Sena pulled a shirt from the dryer and shook it once, the fabric snapping flat between her hands. She folded it lengthwise across her forearm, pressed the crease with her fingers, halved it again, and set it on the stack growing on the counter beside her.
She reached for another shirt from the basket and shook it the same way, her hands smoothing the collar flat before she started the fold. Behind her, footsteps came down the hall, and Tae appeared in the doorway with a Snickers bar in his hand, the wrapper peeled halfway down, a bite already missing from the top.
He pointed the bar at her. “You couldn’t go do this at eomma and appa’s?”
Sena kept her eyes on the shirt in front of her, her fingers pressing the crease into the cotton as she folded it over. “Vicky told me I could. Someone’s always stealing other people’s shit at my complex.”
Tae scoffed then bit off a piece of the Snickers, the caramel pulling in a thin string before it snapped. “You’re the one that wanted to move out on your own. You wouldn’t have to worry about that if you’d just stayed at home.”
Sena set the folded shirt on the stack and reached for the next one without turning around. “I wanted some independence.”
Tae laughed. “Sena, you live 20 minutes from eomma.”
She looked over her shoulder at him, her hands still on the shirt in front of her. “You and June do, too. That must be the case for all of us then.”
Tae shook his head, pushed off the doorframe and walked to her side, settling his lower back against the counter with his arms crossing loosely in front of him. He watched her fold the shirt in a few practiced motions, the fabric turning over itself and flattening under her palms, and pointed the bar at her again.
“What about this guy you been seeing, huh? He doesn’t have a washer and dryer? Or you don’t want him to see your dirty clothes?”
Sena gave the shirt in her hands a shake and laid it flat on the counter, folding it over in two clean motions before she set it on the stack. She reached into the basket for the next one. “He does, but it was just easier to come here. You live closer.”
“Or you don’t want him to know that you’re domestic. He’ll have you ironing his boxers. White men, they love the docile Asian woman.”
Sena snorted a laugh. “You’re married to a white woman. June, too.”
Tae waved the comment off with the hand holding the Snickers, the bar tracing a short arc through the air before he brought it back to his mouth and bit off another piece. “That’s different. I’m the man. You? You’d have to be carrying his umbrella, bowing and shit.”
Sena shook her head as she picked up the stack of shirts and set them carefully into the laundry basket on the counter, pressing them flat with her palm. “I guess it’s a good thing Rey’s not white then.”
Tae chewed, his eyebrows coming together. “Black? Appa might lose his shit if you bring home Rob48.”
“Appa’s not racist.”
Tae swallowed and pointed what was left of the Snickers at her. “Being racist and not wanting your daughter getting cracked by some dudes with criminal records are two wildly different things. We live in New Orleans. I’m just playing the odds.”
Sena rolled her eyes. She pushed past Tae with her hip, reaching for the pile of clothes still waiting on the other end of the counter, and pulled the next item toward her. Her fingers found the seams and started the fold. “S—He’s Mexican. In nursing school. Not a fucking criminal.”
The correction sat between them for a half second, Sena’s hands moving through the fold without breaking rhythm, her eyes fixed on the fabric. Tae shook his head, pulling the last piece of the Snickers from the wrapper with his teeth before he balled the wrapper in his fist. The grin came up one side of his face as he chewed.
“From Rob48 to Peso Plums. Make sure I’m there when you bring him home to eomma and appa, yeah?”
“Fuck off, Tae.”
Tae laughed then reached over and flipped the shirt she had just folded off the top of the stack, the fabric coming open as it tumbled flat against the counter, and walked out of the room.
Sena picked the shirt up, shook it once, and refolded it.
~~~
Sara had Micaela against her chest with one hand spread flat across the baby’s back, the small weight of her pressed into the fabric of Sara’s shirt above her collarbone. Music played low from the speaker on the bookshelf and Sara moved with it, her weight shifting from one foot to the other in a slow rhythm that carried Micaela. She sang along in a voice pitched low enough to stay under the music, the Spanish coming loose and easy off her tongue, the melody finding its notes.
Micaela’s eyes tracked Sara’s face from below, dark and fixed, the lashes blinking slow. Her hand came up from where it rested against Sara’s chest and her fingers found the ends of Sara’s hair where it fell past her shoulder. She closed her fist around a strand, the hair pulling taut between her grip and Sara’s scalp.
Sara smiled, her chin dipping toward Micaela’s face. She kept singing, her hand pressing warm against Micaela’s back, her body carrying the sway, the words rolling through her.
A knock came hard against the front door. Three hits, fast, loud enough to rattle the frame.
Sara looked over her shoulder toward the hallway, her voice trailing off mid-line. She shook her head and crossed to the bassinet beside the couch, bending at the waist to lower Micaela down into it. She eased her hand out from under the baby’s back, her fingers sliding free of the fabric of the swaddle and settled her against the pad. Micaela’s face scrunched, the skin between her brows pulling in, her mouth turning down at the corners, but the cry that looked like it was coming never came. Her fist still held the strand of Sara’s hair and Sara worked it free with her thumb gently before she straightened.
“I’ll be back, muñequita.”
She walked through the hall to the front door and pulled it open.
Maria stood on the other side with her purse over her shoulder, her chin lifted, her mouth set in a line. Her hair was pulled back tight from her face, pinned flat against her scalp.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Maria’s eyes moved past Sara into the house then her gaze came back to Sara’s face.
“Considering you said this was Mireya’s house, you sure are here often. ¿No trabajas?”
Sara leaned her shoulder into the edge of the door, her hand resting on the knob, her body filling the frame. “Cuando cuidas de tus hijos, ellos te cuidan a ti. If you weren’t such a fucking cunt, maybe you’d have some good coming to you, too.”
Maria scoffed. “Where is my grandchild?”
“Nowhere you’re going to see her. Is that what you came here for?”
Maria’s chin came up a fraction higher. “You have no right to keep my grandchildren from me.”
Sara’s hand stayed on the knob. “Do you know what happened to Mireya when she delivered?”
“No, I do not care.”
Sara held her eyes across the threshold. “Murió. Sangró demasiado.”
Something moved through Maria’s face. A hitch in the line of her mouth, a pull at the skin around her eyes that lasted less than a second before the scowl settled back into its place and flattened everything underneath it.
“You lie.”
Sara shook her head. “I was there. Holding her hand. Tu hija. She was screaming for them to bring back her child, begging me to bring her back. Then nothing.”
Maria sucked her teeth. “Then they must’ve brought her back.”
Sara nodded. “Thanks to La Virgencita herself.”
Maria’s mouth pulled at one corner, the skin around her eyes tightening until the lines deepened into the creases that ran from her nose to the edges of her lips. “Porque el infierno aún no estaba listo para ella.”
Sara let out a breath through her nose, slow and measured. “When will this end, Maria?”
“Let me see my grandchild, puta.”
Sara stepped back from the doorway and took hold of the door. “No vuelvas por aquí.”
She slammed the door before the first word of Maria’s response could clear her mouth. The frame shook in its housing.
Sara stood in the hallway with her hand still on the knob, the music still playing from the living room behind her. She let go of it and turned, walking back through the house, her bare feet crossing the hardwood, her fingers running through her hair, pulling the strands back from her face and letting them fall.
She stopped at the bassinet and leaned over it. Micaela’s eyes found her face and her mouth softened, the scrunch between her brows easing, her body settling deeper into the pad.
Sara smiled then slid her hands under Micaela’s back and lifted her out of the bassinet, bringing her back up against her chest, the baby’s cheek finding the same spot above her collarbone where it had rested before.
“Ven a bailar con abuela, muñequita.”
~~~
Mireya sat with her arms crossed over her chest, one leg resting across the other, her weight settled deep into the back of the chair. The chair was leather, wide enough that her elbows cleared the armrests on either side, set across from a matching one where Fernanda sat with a leather portfolio open against her knee, a pen uncapped between two fingers, her other hand resting flat on the armrest. Bookshelves lined the wall to Mireya’s left, the spines running in clean rows. The carpet was thick under Mireya’s shoes. Light from the window behind Fernanda fell across the arm of her chair and onto the floor between them.
“You’re from Oaxaca.”
Fernanda’s eyebrow rose. “Are you familiar with my accent?”
Mireya nodded. “My dad is from Oaxaca.”
Fernanda’s pen shifted between her fingers, the barrel rotating a quarter turn. “Are the two of you close?”
Mireya’s mouth pressed flat. “I haven’t seen him since I was a kid.”
Fernanda let a beat pass, her eyes staying on Mireya’s face, her pen turning once more before it settled against the leather of the portfolio. “But you’ve held onto the sound of his voice and can identify the accent after all these years.”
Mireya shrugged, one shoulder lifting inside the fold of her arms and dropping. “I come across it on TikTok and shit, too.”
Fernanda smiled, the corners of her mouth pulling up a fraction before they leveled. “Yes, the internet allows us to be much more connected to things we have lost. What is it that brings you to therapy, Mireya?”
Mireya’s thumb pressed against the inside of her elbow where her arms crossed. “A social worker suggested it after some things happened and I figure it might be a good idea to stay on people in the government’s good side.”
“What things?”
“Some things.”
Mireya’s crossed leg shifted, the top foot rocking once before it settled.
Fernanda paused, her eyes on Mireya’s face, steady, holding the silence between them long enough for it to fill the space. Then she gestured toward the closed door with her free hand, a small sweep of her wrist. “Mireya, when you walk through that door, anything you tell me is privileged unless it is a danger to yourself or others.” Her hand came back to the armrest. “This doesn’t work if you keep things from me. It doesn’t help me treat you and it doesn’t help you get treatment.”
Mireya’s jaw worked once. She looked past Fernanda at the wall for a beat, then brought her eyes back.
“I freaked out when I found out I was pregnant. Stupid shit because I’m weak. That’s it. The government wouldn’t have treated me like that if I was some blonde haired, blue eyed bitch named Makayla. ¿Pero yo? ¿Una mexicana? Empieza a buscar la manera de quitarle a sus bebés.”
Fernanda’s head dipped a fraction. “No te equivocas en eso.” She let a beat pass, the portfolio shifting on her knee as she recrossed her ankles beneath the chair. “Why are you really here, Mireya? What would you like to accomplish?”
Mireya shrugged, both shoulders this time. “I don’t know. I think I need it.”
Her eyes dropped to her own lap for a beat, to her crossed legs, to her hands gripping her elbows, then came back up to Fernanda’s face.
Fernanda held her gaze. “Can I point out something I’ve noticed from our short time together today?”
Mireya nodded, her chin dipping once.
Fernanda set the pen down flat against the leather and brought both hands to the armrests. Her posture shifted forward a degree in the chair, her weight coming off the back of it. “You have an anger in you. Deep inside. It radiates from you when you move, when you speak. Even if you say something mundane.”
Mireya’s arms loosened against her chest, her grip on her elbows easing until her fingers went slack against the fabric.
Fernanda held her eyes. “That kind of anger is embedded from years and years. And you keep stacking on top of it. It’s the type of thing people feel. If there is something you get from this, I would recommend it be you understanding that anger, its source and then finding a way to let it go.”
Mireya sighed, the air leaving her through her nose. Her eyes moved off Fernanda’s face and traveled past her shoulder to the wall behind her. A framed photograph hung at the center of it, Fernanda and a man standing on a beach, the sand white under their feet, the water a flat blue behind them. Off to one side, past the man’s shoulder, a man stood at an elote cart, the yellow of the corn catching against the blue of the water, the metal of the cart bright where the sun hit it.
Mireya’s eyes stayed on the photograph. On the beach, on the cart, on the corn.
~~~
Autumn had the corner of the couch with one leg tucked under her, her phone resting on the cushion beside her knee. Jade sat at the other end with her feet up on the coffee table, her ankles crossed, her back sunk into the cushions. Simone had the armchair to Jade’s left with her legs crossed, one foot rocking against the air. Brooke sat on the floor between the couch and the armchair with her back against the base of the couch, her elbows resting on her drawn-up knees, her head tipped back against the cushion behind her.
Jade shook her head, her hand cutting through the air in front of her. “Y’all I saw that nigga Ali hugged up with some white bitch down in Santa Monica the other day.”
Brooke’s eyebrow rose, her chin tipping up. “You mean as-salamu alaykum, my sister ass Ali?”
“That exact fucking nigga.”
Simone’s foot stopped rocking. “I always knew that shit was an all an act.”
Autumn sucked her teeth, her head shaking once. “No nigga that makes being a Muslim his whole personality is actually a fucking Muslim. Ali’s mama and daddy go to an AME church out in Crenshaw. He does that shit to get stupid bitches to fuck.”
Jade snorted a laugh, her body folding forward, her hand coming to rest on her knee. “I know more than a few it’s worked on.”
Autumn lifted her chin. “Exactly. And he probably doesn’t even like us. He likes what he was hugged up with.”
Brooke tapped her thumb and pointer finger together twice, the pads meeting in a small clip. “Clock it.”
Simone leaned over the arm of her chair toward Jade, her voice dropping low. “Like she got room to talk.”
Autumn’s eyebrow rose. “What was that?”
Simone held her hand up, her eyes sliding away from Jade’s face and back to the center of the room. “Nothing, girl.”
“Say what you got to say. Don’t be a petty bitch and a scared bitch. Pick a struggle.”
Simone’s hand came down to the armrest. Her chin lifted a fraction, her crossed leg shifting, her posture straightening in the chair as she looked at Autumn across the room. “I’m just saying that I think that nigga Caine suspicious on some shit.”
“Suspicious how?”
Jade shifted on the couch, her feet coming off the table and finding the floor. “C’mon, Simone. Don’t get on her man right now.”
Autumn waved Jade off without looking at her. “She said the shit. She can defend the shit.”
Simone’s arm settled along the armrest, her fingers wrapping over the end of it. “He just got a weird vibe around him. And how you know that nigga ain’t still fucking his baby mama? You said they speak to each other in Spanish. They could be clowning you on the slick.”
Brooke snorted a laugh from the floor, her head shaking once against the base of the couch. “It’s wild to be suspicious of people speaking Spanish living in Los Angeles, girl.”
Simone’s eyes cut to Brooke. “I ain’t talking about two little old women talking about a recipe. I’m talking about her man speaking in a different language to his fucking baby mama.”
Autumn’s jaw set, the muscle at the hinge visible under her skin. “First of all, he talks to his mama in Spanish, too. And his children. He just fucking speaks Spanish. And his baby mama is with a woman, got her sleeping in the house and everything.”
Simone uncrossed her legs, her hand coming up to touch her earring once before it dropped back to the armrest. “You keep saying that but I went check out her socials and you see all them niggas under her pictures? That’s a bitch who a linktree away from selling pussy on OF. She ain’t no dyke.”
Jade held her hand up from the couch. “She do got a point.”
Brooke shook her head from the floor. “She really don’t.”
Autumn looked at Simone across the room. Her tucked leg came out from under her and her foot pressed flat against the floor. “Just because niggas play your ass like a stupid ass bitch doesn’t mean you have to be watching for it to fucking happen to me.”
Brooke’s head turned toward Autumn. “C’mon now, Autumn. Chill.”
Simone shook her head, her mouth pulling flat, her eyes holding on Autumn’s face for a beat before they moved to the wall past Autumn’s shoulder. “You got it, girl. I ain’t even going to tell you I told you so when it happen.”
Autumn shook her head, her eyes on Simone for a second longer before she reached for her phone on the cushion beside her and turned it over in her hand.
Jade looked between the two of them, at the space that had opened up between Autumn on the couch and Simone in the armchair, then around at the kitchen behind her. She pushed up from the couch, her palms pressing into the cushion on either side of her hips. “We need some fucking alcohol in this bitch now.”
~~~
Caine leaned against the glass case with his forearms resting on the edge of it, his eyes on the piece the jeweler held between two fingers. The necklace caught the overhead light in a line of white that moved along the links as the jeweler turned it, the pendant swinging at the bottom in a slow arc. The store was bright, track lighting running along the ceiling in even rows, each beam aimed down into a case so the merchandise under the glass threw light back up against the faces of whoever stood above it.
The jeweler turned the pendant toward Caine, the face of it catching the track light. “This is a VVS1 diamond pendant on a 14-karat white gold Cuban link. Twenty-two inches. The stones on the pendant are set in a micro pavé, so every angle is going to catch.” He ran his thumb along the edge of the setting. “The total carat weight on the pendant alone is just over three. The chain has another two distributed across the links.” He held it higher, letting the pendant swing once before it settled. “It’s a statement piece but it’s clean. Nothing about it is loud.”
Caine listened, his eyes on the piece.
Across the store, Rio stood at another case with two of his people flanking him, their shoulders angled in toward the glass. One of them had his phone out, filming the pieces in the case, the screen bright against his hand.
Rio pointed at the pieces under the display, his finger tapping the surface once for each one. “Give me all them.” He turned and gestured to the guys beside him, his hand sweeping between the two of them. “Hook them up, too.”
The jeweler behind the case looked up from the tray he was pulling, the velvet slots already half-empty where he had been lifting pieces out. “Is there a limit?”
Rio shook his head, one hand coming to rest flat on the glass, his rings clicking once against the surface. “Just make sure that shit looks good because I can’t be looking like I don’t take care of my niggas.”
The jeweler smiled, his hands already moving the tray onto the counter. “You got it, Rio.”
Rio tapped the glass once with his knuckle and said something to one of his guys. He turned from the case and crossed the store toward Caine, moving past a row of cases that held watches under the glass. He came up beside Caine and leaned his hip against the edge of the case, one arm resting on the glass, his body angled toward the piece the jeweler was still holding between his fingers.
He nodded at it. “That’s some nice looking shit, lil’ homie.”
Caine shook his head. “Jewelry ain’t never really been my thing.”
“You got money now, nigga.”
“That don’t stop nobody from trying to snatch that shit off your neck and I know I ain’t going out like no pussy and letting it happen.”
Rio’s mouth pulled at the corner.. “That’s why you gotta go get yourself a burner. I know it’s California and that shit a little harder but you can get you something.”
Caine snorted a laugh then reached forward and took the piece from the jeweler, the chain sliding off the jeweler’s fingers and pooling in Caine’s palm as the weight of the pendant settled against his skin. He turned it over, holding it up to the track light, the stones catching in short bursts as they rotated through his hand. “I’m a felon, big brudda. It could be California or Texas, ain’t nobody selling me a pistol.”
Rio laughed, his head tipping back a fractionn. He brought his hand up and pointed at Caine. “Here I was thinking you was a regular ass football playing nigga and you a whole ass criminal. I guess you left that out of the conversation when you came to this bitch.”
Caine shook his head, the pendant still turning between his fingers, the chain running over the back of his hand in a loose drape. “They knew. You know how that is. If you good at what you do, these white folks will look the other way.”
Rio nodded, the grin still sitting at the corner of his mouth, his hand dropping back to the glass. “That’s facts.”
Caine held the pendant flat in his palm for a beat, the chain gathered in a loose pile against his skin. He lifted his eyes to the jeweler.
“How much this is?”
The jeweler set both hands flat on the counter, his fingers spread on the glass. “Forty-five.”
Rio tapped the glass between them with two fingers. “Get that bitch, bruh. You got it.”
Caine looked at the piece one more time. The pendant sat in the center of his palm, the stones holding the overhead light in small points across their faces, the chain coiled around it. He set it on the counter in front of the jeweler, the links settling flat against the glass.
“Yeah, I’ll take it.”
Simone tried to say some slick shit.
