“I’ll have a tall half caf, leave room for cream, please,” Wendy said.
The barista, who had an exaggerated flip to her hair and an easy smile, nodded, then looked at Hakiam for his order.
He thought fast and said, “Nothing.”
The barista’s sunny smile didn’t lapse. She went to make Wendy’s order.
“Don’t you want a water, at least?” Wendy asked Hakiam.
He shook his head without meeting her eyes.
There was a couple of dollars and change in the tip cup—talk about courting robbery. That was something you’d never see down the other end of Lancaster Avenue. Everything that could be stolen was kept under lock and key.
The girl with the flip to her hair came back with Wendy’s drink. They headed for seats.
Wendy wasn’t a tall girl, but she had a long, slender back, which Hakiam enjoyed watching as he walked behind her. Since there were no more tables available, they took seats on the sofa by the window.
Wendy set her cup on the end table. “Funny, when you asked me for coffee, I was sure you were going to have some too.”
Hakiam gave a half grin and put a dollar and change back in his pocket.
Wendy took a sip and asked him, “Don’t you like coffee?”
“I’ve never done this before,” he said.
“You’ve never done what before?”
He looked at her hard for a good moment or two, then said, “Skip it.”
She observed him for an equally long period of time and said, “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be skipping.”
Silence.
More silence.
Wendy stirred her coffee.
More silence.
Hakiam looked outside. The coffee shop was on the corner of a busy intersection. The light had just changed and a mass of people trekked from one side of the street to the other. He peered back at Wendy with a blank, washed-out expression. This was an improvement, because he was doing his best to suppress the scowl that he customarily wore.
“So,” she said, “what’s your favorite movie?”
“Huh?”
“What’s—your—favorite—movie?” she said again, slowing down her words.
He still had no answer.
“Mine is Twelve Angry Men,” she said.
There was another pause. Then, she started carrying on a conversation with herself that went like this:
“What’s that about, Wendy?
“Well, I’m glad you asked me that, Hakiam. Twelve Angry Men is about a jury that believes it has an open-and-shut case. But one juror—Henry Fonda, he plays the architect—he thinks that the young person on trial for murder deserves at least some deliberation and votes not guilty.
“Why is that your favorite movie, Wendy?
“Well, I’m glad you asked, Hakiam. It comes on American Movie Classics all the time. I like issue-oriented films, like that one and The Ox-Bow Incident and Inherit the Wind.”
At that point, she ran out of steam. She seemed weary of all the back-and-forth with herself.
He gave her another blank look.
She frowned. “You probably go for fast cars over character development.”
“No, I’m listening,” he assured her.
“I also liked Boyz n the Hood.”
“What are you doing watching that?”
“I told you, I like issue-oriented movies.”
“What was the issue in that?”
“Senseless street violence, poverty, the high homicide rate among young African American men …”
“You need a movie to tell you that? You ain’t know nobody who was murdered?”
“No. You do?”
“I know a couple.”
Wendy wanted to ask the who, what, where, and why. Instead, she just took another sip of her coffee.
Hakiam stared at the way Wendy’s beige-colored lipstick left a half kiss on the rim of her cup and sighed.
More silence. “You go to church?” he asked.
“Not since my mother died. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. I was just asking things like you were asking things.”
“Do you go to church, Hakiam?”
“Hell, no.”
Wendy laughed until she realized she was laughing all alone and then said, “That was a joke, right?”
More silence, then he said, “Yeah.”
“When I did go, I went with my mom. She was Catholic, but my dad was raised Baptist.”
“Oh. Might have guessed that you came from a mixed marriage.”
She chuckled this time, not caring that she was alone. She waited a beat or two more before saying, “You ought to do stand-up.”
More silence. He glanced out the window again.
She looked at the clock. It was almost five.
She snapped her fingers as a thought occurred to her. “You know, that just might be the answer.”
“What?” he asked.
“Church. They would love someone like you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean there are people in this world who live to help out. When I was looking for a place to volunteer, I ran into a lot of places with a religious link.”
“My aunt is one of those people. She’s always saying things like ‘God is good.’ ”
“God is good,” Wendy repeated.
“ ‘All the time,’ she says.”
“Well,” Wendy said sarcastically. “Nobody’s perfect. Why don’t you stay with her instead of your present arrangement?”
“I don’t know. She’s really changed now that she found religion. Do you know how many rules them Bible people have? That’s why my cousin can’t live with her. I don’t want a bunch of rules.”
“I don’t see how it could be any worse.”
“I don’t see how it’s no better.”
Wendy rolled her eyes. “What are you talking about? A curfew?”
He laughed. “That’s just the start.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I do,” he told her.
“What’s your aunt’s name?”
“Josephine.”
“Aunt Josephine, eh?” Wendy mused aloud. “You don’t want to run the streets here. Philadelphia has some of the highest crime rates in the country. You don’t need the fast lane. Where does your aunt live?”
“She’s on Catharine Street.”
“That’s not far.”
“I know.”
“You should live with her instead of your cousin. She sounds much more stable.”
Hakiam shook his head. “It’s not for me. I ain’t looking for a mother. I’ll be eighteen soon.”
Wendy’s eyes held him in a steady gaze. “Hakiam, take it from me. Everyone needs a mother. Everyone in the whole world.”
Her cell rang. She put it to her ear and said, without even checking it, “Yes, Dad.… I’m in a coffee shop.… I’m drinking coffee.… Never mind that.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Okay.… I won’t forget.… You said Visine.… Write it down?”
She stepped up her voice.
“I don’t have to write it down! I’ll remember to pick it up.… I’ll be home soon.… When do you think soon is?… In an hour.… I will pick up your Murine—I mean, Visine. Goodbye.”
She slipped the phone back into her tote bag.
“I better go.” She held up the cup and said a half sentence before leaving: “Thanks for the …”
And then she was gone.
Gone. It seemed like they had just come in. Hakiam had hardly had the chance to say or do what he really wanted. He was going to brush his knee against hers—if he’d had a few more moments. He was going to lean close and whisper in her ear, perhaps. He was going to do something. He was. If only he had had a little more time.
14
When Wendy told Erin she had gone out with someone from the tutoring center that afternoon, Erin summed up things with: “How Bill Clinton of y
ou!”
“What do you mean by that?” Wendy asked.
“Well, he got it on with his intern,” Erin said.
“Erin, I’m the intern.”
“Okay then, how Monica Lewinsky.”
A mental picture popped into Wendy’s mind and she said, “Oh, God. That’s not what’s happening. This was a G-rated get-together.”
“Well, even if it wasn’t. It’s not like you’re a teacher. If you were a teacher and he were your student and you two had feelings for each other, now, that would be icky.”
“Who said anything about feelings? We just went for coffee, and he didn’t even have that.”
“What did he order?”
“Nothing. He just sat there. He barely said a word, Erin.”
“Oh, so he’s the strong, silent type.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
“He was probably nervous, you know, first date and all.”
“First date?”
“Yes, first of many, Wendy. Didn’t I tell you this would happen? I mean, you kept talking and talking and talking about him.”
“Nothing happened, Erin.”
“Will you quit it already?”
“Okay, I guess I like the way he challenges. We spar and joust with each other. I guess sooner or later that’s bound to get to you.”
“Yeah, either you fall in love or kill each other.”
“This isn’t love. I just like his kind of humor.”
“He’s dry?”
“Yeah, he’s real dry.”
“So he’s funny. I love funny guys. Especially when they’re cute, but that almost never happens—Hold on, Wendy, my call-waiting just beeped.”
Erin clicked over to the other line, and Wendy paced the kitchen, which was ridiculously well-ordered. No Cheerios strewn on the counter, no dirty plates or saucers brimming from the sink. There was a place for everything, and, thanks to her father, everything knew its place. Even the top of the fridge was dust-free. She walked to the other end of the kitchen and glanced in the trash, and it was there that she saw a large envelope addressed to her, unopened. She retrieved it and her eye shot to the upper left-hand corner: Howard University.
Wendy felt her face heat up.
Erin came back on the line, saying, “We ought to double-date. Me, you, Hakiam, and Kyle.”
Wendy couldn’t focus on something so innocent as double-dating. Her father had done it again! Once again, he’d violated her trust.
“Erin, I’ll have to call you back,” she said, and flipped her cell closed.
Wendy went straight upstairs to her father’s room only to find it empty. The TV was on, though, playing an ad for a luxury car pitched by a thirtysomething woman in a tight satin dress.
Wendy left the bedroom and spotted her dad in the bathroom, standing in front of the sink. He dabbed his face with a washcloth, then dotted both his eyes with Visine.
He blinked.
She scowled.
He turned to her. “I want to thank you for picking up the right brand, Wendy.”
Now she was really boiling. He was too much! To the world he looked like a standard-issue “harmless” dad—fortyish, bespectacled, and balding, doing what most widowed dads would do at eight at night: watching TV and grooming himself during commercials. But Wendy knew he was anything but ordinary and innocent. He went through her library books, once calling a text by W.E.B. Du Bois “militant and revolutionary.” He had returned The Souls of Black Folk for her long before it was due. Wendy remembered thinking that there should be a law against things like that. Ironically, she knew the Patriot Act had introduced a rule to the opposite effect: librarians were supposed to report “questionable” books that the public took out. Say, if someone had a stack of how-to-build-a-bomb books, librarians were supposed to comply and submit that patron’s name to the authorities. Luckily, Patriot Act be damned, some librarians would rather go to jail than betray their patrons’ right to read whatever book they wanted.
Yet her dad was at it again, the self-appointed secretary of Homeland Security. Now he’d taken to seizing her mail.
“You threw out my letter,” she said.
He offered his daughter a very monotone “Yes.” Then he excused himself and went back to his room.
Her dad lived for American Movie Classics. A James Cagney movie was on. Wendy didn’t absorb enough of his performance to tell if Cagney was on the wrong or right side of the law. She knew enough about the actor to know that he wore a trench coat regardless of whether he was a crook or a cop.
Her dad took his seat five feet from the TV screen.
She hated when he played her off cool like that.
“You have no right to throw my things away!” she shouted at him. “I want to go to a historically black college.”
“Over my dead body,” he replied.
“Dad, my going to an HBC is not going to kill you.”
“And you’re sure of that?” He reached for his cup and stirred his evening tea, then took a sip.
“There’s nothing wrong with going to a black college. Plenty of successful people have done it.”
He laughed and said, “Name three.”
“Easily,” she said. “The astronaut Ronald McNair. The 60 Minutes commentator Ed Bradley. And, last but not least, Oprah Winfrey.”
“All flukes.”
“Dad, come on.”
“This is my house, Wendy. I have a right to discard anything I don’t want in it.”
“Why are you such a control freak?”
“I just told you this is my house.”
“I’m sixteen years old.”
“You are my daughter before anything else; I don’t care if you’re sixty. And one thing’s for sure, Barack Obama didn’t go to a black college.”
“No, Dad, he just went to Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church.”
“He was never present for those radical speeches!”
“Denial is more than a river in Africa, Dad.”
“Wendy, Barack Obama is clean and articulate.”
“Where have I heard that before?”
“No one could confuse President Obama with some gangster. You are not going to a black school. I do not want you around that element.”
“What element—college students?”
“They are not college students.”
She shook the brochure in his face. “I guess it’s a mirage, then.”
“You’re going backward, Wendy. This isn’t the nineteen-twenties. Those schools were created because we weren’t allowed to go to the regular schools. They were a consolation prize. They are secondary. You can now go to the regular schools, and that, Wendy, is what I plan for you to do.”
“Why can’t I go to the school I want to go to?”
“How do you expect me to rest nights with my mind racing with thoughts of you, my only child, in the atmosphere of drive-bys, dope addicts, and hos?”
“Hos?” she asked. “What makes you so sure there are hos at Howard?”
“I MapQuested that school, Wendy. It’s right by the projects.”
“It’s also near the Capitol. Did MapQuest tell you that, too, Dad?”
“Young lady, a lot of people don’t have any choices, but you do. I’ve sent you to the finest schools. You’re groomed for the Ivy League.”
“Translation: I have been cooped up with white people for the past eleven years.”
“Be that as it may, a lot of people would kill to attend the schools you’ve gone to. You should be grateful—”
“I am grateful. I value my education, Dad.”
“Then it’s settled. You will not go to Howard or any other black college. I’m not going to let you do this. I want you to be around safe, predictable people. You are not going to worry me into an early grave risking your life around those people.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘those people’?”
“You’re not a child, Wendy. I don’t have to explain everything to you.”
His voice rose. “How dare you call your father a lunatic!”
“I said you were talking like a lunatic, I didn’t say you were one, Dad.”
“I have a right to my beliefs.”
“They are not very informed beliefs. Anyone can tell you that Howard is a selective school.”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“It is, Dad.”
“Look, there was a time when the black community carried itself with dignity and class. We turned out Nat King Cole and Harry Belafonte. Now what do we have? Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube.”
“What does that have to do with me going to the college I want?”
“I have sent you to the finest private schools. You could have your pick. You could go to one of the Seven Sister schools!”
“So it’s all right for me to go to a women’s college but not a black college?”
“Exactly.”
“Why?”
“Think of your future. What would an employer think? Don’t stigmatize yourself unnecessarily.”
“Any place of employment that would think like that is a place I wouldn’t be comfortable working for anyway!”
“This is getting very circular. Wendy, I am not going to argue all night. You don’t need to apply to one of those schools. Choose another. There are thousands of others. You may think this is what you want, but you are just going through a phase.”
“This is not a phase!” Wendy pointed to her father’s skin.
He shook his head. “The future, Wendy, is not black.”
15
When Hakiam got to the apartment, he found Malikia in a car seat. This struck Hakiam as strange because Leesa didn’t have a car. But there the baby was, propped in the seat by the plastic-covered couch. The TV was blaring a video that was heavy with the b word, and the air was heavy with the smell of fried hair. Leesa brushed past him with a new hairdo, which was shoulder-length and all of a sudden straight and swishy. He also noticed she had a new tattoo. It was the word “mother” stenciled into the center of her back.
“Where did you get that?” he asked his cousin, pointing to the car seat.
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