by Natasha Díaz
Relief floods Jesus’s face and he mouths the word “go” with enough urgency that I grab Stevie and drag him outside before he does something else stupid.
The lock clicks behind us and spits us onto the street, where the eau de breakfast sandwich and cigarette wafts underneath the streetlights and it’s just the two of us wearing too many colors and no one we want to kiss is anywhere in sight.
“Ney!”
I turn to find Janae hanging out a window near the front door, trying to keep as much noise off the street as possible.
“You know you didn’t have to do all that! I had eyes on the situation,” she yells.
“No, girl, we obviously didn’t know that!” Stevie shouts, adrenaline still pumping through his veins.
“You got moves, my guy.” She nods, ignoring his rage with an even-keeled smile. “What time you supposed to be back by?”
I check my phone. It’s 10:45. Shit.
“Tell her you went the wrong way toward Fifth Ave instead of Lenox and you got all turned around,” Janae shouts as Stevie and I book it down the street, confident that Anita is already cursing our names from her stoop eight blocks away.
Once Stevie is safely in a car and on his way home, I go inside to find that the house is unexpectedly quiet. Anita must have passed out.
“Don’t have to do more than stick your Lite-Brite toe out and guys show up ready to do your bidding, don’t they?” Jordan accuses as she stops me in the hallway on the way upstairs. Her eyes are red from crying, but even in her ratty pink terry-cloth bathrobe and bare, clean face, she looks magnificent.
“I—I don’t know,” I stammer.
Jordan backs me into a corner of the hallway where a huge vintage mirror hangs. She turns me around so the two of us stand together. Her eyes are fixed on mine in the reflection, pleading for me to see that the solution to our tumultuous relationship is right in front of us.
“Just because you didn’t choose to pass doesn’t mean you don’t have a choice, Nevaeh.”
Jordan sighs a deep, sorrowful sigh. The type of sigh that sounds like the depletion of any lingering patience.
“I’m tired,” she goes on. “Tired of people like you who think it’s my job to make you feel better about your internal struggle when you barely recognize the one that rests on the surface of my skin. Tired of being seen as good enough to put my body on the line in the streets, but not worthy of affection or praise or flattery. Tired of thinking about college and how if I can’t convince Mama to let me take out loans and go to an HBCU, I’ll have to deal with the racist theme parties and dumb jokes and biased curriculums. Tired of people constantly ruining my joy with their foolish, fragile tears and excuses. If you wanna be with us, then you’ve gotta be about us, and that takes more than the blood running through your veins. You need to do the work, so do it, ‘Lightskin.’ Stick that toe out and take some of the load off my shoulders. Because I am tired, and I have to wake up tomorrow and face it all over again.”
I raise my eyes from the ground, where they drifted in shame halfway through her monologue, and meet her gaze in the mirror. I want to tell her I think she is the definition of beautiful. I want to tell her I’m still learning how to be me. I want to tell her I am sorry and that I didn’t mean to dismiss her, but I don’t.
I shouldn’t keep her from sleep any longer, so I clamp my mouth shut and wait until she evaporates into the night.
Chapter 17
The steps creak under my feet. I planned to spend the evening dancing alone with the butterflies in my stomach and shooting poems out of my fingers like firecrackers, but not now. Now, as I head to the attic, my former sanctuary, which has revealed itself to be a chamber of consequence and retribution, there is only one thing I can do.
I have begun to crave my mom’s journal entries because they bring me back to earth. Her words drill into me, releasing the pain my body won’t allow me in tears. The hurt, I find, is a twisted comfort. Temporary and raw and deserved, it comes from the truth, which I tell myself means it is a pain that can lead to growth. I tell myself that growth means there may still be hope for the future.
January 10, 1999
I was only home for two of the four weeks of winter break. Mummy tried to convince me to stay, but I told her I had an extra assignment that I needed to get back to in Chicago, so I flew out a couple days later.
The assignment is Samuel.
We’ve been inseparable since the day we met. At first, I wasn’t sure I could love a white man. I’ve always kept them at arm’s length, never really interacting with them unless they’re teachers or other authority figures. Anita has told me stories from being on debate team about how they treat her. She says they always talk over her, like her voice is just a piece of paper that they can crumple and throw in the trash with one clench of their fist. Samuel isn’t like that.
He takes me on adventures, like breaking into the RA lounge to make French toast at two in the morning. He tells me I’m beautiful when we stop for a drink of water or stay up late to study. He makes me laugh so hard I worry I might choke on the oxygen that gets trapped between my belly and my mouth each time he impersonates our teachers or makes fun of me for being a prude. He listens to my insecurities and squashes them with unbridled confidence. He makes me feel alive again. He is nothing like Raymond.
Samuel stayed in Chicago because his mother decided to visit and spend the holidays there. He begged me to come back early, claiming he wouldn’t survive that long with his mom if I wasn’t there the moment she left to revive him. He literally got on his knees and started a trail of kisses from my toes to my belly button—it was so sweet and romantic.
I’ll only admit this to you, but there was another reason I agreed to come back: Becky Merrill. She’s this blond, volleyball-playing wench on the second floor. She has spent every waking second of this semester lusting after Samuel, and I know for a fact she stayed on campus over break because she failed our English class and needs to take a make-up course so she doesn’t fall behind. The idea of her pointy nose and choppy, layered Meg-Ryan-circa-1996 hairdo anywhere near him is enough to make me scream.
So I scooped him up and promised I’d come back early, and then switched my return flight before I had even made it home.
Anita, who has a new boyfriend herself, called my bluff the first night I was back.
“You got you a man.”
She threw the accusation in my direction as she handed me a plate to dry after dinner.
Our whole lives I have been waiting to have something in common with my sister so we could stay up all night talking and giggling. She told me about her boyfriend, Zeke. He tried to follow her onto the debate team and calls her every night before bed to remind her he will see her in his dreams. I told her about Samuel and how he loves to do crossword puzzles and how when he dances he makes this funny face that looks like he is blowing bubbles and how he can talk his way out of anything. I don’t tell her he’s white and Jewish. I know that’ll be an issue—for her, not me.
We fell asleep every night next to each other in the giant bed we made by pushing our twin mattresses together, holding hands and whispering their names into our pillows like wishes on stars.
Then one night, Anita showed me a picture of Zeke. He’s tall and muscular and Black. She was going to find out sooner or later, so I pulled out a strip of pictures Samuel and I had taken at a photo booth and handed it to her.
Anita’s face knotted up, like she drank cold water too fast and had to wait for the brain freeze to subside.
“He’s white,” she observed.
“Correct. He is also nice and funny and makes my whole body tingle…”
“You told Mummy and Daddy yet?”
I hadn’t. My parents are strict and traditional. They’re immigrants who want us to have good, uncomplicated lives. Honestly, I don’t know how the
y might react to me dating a Jewish man, or how I might respond if they don’t approve. Anita read my mind as I mulled over the best way to respond.
“Well…,” she said, handing the photo back to me like it was a foreign object, unable to mask the skepticism in her voice, “as long as you’re sure…Are you sure, that you are sure?”
“I love him,” I said.
Usually, she wouldn’t shut up for anything, but I think she could tell how much I cared and decided against further commentary. When my two weeks were up, I left New York feeling like my life had fallen into place, and when I hugged my family and told them I would miss them, I meant it more than when I’d left six months prior.
Once back in Chicago, I went straight to the dorms, frostbitten from the sub-arctic winter winds and eager to see Samuel. Before even dropping my belongings off in my room, I stopped by his and knocked on the door. No one answered. It was seven-thirty, prime dinner time, so I left a note on the dry-erase board plastered to the door and went to my room. I sat by the phone for an hour, cursing the skies that my mom hadn’t given me a cell phone for Christmas, as I had requested, and checking the cord to make sure it was plugged in correctly.
I woke up in the morning to the smell of old soup, my sad dinner from the night before. A cold Cup O’ Noodles sat on my desk, near where I had passed out. I jumped up to call Samuel’s room again, but he didn’t answer, so I went downstairs in case he’d left a note in my mailbox. As I entered the lobby, I walked right into what looked like a morning coffee date between Samuel and an older woman.
Somehow, Samuel was more handsome than he had been two weeks before. He didn’t say much as he scooted over on the couch to make room for me. We sat in an awkward silence. I introduced myself to the woman, who turned out to be Samuel’s mom, Aviva. She cheerfully caught me up on all they’d been doing in Chicago, visiting museums and seeing shows, like we were old girlfriends. Samuel sat quietly.
“Where are you from, Corinne?” she asked.
“New York City.”
“Oh, I love New York! You’re not too far from us in Connecticut,” she exclaimed, clasping her hands together as though she’d caught a firefly. “I’m glad Sam has so many friends.”
Samuel’s knee bounced so hard that the couch vibrated like a massage chair at a nail salon. I reached over to grab his hand, but he coughed and pulled away.
“We should get going, Mom. We don’t want to be late,” he said.
“Rent. A matinee,” Aviva boasted. “Corinne, are you free this evening? It’s my last night here. We can add to the reservation at Gibsons. The more, the merrier.”
Flattered, I nodded, ashamed that Samuel had told his mother about me while I had kept him a secret from my parents. I turned to ask Samuel what time the reservation was when Becky’s ear-piercing laugh cut through the space. Aviva waved to her ecstatically and Becky walked over, her thin lips curled in an evil grin at the sight of me.
“We’ll see you at dinner, won’t we, doll?” Aviva asked her.
“Wouldn’t miss it!” Becky chirped, unable to keep herself from raising her cleavage a bit closer to the light.
Becky beamed, and I suddenly understood why Samuel had never called me the night before. The humiliation took over my body like a rash, spreading hot under my skin. Anxious, I rummaged through my purse to buy some time and come up with an excuse to get away.
“Oh, uh, sorry, I actually have plans tonight,” I stammered, and ran off, waving goodbye before I lost control.
I cried for the rest of the day and night, disgusted with myself for being so dumb and leaving my family early to be trapped in this empty dorm for weeks before anyone I knew would be around. I cried because before Samuel, I had never felt this deep, beautiful ache that sat in my heart and exploded whenever I thought of him. Now that same ache had turned sharp and violent with every breath I took.
Around midnight there was a knock on my door. I refused to get myself out of bed, worried that if I got too close, he might intoxicate me all over again. Eventually, the knocking and the whispers stopped, and I let myself drift into a restless sleep, plagued by dreams where I fell into a deep, dark hole and couldn’t claw my way out.
The next day, when I finally willed myself out of bed to get some food, I found Samuel asleep outside my door.
“Let me explain,” he said, jumping up and blocking my way. “I mixed up the date you were coming back and I told my mom I was seeing someone, but Becky must have planted some sort of tracker device on me, because she appeared everywhere we went, and my mom just assumed—”
“Why didn’t you correct her? Why didn’t you introduce me?”
“I didn’t think you’d be back in time to meet her, so I figured if she thought Becky is who I’m dating and she saw how awful she is, then when she met you—”
“Oh! You wanted to soften the blow that you’re dating a Black girl by replacing me with a terrible non-Jewish white girl and have your mother be grateful I’m not her?” I screamed.
“No. No—that’s n-not…,” he stuttered, but then straightened up like a prepared lawyer who set the prosecution up for the trap they fell right into. “So you told your family about me? You told your Baptist minister father that I’m a white Jewish guy from Connecticut?”
My hesitation answered his question and his shoulders relaxed, confident that he’d caught me in a double standard.
“I don’t care what anyone thinks, because I don’t see you as Black or anything other than the woman I love,” he said, stepping forward. “It’s just us. That’s all that matters.”
He kissed me, and all at once, we were one stream of breath and one slow and steady heartbeat.
Ever since Raymond, I feel so much guilt whenever I look at myself. All I see in the mirror is a filthy, unfixable stain, and yet Samuel can’t see anything but my smile and my eyes. He sees me the way I thought Raymond did. He would never hurt me, not like that. He waited outside my dorm room all night just for a chance to make things right.
“It’s just us,” I repeated. “That’s all that matters.”
My phone buzzes next to me, a text from Jesus.
1:30 a.m. Fallin’ asleep with you on my mind. See you tomorrow?
Thinking about him reminds me of sitting on a tire swing that has been wound up to the very top and then released so it spins like a tornado. My stomach jumps up to my throat and my hair goes electric. It feels as though I’m standing at the center of the solar system while the rest of the universe moves around and around and around.
This is how it happens, the voice in me says. First they charm you, and then they brainwash you, until you end up like Mom, a ghost, even though her body sleeps just a hundred feet away.
I close the text unanswered and wait for the spinning in my chest to stop. I chug some seltzer to wash the taste of Jesus away and try to convince myself that I won’t make the same mistakes my mom did. I try to convince myself that I don’t want him more than anything else. I can’t pick a guy over who I need to become—whoever that is.
Chapter 18
“You want to get food before we go?” Stevie asks me as we walk out the front doors of the school on Monday.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I don’t have to look to know it’s Jesus. He’s been hitting me up ever since Friday night. So far, I’ve only broken down and responded twice with emojis to keep things casual: a winking smiley face and the laugh-cry cat.
“Hmm? Go where?” I ask, distracted.
“My rehearsal.”
The leaves have already started to fall off the trees, coating the streets with a thin, papery layer that crackles under the feet of classmates as they flee the school grounds and head toward pizza slices and make-out sessions. Last week, Stevie cornered me and made me promise to watch his routine for the Lena Zahira dance fellowship first-round auditions, but considering everything I have
going on, participating in my best friend’s plan to abandon me for a year is not at the top of my list of priorities.
“I can’t,” I tell him, and his face falls.
I hate his rehearsals. They make me wish terrible, selfish things would happen so it’ll be impossible for him to compete. I usually go because if I don’t, no one else will, and best friends are supposed to be there for each other, but today I have a viable excuse.
“Sorry. Bat mitzvah practice.”
“Right,” he says. “No biggie.” He walks away before I can remind him that he is going to be great.
* * *
—
Rabbi Sarah is outside when I arrive at the temple. She looks pleased that her threat of blackmail has been getting me here in a timely fashion. Rather than going downstairs, she takes a left and leads us to a waiting area outside two wooden doors. There’s a small shelf to the right of the entrance holding a basket of silk caps. She takes one and places it at the very top of her head before entering.
“Grab a kippah, if you want,” she says, but I keep my hands in my pockets. The idea of wearing a shared headpiece makes me want to douse my body in hand sanitizer.
The wooden doors to the dark sanctuary creak like a haunted house. Rabbi Sarah walks in, undaunted, and navigates her way to a wall, where she flicks on the lights. The room is simple, less ostentatious than my grandfather’s church and many of the other temples I have been to for bar and bat mitzvahs.
Rabbi Sarah beckons me to the front of the altar, where she now wears a white scarf that she retrieved from some hidden closet. The sound of my footsteps is swallowed by the carpet beneath them. Unlike Mount Olivene Baptist Church, which seems to be constantly filled with laughter and music, this room exudes calm reflection and meditation, sort of like internal worship as opposed to loud group celebration.
