“If I have to tell you, you don’t need to know.” My father’s tone reeked of resenting my intrusion. Or maybe simply me. My mother shook his hand in silent chiding. He drew on his cigarette and turned away to study the shadows.
“What is it, baby?” my mother asked.
I handed her the folded paper Cathedral High School sent home. The private school marked the first time in my life I ventured beyond the confines of the neighbourhood to attend school. Only one of a handful of black students there, most of the kids made fun of me for being too black.
“This says there was an incident in class.” Her voice rose, implying a question.
“My Algebra teacher hates me.” Fearing too much gesturing might make me look like I was spinning a tale, I shoved my empty hands into my pockets.
“How so?” Already unconvinced, she released my father’s hand and straightened, crossing her arms.
“He seats the class based on how good your grades are. I get A’s on just about every test, which frustrates this one kid who sits two seats down.” I skipped the part where since he was quick to talk about “that coon” or “that porch monkey,” every time a test was handed back, I rubbed my A all in his face. “He looked at his test, jumped up, ripped it up, and muttered ‘this nigger’ under his breath.”
“So, what’d you do?” She parsed my words with care.
“Nothing. I wasn’t going to trip over that. He’d already lost.”
A quick smirk crossed my father’s lips. The memory of his upturned lips and proud glint in his eye seared itself into my memory. With another drag on his cigarette, he drifted back to his thoughts.
“The teacher pulled me aside after class to ask me what I planned to do after high school. I said go to Purdue University to study engineering. He was concerned that I was . . . overreaching.”
My mother’s eyes narrowed. “So, what did you do?”
“Nothing.” I held my breath. Richard Pryor preached in the background. I should have said, “Fuck you and your concern. Sir.” I could picture my mother throwing her hands in the air and yelling “Lord have mercy. You just like your father. Always such an extremist.” My father might have slid me some skin on that one. “That was when I was sent to the guidance counsellor. They said I couldn’t take the Calculus class I wanted.”
“The hell you can’t.” My mother’s eyes locked onto me like a poised cobra. I never had to explain who “us” were. Just like she understood that “they” wasn’t just the counsellor. “I am paying good money out of my pocket for you to go to that fancy school.”
“They said I was on the ‘business track.’ All of us were and there was no room in the advanced track.”
“Nah. My money’s just as green. You can take any class you want.” My mother wadded up the piece of paper. “You should never be made to feel like you have to apologize just for existing.”
“Scientists agree that the first person to live to one thousand was probably already alive.”
“Negotiations continue with the Holland Accords, to settle the interfaith wars raging across Europe.”
“Ghana launches Outer Spaceways Inc. to explore commercial space travel.”
A notice blipped, interrupting Hakeem Buhari’s scrolling through the headlines of the day, as a holovid informed him of a meeting with his supervisor. In the eighteen months since he’d been promoted to team lead, he’d honed his squad of six into a tight-knit group who’d walk through fire for each other. Half of them huddled in a corner talking mad trash to each other, their topics ranging from the status of their perspective projects, to current events, to issues bubbling up in their neighbourhood. One had missed a few days due to illness and focussed on getting caught up on her work. The last, like Hakeem, kicked back and studied the news of the day.
“Hakeem, come in. Have a seat.” Not rising from his chair, Basic Boss Chad—how Hakeem referred to him—gestured to the empty space across from his desk. A half-eaten sandwich swaddled in the remainder of its wrapper rested next to his holograph array of spreadsheets. A series of bars and projections calculating profit in real time. He interlaced his fingers and rested them on the large swell of his belly while Hakeem settled in. “Your team’s doing well.”
“The top in the division.” Hakeem was not about to let management spin any narrative that diminished him or his team’s efforts. Their department had recently rolled out a new citywide administrative AI system. In his spare time, he sketched out the design for the next generation system he called Morpheus.
“Be that as it may, they are developing a bit of a reputation.”
“What sort of reputation do we have.” Hakeem leaned forward, correcting the message from they, as if he wasn’t part of the team. Another one of management’s games was to separate the pack.
“That, for example. That tone as if you’re already mad about something. Tip toeing on eggshells makes it so hard to manage you . . .” Basic Boss Chad caught himself, his hand waving, passing through the projection of the cost of productivity impacted by this meeting—somehow magically erasing the mine he was about to step on. “Can I be frank? It’s much easier to talk if we can dispense with the PC nonsense.”
“Sure. I’m not going to trip over petty nonsense.” Hakeem smiled, cold and welcoming, a shark not wanting to startle the prey swimming about him. “I always like to know who I’m dealing with.”
“Good. It always offended me to have to refer to you as ‘African Americans’ much less what’s the new word making the rounds? Ugenini? What the hell is that? It’s divisive, is what it is.”
“Yeah, that’s what’s divisive.” It was “frank” comments like that which earned him the nom-de-guerre Basic Boss Chad. Hakeem grew more exhausted than anything else. Over the course of his long life, he’d sparred with management over the same brand of bullshit. But he was more mad at himself than the company. Compromising his dream of chasing his own hustle, remaining free, because the very real pressure of becoming a father and needing medical benefits led him back into the trap of working for someone else. He was tired and didn’t know how much fight he had left. “I’m good with ‘black.’ I run a black department. I run the black department.”
“I was thinking about bringing in a new manager to oversee your black division.” Basic Boss Chad emphasized the word “black” like it was a cuss word tripping off his tongue. And by manager, he referred to Basic Boss Becky. She’d been chatting up the superintendent for months, as if the entire floor hadn’t noticed her ambitious-at-the-cost-of-anyone-else ass.
“No, we’re not doing that,” Hakeem said flatly.
“I don’t think you get to . . .”
“I get it.” Hakeem held his hands up in mock surrender. “Your masters have yanked on your chain to bring us field folks under control. The superintendent probably thinks we’re shiftless and don’t get enough work done.”
“What do you think about that?” Basic Boss Chad’s eyes widened with mild surprise.
“According to the reports of any folks like Ba—” —he caught himself before he ended up in HR’s office— “based on her whispers in his ear, it’s true. Because when there’s no work to be done, I’m not going to have my crew fake like they’re doing something. That said, our team of six gets more done in a week than your department of thirty does in a month.”
“Well, as you said, she has the ear of the superintendent.”
“I don’t care if she’s got God on speed vec.” Hakeem glanced through the office window. His team watched him like he was an athlete in a sporting event. Assuming management had promoted him to provide an opportunity for him to fail, he’d assembled his team on his terms. Built on a philosophy of relationships over everything else, when shit hit the fan, they knew the accountability stopped with him and he wouldn’t let anything land on them. “My team is my team.”
“I’m gathering that neither you nor your team would respond well to new oversight?” Too cheap for implants or genetic sequencing to fix his eyes, Basic Boss Chad lowered his head to study him over his photo-electric lenses.
“An overseer’s an overseer when you’re on the plantation. I’m simply saying, as long as I’m here and they’re under me, we’re going to remain free. If you don’t mind my frankness.”
Basic Boss Chad’s face flushed a red so deep, Hakeem feared he might need to summon a medic unit.
Finally, Basic Boss Chad scooted toward his desk. “I like to know what I’m dealing with, too.” With that, he dismissed Hakeem, turning away like a captain surveying a new series of star charts to make course adjustments.
STAGE TWO: Reminder
Paint flecked from the siding of our house. The concrete floor of our porch was in desperate need of touch-ups, the steps reduced to a burgeoning scree of pebbles. But none of that mattered. What mattered was that the space was ours. Other kids came to hang out on our stoop mostly because my mother was always quick with a pitcher of Kool Aid for us.
“Look at ‘em.” His government name was Montaque Harding, but everyone called him Q. Tall and thin, basketball flowed deep in his veins, his every move ending with a practice juke or a layup. He managed to be fifteen and sound like an embittered old man. “Pulling up on a brotha knowing good and got-damn well he ain’t do nothing.”
As I was the youngest kid on the block, the other kids often felt they had to explain things to me. But this particular sight was all-too-familiar. A cop car squatted in front of a house where Kenny Washington, a famous jazz player, once lived. His family moved away a while ago as the neighbourhood continued to change. Developers bought up properties to use as rentals, leaving scores of neighbours moving about like cicadas in the summer. The police officer remained in his car, surveying the comings and goings of the block.
“Fuck him,” I said, testing out my newfound ability to cuss from my front porch. Out of habit, I checked over my shoulder to see if my mother was coming at me, shoe in hand. Still, part of me wondered what the house occupants had done wrong to have police crawl up on them. The thought was pure reflex, and it angered me. Being under constant scrutiny, as if we lived in a zoo exhibit, trained us to feel suspected, embarrassed, and ashamed, just for living in our neighbourhood. The cop’s car growled to life and began to ease into the street. It crept by the porch, words locking and loading in the back of my throat. “Get out of here, pig!” I shouted.
The car rolled on for three houses before the brake lights blared. The taillights flashed white and the car began to reverse. My friend Michael peeled off the side of the porch, tumbling over the ledge before he was seen by the patrolman. In plain sight, me and Q froze as the vehicle stopped in front of my house.
The cop waited in his vehicle for several heartbeats, taking his time to unbuckle. His short-sleeved shirt revealed a thick mat of light red hair along his burly arms. A trimmed moustache gilded his youthful face, like he’d just graduated from the academy. Slowly removing his sunglasses, he levelled his unflinching gaze at us and unholstered his weapon. “Who called me a pig?” He put his entire weight into making his voice boom with authority.
Not risking even a sideways glance at each other, our attention focussed on the gun looming huge in his hands.
“Come on now, fess up fellas. You were all kinds of bold a minute ago. Who’s got something to say now?”
“What’s going on . . . officer?” My father said from the doorway. Tall, straight, and proud, his black leather jacket matched his shirt and pants, like he wore the uniform of the community. “What you got the gun out for?”
“The boy called me a pig.” The way he emphasized the word “boy,” we knew he meant a different word.
“So what?” My father kept marching down the stairs, deliberate but easy. His hands remained in plain sight, not giving the officer an excuse to shoot. “He can call you a cat, dog, rat, pig, any creature on God’s green earth . . . it ain’t a crime. Especially one worth drawing a gun for.”
The pair of them faced off, neither one giving an inch. My father’s bold defiance sprang from being used to marching in tandem with others from the neighbourhood. But there were no others today. The officer’s lips upturned in a cruel smirk. He holstered his weapon.
“Name and identification.” The cop’s tone didn’t invite debate.
The moment shifted, the way clouds had a way of turning green before a tornado ripped through your life.
“I’m a man on his property not doing anything wrong.” My father shifted his weight from one foot to the other as if suddenly unsure of the ground he stood on.
“Refusing to obey a police officer’s directions.” With that announcement, the officer seized my father. He barely had a chance to grunt a protest before the officer had him on the ground. Knee in his back. The officer rifled through his pockets, turning them out as if my father were no more than a toy he decided to play rough with. “Got anything in here that will stick me?”
“I don’t do drugs,” my father coughed out, each breath a desperate exhalation. But he refused to give the officer the satisfaction of hearing the sounds of his pain.
“Get off him! He can’t breathe!” I wanted to yell, but the words caught in my throat. I wanted to throw myself on him, or even run away, but I couldn’t will any part of my body to move.
“You’d be the first on this block not to.” The cop ground my father further into the dirt. Like he wasn’t a man, wasn’t human. He wasn’t anything. Something to bend and torture at will as the officer pushed my father’s arms, drawing them back, nearly tearing them out of their sockets, until he cried out.
Cuffed, chained, my father’s eyes locked onto mine. His face contorted, a miasma of terror and pain and anger. And shame. His gaze grew distant, resigned, like he both needed me to witness him and yet somehow could not watch me see him broken this way.
For something I did.
“What’s going on out here?” my mother shouted.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to keep back.” The officer tugged my father’s wallet from his back pocket.
“What’s going on? These boys make you fear for your life? Officer.” She spat the last word out.
“Lamont Little, Sr.” Little more than glancing at the name, he turned my father’s license over in his hands. “You know this man, ma’am?”
“He’s my husband.”
“You managed to get a man to stick around?” He remained on my father’s back long enough to drive his point home to each of us.
It wasn’t just him. It wasn’t just this city. It was an entire system, so completely part of the way we lived it was like air we all breathed. He unshackled my father and tipped his cap to my mother. “You have a nice day. Ma’am.”
My father remained on the ground. Only once the police car’s door slammed shut did he begin to gather himself and raise up. Avoiding meeting our eyes as much as we did his, allowed him space to hold onto the remaining tatters of his dignity. But he walked as if something had been beaten within him.
A few months later, my father had another one of his shamanistic experiences.
Through the years, it was simply not something we talked about. Shamanistic was what I called them, based on what little information I had. I struggled to wrap my tiny head around this figure who moved in and out of my life, gone for long stretches of time. In the story I created, he was a shaman on a retreat, experiencing a mystical way of seeing, which took him to another level.
One day when I returned home from school, the living room looked like someone had broken in and tossed the place, searching for secrets. The family—mom was also gone—said he’d been checked into a hospital in Marion.
“. . . so what did you do?” Dona, Ms. Jywanza as she preferred these days, le
aned over the counter of the Weusi Press Bookstore. She gestured toward the seating area. Her college days’ vision come to fruition, she called the store—weusi being the Swahili word for blackness—her base of operations. Ever since the two of them were kids, growing up in the same neighbourhood, Dona had believed they had to run and control their own institutions, or they could never be free. She built a digital publishing house and coffeeshop that doubled as a staging area for her community work. When they were kids, he had the same dreams.
“After that conversation, management did what management does. They dangled trinkets in front of each member of the team. New projects. Pay raises with new titles to work under Basic Boss Becky. Promotions which shipped them off to different departments, even different cities.”
“They completely dismantled your team?”
“Right from under me. Management was willing to hurt themselves. I’m talking complete setbacks on some projects—my Morpheus initiative was a non-starter—just to put me in my place. They left me in the department, a leader without a team. Some of my crew pleaded with me to talk to management.”
“So, you . . .” Her voice trailed off, raising it to signal a question but allowing him space to answer in his own time. Ms. Jywanza gestured for a servo unit to bring over another cup of coffee.
“. . . did what I had to do. Packed up my shit and turned in my notice.”
“How are you holding up?” She rested her hand on his arm in that easy, comfortable way they always shared.
“Good, I think. I have my work.” Hakeem patted his wrist. A holovid activated and a file displayed a logo for Morpheus. “I just . . . I guess I need to figure out what’s next.”
Ms. Jywanza left him to his thoughts, allowing Hakeem to sip his coffee in something approximating his own space. As the young people used to say, he was ride or die for his community, but he needed to figure out what the third act of his life was going to be. The downside to better technology and healthcare was longer life. The laws hadn’t caught up to the realities of such longevity. To be unemployed at his age: too old to come in at an entry level position, too young to accept retirement with so many decades ahead of him. All but unhireable. Unmoored best described his unsettled spirit. Unattached to any foundation, unable to get traction, not knowing how to start or where to go if he did. Gone were the days of one job, one employer, for the length of a career. Now he had to recreate himself every decade or so. Had to think about who he was, what he offered, and dream of possibilities for himself. The uncertainty was the worst, not knowing what came next. The kind of panic which led to him accepting the job he’d just quit.
Seasons Between Us Page 30
