He smiled, said, “You look good, Kay.”
I said, “I’m not tall enough to dunk a basketball like a certain female we both know, but I’ve got my good qualities.”
He smirked.
“How’s your tall friend, Richard?”
He shook his head. “Not good.”
“That why you’re over my way?”
“Not at all. Come on.”
“Uh-uh.”
“You know me better than that, Kay.”
“Do I?”
He nodded, moved toward me. Sean John’s Unforgivable. That’s the cologne he was wearing. It fit. What he’d done to me was unforgivable. Truly.
He stopped a foot short of me. “Kay?”
“My name is Kenya, please.”
“I can’t call you Kay?” His eyebrows arched in surprise.
I shook my head. “You forfeited that right, player.”
“Okay…Kenya?”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
“Why are you being so hard, girl?”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Okay, you’re right.” He put his hands up in surrender. “I understand. I messed up.”
I shrugged. “No biggie. Don’t even sweat it.”
He moved closer, took my hands. I let him. “It was a biggie. I was stupid. I’m talking Michael-Vick-dog-fighting stupid. Britney-Spears-baby-on-her-lap stupid. Foxy-Brown—”
I cut him off with “You love her?”
He shrank by several inches. “Monique? Are you kidding me? I just turned eighteen. Love doesn’t live here.”
I snatched my hands away. He’d told me he loved me at one point.
“Kay.”
“Kenya,” I said.
“Real talk?”
“Whatever, Richard.”
“Can you stop that? Ricky, please.”
“Whatever, Ricky.”
He plopped down on my bed. I didn’t like that. I hadn’t offered him that spot. He patted a place next to him, wanting me to sit down beside him. He must’ve fallen on his head on the climb up. I shook my head. His eyes were cast down, sad. I looked away. If I didn’t, in a minute I’d be sitting on his lap, playing with his ears or something.
He said, “Okay, real talk…Monique was just something to do. A way to pass the time.”
I wheeled back around, angry, said, “Johnny Cochran you are not. So you like using girls just to pass the time?”
He surprised me, said, “Pretty much.”
Oh hells no. I moved over to my window, pointed at it. “Leave, Richard.”
“Hear me out?”
“I’ve heard enough.”
He said, “‘Girlfriend.’”
“What?”
“That Alicia Keys song,” he said. “You had her CD playing that night you modeled those boy shorts for me.”
“So?”
“I brought over Italian hot dogs for us. You let me eat the fries off your dog.”
I didn’t say anything.
He continued, “You didn’t have on any perfume, but you’d showered before I came over. You smelled like Dove. Dove never smelled so good.”
I still didn’t say anything.
“You’d been reading that Toni Morrison novel Song of Solomon. I asked you why you were always reading. You shrugged. I picked it up, read a bit of it. It was pretty good. ‘Milkman lay quietly in the sunlight, his mind a blank, his lungs craving smoke. Gradually his fear of and eagerness for death returned.’ You remember that passage, Kay?”
I nodded. I couldn’t believe he remembered. He didn’t seem that enthused at the time, as I recall.
He said, “I do, too. In fact, I remember that and everything else about that night.”
I gulped, asked, “Why?”
He paused and then said, “Because you weren’t just something to do, a way to pass time. I got twisted up in this thing, fo’ sho’. Did some things I regret. I wanna make it right with you. If you’ll let me.”
“Why should I? Just words. Anybody could say what you’re saying.”
Big talk that I didn’t even mean, but I couldn’t just give easy.
He nodded. “If you’ll allow me to spend some time with you again…my actions will speak louder than my words.”
“Been there, done that.”
“Let’s go back,” he begged. “One-mo-again.”
I thought about everything.
He remembered the song I’d been playing that night.
How I smelled.
Toni Morrison. I repeat, Toni Morrison.
He said, “Pretty please, Kay.”
I didn’t correct him about my name. I said, “Begging really suits you well, Richard.”
He sighed. Long and hard. Then he said, “I’ll do anything, Kay. For just one more chance with you.”
“Admit on your MySpace page that you really really really like Kelly Clarkson. Let ’em know you find yourself singing ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ in the shower.”
“Damn, Kay, since when you got so mean?” He smiled at that. He knew he was close to breaking my resolve. If I was making light of our situation, things were moving in his favor. I couldn’t stand him for reading me so well.
I said, “You really hurt me, Ricky.”
He said, “Hurt myself, too, Kay. Bad.”
I silently apologized to my mama, went over to Ricky.
“Hold me, Richard Williams.”
“Ricky,” he said as he took me in his arms.
“And I’m Kay,” I said to the shoulder I lay my head against.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I don’t.”
“He actually remembered all that?”
“Yes, Lark.”
She whistled through the phone line. “Who’dathunkit?”
I said, “I actually have a boyfriend.”
“And you’re sure Ms. Amazon.com is out of the picture?”
“S’what he says.”
“I’d be scared.”
“You think I’m not?”
“I can imagine. And he actually remembered the Toni Morrison passage?”
“Yes, Lark.”
“That’s deep. Toni Morrison’s deep. I bet you she doesn’t even remember the passage. And she wrote the darn thing. I’m thinking Oprah and Ricky are the only two people on the planet who’d remember that passage.”
I smiled at that. Lark had a point. That one move showed me how much Ricky really cared.
“You gonna tell your momma about him, Ken?”
“Is you crazy?”
“She’d understand. Ain’t things going well with her new boyfriend?”
I didn’t answer that.
I didn’t like to think about my mother’s boyfriend.
In any way.
Mama had been set up with the boyfriend by a meddling, self-proclaimed matchmaker extraordinaire coworker. Woman knew of him through her sister’s cousin’s boyfriend’s uncle. A long and disastrous chain of liars. I’ll never forget the night Mama was preparing for her first real date with “the boyfriend.” They’d talked on the phone for at least a couple weeks, felt ready to take things to the next level. Mama modeled five outfits for me, made me pick out the winner among the bunch. If I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have crinkled my nose at the doo-doo brown outdated dress she’d put on first; I’d have given it an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Mama talked and talked the whole time it took her to get ready. Nerves, I guess. I remember asking Mama what he looked like.
“Don’t be superficial,” she’d said.
“Okay, Mama,” I replied. “If he looks like the devil on Hell Date…”
Mama said, “The who on what?”
“The devil on Hell Date,” I informed her. “It’s a show on BET.”
“Informative and uplifting programming, I’m sure,” Mama said, “from the same folks that bring you such fare as 106 & Park.”
No wonder Eric and I talked the way we did. Mama’
s name could have been Merriam-Webster. She was a regular old walking dictionary sometimes.
I said, “Yeah. So what he look like?”
Mama beamed. “Five-ten. Athletic and trim. Doesn’t smoke or drink. And that’s a relief after dealing with your father and his Marlboro Lights….”
I had to laugh.
The boyfriend turned out to be about five feet eight inches with his sneakers on, more than a few pounds removed from any “athletic and trim” physique, if he ever had one, and not a day passed where he didn’t have a Heineken in his hand. Oh, on the good side of things, he wouldn’t be caught dead smoking a Marlboro Light. Nope.
He preferred Newport shorts.
I needed to stop.
Like they say, if you don’t have anything good to say about someone, don’t say a word.
Lark interrupted my thoughts with, “Zoning me out again, Ken.”
“What happened now?”
Lark said, “Your momma has finally found herself someone special, Ken. She’d probably be able to give you some good advice on the situation with Ricky.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “Current boyfriend aside, it’s always been the same with my mother and her advice about men, especially when it comes to my dad. Don’t trust them. Don’t believe a word they say. If one even writes you a love letter check it for ricin first.”
“Raisins?”
“Ricin, the poison they put on those letters they sent to the senators. We just went over that last week in poli sci.”
“I was zoning out on that part, girl.”
“Too busy mooning over David Rivers.”
“Ken, please. I told you I’m not thinking about that boy.”
“I don’t want to be the only one with a boyfriend, Lark.”
“Do you. It’s okay.”
“It makes me feel…awkward.”
“Look,” she said, “you’re two years older than me. I got skipped ahead, and we’re cool, on the same wavelength with so much, but I’m just not ready for a boyfriend. I’ve got enough going on to worry about….”
Lark was so smart and so mature, I oftentimes forgot she was the same age as my brother. I guess she was right. Boyfriends could come later.
I said, “I’ll leave you alone about David Rivers. Or anybody else, for that matter. I know I’m always on you.”
“It’s cool. You’re looking out. You don’t want me to be lonely.”
“Never that,” I said. “As long as we’re friends, you’ll never be lonely. I already told Ricky that you and me were gonna continue to hang tough.”
“You say that now.”
“Lark!”
“I’m joking. I know you have my back, Ken.”
I said, “Always. Matter of fact, this Friday why don’t we—”
“Gotta go, Ken. Later.”
“Lark? Lark?”
Dial tone greeted me.
That happened often when I was talking with Lark. We’d be having the greatest conversation, and then boom, she’d rush off the phone. When I asked her about it later, she always said the same thing: “My parental units came home. They’re always on me about being on the phone.”
I understood. Mama was tough on me, too.
But I quickly forgot about Lark’s issues with her parental units, as she called them. I focused on the larger issue at hand.
I actually had a boyfriend.
Kenya Williams. I liked the sound of that; it had a nice ring to it.
Eric
“Boo ya! Holla at ya, boy!”
Benny looks over at me with his ocean-blue eyes, smiles, and then quickly turns his attention back to the television set in front of us. It’s a state-of-the-art television. Forty-six-inch Sony high-definition set, with a twelve-hundred-watt theater system. Some buttered popcorn and a roomful of black folks talking over the sounds on-screen and we would be at our local Loews movie theater. NBA players run up and down a basketball court in front of us, courtesy of Benny’s Xbox 360. Their likeness to the real players is uncanny. The computer-generated images, or CGI, as Benny the Geek is quick to point out, even move with the same fluidity of the real players, with the same cool that a million-dollar contract and an equal number of adoring fans can add to one’s self-confidence. Benny uses the Los Angeles Lakers, takes most if not all of his shots with Kobe Bryant. It’s the start of the fourth quarter of our game and Kobe already has forty-six points. I run with the Miami Heat, most of my points scored by Dwayne Wade. I’m beating Benny by three points, but the momentum is definitely in his favor. He’s on a thirteen-to-two run, has almost completely wiped out my lead.
“Boo ya! Can’t stop, won’t stop.”
Kobe Bryant yet again.
I say, “Would you stop that.”
“It’s called competition,” Benny replies. “It’s up to you to stop me, Eric. I won’t just lay down for you. But I feel your pain, homie. Kobe is on fire.”
“Not that…all that boo ya stuff, the hip-hop talk.”
“That’s how I talk, Eric. Nahmean?”
“‘Nahmean’?” I frown at Benny’s word choice. “No, I don’t know what you mean. And that’s not how you talk. I don’t know if I’m playing you or Eminem.”
“I’m offended you picked a white rapper, Eric. That’s reverse racism. But I’ll let you slide on that, homie.”
“You’re out of control, Benny. I wish you’d stop. That’s not how you talk.”
“Is now,” Benny says, talking to me without looking in my direction, his focus trained on the action on the screen. I talk to him in the same way. If either one of us takes our eyes off the TV, the other gains an advantage. We don’t want that to happen. This is serious business. Bragging rights are at stake.
I ask, “Since when have you talked that way?”
“Since Crash did me dirty. Since I became the school’s biggest joke—no offense—next to you. I’ve got two more years there. I’m going to do my best to make them good ones. Can’t beat ’em…join ’em. That’s my new motto.”
I say, “And you think talking like a rapper is gonna get you points?”
Benny says, “Can’t hurt to try. I can’t go in there talking like Shakespeare.” He pauses, forces some kind of English accent. “Thou doth protest my good intentions too fervently. See how ridiculous that is, Eric? If it comes down to the Bard or Fiddy, I have to roll with Fiddy.”
I want to present the opposing point of view, remind Benny that his “back that thing up” comment to Kenya really started this thing. Remind him that Crash and the others have never taken kindly to some pale white boy speaking in a way that they themselves speak, that they find it insulting and demeaning, that it will cause him more problems than he has now. I say, “I think you’re asking for trouble, Benny.”
“You’re not exactly an expert on the matter, Eric. No offense. But maybe you would find yourself in a better place if you had a little more Fiddy in you than Steve Urkel.”
“Steve Urkel?”
“Did I do that?” Benny says in Urkel’s whiny voice. “Didn’t mean to speak so openly, Eric. But yeah, that’s how everyone sees you. I’m sorry.”
Steve Urkel.
I’ve been going for Kanye West, Pharrell, even Common, and somehow I keep ending up like Urkel, arguably the biggest example of a black nerd that exists, the pop culture icon for everything an impressionable black adolescent doesn’t want to be.
Lucky me.
Angry, I say, “Well, Benny, I hate to tell you, but they see you in the same light, or worse, because of your lack of melanin. And changing how you speak isn’t gonna change that. Just gives them another name to add to geek, nerd, lame, and pizza face: wigger.”
Nasty words, I know. I want to hurt Benny in the same way his words hurt me. What he said about everyone seeing me as Steve Urkel is the truth. And, well, the truth hurts. I won’t be alone with my pain, though. Benny’s gonna share in it.
Benny pauses his Xbox onslaught and looks over at me. I expect some angry words
in exchange. That we’ll be fist fighting again for the second time in less than a week. I’m prepared for it. Benny says, “Don’t hate…congratulate,” and goes right back to the game.
It’s hopeless.
“You’re ridiculous, Benny.”
“Word to your mother.”
“That’s old, Benny. Real old. What you been doing, renting old Spike Lee movies? Doin’ the Right Thing?”
Benny corrects me. “Do…Do the Right Thing.”
I say, “I’ll pray for you.”
Benny says, “Please do. Ask God if there’s a place in heaven for a G.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Boo ya!” Benny shouts, and then adds, “I’m ridiculous. And you are now on the short end of the score. I’ll take ridiculous to loser any day, homie.”
Kobe again, giving Benny a lead of two points.
I need to focus on the game. I can save Benny’s soul after the final buzzer sounds. Maybe. He just might be too far gone.
I grit my teeth, thumb a button on my controller and pass inside to Wade. He’s a sure thing. His dunk rattles the rim, ties the score. I tell Benny, “You can’t stop him. You can only hope to contain him.”
“Eric, Eric, Eric.” Benny moves to Kobe again, of course, and shoots a three-point shot from far beyond the arc. The net on the rim ripples as Kobe buries the shot. Benny’s now in the lead by three points. One and a half minutes left in the game.
“Lucky shot, Benny.”
I attempt a long pass. Bad move. Lamar Odom swoops in and intercepts the pass, dishes the ball immediately to Kobe, who shoots another three. Dead-on, nothing but net. I’m down six in the blink of an eye.
Benny says, “This is why I’m hot. That pass is why you’re not,” and laughs at his little rhyme.
Dirty Jersey Page 4
