Romantically Entangled

Chapter 9

Nicki

I don't sleep well that first night in my new home.

I wake up the first time with my heart pounding in my chest, staring into the unfamiliar darkness, no idea for a few seconds where I am.

Tree branches are scraping the roof near my window, and the harsh, jarring sound invades my thoughts.

When I fall back to sleep, I dream about the awful last days of my mother's life.

In the dream, I'm back at the ranch in my old room upstairs, with an oak tree just outside the window.

I used to sneak out that way when I was younger, until I fell one night and broke my arm in two places.

Virginia had the ranch hands shear off the branches near my window and put a stop to what she called my "tree-top adventures."

She always wanted me and my brother to call her Grandmother. In her mind, Grandma was low-class.

My brother Micaiah complied—like he always did.

Naturally, I made a point of calling her Grandma. Until I got older and switched to Virginia.

She seems to hate that as well.

About a week before my mother died, Virginia showed up at the mobile home where we'd been living.

I was sitting outside in a lawn chair, swatting at mosquitoes and staring at the setting sun, when she roared up in the big SUV emblazoned with the Cooke Ranch logo.

As usual, she was driving like a bat out of hell. She seems to think she has a right to do that.

Micaiah was inside our double-wide, trying to figure out what to eat for supper. His choices were limited to whatever canned food and stale cookies or crackers he could find in there.

I'd been meaning to make it to the grocery store but couldn't seem to get motivated enough to do it.

Micaiah had the marijuana munchies, but he wasn't getting any sympathy from me.

My brother's smart, probably smarter than me. But he stopped even trying in middle school, and by high school, he was a dropout.

So he spent a lot of time sitting around in front of our trailer with his druggie buddies, toking up and making moronic comments.

"Nice job perpetuating the trailer-trash stereotype, Micaiah," I'd said when I got home from work, my McDonald's uniform reeking of the french fry machine I'd been operating for hours. "Your mother will be so proud."

He told me to fuck off—mainly for his buddies' benefit, I thought—and when they weren't looking, he shot me a stricken look that made me feel a little guilty about using our dying mother to taunt him.

But only a little. Micaiah had a lot to answer for.

I had to snatch a lighter out of the hand of one of his idiot friends, who was hunched over waving the flame under the loose vinyl straps of the chair he was sitting in.

"Too bad it's fire-resistant, genius," I snapped as the acrid smell of burning plastic reached my nose.

Genius just grinned up at me stupidly.

Micaiah was always making dumb choices when it came to his friends.

The druggies were all gone—except for the one I was related to—by the time Virginia walked past me and yanked open the trailer door.

She was impeccably dressed, as usual, in wealthy ranch-chic.

Her boots alone probably cost more than several months' rent on our little home on wheels, the only thing my dad had been able to afford after we all left the ranch in a hurry, not long before my mother's diagnosis.

Virginia's hair was cut in a sleek bob. She'd never colored it; her natural gray was steely and stylish, just like its owner.

But her eyes were puffy, almost invisible without makeup. She looked exhausted.

I knew she'd been at the hospital with my mother for the last forty-eight hours.

"Onika," she barked at me as she climbed into the trailer, "pack your things. You're moving back in with me."

Virginia rarely just speaks to someone. Instead, she issues orders.

I hate that about her.

Naturally, I started to resist. Virginia and I have been butting heads since I was a little kid, and by then it was a comfortable pattern.

It used to make my mother cry and my dad laugh. But they were both beyond that.

And the truth was, I really did want to go back to my big, comfortable room at the ranch. I hated the cramped, crumbling trailer.

Until my mom went to the hospital for what would turn out to be the final time, I had to cover my ears every night and pretend not to hear her moan in pain.

I couldn't wait to get out of there.

In my dream, I'm watching my family from the safety of the canopy bed Virginia bought for me when I was six.

Somehow, the trailer, the ranch and the hospital are all mixed together.

Mom, Dad, Micaiah and Virginia are inside the double-wide, arguing about something.

And then, suddenly, they're standing out in the sunshine at the ranch, laughing together.

And then, in another instant, they're sobbing in a waiting room at the hospital.

All except for my mother, who starts shrieking as she is wheeled away on a stretcher.

I sit upright in my new bed, hearing the screams from my dream for a few seconds even after I'm awake.

It's still dark outside.

I tussle with the sheets as if they're holding me down, then leap out of bed and step to the other side of the tiny room, resting my hands on the wall and forcing myself to breathe deeply.

After a few moments, I pick my phone up from the dresser to check the time: Four o'clock in the morning.

I groan and flop down on the bed, then close my eyes, trying to go back to sleep.

I punch the pillow a couple of times, trying not to think about my family, or the past.

Instead, I allow myself to think again about Beyonce Knowles.

I can hear in my head the song she sang to me on the roof.

My mouth tingles as her thumb moves tenderly across it again in my memory. I think about how she kissed me; I can practically taste her lips on mine.

I wish, now, that I'd kissed her back. That I hadn't been such a prissy baby.

I finally drift to sleep, imagining being wrapped up in Bey's strong arms.

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