“I don’t think that’s what it’s usually like,” I said, shaking my head.
Kai seemed to think about that for a moment then he nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “They barely even patted us down.”
“I think it’s because they need as many cops as possible back out on the streets. Maybe they don’t have time for all the stuff they usually do?”
Kai’s brow furrowed. He looked almost disappointed.
“But it still counts,” I said, holding up the paper I was given. “I mean, we have to go to court and stuff.”
And it felt silly, because basically I was consoling him that our arrests were bonafide.
Kai looked me over for a while. His eyes look a little inflamed, pink-rimmed, the whites red around the blue-gray. He took a couple of careful steps forward, like he thought I might run.
“Are you … were you okay?” he asked. “They didn’t like, hurt you or anything, right?”
I shook my head and he nodded, his shoulders heaving and releasing slightly.
“That was intense though,” he said.
“Yeah. And you?” I asked. “Are you okay? Because …” I motioned around the area of my eyes.
“Oh. Yeah. They got me pretty good out there with that tear gas. Stings like a mother …”
We stared at each other for a few beats and Kai ran a hand over his head. I noticed that it shook a little, but I pretended not to see since I didn’t think he would want me to see. Still, I didn’t think he was shaking with fear. It was probably just from the adrenaline.
I felt it myself, the buzz like the one you get when you’ve been in a club with loud music and strobes and then go outside and the quiet feels like an assault to the senses so it takes you a while to come down.
“What’re you ‘bout to do now?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Call my dad, I guess.”
That seemed to spur him to action.
“You wanna get … You hungry, or …?”
I was about to say ‘no’ because I wasn’t hungry. And if I was, I had been given my backpack back, and there were still snacks inside. But I realized he wasn’t really asking that. He was asking me not to go.
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“So, you wanna go get something to eat?”
I nod again. “Sure.” My voice sounded tiny, and to my ears, tinny.
Kai is tall. Maybe six-two? He looks like he used to play a sport, probably basketball because he has that slightly hunched posture around his shoulders, like he’s making room for other people.
Up close, I saw how good-looking he is, but he’s the kind of good-looking that is just short of being awkward. One day, when he is about thirty-two, he will graduate to being sexy. Now, he is college-boy handsome. The handsome before you fully realize that’s what you are.
He had about two days’ worth of growth on his chin and jaw, but no other facial hair. The absence of a mustache makes him look innocent and unassuming. Maybe that was part of what made me feel I could go off with him, some strange guy I met in a city lockup. That, and the still prevailing sense that we had quite possibly—though I didn’t recall it—met before.
“What d’you feel like?” he asked, like he had just picked me up for a date.
“Anything.”
“You mind if we have breakfast?”
I smiled.
“I mean, I didn’t eat this morning and …”
“Breakfast is fine.” It was well past noon, though I wasn’t sure how long past.
I instinctively reached for the front pocket of my backpack where my phone was and when I felt it was still there, I took it out and check the time. Two-fifty, and the face of my phone was cracked, and I missed two calls, both from home. Both from my mother. I ignored them.
“Everything okay?” Kai asked when he saw my expression.
“Yeah. Just …” I showed him the face of my phone and he reached to get his.
His was fine.
“You still good for breakfast, or …?”
I couldn’t help but smile wide at that.
“Yes,” I said. “Even with a broken phone, I think I’m still good for breakfast.”
Kai nodded. He inclined his head toward the large glass doors that lead out to the street, and when I moved toward them, he rushed to open them for me.
Only then did I glance back and notice the front desk in the lobby where a female cop, or uniformed security guard had been sitting the entire time, watching us, and smiling.
Chapter Three
Kai
When she told me her name, I tried not to smile. Because it’s not a name you hear often. It suited her perfectly. Not only because Lila reminds me of lily, a flower, something fragile, but because it made sense that she would have a name that’s out of the ordinary.
“What does that mean? Kai.”
It felt like she’d read my mind and knowing I was thinking about her name, asked about mine.
“My mom said she heard it in Hawaii where she and my pops had their honeymoon. And she liked it so much she decided to name their first kid ‘Kai’ whether they had a boy or girl. In Hawaiian it means ‘sea’.”
Lila smiled. “That makes sense.”
“Why?” I asked her.
“Because … your eyes,” she said. “They’re like gray, but blue. Like some parts of the ocean are.”
Then she blushed and glanced down at the table.
I was about to ask her about her name when she beat me to it and asked about mine, and once she had, it just seemed like maybe it would come across as unoriginal. I was kind of quiet for a little bit, just looking at her, trying to think of something else to say.
Lila’s face is heart-shaped, and she has apple cheeks with deep dimples, eyes that are sort of heavy-lidded and mournful. Her lips are full, evenly full top and bottom. She has the kind of face that makes me sure that if she ever cried, I would do basically anything to make the tears stop. And if I was the one who made her cry, it would only break my own heart.
Lila looked up again and around us.
Just a few blocks from the jail, the diner was small, and inside, ordering only a few at a time as prescribed by health regulations, was a mix of cops and folks like us, who looked like they may have been protesting as well. Each group was ignoring the other, as though we were actors on a movie set, playing out a scene called Protest-and-Arrest until the director called ‘cut!’ and we all ambled off to have lunch before resuming our roles.
Outside where we were, clusters of socially-distanced groups sat on the curb or sidewalk to eat, or at the few tables that remained. I was pretty sure we weren’t supposed to be doing that, but the cops who were going in and out didn’t seem to care.
“So, how’d you wind up out there today?” I asked.
Lila turned to look at me again. “I’m part of a group that organized it,” she said before letting her eyes drop to the menu in front of her.
It was like she was embarrassed for taking even a tiny part of the credit.
“Oh, word?” I asked.
“Yeah. How about you?”
It was the second time she’d done that: how about you?
She didn’t like having the spotlight on her, even in one-on-one interaction.
“One of my homies called me up after what happened and …” I shrugged. “Didn’t feel like sittin’ it out was an option.”
“No,” Lila said. “I know what you mean.”
Her eyes clouded over for just a few seconds, and I knew she was thinking about the video.
I actively try not to think about the video.
When I think about it, I remember my grandfather dying.
He went out in a chorus of slow moans, in a small house in Southern Virginia where my father grew up, way down a long country road where there isn’t another house for about two miles. My uncles and aunts were there, my grandmother, some neighbors, people from my grandparents’ church.
Everyone sat in the living room, talking, and some
times singing while in the back my grandpa, attended to by his wife and kids, took his last breaths. When the moaning stopped, we knew he was gone and that was when the church folks started singing louder and more energetically. All us kids got wide-eyed and frightened, and the church ladies pulled us against them and rocked us back and forth while they sang.
Later, when the coroner had come and gone with my grandpa’s body, and I was sleeping on the living room floor with some of my cousins—or supposed to be sleeping anyway—my dad walked by, stepping over us to go sit on the porch. I heard the flick-and-whisper of a lighter. He was smoking, something he had quit doing a long while before that.
I went out to join him and he turned to look at me. I was like ten, I think? He batted away the sandflies and gnats, and with eyes squinting against the dark and smoke, patted the space on the step next to him. I sat there, and he put an arm around my skinny shoulders.
You alright, Kai? he asked.
And I immediately started to cry. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t crying. Grandpa was his dad. And I was thinking in that moment that there could be nothing worse than losing my dad, never being able to see him again, or hear his voice. So how come he wasn’t crying?
Between sobs, I asked him, and he exhaled a long slow column of smoke, turning his head to the side so he wouldn’t blow it in my direction.
I’m not crying … he began. I’m not crying because now he has no more pain.
I try to focus on that when my mind goes toward the video. The video is an horrific, stomach-churning, memorialization of prejudice and brutality. Of agony, and fear. Of pain.
But now, his pain is no more.
I reached out and touched Lila’s hand.
She looked up at me, surprised.
But she didn’t recoil. Her eyes softened a little and her lips parted to say something. But our turn finally arrived, and I pulled back. Both of us focused on ordering our meals.
Lila ordered pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon, and “on the side, one egg, sunny side up, please?”
Our order-taker looked at her. “You want the extra egg on the side? In a different container? Just the one? Not with the scrambled …”
“Yes. On the side in a different container,” Lila said. “Just one egg. Sunny side up.”
The order-taker scribbled down the instructions and then turned to me to take my order, then handed us our coffees and left us to go into the back.
Lila must have seen how I was looking at her, curious, amused. Because she shook her head and laughed a little.
“I’m not OCD or anything,” she said. “It’s just … it’s a thing.”
“Cool.” I shrugged, not wanting her to think I was judging her or thinking she was strange or anything. Even though it was kind of strange.
“It’s this thing me and my dad do. Or at least …” She paused to sigh. “I used to see him do it. Once in a while, either early in the morning or late at night I would walk into the kitchen and he’d be there, frying just a single, perfect egg. With the unbroken, perfect sphere of a yellow yolk.
“And he’d get his spatula …” She motioned with her hands as she described it. “And carefully slide this perfect egg, yolk up, onto a plate. And then he would sit with it in front of him and look at it for about ten seconds. With … satisfaction, studying it. And then he would eat it, slowly, deliberately, like it was the most perfect, best thing he’d ever eaten in his life.”
Lila looked at me, a hint of a smile on her lips, like the telling of the story had been the most perfect, best story she’d ever told.
“I don’t get it,” I admitted.
“I didn’t either,” she said, adding two little containers of creamer to her coffee. I noticed that she didn’t add sweetener though. “So, when he wasn’t around, I tried it myself.”
“And?”
“It was … I don’t know. The whole process had a weird … ceremoniousness to it, the cracking of the egg, watching it go from translucent to solid as it cooked, removing it from the pan and sliding it onto the plate without breaking the yolk, taking a few moments to look at it and admire its … simplicity. Then to deconstruct and consume it. It was a meditation. It made me feel, I don’t know, centered.”
“Do you add salt and pepper?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. It has to be … unadulterated.” She said the last word as though she had chosen it very specifically, like no other word would do.
“And … does it still work if you order the egg? Like from a carryout like now? If you don’t make it yourself?”
Lila narrowed her eyes. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Nope. Serious question.”
“It still works, but it’s much better if you make the egg yourself,” she said slowly, like she was thinking about it to make sure her answer was accurate. “Because it’s the ritual of making it, not just looking at it, not just eating it.”
And that was the moment. Right then, I knew. I knew she was my wife.
“Did …”
My voice hitched a little and sounded weird, like something was stuck in my throat for a second, or like I’d had the air knocked out of me. Because the feeling I got, it wasn’t a vague sensation. It wasn’t one of those, ‘I-know-this-person-is-going-to-be-important-to-me,’ feelings. It was a very specific knowingness. I looking at the woman I was going to marry.
“Did you ever ask your dad?” I managed. “What the ritual means to him?”
Lila shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Because maybe it means something very different to him. And also, even though it wasn’t something he did in private, it felt very private. Y’know what I mean?”
And that was another moment, the moment I realized that Lila might not come easy. She came with layers, and to break through some of them, I was likely to encounter resistance.
She ate the lonely egg first, and slowly. I pretended not to be paying attention, but I watched everything. The way she first pierced the yolk and watched the yellow liquid spread. The way she used her plastic fork to cut it into three pieces, folding each one before she speared it, then directed it to her mouth. The way she chewed slowly, with her eyes shut.
When it was done, she shoved that container aside and pulled her “real” meal toward her.
“You’re not eating,” she said.
I hadn’t been as subtle about staring as I thought I was.
“Tell me more about your dad,” I said. “The man who meditates over a fried egg.”
She laughed.
I think it was the first time I heard her do that. It was a pretty laugh, and her eyes crinkled shut like the laugh began at the top of her head and moved downward where it settled somewhere around her shoulders which hunched a little.
“Well, what do you want to know?”
“Back over there by the jail you said you were gonna call him to come get you. So, he knew you were out here?”
“Uh huh.” She began on her pancakes, so I did the same.
“And he was cool with it?”
“I think he would have been disappointed if I wasn’t out here,” she said matter-of-factly. “Why? Did you not tell your folks?”
I shook my head. “Not really, no. But …” I didn’t want to get into the intricacies of my family situation just yet. “So, your pops was cool with it, huh? What’d he say?”
I was thinking about my father, and how he didn’t speak his approval aloud, how it almost had to be a secret between us.
“He said, ‘well, Lila. I suppose some change can’t be clandestine. It has to announce itself. It must be bold and ostentatious.’” She mimicked a James Earl Jones voice and puffed out her chest when she spoke, and then we were both laughing.
“You lyin’,” I said. “Your pops did not say that. No one says sh … stuff like that. Not for real.”
Lila shrugged. “I swear. He really did. It’s just the way he talks.”
“What is he? A latter-day Frederic
k Douglass?”
“A political science professor.” She squeezed a syrup packet onto her pancakes and because she was talking with food in her mouth put up a hand to shield me from the view.
“Where?” I asked. “Lemme find out he’s a professor at my school.”
And when she tells me where her father teaches and that she goes there too, I try not to smile. Her college is only thirty-five minutes away. Less. It feels like the stars are aligning.
“Then he won’t be pissed you got arrested?”
“I don’t think so.” She half-shrugged and swallowed her mouthful of food. “He likes that I do racial justice work.”
I said nothing. I don’t think I “do racial justice work.” Of course, I believe in racial justice, and I’ll put some skin in the game at times like this, but am I really doing the work? Nah, not really. I’m a tourist.
“I think before all this, he thought it was kind of theoretical for us, you know, people in our generation. I don’t know that he realized that we’re serious, y’know?”
I nodded.
Am I serious? I don’t know that I am. It is more accurate to say that I am not un-serious about racial justice, but I readily lay claim to the ‘we’ she casually tosses out there.
“Because of where we live, where he teaches …” Lila was energized by talking about her father. I could tell he’s very important to her, that his opinion means a lot. “The Black folks there, they’re … not exactly on the frontlines of systemic oppression, y’know what I mean? Or at least not in a way that’s as visible. So, we have our little campus group or whatever and he thinks it’s great that we’re talking about sociopolitical theory and questioning the capitalist bedrock of American society. But I don’t think he realized till this moment that we aren’t just playing. We’re working to dismantle all the things that are keeping our people down and build something new.”
I just listened. To all of those words, and all those earnest phrases. I wondered how many of them were hers, how many she believed.
Lila had stopped eating just to make sure she got everything she had to say out. Her eyes, which minutes earlier were clouded over in remembrance of a dead Black man’s pain, were fierce and determined.
Resistance: A Love Story (The Shorts Book 9) Page 3
