The roar from the lobby came without warning. The crowd pushed forward, the doors came open and all the cameras fell into position as Dame walked into the building. I inched up a bit, leveraging myself with Billie’s arm, so I could get a good look. From the door, shaking hands with Evan, he looked different than I expected. Than I remembered. Bigger in some way. He was dressed in a plain white T-shirt that was small enough to show his muscles, blue jeans with designs hop-scotched all over them, and extrawhite sneakers. Aside from the crew buzzing around him, he didn’t look flashy or out of place. And even from my position, about six feet away, I could tell by the shine in his eyes that he was just as excited as we were.
The man on the ladder signaled for the crowd to quiet down as Dame and Evan shook hands and chatted a bit in front of the cameras. Evan went to put his arm around Dame for one of the photographers who was with the local newspaper. It was a welcoming gesture, like one of the old guys was welcoming a kid made good back to town.
Dame made his way toward me, shaking hands down a line of teachers who’d taught him. I could see that he really had grown up. Puberty or testosterone or something had changed even his skin. I remembered him having a caramel complexion with common cocoa eyes, but now everything in his face was smoky. His brown skin was now a lacquered dark chocolate and his eyes were more mysterious and pointed. Even his hair had changed. Far from the little pointy sticks he used to sit in the back of the classroom and twist as he wrote in his notebook, his locks were now long and feral in a way that warned of enticing danger. Just a bit darker than his skin, it looked clean and soft like pre-spun cashmere rinsed in myrrh. It almost begged to be touched. Looking at the magazine cover I had at the house, I’d thought this was airbrushing or the effect of celebrity lighting, but no, it was the real thing. He smiled and his perfect, white teeth contrasted against his skin, making him shine effortlessly. He looked like a star. And as he walked the greeting line, one by one, the grown-up female teachers turned into grinning girls with crushes. How ridiculous they looked, I thought ... until it was happening to me, too.
As I watched him move, everything around me grew so loud, but all I could hear was my insides turning. Saliva spinning at the back of my throat. My pulse tickling the insides of my wrists. My breathing going slow, slow, and then the vibration of air tunneling down the center of my chest before an exhale whistled out of my shuddering body. It was like I was at a concert, catching a fever of emotion from everyone circled around me. It was a surprise that I’d felt this way, but I couldn’t ignore the energy and pretty soon, the excitement was inside of me. I looked down to see that my right foot had turned coyly toward my left ankle. I was standing there like a little girl. I wondered if anyone had noticed and quickly moved my foot back into position.
“Ms. Cash?” Dame stopped suddenly as he was talking to another teacher a ways down from me. “Say it ain’t so,” he said, laughing as he strutted toward me with the cameras behind him. “My favorite teacher! Ms. Cash!”
He scooped me up into his arms and spun me around so quickly I had to catch my breath. As he opened his arms and I slid back to my feet, I could feel the muscles in his chest.
“Oh,” I said, smiling and telling myself not to look at his arms in front of the camera. “I’m Mrs. DeLong now. I got married,” I blathered, and so I flashed my ring in front of the camera as proof.
“What?” Dame looked over at Evan grouped with some other people from the school board. “You married Dr. DeLong?”
“Sure did,” I smiled, inadvertently waving my ring again. “And we’re so happy to have you here to visit the school you once called home,” I said and one of the crew members whispered for me to look at Dame and not at the camera when I spoke.
“I couldn’t think of a better place to be,” Dame said sincerely. “When my manager said I had some time off before my world tour, I told him to cut me a check and book me a plane ticket home. I had to come see about my people. The Black Warriors.”
Benji Young, a boy I used to see writing rhymes in the back of the classroom with Dame, hollered, “Warriors” the way the kids did at pep rallies and other school functions, and the kids replied, “Warriors,” and everyone began to clap.
After the greetings and me getting my students settled in the auditorium, I escorted Dame and the crew around the school, so he could show off his old locker, the basketball courts, and the bathroom where he jokingly said he’d almost lost his virginity until the girl’s boyfriend walked in. As we walked around the school, Dame had the whole crew laughing, me included, with his memories of Tuscaloosa. While most people would think someone his age didn’t care about the place, Dame seemed to remember everything that made Tuscaloosa special and unique and every time he said, “Let me tell y’all about the time ...” everyone gathered and listened intently.
When we finally made our way to the chorus room, I was beginning to feel like a celebrity myself. Between takes, a woman popped out of nowhere and smoothed my hair, gave me a sip of water and redotted my lips with the gloss I’d given her—I still didn’t trust her to touch my makeup.
“This is where it all began,” Dame said. He dashed up the steps that led to the back of the room and sat right in the seat he once inhabited. “I used to sit right here and write my rhymes with T-Brill and Benji. We’d be in here bugging out ... just dreaming of making it big someday.” He stood back up and walked down toward my desk where I was standing behind the camera. After everyone shifted around, he looked at me. “And now I’m big ... and I have you to thank for that.”
“You’re very welcome,” I said.
“I know sometimes you must’ve felt like you weren’t teaching us a damn thing ... man, we were so damn bad!” He laughed and I nodded in agreement. “But you were teaching us. Just being in here and listening to your music and seeing you do something you loved ... sometimes that was all we needed to learn. We was coming out the projects and seeing what it was like to have a job where ain’t nobody looking to take you out. You know? That’s real talk.” His eyes grew more serious. “I know that ain’t something you can measure on a test, but it saved my life. It gave me a vision that I could do what I loved and not have to answer to anybody. I took that and ran with it. Literally! I ran right out the classroom and ain’t never come back.” Everyone except Dame and I laughed at his story. We kept our eyes on each other. “But now I’m here,” he said, lowering his voice. “I’m back home.”
When Dame and I finally made our way into the school auditorium, it was standing room only. The noise was so loud, Dame had to take the microphone himself to get everyone settled down. I was standing on the stage beside him. Evan and Mr. Williams were a few steps away.
While I’d sung in front of crowds at the church and traveled with the choir to places where audiences were twice as large, knowing so many people were watching and filming made me nervous. Was I standing too close to Dame? Too far away? Was my hair messed up? Should I have let the woman do my makeup? Did I look shiny? Did I sound crazy? And pretty soon, I had so many questions that I just wondered, Why am I on this stage?
“I’m one of you,” Dame said when he finally got all the kids to sit down and relax just enough so he could speak. “I’m not from the ‘dirty’; I’m from the dirt. Where folks got less than nothing. Got to go outside and eat fruit all day because that’s the only thing that grows free in your grandmama’s yard. I know some of y’all know what I’m talking about.” Their eyes locked on Dame, the students grew quiet. I’d never seen them so focused.
“And when that fruit runs out ... when them collards run out,” he went on, “you’re fast to do anything to feed yourself—to feed your family. And you know it’s wrong, but you’re hungry. Ain’t nothing worse than being hungry. I ain’t talking about the clothes you wear or the car you drive. Where you live. I’m talking about being hungry. And when my stomach was empty, I used to dream about someday just doing anything. Anything somebody would let me do. A garbage man. Anything. So I wouldn�
��t have to be hungry no more. But ain’t nobody give me a chance, so I went out in the street. And when that ran out, when folks started getting popped and the game got real bloody, I realized I wasn’t no street dude. Not really. I realized that I had to hustle to live for myself. So I could be Dame. Not what the world expects me to be.”
“We love you, Dame,” a girl cried out from the crowd.
“And I love you back,” he said and the auditorium filled with the sound of laughter and screaming girls. “And I love you so much that I’m giving this school, my school, a little bit of what I got out of hustling for myself. This money I’m giving is just for you. So you don’t have to be hungry in your school. So you don’t have to want someone to let you be anything. So you don’t have to get in the drug game and lose respect for your community and keep bringing us down.”
Led by the teachers, everyone began to clap at his last point and I was honestly surprised by what I was hearing. This wasn’t the young man I’d expected. The person who was saying this didn’t sound a thing like the Dame I’d seen on Entertainment Tonight, in magazines, and even in his songs. Suddenly I was thinking that maybe my father was wrong. Maybe none of us knew who the real Dame was from what we’d seen.
“This check is so you can have a chance at Black Warrior,” he added. “A chance to be better than your parents, better than your teachers, better than me. Because this is your future.” He paused and looked off toward the left wing of the stage. “Benji, bring the check out.”
Benji, who I’d since learned had become Dame’s bodyguard, walked out, carrying a huge, blown-up check like the ones television shows use when people win a million-dollar sweepstakes prize.
He handed the check to Dame and Evan and Mr. Williams came over to stand beside me.
“Would you like to do the honors?” Mr. Williams asked, handing me the microphone.
“Sure,” I said. I held up one side of the check and read into the microphone, “A check to Black Warrior High School in the amount of one million dollars, signed by Mr. Damien Mitchell.”
Everyone in the room cheered his name and then a few kids were rapping his lyrics and the camera crews were scampering to the front of the stage to get a picture of the two of us holding the check.
“Smile,” they said one after the other for so long my cheeks began to hurt. I was smiling and holding one side of that check from the center of the stage to the back of the auditorium, where some cameramen were still waiting to get a good shot.
“That was wonderful,” Evan said when we were finally out of the limelight and the circle had dwindled down to just me, Dame, Evan, and Emily, Dame’s assistant, who was fussing over Dame’s clothes and taking the hidden microphone pack from underneath his shirt.
“Yes, I really think the children got something from your words,” I agreed as someone else removed my microphone pack.
“Thanks,” Dame said. “I wish I could come speak to them more.”
“If only we had more people who thought like you, young man,” Evan said. “Hey, I was wondering, what are you doing tonight? Mrs. DeLong and I would like to take you out for dinner. The Cypress Inn? I know it’s no Hollywood meal, but we’d be honored to have you join us if you don’t already have plans.”
I looked at Evan, surprised at his suggestion. He’d said explicitly that he wanted to keep his distance from Dame and now “we’d love to have” him? I didn’t recall ever discussing going out with Dame. Perhaps Evan had the fever, too. I looked down to see which way his feet were pointing.
“Man,” Dame started and it sounded like he was about to say he was busy, “I can do that. I have to do some signings, but I need to eat, too.”
“Wonderful,” Evan said, smiling. “I’ll have my secretary make reservations for 7 p.m.”
Trying to get out of the school was like maneuvering through a herd of traveling cattle. The kids were in a frenzy, running around to try to get to Dame, who’d already slipped out the back door for safety reasons. And the teachers were only blocking the traffic, gathered in bunches where I overheard most of them talking about how handsome Dame had become.
“I need to get me a twenty-three-year-old,” Billie said when I finally got outside and found her standing in the parking lot talking to Kayla.
“Yeah, he was something to look at,” Kayla agreed. “Did you see his arms? You could swing from them.”
“You two should be ashamed of yourselves ... looking at that young boy,” I censured them playfully.
“Please, Mrs. DeeeeeLong, your mouth was salivating, too,” Billie said. “And your husband was there, so that makes you even worse.”
“Oh, no, you didn’t!” I replied, slapping her hand.
“Did you see his butt?” Kayla said all dreamy. “The way it was holding those jeans ...”
“Even with the sag, you could tell the brother has a nice, rock-hard ass,” Billie said. “I wanted to tap that thang.” She pretended she was slapping his butt.
“Oh, let me go. I’m not about to stand here and listen to this foolishness,” I protested, pulling out my keys. I thought the boy was fine, too, but I didn’t think it was appropriate to share that with people. And for some reason, I felt I’d been too close to him to admit I was thinking that way. But he did have a nice butt.
“Stop being a bump on a log, J,” Billie said. “Men look at women all the time. What’s wrong with us recognizing sunshine sometimes? No one said we were actually trying to sleep with the boy—”
“No, you didn’t say that,” Kayla said, and I had to laugh.
“Now, I want to hear Journey admit it,” Billie dug. “Admit that he’s fine!”
“What? I don’t see how that makes any difference. Why do I have to do it?”
“Because it’s a dare.” Billie put her hands on her hips like we were kids in the school yard. “I dare you to admit that you found your former student to be an impeccable specimen of a chocolate man.” She was always coming up with these ridiculous dares.
“That’s stupid.”
“Then do it.” Billie and Kayla folded their arms expectantly.
“This is ridiculous, and I’m not doing it.”
“Hmm ...” Billie looked at Kayla. “Told you she was stuck-up.”
“No, I’m not.” She wasn’t slick. This was how she’d get me to do things in high school. She’d call me a prude, stuck-up, a lame, Miss Tight-Ass, until I felt so bad I did the dare.
“A straight-up prude.” Billie dramatically pursed her lips again and looked at me accusingly. I could almost hear the Old West standoff music playing in the background. “Stuck-up. Miss Tight-Ass herself—”
“I thought he was hot. Happy?” I said quickly, pulling my bag back up on my shoulder and turning to walk to my car.
“Love you, Mrs. DeeeeLong,” Billie hollered after me as she laughed with Kayla.
“And did you see his teeth? I love a man with nice teeth.” I heard one of them say.
“That and a nice tongue.”
“And that hair! Girl, that hair makes you want to just jump rope!”
“Or pull it.”
They cackled me all the way to the car.
Chapter Ten
One of the most annoying things about being married to someone who was so involved with community relations was the waiting. Evan was always late. Everywhere we went. Anytime we were supposed to meet up to do anything. If we weren’t planning to arrive together, I could expect Evan to be late—at least fifteen minutes late. He was held up in a meeting. Lending a listening ear to some parent in the parking lot. Providing a group of constituents with talking points for future engagements. Or just trying to find a parking spot. Because I’m often late myself, I could understand being a bit late on occasion. However, there were only so many fifteen-minutemeeting carryovers, face-to-face confrontations, planning boards, and full parking lots I could take without feeling like I was playing second fiddle to the rest of the universe. I’d sit forlorn in concert halls, theaters, restau
rants, and sometimes at my own dinner table, imagining Evan smiling and charming those around him—not even thinking about where he was supposed to be. What made it worse was that Evan was never late for functions when my father was involved. If we were headed to church or on our way out of town to hear Reverend Jethro Cash speak, Evan would snap into action and sometimes go out and sit in the car early, before I was even ready. And if I had the nerve to be late, he’d shoot his eyes at me and say I needed to be a better planner.
Sitting alone at a table for three in the middle of the dining room floor at the Cypress Inn, one of Tuscaloosa’s top restaurants, I was struggling not to be rude or, worse, a nag. I avoided pulling out my phone and asking Evan where he was and when he planned on getting to the restaurant. When he’d invited Dame to dinner, I remembered that Evan already had three meetings scheduled and needed to complete a presentation for the next day. Thinking he was so excited with the idea of meeting with Dame and milking him for more money for the school board’s plans—another catalyst of his secret plan to someday run for mayor—I called him hours before the dinner to remind him of this and said it wasn’t too late to reschedule or just cancel. “I’ll be there, darling,” he’d said. “Can’t miss it.”
Twenty minutes after our early 7 p.m. meeting, the dining room was filling up and it was evident that I’d have to keep Dame company until Evan showed up—if Dame even came.
The Cypress Inn, with its elaborate outdoor gardens, formal dining setting complete with elegant light fixtures, and a 550-gallon fish tank, was a natural destination for the city’s elite and newspaperready faces. Nestled right along the Black Warrior River, it was the kind of place where dinner served double duty—nourishment of the body and maintenance of social status. Rubbing shoulders, brownnosing, and just general schmoozing was encouraged as $500 wines were sent to tables like bread baskets and bills were often paid anonymously. The governor, mayor, local celebrities from television, college presidents, and even the University of Alabama’s football coach Nick Saban and his wife were regulars.
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