“Listen. I’m not going to pepper you with clichés,” Lisabeth said, practically reading her mind. “But say you do put on a little concealer on the birthmark. And he likes it like that. And wants you to keep it like that. That’s you. And you can’t cover up a part of who you are forever, particularly for some boy.”
“You never, I don’t know, changed anything for . . .” Leila looked over at Jon.
“Alright, that’s my cue,” Jon said. He folded up his paper and tucked it under his arm, his chair squeaking as he got up.
“Jon,” Leila ventured. For a moment, just a moment, the word dad had come dangerously close to slipping out, and her heart quickened.
“You two talk, I’ll finish my paper on the porch.” He smiled and hurried out of the little kitchen. Lisabeth stood up and wrapped an arm around Leila, hugging her from the side. Leila stiffened as though ice had shot through her veins, but she pushed through it, trying to soften herself up, lean into the hug.
“I think everyone changes a little bit when they end up together, you know?” Lisabeth said, giving Leila an extra squeeze before letting her go. She crossed her arms and looked where Jon had walked. “That one. He used to crack his knuckles a lot, channel surf, little things like that which sort of annoyed me. You adjust. You don’t change. There’s a difference.”
Leila grinned, and this struck an odd chord with her, as she’d basically done precisely the opposite her entire life. It was the sort of thing you learned in the group home when prospective parents came by. To act a certain way, talk a certain way, dress a certain way. When they took you home, you changed, behaved more like them. Like their kids. Talked and acted “normal,” whatever that was. It was easy to be herself around Sarika, and for the first time, thanks to their gentle nudging, she’d been mostly herself around Lisabeth and Jon.
Everyone else though . . .
“So, no makeup?” Leila said, looking at Lisabeth.
“No makeup.”
“Then why bother with it at all, ever? Any kind of makeup?” Leila gestured at her face.
“None of that covers up anything, really. The little things.” Lisabeth said. She walked over to the coffee maker and cleared out the grounds, and her thick braids swung around her head every time she moved. Her eyes sparkled with adoration when she looked back at Leila, who blinked and tried to ignore the heavy feeling in her chest as Lisabeth stared at her. Without makeup, and maybe if Liz wore her hair a little differently, well, they looked a lot alike.
She could easily be confused for her biological mom.
A blast of warmth shot through Leila and she had to turn away.
“It’s for you, and it accentuates what’s already there,” Lisabeth said, sitting back down and putting a hand on Leila’s shoulder. “And what’s there is beautiful.”
“Okay,” Leila said, nodding. “I’m, um, I’m going to head out, meet up with Shawn.”
She pushed her chair out and grabbed her bike helmet off the rack near the back door, pushing it down over her hair and onto her head, clicking the strap in place. She smiled as bits of hair pushed their way up through the spaces in the helmet, and glanced at Lisabeth, who stared, aghast.
“What?” Leila said. “I’ll fix it later.”
Lisabeth shrugged.
“You said it yourself,” Leila said. “Never change, remember?”
_____
After several minutes of awkward wrangling and twisting, Leila finally managed to squeeze her bike out the front door. It was a tedious routine. The hallways of the home were narrow, and the only place for her bike was hanging from the wall in the living room, far away from the door. Jon suggested locking the bike up out in front of the house, promising there was no way it would get stolen, but she’d heard that before.
Her bike, named Marigold after the seeds Frieda and Claudia sell in The Bluest Eye to purchase a bicycle, had been with her through too much to risk losing it. The group home, foster homes, and now this one. She wasn’t about to lose her to people who wouldn’t appreciate her fading paint, her slightly dented tire that wobbled a little bit, and the brakes that were somewhat spotty.
“Alright, let’s do this,” Leila muttered, swinging her leg over the thin bike frame. Straddling the bike, she pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket and clicked it on to double check where she was going, flipping to the texts Shawn had sent her earlier in the day.
Let’s meet over at the Art Museum, and we’ll roll out from there.
Meet you there around 3PM? Ride our bikes through golden hour?
Sounds good, see you soon!
She stared at the phrase “golden hour” quizzically for a moment, as confused about it now as she was when she got the text, before shrugging her shoulders and putting the phone back in her pocket.
With a few quick huffs, she was off.
LEILA: Hey what does “golden hour” mean?
SARIKA: What?
LEILA: I don’t know. Shawn said something about it in his text. Riding our bikes through it.
SARIKA: Oh.
SARIKA: Damn girl, it’s going down.
LEILA: What?!
SARIKA: ;-)
LEILA: What does it mean?
SARIKA: Not telling, but you’re gonna like it when he does it. Mm. Rawr.
LEILA: Oh my God stop it what is it.
LEILA: No seriously I’m like a block away from my house still and about to go home.
SARIKA: Hahahah it has to do with taking pictures.
SARIKA: Golden hour is like, that time when the sun is at its best.
SARIKA: Probably wants to take cute snaps together on Instagram or something.
LEILA: Ohhhhh.
SARIKA: You thought it was some weird sex thing.
LEILA: I hate you. ?
SARIKA: ?
VIII
Leila pushed forward on her bicycle as the wind tickled her skin. She had always felt that Philadelphia’s end-of-summer-here-comes-fall weather had a special magic to it. It was unpredictable. Sometimes Mother Nature was kind, with cool breezes and temperatures that usually came in October, ushering in the crunch of multicolored leaves and the smell of tiny fireplaces. Other days, it felt like it hammered home the remains of summer, with blistering, unforgiving heat that rose up in waves off the cobblestone streets and burnt-brick sidewalks. Back at the Kline’s, air conditioners and space heaters waged a noisy war with one another in the old, historic home, despite the fact that one side was always going to lose.
Today felt like it was a lucky day, with surprise fall weather, just minus the changing, vivid landscape. Leila rode her bike out from home and through the brownstone-lined streets, and flashes of murals greeted her as she pedaled along the bike lane. Fearless alongside speeding cars and motorcycles, Marigold’s threadbare tires pushed hard against the city asphalt. Philadelphia. The City of Murals. From the large-scale paintings that took over the sides of entire buildings to the smaller ones decorating the ends of rowhomes, they were everywhere, impossible to miss, and were always a welcome distraction on long walks or quiet bike rides.