Queen Move Read online

  Noah nods, his face sobering. “I’d be nervous, too, but Daddy said you’re the smartest girl he ever met.”

  I zip a glance at Ezra, who looks self-conscious for a moment before meeting my eyes. “Still not smarter than me, though,” he deadpans defiantly. “And don’t you forget it.”

  I thought there was no way to laugh, not on the day I buried my father, but a chuckle rattles in my throat. “You’re just mad because I beat you at chess.”

  “You beat Daddy at chess?” Noah’s eyes stretch to full moons. “Nobody ever beats him.”

  “Once,” Ezra interjects with a heatless glare. “She beat me once.”

  “Now the excuses start,” I tell Noah.

  Ezra smiles, but his gaze flits back to where his wife stands and the brief flash of humor disappears. “We better go, Noah. Let’s see what your mom needs.”

  Noah takes off, dashing from the tent and across the grass to his mother. When he reaches her, she pulls him into the crook of her arm and kisses the top of his head. What a beautiful family. I’m happy for him.

  Ezra turns his attention back to me. “I just wanted to say how sorry I am. Pay my respects.”

  A dozen words idle on my tongue at the prospect of him disappearing again.

  Don’t be a stranger. Let me get your number. We should stay in touch.

  He looks down at me, and the words lodged in my throat seem to burn in his eyes, too, fueled by regret. And hope. All the things clamoring in my chest play across his expressive features.

  “Kimba, we could—”

  “It was good seeing you again,” I cut in with soft politeness, dropping the hand I didn’t realize I still held until now. “Thank you for coming.”

  He stares at me for long seconds, and despite my best intentions, I stare back. When I was a little girl, no one was closer to me, no one knew me better than Ezra Stern. It was the kind of closeness you cherished as a child—the kind that between two adults could be nothing short of intimate.

  “Goodbye, Ez,” I whisper, blinking at fresh tears.

  “Yeah.” He looks out across green grass and headstones to where his family waits, and nods. “Goodbye, Tru.”

  Long, swift strides take him to his wife and son. They disappear over the crest of a hill, hand in hand and then out of sight. They were here only a few minutes. I doubt Mama even realized he was here. She’s still trapped in her worst nightmare where the love of her life is gone.

  “Goodbye, Daddy,” I say, loud enough for just myself and him to hear, like the little secrets he and I used to keep. The casket in front of me breaks my heart for what I’ve lost.

  I glance over the hill and shed a tear for what I never had.

  PART ONE

  “We are stardust brought to life,

  then empowered by the universe to figure itself out—

  and we have only just begun.”

  ― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

  Chapter One

  Ruth

  1983, Atlanta, GA

  Shabbat Shalom

  The words come—sudden, unexpected. A greeting my heart offers when there is no one to reply. No one for me to say it to. Friday evenings, once a day of rest, a Sabbath, are now the most restless days of the week. My soul churns, yearns for rest, but there is no peace here tonight.

  “Your ass is set!”

  My husband Alfred’s animated words thunder from the living room, shattering the small moment of quiet I found for myself by a steaming tub of water. It’s our first time having anyone over since we moved. With the food out, our new neighbors all entertained, I used my baby’s nighttime bath as an excuse to slip away. Despite my melancholy mood, Alfred’s laughter and booming voice coax the corners of my mouth up in a smile.

  “Sounds like Daddy’s winning,” I say, pressing my nose to my son’s. He gurgles back, laughing and stretching his little starfish palm toward my face. He squirms as I lower him into the warm water. A grin squints the corners of eyes the same color as mine, a blue so deep it’s almost purple. The contrast with his golden skin and cap of springy dark curls is striking. Some of me. Some of his father. Wholly himself.

  Is he adopted?

  The cashier had asked today, the syllables dragged into a molasses drawl, her wide eyes flicking between my son and me. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked that since we moved to Georgia. Even in New York, this petite Jewish woman carrying this baby boy drew the occasional stare. But here? Every time I venture out, they can’t seem to look away. Some are discreet, at least trying to hide their curiosity, but many don’t even bother. From my experience so far, the famous Southern hospitality is, at least in our case, overruled by good old-fashioned nosiness. Sometimes outright rudeness.

  I squeeze baby shampoo into my palm and rub it into his soft hair. “What have we done bringing you here, Ezra?”

  I was so ready to get away from my family in New York, I didn’t fully consider where we were going. My husband couldn’t turn down a full ride to Emory University, and my mother and I were barely speaking by then.

  “Alfred Stern,” my mother had said, savoring the name. “And a business student at Columbia? What a catch, Ruth.”

  I could practically hear her thoughts. A nice Jewish boy with a nice Jewish name and a bright future. Well, she had the bright future part right, but I knew my atheist boyfriend, with his imposing height, smooth dark skin and stubbornly godless heart was not what Mother had in mind. I’d always assumed I’d marry someone from my own neighborhood. Certainly someone Jewish. Alfred walked into the bookstore where I worked and swept me off my feet without even trying.

  “Lord above, they’re gonna come to blows out there playing spades.”

  I look over my shoulder to find Janetta Allen, one of my new neighbors, whose husband is in law school with Al. She stands in the bathroom door, arms extended keeping her baby girl, Kimba, away from her body. Bright green peas and orange mashed carrots splatter Kimba’s once-pristine romper.

  “This girl eats like a tornado,” Janetta says, nodding toward the counter. “Mind if I strip her down?”

  “Oh, of course.” I laugh at her squirming baby girl. “They don’t stay clean for long, do they?”

  “Oh, honey, I gave up on clean after baby number one.” Janetta lays Kimba on the counter and peels the romper from her little body. “I’m happy to just keep ‘em alive, rough as my kids are.”

  I glance at her slim curves a little enviously. I’ve had the hardest time bouncing back, but she doesn’t look like she’s had even one baby, much less plural.

  “How many do you have?” I ask, rinsing the shampoo from Ezra’s hair.

  “Three.” Janetta smiles, teeth white against her gorgeous brown complexion.

  “The other two are with their cousins tonight. It took me the longest time to let them go anywhere without me. A few years ago, everyone here was on edge and keeping their kids close.”

  “You mean because of the child murders?” I ask, frowning.

  The Atlanta Child Murders case, two years of more than twenty unsolved murders and disappearances, transfixed the whole country. My mother mentioned it as soon as she heard we were moving here.

  “Yeah.” Janetta sighs. “All little black boys and girls. I had to know where my kids were every second of every day. We even started sleeping in their rooms after one child was taken from their bed. Joseph in Keith’s room and me in Kayla’s. Well, that’s behind us now, thank you, Jesus.”

  She glances at my necklace, onyx embedded into the Star of David charm. “Sorry. Forgot you were Jewish.”

  For some reason, we both find that comment hilarious, and laugh loud and long in that contagious way that makes you almost forget what was funny in the first place.

  “Whoo. I needed that laugh,” Janetta says, her lips still curved with leftover humor. “And thanks for having us over, by the way.”

  “Thanks for coming. We haven’t had many visitors, believe it or not,” I repl
y wryly.

  Janetta pauses, her fingers resting on Kimba’s bare belly. The look she offers holds sympathy and sees more than I probably want to show her. “You do know y’all have been the talk of the neighborhood, right?”

  Her frankness draws a startled laugh from me.

  “Can’t say I’m surprised.” I flick water into Ezra’s eyes and he giggles, his face lighting up. “I take it there aren’t many mixed marriages around here just yet, but it is the eighties.”

  Janetta shrugs, leaning a hip against the bathroom counter. “Loving was what? Just fifteen years ago? We’re not that far removed from your marriage being considered criminal, and in the South, ignorance about race likes to linger as long as it possibly can.”

  The arguments I had with my parents and the snubs I suffered at synagogue in New York tell me the South hasn’t cornered the market on intolerance.

  “You seem familiar with law,” I say instead. “You’re a lawyer, too?”

  “Oh, no, I leave that to my husband. I’m a teacher.”

  Kimba’s small hand flies into Janetta’s face, making us both laugh.

  “She’s beautiful.” I nod toward the squirming baby girl. “How old?”

  “Just turned nine months last week.”

  I pause, my hands going still in Ezra’s curly hair. “When last week?”

  “Last Thursday.”

  “The twentieth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They have the same birthday!”

  “No way.” Janetta looks at me with wide eyes and shakes her head. “What are the odds? We can have one big party if you want.”

  “That’d be really nice,” I say, smiling because something would actually be really nice for the first time since we moved here.

  Janetta rifles through her diaper bag. “I’m out of wipes and this child is so sticky.”

  “Why don’t you just plop her in here?” I gesture toward the bathtub. “Plenty of room.”

  “You sure?” Janetta asks, hesitation in her expression as much as her words.

  “Of course. Why not?”

  Janetta smiles ruefully, walking Kimba over and settling her into the steamy water. “I guess I’m as bad as some of these busybodies around here. I assumed you’d be…I don’t know. Stuck-up. Act funny.”

  “Me act funny?” I chuckle and frown. “Every time I leave my house people stare at me like I have two heads. At least once a week I’m asked if my son belongs to me. My husband is never home, and it feels like I’m in this whole state by myself. Of all things, I miss my mother, who rejected me for marrying a man who is not only not Jewish, but black. At this point, I’d kiss strangers to make friends.”

  The words tumble out in a rush of anxious air, like someone popped a balloon, forcing it into a frantic zigzag. How long have I stuffed it all, waiting for the pin to pop? I blink at tears that snuck up on my eyes and press a hand to my chest where the loneliness collects. It’s quiet in the bathroom, with the sound of laughter and the boasting that comes with card games floating into the room in muted tones. I don’t look up, afraid that if I do I’ll cry and be unable to stop, but my fingers, buried in Ezra’s hair, shake and my bottom lip trembles.

  Janetta extends her open palm and nods to the bottle of baby shampoo behind me on the rim of the tub. “Can I get a squirt?”

  I appreciate her not dwelling on my outburst. It gives me time to collect myself, and in the quiet, we wash our babies. I swallow the tears scalding my throat and cling to the love that brought me here, so far from my community and my family and my traditions and my faith.

  “You know I don’t have any Jewish friends,” Janetta says. “You’ll be the first.”

  Shabbat Shalom

  I meet Janetta’s eyes, dark, kind and curious.

  “I’d like that.” I smile and rinse soap from Ezra’s little shoulders and back. “Though it’s been months since I stepped foot in a synagogue.”

  “There’s one a couple blocks over.”

  “Really? I was just thinking I want my son to grow up with the traditions I did. I don’t want to cheat him of that. Some rabbis won’t even acknowledge my marriage.”

  “Because Alfred’s black?”

  “Oh, no.” I grimace. “Well, maybe some. Mostly because he’s not Jewish. Some are more conservative than others. No one in my family ever married someone who wasn’t Jewish, so…”

  “Joe’s family helped elect the first, the only, Jewish mayor of Atlanta,” Janetta says, a note of pride in her voice. “Sam Massell. His vice mayor was Maynard Jackson. Four years later, Joe’s people helped make him the first black mayor of Atlanta.”

  “Joe’s family’s into politics?” I pounce on the chance to talk about something other than my problems and pull Ezra from the bath, toweling him off, kissing his damp hair.

  “Joe’s family is into progress. Into change and making wrongs right. His father was a freedom rider. Marched. Sit-ins. Did it all. He’s a legend here in the city. Streets and schools named after him. All of it.”

  “You’re close to his family?” I ask wistfully.

  “Close as I am to my own. Especially since my parents are gone. I was an only child, and Joe’s family treats me like one of theirs.”

  “That must be nice.” I choke out a humorless chuckle. “We got married at City Hall. My family wasn’t there. Neither was his.”

  “You miss ’em? Your family, I mean?”

  I nod. “I was just thinking about them, what they’re doing on a Friday night. It’s the Sabbath.”

  “I’m guessing they probably aren’t playing cards and going through six-packs like there’s no tomorrow?”

  “No.” I smile. “You can’t even turn on the lights or cook or do much of anything on the Sabbath. When I was growing up, I thought it was the most boring day of the week. Now I realize it was the most peaceful.”

  “And your family turned their backs on you?”

  “At first, yes. My mother actually started calling after Ezra was born.”

  “So things are getting better between you?”

  “I haven’t talked to her much. We both said some awful things when she first found out about Al. I’ve been so hurt and angry I just…” I blink at tears again, recalling the scent of challah bread and fish and chicken soup Mama would serve for the Friday evening meal.

  “But you miss her?” Janetta asks.

  I nod, swallow, and dry Ezra with a towel.

  “Then, girl, call her back. Life’s too short.” Janetta pulls Kimba from the bath. “My mama passed last year. She never got to meet this grandbaby. If your mama’s willing to put it behind you, give her a chance. Family is everything.”

  Laughter erupts from the living room, shouts, raucous voices. The heavy timbre of my husband, the lighter tones of others. I prick my ears to tease out a few phrases.

  “Did they just say ‘running a Boston’?” I ask, smiling and offering Janetta a towel for Kimba. “What’s that?”

  “In spades, it’s when one team wins all the books.”

  “What kind of books?”

  “You never played spades?” Janetta asks, surprise tipping the question up at the end.

  “No. I didn’t know Al played.”

  But as I think about it, in New York, Al was quieter. More reserved, to himself. I grew up there, and every corner felt like home. Al grew up in Chicago, and didn’t have many friends when we first met on campus. I introduced him to my friends; none of them played spades. New York felt very much like my world. Atlanta? Even though Al didn’t grow up here, this world already feels like his.

  “If Al’s running a Boston,” Janetta says with a grin, “he not only plays spades, but he must be pretty good. What do you like to play?”

  “You’ll laugh,” I say, self-conscious, but still managing to smile under the warmth of her encouragement.

  “Probably, but is that so bad? Child, three babies, teaching badass kids, and struggling to keep my house halfway clean, I could use a laugh.
”

  “I like playing mah-jongg.”

  “Mah who?”

  We both laugh, me slipping a onesie onto Ezra and Janetta digging out a fresh T-shirt from her diaper bag for Kimba.

  “My mother and Bubbe and—”

  “Bubbe?”

  “That’s what I call my grandmother. They played mah-jongg with their friends when I was growing up. I called it an old Jewish woman game. Even though it’s originally from China, we adopted it as our own. It’s like bridge or gin rummy, I guess, but with these tiles. Anyway, I started playing with my mom’s group one summer, and I got hooked.”

  For a moment, I can almost hear the clack of tiles and their calls of ‘five crack,’ ‘six dot’ and ‘two bam’ as close as the laughter in my living room. I can still see the tables laden with dark chocolate jelly rings, Bridge mix, pineapple and maraschino cherries pierced with toothpicks. Smell the pungent mix of their various perfumes, the scents socializing on a summer afternoon.

  “You miss it, huh?” Janetta asks, resting a drowsy-eyed Kimba on her shoulder.

  I’ve spent so much time hiding it from myself, and if I’m honest, from Al so he wouldn’t think I regret marrying him, moving here, leaving home – that it’s hard to admit. After a brief hesitation, I nod.

  “Tell you what,” Janetta says. “I’ll teach you spades, and you teach me this Mao Tse Tung.”

  I chuckle at her deliberate mangling of the game’s name. “It’s mah-jongg, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  “Good.” She turns to leave the bathroom, but pauses in the doorway to look at me over one shoulder. “And Ruth?”

  “Yeah?”

  Her smile is the kindest thing I’ve seen since we crossed the state line. “Call your mama.”

  Chapter Two

  Kimba

  10 Years Old, Atlanta, GA

  I pull back the curtain at our living room window again, like I’ve done a dozen times in the last hour.

  “Get away from there.” My mother taps my head when she walks past on her way to the kitchen. “They’ll be over soon enough. Come set the table.”