bit her bottom lip. Kelley made her feel both extremely grown up and consumed with infantile reactions.

“It completely fetishizes black people in a terrible way,” Tamra went on. “It makes it seem like we’re all the same, as if we can’t contain multitudes of personalities and traits and differences. And people like that think that it says something good about them, that they’re so brave and unique that they would even dare to date black women. Like they’re some kind of martyr.”

Wait a second. I don’t want to give this part up either. On her own and at her best, Briar was odd and charming, filled with intelligence and humor. 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. Without Briar, there were all these markers of time that would come to mean nothing.

One day, when Emira would say good-bye to Briar, she’d also leave the joy of having somewhere to be, the satisfaction of understanding the rules, the comfort of knowing what’s coming next, and the privilege of finding a home within yourself.

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.

New York was like an ex who had worked out all summer. Alix had spent the last five days running through the city with Rachel, Jodi, and Tamra—sometimes just with Catherine—to all her favorite spots.

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

Believing that Kelley was the starting point of her adversity would always be easier than believing she’d simply slipped through an unlucky crack.

And some days, Emira would carry the dread that if Briar ever struggled to find herself, she’d probably just hire someone to do it for her.