“So, yeah, he knew I would be out here. I think he’s proud of me.”
“Does this mean you’re planning to be a civil rights lawyer or something?”
“I have no idea.” She smiled. “What about you? How’d you wind up out here getting arrested?”
Looking down at my plate, I reached for my fork and stabbed at a piece of sausage, stalling.
“I mean, it’s not … it just didn’t feel like the kind of thing any of us should just watch on tv, y’know?”
It sounded weak, compared to her fiery treatise on “the capitalist bedrock of American society” but it was all I had.
“No. Yeah. For sure.” Lila nodded, cutting off another piece of pancake.
I tried to shake the sense that I was disappointing her. A girl like her would probably be into guys who were super-woke and had been paying attention to all this stuff long before someone’s life got snuffed out on camera.
“How about your family?” she asked. “How’re they gonna feel about your criminal record?”
“We’re not legit gonna have a record, are we?”
Lila laughed. “No. I think we just got a citation. Why? Are you planning on being a lawyer?”
“Hopefully. Yeah. Not civil rights probably, but yeah.”
“Cool.” Lila started eating again. “So … how’re they going to react to all this? You said your family doesn’t know you’re out here, so what’s it gonna be like when they find out?”
“I don’t know.” I answered honestly. “Because my pops is not a political science professor, so …”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t understand. Not that he would want you to get a citation. But he must get it, right? Because …”
She broke off and I knew what she was trying not to say. As a Black man, he had to get it. There was no way he wouldn’t.
“True. But …”
Lila looked up. “But …?”
“My family situation is … different than most. Complicated when it comes to stuff like this. Sometimes.”
“How?” She asked the question reflexively then quickly shook her head. “I mean … I didn’t mean … It’s none of my …”
“Nah. It’s fine. It’s just that my father is a Black man, but my mother … is not a Black woman.”
Lila didn’t look surprised. She nodded.
“I guess that might make the conversations a little different in your house sometimes. But maybe not.”
“Nah, they’re different,” I acknowledged.
“How so? If …” She stopped herself again. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I don’t mind,” I said.
And I didn’t. Because most people didn’t ask. The fact that my parents were an interracial couple was something that people tended not to remark upon. Because it was 2020 and everyone knew you weren’t supposed to mention stuff like that. We were all supposed to be post-racial.
Most people I kicked it with casually didn’t even know. Unless they came to my spot and saw the family photos, Black folks never assumed my blue-gray eyes meant a white parent. They were too well-versed in the nuances of Blackness, the various shades, and permutations.
White people were more likely to get into it, like it was a reflex for them.
Are you mixed?
You’re biracial, right?
Where are you from originally?
And my favorite, the vague, twenty-first century version that implied rather than asked outright what they wanted to know: what’s your background?
Black people noticed but made no assumptions and mostly didn’t ask any questions. My boy, Lamar, was the funniest.
When he first saw a picture of my parents, he nodded in comprehension.
A’ight, a’ight, he intoned as he studied the shot of me and my parents at my high school graduation—mom and dad on either side and me in between looking like the perfect gumbo of them both. See, I thought them eyes was just some massa-in-the-slave-cabins genes poppin’ up.
That shit was funny, so we both laughed, and it never came up again.
“I don’t mind you asking,” I told Lila.
And I didn’t. It wasn’t like I repressed the sense of myself as biracial, but it was just something I carried with me always, which rendered it unnoticeable. Most of the time latent, but always present was the knowledge of two identities, though I was often relieved of that duality since America only identified me—and I identified myself—as a Black man.
Chapter Four
Lila
Kai has a mellow kind of energy, so that even when he’s talking about deep and difficult subjects, he comes across as perfectly chill. When we were talking about how we wound up at the protest, I was eating really fast because I had all this nervous energy, and I was talking too much, saying dumb stuff about breaking up the capitalist mindset or other jargony stuff like that. I was sure I was making a fool out of myself, but I couldn’t seem to stop. I was unsettled by being arrested of course, but also a little because of Kai.
I think it was because when we were walking over to the carryout, he did that chivalrous thing that some guys do, where if you’re closer to the curb on the sidewalk, they take your arm and gently maneuver you to the inside. His hand on my arm was gentle, like he was apologetic for touching me without permission. And then, because I stopped talking, he looked at me and smiled, and prompted me to continue with a little nod, and a soft: Sorry, what were you saying?
To make matters worse, at the carryout, all the cops made me nervous.
Even though I personally never had reason to feel genuinely threatened by a cop, and even though the one who took me in was practically fatherly, I still felt like I was in hostile territory. And feeling that way made me sad, because I’ve never been one of those people who view law enforcement or any other group of people as a monolith. Police officers … I mean, sure they’re part of a system of oppression but on an individual basis, there were good ones, honest public servants, trying to fulfill their duties with integrity. Right?
But that morning was the first time I looked at them and couldn’t even see their faces. All I saw was blue, and it brought me way down just thinking that all they might see when they looked at us … was Black. Not just the color of our clothing while we marched, but our faces. And maybe there were traits they ascribed to that Blackness, the kinds of traits that made them reach for their weapons, or feel inexplicable rage that they were themselves too scared to examine.
Maybe, I wondered, as Kai and I took our seats on the curb, they had always seen us this way? Even the Black cops. Like, does it change your perception of your own community when you’re a cop, and you’re Black? I think it probably has to. Even just a little bit. Maybe you feel pressure to overcompensate or perform or prove something to your colleagues. I don’t know.
Maybe it’s a process of being indoctrinated into a way of thinking bit by tiny bit and before you know it, the way you see the world is completely different, the way you see people who look like you is completely different. Or, that maybe you can turn it on and off depending on the context. Maybe it stays with you when you’re not even on the job. It’ll drive you crazy just thinking of it.
I know a lot of the activists from the north and west sides of the city say that the Black cops can be the worst ones. I used to be skeptical of that. But now, I’m not. Not because I’ve seen it for myself but because now, I believe anything is possible. I believe that when you have a badge, a blue uniform and a gun you can kill someone for no reason in cold blood in front of dozens of witnesses, and society will only shrug, and think, ‘he more than likely deserved it.’
And if they’re not shrugging now, it’s only because we took to the streets.
Those were the thoughts running through my head when we sat down. Everything was all muddled and jumbled; thought and feeling all mixed in together. I wondered whether I should be calling Tianna, even though her having not called me probably meant she had been picked up as well. And if not, she w
as hardly likely to be in a place to hear and respond to phone calls.
I thought of calling my dad, but I knew my mother would be frantic, and worried that my dad would read the pace and excitability in my voice and say he was coming to get me right away. I didn’t want him to come. Not right away. I wanted to spend a little more time staring into the eyes of the mildly awkward, handsome boy sitting across from me.
Kai’s eyes are beautiful, and make his gaze seem unusually piercing and perceptive. And he has a strong, rangy neck which he cranes slightly forward when I speak. And I spoke a lot.
Most of what I said just came spilling out of me, like I was some kind of idiot. I even told him about the egg thing, which I know must sound really weird to someone who has no frame of reference to reassure himself that I am not in general a weird person. And in between, I was stuffing my face in a frenzy, even though I wasn’t hungry, feeling like a dork the entire time.
And then Kai mentioned his mother being white and I asked him if the conversations they had about race were different. I immediately regretted prying like that, but he just nodded and said he didn’t mind talking about it.
Once he started talking, I was relieved, because it meant I would be forced to shut up for a minute and get my bearings.
“The thing is, when one of your parents is white, you don’t think that. Not consciously. You don’t think, ‘my mother is white’. She’s just my mother. And the really stupid part … at least it’s stupid when I say it out loud, is that I never related her to other white people.
“You know what I mean? I never made that conscious association. I never thought for instance, ‘my teacher is white, like my mother.’ Or, ‘the bank teller is white, like my mother.’ I could think of her separately, and not as part of a racial group. Does that make sense?”
I nodded, already kind of surprised at how much he was saying, to me, some girl he just met.
“Anyway, I’m just telling you that so you’ll understand,” Kai continued. “How much of a surprise it was, when I realized that I had to think of her that way. At least sometimes.”
“When did you realize it?”
Kai smiled and shook his head. “To be honest, I don’t think I did. At least, not on my own. My pops had to point it out to me. Not once, but repeatedly. The first time I remember it happening though was when I was like seven, maybe?
“We were at Chuck E Cheese for a party and I was getting rowdy with a couple other kids, I think we turned a table over by accident or something like that. And my mother was cool about it, and I remember she said to my dad, ‘James, it was just an accident’ and went to get napkins to clean up.
“But my dad snatched me up and pulled me aside and he said, ‘Listen to me. When you’re out here cuttin’ up, don’t think you’ll find shelter in your mother’s whiteness. Time’ll come when even she can’t protect you.’”
“Wow,” I said. “You were seven when he said that?”
“Yeah. And of course I didn’t get it at the time. But I remembered it, because of the words he used: find shelter in your mother’s whiteness. Because remember I didn’t even think of her as white, really. And shelter? Like in my kid’s mind I was thinking, ‘Mom’s not gonna let me live with her anymore if I’m bad?’”
Kai laughed at the memory. I smiled at the sound of his laughter.
“Anyhow, that was the first time I remember my dad talking about me as separate or different from my mother in some way. And as I got older, he talked about me and him as being separate and different from her.”
“How did that feel?”
Kai shrugged and scratched his jaw, thoughtfully. “I don’t remember feeling any way in particular about it. I mean, the older I got, I started noticing it myself, right? The way people would look from her to me and back again when we were out somewhere, just the two of us. You know … the usual curiosity and stuff.”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said.
I know those looks, because I’ve probably been guilty of them myself, those slightly longer than usual assessments of white mothers with Black children. Searching for common features, wondering if the kid might in fact be adopted, and then chiding myself because what the hell did it even matter?
“And if we talked about it at all, my dad and me? It was always out of my mother’s presence. And after a while there wouldn’t be as many of those talks, but looks we exchanged, or an unspoken understanding about how our world was not the same as her world.”
“Wow,” I said, aware that it was the second time I’d had that reaction since he started telling his story.
“So, in answer to your question about whether my folks know I’m out here? I think … I’m pretty sure my pops knows I am. I’m equally sure my mother doesn’t.”
I forced myself not to say ‘wow’ again, and instead gave him a wry smile.
“Are your … parents still together?” I asked hesitantly.
Kai laughed at that. “Very much so. Although I can see why you would ask.”
I nodded again.
“The funny thing about it, is that my parents are as together as two people can be. They have a good marriage far as I can tell, I’ve hardly ever seen them fight, and my pops … he’s pretty clear that she’s the love of his life. So …” He shrugged. “You can search me. I don’t know … That’s why I said it’s complicated.”
“That is complicated. Like …” I squint, trying to formulate a way to ask what I want to ask.
“You won’t offend me,” Kai says shaking his head. “Don’t worry.”
“Well … do you think your dad can be who he is, if he’s married to someone he doesn’t talk to about this stuff? I mean, this is pretty important stuff, so …”
Kai did some squinting of his own, his brow furrowed as he thought about the question.
“I think ... I don’t know what he talks to her about. I don’t know how much he shares about his experiences, but I think in being my father, he understands that he needs to …”
He stopped and thought for a while. And I felt a strange tenderness toward him as he grappled with what he wanted to say, or what he could say without betraying his parents, or diminishing their relationship.
“I think my pops knows that to be the father he needs to be to me, some things maybe my mother won’t understand.” He was still speaking haltingly. “So, he shields her from it. Because I think he … believes it would break her heart.”
“What would break her heart? Being excluded, or …”
“No. Finding out the truth about what it’s really like to be a Black man in America. And knowing the full extent of what her husband and her son have to face.”
I leaned back against my extended arms.
I didn’t say what I was thinking, which was that it might be both unfair and paternalistic for him and his father to shield his mother this way. And that if she was in fact ignorant of what they faced, she had no excuse because her son and her husband were Black men, and that gave her a responsibility to educate herself.
I didn’t say either of those things because I didn’t know enough about his family to say them, and ultimately it didn’t matter. What mattered most to me were two things: one, that he had told me all this at all, and two; that he was the kind of son who interpreted things in the light most loving and compassionate to both his parents.
What I said instead was something that I did, in my heart believe.
“Well, you can never know what couples talk about in the private space of their marriage.”
Kai nodded. “Yeah. True.”
That thought seemed to reassure him in some small way because his shoulders relaxed a little.
“For all you know, both your parents are home right now talking about the fact that you’re probably out here marching for Black lives.”
He smiled and those blue-gray eyes brightened a little. “Doubtful,” he said. “But you’re right. You never know.”
“Where is home anyway?” I asked him.
“The DMV.”
“What?”
He laughed. “Not the Department of Motor Vehicles. The DC-Maryland-Virginia area.”
“Okay, but which one?”
“Just over the border where DC meets Maryland in a town called Silver Spring.”
“I’ve heard of Silver Spring. Is it nice there?”
“Uh huh.” He nodded, still smiling at me.
Our order-taker walked by and handed Kai the check, muttering ‘whenever you’re ready’ in a tone that actually conveyed ‘as soon as possible.’ Apart from the fact that we were surrounded by police officers, there was no guarantee that we wouldn’t amble off without paying at all. Things were a little unorthodox these days; carryouts transformed to sidewalk dining, and cops ignoring clusters of people eating on the street just blocks away from the jail, because they needed to go out to man a protest and bring more people to the jail.
Kai leaned to one side, to retrieve his wallet from his back pants pocket, then patted, looking perplexed and then tried the other side. Finally, he stood and tried the front pockets too.
“Shit!” he said.
“What happened? Did you …?”
“My fuc… I don’t have my doggone wallet. I must’ve …”
Anyone who had done this before would have told him that you don’t take your wallet to a protest march. Anything could happen—from outright theft to a full-on melee like we had today, where personal items get scattered, lost or destroyed. And also, you could give a false name if you got nabbed and didn’t have ID on you. Not that I had been brave enough to do that.
“Did you have it at the lockup?” I asked.
“They didn’t … No, I don’t …” He seemed to be trying to remember. “Shit. I can’t … I’m pretty sure I …”
Then he looked at me, his expression a mix of stricken and embarrassed.
“It’s okay. I can take care of …” I reached for the check, but he pulled it out of reach.
“Nah. If they take Apple Pay, I can use my phone,” he said. “Lemme go see.”
He walked away, with the check in hand, but I was already certain given the datedness of the place that they were likely to have only an old-fashioned cash register and card reader. And sure enough, Kai returned moments later looking mortified.
Resistance Page 4
