Caucasia

by Danzy Senna

  I pretended as I walked that I, like the stony-faced people who milled around me, had someplace to go, though really I was moving in circles. I kept my eyes averted from men in suits (my mother’s lessons had stuck), but I stared hard into the faces of certain girls—light-skinned black girls, about eighteen years old: a frizzy-haired hippie girl wearing a long flouncy skirt and combat boots, who rode past me, giggling, on her blond boyfriend’s back; a prim bespectacled girl wearing a Boston University sweatshirt, her hair straightened neatly, who glanced up at me when we passed each other; a pale girl with curlers in her hair, who sat in the backseat of a blue Chrysler LeBaron, nursing a baby while the driverless engine hummed and the radio played some classic soul melody. Looking at these girls, these possibilities, I caught my breath, thinking I had found Cole, only to see a stranger’s face staring back.

  NKRUMAH WAS DEAD. It was on my third night in Boston that Dot broke the news to me. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. I had hoped that my old school chums might know something about my disappearance, my sister’s disappearance, my father’s whereabouts. But, Dot told me, there was nothing left to go back to. She said the school had closed down in 1977. Lack of funding and lack of interest were the culprits. The old philosophies of Umoja and Ujamaa had lost their luster. In their wake lay a crumbling, rotting building with a “Do Not Enter” sign in front—a sign which homeless people soundly ignored, seeking shelter from the cold streets in the abandoned, dusty classrooms.

  I had spent only one year at Nkrumah, but I was sad to hear it was gone. It was the one real link to my past, that part of me. But I also remembered my mother’s wisdom: She always said we needed to be strategic, not nostalgic, if we were going to evade the Feds. I needed to do the same if I was to find what I was looking for.

  The following day I had a new energy. I remembered Maria’s old address in Mattapan, and was able to track down her number that way. But the sleepy woman who answered the phone informed me that Maria had moved to New York years before to live with her father and to attend a performing arts high school. When the woman asked who was calling, I told her nobody and hung up the phone.

  It was Wednesday. I had been at Dot’s only four days, but already I was feeling restless. Maria’s life sounded exciting. I had seen the movie Fame a year before and at the time had wanted to escape to that fantasy, an urban hub where students spent lunch hour dancing on the roofs of taxi cabs and playing the tin-can drums in the streets. I imagined that Maria looked like Irene Cara, and wondered if she knew any of the teenagers I had seen dancing that day in the city.

  Ali was my only other hope. His father had been my father’s best friend once upon a time. Ronnie Parkman, the documentary filmmaker. I recalled Ronnie’s face, bending over me at Dot’s party that night, assuring me in a gentle whisper that nobody was going to hurt my father.

  It seemed like a long shot, but I called Information. The Parkmans had lived near us in the South End, on Dartmouth Street, and the operator found a listing for a Gloria Parkman. She was Ali’s mother, a dainty dark-brown woman who wore fitted business suits, small gold hoops in her ears, and her hair in a neat natural. She worked as a public defender and always had seemed distracted when she came to pick up Ali from school. My father once had told my mother, “Now that’s a strong black woman. You could use some of her backbone.” He had often pointed to “strong black women” as evidence of my mother’s inadequacy.

  I called Ali’s number and spent the rest of the afternoon in Dot’s apartment with the television blaring in front of me and the phone to my ear. I let it ring over and over again for at least an hour. I must have fallen asleep that way, because I woke to somebody saying into my ear, “Hello? Hello!” There was drool on Dot’s sofa and “Captain Kangaroo” on the television set. I jerked awake.

  “Oh, hi,” I said. I didn’t know how long the person had been on the other end, listening to me snore.

  “Who is this?” came the impatient voice on the other end. It was a boy. Somebody my age. Music played in the background.

  “Is this Ali Parkman?”

  “Yeah. Now are you going to tell me who this is?”

  “Hi, uh, I used to know you.” There was a heavy silence. I hesitated at saying my real name. “A long time ago.”

  Still no response. I half-hoped he would just guess who it was, but I knew that was crazy. So I said, “I’m Birdie. Birdie Lee.”

  It felt strange to say those two words. They had been forbidden for so long that I almost expected a bolt of lightning to crash through the living room. Instead, Ali spoke.

  “Birdie Lee? For real?”

  “Yeah, for real.”

  “Holy shit. I remember you. You were my first girlfriend. Over at Nkrumah.”

  “That’s me.”

  “Where you been all this time? I remember you and your sis got taken out of school one day and I never seen you again.”

  A half-he came forth as I fixed my gaze on the television screen, where Mr. Rogers was hanging up his jacket and putting on a cardigan. I said, “My grandmother sent me off to boarding school. And my sister went to Brazil with my dad. I lost track of them a long time ago.”

  Ali laughed a little. “Yeah, I knew it wasn’t true. They was saying your mother went off the deep end, kidnapped you or something. People was freaking out about it for a while. Then the school closed down a year later and we all got sent back to public.”

  I felt vaguely defensive at the things they had said about my mother. The same way I had felt when Dot said she was running from nothing. But it was also a relief to hear that people had noticed I was gone, that they had been concerned.

  I asked him if he wanted to come over and meet me. “I’m staying in the same neighborhood. We could go get a soda or something.”

  He sounded a little hesitant. “Um, like now?”

  “Yeah, or later. I mean, whenever.”

  I felt stupid and wished I hadn’t asked him.

  But then he said, “Yeah, sure. That’s cool.”

  After we hung up, I went and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked country. A girl Nicholas might like, but not Ali. Ali might be embarrassed to be seen with me. We were going to meet up at the pizza deli a few blocks away. I had only a few minutes to prepare. I brushed my hair and pulled it into a tight ponytail so that it masked the New Hampshire feathers. I changed into some of Dot’s jeans and a long blue cardigan. I didn’t want to put on my denim jacket and sneakers, but they were all I had.

  I saw him from a distance, leaning against a concrete wall. As I neared him, I saw that his clothes were secondhand, his jeans stained with paint, and a backpack hung loosely off one shoulder. Even as I came closer, he stared past me, as if he were expecting somebody else, so that I had a chance to examine him before he recognized me. He had a young boy’s face, though he was tall as a grown man. His skin was velvety dark, and he had his father’s high cheekbones. His eyes were soft, deep set, his lips pink on the inner edge, in sharp contrast to the dark brown of the rest of his face. He was going to be handsome. For now, he was pretty, like Nicholas.

  It wasn’t until I was in front of him that he looked at me. “Ali, it’s me.”

  He blinked at me, surprised. “Whoa. Birdie Lee. I forgot what you looked like.” I wasn’t sure what looked so different. I wondered if he had expected, somehow, to see a girl more like Cole.

  We embraced without much affection and kept our eyes averted from each other’s as we walked into the steam and smells of the pizza shop. We bought a couple of Pepsis and sat in a corner booth, across from each other, both fiddling with our straws. His hands were stained with splashes of colors—red and blue and yellow. He noticed me looking and explained, “I tag. Graffiti. You can see my work all over.”

  We chatted for a while about what had happened to other kids from Nkrumah. He said Maria had grown up to be “super fine” and that she had been told so many times that she could be a movie star, she had decided to try it out for real at t
he performing arts high school. Cherise was pregnant. Cathy went to his high school and had plans to join the Army in a few years. Mrs. Potter was running a program called METCO that bused black kids into the suburbs.

  There was a lull in conversation, and then he said, “So, what was it like at boarding school?”

  It took me a moment to remember my lie. “Oh, um, ever see ‘The Facts of Life’? It was kind of like that.”

  He covered his mouth and laughed. “Seriously? With Tootie?”

  “Yeah. With Tootie and Blair and the rest of them.”

  It didn’t really feel like a lie, I had watched the show so many times. I saw myself with the cast, whizzing around the kitchen on roller skates, while the theme song played overhead. I wondered if it was still a lie if you could see it so clearly.

  “So, why’d you leave?” Ali was asking. “What are you doing back here?”

  I told him I was looking for my father and my sister. “They’re still missing. I haven’t seen them since, you know, we all left that day.”

  “Man, that’s wild. Any leads?”

  I took a deep breath. “Well, I was thinking. You might be able to help me. My dad,” I said, trying to restrain the excitement in my voice. “Our dads. They were tight. Remember? They were good friends.”

  As I said it, Ali seemed to grow cold and distant, his lips thinning as he squinted at me. “So what?”

  I hadn’t expected this response. His body seemed to have moved farther away from me, though it was impossible. I persisted, remembering my mother’s advice about being strategic. “Your dad might know where they are.”

  Ali only mumbled, “Yeah, well, maybe.”

  I looked around. The pizza joint was empty except for the young man in the pinstriped shirt behind the counter, who watched us while he leaned on the counter, talking sleepily into the phone. I leaned across the table and hissed to Ali, “I need to talk to your dad. And I thought you might be able to take me to him.”

  He laughed over my head. “Naw, Birdie. My dad’s missing too. I think he might be dead. He left around the same time as yours. Weird, huh?”

  I was quiet, taking in this news. Ronnie had never been as political as my mother. I didn’t think he’d been up to any shady business of that magnitude. And I couldn’t imagine him disappearing, leaving his son and perfect wife behind. Their family had seemed the antidote to mine. One color, one love, forever together. But I couldn’t imagine why Ali would lie. All I could manage to say was “Oh, yeah? Sorry to hear that.” I bit my lip, trying not to cry. I felt silly for being so disappointed, but I was. Ronnie had been my only hope. My father hadn’t been close to very many people. There wasn’t much else out there.

  Just then there was a loud knock on the window next to us. We both started and looked. A bunch of teenage girls stood at the window, grinning in at Ali. He smiled and raised a hand. Two of the girls were black, one was white, and they all wore big bright bomber jackets, red lipstick, and tight jeans. The white girl’s hair was in strawberry-blond cornrows, but her eyes were a pale blue. The girls squinted at me, their breath fogging up the glass as they tried to figure out who I was. They clearly didn’t like what they saw, and went off, sneering. Ali smiled across the booth at me, bashfully.

  “They go to my school,” he muttered, by way of explanation. I got the feeling that he was tired of our conversation. He wanted to go. He was bored by me. By our reminiscing. He asked, “So, where are you staying?” It was a small effort, but false. I doubted we’d be seeing each other again.

  “I’m staying at my aunt’s. In the South End.”

  He nodded. “Well, maybe we’ll bump into each other again. I hang out afternoons over at Downtown Crossing. Usually I’m there, tagging. Come visit some time.”

  I nodded, and said to Ali, “Yeah, sure,” not really meaning it. We both got up to go.

  We stood outside the pizza place for a moment. “Well, thanks,” I told him. “For coming to meet me.”

  He looked at me. Smiled slightly. “You know, we wondered about you. For a long time, people was asking, ‘What ever happened to Birdie and Cole Lee?’ Maria was all sad, moping around the halls for a while. I’m glad you’re all right.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  The name Jesse had been a lie, but as I walked home that day, I wasn’t quite sure the girl Jesse had been such a lie. I had felt out of place with Ali—less at home with him than I did in New Hampshire. Maybe I had actually become Jesse, and it was this girl, this Birdie Lee who haunted these streets, searching for ghosts, who was the lie. I missed Mona and Nicholas and my mother and Mr. Pleasure. I missed the soft country earth and the dingy little town I had come to think of as my own. The missing scared me. It made me feel a little contaminated. I wondered if whiteness were contagious. If it were, then surely I had caught it. I imagined this “condition” affected the way I walked, talked, dressed, danced, and at its most advanced stage, the way I looked at the world and at other people.

  THAT NIGHT, I was too scared to sleep alone. Seeing Ali, hearing that his father was missing as well, had left me shaken. Nobody seemed to have stayed the same. No families intact. Dot, beside me on her wide futon, listened as I told her what Ali had said, and she shook her head. “Yeah, those were crazy times, babe. We lost a lot of good ones. Either died, went to prison, or left the country.” She paused. “Or just disappeared, like your mom, into thin air.”

  Dot hadn’t mentioned my mother since the second day, when she had forced me to talk to her. She hadn’t mentioned whether I should stay or go. She had told my mother that I needed time, and that was what she was giving me. A part of me wanted to stay with Dot, pretend she was my mother, the mother I had never had before: slender, mahogany, sensible, a mother who didn’t switch faces with the seasons, a mother who stuck to one spot. But I was certain she didn’t need me, an extra weight, in her life. She had survived these years by keeping her baggage light, by floating, and I didn’t want to ruin that precarious balance.

  I spent the next day composing a letter to the Brazilian consulate, asking them to help me trace my father and sister. I even called a private detective I had found listed in the yellow pages and asked if he could help me. He said he might be able to, but he’d need five hundred cold cash up front, and I slammed down the phone. I stared at Dot’s photograph of them, the last proof that they were alive, that they had ever existed after the night they drove off. I scrutinized my sister’s face for signs of my own. The resemblance was there, but it wasn’t easy to explain. It was something in the expression. Or maybe I was just imagining it. I played Dot’s music. She had a mix of seventies soul and Indian religious music. I chose the soul and blasted Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, the Isley Brothers, and wondered what to do next.

  Dot came home later that afternoon to find me watching television and listening to the record player all at once, with the contents of my box of negrobilia spread out before me. She stood watching me with a concerned look on her face. I wondered what she was seeing that disturbed her so much. I wondered how crazy I looked. Then she said that I needed to get out of the house, to get some fresh air. It was a Thursday and she sent me off to an organic food store in Cambridge with an elaborate list of vegetables, herbs, and teas.

  When I was finished shopping, I took the bus home. I stared out the window at the raindrops eating one another on the windowpane and, beyond that, at a gloomy Harvard Square. It reminded me of my grandmother. I hadn’t thought of her once since I had been back. I wondered if she were still alive. She had lived not far from where the bus was passing, in that big old house off Brattle Street.

  Outside, a girl waited at a crosswalk. She wore her hair in Shirley Temple ringlets and carried a black umbrella with yellow sunflowers on it. It was something in her features, the mixture of hard and soft lines, that had made me pause. When she glanced up, it was nowhere near the face I was looking for, and my eyes stung.

  Back at Dot’s, I clambered up the stairs, leaving
wet marks behind me. I heard voices from inside, but didn’t stop to listen closely. I expected to see one of Dot’s macrobiotic friends in a yoga twist on the floor.

  Instead, my mother sat wide-eyed on the couch, with a cup of steaming tea in her hands. Beside Dot on the floor, Jim sat building a Lego truck with Taj.

  There was a moment of silence, then Taj blurted out, “Birdie’s in big trouble!”

  As if choreographed, Jim and Dot rose at once and took Taj with them to the kitchen.

  I listened to the door slam behind them. I steadied myself against the doorjamb and looked at my mother.

  My first thought was that she had aged. Maybe her face had been as lined before and I simply hadn’t noticed. But now she looked older, and a traumatic bewilderment had taken root in her blue eyes.

  She was wearing her old stained Levi’s and one of Jim’s lumberjack shirts. Her knuckles were dirty and scabbed, I noticed, and I wondered why. She looked as if she had been crying.

  Finally I said, “Isn’t this dangerous? I mean, don’t the Feds have a watch on Dot’s house—”

  She cut me off with a vicious “Shhhh. You should know better.”

  She was talking about bugs. She had lectured me on many occasions about the precautions a revolutionary must take, but this time her voice had a particular harshness to it. I wondered, perhaps for the first time, if she ever got tired of running, of living a he, if she ever missed her mother the way I missed mine.

  “Sorry.” I sat across from her in Dot’s denim beanbag chair, hugging my knees to my chest.

  She sighed deeply and put a hand to her temple, rubbing it. She felt a migraine coming on, I could see it. She set the tea on the coffee table, then said after a pause, “What you did was unacceptable, Jesse. You nearly killed me. I was worried sick. Worried out of my fucking mind. Do you hear me?” Her voice was rising, and I glanced around, an odd sense of decorum overtaking me. But it was too late for manners. She was shaking, and her left eye was twitching. “I’ve already lost one child to this war they call America. I refuse to lose another. Now I want to hear why the hell you would do this to me, without any warning. But first I want you to pack your bags and get downstairs, into the car. I don’t want to stay here too long. There’s too much of a risk.”