After First Love

F7: Full from somewhere

Nevaeh

Aged 16, Thanksgiving Day

There is food. There is food everywhere. The staple of a Black thanksgiving. Food.

Roast turkey, barbecued turkey, deep-fried turkey, glazed country ham, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, green beans, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes mashed and covered with marshmallows, corn, cornbread, yeast/potato rolls, black-eyed peas, rice, gravy, potato salad, cranberry sauce. So much food.

How is one supposed to stop eating when this is what one has to go through?

My paternal Grandma, Georgianna, or Gigi as she likes to be called, did most of the cooking, while Brenda helped but was swatted at several times, and my mom spent the whole time in a corner, watching, stabbing my Gigi with her eyes.

Jasyra did help out a little, but she's too engrossed with 'college work' to fully commit to the process.

But now, it's all done. Laid out to perfection on the huge table my mom ordered a month ago, huge, rectangular and made of the shiniest wood anyone has ever seen.

The table has been put on our patio, by the pool. The whole place is decorated with Thanksgiving monikers, specially ordered, not any of the crappy, hand-drawn shit. My mom likes her events professional. That's something that she and Gigi clash over, Gigi likes surrounding holiday tables with art by her grandkids and her cousins, and her pastor's children, and everybody on earth basically, but mom's never been the 'drawing on the fridge' type of mom. It never bothered me or Jasyra. We didn't care, but Gigi always made a big fuss over it.

Sitting now, at the table, I look at everyone around me; mom, dad, Gigi, Gramps, Knox's mom –Dee-, Knox, Jasyra, Brenda, Aunt Bea, Uncle Nicholas, Baby Amaya, Darcy and of course, the beloved family dog, Dairy.

My mom's parents, Georgia and Mike, couldn't make it because they had some big...thing, but my Dad's entire nuclear family is here. Aunt Bea brought her adorable eight-month-old Amaya, and my Uncle Nicholas brought beer apparently. Knox's mom, Dee, is here but his dad, Terrence, isn't here because he's off with his girlfriend, Bianca, visiting his side of the family in Tampa Bay.

My parents are sitting at opposite ends of the table while everyone else is scattered in between. I'm sitting opposite my sister with Knox to my left and Baby Amaya to my right.

This position leaves me with a very uncomfortable view of a very large roasted turkey that smells like everything good in the world.

To fill me up, partially, I drank approximately 4 diet cokes and ate two oyster crackers. Maybe it didn't fill me up, but it's good enough. I also wore a really cute leather dress that's red with patches sewn into it. And it's hot but it's also very constricting because I read online that those can push and shape the fat in your body. I'm not completely sure how factual that information is, but it's worth a shot, isn't it?

I look around at the bustle of the table; Gigi slapping away Gramps's hand from the spoon of gravy, Dee (Knox's mom) playing with Baby Amaya by making silly faces from across the table, my mom and Jasyra in a heated conversation, Aunty Bea practically sleeping, Uncle Nicholas downing bottle by bottle while shoving mac and cheese in his mouth and Knox eating silently, scrolling through his phone.

Everyone's eating. Everyone's enjoying their thanksgiving, not a care in the world. Why can't I be like that? Why can't I be nonchalant and free and normal? Why can't I force myself to eat anything else but this, admittedly delicious, potato salad?

Seeing everybody here, my black paternal family plus my mom, Knox and his mom, makes me realize that Jasyra and I are the only ones here with a mixture of both. Like the casting directors said, I'm not original, I'm a mixture, I don't even have one personality, I'm a blend.