We Cast a Shadow

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

  Nigel grabbed the back of his mask, and my stomach tightened. The mask had been fastened with sticky strips, and the ripping was audible. Underneath, his face was all white from stage paint. The band removed their masks—the same. I was quite pleased by the face paint as it reflected the purity of the artist’s intention, the triumph of knowledge over ignorance. Kudos to the director.

  Nigel: “Me and my band pushed against the darkness!”

  They jumped into a song about how hard city life could be at times. And at the end of the song, many of us parents jumped to our feet, ferociously applauding. The next hour would alternate between songs and quiet vignettes from the musician’s life: avant-garde dance interpretations of the first time he tasted pizza and first girl he loved. Nigel threw himself into the role.

  Several teachers and students stood in the wings enjoying the show and clapping along. When the final note played, the entire house was on its feet. Nigel bowed. Penny cried.

  On the drive home, I was giddy. We all were. I stopped short of our house, near the front porch. But before anyone could get out, I accidentally let my foot off the brake, and we rolled forward a good four feet before Penny grabbed the emergency brake between the seats and wrenched it back. Our momentum carried us all forward, within the Bug’s cab, three bunnies bowing. I threw the transmission into park, and we settled back, in unison, into our seats.

  A long moment of silence. We glanced at each other. Brows furrowed. Mouths quivering. Eyebrows twitching. These were my faces, the only faces that mattered, the only faces that could matter. I opened my mouth to speak but accidently brushed the horn, which honked. We jumped in place at the shock of it and burst into laughter. Hard, snorting belly laughs. At the car. At the early night. At the silliness of us beneath an invisible moon on a clear night.

  I doubled over in full guffaw. My hand, having migrated on its own, caressed Penny’s thigh. Something about the way she sat reminded me of the morning Nigel was born. One leg curled against the dashboard, as was her habit. It had been winter, and the sun seemed reluctant to do its work. Penny’s ob-gyn had warned us from the jump about the dangers of her maternity. She risked toxic shock syndrome, gestational diabetes, and a dozen other family curses, including and beyond death. She could wind up in a coma and then die. The baby could die, too. And the baby, if a girl, could inherit some of her burdens. One day during a checkup very early in the pregnancy, Penny took Dr. Sapirstein’s hand and squeezed it, perhaps a little too hard: I’m having this baby. Dr. Sapirstein pried his fingers loose: Yes, of course you are.

  But on the morning in question, the sky outside PHH’s Labor and Delivery Suite was dark. It rained in the early morning hours, a torrent of rain that left little lakes all over the hospital lawn and dripping stalactites of water along the eaves. I had stepped in a puddle. My socks were soaked. My feet freezing.

  But Penny’s hair was sweat-drenched. She sat upright. Her shoulders shuddered. Her red ringlets drooped against the pale of her collarbone. And her face was pale, too pale. She exhaled and glanced out the window.

  The sun rose. The hospital room blazed like the inside of a stoked oven. Penny uncrossed her legs and curled one against the railing. She placed a hand on the side of her belly. She gritted her teeth.

  By my elbow, Nigel leaned against the side of Penny’s seat, himself suffocating in our laugh-bubble, his upper cheeks wet, his eyes pressed shut. Penny still laughed, too. I tried to ask Penny and Nigel to stop laughing, but all I could do was hiccup with yuks myself. It would be a terrible and heavenly thing to die from amusement. But I wasn’t ready to go.

  I barreled out of the Bug. I stood with hands on hips. I stood on tiptoes. I counted, slowly, to five. Then to six. They got out.

  “You goofuses,” I said, trying on an angry face. They both watched me. “That’s enough.” A moment of silence—and we all started laughing again. A crow perched on the electrical line above, tilting its head in that mechanical way avians do.

  “We should order pizza from Fratelli’s,” I said.

  Nigel’s face turned serious, as I hoped it would. Odd boy that he was, Nigel despised pizza. Penny and I only ate it when he was away on school trips or sleepovers.

  He took the house keys from Penny. “No pizza,” he said. “I have a better idea.” Nigel ran for the back door. A moth, really a bullet with wings, beat against the night.

  “Is he going to cook?” I asked. It had been weeks since Nigel made anything, even breakfast. Smiling, Penny placed her fingertips over her mouth and nodded. Then she kissed me.

  “I thought we were fighting?” I said.

  “You’re fighting,” she said. “I’ve already won. Besides, I have a honey-do list for you.”

  She was right. I couldn’t win our argument—at least not out in the open. Besides, the key to a happy marriage wasn’t to avoid going to bed angry. It was to take every chance for reconciliation. We would fight tomorrow over my work, over BEG, over Nigel. But tonight—

  “This list. Does it involve bed?” I pinched her stomach.

  “Why, you scandalize me, sir.” She mock-blushed away from my gaze. Then she smacked her lips. “Boy, I’m getting the Polaroid. We should capture the night.”

  “Not the Polaroid,” I said. The Polaroid was an antique made around the turn of the millennium. Penny only pulled it out on special occasions. She had used it to take that picture of Nigel on the beach. “It’ll take you all night to find that thing.”

  “It’s in the bedroom closet.” She trotted toward the back steps. “I know exactly where. I just have to find the spare film cartridge.”

  “Oh, brother.”

  Penny glanced over her shoulder. “The bed idea isn’t a horrible proposition. I’ll take it under advisement.”

  In the kitchen, Nigel furiously mixed batter in a big plastic bowl. He wasn’t standing on a step stool like he used to. I smelled vanilla. Flour particles suspended in the air. I didn’t have to ask. He was making our undisputed family favorite, crêpes suzette. At the end of the dish preparation, we would turn down the lights. He would drizzle liqueur onto our plates and light it. For a few moments, our faces would glow in the presence of the miracle that was us. I kissed his forehead. He didn’t even flinch.

  I found the Grand Marnier in the cupboard and the kitchen torch on the lazy Susan. I activated the flame and admired the white-blue plume.

  “Don’t,” he said. “You’ll burn yourself.”

  “But—”

  “Like last time,” he said. Who knew that ties were so quick to ignite? Embarrassed, I put the torch and bottle on the table.

  “Um. What’s our fruit?” I asked.

  “Raspberry.” He nodded at a dish of ripe berries.

  “Most excellent.” I played courier, shuttling eggs, butter, lemons, whatever my bright boy asked for. How strange to watch this little person hard at work combining ingredients that would have been disgusting taken individually into something of gustatory brilliance. He poured the batter into a container—his thin arms straining against the shifting weight of the mixing bowl—and put the container into the freezer so he could poof up the whipped cream. It wasn’t until he fried the last crêpe that I began to wonder what was keeping Penny. Nigel was preparing the first plate—Penny’s plate—when she entered the kitchen pinching a red spiral tablet, my Big Chief Bigboote tablet, by the rings.

  My god.

  If she had read any portion of that journal—even just the last few weeks of entries—she knew it all: my plans for Nigel, how I intended to do it, how I prodded the boy, how much I hid from her.

  “Nigel, baby.” She blinked. I’d never seen her eyes like that. Focused and hard. Taking me in. Dismantling her image of me. I was afraid. “Change of plans, and this is important. I need you to pack your overnight bag for a weekend stay at Grandma’s.”

  “But the crêpes are h
ot and ready.”

  “Now!” She stepped to Nigel as if to grab him, but he backed away from the stove.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “There’s no need to—”

  Nigel went to his room.

  “Two minutes,” Penny screamed. She brandished the tablet. “It fell on my head while I was searching for the camera.” She pulled out the clinic pamphlet that I had tucked into the cover fold.

  “Penelope,” I said.

  “No.” Rolling her eyes, she held her index finger up as if putting me on notice that one wrong move would end me. “ ‘Penny hasn’t suspected anything of my plans. I admit my surprise at this fact. But the lovely old girl is too deep in her own confusions to sense what I’m working on….’ ”

  “That’s an old notebook.”

  “That part was dated last month!”

  Cool. Be cool as an underground well. “I was just playing around,” I said. “You know I always wanted to try writing some fiction.”

  Penny fumed and went into Nigel’s room. A few moments later she led him out of the house.

  I ran to the front windows and peeked through the blinds. The minivan was parked against the curb on the opposite side of the street. Nigel was in the passenger seat. He was talking to Penny, but she ignored him. The van lights flickered on, then off. The engine wouldn’t turn over. That ratty old van was good for something after all. I could fix this. I just needed to get them back inside. If we made it through the night, we might be us again.

  Penny went over to the neighbors’ and banged on the door. After several moments, skinny, beak-nosed Mrs. Kravits opened the door, followed by big, panda-bear-like Mr. Kravits in gray pajamas. They talked for a moment, and Nigel entered their house. Mr. Kravits tousled Nigel’s hair in a grandfatherly way.

  Penny stalked back toward our house. She slowed as an electric utility truck careened past, its unsecured boom bobbing. I almost opened the door and cursed that driver out. Idiot. But Penny ran to the back door. I bolted to intercept her.

  “You don’t understand,” I said.

  “You’re damn right I don’t. Our son. That’s our son! You never had the right!”

  “Please sit.” I grabbed her shoulder.

  She threw my hand off. “Don’t tell me what to do.” She went to the table. I didn’t see her knock the Grand Marnier bottle over, but it rolled to the edge of the table and stopped.

  “Would you just calm down.” I knew my mistake when I said it. Calm down? What kind of leaky faucet asks a furious woman to calm down? To my credit, she did seem a little calmer. Like Mount Vesuvius in the final moments. She walked to me in short steps. And slapped me. It hurt. I didn’t move.

  “What is your problem?”

  “I’m trying to help.”

  “By poisoning our son?” She slapped at my shoulders and neck. I grabbed both of her wrists. She put one of her feet in my gut and pushed me back. I let go. We stumbled apart. “That shit corrodes steel. Don’t you understand that?”

  “I didn’t poison him—”

  “And now you want our son to go to the hospital so that they can shoot him up with things they don’t even fully understand yet. All for what? So he can look more like my cousin Shane? You’re that afraid of a birthmark?” Trying to strike me again. But I held on. “You coward! Afraid the cops will come after him just because they might think he’s black?

  “That’s what they do.”

  “Jesus Christ, things are bad. But not that bad. Nobody’s going to kill our child if he looks like you. We don’t live in the Tiko. Nigel doesn’t roam the streets in the middle of the night. He doesn’t carjack people. Sometimes the police do awful things, but you can’t build his whole life around that. The chances of something like that happening to our son are very low!”

  It was then that I realized the distance between us. The talk that all black parents give their children was such an integral part of my upbringing. One night when I wanted to play after dark, Sir and Mama sat me down and basically said, The chances of something like that happening to you are virtually assured. Penny was aware of this phenomenon. Many white people were. But her parents never gave her the talk because it wasn’t necessary, so the whole thing was just a theoretical exercise. Like trying to choose between ten doors, all but one of which led to immediate death. It’s not a problem if you never have to choose.

  How could two people know each other so well but not recognize so fundamental a rift? She really didn’t know. She really hadn’t felt what I’d felt. This was the woman of resistance. The literacy program volunteer. The fearless protester. She understood the dangers of structural inequality. She knew the value of dismantling systematic injustice.

  But when it came to the basics of walking through life as prey, she had no idea. It wasn’t just that Nigel would make an appetizing target for some zombie with a badge and a gun. It was all the little things that were so obvious to me. The woman switching from one side of the street to the other. The store owner following him around. The increased scrutiny from anyone with power over his freedom or happiness. All the things that would eat away at his soul and make him wonder why we ever brought him into this world. All the things that would make him me.

  “Not all of us in this family are beneficiaries of white privilege,” I said.

  She pointed at me. “Don’t you dare.”

  I pointed at myself. “I dare.”

  “Every time you want to hurt me, you pull the race card.”

  “My life is a race card!”

  “I’ll tell you something you should remember. Our son is brave. He won’t crumble just because he’s a little different. Unlike his father.”

  “Take that back.” I cornered her by the sink, placing a hand on the countertop.

  “No.” She pushed past me.

  “You think that just because you did a few marches and called out a few people over the years that you’re some kind of racial saint? That’s not how it works. And it won’t protect Nigel. You must believe I’m trying to do the right thing. All these years together. You have to give me some credit.”

  “I don’t have to give you shit.” Penny closed her eyes. I touched her arm, and she shuddered away. She was at the door. She opened it. She closed it.

  “I’m not afraid of you. But I’m an adult. That boy believed in you. Thought the world of you.” I flinched at her use of the past tense.

  She went to the table and sat. She righted the bottle and drank. “This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to find a lawyer.”

  “Wait—”

  “Don’t make me repeat myself. I’ll get the house and full custody.” She was serious. I had seen her make similar declarations. When she decided to cut her losses, she cut them through and through. “I used to feel guilty about your pill problem. I felt guilty about how full of shame you were and thought if I were a better person I could get you to straighten up. But it was never about me. It was always about your demented ideas. I was too stupid to accept that before.”

  Penny rose from the table and went to the door. Then she was gone. I sat there for a moment encased in amber. I would not let it end this way. I could not let it end this way.

  The door jammed. I yanked it open and heard a sound like a large tennis racket hitting a large tennis ball. The noise disoriented me enough that I tripped down the steps, landing hard on my hands and knees. I pulled a shard of metal from my palm. One of Penny’s lost earrings. How long had it been there? A pearl of blood erupted from my dirty palm. I heard Mrs. Kravits’s voice, a yelp, but I couldn’t see her, as she was obscured by the house next to our driveway.

  An engine revved. I expected to find the minivan gone, but it was in the same spot, the hazard lights blinking. I jogged out into the street, feeling air on my knee. I had ripped my best cotton trousers in the fall. The Kravitses and Nigel were on the Kravi
tses’ porch. Mrs. Kravits covered her mouth with both sets of fingertips. Mr. Kravits placed a big paw over Nigel’s eyes and pushed him into the house.

  “What—” I said. I was about to ask Mr. Kravits what on earth he thought he was doing to my son. But I realized the three of them had been looking past me.

  A white police van had swerved off the road a few car lengths in front of the minivan, taking a mailbox with it. I realized I’d never called the City to ask them to slow the safety patrols down like Penny had asked.

  Where was Penny?

  The street glowed yellow, then white from the moonlight, then yellow again from the van’s hazard lights. The driver of the white van, a young police officer in coveralls, stumbled out. He rubbed his face and looked me right in the eye. His forehead was bleeding.

  “I was coming down this way, and she just—” Suddenly, his face shifted from confusion to fear. “Where did you come from? I need to see your ID.”

  I ignored him and went around the front of the van. Penny was suddenly there, on the cement, perfectly still and composed, as if sunbathing on a knoll. Her skirt splayed to one side and one leg lay at an impossible angle, like that painting of the girl lying in a grassy field. Her head lay against the sloped curve of a driveway. Her eyes opened. Some blood collected on the dirt below her neck. I got down to one knee.

  “Stop right there!” The officer stood a few feet away, his gun drawn. “Step away from the woman.”

  Penny was blinking and turning her head as if to say no.