A Hope in the Unseen

by Ron Suskind

This place is different. “No one can say I don’t take you out nice,” he says as they cross the parking lot toward Coconuts, the record, tape, and CD store.

  “Oh, we doing it all right …. Hey Cedric, let me make my stop in Popular Club first, real quick.”

  And they do, him holding open the double door as she passes inside the bland storefront, giving him a chance to look her over inconspicuously: all cute and casual in her tight blue faded jeans, black low-heel boots with a delicate, pointed-toe, and an oversized BROWN sweatshirt under a black leather jacket, collar up. She’d bought some shoes here a few weeks ago, and hearing that they’d be coming this way, she brought them with her to return.

  He likes that—her returning the shoes and all—so it’s not like some big formal date or anything. If anyone asks, they can just say that Chiniqua was returning some shoes, then they decided to catch something to eat and a movie. No big deal. Considering that any hint of romance between the only two blacks in the unit would be the gossip sensation of the month, Cedric figures he might need a cover story.

  It’s crowded inside the store this late Friday afternoon, with women, mostly black, toting small children and picking up this item or that they’ve ordered before the weekend arrives. Phone-book-sized catalogs from Popular Club, a discount catalog merchandiser, are stacked in piles along the walls, and Cedric and Chiniqua each grab one. They flip through the pages of off-brand clothes, shoes, and household items as she waits for her number to be called. She points to a dress. “Uh-huh, you’d look mighty good in that,” he says. They’re both familiar with Popular Club, an establishment that has grown fast in inner cities by mugging the pose and product lines of nationally known chains that won’t locate in low-income areas. Every bit as much as a soul-food restaurant or an A.M.E. Baptist church, this storefront is a branch office of home. Cedric, glancing up from his catalog as Chiniqua returns her shoes, notices that a spandex-clad woman about their age, holding a newborn and jerking the hand of a resistant toddler, is sizing her up from across the store, probably noticing Chiniqua’s sweatshirt and wondering, he figures, what’s she doing here?

  He steps next to Chiniqua—just getting her credit slip at the return counter—and glares at the woman as he takes Chiniqua by the arm. “Come on, time we got going,” he says, and leads her out and next door, where, in a moment, they’re wandering contentedly through Coconuts, an even cozier realm than Popular Club, bumping along, shoulder to shoulder, through the ample CD selections of hip-hop, gospel, rap, and rhythm and blues. Even though the big tent of black music is a spot where folks of all races stop by nowadays, and even though the enthusiasms of hallmates like Zayd and Maura are, indeed, welcomed, it’s understandable that the two black members of Unit 15 feel a bit proprietary about this fare. Moving through the rows of CDs, they gently feel around for a place to stake their claim, stopping, after a bit, at the white polyurethane divider marked Keith Sweat.

  “You know, I grew up with this music,” Cedric says, pulling out an old CD, Make It Last Forever, from the R&B pioneer whose best days are long past him.

  “What year was all that?” she says, then answers herself “Oh yeah, it was fifth grade and all. I used to sing him all the time. Oh, I had a big crush.”

  “Wait, here it is,” he says, flipping it to check the copyright. “It’s 1987. Right, fifth grade.”

  “Like, no one in the unit knows anything about people like Keith Sweat,” Chiniqua says, smiling. “It’s kind of nice, you know. You have to be real. You have to have grown up with it like us, to really know it.”

  Cedric just smiles, and around the room they go, pulling up obscure CDs and humming songs and reminiscing. Chiniqua’s urban upbringing, Cedric knows, was something of a departure from his. Her parents are working class—her father, a bus driver; her mom, a teacher’s aide; her brother, a New York City cop. And the Inwood section of upper Manhattan where they live is a mixed neighborhood, predominantly blacks and Latinos, especially from the Dominican Republic (and a good bit of crime), but also a clinging minority of Irish and Italians and even a few Jews. But hovering over an old Bobby Brown CD, both of them can sing “Every Little Step” with the same lilts and dips they sang it with seven years ago.

  “Right, this music is who we is,” Cedric says, puckering his lips and juking a step as he slips Bobby Brown back into its row.

  “Who we are,” Chiniqua says, smirking.

  “Whatever,” he mumbles, feeling a first, light breeze of self-consciousness about the right tone to affect—actually being on a date and all—but remembering to smile.

  It is, clearly, a date. And it is just the two of them. Cedric has never really been on a college date (something he’s ashamed of and would never admit), and he wants to make certain Chiniqua doesn’t suspect it, never suspects that the protocols of how to act alone, with a woman, in this context, are all new to him.

  So he drifts a few steps away from her, slipping into a gentle pimp roll, and roots through publicly available images about appropriate behavior for a fine and studly black man. Nearby, in the movie soundtrack aisle, a heavyset white guy with watery eyes and a long, mottled army jacket provides a foil. The guy mumbles, “You’re gonna have a bad day … ,” maybe to himself but in the general direction of Cedric, only five feet away across the jazz section divider.

  “You don’t know me,” Cedric says, jutting out his jaw. “You don’t want to know me.”

  This seems to encourage the army man, who bellows, “You’re gonna have a bad day,” and then faster, “You’re gonna have a very bad day.”

  Cedric, leaning across John Coltrane and Miles Davis, shouts, “You don’t know me so you better not mess with me!” with enough volume that even he’s startled.

  “Oh God,” he hears Chiniqua from behind, “I don’t want to get into this.” He turns to see her retreat toward classical, plenty of confirmation that the tough black dude pose—taking no beef from no man, especially a white one—seems to work only in movies and music videos.

  A second later, with his chest unpuffed and the manager already escorting the mottled army man out, he joins Chiniqua near Bach and tries to regain the ease of a few minutes ago, talking about wanting to buy R. Kelly’s album 12-play—a misguided conversational selection, he immediately realizes, because it’s filled with explicit lyrics and sexual asides.

  “Why you want all that nasty, confrontational stuff,” Chiniqua sighs. “I’d never buy it. No way.”

  Cedric, wishing they could just talk again about Keith Sweat and fifth grade, summons some saving grace, shrugging, “Well, you gotta give a guy a chance,” enough to compel from her a reluctant smile.

  A half-hour later—past the Radio Shack, Staples, a local no-name supermarket, and down a long incline of parking lot—they settle into a booth at McDonald’s. With Donald Korb’s monthly check for $200 not due until mid-April, this is all Cedric can afford. But, like the low-rent shopping center, it seems to be just fine. He gets two quarter pounders, the second one for free because pickles were wrongly put on the first one (he specifically said no pickles).

  “Tastes better when it’s free,” he quips, as he plucks off the pickles and glances up at Chiniqua quietly slipping one of her two cartons of chicken nuggets into her jacket pocket for later before cracking open the other one. They eat, not saying anything, and he wonders if she might be feeling funny about pocketing the nuggets, the kind of thing, he figures, she might not do around anyone, up here at least, but him.

  “Why not, before the movie, we stop by the supermarket and pick up stuff,” he says, his month full, “like drinks and candy and whatever, and sneak it in under our coats—you ever do that?”

  She laughs lightly and seems relieved: “What? You do that stuff?”

  “Oh, showaaaaah,” he says, laughing. “Me being a real hustler and all.” They both crack up, though Cedric stops so he can watch her laugh. He notices how her left ear is pierced three times for a silver hoop and two studs, and how the top stud has
this cool blue dot in it. Yes, she looks good, he thinks, and tonight is going well, better than he imagined. Soon they’re both hunched forward over the table, talking conspiratorially. They agree that a movie about the dorm would be called “Clique,” and then Chiniqua does most of the talking, mentioning how lots of white kids in the unit go on ski trips together and how “it would be nice to try going skiing, I mean, black people like to ski, too.”

  Cedric listens intently. Chiniqua, after all, has had so many experiences with white kids that it boggles his mind. He nods as her monologue moves to how “even some freshmen and sophomores drive around in BMWs and Mercedes and Lexuses … but it doesn’t bother me … I know it’s just Daddy’s money.” She pauses, sipping her diet Coke. “I mean, I went to high school with kids who had cars like that. It don’t mean nothing, deep down. They wished they had my grades.”

  She stops, suddenly seeming self-conscious. “What’s wrong, what you looking at?”

  “Your hair’s different, it looks really good.” Cedric notices she’s actually blushing as she turns her head, offering a better look at her carefully spun rows of mini-dreads.

  “Did it myself,” she says softly, and Cedric feels warmth coming across the bolted-down table that makes him feel anxious and short of breath and, all in all, just fine. But also uncertain enough that he finds himself becoming boastful, talking about how many CDs he now has collected and his trip last semester to Boston.

  “I was walking through Boston and I think some of the areas weren’t so great, but being pretty big now and black and all, I wasn’t scared. It was, you know, different.”

  Chiniqua distractedly dips her chicken nugget in the sweet and sour, letting him ramble on down this dead end, and then tries to change the subject—talking about going to MIT recently to visit some friends—prompting a final smooth-guy gambit from Cedric.

  “Why didn’t you ask me to go?” he asks, all smirky. “Damn, girl, we could have spent the weekend.”

  “Give me a break,” Chiniqua counters impatiently. “I’ve asked you to go to about one thousand things. I can’t figure you out … you never want to go!”

  Cedric, his cards called, folds the suave-guy hand. “Yeah, you’re right,” he says gently. “Well, maybe I’m ready now.”

  As he says the words and sees Chiniqua’s angry brow soften with understanding, he remembers something he thought about a month ago, about his being like a nocturnal animal, blinking in the light. He thinks of that a lot. And he realizes, as the two of them sit quietly, easily, not having to say anything, that his eyes may finally be adjusting.

  The date spins swiftly forward, light and carefree. The movie, a Martin Lawrence vehicle called A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, is the story of how Martin, a womanizing, hip-hop brother, manages to seduce the wealthy, corporate executive (Lynn Whitfield), then betrays her and feels her titanic wrath. But, like so many “black” films of this era, the movie is full of code about dilemmas du jour over race and class, with Martin’s down-to-earth, devil-may-care, ghetto scoundrel getting the stamp of black authenticity to highlight how Lynn Whitfield, with her college degrees, corporate status, flawless diction, and foolish desire for monogamous love, has really succeeded only in losing touch with her true black soul.

  Of course, it’s not until the lights come up that the encoded messages hit home, leaving Cedric and Chiniqua silent and contemplative as they journey back to campus. As he walks, Cedric is reminded of the “wanting to be white” taunts at Ballou, about the stereotyped notions that so many people hold (movies are certainly good at pointing up those, he mulls) and how far all that is from the real issues and interactions he’s grappling with. A few blocks from the dorm, Chiniqua mentions another recent movie, Waiting to Exhale, which deals a little more subtly with some of the same race/class/ authenticity issues. Cedric says he saw the movie, too, and they discuss a scene where the married Wesley Snipes goes up to the hotel room of a single woman, played by Angela Bassett.

  “Well, he’s wrong. He shouldn’t have been up there if they weren’t married,” Cedric says, reflexively, mimicking Barbara’s zero-tolerance stance on premarital sex, which helped usher him through the urban minefield. “Shouldn’t have even been in that damn hotel room.”

  Chiniqua looks at him quizzically. “Why not? They’re both adults,” she says, catching Cedric with a dizzying broadside as they cross onto the dorm’s parking lot. His mouth goes dry. His mind races.

  He just smiles wanly at her and reaches for the dorm’s heavy exterior door, thankful, suddenly, to be back at East Andrews, where he and Chiniqua will certainly separate before they arrive on the second floor to, as always, meet everyone’s prying eyes. Their evening, thereby, ends smoothly and naturally, giving him an out to consider what, in God’s name, someone named Cedric Jennings does next!

  What the hell is Rob up to, Cedric wonders as he glances over at his roommate—a vision of shabby prep in his torn khaki shorts, faded Marblehead Yacht Club T-shirt, and sandals—hovering near Cedric’s CD player like he’s looking for something.

  “I really like this, I mean it’s growing on me,” Rob finally says, snapping his fingers. “Who is it?”

  Cedric pushes aside his psychology textbook and looks over, astonished. “You like it?!” he laughs. “No lie?”

  “Yeah. So … are you gonna tell me who it is or make me guess?”

  “It’s Hezekiah Walker and the Love Fellowship Crusade Choir. The song is called ‘I’ll Fly Away.’”

  “I’ll Fly Away,” Rob says, nodding meaningfully as he turns to go. “It’s, you know, great.”

  The door slams, and Cedric leans back in his chair, bemused, shaking his freshly shaven head. Rob has actually been borrowing some of Cedric’s CDs lately, and Cedric is developing a passing interest in Alanis Morissette, one of Rob’s favorites. Crazy.

  April, he decides as he cranks Hezekiah a notch, is turning out to be his best month, even if it’s only one week old. He’s still daydreaming about his Friday night out with Chiniqua. Meanwhile, all’s well with Zayd, who beat him last night in Supernintendo, on Cedric’s TV, at that. Word is out that the marquee musical act for spring weekend in two weeks is the Fugees, so they joyously blasted the group’s music in honor of the announcement and talked until late, first in Cedric’s room and then in Zayd’s. The fact that Zayd got their first CD last year, when they were unknown, combined with Cedric’s casual aside last winter that he thought the group’s curious mix of hip-hop and soul and rock was at best “derivative,” gives Zayd bragging rights on having discovered them first. He’s crowing over this small victory, something that would have irritated Cedric a few months back. But not so much anymore, Cedric muses, closing psychology for today and stretching some kinks out of his lower back. That Zayd gets straight A’s and has pretty fair musical tastes doesn’t intimidate Cedric anymore.

  Everything seems to be getting easier. He recalls last semester, when whatever the other kids said or did, the way they acted and addressed him—or, for that matter, ignored him—felt like some form of slight. A judgment on his unworthiness. Cedric’s not sure what, specifically, has changed, but actions and words, in the dorm or the cafeteria or the classroom, seem to carry less weight, less personal charge.

  With dinnertime approaching on this Wednesday night, he picks up the phone near Rob’s unkempt bed, dial’s Zayd’s number, and soon they’re scarfing lasagna at a long table in the VeeDub.

  Talk shifts to girls, and Cedric is delighted to finally have something to offer. Not wanting to disclose much about Chiniqua, even to Zayd, for fear everyone in the unit will be gabbing about it, he mentions another girl who’s caught his attention, an Asian girl from psychology lab named Anna, who’s “really fine,” he tells Zayd. “I’ve talked with her a few times and I’m thinking about asking her out,” he continues excitedly, before an admonition from Bishop Long suddenly echoes through his conscience. Searching for rebuttals on such issues, Cedric experiments with a head-on ass
ault: “I don’t know Zayd, you might say, she has one of those Coke bottle bodies.” He gets a whoop from across the table.

  Zayd, after suggesting various romantic tacks, brings up his own dilemma. He’s met a girl—“smart as hell,” cute, confident, blonde. “This one I really like. She’s different.”

  Cedric puts down his fork, pauses thoughtfully, and takes a deliberative sip of Sprite. “This may be the one, Zayd. The one that’s worth going slow, real slow, with. You know my advice. Don’t try to sleep with her. Go out five, maybe six times, before you even think about it. Let a real relationship form, real respect, first. By then, you may find out that she’s the one and you’ll want to wait even longer.”

  Zayd smiles, and they high five above the dirty plates, hands meeting in the middle. “You may be right this time, C. Yeah, you may be right.”

  Spring, of course, is the season most suited to college life—to the budding senses of emerging adults, to the carefree promise of growth, to the far-from-home feeling of being unbound. Especially in universities of the north, where winters can come hard, the fit is so neat that it’s even possible to believe that sun and warmth and soft grass possess transformative powers.

  And Brown, in the mid-April lull between midterms and finals, is bursting with flora on the freshly cut main green and students convinced that they are, finally, at their best.

  The university’s officially designated party weekend, with at least one big-name musical act, starts on Thursday, April 18, with the following Friday beginning the reading period for final exams. But Spring Weekend also draws townies from Providence, along with kids from colleges in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and other states along the East Coast, a crushing crowd of foreigners that alters Brown’s social character. Instead, it’s this weekend, April 12 and 13, that many students consider the true pinnacle of Brown partying, a weekend when all quarters of the university seem to be working furiously to entertain themselves, turning the campus into a vast progressive dinner party, with each house on the street serving a different dish.