The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

by Junauda Petrus

  I hear my dad outside the door before I hear him knock, and I is a lil’ bit dreading talking to him. He ain’t know me and I ain’t really know him, and every time we talk, I ain’t know what he want to hear from me. Most adults I know want you to say just the right thing to them, in just the right way, so they can love you. Everyone, except Queenie. I answer the door, pretending like I was sleeping to shorten the discussion. He is there in a brown-and-blue dashiki with a necklace of wooden beads he uses for meditation. His dreads are down and hanging at his shoulders. His glasses look like the kind Malcolm X used to wear, and I bet that is why he wear them too. He is smiling.

  “Yes?” I say, trying to look and sound tired, so he get the hint.

  “Audre, I made you a vegan sandwich.”

  Steupse, I think inside myself.

  “I tried a recipe I found online.” He shifts his weight like he’s uncomfortable too. “It’s like a tofu, spinach, avocado thing? I added some of my own additional seasonings and barbecue sauce to give it that soul-food kick and round out the flavor.”

  Round out the flavor of disgusting? I think to myself. He always insist on adding his “own additional seasonings” on everything and I ain’t know who tell he to do that.

  “Thank you. I ain’t hungry now, but I appreciate it,” I say, trying to sound grateful and conceal attitude, which is not one of my strengths. I ain’t know how many times I tell him I ain’t hungry, and if I is, I know how to cook for myself. But he insists on making food for me like I ain’t survive the last sixteen years without his confused cooking.

  “You sure you ain’t a little hungry? I know my cooking been hit and miss, but I feel like this sandwich will redeem me.”

  I trying to think of a polite way to slink out of this one.

  “Yes, it sound real good, but I is sleepy. I’ll eat it later.” Which is Audre-speak for I will wait until late at night when he sleep and throw it away in the trash. So far he ain’t catch on.

  “Audre, we gonna get out the house today, okay, baby?” he says. “Remember my friends, Sequan and Coco, who have the girl your age, Mabel? And a little boy too, Sahir? You and Mabel got along last time you was up here. They invited us over for dinner, and they can cook way better than me. All stuff from his garden. I told them you eat vegan like a rasta,” he says. “I think it may be nice for you to talk and hang out with Mabel. She go to the same school you gonna be at,” he said, looking me in the eye and pleading ever so slightly.

  This was the closest thing to a parental demand he has given since I reach the States. (I refuse all the other outings so I could cry alone in my room.) Besides the natural food store, I been in this room with the velvet girl and he been avoiding disrupting my solitude, except to occasionally attempt to poison me with his culinary experiments.

  “Sure,” I say, not having a good reason prepared for any other response.

  His face lights up a little and he seems satisfied. “Glad to hear this, yes! I think it’ll be nice.”

  “Sure, mm-hmm,” pulling the tiredness in my voice in order to wrap things up and he starts to stare at me and giggle a little. “What’s funny?” I ask him, curious in spite of my desire to be back into my bed.

  “Oh, nothing. Well, I mean . . . I can’t believe you are here sometimes. It felt out of the blue, but also like an answer to prayer.” I see his eyes start to well up, and he pulls out a handkerchief and dabs his eyes beneath his glasses, and he starts to really cry. “You’re almost an adult and I’ve always wished that I could know you—have you live with me. I’d even written it down and meditated on it. And then your mother called. It is like something in me knew you would be here . . .” He takes a deep breath. “Don’t mind your father and his tears. Always been an emotional cat. Just happy that you’re here. I know I say this a lot, but I mean it: Let me know whatever you need.” He finishes his little speech, and I can’t help but feel a little something in my chest. I ain’t know if it’s sadness or anger, I just feeling my chest doing something.

  My whole life he been “my American father.” A lot of visits when I was younger, Christmas and birthday gifts in the mail, and phone calls, cards, and letters. My mom would send him a picture of me from school and I would write him little kiddy letters. He was like a personal tooth fairy or a Yankee Santa. I used to come and visit for two weeks every other year, and he would come down for a couple of weeks on the years in between, and we would hang at the beach and go to the zoo by the Savannah, but that arrangement started to shift when my mom started with Rupert and the church.

  I know my father somewhat, but I ain’t know him too. And for sure he ain’t really know me, even if he happy I is here with him.

  “Thank you,” I say, not knowing what to say, because in truth, I ain’t want to be here in his home, in his country, no matter how he feeling. But I don’t want to hurt he feelings either.

  “It’s aight. Thank you, Audre. I know you adjusting. Your mom and I would talk over the years of you coming up here and getting to know your Black American side more, but I don’t know . . . It never seemed to be a good time to take you from what you knew and the culture you was being raised in with your mother and grandmother. Then I got the call”—he smiles at me and fiddles with the long loop of beads around his neck—“I guess she decided sixteen was finally old enough.”

  I know better, I think to myself. I know my mother and I know she ain’t tell him the whole story as to why she change her mind about me living with him, and for that, I’m grateful. I ain’t need he in my business since he ain’t really been so most of my life. One thing about my mama is she got pride. She believe she do good without him in our lives. Maybe that idea was change by the fact that I shame she in church and to she friends. He think she all of a sudden want me to know him and for that he is either stchupid or he ain’t really know she. It’s actually hard to imagine my parents as a couple. I feel like I’m the only proof of their union.

  I decide to give a good yawn to officially send him on his way.

  He tells me he’ll come wake me up at three and then walks away. I close the door. I stand and look at the velvet girl, who looks beyond me. I sit on my bed. Then, I get up and look out the window. It’s actually beautiful out: The trees are big next to my window, and the sky is blue and with clouds moving by. I see a squirrel squeeze around the tree, pause for a second, and then another squirrel come up and they chase each other away up into the branches. I sit down on my bed again. I lean over and grab under my pillow for my new pouch. This one is dark-purple leather, like a melongene, on the outside and on the inside, a bright fuchsia like hibiscus. It has cowries sewn onto it carefully with dark green thread. I feel the weight of it in my hand and think of Queenie. And then Neri. I put it around my neck and under my dress.

  I fold myself on the bed and I feeling empty and weightless. Like I not even there. I don’t know where I am, but I do. I’m in my father’s house in the United States of America. Yet, I still feeling like I was just pluck up from the ground and thrown in the wind.

  MABEL

  “YOU EVER SEE SOMEONE FACE SO STCHUPID, you want to smack the stchupid off, but then you ’fraid they gone get they stchupidness on you? Dat’s me stepdad, no doubt. Me mudda definitely got he stchupidness on she self. . . . I don’t want to talk about dem,” says Audre.

  I’m in the prettiest garden in the North Side with a girl who talk so pretty she has me feeling like I can hear melodies in her voice. She seems hella intense but a little chill or maybe shy? I don’t know. I am still a little groggy from sleeping most of the day.

  Against all this green, Audre is cocoa wrapped in a light-purple dress with skinny straps that keep sliding down her shoulders, her booty a pillow on the earth in the midst of it all. She also has these superthick glasses with brown rims that had to be circa 1988 but still made her seem like she saw into your soul. And was unimpressed.

  She just moved up fr
om Trinidad due to some drama with her mama. She don’t want to talk about it, I do know that. And apparently from what my dad knows, she is also deep in the church too, so I watch my mouth.

  Well, mostly I watch her mouth.

  And I don’t know why, but I was really excited to see her. We met once when she was visiting from Trinidad when we was both eleven. I took her to the raspberry patch then too. She had never tasted any in her life. She had eaten soursop, chenette, sugar apple, pommecythere, guava, breadfruit, and all of these other Caribbean fruit I ain’t never heard of and wrote down to memorize. But never a raspberry, which are basically my main ish.

  That day, she ate so many raspberries that she got sick and had the runs. She even had to go home, the diarrhea got so real for her. But she wasn’t even embarrassed. I remember her sitting in her father’s back seat, like a fallen soldier with a spattering of raspberry wounds all over her dress, and a smile on her face. She was muttering she would do it all again as the car drove off. I think I liked her since then. She was the perfect reckless.

  For this evening’s occasion, I’m in my dad’s Notorious B.I.G. shirt from the nineties that I made him give to me (he got like fifteen of them anyway). It’s faded with a couple of holes worn through but you can still see Biggie in a suit and hat and it says, “It was all a dream.” I’ve got my favorite (and lucky) light-pink sports bra, as always in a tomboy mood.

  “Mm-mmm . . . I ain’t eat these in so long.” Audre is now on her knees, leaning into the patch of raspberries (low-key greedy but high-key cute), picking them, and placing one on each of her fingertips. Once a berry crowned every single tip, she methodically ate each one off a digit. It’s the most tedious way to eat raspberries, and yet I’m mesmerized. As she eats the berries, I see tears behind her frames, sliding down her cheeks. Audre is crying. Tight and deep to herself. I feel a stillness and an echo within me, like I am feeling her thoughts in my body. “And I ain’t sayin’ nuttin’, ’cause I know if I say somethin’, I is gon’ say somethin’ get me in rell big trouble and everything I manage to say is punishment.” Her little Afro glistened in the summer light and greenery. And I ain’t hearing it; I’m actually feeling it and I have no idea who she is talking to or about.

  I see the gap in her teeth through her lips and suddenly I feel like I’m lost through the space of it, feeling her intensely. Her voice feels almost like trance, and life and earth closed tight around us. We are within our own force, like a heavy dusk holding us. Everything she says lands in me, hot and tingling.

  “She always saying tings like dat, like I ain’t have me own mind, like when I go natural. She telling me I following a trend, when I say I ain’t wan’ kill my hair wit’ white man chemicals. You see we hair like going to de cosmos?” I feel her tears flowing, her face contorted in pain, justifying herself to what I assume is her invisible mother. And I was feeling sensations all over me in relation to her breath.

  “Wha’ happen wit’ ya, girl? You ain’t saying nuttin’,” she ask, and wiping her face as though nothing even happened.

  I was shook. I don’t know how to understand the vortex her tears took me into. I felt like I was being pulled into her, sitting within her. Sorrow. I’m stunned and low-key feeling thrown off about what I just experienced. I don’t know what to do, so I brush it off.

  “I’m just chillin’ . . . ,” I say, scratching a mosquito bite on the back of my thigh.

  Taking a break from her raspberry ritual, she props herself up on her hands and extends her head back with her neck toward the sky. She looks like she was replenishing her throat with words to sing. Her legs look more womanly then my skinny-ass calves. She fans them out beyond her skirt, exposing her knees. Her feet look rough but in a way that made them look strong, like they never learned the need for shoes.

  “You wanna go for a walk to the park before it gets dark?” I ask her. With a mouth full of berries, she mumbles that she is down. She grabs her books and we bounce.

  * * *

  • • •

  Audre is sitting up looking at my favorite lake on the planet, and I’m wondering if she is thinking of the ocean.

  “You like being here so far?” I ask.

  “I hate America,” she deadpans, then collapses completely on her back, staring at the sky.

  “Why?” Not that a Black girl ever needs to give a reason as to why America don’t get no respect.

  “Why ya tink? ’Cause it’s pure Babylon, full of lies and run by devils. And it cold. No good mangoes. No ocean, no vibes. I miss the food. And meh dad can’t cook at all. No, excuse me. At fucking all,” she musters from on her back, irritation and sadness croaking in her throat.

  I gasp, shocked to hear this church girl curse—and curse like a mutha-fuckin’ champ. She kicks off her sandals and the right one flings high and lands near some ducks at the edge of the water. They squawk and waddle away all stank.

  “The last thing I need to do is come to America and get skinny like Taylor and Becky, dem.” Audre lifts her arms up over her head and I see that she has the full baby Afro growing from her armpit. That must be some Rasta ish, ’cause most girls here don’t let their pit hair grow like that, but still, weirdly, something in me feels something. Something bottomless, like a good feeling. Sigh. Her underarm is sweet-smelling funk and got me shook.

  “I can cook for you,” I say, before I can remember I don’t really know how to cook. She slowly looks over at me and then smiles, like she ain’t sure about my skills.

  “I mean, I love to help cook and maybe we can make some of the foods you miss from Trinidad. What you eat there?” I ask, raking my fingers through the long grass we were chilling in.

  “Roti, doubles, pelau, pumpkin, callaloo . . . ,” she says with her eyes closed in yummy reminiscing. Then she sucked her back teeth with frustration. “Steupse, man, I ain’t even want to think about it, yuh see? I miss it bad! I been eating more Ital lately.”

  “Eat all?”

  “I-T-A-L, Ital.”

  “What is that?”

  “It’s da way de rasta people eat. Just clean, it de best food. It give you life. Me cousin Epi is a rasta and he de best chef, next to me grandma Queenie of course. He food taste like pure love from de earth. He tell me, ‘Yuh food should be yuh medicine,’ and he right. Queenie feel that way too.”

  “What’s Ital like?” I ask.

  “No animal nuttin’, everyting clean from the earth. Fresh. Ital stew, lentil loaf, green salads, smoothies, fresh juices. You would like it,” Audre says, her eyes excited behind her glasses while she twirled her fingers in her hair, her whole mood seems to shift.

  “Let’s make somethin’ tomorrow! Can you come through?” I blurt out, suddenly thirsty, like her excitement changed my whole body. We agree to meet up the next day after her dad takes her to register for school in the morning.

  * * *

  • • •

  That night, I lay in bed. Audre is on my mind. Real hard.

  She was another molasses altogether. She was sweetness, but also slightly bitter and slowly dark. And I could tell nerdy AF. She came to the crib with two books and a journal—I guess in case she may have to entertain herself if I was goofy or something. Neither were Bibles though, just a vegan cookbook and a color healing book, which sounded dope whatever it was.

  I whisper to myself, and it feels good on my lips. Delicious and dark with a chew at the end. Aww-Jreeeeee. Pretty and slow. The moment she came in. Warm rain in a lightning storm. Soft and dangerous. Even thinking of her I feel something sweet in the world find its way to my heart. I wonder about her skin and if she would feel as smooth as it seemed to promise.

  AUDRE

  “SO THEN I GO BY YUH TANTIE to see if she all right, ’cause she been complaining about she knee, that she ain’t been sleeping good, she diabetes is acting up and this and that. I tell she, lemme come over there and bring you some of
these herbs that will fix you good, help you get your blood better and feel to get up and move so. She say she ain’t want to be shitting all day like the last time I take care of she. And I say well, Daphne, you prefer the shit in or the shit out?” says Queenie over the phone, talking about her sister in Trinidad as I lie listening to her on my bed in Minneapolis, staring at my ceiling.

  “Let yuh body rest, eh? Purge it out. I tellin’ she to heal she self through she food. Them doctors will put all kind of chemicals in your body before they tell you to go drink a coconut, sit under the sun by the sea, watch the water, and cry. Or grow and fix yuh own food. But she go to the States for all them years and is brainwash and only trust them doctors and they stchupidness. She knew how we grandmother, from Saint Vincent, used to heal everyone with bush and ting and now she seem she is forgettin’.” Queenie sighs. My grandma is a respected healer to people from all over T & T. She sisters seldom consult her for she healing wisdom, much to her frustration.

  We been talking every couple days on WhatsApp, like I used to talk to my dad when I was in Trinidad. Hearing she talk—even if it’s about she fussing with she sister—make me feel peace, like I home. I imagine she with her phone on speaker (she say the cell phone melting everyone brain) sitting in she backyard eating mango she pick from she own tree, wiping the juice from her chin as she buzzes on about Tantie Daphne. I miss mangoes from home, especially the sweet julies that is better than candy.

  Queenie always tells me that, if need be, she could live forever on she land and survive off the food she eats—and eat like a queen too.

  “You hear anything ’bout Neri?” I ask Queenie after we check in about she day and mine. She steupse and then breathe out long.