by Dream Jordan
When I went to thank Lynn, I felt weird, and awkward. She received me with a nod and a smile. “Just make sure you use it,” she said.
The next day, I wanted to keep the good times rolling, so I initiated a conversation with Lynn. She was sitting at the kitchen table going over paperwork for her volunteer job at her school. During the school year, she works as a guidance counselor, and she could have the whole summer off if she wanted to. But she chose to counsel the summer school kids three times a week. I admired the fact that Lynn worked so hard for free. Couldn’t be me.
I inched up by her side. “Um, can I ask you a quick question?”
Lynn looked up from her papers. “Sure, what is it?”
“Just wanted to know how you think I should I start out with my life book.”
Lynn cracked a rare smile. “Well, you can start anywhere, and any way, you want. It’s yours. You can write a journal, sketch, take pictures—whatever you want to do.”
Take pictures … hmm, not a bad idea.
“Do you think Ted will let me borrow his camera?” I asked timidly.
“Doesn’t hurt to ask,” Lynn said with a shrug. Then she went back to scanning over her papers, as if to dismiss me. I wasn’t offended. I could tell she was busy. The fact that she smiled at me was a serious breakthrough.
I thanked Lynn and left the kitchen feeling satisfied. Ever since the air had been cleared by Tisha, things seemed to be sailing smooth in the Johnson household. True, I almost risked everything by stealing a pair of sandals, but I was slick with mine, and got away with it, didn’t I?
Now if only I had somewhere to go.
I sat in my bedroom, looking out the window, drifting in deep thought. I thought about shooting some hoops, but then again, my hair. I wanted Charles to see me looking good 24-7, and the only activity worth sweating out my hair was a hot and steamy kissing session with my baby.
So in the meanwhile, what to do?
Then, boom! It hit me.
Why not go to Prospect Park? At the park, I could chill out, walk around taking pictures of the trees, the lake, the swans in the lake, whatever. This would be something new for me to do.
I have Felicia to thank for making me want to try new things outside the box of Bed-Stuy. She was the first friend to appeal to my defiant side—on the positive tip. I’ll never forget the day we were sitting bored on Felicia’s porch and she popped up and asked me to go bird-watching in Central Park. I looked at her like, What? Then I laughed at her and said, “Are we senior citizens now?”
“Why does it have to be all that?” Felicia asked. “You’re the one always talking about how cute the sparrows are, but now you’re trying to act brand-new?”
“What sparrows?”
Felicia pointed toward the curb at a brown little bird. “That sparrow.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that was a sparrow.”
“My point exactly,” said Felicia.
We debated back and forth for a minute. Then finally, I sighed and said, “Sounds mad boring, but let’s do it.”
Next thing I knew, Felicia and I were in Central Park, laughing, bugging the heck out, and having a crazy good time. The park let us borrow binoculars for free, and we threw them around our necks and got busy tramping across the trails looking up through the trees for different species of birds. I saw my first woodpecker. My first robin redbreast. The experience was too cool. During the train ride home, I turned to Felicia and said, “My bad, that was really fun.”
“No doubt,” Felicia replied. “I’m just glad you came through.”
Since then, I vowed to keep myself open. Go outside the box. Be defiant. Be adventurous. Be the opposite of what people imagined I should be. Think I will fail? Then watch me succeed.
So, yeah, I’d go to Prospect Park. Be a photographer for the day. After that, I’d lounge on a bench in the shade, breathe in the trees, then come back home and figure out which pictures should make it into my life book. Sounded like a plan.
My program for the day was hot, and I was all keyed up about it. As soon as Ted came back from his stroll, I pounced. “Hey, Ted!”
“Hey, Kate!” he exclaimed, imitating my animated voice.
I chuckled, waited a few moments, and then asked, “Can I borrow your digital camera?”
He raised his eyebrows. “For where? Here?”
“No, Prospect Park,” I said. “I want to start lacing up my life book, like you told me to.” I beamed, thinking he’d be thrilled over my initiative.
But Ted’s eyes bugged out of his head like I had just asked for his firstborn child. “Oh no, sorry, Kate,” he began, “but I can’t let you take my digital out this house.”
My face fell flat. I didn’t know it was like that. I thought Ted trusted me.
“Kate, what’s the sad face for?”
(I need to learn how to control my face. I don’t like folks reading my mind all the time.)
“I’m not sad,” I lied. “Just trying to figure out what I’m going to do at the park … that’s all.”
“Who are you going with?” Ted asked. “Your new friend?”
“No. Going solo.”
“Really?” Ted said with raised eyebrows. “Well, you be careful out there. No strolling in deserted areas, always stay out in the open where there’s other people around, understand me?”
“Of course I understand you,” I said. “I know how to handle myself.”
(I guess I need to control my tone of voice too, because Ted could hear I was still upset.)
“Listen, it’s nothing personal. I just don’t want you dropping or losing my three-hundred-dollar camera.… Shoot, I don’t even trust myself with the digital in Prospect Park. But you wait right here. I got something else for you.”
Ted went upstairs and came back carrying a clunky black camera, big as a TV. Oh no. I didn’t think so. Ted must’ve snapped pictures of cavemen with that prehistoric-looking contraption!
“Don’t screw up your face like that,” said Ted, laughing. “It still works. I even have some film left for you.”
“No offense, but nah, no thanks.”
“Why?”
“That thing looks mad heavy, and I’m carrying a small purse.”
“Since when do you carry a purse?” Ted chuckled.
I shrugged.
Ted stroked his chin and asked, “Well, what happened to your trusty ol’ knapsack? Maybe you can carry that.”
It hurt my feelings to think about my knapsack sitting in a dump somewhere. I quickly said, “Oh, it’s somewhere around here,” and then I quickly changed the subject. Ted looked at me funny, but he didn’t press me further.
“Oh well, thanks for trying to look out,” I said.
I was about to leave the living room, but Ted called me back. He leaned forward to see if Lynn was still busy with her papers before reaching into his shorts pocket, and pulling out his favorite (and my favorite) tan leather wallet. He pulled out a twenty, and my eyes lit up. Ted slipped it in my palm so slick, I felt like I was pushing dime bags on the streets. This is how we had to get down, since Lynn didn’t believe in allowance.
Okay, so no camera. No problem. I had a twenty-dollar bill in my purse. I was set. Now maybe I could check out the petting zoo, or go for a boat ride, or do whatever I wanted to do. Hey, I was free to do me. It would be strange going to Prospect Park without Felicia, but even stranger to stay stuck indoors. Nah, I wasn’t trying to stay stuck. I needed to be out!
I got dressed. Kept my outfit simple. An old yellow T-shirt, a pair of baggy blue shorts, and my hair hooked up into a ponytail with bangs swished to the side. My bangs kept falling into my eyes, but that was okay, I loved the feeling of flicking my hair out of my face—like I’m a diva, because I am.
I grabbed my keys, my purse, said my good-byes, and headed out for the sun. But the split second I stepped outside, Ted whipped open the front door and called me back in. I had a phone call. It was Naleejah. Her “hello” sounded shaky, like she had been
crying. What was up this time?
Chapter 18
“Hey, girl,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Listen, my parents are fighting. I need to get out of this house. Can I come over, please?”
“Well … um … I was headed to Prospect Park—”
“With who?” Naleejah blurted out like a jealous boyfriend.
“By myself.”
“By yourself? Are you crazy? This is Brooklyn!”
“Why crazy?” I asked. “I’m not walking through the forest butt-naked. It’s no big deal.”
“But … why didn’t you ask me if I wanted to come?” Naleejah sniffed.
“I didn’t think you’d be down.”
“Well, I’m down,” said Naleejah. “What are you trying to do there?”
“I’m open to whatever.”
I was shifting my feet, itching to bounce, but I tried to consider Naleejah’s possible state. I know it’s nerve-racking to hear grown folks yelling at each other in the house, and it’s worse when you have no place to go to escape the madness. So I sighed, hoping Naleejah didn’t hear me sigh, and said, “Listen, if you want to come with me to the park, I’ll wait for you, okay?”
“Hey, we should go to Coney Island!”
“Nah,” I said firmly. “Prospect Park.” We needed to do something I wanted to do, for a change. I had let Naleejah lead me around like a brainless puppy on a leash for far too long. It was my turn to call the shots.
Finally, Naleejah said, “Okay, I’ll come with you.”
We met up at the B46 bus stop on Macon Street. Naleejah was dressed for a pool party. She had on a hot pink halter top, dark green Daisy Duke shorts, and silver flip-flops decorated with rhinestones. She looked mighty pretty, but mighty silly for the park. I wondered how she was going to sit comfortably on dirty buses and trains and wooden park benches in those coochie-cutting shorts of hers.
Naleejah gave me a stiff quick hug, and the first thing out her mouth was: “Girl, I gave you all those clothes, and this is what you wear?”
“Hello to you too,” I grunted. “No need to wear a ball gown to the park.”
Two seconds later, she said, “Honestly, it’s burning up out here! We should be headed to the beach, not some dang park.”
Okay, be nice. She’s going through some things.
When we got off the bus and headed to the Utica Avenue number 3 train, Naleejah tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe we have to take a bus and a train just to get to some park! See, that’s why I need me a full-time man with a hot whip to chauffeur us around, feel me?”
I nodded and flashed a fake smile.
When we entered Prospect Park, I didn’t have a solid plan. I just wanted to chill out, bug out, see where our feet took us. But no, not Naleejah. The queen of walks-to-nowhere had the nerve to be beefing with my idea. She couldn’t appreciate the silky blue sky or the beautiful green trees surrounding us.… The cute kids wobbling on their first bikes didn’t amuse her, and the old folks trembling on Rollerblades didn’t make her laugh. So, everybody was outside having fun—except for us. I tried to be patient with her at first, because Felicia had to point these same things out to me once. But ten minutes into our walk, Naleejah jerked her chin up at me and asked, “Are we there yet?” Then she rolled her eyes.
Between me and you, I was ready to chin-check her. But I took a deep breath instead. “Do you want to go to the zoo? Six dollars to get in.”
“The zoo!” Naleejah exclaimed. “I’m not trying to pay six bills to see nobody’s animals. We got enough mice in our house as it is. You sound crazy.”
Wow, this was some bull.
Listen, the first time Felicia invited me to Shakespeare in the Park, I thought it would be mad boring, and I was correct, but I went along with the program anyway. I didn’t clown my homegirl or complain. If Felicia could roll with me to watch a basketball game, then I could roll with her to watch Romeo and Juliet commit suicide. It’s called give and take. But right now, all I wanted to do was give Naleejah a black eye and take my black butt home.
“Where to now?” asked Naleejah.
“Let’s sit down for a minute,” I said, pointing to a bench under a weeping willow tree. “I’ll think of something we can do.”
“Hope you can,” said Naleejah, shaking her head as we sat down.
I put my hand to my cheek. “Uh, do you have any suggestions, Ms.Thing?”
“No,” Naleejah said. “But you’re the one who dragged us here—remember? Got me taking buses, trains, and planes to get here to do what?”
I clenched my fists, then unclenched them, leaned back on the bench and counted to ten. Naleejah suddenly leaned forward and looked to her left and right. “I can’t believe not a single hottie in this whole park! Nothing but bratty kids and grown folks. I wasted my dang outfit.”
Okay. Last try.
“Hey, there’s an electric boat tour we can go on,” I suggested. “Me and Felicia had crazy fun on it last summer—my treat, okay?”
The boat ride would be ten dollars for the both of us. Ten dollars was worth spending to shut this chick up and save my day; it was too sunny outside to let this cloud named Naleejah rain on my parade.
“Well, where’s the boat?”
“On the other side of the park—closer to Ocean Avenue, I think. We’ll find it.”
“No, you’ll find it, because I’m not trying to walk across no damn park.”
I pressed my lips together and shook my head in anger.
“Naleejah, you could at least try to have fun,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck; she had me feeling mad tense in the neck bone!
Naleejah didn’t reply. She just whipped out a cigarette, stuck it in her mouth, and lit up.
I jumped up.
“Where you going?” Naleejah asked.
“Don’t want your smoke blowing all up in my face.”
“You mad at me?”
“Do you really care?” I asked. “I’m saying, you don’t want to do anything I want to do. You ain’t open to nothing.”
Naleejah blew a circle of smoke and said, “No disrespect, but it seems like you and your homegirl be trying to do white people stuff.”
I jerked my head back. “What? Black people can’t ride boats now? You didn’t get the memo? We’re free.”
“Well, sorry to say, but you and your homegirl be sounding mad nerdy.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “Nerds do it real big. So I’ll be getting cake, while you’ll be getting crumbs.… If you’re lucky, I’ll save you a slice.”
“Please, girl, I had you riding in a shiny fly Range Rover the other day.”
“And, what?” I asked. “We didn’t go anywhere special, and it wasn’t even your truck.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever.”
“Trust me, Naleejah, I’m going places. So don’t sleep on me.”
“Okay, so now I see,” began Naleejah, “you don’t think you’re white, but you do think you’re too good for the hood, huh?”
“Girl please, when I get my college degree, I’m still shouting out Brooklyn and keeping it me. What?”
“Sure you will.” Naleejah blew out another circle of smoke and flashed a smart-aleck smile.
I looked away from her, kicked at the ground, and stared at the tree in front of me. I tried to tell myself to ignore her, but she was taking me back to a bad time, reminding me of a group of girls I had rolled with in the beginning of the seventh grade. Chandra. Melissa. Tina. Rolanda. Bad girls for life. They weren’t technically a gang, but they were close, bullying weak broads and acting up in general. They used to cheer me on whenever I yoked somebody up, but scrambled and ran once I started doing good in school and my teachers started sweating me like fans. “You think you too good now?” they’d ask, passing me by in the hallways. I felt so rejected and hurt by them, especially when they swore I was trying to be better than them, when I was only trying to do better for myself.
Once, i
n the lunchroom, Chandra stepped to me as I was sitting quietly with Felicia, minding my own biz. Felicia and I were running partners by then, and Chandra seemed upset about it.
“Yo, Kate,” she began in a bass tone. “Don’t think you can come back to us when you get bored, okay?”
I shrugged in place of an answer.
“You heard me, right?”
“Yeah, I heard you,” I said, then turned to face my dry hamburger. After Chandra left the table, my face must’ve looked pitiful because Felicia patted me on the shoulder and said, “I hope you’re not tripping over her. She’s mad stupid. That was so random and unnecessary.”
“Yeah, I know, but when I was down with her, she was riding my bra strap hard, and now that I’m hanging with you, she got a problem with that? She makes me so sick. None of those other girls talk to me anymore either, and we used to be mad tight—two-faced broads. I don’t need them anyway.”
Felicia dropped her hamburger on the tray and stared at me for a second, then said, “But why do you sound so bitter?”
“I’m not bitter,” I insisted.
“Yes, you are. I can hear it in your voice.”
I shrugged whatever, and then started picking at the limp lettuce on my hamburger. Then Felicia began her lecture. I didn’t hear anything she said but the last paragraph: “Let those girls laugh at you. And they’ll be flipping fries for a living, while you’ll be getting paid. Don’t even worry about them. You can’t be rejected by a group you don’t want no parts of. Let it go, girl.”
That day, I let it go.
But thinking back to that day, and the way those girls had treated me, had me heated all over again. Naleejah was taking me back. And there was an old Kate deep down inside of me. If Naleejah wasn’t careful, I’d introduce her to the side of me she didn’t want to meet.
Naleejah stamped out her cigarette, raised her hand as if in class, and said, “Um, professor, can we go home now?”
