Luster

by Raven Leilani

“I’m an open book,” I say, thinking of all the men who have found it illegible. I made mistakes with these men. I dove for their legs as they tried to leave my house. I chased them down the hall with a bottle of Listerine, saying, I can be a beach read, I can get rid of all these clauses, please, I’ll just revise.

It’s not that I want exactly this, to have a husband or home security system that, for the length of our marriage, never goes off. It’s that there are gray, anonymous hours like this. Hours when I am desperate, when I am ravenous, when I know how a star becomes a void.

I am good, but not good enough, which is worse than simply being bad. It is almost.

During this time, I couldn’t tell if I liked being alone, or if I only endured it because I knew I had no choice.

“Oh,” I say, trying to show my disinterest, but the principle of the thing doesn’t prevent it from bothering me, this thing Eric failed to mention, the look in Akila’s eyes as she climbed the stairs. My desire to deny Rebecca this attempt to create a link where there is none is less pressing than my embarrassment for their daughter, who may or may not be the kind of kid who wants friends, but who almost certainly would hate her mother talking about it.

Obviously, I don’t relate. I take a moment to revel in the schadenfreude, but mostly I feel suckered into admitting it, that it matters, that I have thought about it, the apparent isolation of their child, a thing immediately recognizable to me for being myself that thing which is both hypervisible and invisible: Black and alone.

he calls at midnight and says, “I’m not a violent man,” it doesn’t matter if it’s true. And when he says, “I know you are a person,” and then hangs up, it doesn’t matter that the words are slurred.

It doesn't matter ???

“You’re the girlfriend,” she says with no ire or judgment,

“I am her mother,” she says firmly, though there is a hitch in her voice and her face colors. “You are a guest,” she says before she sweeps out of the room, and I find it very rich, to have been invited here partly on the absurd presumption that I would know what to do with Akila simply because we are both Black, and now be rebuffed when I have not performed the role of the Trusty Black Spirit Guide to her taste.

It becomes clear to me, how keenly she is alone.

I sit at the top of the stairs and eavesdrop. When they begin to talk, it is in a very languid, businesslike fashion, their conversation filled with affirmations like yes, I understand you, and yes, that is valid,

She stepped into Akila's shoes

“It’s going to be all night.” “What?” “Their dialogue,” she says, a little annoyed, like she wishes I would keep up. “It’s this thing they learned in therapy—Radical Candor.” She makes a cross with her fingers. “It’s an axis. There’s also Ruinous Empathy, Manipulative Insincerity, and Obnoxious Aggression.”

Not the child comforting the adult

Now I am different. I have learned not to be surprised by a man’s sudden withdrawal.

he asks a slew of slightly invasive questions with this bright, apologetic look on his face. I have had this exact exchange more times than I can count, but I can’t tell if Eric is trying so hard because he is white, or if it is because he is a dad. When he leaves, Akila looks at me and laughs.

He is the most obvious thing that has ever happened to me, and all around the city it is happening to other silly, half-formed women excited by men who’ve simply met the prerequisite of living a little more life, a terribly unspecial thing that is just what happens when you keep on getting up and brushing your teeth and going to work and ignoring the whisper that comes to you at night and tells you it would be easier to be dead.