Speaking of Summer. Kalisha Buckhanon
Speaking of Summer
ALSO BY KALISHA BUCKHANON
Conception
Solemn
Upstate
SPEAKING OF SUMMER
Copyright © 2019 by Kalisha Buckhanon
First hardcover edition: 2019
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.
Portions of the novel appear previously in the following publications under the following titles: “Speaking of Summer,” Intellectual Refuge, Volume 8 (June–August 2015); “Speaking of Summer,” excerpt, Cat on a Leash Review, Volume I, Issue I (Fall 2016); “Night Wind,” NYU Black Renaissance Noire, Volume 17, Issue 1 (Winter 2017).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Buckhanon, Kalisha, 1977– author.
Title: Speaking of summer : a novel / Kalisha Buckhanon.
Description: First hardcover edition. | Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018052245 | ISBN 9781640091917 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Sisters—Fiction. | Missing persons—Fiction. | Bereavement.
Classification: LCC PS3602.U264 S74 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052245
Jacket design by Jaya Miceli
Book design by Wah-Ming Chang
COUNTERPOINT
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For M.C.
To live life as a woman is to live life on the defense.
—BRIE LARSON
A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.
—OSCAR WILDE
Speaking of Summer
CONTENTS
I was the nice-looking, well-dressed woman running down 151st Street in Harlem after school and before evening rush hour on a bright day at the end of August in 2015.
If you saw me with my purse half-open and my balance tested more than once, you were wrong to laugh and right to be alarmed.
If you saw me trip and bust my lip, you were right; it really did hurt. If you thought I was being chased and you failed to call the police, I thank