ABOLITION
EVERYDAY SH!T: THE PILOT ISSUE
Content Notice: Black girlhoods, family relationships
With each step that took Shawna closer to her aunt’s front door, she tried to shed another piece of the day. She wiped at her pants, hoping it would rid her of the lingering feeling of Corey’s hand pressed against her thigh, squeezing a little tighter when his best friend took a sharp turn with this car that they’d been dreaming about for weeks. His hand had been warm and weighty, grounding her into the backseat, so now the spot on her leg felt sensitive to the air, needing the pressure. When she got to the porch she adjusted her bangs, making sure the joyride’s air colliding with her face hadn’t made her hair look too free. The rush that’d been ricocheting inside her body earlier became lead that fell to her feet as Shawna opened the door to Aunt Juanita waiting at the kitchen table.
Juanita was the youngest of her two sisters, named for that fleeting optimism her parents had when she was born. It was 1954 and the thought of good, integrated schools floated around every hope they had for her. Juanita sounded successful but humble, to match the sunwarmed life that had no choice but to find her. Her sisters Eva and Evelyn had cooler airs surrounding their lives. The story of Jaunita’s name often visited Shawna when she watched her aunt throw her weight around her two-bedroom, with a dining room separate from the kitchen, apartment like there’d never be anything dearer to her. Like Shawna should only tiptoe against the mauve that carpeted the place, like it might all unravel if she stepped too hard. In these moments, thirty-some years after the prophecy was first uttered, Shawna saw Juanita’s determination to see her destiny through, eyes open or closed.
“Girl, it’s seven o’clock. Where you been at? Just ‘cause it’s Friday don’t mean you can do whatever.”
In a split second, Shawna watched it all play out in her head. The story she’d tell, Juanita calling her Liar laced with the understanding that she could be nothing else, the escalating back and forth that forced her slow-footed uncle Julius to come out to acknowledge her and the funk he swore he always saw trailing her. That part of the routine played out how she knew it would.
Shawna walked down the hall wishing she could’ve just said sorry instead of letting Juanita push her in the places she hadn’t learned to contain. She wanted to carry her aunt’s disappointment to her room, let it make the air heavy until she couldn’t breathe, and when her lungs settled into a rhythm that was similar to ease, but not quite, she would thank God for offering redemption. But Juanita had never been disappointed in Shawna. She saved her disappointment for Julius and the parents of the students she taught, and occasionally, herself, when the world she built suddenly looked like shoddy craftsmanship. There wasn’t enough disappointment left over for Shawna, but Juanita was generous with her annoyance.
The routine Shawna was used to diverted course when she opened her room door to boxes stacked and waiting. Just two, small boxes and everything else she owned now lived in a black garbage bag. Nothing was left unpacked, not the bobby pins that were on the dresser or the Slick Rick poster on the back of the door. Juanita even found the cassette Corey had made her the year before. Shawna had never listened to it, she taped it underneath the dresser as soon as she got home and swore Juanita would be right there if she ever pulled it out. It was the only thing that seemed carefully packed, placed right on top of the unruly mound in the garbage bag.
“Auntie Nita,” Shawna called out, most of her voice getting sucked into the emptiness of the room. Luckily, Juanita was waiting for Shawna’s reaction, so her ears easily picked up the childlike whisper of her niece’s plea.
She grabbed her cup of tea in both hands, shuffled her feet out the kitchen and leaned up against a wall a little bit away from Shawna. This was the most relaxed she’d felt all day, the rage she’d felt earlier locked in the boxes and ready for wherever Shawna would take it. “Don’t try to Auntie me now. You should’ve remembered you wasn’t grown when you was out acting like nobody loves you.” She left Shawna where she was at as soon as she finished talking, cuddling up beside Julius on the couch. It felt to her like his arms wrapped around her tighter than they had in months. Juanita leaned into the security of it, imagining herself cutting Shawna with her eyes if the girl walked over to start something. She liked letting her mind run through what Julius might do, if the girl walked over to start something.
Shawna couldn’t speak but her mind was active. Juanita had threatened to call The Lady to get her enough times that Shawna knew a slowness in her feet to move on might be reason enough. She pulled everything onto the porch, filled her bookbag with the most important things from the garbage bag and left it and the boxes there, praying it’d still be there when she and Gina came back for it. Shawna walked the couple blocks to her friend’s place only hearing the shallow breathing that’d been following her since she got home. Since she got to Aunt Nita’s.
“You alright?” Gina’s mother asked Shawna as she pulled her inside the apartment. “Gina, Shawna’s here looking for you,” she made the words long, stretching them in a way that would let Gina know to come out with soft words and easy steps. She kept her eyes trained on Shawna, waiting for the girl to crack under her gaze and spill herself against the floors.
Shawna waited until the door to Gina’s room was shut before she purposely let anything honest come out of her. Her words struggled to stay connected, falling from her mouth and scurrying around until they were in the right order. There was Auntie Nita holding a mug full of something foul smelling that left a green film on her teeth and tongue. The doorknob before she walked in the house felt slippery. The way Julius held his eyebrows up as he watched her carry a box out the door. And the smell of finality everywhere and Shawna nowhere, like she had never shed a single skin cell in the place she lived the past six years.
When the air around the girls settled, Gina offered up the customary, “Damn girl, that’s crazy.” She’d heard her mother say it enough times, but coming from her own mouth it didn’t sound as full and didn’t stir anything in Shawna. Gina went to find her mother, leaving Shawna sprawled out on the bed and picking at the skin on her thumbs. She always hated asking if her cousins could stay the night, whatever sales pitch they’d practiced immediately lost to her anxiety. It was the same in this moment, but the specifics of Shawna’s story didn’t make sense and that didn’t make her job easier. Gina prayed she could make her mother feel the despair if nothing else.
“If she really don’t have nowhere else to go, she could stay. But tell her to call somebody and let them know where she’s at. I don’t need nobody coming to me with problems.”
Gina’s “okay, Ma, I’ll let her know,” trailed behind her as she sped back down the hall, following her into the room so that before she said anything, Shawna was already scrambling her brain thinking about who she could call.
Evelyn had just begun to sink into the embrace of her big book of crossword puzzles and knowing her three kids were within earshot when the kitchen phone shook the place, leaving the floors uneven, slightly declined towards the door.
“Four? Four hours ago?” Her voice boomed through the line, confusing Shawna who was only trying to let her aunt know what had happened earlier. “Girl, why didn’t you call me earlier? Why you ain’t just come here?”
There were a few answers circling in Shawna’s head but it was hard for her to distinguish between the ones that were true enough and the one that was most true.
Evelyn only waited a half second for Shawna to contemplate, “I’m coming down there to get you now.” She didn’t see a reason to wait for Shawna to discover an answer far from where the right one was buried, not when it’d show itself eventually.
“I’m Doreen, Gina’s mother,” was how she introduced herself to Evelyn, whose eyes ran ragged as she looked around for Shawna. Doreen made her sit down at the table and have a sip of water. It had been a while since another woman walked into her home so small, so she wanted to be a good hostess. Shawna walked into the kitchen holding as much of her things as her arms would allow, and soon enough the two of them were out the door, Evelyn thanking Doreen, “I really appreciate it, I don’t know what’s going on with my sister.” Doreen couldn’t help but feel like appreciation would’ve been coming in the morning with some sense in tow, not unsettling the place close to midnight like they had the girl strung up by her ankles. She sprayed air freshener around the room before going to bed.
The man driving the cab hurried out the car and opened the trunk when he saw the two of them. He turned the meter off when Evelyn went up to get Shawna and when they pulled back in front of her building, he didn’t want to take the tip. Eventually, he did, making a show of shaking his head while tucking the money into his jacket pocket. She wondered if her face looked like a sister or aunt of his that he hadn’t shown enough care, so she grabbed his hand tight as she said thank you and goodnight.
The two of them dragged Shawna’s things inside. The matching boxes, the garbage bag, and the bookbag were all piled by the front door and left to rest there.
“Thank you, Auntie,” Shawna’s voice was raspy with exhaustion as she pulled her legs up to her chest and settled into the couch.
“Uh-uh, what you doing? Go get in your bed, it’s still here.”
Shawna woke the next morning in the room she was once again sharing with her cousin Mirah. She was two years and two days younger than Shawna. That, and how similar they looked, always made them feel like they were some kind of twins. Mirah had her comforter pulled up to her chin and her eyes locked on Shawna in the bed across from her. Shawna wondered if her own face had ever looked so honest, hiding nothing. Mirah bounded across the room, her lips and teeth both wanting center stage, and sat at the end of Shawna’s feet, “Finally you’re up! I’m happy you’re here, I was meaning to call you the other day, too.”
Mirah tried to talk over her mother’s voice, low and stern, as it crept under the door. She filled the space with tales of the boy who she knew liked her and his girlfriend who wasn’t really his girlfriend and wasn’t prettier than her neither. Shawna tried to listen but her Aunt Evelyn’s voice pulled her out the bed, “I’ll be right back, I’m thirsty,” she told Mirah.
“If I knew this was the kind of shit you was gone be on Nita, I would’ve never let you take her out my house,” Evelyn was sitting on the counter when she caught sight of Shawna, who mouthed that I just need some water. “Go head, you know where it is” she said before tuning back into her sister’s excuses that were coated in indifference regardless.
“Listen, I don’t have time for this. Don’t come over here ‘til you have an apology for this girl. And you’re lucky! Because really you need your ass beat. ” The phone’s cord swayed after Evelyn threw it back on the wall.
Shawna fumbled around the kitchen looking for a cup, trying to be as small as her body would allow. Evelyn walked over and pulled out a glass, handing it to Shawna, “Here. And make yourself something to eat if you hungry. You ain’t company.” She walked out the kitchen, Shawna left wondering what her body could hold onto.
Kiian Dawn is a Black American writer, hoodoo, mother, and organizer born and raised in Central Jersey, living in Philly. Their work often revolves around the natural world and climate change, communal and familial dynamics, and spirituality. She received bachelor's degrees in Africana Studies and Journalism from Rutgers University, and credits most of her education to her ancestors and elders who raised and continue to guide her.