Page 19 of Summer Breakdown
“What’s that?” Lani asks, and Jasmine laughs as she locks the front door.
“Er, like a look?”
“It goes with your skater-boy look?” Lani asks.
“Yeah.”
“Are you a skater boy?” she starts with a giggle, and Jasmine already knows how it will end because she’s been requesting the same song repeatedly. Sure enough, she quickly breaks out into a very cute rendition of “Sk8er Boi” by Avril Lavigne.
“Ma!” Marcel calls out with his head thrown back, but she knows he doesn’t mind. Jasmine spends a lot of time making sure her kids are friends, but with the added knowledge that fourteen-year-olds don’t hang out with four-year-olds. She wants Marcel to be his own person. She wants him to say no when he wants to, even if it’s difficult to say no to someone dressed head to toe in yellow who is always smiling.
“Lani,” Jasmine says with a laugh, as she puts the wheelchair in the boot. “Be nice.”
Jasmine gets in the front and spins round to double-check Lani is strapped in correctly. Marcel did it perfectly. She looks at him. The little hairs on the top of his lip that he loves so much. The beanie hat he wears, even though it’s summertime and she spent hours designing cornrows on his head last night. The new baggy jeans. He’s so cute.
“Stop,”he whines, when he catches her looking at him. He pulls his hat off.
“It’s cute! Cool!”
Marcel laughs. “It’s itchy.”
“You need a satin-lined one, and for it to be cold outside.” She hands him her phone. “You’re on music. Pick something good. It’s not a long drive.”
Jasmine usually walks around town with the kids, but it’s due to rain later, and she has no idea how long this rugby open day will be on for. They missed the big one as they were moving, but she hopes if they show up today, she can still sign Marcel up for lessons. Lani would love to do it, but she can’t find a wheelchair sport for kids anywhere. She might have to start one herself.
“Lani, you can pick if it’s not skater-boy related.”
“I don’t know any other songs,” she grumbles.
“Sucks to be you,” Marcel replies, and Jasmine flicks his thigh.
Jasmine got lucky with them, even if it meant she had to be with Mike for that long. It’s possible she should have left when Marcel was young, but Mike was still decent then. Marcel loved him more than she thinks he’s loved anything or anyone ever, and Jasmine wanted another child. At the start, she thought it was one and done because everything was so hard. Then she got older—to the age she’d hoped to have been when she started thinking about babies. She’s not sure she ever thought another child would save them, or that she wanted them to be saved, but she can’t bring herself to regret the decision when she hears Lani singing along with Marcel.
“I hope Adebayo is there,” Marcel says. “And Azan. Maybe Johnson will be there too.”
“Why am I hearing all these names now and not yesterday?” Jasmine asks. She loves to google things so she can have a conversationwith her son.
“Because you would have spent the entire evening looking them up and asking me questions this morning, and I already knew I wanted to lie in.”
Jasmine gasps. “You little trickster.”
“Even I know about Adebayo, Mama,” Lani replies.
“Betrayed by my own womb mates.” They laugh, and Jasmine smiles at the sound, even if they are, in fact, traitors.
They head-bang in unison as Jasmine pulls into the Titans car park. It looks a little rusty on the outside, but she can’t be too mad. This is the only thing Marcel said he wanted to try before school started. There’s gotta be kids here he can see over summer. They didn’t move too far from their own home, and Marcel was having some trouble at school anyway, but she still feels guilty for moving him in year ten.
“Right,” she starts, as they all unbuckle. “Marc, can you grab my bag? Lan, I’m going to put the big wheels on.”
Jasmine isn’t expecting much from today. Really, she wants Marcel to make friends. He said this team has a lot of Black players and is owned by a Black woman, and Jasmine’s not mad about it. The entire drive was Adebayo this, Adebayo that. Jasmine hopes they’re here today. Sure, they won’t want to hang around with her child, but it would make him happy, and she needs him to be happy.
When they walk in, there’s a few stalls and a lot of people—children, teenagers, and possibly a few players, based on the width of their shoulders. No one comes over, but it appears to be more of a do-it-yourself kind of day. There’s no lip at the doorway to drag Lani over, so they’re already winning in her book. At one point, Jasmine thought she saw Mali, but it was purple hair, not pink.Phew.
Mali did text her to say she beat Ezra, but Jasmine didn’t want to start a conversation with her. She’s Frankie’s friend, and she never wants to see Frankie again. For a few days, Jasmine thought Frankie left because she had a low episode, or she needed to leave, and it would have been fine. Frankie is bipolar. Jasmine knows she can’t control that. Probablyanxious too, if Jasmine’s research taught her anything, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have texted her, even days later. It’s been a full week. Jasmine is still thinking about it, and Frankie could have put her out of that misery if she wanted to.
How she treats Jasmineissomething she can control.
Face painting—the dreaded activity all children’s events seem to have—is the first table they come to, and she’s not sure she can spin Lani around before she spots it. Jasmine does whatever the kids want, if what they want is reasonable and she wants to do it, but she really hopes Kehlani doesn’t want her to match face paint, because she truly cannot be bothered.
