Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins (read any book .TXT) 📕

about her own life. Maybe a sixteen-year-old wasn’t ready for a child, but who is? Amara wasn’t.

This epiphany struck Amara with a force that propelled her to call out sick for the rest of the day and phone her mother. Denise wanted Amara to come home, but Amara urged Denise to come downtown because she did not want to be anywhere near Harlem since the news had broken about Asali’s charge. She feared that there would be a riot or, worse, she would be attacked.

Denise arrived in the late afternoon with a bag of Crown Fried Chicken and said, “Hey, baby, I brought your favorite.”

Amara, who was now dressed in a pink robe, her curly hair tangled and matted, hugged her mother and brought her into the apartment, where they sat and ate in the kitchen.

“Girl, what is going on with that head?” Denise joked as she slathered butter over her buttermilk biscuit.

“I just needed to take a quick nap. Ain’t feeling too good today.”

“Is it because of Asali?”

Amara was about to bite into her chicken wing but closed her mouth and placed the meat back on her plate.

“Uh-huh. I thought so.”

“Do you think I went too far, Ma?”

Denise sighed. “What’s done is done. What good would it be if I gave you my opinion now?”

“It would help to keep me in check.”

Denise took a beat. “Fine. I do think that it was too harsh. Way too harsh. You know she might land in Rikers, and she won’t last three years, that frail thing.”

“But, Mom, I’m a prosecutor. That case was horrific.”

“You’re a Black woman before you’re a prosecutor. And you’re from Harlem too.”

“I can’t use that in court, Mom. That’s beside the point.”

“Is it? If it is, then where’s your guilt coming from?”

Amara rubbed her hands together, and her eyes escaped to some other spot in the room. “I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

“What?”

“You’re lying because you didn’t look me in the eye when you said it.”

Amara looked her mother in the eyes and laughed to dilute the awkwardness from being put on the spot. “Mom, I am trying my best, okay?”

“I told you years ago, back when you were at Columbia, that you would come to me when you’re ready, and I know that whatever that was is still messing with you now. And that mess is gonna turn you inside out if you don’t let it out, Mar. I’m telling you. You let things stew in your body like that and you’ll go crazy.”

“Let’s change the subject, okay? How’s Aunt Laila? She doin’ okay?”

“Same ol’, same ol’. She has days where she’s quiet and just stares off into space and then some days she has her fits, where she screams and yells so much that I hear ringing in my ears. But lately she’s been doing something different that I can’t quite put my finger on.”

“What’s going on?”

“She’ll be having these conversations with herself in her bedroom. Like . . . full-on conversations. But when she’s talking, she’s going back and forth.”

“What is she saying?”

“All sorts of things. Talkin’ about the child she’s carrying, how she was turned away by the Melancons, the money. And I just let her keep going, but she’s been saying Landon’s name over and over and I don’t know why.”

“Landon?”

Denise nodded.

“How long has this been happening?”

“Only for the past few weeks. I tried to get Landon on the phone, since I thought she wanted to speak to him, but she’ll spaz out into a fit if I even bring him up. I don’t get it.”

“Landon,” Amara said. “Huh.”

The door opened and a male voice yelled, “It’s just me!” Denise closed her eyes and quietly groaned, and Amara hurriedly hushed her mother before Ethan entered the kitchen. Her long-term partner was one of those Connecticut blue bloods: He was educated at the elite Hotchkiss School, and his family had a summer home in Narragansett. Always dressed in either Hugo Boss or Ralph Lauren, Ethan was a John Kennedy Jr. look-alike who’d met Amara in a Legal Writing course back at Yale Law. Paired together for an assignment, Amara learned that Ethan had been accepted by the skin of his teeth, after a phone call and blank check to the office of admissions from his father, another Yale Law alumnus. Unlike Amara, Ethan was a mediocre student, but there was something about her ambition and beauty that lit a fire underneath him: he aced the assignment and got his priorities together in order to woo her. Ethan’s parents, who voted for Barack Obama twice, welcomed Amara with open arms, whereas Denise shook Ethan’s hand with one of hers while the other was kept clenched by her side.

Ethan entered into the kitchen and grimaced at the fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits, and mashed potatoes all across their marble table from Williams-Sonoma. He contorted his face and shook his head as he went to the refrigerator to mete out a portion of niçoise salad and a bottle of vitamin water.

“There a problem, Ethan?” Denise placed an arm on the back of her chair and twisted the upper half of her body to face him. Amara shielded her face with her hand and turned her body in the opposite direction facing the living room.

“You two shouldn’t be eating all that junk. It’s heavy in calories and saturated fats, and it can mess with your cholesterol.”

“Thank you for the public service announcement,” Denise said sarcastically.

“Mom,” Amara whined.

“I’m just trying to look out for you both. You’re more prone to having high cholesterol and heart disease because—”

“Because we’re Black, Ethan, is that it?”

“Mom!” Amara said.

“Well”—he swallowed an olive and continued—“yes.”

“I don’t think one meal is going to kill us, sweetheart,” Amara said.

“You call that one meal? That’s enough to feed a whole village.”

“Village?” Denise said. “You know what? I think it’s time for me to go.” Denise walked over to the other side of the table and pressed her lips to Amara’s forehead. She rubbed the back of her daughter’s head before releasing with a loud