The Officer's Daughter

by Elle Johnson

  “Where is Karen?” I asked.

  “She’ll be here. She’s coming. You go enjoy yourself.” Aunt Barbara nodded me toward the flashing lights on the dance floor as she and my parents headed the other way and disappeared into the kitchen, where the grown-ups were.

  I pretended to inspect the gifts. I picked them up, shook the small ones close to my ear, restacking them by size, but really I was checking out the room, looking for familiar faces, like the girls from Karen’s sleepover when we were thirteen. We’d spread out on sleeping bags and blankets on her parents’ living room floor. We ate pizza in our pajamas and played truth or dare until one girl started crying and the room divided into school cliques I didn’t understand. Karen didn’t sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor. Even if her guests had to. And when lights-out came, I got to sleep with Karen in her room in a trundle next to her big four-poster canopy bed. We stayed up past the point of exhaustion into delirium and talked about nothing while laughing at everything until Aunt Barbara rapped on the wall and told us to settle down and go to sleep.

  Looking around the sweet sixteen, I didn’t see any of Karen’s friends from the sleepover. The room was full of Black faces, and all those girls had been white. My parents would be happy. Whenever they picked me up from a party they always wanted to know the race of every kid at the event. I’d always say “Human,” annoyed that they cared how many Black kids were there besides me. Especially when they knew the answer was almost always that I was the only one.

  My parents sent my sister and me to a Lutheran elementary school where we were surrounded by blond-haired, blue-eyed Germans. Then my mother used her standing as a teacher and pulled strings to avoid the crime-ridden, all-Black public high school nearest our house. We ended up at Jamaica High, a racially diverse school, except in the honors classes, where most of the kids were white and predominantly Jewish and my sister and I were once again the only Blacks.

  I was used to being an anomaly at school and then singled out by the Black kids on my block when I was in elementary school. Pelted with rocks, sometimes bricks, at the instigation of one family down the street. It stopped only when my father paid the parents a visit in his official capacity as a law enforcement officer investigating what he labeled criminal assaults against his daughter that might end with an unofficial ass kicking if the attacks didn’t stop. In high school I was tall enough to not get beaten up. The sticks and stones turned into words that were no less hurtful. Name-calling and insults hurled at me from across the street or down the aisle of a bus that disparaged me for being light, talking white, and acting like “you think you so cute.”

  I squinted into the darkness at Karen’s guests and wondered how Karen had managed to make so many Black friends.

  I thought, This is my chance.

  If the Black girls at the party could be friends with Karen, maybe they could be my friends, too. After all, Karen was even lighter than I was. So light she could pass for white. She still went to an all-white Catholic high school for girls and wore a uniform every day. She was also bound by the rules of a law enforcement household much stricter than mine, because both her parents were “on the job.”

  Uncle Warren was a homicide detective in Manhattan who wore his gun nestled close to his heart and within easy drawing distance of his right hand. His shoulder holster had thick brown leather straps that lay across his wide back and barrel chest like a warning. Karen’s parents demanded good grades and blind obedience, just like mine. And just like mine, Karen’s parents ensured their daughter’s safe passage in a world they knew all too well to be dangerous and full of heinous, vile people—suspects and convicted criminals—by escorting her everywhere.

  Except Karen’s parents had let her get a job. She was going to spend the summer studying Spanish in Madrid. It was an adventure my mother, a high school Spanish teacher, couldn’t stop talking about. To help pay for the trip and sock away some extra spending cash, Karen had just started working a night shift at the local Burger King. Getting a job was something my father simply would not allow. “You’re going to be working for the rest of your life,” my father said. “You don’t have to start now.” He made it seem like it was for our benefit, but really he didn’t want us out in the world, out of his sight and control. Making our own money meant we wouldn’t need him to buy things for us.

  At the party I clung to the wall, walking outside clusters of party guests who had migrated into the middle of the room. Everyone seemed to know one another. No one was standing alone. I pulled my mouth into a close-lipped smile and looked for an opening, the smallest of spaces between friends that I could slip into without drawing attention and still slide naturally into the conversation.

  “Hi, hello, hey,” I said in a voice barely loud enough to hear as I strolled behind groups of friends. That was as far as I got. I was greeted with a confused smile—Who are you and why are you talking to me?—or a dismissive head nod before the guests turned back to their conversations. I preferred that to the once-over I got from some of the other girls. It was an eye-rolling bat of their eyelashes that started at my ungainly large feet and moved in what felt like slow motion up to the relaxed straight-like-a-white-girl hair on my head.

  They were confident in their inexpensive yet trendy outfits. The kind you’d buy from storefront shops on crowded avenues under the el train. Their hair was styled into geometric shapes, pressed against their scalps in waves or rows of hot-pressed curls that stayed perfectly in place, defying gravity.

  They wore gold jewelry that spelled out their names or other synonyms for who they were, like SASSY, SEXY, or simply TROUBLE. Their fingernails were long talons with polish and designs on the tips. They wore makeup. They had boyfriends. They went out at night. They carried knockoff designer handbags with lipstick and Life Savers, loose little rectangles of Bazooka Joe chewing gum and square packets of condoms tucked inside faux reptile-skin wallets.

  No one was getting close enough to me to care how my lips looked or what my breath smelled like. I never carried money. My parents still paid for everything. I didn’t have a set of keys to my own home. My parents were always there to let me in.

  I saw my cousin Warren Jr. and decided to follow him. Warren was just as striking as Karen—light eyes, light skin. He wore his hair in a big black Afro that drooped under its own weight. He dashed around the party, from group to group, shaking hands and smiling, giving hugs, then running off. I shuffled alongside a conga line of adoring girls who trailed behind him.

  He did a double take when he finally noticed me. He wrapped his arms around me, squeezed my shoulders like a python, and lifted my feet off the ground. “How you doing, cuz?” he asked, kissing my hair.

  He walked away before I could answer.

  I smiled at the girls following him, then retreated to a long folding table with bowls of chips and a rubber tub full of soda cans covered in ice. I put a handful of chips in a napkin, then rummaged through the ice for a can of cold cola. I tried to come up with topics of conversation. Things I might have in common with Karen’s Black friends. But as I went down the list of my activities in my head, everything sounded so dull.

  Homework. Reading. Studying at the library.

  Sometimes I wasn’t even studying. Instead, I wandered the shelves, looking for interesting books to read about things I wanted to know or thought I should know.

  I taught myself how to type ninety words a minute. I learned the alphabet to American Sign Language—what if I met a Deaf person one day? I practiced the flute. Rehearsed for the school play. Or worked on a scene for my theater class downtown once a week.

  I was in before dark. I ate dinner with my parents at the kitchen table every night. I watched television with them, too. The only thing I could think of to say was Hi, I’m Karen’s cousin.

  “Hi. You’re Karen’s cousin,” a voice behind me said.

  I turned and saw David. He stuffed a chip into his mouth, then held out his hand for me to shake. “I don’t know if you
remember, I met you at Karen’s house.”

  David was my height, white with tousled sandy hair and a line of freckles across his nose. His hands and arms were like the chiseled marble of his namesake sculpted by Michelangelo. Yes, I remembered David.

  As I shook his hand my shoulders relaxed—I didn’t realize I had been holding them up around my earlobes all night. I let out a breath and felt lighter. I was grateful for the company and tired of holding out a smile with no one to receive it.

  “Are you here with anyone?” David moved closer to me.

  “My parents,” I said, then clarified: “My sister’s away at college.”

  David leaned over to scoop up a fistful of chips and offered me some. Thoughts that had been trapped in the back of my mind gushed out of my mouth like rainwater through a downspout. I went on about classes and college, studying for the SATs, Karen was going to Spain but I had my eye on a summer internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the medieval art collection at the Cloisters museum in Upper Manhattan, which would be my first job of any kind and I hoped my parents would let me do it.

  “Why wouldn’t they?” he asked. “I mean, it sounds kinda like school anyways.”

  I shrugged—I didn’t want to admit how controlled I was by my parents—then blurted out, “I love school.”

  David lifted an eyebrow. I laughed nervously, worried that he would think I was strange. But then he laughed with me.

  It was easy for me to talk to David. He nodded through mouthfuls of chips and was polite enough to pretend to be interested in what I was saying. He smiled sheepishly when I caught him looking over my shoulder, eyes searching around the dark room. “Do you know people here?” I asked.

  “Just Karen. Wonder where she is.”

  “Still getting dressed, probably.”

  David smiled to himself.

  I got the feeling he was hoping for something more from Karen than casual friendship. David recognized someone on the other side of the room and excused himself. I watched him disappear into the crowd, then I wandered into the bright light of the kitchen, where the adults were eating. I slipped into a space next to my mother, who was sitting at one of the tables. She was leaning over, shielding her dress with a napkin that she held under her chin up against her chest. She carefully forked up mouthfuls of collard greens, black-eyed peas, and chicken from the partitions of a paper plate.

  “Leave it to you to find the only white person in the room to talk to,” she said between bites.

  Heat rose in my cheeks. I turned away, stung, and looked around the kitchen.

  After a moment she squeezed my arm, then shook it. “You want something to eat? Why don’t you get something?”

  “I’m not hungry,” I lied, pulling away.

  I moved across the room to stand closer to my father. He was seated in a folding chair at the head of a long table. He leaned back with his legs crossed and a cigarette trailing smoke from his hand resting on his thigh.

  The men around him were laughing. I could tell by the way they looked at one another—for support or confirmation—that my father had said something outrageous or controversial, inappropriate or even offensive. The men were laughing, but they weren’t having fun.

  It was laughter born of shock. The kind of laugh that puts distance between you and what was said and the speaker. It made me anxious.

  My father leaned over and twirled the tip of his cigarette around the bottom of a ceramic ashtray on the table. “It’s true. You may not want to believe it, you may not like it.” He let the words hang in the air while he put the cigarette to his lips and took a long pull, then blew out a stream of white smoke. “But that’s the way it is, baby.”

  The men laughed again. At my father’s stubbornness and defiance. What else could they do? Especially if the topic was politics or racism—two of my father’s favorite subjects. Laughing was the only way to avoid an argument, to engage without agreeing.

  Disagreeing with my father meant starting a conversation that would not end until he had convinced you otherwise. My father would take whatever the topic was and bring it up every time he saw you, over and over until he understood your misguided position or had hammered his points into your brain and convinced you that you were wrong. Those who didn’t know this proceeded at their peril. Arguing a point successfully only made you the sought-after expert on that particular subject in my father’s eyes. Either way, you were on his radar—and that was not somewhere you wanted to be.

  For once I was glad to be left out of the conversation.

  I leaned back into a corner of the wall. That’s when the DJ started to play Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday.” It was a pop song with an unmistakable hook. “Happy birthday to ya, / happy birthday to ya, / happy biiiirth day.” Unrelentingly upbeat, it was actually a protest song written to garner support for a national holiday to celebrate the birthday of the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., shot dead on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.

  I just never understood

  How a man who died for good

  Could not have a day that would

  Be set aside for his recognition.

  The song would turn into a much-loved, alternative birthday song for Black people, similar to how “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is considered the national anthem of Black America.

  Aunt Barbara stood up and walked quickly to the door. Before she stepped into the darkness, she turned back to everyone in the kitchen who had started singing along and said, “Okay, she’s here.” Karen had arrived. I was excited and relieved. Finally someone I could talk to.

  A spotlight cut a path across the floor from the DJ table to the basement door. Karen stepped into the light. From the dark sidelines someone reached over and pulled away the black wool coat covering her shoulders and back. Her skin reflected the bright white beam like a halo. In her left hand she cradled a corsage of purple flowers laid out on a white tissue paper pillow in a clear rectangular box. She wore a diaphanous lilac dress with puffy sleeves and a pleated skirt. Her hair fell down her back in long curled ringlets. Karen walked slowly, like she was in a procession. She looked deliberately from side to side, smiling confidently at her guests. So beautiful. So poised. I wanted to be her. Or at least be close to her.

  The DJ handed Karen a microphone. The Stevie Wonder song faded, the singing trailed off as the room burst into applause. Over the clapping, Karen said, “Thank you for coming. This is going to be a good party. With good food. And good people. So come on, let’s have a good time.” She handed back the microphone, and a crowd of guests closed around her like the shutter of a camera.

  I pushed my way through and waited, facing Karen as she hugged one of her friends with her eyes shut tightly. When she opened her eyes she gave me a big smile and reached over her friend to pull me close. We rocked back and forth, in sync like a metronome. I heard someone say, “That’s her cousin.” Then, “Don’t they look like sisters?” Karen pulled away and held my shoulders in her hands. She looked me in the eye with the intensity of someone about to share a secret. I leaned in, ready and eager to hear whatever she had to say. But she only asked me if the party was fun. Was I having a good time? “Yes,” I said. “Yes. This party is the best, Karen. It’s just the best.” She smiled as she rubbed my shoulder, then stepped into the crowd of guests and was gone, leaving me with the faint sweet scent of lavender and vanilla on my skin and clothes.

  Something soft and slightly scratchy rubbed against my arm. My father nudged my wool coat against me and said, “Here. We’re leaving.”

  I was stunned. “But Karen just got here,” I said.

  “We’ve been sitting here for two hours. I don’t have time for this nonsense. I’ve got things to do.”

  My mother rushed up, pulling her hands through her coat sleeves. She was out of breath. I realized by the scowl on her face that they had already argued about this. I knew my father’s mind was made up, but that never stopped m
y mother from trying.

  “Ricky, wait. Can’t we stay just a little longer?”

  “That child made all these people wait. For what? So she could make an entrance?”

  I thought of all the times my father had made us wait. He’d stop to drink coffee or smoke a cigarette or drink coffee and smoke a cigarette while everyone was already dressed and ready to go somewhere. He would sit in his silk pajamas at the small desk with the telephone in the foyer. Looking out the window, listening to Sarah Vaughan or Chris Connor with smoke swirling around his head. Only when he was good and ready would he saunter upstairs and start to get dressed.

  Or he’d back out. At the last minute. He would say matter-of-factly to my mother that he wasn’t going. That he’d changed his mind about attending my elementary school graduation.

  He almost didn’t go to my sister’s high school graduation, because she refused to let him write part of her salutatorian speech. He wanted to rail against the Black students who had bullied my sister and made her feel like an outsider for being smart. And the white classmates and teachers who’d tried to make her think she wasn’t smart enough to be salutatorian—an honor based strictly on grade point average. After several cups of coffee and just as many cigarettes, he decided to go. We were late. But they couldn’t start the ceremony until she got there.

  That suited my father just fine. He had controlled the situation and thought he’d taught them a lesson. Just like he was trying to teach Karen a lesson by punishing her with our early departure. But the only person being punished now was me. My disappointment felt like rocks in my stomach.

  “She’s a child, Ricky,” my mother said.

  “You want to stay? Go ahead.”

  My mother looked at me, and I could tell that she shared my disappointment.

  “Maybe we will,” she said and stopped following my father toward the door.

  “Oh, so you know how to get back to Queens from here?” my father asked.

  My mother was directionally challenged. Most of the time my father drove, and when my mother did, we had to double back. My mother was brave but not adventurous. She didn’t like driving in unfamiliar places. Even though she’d grown up in the Bronx, this part of the borough was unfamiliar to her. “No.” My mother laughed. “But I’ll figure it out.”