Her body went cold first, then hot all at once. Her heart struck hard against her ribs, so hard it almost hurt. Her throat tightened. Her knees weakened just enough that she had to lock them again to stay upright. She stared at her sister, unable to speak for a beat too long, while the seamstress froze in place, and one of the assistants looked sharply down at the floor, pretending not to hear what had just been said.
“Kesha,” their mother said. But there was no outrage in her tone, only mild embarrassment, as if her oldest daughter had made a joke in poor taste rather than cut someone open in the middle of a bridal fitting. Immani finally found her voice. “What did you just say?” Kesha turned in the mirror, smoothing the gown over her hips.
“Oh, come on. It was obviously a joke. It didn’t sound like one. Now Kesha let the sweetness slip just a little. Everything feels like an attack to you these days.” Nobody spoke. The silence said everything. Immani stepped down from the platform, the hem of her own gown brushing the floor behind her like a ghost.
Her hands were shaking now visibly, and she hated that they were hated, that her body was giving away what she was trying so hard to keep contained. She turned to their mother, desperation and anger colliding in her chest. You heard her, their mother’s expression tightened, but not in Ammani’s defense. I heard a comment you are choosing to make bigger than it is.
Am I stared at her in disbelief? She put on a wedding dress in front of me and said she said a foolish thing her mother cut in irritation rising. And you are always so ready to turn everything into drama. That was the moment something inside Imani shifted. Not shattered, not collapsed. shifted quietly but permanently because pain can do many things and one of them is sharpened vision.
She looked from her mother to Kesha standing there in white with that faint victorious smile still playing at the corners of her mouth and understood with painful clarity that she was standing in a room where the truth had already been assigned its place. If Kesha said black, they would call it black. If Emani said white, they would ask her why she was being difficult.
This was not confusion. It was choice. They were choosing her sister. So she said nothing else. She turned, walked behind the screen, changed out of the dress with stiff, controlled movements, and emerged a few minutes later in her own clothes. Her face composed in a way that frightened even her.
The seamstress tried to speak, then thought better of it. Their mother looked annoyed. Kesha looked amused. “I’m leaving,” Ammani said. “You’re overreacting,” Kasha replied at once. Ammani picked up her purse and met her eyes. “No,” she said quietly. “I’m finally reacting the right amount.” She left the boutique with her spine straight and her chest aching so badly she thought she might fold in half once she reached the parking lot.
But she didn’t. She made it to her car, closed the door, sat behind the wheel. And only then did the first tear fall, followed quickly by another, until she was crying so hard she had to press her hand over her mouth to stop the sound. Her whole body trembled with it, shoulders tight, breath breaking tears falling hot and fast onto the steering wheel.
Why did it still hurt this much? Why, after a lifetime of this, did some small part of her still hope they would choose her just once? Her phone buzzed on the passenger seat. It was a message from Andre. Can’t talk right now. Busy with Kesha and your mom. wedding stuff. Immani went completely still. The tears stopped, not because the pain was gone, but because something colder had moved in beneath it.
