Who Am I Without Him?

by Sharon Flake

  “Hi,” she says. “I’m your recorder.”

  “And?” Marimba says.

  “And, well, I’m gonna follow you around. But I gotta tell you the rules first.” Kenya leans against the wall and sighs. “You and Marimba have to ‘work toward a common goal,’” she says, reading off the paper. “‘Like completing a paper on this class, buying a house together through the ads in the newspaper, or adopting your recorder.’”

  “What?” we both say.

  Kenya smiles. “That’s what Jacobs says. You two can adopt me for your project. You have to research how to adopt somebody on the Internet. Then adopt me, if that’s what I want.”

  “That’s what I want,” I say, moving closer to her.

  Marimba’s pissed, and we ain’t been together ten whole minutes. “Why we wanna adopt you?”

  Kenya reads from the paper. “‘Before the couple can say yes or no to any of these options, they must meet and discuss them alone. Recorders may not advise them.’”

  Marimba pulls me by the arm and drags me over to the stank-smelling water fountain nobody drinks from. “Listen, we ain’t adopting her.”

  “You just jealous.”

  Marimba sets me straight, telling me that she’s part of this couple and she ain’t adopting no big-behind girl. I look back at Kenya with her shiny brown hair and big butt. “Whatever,” I say, opening the door and heading back into class.

  Jacobs makes us stand by our girls, then dumps, like, a hundred rings on the table. Real ones. He got ’em on the cheap from Goodwill, he says. The diamonds are dulled and the gold is faded on most of ’em, but the girls still act like they’re new from the store.

  “Remember, boys, your recorder is taking notes. If you just shove that thing on your girl’s finger— well, that’s ten points. If you kneel down and propose, that’s fifty points.”

  I smack my forehead. “Why you doing this, man?”

  Jacobs walks to the back of the room. “Two hundred points for the couple that does the best proposal. All right now. Your recorders have numbers on their papers. It tells which couple goes first, second, third, etc.”

  Marimba and I are couple number ten, so we have a long time to figure out what to do. The girl’s bossy, so she keeps telling me how I should propose to her. I shut her down, though. Told her I was the man. That I was gonna do it the way I wanted. So I did.

  “Marimba and Brandon,” Jacobs says. “Your turn.”

  I walk up to the front of the room, trying to be cool. Marimba sits down in a chair and crosses her legs. She’s nervous. Her foot keeps shaking.

  I clear my throat, turn my back to the class, and think about Kenya. I start off wrong, though. “I’m only doing this ’cause I have to,” I tell Marimba.

  “Oh, no he didn’t,” one of Marimba’s friends says.

  I keep talking. Looking right at Kenya. “I really want this other girl.”

  Everybody laughs. Not Marimba. She is sitting like a statue, staring at her feet.

  I keep going. “I need a girl,” I say, looking over at Kenya. “Not a dude.”

  Marimba bends down and ties her dirty, loose sneaker strings. “Mr. Jacobs, this boy ain’t gonna be my fiancé.”

  Jacobs tells her we have to get engaged. “Right now.”

  I look at Kenya again, then I hand the ring to Marimba. “Here.”

  “You supposed to put it on my finger. And propose, too.”

  I slide it on her left middle finger. “Will you . . .” I say, turning to Jacobs.

  “Go ahead,” she says.

  “Marry me,” I say under my breath.

  Marimba does what all the girls do when they get the rings on, she holds it up in the air, smiles, and wiggles her fingers.

  I walk away. Jacobs shakes his head. Kenya writes the number ten on our paper. That’s the lowest score you can get. “Pathetic,” she says.

  “If it was you,” I say, cornering her, “I’d get down on my knees and beg.”

  * * *

  Marimba and me are the worst couple in the world—even Kenya says that. We fight and argue all the time. Jacobs says there are real couples out there who do just that. “And they get married anyhow.” Our goal, he says, is to try to be more supportive of one another’s differences. But how am I supposed to do that? I don’t like the girl—period. I like tall, sweet-smelling girls who wear clothes as tight as skin. So every day I tell Marimba the same thing—dress up a little. “Put some nail polish on and do your hair every once in a while.” Every day her answer is the same: “Screw you!”

  Kenya told us the other day that we’re gonna fail this part of the class, and she will too, unless Marimba and me do better. “Brandon, this class ain’t about how Marimba looks or dresses. It’s about relationships, and relationships ain’t got nothing to do with clothes.”

  I can’t make them girls understand. A boy’s got his reputation. If a boy’s got a woman, he wants her to look like something.

  We’re sitting on the floor outside Jacobs’s class before school starts. Kenya called the meeting. Said we needed to get on the ball, or she was gonna ask to be assigned to another couple.

  “You two are supposed to buy a house. Here’s the paper. Let’s start now.”

  Marimba and me look through the ads together. The whole time, I’m checking out her long Big Bird–looking tube socks.

  “Brandon, what kind of house do you want?”

  “A house. Any house.”

  Marimba wants a house with an eat-in kitchen. “I can burn some pots and pans.”

  I look at her. “You cook?”

  She smiles. “Yeah. I help my mom cater.” She scratches her head, then checks out the stuff left under her nails. “Gonna have my own catering business one day.”

  Kenya steps in. “So y’all’s house is gonna need a really big stove.”

  “And a patio for grilling,” Marimba says.

  The girls in my family cook. The men drink brewskies and watch the games. “We gonna need a family room with a wide-screen TV,” I say. “And a pool.”

  Funny I said that. It turns out that Marimba’s on a city swim team. Every morning at 5:30 she’s at the pool doing laps.

  Marimba and me stay a little longer and pick out our house. It is a three-story colonial, whatever that means, on the north side of town. It’s got five bedrooms and two baths, ’cause Marimba wants to have five babies. Before we are done, D’Little comes up to me. “Yo, Brandon. Your girl. She’s just . . . ill.”

  Marimba looks at me like I’m supposed to take up for her. I do. I don’t know why, but I do. I tell D’Little to shut his face. “You ain’t so hot looking neither. Anyhow,” I say, surprising my own self, “long as me and Marimba gotta be together, ain’t nobody gonna dog her.”

  Later Kenya walks up to me and hands me some bonus bucks. She says Jacobs made it so couples can earn extra points and dollars for doing the unexpected. You can lose points and dollars that way, too. For the next two weeks I’m trying to think of stuff to do to get some extra dough. It don’t work. Kenya says I’m not being sincere. But all my trying paid off in another way: Kenya is talking to me more often. We are in three other classes together. Before they start, me and her talk about Jacobs’s class. We talk about other stuff too—personal stuff. One day it got so good she wrote her phone number on my arm. She said for me not to tell nobody ’cause recorders can’t have one-on-one relationships with any one person that makes up a couple. “‘Otherwise,’” she quotes, “‘the group loses points.’”

  The only person I told about me and Kenya was D’Little. He told six other boys in our room, “accidentally,” he says. I’m hoping Jacobs don’t find out. But mostly, I’m hoping Kenya don’t. Otherwise she won’t have nothing to do with me . . . again!

  Jacobs is getting on my nerves. I’m ready for this engagement mess to end. I’ve been at it four weeks, and now he’s wanting us to make regular progress reports. Halfway through the presentations, he starts writing on the blackboard.
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  DOES A COMMITTED RELATIONSHIP MEAN THE SAME THING TO GIRLS AND BOYS/MEN AND WOMEN?

  Hands go up and mouths start moving.

  “Tyrek, speak,” Jacobs says. “Then let’s hear from your woman,” he says, meaning his fiancée.

  Tyrek moves his chair away from Olivia. “She ain’t my woman, man.” Then he starts talking ’bout how guys are like lions—they supposed to roam free and have lots of females at their disposal.

  Olivia says that girls are more committed because they were born to be mothers, so they are wired to find lifelong mates, not just the boy with the cutest face or the nicest butt.

  I raise my hand and say that makes a lot of sense. Then I ask Jacobs how marriages and engagements are supposed to work if men and women want two different things.

  “Yeah, man, I mean, I don’t wanna hook up with nobody—for long,” D’Little says, holding out his arms like wings. “I gotta spread myself around. Pollinate the place, you know.”

  Marimba’s hand goes up. “How come in nature it’s the male animal—like peacocks—that’s gotta be extra pretty to get the woman. But with people, it’s the girl that’s got to do all the work to get a boy?”

  I wanna tell her not to worry. Ain’t nothing she can ever do to make herself look good.

  Jacobs checks out the time, then says class is almost done, so he’ll make this quick. “You, you, and you,” he says pointing to me, D’Little, and Tyrek, “would get absolutely no play in the animal kingdom.”

  The class goes off.

  “You’re not cute enough,” he says, busting on us. “Or tall or muscular enough.”

  Kenya points out that things in nature are different because all male and female animals want to do is procreate—“Make babies so their species don’t die out.”

  I wouldn’t mind her having my baby, I think. Once the bell rings, I go up to her and ask if she wants to go to the movies. Marimba is nearby, so Kenya ignores me. Later on, she walks up to me and says she’ll go. “But Marimba’s gotta go, too. Jacobs’s rules. Recorders can’t be alone with one member of the couple.”

  I wanna tell her to forget it at first. But she says she’ll sit next to me. “And, well, Marimba ain’t gotta know everything.”

  All day long I’m thinking ’bout that girl. Feeling sorry for Marimba, kinda, too. I mean, I’m supposed to be her fiancé. And I don’t even give her no play, not even for pretend. That’s messed up. But Jacobs shouldn’t have hooked me up with her. She ain’t my type.

  We all agree to meet at the movies at Ninth and Oak at nine o’clock. I’m there waiting when Kenya calls my cell and says she got stuck taking care of her brothers, so she can’t come. Now I’m stuck with Marimba.

  For a while I try to figure out how to get out of this movie deal. But Marimba’s dad drops her off and, well, I don’t wanna tell no man the size of the Statue of Liberty that I’m ditching his daughter. But the whole while we’re watching the movie, I’m checking my cell, hoping Kenya calls. I’m excusing myself and going to the bathroom, calling Kenya and talking to her five, ten, fifteen minutes at a time. Kenya keeps saying that I’m doing Marimba wrong, but she don’t hang up on me.

  Marimba is boiling mad. After I leave her for the ninth time, she calls her dad and tells him to come get her. I don’t stick around. I’m gone before she is. Kenya tells me I’m gonna lose points for the way I treated her. “Fiancées can’t be mistreated. Jacobs’s rules.”

  “I don’t care,” I say, “as long as I don’t lose no points with you.”

  “One more week,” Jacobs says. “And this is the final test.”

  D’Little and me standing by each other. He says this has been the worst three weeks of his life. “And I ain’t never getting married neither.”

  I slap him five. Jacobs lets us know that things are gonna get worse, not better. I look over at Marimba. She ain’t spoke to me since the movie thing last weekend. I don’t care really, but Kenya deducts fifteen points for every day we two don’t communicate. Marimba and me gonna fail this project if she keeps this up.

  “You can double your total points this week,” Jacobs says. “If you decide not to do what I’m asking, you’ll lose four hundred points—which is half of all the points you can earn.” Jacobs heads my way. “That happens, and there’s no way you can earn higher than a C for the course.”

  Everybody tells him that’s not fair.

  “I’m not trying to be fair, here,” he says, wiping chalk off his hands. “I’m trying to teach you about relationships—none of which is fair, boys and girls.”

  I like what Jacobs says we have to do. Marimba looks like she wants to cry.

  “Gonna have to change them clothes, huh?” I say. “Buy you a dress or skirt or something,” I say, laughing.

  Kenya explains the rules. Me and Marimba have to pick something we don’t like about one another. Each person has to do what the other wants for one whole week. I knew right off that I was gonna tell Marimba to get rid of them clothes and get her hair did. But me, I dress like a king. I smell like heaven and I got the best cut in this school, so there’s nothing she can ask me to change. Even Marimba can’t think of nothing for me to do differently, till Kenya whispers in her ear.

  “Be nice to me,” Marimba says.

  “I am nice to you.”

  She shakes her head.

  “She means, open doors for her.”

  I shake my head no.

  “Pull out chairs for her when y’all in class together.”

  “What?”

  Marimba’s liking what she’s hearing. “And . . . and tell me I’m cute in front of your boys.”

  I shake my head no. “That ain’t the kind of stuff Jacobs was talking about.”

  Kenya puts up her hand and Jacobs comes over. He laughs after she explains our conversation. “Yep. You have to do it, if Marimba wants you to.”

  “She trying to make a fool outta me.”

  “You already a fool,” Kenya says, walking off with Marimba.

  I walked right by Marimba. Didn’t even recognize the girl. She had to take hold of my arm and ask me how come I didn’t speak to her. My mouth fell open. “That your hair?” I asked. “Your clothes?”

  This is the first time I ever saw Marimba in shoes—girl shoes—with high heels and pretty colors. She got nice legs, too. “Man,” I say. “You look awright.”

  Kenya clears her throat. “How she look?”

  I know what she’s doing. “You look pretty,” I say, low enough for my boys not to hear.

  All during class I stare at Marimba. She’s pulling at her short pink skirt—grabbing hold of her collar top and snapping her bra straps.

  “All this time,” D’Little says, “I thought the girl was a dude. And here she got more up top than any girl in this class.”

  I just stare at her.

  “That her real hair, you think?” D’Little asks.

  I ain’t sure. She always wore braids or her hair under a cap. And here it is, straight and black and down past her shoulders. “She still walk like a dude,” I say when she goes to sharpen a pencil.

  D’Little follows her with his eyes. So do most of the other boys. “I like the legs,” he says. “The butt ain’t bad neither.”

  Kenya whispers in my ear. I don’t want to do it, but before Marimba sits down I go over to her and pull her chair out. Everybody laughs, even Jacobs. Marimba knocks her book on the floor, on purpose, I think. I pick it up. I woulda left it down there, but I need the points, and Kenya’s watching.

  “In three days, you will have to turn in a written assignment,” Jacobs says. “I hope you’ve been keeping careful records. Class dismissed.”

  When Marimba gets to the door, I open it without anybody telling me to. D’Little says I’m pathetic. Heavenly asks how come I didn’t hold it open for her. “’Cause I ain’t no butler,” I say.

  Everybody’s teasing me. Calling me “Mr. Manners.” Asking how come I’m waiting on Marimba hand and foot. I tell ’em i
t ain’t something I wanna do. I gotta do it for class. Only it ain’t as bad as I thought, opening doors for girls, pulling their chairs out. Besides, the more I do it, the more girls be coming up to me and talking to me. Girls that never paid me no attention are giving me a little play now. This girl Elizabeth made me stop and talk to her. She was all up in my face. Kenya saw it and deducted fifty points. I’m starting to wonder about that girl.

  Jacobs walks through the aisles collecting our final papers. “Recorders come to the front, please.”

  Ten students go up front. It’s funny, I never realized that half the recorders were boys and half were girls. And they are the cutest, or best dressed, or most popular kids in school, too. When Jacobs joins them up front, he explains why those kids got picked in the first place.

  “In relationships, there are lots of distractions. The pretty girl,” he says, standing next to Kenya. “The jock,” he says, pretending to throw a left hook to Kevin, who heads the football team. “People with a big chest, pretty eyes, or nice hair.”

  Jacobs says the recorders were placed in our groups to distract us from our mission. He asks the recorders to raise their hands if they were able to make one or both people pay more attention to them than their fiancés. Eight hands go up.

  “Kenya,” Jacobs says. “Explain.”

  Kenya tells all my business. How I tried to hit on her. How I paid her more attention than Marimba. “And when I didn’t show up for the movies like you told me, Jacobs, he didn’t even talk to Marimba.”

  Marimba raises her hand. She called Kenya that night, she says, ’cause she was hurt I didn’t say one word to her during the movies. “I know he doesn’t like me, but he coulda at least treated me decent.”

  I’m pissed. This whole thing was a setup from the start. “Wasn’t no way I could be a good fiancé, Jacobs. Everything you did made it so I’d mess up.”

  Jacobs settles me down. Then D’Little’s recorder gives a report. Another pretty girl saying almost the same thing Kenya said about me. “Listen, Jacobs,” D’Little says. “A boy’s gonna try and talk to a looker. That’s just how it is.”

  The girls get mad at that, but the boys clap— ’cause they know it’s true.