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  She shakes her head. “It got me so fired up. I thought, there’s no way some rich businessman is gonna partner with the local fruit box company and send all the bruised and too-small oranges out at a discount. He would just let those oranges sit and rot and spoil the earth, wouldn’t he? And I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t stay in bed and feel bad for myself. I had an orange grove to run.”

  She bumps Grace’s shoulder. “Sometimes your mom can be very dramatic, you know? But, I’m still here, so I guess all the drama worked out. And I know exactly what kinda homes these oranges are going to. Sometimes you just need to know that what you’re doing makes a difference, at least for some people. Now c’mon. C’mon.”

  Grace follows her outside, but her thoughts are on stray oranges. Her thoughts are on bruised things being left to rot, unless there is someone to pick them up and give them somewhere to go. Her thoughts are on taking care of people who take care of you, and not leaving, because who will take care of them if you go?

  The night dissipates, and everything is glowing and orange: the sky, the trees and the sun creeping past branches that look like they go on forever. Mom keeps humming a little tune that Grace picks up, both of them like two chittering birds in the early light.

  She checks her phone. There are messages from Yuki’s roommates—Grace’s friends—she can’t bring herself to read. Ximena, Agnes, Raj and Meera spammed the group chat overnight. Grace grits her teeth at the wave of guilt that rips through her. They have their own lives, their own problems, but here she is wishing they could solve hers, too. To hold her hand and stroke her hair and say they’ll fix everything.

  Agnes

  3:01 a.m.

  what have you done now, dumbass

  Raj

  3:15 a.m.

  i should have brought you back with me

  Ximena

  3:18 a.m.

  call me now!!

  Grace isn’t calling her. There’s nothing for her to say. I am too scared to come home. I am not as strong as you thought I was.

  I am running. I am running. I am running.

  “Think you’re ready to talk about it?” Mom asks.

  “I just—” She waves her phone. “I’m letting so many people down.” She clenches her jaw tight enough that it hurts. “I worked so hard and so many people believed in me. I’m letting everybody down.” She curls in on herself, gasping through the words.

  “Hey,” Mom says quietly. She brings Grace in close. “Let’s go sit, huh? That’ll be good. That’ll be good, Gracie.” Gracie, like she’s a kid again.

  They end up under a grove tree, one that’s been nearly cleared of all the fallen fruit beneath it. Mom leans back against the trunk, and Grace falls into her lap.

  She is like a child all over again.

  “Shhh,” Mom says, running gentle fingers over her back. “You’ll get yourself all worked up. Just calm down.”

  “I messed it all up,” Grace cries. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Jesus.” She wipes her nose, feels the burning and stinging of it. “I’m—I’m—”

  “What?” Mom asks quietly. “Tell me. Go on.”

  “I’m lost,” she sobs. “I don’t know what I’m doing, and I hate it.” It comes up like black sludge, like tar. It’s been buried, and it comes up now. “I hate not having things figured out.” She shivers, even in the warm morning. “I should be trying harder. I hate that even now I just want things to be perfect. I hate myself for thinking they need to be that way.”

  “Oh, honey,” Mom says. She leans down and kisses Grace’s head, her wet face. “Have you been bottling this up all summer?”

  Grace can’t help the terrible, monstrous laugh that erupts from her. “I think I’ve been bottling this up for a lot longer than a summer.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I don’t know,” Grace finds herself snapping. “Maybe because you’re always searching the world for peace and clarity, and I didn’t want to get in the way of that.”

  “Okay,” Mom says. She tenses slightly. “Maybe I deserve that, and I’m sorry, Porter. I haven’t always been around like I should have been, but I’m here now. Let me help.”

  Grace sniffs.

  “Let me help,” she whispers fiercely. “Let me try. Tell me how it’s gotten this bad.”

  A million years ago, Yuki told Grace she needed to get her head out of the clouds. To look down, and see all the people down here, wanting to be with her. Grace looks, and Mom is waiting. She wasn’t always, but she is right now, and Grace decides in this moment, that is good enough.

  “I got married,” she breathes out. “I got so drunk in Las Vegas, I met a girl, and she made me laugh, and we kissed and danced. Then I married her.”

  “Jesus—”

  “That’s the good part,” she says. “It was stupid and reckless, but it’s not the bad. It was never the bad.”

  “What is, then?” Mom asks. Her voice strains with caution. “If it’s not the—the drunk marriage in Vegas, and Jesus Christ, Porter, I don’t know how it’s not—what is?”

  What is?

  * * *

  Here is the thing about the tar, the sludge, the inky black poison. Once it starts its ascent out of your body, there is nothing you can do to stop it. It tastes like volcano ash and fire, and you must taste it, and gag on it, and ultimately, you must spit it out. There comes a time when you cannot swallow it down any longer.

  Everything that is buried will be unburied. Everything that is pushed down will find its way out. It is the way of the universe.

  Here is an origin story that Grace tries to forget: she was not always dedicated to being the perfect daughter. After her parents’ divorce, she was angry and spiteful and full of teenage rebellion. She did not want to be like Colonel, inflexible and regimented and reserved. She did not want to be like Mom, absent as she backpacked through country valleys searching for serenity and balance and her free spirit.

  So, she acted out at school. She messed around with the wrong girls. She skipped class. She found herself at parties where the cops showed up, even though she knew how it could go. But Colonel and Mom would hate it, just like Grace hated being uprooted from Southbury and transplanted to the other side of the country.

  It didn’t last long.

  “Colonel was so mad,” Grace tells Mom. “I know you both talked about it, but he was so mad. So—disappointed.” Colonel sat her down at their dining room table. He was going through another round of physical therapy back then, and the last thing he needed was Grace’s insurrection.

  Through pain and gritted teeth, he laid down copies of her transcripts. He laid down a copy of a police report that said Grace was disorderly and trespassing. He laid down college admissions packets and a bulleted list.

  This is your plan, he said, which you will stick to, and I mean every goddamn letter of it, Porter. I’ve worked too hard to watch you throw away your future. Do you understand?

  Yes, sir, she said, and that had been the birthplace, the true beginning, of Grace Porter’s Grand Plan. Everything else fell to the wayside. She would be the Porter her father expected. She would be the Porter that did not burden her mother’s newfound tranquility quest.

  “So you felt obligation and guilt,” Mom says. “God, Porter, I thought you just loved astronomy, that’s why you became so single-minded about it.”

  Grace closes her eyes and remembers. It wasn’t until that first astronomy course that she thought, The universe has everything mapped out for me. I cannot go wrong, because I am it, and it is me. It is a plan, but not Colonel’s, she thought. This is a plan I can do myself. I can prove to him that I can do it myself.

  She talks about seeing face after face that was not like hers in the department, and once, a lab manager asking if she was lost, because this was for astronomy students, and liberal arts was on
the other side of campus.

  “I had to work so hard,” Grace says. “I couldn’t mess up, because they weren’t messing up. They didn’t think I was supposed to be there in the first place.” They said as much, and she knows it is twisted privilege that her lighter brown skin kept them reserved to sly remarks only.

  “Even when you came back here, you were always working,” Mom says. “Every summer and break you came back. I left you alone because I didn’t want to break your stride. I didn’t want to interfere.”

  “I wish you had,” Grace says. “I should have told Colonel, because he’s dealt with it in his own way, but I wanted to handle it myself.”

  She remembers presenting research in her master’s program. She never told anyone, not a single soul, about how they ripped her apart. About how multiple academics complained to the board and said there was no way the work was her own. About how the conference kindly and quietly and firmly asked her to leave a day early. She would be refunded for the remainder of her trip to avoid further confrontation. Ximena and Agnes asked why she was back early, and Grace locked herself in her room for two days.

  It was worse, Grace remembers, in the doctorate program. It was worse, because Grace remembers all the academic recruiters’ events. She watched as white people in ironed suits and pencil skirts glanced over her résumé, her list of achievements. Queer and Black and under the tutelage of their favored professor at the university. Professor MacMillan said, This is my shining star, Grace Porter, and she watched as their lips folded and their smiles turned brittle.

  I think they liked you, Professor MacMillan told her. Kid, you’re going to have your pick of any institution in the country when you’re done here.

  That hasn’t been true. Grace knew it wouldn’t be true, even though she wanted it to be so badly. She wasn’t what the recruiters had in mind. She was not the future of the sciences they wanted.

  Mom rubs her back, the motion soothing and calm. “I wish I could fix it, Porter. I wish you didn’t have to feel like you can’t make mistakes. I wish people weren’t so caught up in maintaining their status quo that they don’t see how things could be so much better. How you could be so much better than anything they’ve ever seen.”

  “I have to be perfect,” Grace says. “I have to be excellent. I have to be the best. I can’t be anything else. It makes me feel sick that I’m not. It makes me feel worthless.”

  “None of that,” Mom says. “No more of that talk, okay? I listened—I listened to you tear yourself down, Grace Porter, and now you’re going to listen to me. You can do whatever the hell you put your mind to, just by being you. Fuck anyone that disagrees. You are not worthless.”

  Grace takes a deep breath, burrowing her face in her mother’s shirt. She feels helpless and tired and aching. “I don’t know how to stop feeling like this.” She’s twenty-nine now, and she’s spent so long this way.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Grace nods.

  “Have you ever talked to anyone about how you feel?” she asks. “Not your friends. I mean a professional. Have you talked to anyone like that?”

  Grace thinks, Wouldn’t you know if I had? That is the inky poison and sludge talking.

  “No,” she says instead. “I was too—” Scared. Terrified I’d find out I’m stuck like this. “Busy. I thought there was something wrong with me, because nobody else seemed as hell-bent on succeeding as me. Nobody else seemed like they couldn’t handle the pressure. It’s just me, there’s just something wrong with me.” She wraps her arms around her torso, feels her nails dig into skin, and she presses hard. Grounds herself.

  “Okay,” Mom says. “Can you just hear me out for a second?”

  “A second,” Grace tells her.

  Mom smiles, and they both pretend it doesn’t waver. “You know Kelly used to be a crisis counselor. He knows a lot of people that could help. It might be hard, but maybe we could look for somebody. Maybe you’d prefer a Black therapist. Someone that understands what I can’t.”

  Grace blinks. She’s too old for this. Too old to be held. Too old for this crisis of self, but it persists nonetheless. “You think I should talk to someone?”

  “Maybe give it a chance.” Mom tilts Grace’s head back so she can meet her eyes. “It’s not exactly the same, but I was like you for a long time.” She smiles at Grace’s suspicious look. “I know, I know. But when you were younger, I thought plans and lists and perfect organization would give me control. It didn’t, though. It just made me worry more.”

  Grace nods. “If I control everything, it can’t go wrong. At least that’s how it feels.”

  “I know,” Mom says. “So what do you say? Will you let go of that control for a little bit, and talk to someone about it? Even if it’s just to make your poor mom feel better?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay. It can’t make anything worse.”

  “Okay, then,” Mom says decisively. “We’ll talk to Kelly. He doesn’t need to know the details, but he’ll help you find somebody good, I promise. Now,” she announces, groaning as she reaches up to stretch. “These old bones are hurting from being on the ground for so long. How about you and me head in and whip up some breakfast. French toast?”

  In the kitchen, Kelly is already up. He’s got the radio on the local pop station and the griddle going on the stove. “Howdy, ladies,” he says, giving a little salute. If he notices their red, puffy eyes or the way Mom holds tight to Grace’s hand, he doesn’t say a word. “I got French toast coming up if anybody wants.”

  Mom smiles. “You sit down, Porter. You want orange juice? Or mimosas?” She shakes her head. “Okay, that was a terrible suggestion. We’re having orange juice.”

  Grace smiles, a small little thing. “Okay. Orange juice it is.”

  Kelly sings along to the radio.

  “And tada!” he yells, waving the spatula. “How many do you want, Porter?”

  “Two, please.”

  He slides two on her plate along with a bottle of syrup. He slides two more onto Mom’s plate and pecks her on the lips. Out of the corner of her eye, Grace watches him wipe her eyes and fix her hair.

  “Everybody good?” he asks, silverware hovering over his plate.

  Mom nods, and Grace hesitates. Let go of that control for a little bit, Mom said.

  Let go, Grace Porter, she thinks. You can’t control everything. You’ve seen that.

  “Kelly,” she says. “Mom said—she said you knew some people.”

  He tilts his head. “Sure. I know a lot of people. Can you narrow it down?”

  Grace peeks at Mom, who stuffs French toast in her mouth. “I’m eating,” she says unhelpfully.

  Grace sighs. Meera once said the Grace Porter she knew wasn’t a coward. Well, Grace has been having a hard time remembering that version of herself.

  Let go.

  “Therapists,” she says bluntly. “If you know anybody that I might be able to talk to—I would, like, appreciate it. It would be cool to find a Black woman, but if you can’t—” She shrugs. “As long as they’re good. Please.”

  Mom’s hand finds hers under the table and squeezes.

  “Yeah,” Kelly says, regaining his composure. “Yeah. Let me make a few calls, okay? Absolutely.”

  “Cool,” she says.

  Back upstairs in her room, she sends out a mass text in the group chat.

  Grace

  7:32 a.m.

  life update: in florida with my mom.

  maybe gonna have my eat, pray, love moment???

  will report back soon.

  She opens up the chat with just Ximena and Agnes.

  Grace

  7:35 a.m.

  i’m the shittiest person alive but

  idk how long i’ll be gone

  colonel def won’t keep helping with rent

  i might have a
n idea

  She pauses. She opens the group chat again.

  Grace

  7:38 a.m.

  meera if you want my room it’s yours

  i know you’ve been dying to move away from home

  just ask ximena and agnes about it, okay

  She sighs, fingers trembling as she holds back from spilling it all in the text box. She wants to. She misses the comfort of her friends. She misses how that felt easy, too.

  Grace

  7:40 a.m.

  i’m gonna figure my shit out hopefully

  love you guys so much it hurts

  She turns her phone off. She has so much work to do.

  Sixteen

  Time passes strangely when you don’t have a routine or a grand plan.

  Grace spends her mornings in the groves. Sometimes it’s her and Mom. She talks about the things Grace did not notice during her sporadic visits in the years before. The changes to the fresh market, the weird yuppies that have moved to downtown Southbury, Mom volunteering at the yearly circus that’s put on by the fire station.

  “What do you do?” she asks, peeling a small, bruised orange she’s saved from the ground. “Walk the tightrope?”

  “Look,” Mom says. She puts down her basket and picks up three, four, then five oranges. “I was the opening act.” She laughs and starts to juggle.

  Sometimes it’s just her and Kelly. They don’t talk much. Thankfully, he knows not to ask about school or jobs or her summer in New York.

  Sometimes he asks about her favorite planet (Venus) or if she’s ever seen Halley’s Comet.

  “That only comes every seventy-five years,” she says quietly. “The last time was 1986.”

  “Oh shit,” he says. “I could have seen that.”

  “Probably. What were you doing in 1986?”

  He gives her a mysterious smile. “That’s a long story, Grace Porter. You up for another lap around the groves?”

  She finds herself spending chunks of time in therapists’ offices. The first one is an older white woman named Barbara-Jean Marie, who wears a long denim skirt and Skechers and baubles for earrings.