In the Silences

by Rachel Gold

  “Not one set,” Royce said. “Because you get to be you. But I understand what you’re asking. It can be hard. You should’ve seen Cori figuring it out. And, okay, I don’t usually tell people this, and Cori don’t be laughing, but I’m super into makeup and I haven’t figured out how to wear it out of the house yet.”

  “Oh yeah, you should follow their Instagram,” Aisha told me. “Beautiful.”

  “But that’s all I do. I just make myself up and take pics because when I wear it out, unless it’s to a trans event, it doesn’t work. My parents get all: okay, we get it, you’re a girl. Which I’m not. Or: okay, you’re gay. Which I’m not. Right now I prefer women. Might not always be that way. And oh do not get me started about all the sex-related assumptions. Aisha, just, do not make assumptions about Kaz’s body parts, ’k?”

  “Hey, awkward,” Aisha said. “Y’all are older.”

  “Well when you get to third base don’t be all: I’ma slide across this plate without checking to make sure you’re really playing baseball,” Cori said.

  “Truth,” Royce agreed. “My last girlfriend was convinced I’m swinging a bat when I’m not even playing a sport. I’m a totally a co-operative person, but some girls don’t get it when I’m like: can’t we be painting a mural together?”

  Aisha looked at me, eyes super wide like: “Oh my God” and “I’m sorry” and “I don’t even know.”

  But honestly I appreciated it and I knew what they were talking about. “It’s the same thing, clothes and bodies, the way people look at us and think they know what they’re seeing, but they don’t. They think boobs can only mean one thing.”

  “And there are three culturally sanctioned things you can do with them, or your business in general,” Royce said, waving in a downward direction.

  “Oh,” Aisha said. “Oh. Wait, hold up, are you saying it’s like when folks around here see I’m black and assume I’m going to be a line cook when I grow up instead of a surgeon?”

  “Line cook, for real?” I asked.

  “Yeah that totally happened to me in bio last year due to my skills with the scalpel. The teacher was all: you’re great with that, you have a real future in the hospitality industry.”

  “Shit,” Cori said and Royce looked like they were about to spit.

  “Uh-huh, so I gave him Mom’s ice-stare and said ‘I’m going to be a pediatric heart surgeon.’ I don’t know what kind of doctor I want to be yet, but I hear that’s a hard one so it made my point. Not that he got it.”

  “I want to go beat him up,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s how I feel when I see how people are with you about gender,” she said.

  I threw my arms around her and heard Cori say, “Awwww, babies.” And then, “Hey, you two live in St. Paul, right?”

  “Close to it,” I answered.

  “There’s somebody there you’ve got to meet. Aisha, I’ll send you her info.”

  I was up for meeting anyone these two recommended. They had to sign off and get about their days. I’d have stayed on Skype with them the whole afternoon.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mid October 2017

  As Milo suggested, I went to the Trina & Co study group. We’d met for two Sundays before Trina dropped the bomb about adding Wednesday nights. Aisha got her World History group to move from Tuesdays to Wednesdays, so at least we didn’t have more blocks of time apart.

  My World History group met at Trina’s house because it was big and central to all of us—close enough that I could ride my bike when the weather was decent. Mom freaked out with joy that I’d gotten in a study group with a junior in it. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t a good sign that Caden had to take World History his junior year, but I was on thin ice with her.

  Our assignment was to take a feature of an ancient culture that had parallels in modern American culture, to compare and contrast each. Our first meeting we’d brainstormed a list—and that was it. Trina turned the TV on and flipped around until Caden settled next to her with his arm around her. Eve pulled off her sneakers and started painting her toenails dusty purple.

  “Aren’t we supposed to have picked a topic by Tuesday?” I asked.

  “That’s days away,” Trina said. “You know, Brock and Lisa could come over some time if they wanted.”

  “I don’t think Brock has retained anything from sophomore World History,” I said.

  “Yeah but he knows a bomb about football,” Caden said.

  “And I need to know where Lisa gets her hair done,” Trina added.

  “Uh, yeah, okay, I’ll let Brock know.”

  “Hey, I could really use some ice cream,” Trina announced.

  “Me too,” Caden agreed. “Let’s roll.”

  After they’d left, Eve went upstairs and came back with a whole bunch more pedicure stuff. “Come on,” she said, “They’re going to be gone a while.”

  “What?”

  “They’re going to make out in Caden’s car and forget what they went out for and come back with some sad-flavored chips, like cheese and onion. And anyway, there’s ice cream in the fridge if you want some.”

  “Cool. You want any?”

  “Sure.”

  I brought back two bowls of mint chocolate chip, and sat on the far side of the couch, propping my feet on the coffee table like Eve. She’d brought down a whole box of nail polish colors, so I found a metallic silver for my toes. When in Rome, right? Which is where we should’ve been, picking a World History topic.

  I texted Aisha: Has your WH group picked a topic yet?

  Military, she wrote back. Ancient wars compared to World Wars.

  That sounds boring af.

  So. Boring. Should I do the Harlem Hellfighters of WW1 or black nurses in WW2?

  I texted back: Nurses! I’ll help.

  To Eve, I said, “Aisha’s group is doing the military. What do you think we should do?”

  “Caden’s going to wish we’d picked that. I don’t know, sports?”

  I did not want to get stuck researching ancient or modern sports.

  “We could do medicine,” I suggested.

  “Too gross. Anyway, if we pick something where Caden can do a model or replica, he’ll do most of the work.”

  “Why do we have all these study sessions then?”

  “To hang out,” Eve said like that was super obvious. “Sofi usually comes over and sometimes Trina invites more people. You can bring someone if you want, or if you’re into someone, ask Trina to invite them.”

  “Sure,” I said, but when Trina and Caden got back, I didn’t bring up Aisha.

  And I didn’t argue when Caden said he wanted to compare Roman religion with Christianity in America so he could build a Roman temple. In addition to the group presentation, we each got to do an individual paper, so maybe I could do gender and religion.

  That had been two and a half weeks ago. With Aisha’s homework and my dog walking—plus Trina adding Wednesday night meetings—Aisha and I didn’t see each other most weekday evenings. But now that we’d told Aisha’s family we were dating, and my family—tonight was the first Wednesday night session I’d attended—I wanted Aisha with me. Especially since nobody was working on the project.

  On top of that, it was literally National Coming Out Day, October 11. Not a day I’d thought that much about in the past, except to enjoy folks posting on social about all their identities. I’d figured coming out wasn’t a once a year thing, you told people when it was important, but it was too hard to pass up the obvious opportunity.

  As usual, Trina and Caden made an excuse to run out for chips. How many of these study sessions were cover for them to make out in his car? Like, all of them?

  I texted Aisha: Can I for real tell Eve and everyone you’re my girlfriend, tonight?

  After a bit she replied: I don’t think that’s going to change anything. Least not in a good direction. But sure.

  Eve and I had the TV on quietly, an old season of Pretty Little Liars, and were painti
ng our toenails again because this is what you do when half your study group ditches you. Milo was so going to roll her eyes at me when she saw this. Aisha might think it was cute, though.

  “About inviting people over, and the dating thing, the boyfriend stuff,” I said to Eve. Over the last three weeks, Trina had asked repeatedly who I thought was cute.

  “Yeah, you like someone?” Eve asked. She had the biggest feet I’d seen on anyone and was doing a basketball stencil on her big toe.

  “I like girls,” I said.

  She dabbed more orange on her toe and shrugged. “Okay, tell Trina. She’ll be cool with it. Unless you want me to tell her.”

  “Nah, I can.”

  “You know, if you see a girl you like, Trina’d probably set you up.”

  I took a deep breath and said, “I’m not single.”

  “Really?” Eve paused in her toe-painting and cocked her head, scrutinizing my face. “I never see you with anyone except Aisha.”

  Eyes even with hers, I said, “Because she’s my girlfriend.”

  Eve’s eyebrows shot up and she stared at me for an awkwardly long time. Long enough that I could pick out the silver flecks in her blue eyes.

  “What’s that like?” she asked.

  Most of my possible answers involved swearing (“what the fuck are you asking?” and “none of your fucking business”). I could tell from the angle of Eve’s body, shoulder turned half away from me, how badly that would go over.

  “Would’ve been great to be in the same study group,” I told her.

  “You should’ve just told us.”

  “In the middle of History class? Standing in the middle of the classroom?”

  “Okay, point.”

  “And even if I had, last Sunday Trina had all these other people over—people that nobody is dating—but didn’t even ask if I wanted to invite Aisha. Or invite Aisha herself. Aisha’s with us at lunch every day but Trina acts like Aisha doesn’t exist.”

  “Aisha’s really quiet, hard to talk to. Trina probably forgot.”

  Forgot what? We’d been in tenth grade together for five weeks and at the same lunch table for four weeks. Trina saw Aisha almost every day.

  “You all never ask her anything,” I said.

  “I asked her to try out for basketball and she blew me off. And I asked her about that one song.”

  “She doesn’t play basketball,” I pointed out. “And she doesn’t listen to a lot of rap, so that’s not going to be a very long conversation. Not to mention that’s super stereotypey.”

  “I play basketball, what was I going to invite her to? Golf? Don’t get all emo about it. Invite her to the next party.”

  “Can I do that?”

  Eve switched to her other foot and dabbed with the tiny nail polish brush. “Sure. Why not? Trina’s having a big thing on Sunday with her mom, everyone’s invited, they got all the new winter colors in.”

  That solved the issue for about ten minutes, until I went to the bathroom. Trina’s mom was a realtor but she sold cosmetics on the side. Their bathroom was full of skin creams, soaps, shampoos. The nearby hall closet was packed with samples. Trina had brought me up here a few times, to pick an eye shadow that went with the blue in my hair, to look at nail polish, to show off.

  I opened the hall closet carefully, silently. I had an image of myself as the superhero Beast—covered in blue fur, with animal ears and claws—having climbed up the wall and crept in through the window, like this was a secret lab and I was checking for weapons.

  I found the box of foundations and read the labels: Organza, Velour, Taffeta. A stack of cards listed all the foundation colors; it included brown tones like Chenille, Cypress, Suede. I lifted the top card, rubbed the colors with my thumb. My skin was Organza “light skin with pink undertones” and Aisha would be Chenille “dark skin with warm undertones.”

  This reminded me of the wood colors chart from Milo’s workshop. The card had three colors for light skin, one light-medium, just like the four colors of white in my mind. And it had eight colors for medium to deep skin tones. I tucked the card into my pocket. Maybe I’d show it to Aisha as evidence for how accurate our thirteen-year-old perceptions about skin color had been.

  But I’d rather be called Autumn Oak than Organza. Pretty sure Aisha would say the same about Walnut compared to Chenille. Trees had way more dignity than fabrics.

  Next I checked the box of samples. Organza was there; Chenille was not. Did Trina’s mom never use the dark skin foundation colors at her parties? Did she not invite anyone who wore those colors? Did she even know anyone who did?

  I went into the bathroom to pee and stared at the bottles by the tub: four shampoos and three conditioners. I didn’t have to look at the labels. I wouldn’t use any of them. Neither would Aisha. They were for fine, straight hair. I’d started using Aisha’s brand of shampoo a year ago because it didn’t make my thick hair turn into a mass of frizz.

  Aisha’s mom got their shampoo and conditioner online and always ordered extra for me. Our local stores didn’t carry the good products and if you wanted anything for “ethnic” hair, it was on a tiny endcap way in the back.

  Would Trina’s mom know the difference between a shampoo for straight hair and one for curly or kinky hair? Did she know other kinds existed or just think hair was all the same?

  No way was I bringing Aisha to a party where none of the colors or products were right for her. Trina and her mom had a place for white skin colors, and maybe even blue superheroes like Beast, but not brown.

  I said no to the party on Sunday and spent the day over at Aisha’s. We were catching up on Grey’s Anatomy. I counted white and brown faces, comparing it to Pretty Little Liars, which was always on in the background at Trina’s. Yeah PLL had Emily, who was Filipino and queer and so cute, and her parents. But all the other main characters I could think of were white. Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy were the only shows I saw regularly that had more than one black person in them. And I watched those mostly at Aisha’s house—though I’d hooked Milo on a season of Grey’s Anatomy before she declared the gross medical stuff too much for her.

  So then I was mad. Being mad I did tons of World History research. Seeing all those pale-colored foundations in Trina’s mom’s closet reminded me of the cops coming into the drugstore and wanting to check only Aisha’s purse and nobody else’s. It made me think of all the ways she got singled out and then blamed for it. Not only the drugstore, but the hall monitor at school, our Chemistry class, our lunch table—and I’d bet her list of examples was many times longer than mine.

  How could I show that to Trina and Eve, to Mom and Brock? How could I demonstrate it so completely they’d break free from the mind control and stop doing it?

  There had to be a World History topic I could use. Areas in modern America where the racial disparities were obvious, like how healthy some people were compared to others, where they lived, what opportunities they had, how much money the people in their families had available to help each other out.

  At our next study session, before Trina and Caden could disappear on some phantom errand, I said, “Hey, this religion topic isn’t moving me. Other groups are dressing up for their presentations and I am not going to be a priest or a nun.”

  As usual, we’d sprawled around Trina’s living room: her and Caden taking up the couch, Eve in an armchair with her big feet on an ottoman, me in the other armchair, legs tucked under me.

  “My temple model is half done,” Caden protested. “And it’s epic!”

  I untucked my legs so I could lean forward. “Guess what else Roman temples were used as?”

  He shrugged. I looked at Trina and Eve to ensure they paid some attention to this. “Banks,” I said. “We could compare how wealthy people lived.”

  “Oh!” Trina’s eyes brightened. “Mom has a ton of fake gold coin jewelry from a Halloween party last year. This could work. I’ll do a modern American. Eve, do you want to be a Roman lady?”

  Ev
e shrugged. “Sure, why not.”

  To Caden, I said, “I guess we’re the poor people.”

  “Cool. You have some sites I can look at for the temples that were banks? I’ve got miniatures for the people, I could paint up a banker or whatever. We don’t have to wear togas, do we? I call dibs on the modern poor person.”

  I didn’t argue. If I dressed as a Roman guy, I could get away with a tunic. At this point I didn’t care what I had to wear as long as I got to say something worthwhile in the presentation.

  Apocalypse, I’m coming for you.

  Chapter Twenty

  Mid October 2017

  Other than World History, I did all my homework with Aisha over at her house. Despite Mrs. Warren’s open-bedroom-door policy, she or Aisha’s dad tended to yell up the stairs if they wanted us to come do something. People didn’t randomly walk into her bedroom. And by people, I mean my mom.

  My mom had no qualms about walking into my bedroom, never knocked, even if the door was closed. It made me and Aisha a lot less likely to swap kisses while studying at my house, so Aisha’s was our favorite place to be as the weather turned cold and the treehouse got uncomfortable.

  Most of the time these days, Tariq fondly ignored us because of his intense EMT schedule and the centrality of his Xbox gameplay to his social life. He’d call, “What’s up A and K?” as we went by him on the way upstairs and we’d say, “Same old,” which always made him laugh.

  Our current deal was that I got kisses for doing Algebra 2 and History, and she got kisses for Chemistry and English. We weren’t sure who should be kissing whom for Spanish but it was usually me kissing her because she’d start talking in Spanish and I’d have to crawl across the room and press my lips to hers.

  We’d gone about a half hour without any kissing, so I snagged her latest English paper to see what the teacher said could be improved. The front page had a “B” on it. I flipped through the next two pages. There were a few small corrections and on the last page the words, “good effort.” What did that mean?