A happy black family comes up to me and asks if they can take a picture with me. A black Leia! the mother says, so excited that I actually try to get the smile into my eyes, though when they scroll through the pictures, I can see from their faces that the pictures have not turned out well. I wander around for a while and end up in Artists’ Alley, a section of the convention I saw on the website and assumed would be composed of signing tables for comic book conglomerates, but which is so much more—sexy, modern portraits that have been reproduced from their original graffiti; sleek, hyperrealist fan art; painters working on the floor, pausing to stow their brushes while they make a sale; homemade zines and tarot cards; graphic novelists struggling with mobile card readers and strongboxes as attendees press their noses to their newly purchased canvas prints. Of course I am envious, but as I am coming to the end, there is a booth with the coolest prints I have ever seen. The artist, a very normal-looking black woman in a wool sweater, looks up from her ice cream and tells me that her graphic novels are loosely based around her quest to find adequate psychotherapy. I open one of the books to a random page and there is a spread of dark, residential road. And I don’t know if it is the texture of the pavement, or the single yellow window suspended above the trees, but there is a feeling in my chest, and for a moment I can’t breathe.
“This is really beautiful. I’m sorry,” I say, so determined to put this feeling behind me that I leave the convention center entirely and remain outside until Akila, Eric, and Rebecca are ready to go home. On the way to the car, Rebecca mentions that she has had to park a ways uptown, and after we get on the A and take it all the way to Fifty-Ninth, she mentions that there was a minor accident, though when we get to the car, the front is smashed in, and two of the windows are gone. We don’t talk about it. Instead, we pile into the car and begin removing the less comfortable parts of our costumes, and by the time we make it home, there is an increased police presence in the neighborhood and the car is filled with smoke. All night, everyone has a cough.
When everyone is asleep, I go out to get some air, and I look up the average cost of diapers, but even this is an optimism I can’t afford, as it is unlikely any child of mine would have normal intestinal health.
* * *
It is only when I get up to go back inside that I look across the street and see the old woman watching me, standing in her yard with a leash in her hand. Once I am back in my room, I look out of the window and she is still there. I close my curtains and look up the graphic novelist. I find her LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, and I am shocked that she is the same person on all three. Four years at RISD, and then a stint in a posh mental institution before she began her series. On a badly produced podcast about how to handle getting stiffed for freelance work, she says that when she was in the hospital, her assigned therapist kept falling asleep, and when I hear her laugh, the way it is big and ugly like mine, I go to the contact form on her website and send an effusive and apologetic letter. In the morning, Rebecca comes into my room and begins to clean the windows. Before she leaves, she tells me that I should find a way to tell Akila that I’m leaving.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I would need to do this, but when I take my Captain Planet mug from the cupboard and make the coffee, all I can think is, Of course. I sit in the dark and try to figure out a nice way to tell Akila that I am abandoning her, that her father and I don’t really have sex anymore, that her mother has evidently had enough. I know her life has been shaped principally by the sudden departure of people she trusts, and I am not going to buck the trend. I take the train to Dumbo to interview for an internal communications gig I don’t want, and the entire time I am wondering who will do Akila’s hair.
* * *
The next day, I call Akila out of school, and she does not seem particularly enthusiastic. She says she has a test and asks if anyone has died. I assure her that everyone is safe, and then I pressure her into a day of hooky. We take the bus to Garden State Plaza, and I give her one hundred dollars. She squints at the cash and asks why it is damp, and this is the kind of attitude she has for most of the day. I let her take the lead on which stores we visit, and each time she cuts one cursory circle around the perimeter and darts back out. Though I assumed any Goth-lite accessory would do, she seems to have no distinct taste in clothing, though she lingers on a pair of rain boots at Dick’s Sporting Goods. We go into Macy’s and she plucks a bland, shapeless dress from the rack and tells me that it looks like something I might wear. I try not to let it hurt my feelings, but she does it again at Mango, and then at the Gap. I relent and try one of the dresses on, and it actually doesn’t look too bad. Then I notice a yellow crust on the mirror and feel sick. In the mall bathroom, I throw up for a while, and when I come out, Akila is much more agreeable.
* * *
She puts her phone away, and we walk silently through the mall until she decides that she would like to buy some legitimate underwear. At her age, I felt such shame about my breasts that I refused to even acknowledge them. I wore a bathing suit underneath my clothes to flatten them, but because of an extremely nosy group of West Indian elders in my church, whose sole purpose was monitoring the sexual development of young women in the congregation, I didn’t get away with it for long. In the fitting room, my mother attempted to stuff my breasts into a cute, age-appropriate bra, but my body had ceased to be the sort of hard, inchoate thing you might call cute. Instead, it had, at thirteen measly years, become soft and serious, visible to men and in need of copious support. And while Akila has the typical ambivalence about her own body, she is not like this. She invites me into the fitting room, tries on a few bras, and asks me what I think. Good, I say, trying to locate the most sensitive word. I help her adjust the straps, and she shrugs and slips them into her purse. It happens so quickly that by the time we are out of the store, the window in which I could have said something has closed. In the next store, she does it again, and no explicit plan is made, but soon we are moving in tandem, sliding bracelets and sample perfumes into our purses and stowing what we can in our boots. After an hour, we stop at Orange Julius, and we look at each other and laugh.
“Do you do this often?”
“Sometimes.” She turns the cup around in her hands. “You’re leaving,” she says matter-of-factly, like she has already spent some time with the news.
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”