“You never say yes to anything.”Six startling words.
That’s the beginning. That’s the origin of it all. My sister Delorse said six startling words and changed everything. She said six words and now, as I write this, I have become a different person.
“You never say yes to anything.”
She didn’t even say the six startling words. She muttered them, really. Her lips barely moving, her eyes fixed intently on the large knife in her hands as she was dicing vegetables at a furious pace, trying to beat the clock.
yesyesyes
It’s November 28, 2013.
Thanksgiving Day morning. So obviously, the stakes are high.
Thanksgiving and Christmas have always been my mother’s domain. She has ruled our family holidays with flawless perfection. Food always delicious, flowers always fresh, colors coordinated. Everything perfect.
Last year, my mother announced that she was tired of doing all the work. Yes, she made it look effortless—that did not mean it was effortless. So, still reigning supreme, my mother declared she was abdicating her throne.
Now, this morning, is Delorse’s first time stepping up to wear the crown.
This has made my sister intense and dangerous.
She doesn’t even bother glancing up at me when she mutters the words. There is no time. Hungry family and friends will bear down on us in less than three hours. We have not even reached the turkey-basting segment of the cooking process. So unless my sister can kill me, cook me and serve me with stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce, I am not getting her full attention right now.
“You never say yes to anything.”
Delorse is the eldest child in our family. I am the youngest. Twelve years separate us; that age gap is filled by our brothers and sisters—Elnora, James, Tony and Sandie. With so many siblings between us, growing up, it was easy to feel as though the two of us existed in the same solar system but never visited each other’s planets. After all, Delorse was heading off to college as I was entering kindergarten. I have vague childhood memories of her—Delorse cornrowing my hair way too tightly, giving me a braid headache; Delorse teaching my older brothers and sisters how to do a brand-new dance called The Bump; Delorse walking down the aisle at her wedding, my sister Sandie and me behind her holding up the train of her gown, our father at her side. As a child, she was the role model of the kind of woman I was supposed to grow up to be. As an adult, she’s one of my best friends. Most of the important memories of my grown-up life include her. So I suppose it is fitting that she is here now, muttering these words at me. It is fitting that right now she’s the one both telling me who I am supposed to grow up to be and standing at the center of what will become one of the most important memories of my life.
And this moment is important.
She doesn’t know it. I don’t know it. Not right now. Right now this moment doesn’t feel important at all. Right now, this feels like Thanksgiving morning and she’s tired.
She got up before dawn to call and remind me to take the twenty-one-pound turkey out of the refrigerator to settle. Then she drove the four blocks from her house to mine in order to do all the cooking for our big family dinner. It’s not quite eleven a.m. but she’s already been at it for hours. Chopping, stirring, seasoning. She’s working really hard.
And I have been watching her.
It’s not as bad as it sounds.
I’m not doing nothing.
I’m not useless.
I’ve been handing her things when she asks. Also, I have my three-month-old daughter strapped to my chest in a baby sling and my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter on my hip. I’ve combed my eleven-year-old’s hair, turned off the TV show she was watching and forced a book into the child’s hands.
And we’re talking. My sister and I. We’re talking. Catching up on all the things we have missed since, well . . . yesterday or maybe the day before.
Okay. Fine. I’m talking.
I’m talking. She’s cooking. I’m talking and talking and talking. I have a lot to tell her. I’m listing for her all of the invitations that I’ve received in the last week or so. Someone wants me to speak at this conference and someone invited me to go to that fancy party and I’ve been asked to travel to such-and-such country to meet that king or to be on a certain talk show. I list ten or eleven invitations I received. I tell her about all of them in detail.
I will admit to you right now that I toss in a few extra juicy bits, spin a few tales, lay some track. I’m purposely boasting a little bit—I am trying to get a reaction out of my big sister. I want her to be impressed. I want her to think I’m cool.
Look, I was raised in a great family. My parents and siblings have many wonderful qualities. They are universally pretty and smart. And like I said, they all look like fetuses. But the members of my immediate family all share one hugely disgusting criminal flaw.
They do not give a crap about my job.
At all.
None of ’em.
Not a one.
They are frankly disturbed that anyone would be impressed by me. For any reason. People behaving toward me as though I might be vaguely interesting bewilders them deeply. They stare at one another, baffled, whenever someone treats me as anything other than what they know me to be—their deeply dorky, overly verbal, baby sister.
Hollywood is a bizarre place. It’s easy to lose touch with reality here. But nothing keeps a person grounded like a host of siblings who, when someone requests your autograph, ask in a truly horrified tone, “Her? Shonda’s autograph? Are you sure? Shonda? No wait, really, Shonda? Shonda RHIMES? Why?”
It’s super rude. And yet . . . think of how many bloated egos would be saved if everyone had five older brothers and sisters. They love me. A lot. But they are not gonna stand for any celebrity VIP crap from the kid in Coke-bottle glasses they all saw throw up alphabet soup all over the back porch and then slip face-first in the vomit chunks.
Which is why right now I’m verbally tap-dancing around the room, shaking it like I’m competing for a mirror-ball trophy. I’m trying to get my sister to show any sign of being impressed, a glimmer that she might think I’m remotely cool. Trying to get a reaction from these people I’m related to, well, it has almost become a game for me. A game I believe that one day I will win.
But not today. My sister doesn’t even bother to blink in my direction. Instead, impatient, possibly tired and likely sick of the sound of my voice going on and on about my list of fancy invitations, she cuts me off.
“Are you going to do any of these things?”
I pause. A little taken aback.
“Huh?” That’s what I say. “Huh?”
“These events. These parties, conferences, talk shows. Did you say yes to any of them?”
I stand there for a moment. Silent. Confused.
What is she talking about? Say yes?
“Well. No, I mean . . . no,” I stammer, “I can’t say . . . obviously I said no. I mean, I’m busy.”
Delorse keeps her head down. Keeps chopping.
Later, when I think about it, I will realize she was probably not even listening to me. She was probably thinking about whether or not she had enough cheddar grated for the mac and cheese she had to make next. Or deciding how many pies to bake. Or wondering how she was going to get out of cooking Thanksgiving dinner next year. But in the moment, I don’t get that. In the moment, my sister keeping her head down? It MEANS something. In the moment, my sister keeping her head down feels purposeful.
Deep.
Challenging.
Rude.
I have to defend myself. How do I defend myself? What do I—
At that exact moment (and this is so fortuitous I decide the universe loves me), Beckett, the sunny three-month-old baby strapped to my chest, decides to spit up a geyser of milk that runs down the front of my shirt in a creepy warm waterfall. On my hip, my prudish one-and-a-half-year-old, the moon to Beckett’s sun, wrinkles her nose.
“I smell something, honey,” she tells me. Emerson calls everyone “honey.” As I nod at her and dab at the smelly hot milk stain, I pause. Take in the mess in my arms.
And I have my defense.
“Beckett! Emerson! I have babies!! And Harper! I have a tween! Tweens are delicate flowers! I can’t just go places and do things!!! I have children to take care of!”
I holler this across the counter in my sister’s general direction.
Wait. Speaking of taking care of stuff . . . I also have to take care of a little something called Thursday nights. Ha! I do a victory shimmy across the kitchen and point at her. Gloating.
“I also have a job! Two jobs! Grey’s Anatomy AND Scandal! Three children and two jobs! I’m . . . busy! I am a mother! I’m a writer! I run shows!”
Bam!
I feel totally triumphant. I’m a mother. A mother, damn it. I have children. THREE children. And I’m running two television shows at one time. I have more than six hundred crew members depending on me for work. I’m a mother who works. I’m a working mother.
Like . . . Beyoncé.
Yes.
Exactly like Beyoncé.
I am bringing home the bacon AND frying it up in the pan. It’s not an excuse. It’s a fact. No one can argue with that. No one can argue with Beyoncé.
But I forgot that this is Delorse.
Delorse can argue with anyone.
Delorse puts down her knife. She actually stops cooking and puts down her knife. Then she raises her head to look up at me. My sister, the biggest winner in our family’s genetic Powerball, is in her fifties. Late fifties. Her sons are grown men with degrees and careers. She has grandchildren. And yet I am often asked if my fifty-seven-year-old sister is my child.
The horror of it is sometimes too much.
So when she raises her head to look at me, she looks more like a saucy fourteen-year-old than she does my eldest sibling. Her saucy-fourteen-year-old face eyes me.
“Shonda.”
That’s all she says. But it’s said with such confidence . . .
So I blurt out—
“A single mother.”
Now, that is shameless. You and I both know it. Because while the technical definition of “single mother” fits me—I am a mother, I am single—its cultural and colloquial meaning does not. Trying to appropriate that term as if I am a struggling mom doing my best to put food on the table makes me an ass. I know it. You know it. And unfortunately? Delorse also knows it.
I need to put an end to the conversation. I raise an eyebrow and make my bossy face. The one I make at the office when I need everyone to stop arguing with me.
My sister does not give a crap about my bossy face. But she picks up her knife again, goes back to chopping.
“Wash the celery,” she tells me.
So I wash celery. Somehow the smell of fresh celery, the motion of the washing, Emerson’s joy as she splashes the water over the counter, it all lulls me into a false sense of security.
Which is why I am not prepared.
I turn. Hand her the wet, clean celery. And I’m surprised when, still chopping, Delorse begins to speak.
“You are a single mother but you are not a single mother. I live four blocks away. Sandie lives four blocks away. Your parents live forty minutes away and would love to stay with the kids. You have literally the best nanny in the world. You have three amazing best friends who would step in and help at any time. You are surrounded by family and friends who love you, people who want you to be happy. You are your own boss—your job is only as busy as you make it. But you never do anything but work. You never have any fun. You used to have so much fun. Now, all of these amazing opportunities are coming your way—once-in-a-lifetime opportunities—and you aren’t taking advantage of any of them. Why?”
I shift, uncomfortable. For some reason, I do not like this. I don’t like anything about this conversation at all. My life is fine. My life is great. I mean, look around!
Look!
I’m . . . happy.
Ish.
I’m happyish.
Kind of.
Mind your own business, Delorse. You are annoying, Delorse. People aren’t supposed to Benjamin Button so your face is clearly the result of a pact with Satan, Delorse! You know what, Delorse? You smell like poop.
But I don’t say any of that. Instead I stand there for a long time. Watching her chop. And finally, I answer. Putting just the right amount of casual arrogance in my voice.
“Whatever.”
And then I turn away, hoping to indicate that the conversation is over. I head over to the sitting area, where I gently settle an already napping Beckett into the bassinet. I place Emerson on the changing table for a fresh diaper. In a moment, I’ll go upstairs and try to find a spit-up-free shirt to wear for dinner. The fresh diaper is on. I put Emerson on my hip, lay her head on my shoulder, and we swing back around to face my sister as I head for the stairs. That’s when she says it. The six words.
Mutters them. Almost under her breath.
As she finishes chopping the onions.
Six startling words.
“You never say yes to anything.”
For a single beat, time stops. Becomes a clear, frozen moment I’ll never forget. One of the paintings that will never be taken from my mental wall. My sister, in a brown hoodie, her hair in a neat knot at the nape of her neck, standing there with that knife in her hand, head down, the little pile of white onion pieces on the cutting board before her.
She tosses the words out there.
“You never say yes to anything.”
Tosses the words out there like a grenade.
You never say yes to anything.
Then my sister slides the onions over and begins chopping the celery. I head upstairs to change my shirt. Family and friends arrive. The turkey cooks perfectly. Dinner is delicious.
The grenade lies there in the middle of everything. Quiet. Camouflaged. I don’t think about it.
You never say yes to anything.
Thanksgiving Day comes and goes.
