A Chorus Rises by Bethany C. Morrow

Author:Bethany C. Morrow [Morrow, Bethany C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250316028
Google: B_b4DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2021-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

I hadn’t noticed what my cousin wore today until now. I’m sitting between Priam’s legs, him on a tabletop, and me on a bench in front of him, watching my cousins enjoy a free play after their lesson. Priam’s been alternating between petting my hair and rubbing my shoulders, occasionally laughing at something one of the kids does.

I must’ve seen the siren synthesizer masking the bottom half of Little Bit’s face, and I must’ve heard the autotuned version of her voice every time she speaks. There’s music blaring through the facility, and a sea of kid voices, but I realize my gaze has been trained on her for some time.

And then I realize that I’m not the only one.

A little white girl has been absorbed into a cluster of my little cousins, the group of them taking turns flipping off of a trampoline platform into a basin of chunky foam blocks. The non-Babcock tween is completely comfortable, egging on Little Bit with the rest of them when she makes her dying call during another dramatic, acrobatic descent.

The tween’s mom is another story. I know who she is because she’s been standing with another parent, speaking behind cupped hands like lip-readers are a concern, and taking indecisive steps toward her daughter, and then turning back. Finally the other adult goads her enough that she quicksteps to the trampoline area and reaches toward her child, careful to withdraw her hand whenever one of my excitable cousins almost makes accidental contact.

“Corey,” the mom finally shouts over the noise, and her daughter whirls around. Instead of interrupting her play, the tween starts bouncing around like a cartoon bomb with a lit fuse. She’s demanding her mother watch her flip and despite the fact that it looks very possible the kid is gonna explode otherwise, the mom reaches through the throng of children and yanks Corey away.

Kids are thankfully just kids sometimes, and my cousins make space for the little girl to be retrieved before recongealing. They don’t know or worry over why she’s been taken away; sometimes parents just do that.

But I’ve been watching the mom, and the way she scared-scowls at Little Bit in particular. Like she doesn’t get that a synthesizer’s just a toy, and wearing one basically ensures that the little Black girl beneath it is not a siren—otherwise she wouldn’t need it.

Finally the woman feels my gaze, and looks over at me.

“Little Bit,” I call while we’re still watching each other, and I put my trill in my voice to make sure it catches my cousin’s attention.

She barrels into me, trailed by a couple of others, and the smell of kid sweat almost makes me wave them off.

“Lemme hold your synthesizer while you play,” I say.

“Okay!”

Easy. She yanks it indelicately, wrenching it around her face the way kids do with things they didn’t personally pay money for, mussing her ponytail made of braids.

“Here,” she chirps, gives me a very sweaty kiss on the cheek, and then bounds off.

Across the room, Corey’s mom and her friend still watch while trying to act like they aren’t.

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