We Cast a Shadow

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

  I see you have your grandfather’s nose. Do not worry. It is easily resected.

  Life did eventually improve. But hope wasn’t enough. You had to work at it.

  In the distance, the Sky Tower roof floated beneath milky clouds.

  I had visited the clinic once before on my original fact-finding mission. That time the waiting room was populated by all kinds of people: a girl with a partially corrected cleft palate, a large-bellied man, a redhead in cycling clothes. I had quickly downloaded the demelanization brochure (only available if you stopped into the clinic) but accepted a couple of brochures about varicose vein correction to cover myself and giddily ran out. This time everyone was black (and half of the room wore purple faux-fur coats). This time I checked in at the counter and took my seat in a far corner with my back to the wall like a mafioso. I needed to meet Dr. Nzinga. I needed to tell him about my intentions for Nigel.

  “Hey, brother,” the man next to me said. It was the streetcar driver from the Musée. The one with the stained blue eyes. “You here for a scrub, too, huh? What you looking to have done? Nose? Lips? You got some real repugnant back-to-Africa lips, for sure. Need to trim them shits down.”

  “I’m just here for work,” I said.

  “Makes sense.” The man sipped a can of P. Cola, the can’s pulsing blue a color I always found happy and hygienic. “I saw this thing on TV about folk who get some of this done. They get paid more. That’s why I’m going to get this trimmed down some.” He pinched his nose. “Gonna upgrade. Maybe I’ll finally make supervisor.”

  “Good for you.” An ad popped up on my device—for a butcher shop in the Myrtles mall—but I couldn’t really focus—because the guy—wouldn’t stop—talking—I vaguely noticed a scrolling promotion for that ridiculous Tony Award–winning musical, A Comical Furrier Funs. I also came across a plug for the Nzinga Clinic that I’d seen around town before. A dark woman’s face under a wash of sunshine: YOU CAN BE BEAUTIFUL, EVEN MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN BEFORE.

  One of the nurses opened a door and called out a name. Unfortunately, the streetcar driver remained seated. He gabbed on about all the procedures he wanted to have done. Suddenly it dawned on me that he was just a lowly City employee. How the hell would he bankroll any of his dreams?

  “Pilot program for municipal workers,” he said. “City covers up to seventy percent. Can’t say that’s not fair. I’m working as much overtime as I can pinch.”

  A woman entered the waiting room from the examination room area. She wore a scarf like one I’d seen at work and large sunglasses that I’d once tried on and found too tight. Overall this woman looked an awful lot like Dinah. I called out to her. The woman looked at me with surprise and stepped into the hall. I opened the door and yelled her name, but the woman kept walking.

  Ads kept pinging on my device. Very irksome that the ad bots tracked your movements and offered up their masters’ wares. I rarely clicked on ads—why reward them?—but I needed a distraction from Chipper Charlie the Chatty Conductor.

  A bookseller, offering a suite of books, to wit:

  Mommy, Why Is My Skin So Dark?

  Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

  Lakeisha’s First Perm (with new foreword by V. Sirin-Johnson!)

  Dilution Anxiety and the Black Phallus

  Black Past, White Future

  Keep Your Child Out of the Sun!

  I was about to purchase the last one when I recalled that I’d read it ages ago, even quoted choice passages to Penny.

  My name was said. I glanced at the driver. He smiled at me and said good luck. A girl—I couldn’t remember her name—from Nigel’s school walked in with her parents. I had been struck by her round face and diaphanously pale skin in the past, even as I noticed that her parents were black. I stepped into the medical suite.

  I should probably pause to say another word about Crooked Crown, the pop star I bumped into the day Eckstein kicked Octavia and me to the curb. Other than making really annoying songs—if I never hear “Love the Real You” again, I will be very pleased—she had set in motion several fads. She was the reason, for example, that purple fur coats were all the rage among common black folk. She was also the instigator of the demel fad. It seemed ridiculous to me that one person could completely alter an entire society’s image of the physical ideal. But stranger things have happened. After all, it was Coco Chanel who got white people to tan for a whole century before tanning salons were outlawed. And Hitler permanently removed the toothbrush mustache from the dapper man’s fashion vocabulary.

  In Crown’s case, it was clear that demelanization had changed her life. She went from being a background singer in a moderately successful R&B group—Faith Colombo or Kate Sambo, I could never recall their proper name—to one of the biggest stars in pop history. Which brings me to Nzinga, who not only perfected and performed the first successful full-body scrub but was also Crown’s Merlin.

  The nurse in the consultation room checked my vitals. She had clearly been black…once. And I suppose she still was on the inside. But she must have undergone the full panoply just like Crown. The brochures called it the Spotless Special. Must be nice to get the employee discount.

  Still, the work wasn’t perfect. There was something not-quite-right about the curves of her lips and the way the skin tone around her knuckles was oddly dark. Even Crown suffered from these hiccups, pointed out by some of her haters on social media. That was the problem with being an early adopter of such wondrous technology. They hadn’t worked out all the kinks. Fortunately, there had been improvements to the technique.

  Another nurse entered, this one with dark skin and Africa-Face. What was it about people who were late of the Motherland? There was something about the cant of their cheeks and noses that made them instantly recognizable in relief to run-of-the-mill African Americans like myself. I guessed that people like this nurse’s ancestors were history’s victors, the lucky souls who had avoided the Middle Passage and miscegenation. Coffee never diluted by creamer.

  This second nurse measured my forehead with a set of calipers. She pinched my nose. She yanked my lower lip.

  “Good elasticity,” she said rhapsodically, in her rhythmic accent. Still holding my lip, she jotted something on a chart.

  “Whabt?”

  “It means you are a good match for the program.” She let go. “Still, you are going to require some effort.”

  “When will the doctor see me? I’m kind of in a rush.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. ‘Kind of in a Rush,’ but the doctor sees you now.” She shone a penlight in my eye. I squinted.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—” In all the literature I read about the clinic, I’d never seen a picture of Dr. Nzinga. I’d assumed she was a man. Penny would say this was another of my blind spots.

  “Do not dwell on it. After all, the place you dwell is the place you live. Shame is no proper residence.” Dr. Nzinga groped my face, kneading my forehead as if I were a lump of clay. “Now. You will tell me of your dreams.”

  “Actually, doctor.” I had a frog in my throat. This was a moment I’d anticipated for years. I was frozen. My heart whirled in my chest. I was in danger of coming across as a lunatic. “I—uh. I’m here for my son.”

  I pulled up a picture of Nigel on my device and told Dr. Nzinga everything. I was probably too sincere. But once I started, I couldn’t slow down. I told her about my fears and the sleepless nights. About the skin creams. About how I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing in general.

  “What father is certain he’s doing the right thing?” Dr. Nzinga put a hand on my knee. “Why do you think I moved my program here from Abuja? We can help your— What is his name?”

  “Nigel,” I said.

  “We developed these protocols precisely for people like Nigel. I anticipate that his birthmark sinks to the subcuta
neous layer, but his condition is relatively minor and can be revised.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I hugged the woman.

  “Now, now, good father,” she said. “We are only doing our jobs.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No more than removing a tattoo. Although it is much more involved than that.”

  “How much does it cost?”

  Dr. Nzinga directed me to speak with one of the clerks. She said there were financial programs to help, if necessary.

  “Once you work all that out, be sure to bring this—”

  “Nigel.”

  “—Nigel in so that we can do a full assessment.”

  I floated out of the consultation room but quickly ran aground as the clerk and I reviewed an estimate sheet. The cost of the procedure had gone up since my recon visit. The success rate was over 90 percent now, but the improvements to the procedure had not made things cheaper. Short of finding a pot of gold, the bonus was my only shot.

  20

  It was a roaring, late spring day in the City. Bright but unseasonably cool. A sparkling patch of green, green grass. A blue jay mobbing a hawk. The happy sound of nearby hammers bringing something into being. Pung. Kapung. Pung. Pung. Kapung. Me and my boy. I left work early to grab Nigel per a plan I couldn’t quite recall. Nigel and I walked across the grass of the Great Lawn at the School Without Walls. He wore a brown scarf and, for a change, a baseball cap, the neon-green one, without my prompting. His curly brownish hair poked out from the edges. He was due for a haircut, although I liked the way his hair partially obscured the mark. I removed his backpack and hefted it onto my shoulder. Oof. When did knowledge become so heavy?

  “Thanks,” he said with his fingers. His class was learning American Sign Language so that students who heard the magic of words would be able to communicate with those who heard the magic of silence. This meant I was learning ASL, too. The boy hadn’t even peeped that morning when I kissed him on the forehead.

  Suddenly Nigel hurried in front of me. He held out his hands, so I would stop. I stopped. Seeing my inability to comprehend his signs, he tried charades. We were master charadists, the pair of us.

  A girl cut across the lawn. It was that dark-as-dung brat who’d ratted me out to Penny about the skin-toning cream, that time Nigel trapped himself in the closet. Like a gnat, she often buzzed around when I came to pick Nigel up.

  There was no uniform requirement at the School Without Walls—they were against such orthodoxies. But just like the other times I’d seen her, the girl wore a traditional school uniform with a twist: a plaid skirt, a white top, and a purple faux-fur jacket. I took this as a sign that she was a program student, one of the kids the City gave handouts of tuition, lunch, and uniforms. I didn’t like that she sometimes visited Nigel at the house. She was flippant and crude. And the dozens of twisted kinks and ribbons on her head made her look like something that belonged on the cover of a nineteenth-century minstrel ad. But Penny didn’t mind her, so the girl—she had a name: Araminta Ahosi—sometimes visited Nigel at the house, where they played handheld video games or hide-and-seek, which apparently she was skilled at. At least she had some veneer of decorum. She always called me mister.

  “Hey, mister,” she said. “Hey, Nige.” What was this “Nige” business anyway? My son didn’t like people freestyling his name. Whenever I called him Nigerious or by his verbalized initials, he pursed his lips.

  “You’re interrupting a very important discussion,” I said to the pest.

  “Oh. You must have forgot about— Mmph!” Nigel clamped a hand over her mouth.

  He held up two fingers. Two words. He circled his thumb and forefinger around the opposite ring finger.

  “Ring,” I said. He gave me a weak thumbs-up. Right track. Wrong word. “Wedding.” He kept pointing up. “Wife? Penny?” Nigel hopped and did a little leprechaun dance.

  “Dweeb,” Araminta said.

  Nigel poked out his tongue. Second word. He motioned like his stomach was covered by a balloon.

  “Whale.” Araminta threw her arms wide.

  Nigel held a finger over his own mouth.

  “Fine, boo.” She put a hand on her narrow hip. “I ain’t got to say nothing. I can just stand here and be quiet.” She switched hips. “See? Won’t say a word. I’m shutting my trap. Right now. Just like that. Zippit.” She imaginatively zipped her lips shut and flung the key over the iron fence.

  Nigel forced down a laugh, but my guts betrayed me, and I guffawed despite myself.

  I straightened my face but chuckled again.

  “Fat?” I said. “Pregnant?”

  Nigel wagged his finger. He pulled his shirt collar over his head so that he was hidden like a frightened turtle. The crown of his skull emerged from the neck hole. He mock-screamed as he emerged. I was second-guessing our decision to teach that kid about the facts of life before he was big enough to hold a sippy cup.

  “Mom’s birthday!” I clapped my hands. How could I have forgotten? Nigel’s eyes brightened, and he offered a fist bump. I shook my head. He knew better. We shook hands.

  “Can I ride with y’all?” Araminta asked me.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said. “Tonight is a very special—”

  “My dad has to work late,” she said, “and I don’t want to be there alone. The people upstairs make weird noises every Thursday at nine-seventeen P.M.”

  I sighed. Nigel had told me that her father presently held a number of menial part-time jobs, including a horrible gig for the City Department of Sanitation, removing dead rodents from drainpipes or something similarly repulsive. Her mother had tapped out of life at some earlier point.

  “Fine,” I signed.

  Nigel signed that we had to hurry. He was right. We had much to do and precious little time. We had a cake to buy, and Penny would be home soon. Araminta took off toward the Bug. Nigel sprinted to catch up. His hat fell in his wake. I recovered it. Cake time.

  Thank the fates for my considerate son, who prompted me with reminders of Penny’s birthday. Or as Nigel and I rebranded it some time ago: One Cent Day. Once we cleared the whirlpool of car-bound parents and children that were in the area around the school, crosstown traffic was quite tolerable. We were skimming along like a hippo on an ice floe.

  I checked the rearview mirror. They were having a conversation in sign. Nigel wasn’t the type of kid to have a ton of friends. He once had a few who were especially close, but most of those he left behind at his prior schools.

  Nigel and Araminta laughed audibly, breaking the fiction of deafness. What was so funny? Araminta flipped the device around. An animated ape getting blown up by an exploding cigar. Silly major-key music playing in support. They watched the sequence again and guffawed, one of them stomping the wheel well in delight.

  Was there anything better than watching my shy, taciturn, neurotic boy laugh uncontrollably? My misadventures, in the final analysis, were all about pulling Nigel into a land where such giggles and happy grimaces were frequent.

  The Mall of the Seven Myrtles parking lot was crowded as usual. But this didn’t bother me. I didn’t advertise the fact, but I was a lover of the Myrtles. It was riverfront property on the former footprint of a church and earlier tourist area that had fallen in a storm.

  I got warm fuzzies each time I crossed the reclaimed cobblestone pavilion, which presently faced the water, and passed the historical statuary—our state’s first governor, Jean-Jacques LePieu, clad in a fetching tricorne hat. His knee was raised high like that pirate in those cheeky rum ads. I couldn’t help checking that both of his arms had hands. Some squirrel in my subconscious had been trying for decades to convince me that he had a hook. But no. One mitt held a stalk of maize, and the other a newborn babe. He had graciously just accepted both from kneeling, naked Native Americans.

  The ste
amboat calliope tooted “I Wish I Was in Dixie,” as if we weren’t already.

  The Myrtles combined my love of several fields of inquiry—architecture, people watching, snazzy duds—into a ginormous mise-en-scène I could stroll through without pissing off the director or the audience. The design team that built the Sky Tower also constructed the mall, so that the structures were as alike as they were different. They were a pair of elegant sisters, one tall and thin, the other wide-hipped and round-bosomed. The seemingly countless levels of undulating terraces that formed the atrium of the Sky Tower were limited to merely three floors in the Myrtles. But those gorgeous, gold-trimmed, curvilinear decks stretched onward to the edge of sight. Video panels displayed happenings in other sections of the mall such as the food court or the terrarium. A jumbo panel above showed a children’s kazoo band performing at the main entrance fountain. A crew of actors in superhero costumes worked the food court.

  The mall’s long ceiling was a pearlescent canopy that changed colors depending on the viewer’s perspective. “How does the ceiling change like that?” Araminta asked.

  “It doesn’t change,” I said. “Your eyes are crooked.”

  She smacked her lips.

  Nigel and Araminta played with the electronic mall directory. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone as black as her. Did she lose herself in the dark? When she reentered the lighted world, did she have to make sure that she didn’t leave any of herself behind in the shadows? A spinning compass faded away. A map dotted by hundreds of icons, each for a different business, materialized.

  The mall was shaped like a stylized, seven-branched tree. The trunk sprouted from the river, and our cakery was perched near the tip of one of the upper branches. We stepped onto a conveyor belt. We passed the food court. The ersatz comic book heroes must have been prerecorded because I didn’t see them. However, we passed a duo in cowboy hats playing banjos—the Myrtles hired performers to roam around and entertain in much the same way Disneyland did.

  We passed stores Nigel and I had experienced before with Penny, Mama, Nigel’s other friends, or any combination thereof. Here was the handmade toy emporium where a red, yellow, and blue biplane on a tether ceaselessly circled the checkout counter. We’d bought Nigel’s first wagon in that place. There was the sundry shop that used to give away free photo negatives. We did that as a family when Nigel was about four. I never liked the picture. It was tucked into a closet at home.