She brings his favorite vase with her. Hester the Vase. Stretches a belt over it in the passenger's seat. It was pellucid, antique, cracked–just as he wanted it, begged for it, at a tag sale five years ago. The memory sits with its legs crossed in the backseat, kicking her chair, threatening death by screaming if it did not leave with its heart made whole by ceramic.
The journey to the cemetery was all backroads and winding lanes, twisting as tissue did to form her small intestine, squeezing down narrow streets like her muscles do for the nutrients, brittle hands around wet clothes, straight through the laundry shoot that is the large intestine. Kardi tries to silence it by sciencing it, and it almost works–the image of a coiled, pulsating organ soothes the ache deep in her stomach so completely it's medicinal.
When she is ten minutes from the cemetery, Kardi calls the ex-girlfriend, who picks up on the fourth ring. She almost hangs up when her nasally vocals fill her ear.
–
"Who's this?" Nya clears her throat, and her voice comes out lazy, tired. She flickers her eyes to the red letters staring at her from her clock. 11:07.
"Hello, Nya. This is Kardi Mitchell, LaRon's mom. Ms. Mitchell."
"Kardi?"
"Ms. Mitchell."
"Ms. Mitchell," Mya repeats. "What's going on?"
"Something happened," she says slowly, "to LaRon's grave."
Nya blinks. Her brain buzzes lightly. The cogs in her muscles relax, liquidize. She feels every ounce of sleepiness drain from body to outside feet.
"Something happened to it?"
"Something good," she continues. "The grave tender called me to say it was something good. I'd like for you to come see it."
Nya nearly loses the call. Her cellphone drops from her hands, slides down the brown hump of her stomach pressing hard as a bowling ball against her blanket. I'd like for you to come see it. The words hardly sound real. I'd like for you to come see it. Foreign to her ears.
"I'm on my way there."
"You are?" Mya gathers her blanket and throws it over her shoulder, scrambling blindly in the dark for her car keys.
"I'll be arriving any minute now."
The last conversation Nya had with Kardi Mitchell occurred one month after LaRon had died. She had appeared on her doorstep on a winter morning, an ultrasound burning holes in her purse. Her stomach had twisted into knots so tight she could not help but fear for the peanut-sized baby inside her womb.
Kardi had cried. She held the ultrasound like it was glass, an apparition that might disappear before her eyes if she looked at it piercingly enough. She had shaken so violently feared she might break, and reached her hands out to her, wrapped an arm around her side. Kardi had pushed her away, gently, deliberately. She wrote her a check. One hundred thousand dollars. For my grandchild. For the child. You will never be a part of this family.
"The cemetery is closed for visitors at midnight, so you be on your way, too."
"I'll be there."
