Yazmin
“Are you nervous?” G asks.
“Three years of study all leading up to this moment . . .”
The announcer calls somebody else’s name and they go onto the stage, accepting their diploma. The crowd cheers and claps. I hear parents calling out to their daughter and push down the urge to feel sorry for myself. Since giving birth and getting married, I’ve told myself I’ll never feel sorry for myself when it comes to parents. I am a parent now, and I won’t let how I feel affect little Toby.
“Yeah,” I say. “You could say I’m a little nervous. And you?”
I spin my wedding ring around and around, something I do when I’m feeling restless, like the time Toby was in the hospital with the chicken pox or when Spike went out on a ride to LA and didn’t come back for two weeks. I sat at the window for almost the entire time, twisting my wedding ring, wondering.
“I’m nervous,” G says. “Don’t forget, I’m just a lowly cleaner.” She waves at her graduation robes. “I shouldn’t be here, not really.”
I slap her on the arm. “Don’t be silly.”
G and I decided to go into the nursing course together, going to the same college and going to the same classes. The years have made us close. What happened with Dad and the Scorpions and Mom and Justin has become one of those stories we talk about every now and then but doesn’t rule our lives.
She smiles at me as another name is called. “It’ll be me soon. I’m C, remember. You have to wait for M.”
“Pity Spike’s second name wasn’t Cane or something. That way it’d be before Castle.”
She rolls her eyes. “This isn’t a race, you know. But I do think it’s going to make a huge difference when we start work. I’ll walk in there and say, ‘Look, did you know I got my certificate before Yazmin Macklin? I think that means you should hire me over her.’”
“Ha, ha, ha.”
We smile at each other as the line inches forward, and then somebody calls from the front, “Georgie, you’re up!”
“Oh, this is me.” She adjusts her cap. “Wish me luck.”
I wish her luck and then wait in line, cap in hand, listening as the names are called and thinking about the past. I think about the wedding at the clubhouse, Knuckles in his suit officiating. I think about the terror of the birth and how when they put Toby in my arms it didn’t matter. I think about the tears which slid down my face when he padded across the living room, smiling to me and mumbling, “Mommy! Mommy!” Most of all I think about having a family, a real family, and how even though I’ll always love Mom it isn’t so bad being an orphan if you can make something of your own.
When my name is called, I walk onto the stage with a swelling in my chest.
“We made it,” I whisper, when I see Spike and Toby in the crowd.
Spike
“Broom, broom!” Toby calls, grabbing onto my hair and driving me outside, where Yazmin is waiting. “Broom, broom, Daddy!”
“Broom, broom, little man,” I agree. “But I’ve gotta get you down now.”
“Why?” Toby demands.
“Because otherwise that door will take your head off.”
I nod to the door in question, which is too small for me to carry him through. He pouts when I lower him to the floor, but when I tickle him under the armpit he grins up at me with his gappy teeth. “Mommy looked nice,” he says. “Really, really, really nice.”
“She did,” I agree. “She looked incredible.”
“I love her lots.”
“So do I.”
In the courtyard outside the college’s function building, graduates and parents mingle, taking pictures on their phones or, for the fancier parents, big bulky photographer’s camera. I take out my camera from my pocket, a small digital, and join Georgia and Yazmin where they stand near the enclosed basketball court. Yazmin looks as gorgeous as the first day we met in her black graduation gear, her cap perched on her head. She looks flustered, too.
“I was so nervous,” she says, kissing me on the cheek. “All those eyes . . .”
“You did great,” I tell her. “Didn’t she, lad?”
Toby lifts his arms up for Yazmin to pick him up. She bends down, scooping him up. “Did I do all right?” she asks.
He kisses her on the nose. “Really, really good!” he cries. “Really, really good!”
Yazmin giggles and gives him a kiss in return. I quickly snap the picture. Yesterday I may’ve been in the city working over a couple of guys who thought they’d try and swoop in and pick up where Snake left off all those years ago, trying to funnel drugs into Sunnyside. But today I’m just a proud husband and a dad. I capture Yazmin kissing Toby on the cheek, and her face as she turns at the professor’s voice, calling them over to throw up their caps.
“I better go,” she says. “Wait for me?”
“Nah.” I grin at her, winking. “I reckon I’ll take the little man here and head on home. You’ll be all right without me.”
“You are so not funny.” She blows me a kiss and then disappears into the crowd, becoming one black robe in a sea of black robes.
“Daddy, shoulders.”
I lift him up and together we join the other onlookers. After searching the crowd for a couple of minutes we find Yazmin and Georgia near the back, smiling over at us.
“Daddy, are we happy?” Toby says.
“Why do you ask?”
“Mikey from town says being happy is a really good thing to be.”
“Okay, now, toss!”
A hundred caps fly into the air. A hundred cameras, including mine, snap photographs. A hundred graduates smile a hundred smiles, but Yazmin’s is brightest of all. Yazmin’s is the only one I see, really.
“Yeah, son,” I say. “We’re happy.”
THE END
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