“That would be nice,” she said. “But I can’t. I have an appointment. I’m headed to my apartment now to get ready for it.”
“You don’t live on campus?”
“No, not anymore.” She mentioned a street that I knew wasn’t far away. I asked if I could walk her there, claiming the need to stretch my legs. When she consented, I rose and started gathering my books. She picked one up for me, pausing to look at the cover—a woman in thigh-high leather boots, a leather bodice, leather gloves that rose to her armpits; she held a whip and wore a mask. The title, which I noticed Brenda mouthed, was, The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography. Now she looked at me and squinted, as if DANGEROUS PSYCHOPATH were written in tiny print across my forehead.
“I can explain that,” I said.
As we walked toward her apartment, I made a case for my normalcy, noting that the books were the property of the professor with whom I’d been paired. This professor was interested in the portrayal of women in pornographic literature. I was not. But I was very much interested in the three-thousand-dollar stipend I would be earning working with her, as well as the free dorm housing for the summer. The only drawback was that the housing was here in Chicago, a city to which I’d vowed never to return when I left five months earlier to attend the University of Iowa. I could have stayed in Iowa City as I’d wanted, since the University of Iowa sponsored this program too, but I wasn’t aware of that when a friend at UIC mailed me an application. And so there I was, back in Chicago for the summer due to a silly oversight, talking to the woman I would someday marry.
“Do you like Iowa City?” Brenda asked.
“Not at first,” I confessed. “But it’s grown on me. There’s a really cool, laid-back lifestyle, sort of like a giant Woodstock.”
“Seems like you’re right at home,” she said, her gaze sweeping over my attire. I was wearing tattered Birkenstock sandals, faded cargo shorts, tie-dyed T-shirt, and sunglasses with round, near impenetrable black lenses. A bandanna was wrapped around my brow. “It’s a good look,” she added, nodding. “Refreshingly uncommon.”
She, I learned as we talked, was refreshingly uncommon, too. I hadn’t met any black women who studied art history and had traveled overseas; they had not loved theater, mystery novels, museums, Bach, U2, and INXS; nor had they been raised in white suburbia and played the violin and oboe; and they certainly had not exclaimed “Gosh!” when caught off guard by a belch, as Brenda had just done, lifting her small hand to her lips and turning deep red. “Pardon me,” she murmured, glancing bashfully in my direction just as a wad of bubblegum attached itself to my sandal. As I swore and dragged my foot along the sidewalk, Disney’s Lady and the Tramp came to mind.
The front door to her apartment was wedged between a bakery and a pizzeria. She stood before it now, rummaging in her backpack for her keys. A siren blared and we both looked to where a police car zoomed by with twirling lights. We were on Taylor Street, a busy thoroughfare in the heart of Little Italy. The medical center, where I’d wasted nearly ten years of my life, stood in the distance, sending me bad vibes every time I glanced its way. “Well,” Brenda said, keys in hand, “thank you for walking me home.”
“My pleasure,” I responded, and then, inexplicably, I gave her a little wave, with just my fingers, like I was casting some kind of spell on her. If I could have cast a spell on her, it would have been to make her believe that I was respectful and free of perversions and entirely worthy of seeing her again. But I was certain I’d given just the opposite impression. Already feeling dejected, I turned and began walking away, spinning back around when she called my name.
“You never told me how old you are,” she said.
“I’m … um …I’m twenty-seven.”
She squinted at my forehead again, this time to read, MUCH, MUCH TOO OLD TO BE AN UNDERGRADUATE.
“I can explain that,” I said.
But it seemed I wouldn’t get the chance. In the week that followed, she attended none of our program’s mandatory meetings, she was never in the office she’d been assigned, and I never saw her around campus. And so, on the eighth day, I retraced my steps to her apartment. For the longest time I studied the buzzers on the mailboxes, none of which had a corresponding name, and I wondered if they had been like that before or if she’d had the names removed in case I returned. I took a piece of paper and a pen from my backpack and wrote, “Hi, Brenda. I’d like to see you again. Please call me.” After adding my name and number, I used the gum I was chewing to affix the note to the door. Even before I made it back to my dorm, I was convinced she would think I was a stalker, because gumming notes to apartment building doors was the kind of thing a stalker would do.
Another week passed and still nothing. When I wasn’t reading in the quad where we’d met, hoping she’d walk by, I was in my sweltering dorm room, hoping she’d call.
At last she did, ten days after I’d left the note.
Her roommate had found it, she told me, purely by chance because the tenants usually entered the apartment through the back stairs in the alley. When I asked why she hadn’t been around, she revealed her secret: She had a second internship at the Art Institute, where she was calling me from now. Our program forbade second internships. Lady, it seemed, was a bit of a rule breaker, which the Tramp found more than a little attractive.
“So,” I said, “I’ll be headed either there to have lunch with you, or to the undergraduate research director’s office to have you fired.” When she did not respond, I laughed to let her know I was kidding. She still didn’t respond. “I’m kidding,” I said.
“That’s an interesting sense of humor you have,” she noted.
I admitted it took some getting used to.
Forty-five minutes later we were eating onion rings and french fries while I explained the making of a twenty-seven-year-old college junior, including my various incarnations along the way, the most recent as a hippie. Had she met me a year earlier, I told her, I would have been dressed in all-black like a connoisseur or producer of high art. Before that I was a prep; I’d amassed an impressive wardrobe of pastel-colored polos and blue cotton Dockers, topping everything off with argyle socks and penny loafers that I’d accessorized with actual pennies. On chilly days I’d draped a wool sweater over my back, its thick sleeves crossed over my neck, choking me like some headless mugger as I pranced through the ghetto. Before that I’d worn narrow ties and two-piece suits, impersonating the businessmen I’d seen on the cover of Black Enterprise, and before that, in my teens, I’d worn the hand-me-downs of my brother Tim, whose fashion idols were pimps, though his income was derived mainly from selling drugs. Most of the silk shirts and polyester slacks he’d given me were filled with reefer burns, and even though they were difficult to detect, on account of the multitude and boldness of colors, they were a nice change from the jeans and T-shirts I’d worn, the couture of choice for delinquents, which I hesitantly admitted to Brenda I’d once been.
“Wait a minute,” she said, reaching for one of my fries. “I don’t get how being a prep fits into all of this.”
“That was when I worked at the medical center. All the doctors dressed that way, so I did too.”
“You’re quite the chameleon.”
“I know. I have this bad habit of trying to blend in.”
She took another french fry and said, “Do not get me started about trying to blend in.”
But I had gotten her started, and over the next thirty minutes I learned that she was quite the chameleon too. First she was African, born in Zambia, living on a diet rich in maize and speaking her father’s Bantu tongue. And then she was a four-year-old American living in a Chicago suburb, just another of the community’s little white girls, only with a slightly richer tan. But then puberty arrived, bringing with it a fleet of boys who, unfortunately for her, were interested in girls with tans of a more transient kind. By the time she was eighteen, she’d had only one boyfriend. If that was going to change, she knew, she’d
have to attend a college where there was a large percentage of blacks, and then, once there, she’d have to become black too.
She chose UIC, whose student body was 9 percent African American; by the end of her first year, she knew many of them. She’d joined the black student union, started listening to gangsta rap, declared a minor in black studies, attended three stomping contests, participated in four black clubs, and modeled in the black fashion show. She selected fried chicken in the cafeteria instead of the Jell-O mold and never left her dorm room without her FREE MANDELA button. And she did get boyfriends. But after a while her suitors concluded she was an imposter, no more African American than a white actress in a minstrel show. One after the other, they left her for the real thing—coeds who were either all black or all white, a single race in both appearance and manner, in both substance and style.
Being interracial had made her life difficult, filled it with so much confusion, alienation, and self-doubt that I could barely contain my excitement as she talked. Here was a woman, I was convinced, who would understand me. My hand trembled as I pushed the napkins closer to her. She took one and dabbed the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just all so upsetting. People can be so superficial sometimes, so cruel.”
“And opportunistic,” I added. I ate one of her onion rings. “So,” I asked, “what are you doing tomorrow?”
We spent the next day together. And the one after that. And then every day right through August, going from being strangers to friends to a couple in love. But it would all be over in two weeks, when the research program came to an end, because I’d return to Iowa City while she’d remain to start her senior year. We both agreed that a long-distance relationship simply wouldn’t work, a clearheaded, rational conclusion reached two months earlier before we fully understood our bond. We still didn’t fully understand it, but I had a theory.
I presented it to her one day as we walked arm in arm along Michigan Avenue’s magnificent mile, window-shopping. We’d been dating for ten weeks by then, about the time it had taken me to deconstruct our relationship in a way that went far beyond our mutual attraction, deeper than our enjoyment of documentaries and long novels, beyond our obsession with Indian food, watching This Old House, and staring through panes of glass at things we couldn’t afford.
“So let me make sure I have this right,” she said. “My being black is the same thing as you being a thug?”
“Exactly.” We paused to look at a dining room set. She pointed at the silverware and then looked at me, seeking my opinion. I shook my head; too art deco. We continued walking. I went on with my theory. “But deep down inside, we both knew we were imposters. Frauds. That we were both just searching to discover who we really were.”
“So, who are we now?”
“I’m a stalker.”
She smiled. “And me?”
“You’re Dorian Gray. The female version, forever sixteen.”
She stopped walking. We were in front of Neiman Marcus, which was too expensive for us to even window-shop. “What an amazing dress,” she whispered, staring up at the mannequin, which wore a beige satin gown that fell just below the knees, with lace circling the bustline and hem.
“You ought to try it on.”
“Should I?”
“Why not? Besides, it’s sweltering out here. Some air-conditioning would feel pretty good right now.”
“That’s true,” she said. I followed her inside.
We wandered around for a moment, looking through the racks of gowns for the one in the window, until a spirited saleslady approached us. “Hello, hello, hel-lo!” she sang. “What can I help you with, darlings?”
“May I please see that gown?” Brenda asked, pointing toward the window.
The saleslady gasped. “That would look so astonishing on you!” She took Brenda’s hand and pulled her away. I headed for an empty chair near the dressing room, where a group of men with miserable expressions had gathered. Before them twenty-five or so women drifted from rack to rack, bees in a field of lilies. One of the men grumbled something about the Cubs, igniting a bitter discussion in which we all joined. I was going on about the awful pitching when Brenda called my name. I looked at her and lost my breath. The saleslady was next to her, glowing like a proud mother. “Doesn’t she look amazing!” she exclaimed. Before I could agree, the saleslady charged off toward another customer, shouting back over her shoulder: “That would make such a gorgeous wedding dress!”
All the women in the area froze. They looked at Brenda, cupped their hands to their cheeks, and suddenly they were upon her.
“Congratulations!” they squealed, and then they told her she would make a lovely bride, asked about the big day, hugged her, wiped their eyes, spun her around, dug pictures of their own weddings out of their purses. At one point Brenda looked toward me for help, but there was nothing I could do, other than hunch my shoulders, just as one of them was forcibly clutched. I turned to face my assailant.
“You must be the lucky groom-to-be!” he bellowed. “Good luck to you, buddy!” The other men began slapping my back and shaking my hand, and someone reached inside his blazer and pulled out a long thick cigar. Now I looked to Brenda for help, but she was deep inside the circle of buzzing women, out of view. As the men started offering me tawdry advice, the saleslady came hurrying back toward the mob of women, wondering what was going on.
“This young lady is getting married!” one of the women told her.
The saleslady rested a hand just above her bosom. “Well bless her soul! And to think I helped find the perfect dress! I’ll just ring that up for you, then, as soon as you’re ready.”
Her mouth agape, Brenda looked at me, silently imploring me to say something.
I said, “Gosh.”
A moment later, a chorus of well wishes accompanied us out the door. The wedding dress was in a garment bag, draped over Brenda’s arm. The cigar was between my lips. We stumbled along the magnificent mile dazed and speechless for several minutes before Brenda asked me what had just happened. I told her I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that we’d walked into the store as boyfriend and girlfriend, our romance intense but nearing its end, and we’d walked out engaged and bound for life, changed, just like that, into the next thing we’d be. I reached for her hand.
SISSIES
There were about twelve of us, the honor students of the freshman class, and we’d been quarantined for our own protection. We could not take courses with the non-honor-students. We were advised not to socialize with them. I’d figured out on my own that eye contact should be avoided, especially as we marched together from one class to the next, which we were about to do now. After gathering our books, we approached the door with slow, halting steps, as if waiting on the other side was the hangman’s noose.
The hall was crowded with students punching and shoving one another, laughing, slamming lockers, applying lipstick, shooting imaginary balls in the air, flashing gang signs—activities I stole peeks at as we hurried by. We’d nearly reached our destination when someone spotted us and yelled to make way for the nerds, sparking a smattering of “punks,” “chumps,” and “sissies.” I was pretty certain it was Jimmy who’d called us sissies, but I didn’t look up to confirm it.
This was one of the very reasons why I’d decided not to attend the magnet college preparatory school that my teachers had urged me to attend since I was twelve. No one else I knew had the grades to be accepted there, and I didn’t like the idea of being singled out, especially as a geek. And yet thanks to the honors program at South Shore, it had happened anyway, so now I had to do something to try to fit in; such was my thinking when I arrived on campus one fall morning with my backpack full of marijuana.
I spotted a group of boys in the parking lot, talking near the hood of a Camaro. They fell quiet as they watched me approach.
“Got that fire weed,” I said; this was the phrase Tim had taught me.
“Oh yeah?” said one of the boys.
I nodded.
“Got a dime bag?”
I reached into my backpack, took out a dime bag, and handed it to him.
“How about some papers?” he asked.
I nodded again and dug some from my rear pocket. I gave them to the boy. He tore two sheets free and gave back the rest. Then we stood there quietly as he proceeded to roll a joint until I finally got the nerve to ask him for payment. “That’ll be ten dollars, please,” I said.
The other boys chuckled. My customer continued sprinkling some of the weed onto the papers.
“Ten dollars,” I repeated.
The joint was rolled now. I watched as it was slipped between the boy’s chapped lips. Now the boy patted his pockets, searching, I assumed, for a light. I had one but I didn’t offer it. One of his friends handed him some matches. He lit the joint, took a deep drag, and then held his breath for a few seconds before blasting the smoke from his nostrils like a cartoon bull. “Hey,” he began, “this is that fire weed.” They all burst into laughter. I turned and left.
A short while later I entered a bathroom where six upperclassmen were shooting dice. “Got that fire weed,” I said. The boys looked up. “Got that fire weed,” I said again. A chubby kid leapt to his feet and was upon me before I could react. He threw me to the floor and began punching me, and then they all joined in. Hands rummaged through my pockets and my backpack while others continued swinging. After a final blow to my chin, the boys fled, leaving me on the urine-splattered tiles, surrounded by nine books, the halves of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and my favorite ballpoint pen, somehow snapped in two.
SACRAMENTS OF RECONCILIATION
They were speeding along the expressway when he noticed something strange: She suddenly pulled her seat belt across her body and clicked it into place. Now what is this crazy woman up to, he wondered, and a horrible thought crossed his mind a second before she grabbed and yanked the steering wheel, sending his car through a guardrail and ten feet into the air. As Jimmy and his new girlfriend tumbled toward the earth, my new girlfriend and I lay in his bed, snuggling beneath a warm comforter. More evidence, some might say, that I was the lucky twin.
Street Shadows Page 6
