by Randi Pink
The empty castle felt emptier than usual. I trekked up the stairs to my room and sat on the side of my twin bed. The brown spider that lived on my windowsill worked hard to create her evening masterpiece of a web. She was about a third of the way through, moving her eight legs with intentional chaos. I despised spiders with all my heart, and if she’d ever set foot inside my room, I wouldn’t have hesitated to murder her, but behind the safety of the glass, I loved her. She was everything that I wanted to be: beautiful, independent, confident, strong, respected, intelligent, and fierce. Her body was the size of a quarter, not including the legs. All in all, for a spider, she was enormous.
“Jesus?” I turned around, but he wasn’t there. “Jesus?” And nothing.
* * *
I woke to Unsolved Mysteries blaring downstairs. I skipped two steps at a time to join my family on the pillows. I stood on the fifth stair from the bottom, drinking in the view of my people. As usual, everyone got an oversized pillow to themselves. My designated pillow sat near the fireplace, awaiting my return. That episode of Unsolved Mysteries was the story about the ghost of Grace Brown. She was killed by Chester Gillette over a hundred years ago at the Covewood Lodge on Big Moose Lake, where she now haunted guests. One of my favorite episodes. When my weight shifted, the floor creaked beneath my feet. Alex’s eyes never left the television. Mom and Dad, however, beamed at the sight of me.
“Toya!” said Mom.
“Hey, darling,” said Dad, chewing on the wrong end of an ink pen.
I took a seat one and a half feet to the right of Alex, enough room to give him adequate space, but closer than we’d been in a while. Even before the fight, Alex and I respected each other’s personal space. As a family, we had an unwritten knock-before-you-enter, lock-the-bathroom-door-behind-you, never-hug-too-long-or-sit-too-close policy.
The phone rang.
“I thought the phone was disconnected,” said Alex. “Great job, Dad.”
Dad beamed with pride.
“I’ll get it.” Mom popped up. “It’s probably Evilyn. She hasn’t been herself since some strange white girl took up for her in the park.”
I sank deeper into my pillow.
“Hurry back.” Dad waved the remote. “Grace Brown’s ghost is about to take the lodge.”
“I know,” she replied. “Just a second.”
They exchanged a weird look. Well, not a weird look for a regular married couple, but certainly for them. It was a tender look.
Alex didn’t seem to notice.
“Toya!” Mom yelled from the kitchen. “Some boy is on the phone for you!”
Dad and Alex craned their necks in my direction. I slowly made my way to the kitchen. Mom held the phone out and whispered, “Someone named Dontay?”
“Oh!” I went to take the phone from her hand, and she lifted it out of my grasp.
“Who is Dontay?”
“Dee-on-tay, Mom,” I pronounced, and then jumped for the phone.
“Well, excuuuuse me.” She made her way back to the pillows.
“Hey,” I said into the receiver.
“Hi,” he replied. “I got your number from Ms. Wade. You still have a house phone?”
“Yeah.” That was all I could say in response.
“Everything cool?”
“I never know what to say when people ask that. Is it a catchall, like how are you doing? Or should I really answer the question?” I knew I should’ve just said, Yes, everything’s cool. But I had an irresistible longing to fill the dead space.
“Been a minute since I actually talked on the phone,” he said. “I prefer text.”
“I’m sure I would, too,” I said, somewhat embarrassed. “I think we’re the last family on the planet without access to a cell phone.”
“It’s cool, though. I like hearing your voice.”
I’m certain my heart skipped a few beats on that one, but I couldn’t think of anything to say in response. I like hearing your voice, too? You’re not as horrible as I thought you were? You’re actually quite great? Your name made the back cover of my notebook?
“Well, anyway,” he said, finally. “Can I pick you up tomorrow morning at ten?”
“Sounds cool,” I said, struggling to sound unaffected. “I’ll be out front.”
“See you then,” he replied, also struggling to sound unaffected. “Bye.”
“Okay, bye.”
THE BAD SISTER
Mom and Dad turned the corner into the kitchen. They had been eavesdropping.
“What happens tomorrow?” asked Mom. “Your father and I have veto power.”
“Is this supposed to be a date?” Dad inquired with wide-open eyes and blue ink on his lips.
“At ten in the morning? Surely not,” I said, but they looked skeptical. “I mean, he didn’t say it was or wasn’t. I don’t know. Should I call and ask him? How does it work?” I began pacing. “Oh God.”
Dad grabbed me by the shoulders. “Look, doll. If a guy calls the night before to make sure you’re showing up, it’s definitely a date.”
Mom did a double take. “Man! You been chewing on the front of an ink pen. Go wash up before you get lead poisoning.”
“Ah, woman.” Dad reluctantly stormed toward the downstairs bathroom.
Mom quietly watched him go. “Can we talk a minute?” Her voice softened.
I impulsively rolled my eyes. “Yes, Mom, can you make it—”
Before I finished my sentence, she was reaching for the car keys. “Come on before your dad sees.”
Mom couldn’t drive a stick shift, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her. We jerked down Beckman Drive in horrified silence, while she concentrated on second and third gears versus neutral and fifth. When we reached the top of Colossus, she let out a sigh of relief and rode the brakes all the way down, eventually veering into Edgewood Park and shutting the engine off without shifting back into neutral. “I hate this car,” I said.
“Me too, child,” she said, and we laughed together for the first time in a while. “Nice evening.”
The Alabama sky was streaked with a variation of ambers, darks blues, and purples. “Yeah, nice one.”
Mom watched a woodpecker jabbing a telephone pole. “I wonder what he’s looking for this time of night.” We sat watching until he flew away.
“What’s wrong, Mom?”
She still stared out her window, now watching a young white couple teach their child to play tennis. She cleared her throat for a little longer than needed. “Well, I just wanted to take a minute to say something.” She turned to me and reached her hand to my cheek. “You are so beautiful, baby girl.”
“Mom, what’s going on?” I asked, starting to feel panic.
She eased her hand away. “Your brother’s going away for a little bit. He didn’t want you to know, but I couldn’t let him leave without you two figuring things out.”
“What do you mean, going away for a little bit? When?”
“You know those letters?”
My heart did a little hop in my chest. “Yes, he’s never told me what they are.”
“They’re recruiting him.”
“Who?”
She turned back toward me. “Everyone, Toya. Harvard, MIT, Yale, Brown … all of them.” She couldn’t hold it in anymore. The tears began streaming down her face.
Really looking at her, I realized she’d been holding on by a thread for a while. Her soft hair flew from her head like flames, streaks of mascara lined her cheeks, and her hand was shaking a little. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed before. My mother was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
“How is that possible? He’s absent just as much as I am. He must be failing, too.”
“Your brother’s not failing, Toya,” she said deliberately. “He’s actually doing well.”
Come to think of it, I’d never asked him if he was failing. I’d assumed he was because I was. Even though he was absent as often as me, he’d chosen to push forward academically, quietly suc
ceeding without making a fuss over himself. He could’ve bragged, but he didn’t. He was dulling his own light so I wouldn’t feel bad. He always protected me, even if he suffered for it.
“The letters aren’t all he’s been keeping from me,” I said, mostly to myself.
“He started e-mailing the schools last year. He had an idea for something.” She began shaking her head in confusion. “I don’t understand it. It’s way over my head.” She slipped a letter from her purse. “You read it.”
The paper was textured and off-white, with tiny speckles of gold hidden in the material, making it look more like fabric than paper. The burgundy emblem at the top left corner read VE-RI-TAS in three quadrants, with a white Harvard flag flying underneath the crest.
Dear Mr. Williams,
Thank you for sharing your comparison theory of social sensibility and terror management in impoverished communities. This illuminating model could shift the thinking of …
“Wait a minute,” I said. “He applied to these schools without telling me?”
“No, baby.” She placed her palm on my neck and began massaging slightly. “I think he was just sharing his thoughts with people who could understand them, and now they’re recruiting him.”
I skipped to the bottom.
We would be exceedingly honored if you would tour the Department of Social Psychology within the College of Arts and Sciences, where we seek to understand human experiences and behaviors in social settings. We will gladly sponsor your trip …
I knew Alex was awesome, I just figured I was the only one who thought so. It had never crossed my mind that the rest of the world would ever recognize his awesomeness, too.
“When he was little, I had him tested, and he’s a genius,” Mom said slowly. “Toya, he’s a genius. A real natural-born genius. He’s in the high IQ club that President Obama and Sharon Stone are in. I can’t think of the…”
“Mensa?”
“That’s the one.” She attempted to plug her flowing nostril with the knuckle of her index finger. “He never told us about the letters, because he knew we would encourage him to apply. He wanted to stay here, Toya.” She looked over at me.
“Why?” I asked, though I already knew.
“He didn’t want to leave you behind.” She rummaged through the armrest for tissues and came up with a McDonald’s napkin covered in special sauce. “But you’ve left him behind instead. I really can’t believe it. I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I understand why. It’s my fault. Well, your father’s, too, but mostly mine.”
“What are you talking about, Mom?”
She looked at me like it should have been obvious. “I left you.” She broke down into the most violent Braveheart cry I’d ever seen from her. “Really, I was leaving your father, but I left you guys, too. I shouldn’t have done it, Toya. He’s not even all that bad. He is pretty disgusting with the coffee, and I hate the junk cars, and that empty castle is a pitiful waste of money. But he loves you. He loves Alex. And—”
“He loves you, too, Mom. He told me as much.”
“He did?”
“He did.”
She pulled me into a forceful hug. The parking brake poked my ribs and she squeezed my neck so hard it hurt, but I stayed there. “I’m so sorry I left. You deserve a better mother than me, you both do, and I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mom.” I just sat there and let her cry for what felt like a long time. I couldn’t think of the words to comfort her. I figured she needed to confess and apologize. So I let her.
The semester my mom went to live with Aunt Evilyn, I’d gotten the worst progress report of my life, and I use the word progress lightly. I had earned seven straight Fs. I simply couldn’t focus on algebra while Dad considered buying every crap car in the Gump. Or memorize state capitals while Mom refused to get out of bed at Aunt Evilyn’s. I mean, who really cares about high school when your parents need wrangling? I worried about the stability of my household more than I’d ever concerned myself with school.
When Mom’s waterworks finally calmed, I asked, “What school?”
She lifted her head from the wheel. “What?” she asked.
“What school is Alex going to?”
“That one.” She pointed to the letter.
“Harvard?”
She nodded.
“How long will he be gone?”
“The whole summer, more if they love him, and of course they will.” She drew a breath and blew her nose until the McDonald’s napkin fell to pieces.
She opened the driver’s-side door. “Let’s go home.”
“Wait, we’re leaving the car here?”
“Not a chance in hell I’m getting this thing up that hill.” She slammed the car door. “I’ll send your daddy.”
DEEP-DISH DIMPLE DEANTÉ
“Want your seats hot or cold?” asked Deanté as he opened the passenger-side door to his mother’s Mercedes.
“It’s eighty degrees today.” I smiled. “Cold, obviously.”
I ducked into the car and flipped the visor to check the mirror. When I saw my reflection in the lighted vanity mirror, the smile faded from my face. My cheeks and nose were splotched with pinpoint tiny red dots, and my eyes were puffy and dry from the awful night’s sleep. When Deanté got in the driver’s seat, I flicked the visor back up with more force than I’d intended.
Deanté turned in his seat. “Whoa. Did I do something already?”
“Can you just drive?” I asked, eager to escape Beckman Drive. As we drove I told Deanté about Alex’s letters, Mensa, and my mom’s breakdown in Edgewood Park. The truth poured from my lips, and Deanté stayed silent, listening intently and nodding where appropriate. It felt wonderful to speak without half-truths, or anxiety, just no-holds-barred truth telling for the first time in weeks. I spoke so fast that I couldn’t keep up with myself. After unloading my family problems, I exhaled loudly and slouched in my seat.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is a horrible way to start our date.”
“Wait,” he said, beaming. “Is this a date?”
“Deanté!” I shouted. “From everything I just said, is that all you heard?”
“Nah, I was listening to you. I just don’t really know what to say. You know what I mean? I can’t say I’m surprised that Alex is legit Mensa-level smart. Everybody knows he’s got a little something extra going on.”
I could tell he was cautiously forming his words so as not to offend, so I decided to let him off the hook. “Well,” I said. “Thanks for listening anyway. It helps to talk about it out loud.”
“Anytime,” he replied. “Oh, and we’re here.” We were underneath the arched entryway of the campus of Alabama State University. “You ever been here?”
“I live in Montgomery, Deanté. Of course I’ve been to ASU,” I said, feeling uneasy. Alabama State was an HBCU—a historically black college/university—and when I say I’d been to ASU, I actually meant I’d ridden past it on the way to Edgewood. I’d never actually left the car and entered any of the buildings.
“My bad, dang. I asked because a lot of Edgewood folks don’t leave the neighborhood. Some of my old homies have never seen the inside of an ASU building.” Deanté was positively sunny as we rode past the stadium. “Welcome to Hornet Nation, Toya.” He smiled over at me.
“Thanks,” I said. “But why exactly are we here?”
He made a parking space in front of a fire hydrant. “I thought about our conversation after Josh … you know,” he said.
“Yes, I know. Go on.”
“You asked me why I acted so black, remember?” He paused. “I couldn’t think of an answer. All that mess about choosing hard-core black instead of being an Oreo, that was bullshit. It bothered me that I couldn’t explain, so after I dropped you off, I came here.”
“I’m not sure I understand, Deanté.”
“Just … no one’s ever had the bal
ls to ask me that question, not even my boys—and they’re supposed to be hard.” He shook his head. “I’ve been trying to explain it to myself, more than anything, why I treated your brother like that. And you…” He shifted in his seat, obviously uncomfortable. “I made you … hell … I still don’t know why I did that sick shit with the Jordans.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s really not,” he said, not allowing me to let him off the hook this time. “Just so you know, I’ve always appreciated your style. You and Alex. Y’all don’t fall in line like the rest of us. You do your own damn thing and I respect that. I just never had the guts to admit it.” He pulled from the parking space. “I want to show you something.”
Rolling through campus, I realized it’d never crossed my mind to visit ASU. “When I came here the night of the party, this is what I saw.” He pointed to a brown-skinned girl sitting alone on the grassy quad. She wore plaid parachute pants, a bright orange head scarf, and a T-shirt that read Screw Normal in multicolored letters. He placed his palm on my knee. “It’s you.” He smiled.
“And Alex,” I replied.
“Yeah. Him too.”
Students crisscrossed the sidewalks and streets, blocking the car from progressing too far past the stadium. Most of the students wore black-and-gold T-shirts reading something like Hornet Nation or When We Teach Class, the World Takes Note. I noticed all shades of black people from nearly passable light-skinned to deep dark mahogany. They were all headed in the same direction.
“Where are they all going on a Saturday?”
“That’s the surprise,” he replied. “What time is it?”
I looked down at my watch. “Almost eleven.”
“Dang, I’ll just park here,” said Deanté, as he spun the wheel, parking half on and half off the sidewalk.
“I told you that I don’t really like surprises. What’s going on?”
Deanté put the car into park and shifted toward me. “Okay, I have to be quick because it’s about to start. Do you know my sister, Andrea?”
“I know of her. She was a senior when I was a freshman,” I said, more confused than before.
