And so began our Organized Family Fun, or as Genny, Happi, and I called it when our parents first came up with this idea, OFF. (As in: Jesus, please turn it OFF.)
This evening was no different than any other. At first. Mom was perched at one end of the table, chattering about her day visiting sick congregation members with Derek’s mom, Aunt Imani, while Dad ate silently across from her, nodding his head here and there to show he was listening.
“All right, Happi,” Mom said. “It’s your turn. Give us your HLLs.”
Happi yawned exaggeratedly. “High: the girl who was originally going to play Helena in my school’s performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream transferred schools suddenly, so Mrs. Torres is recasting her role. Low: Kezi banging on the bathroom door like she’s lost all common sense.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes.
“And Lesson: I guess really learning my lines for this role, because I’m going to try out again. This time, I’m going to kill it.”
“Very good,” Dad said after he swallowed a large spoonful of pot pie. “What about you, Kez?”
“Well...” I started as I wiped my mouth. “I would say that my High was definitely standing up to my low-key racist history teacher, Mr. Bamhauer.”
“What’s that now?” Mom said putting down her hibiscus tea. “You know we don’t send you to school to be making scenes—”
“He basically claimed that slavery wasn’t that bad.”
Dad choked on his bite of chicken.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t say anything crazy to him that would get me expelled or anything,” I said. I’d chosen my words carefully. And then I’d shared my thoughts online.
Mom looked at my calm face suspiciously but let it rest.
“My Low is having to deal with Happi hogging the bathroom. Again.” I wasn’t getting into the real drama I was going through with Ximena.
“Petty,” Happi interrupted.
“And—” I said, raising my voice to talk over my sister “—I would say that my biggest Lesson today would be everything I read in this little book here.”
“What book is that?” Happi asked, right before I pulled Ximena’s gift out of my book bag.
“It’s Ximena’s grandmother’s copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book,” I said. “It was like a special kind of Yellow Pages. Except this one was to help Black people travel safely through the US during Jim Crow. Abuelita Caridad has one of the most recent editions from the sixties. They stopped publishing a few years after the Civil Rights Act was passed.”
“Okay...thank you for the PBS special,” Happi said. “But you could’ve just said that it’s another version of that crusty old pamphlet Dad keeps locked up in the safe. And Ximena’s hardly Black. Her granny too.”
“I’m not even going to get into how problematic it is that you think Ximena isn’t Black enough,” I said to Happi with a look of disdain. “The Green Book was primarily used by African Americans, yes, but it was also used by people who were considered second-class citizens at the time. That includes Latinx, Jewish, and multiethnic and multiracial people. And for your information, Ximena’s grandma happens to fall in several of those groups. I’m going to include her firsthand account of using this book in my AP Human Geography report about the Great Migration.”
I glanced sideways at Dad. “The internet’s great and all, but I’m so relieved I also get to work with a physical Green Book, since someone won’t even let me look at their copy...”
“Hey now,” Dad said defensively. “I told you that I’ve only got two heirlooms from my grandparents. That crumbling yellowed Green Book and an old letter from my grandpa to my mother. And while they’re in my possession, I’m not letting anything happen to them.”
Mom nodded in support while Happi rolled her eyes.
“Maybe you can compare the listings in Ximena’s copy of the Green Book with the online database, since she has a newer version of what’s included on the website,” Dad suggested. “And if you don’t get an A on that project, I’m going down to that school myself, because your teacher would have to be crazy. You’re putting in a lot of work there, missy!”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “But it doesn’t even feel like it. You know how much I love this stuff. It even gave me an idea to go on a road trip to celebrate my graduation. I started putting together the itinerary and everything a few weeks ago and posted a video yesterday announcing the stops I’m making this summer. I’m going to be in Chicago already because of that award I’m accepting, so I figured we could take Route 66 back home to California. Our last Green Book excursion should of course be Clifton’s, that restaurant we went to last year to celebrate my birthday... Grandma DeeDee said her dad’s best friend Parker was one of the first Black chefs they ever hired, after he moved out west for training. Maybe I can invite the Williamses again when we get back to give everyone a recap!”
“Graduation road trip?” Happi scoffed. “That’s so lame.”
“I don’t think so! I’m going to film it for my YouTube channel, and I’m taking Ximena and Derek with me. You might want to keep your calendar open for this ‘lame’ trip, because I want you and Genny to come too. It’ll be a last sister-friend hoorah before I go off to college.”
“Hmmm. I think I’ll pass. But thanks.”
Mom and Dad exchanged a glance, and Mom interrupted before I could reply.
“So, Kezi! I think that sounds like a lovely idea. And speaking of graduation, let’s talk about more immediate celebrations. Like dinner tomorrow. I know the big party is going to be this weekend since your birthday falls on a Tuesday, but do you have any special requests for what you’d like me to make?”
“Honestly, Ma, whatever you cook will be fine with me. Shoot, I’d be more than happy if this pot pie was the last meal of yours that I ever ate, it’s so good. And spicy!”
Mom smiled widely with pride. One of her grandmothers was Haitian, which mainly meant that Mom threw scotch bonnet peppers into anything savory she cooked to feel “connected to the island.”
Wonderful. I’d put her in a good mood before I dropped the bomb that I had been sitting on since I sat down to dinner.
“Besides,” I continued. “I might be a little later than seven for dinner tomorrow...since I’m headed to the protest.”
“What protest?” Mom and Dad said in unison.
“You know,” I said, then slowly took my last bite of food and gulped down my water, stalling for time. “The one that they’ve been talking about on the news these last few days.”
“Which one?” Happi asked. “I’m losing count.”
“You must have heard about Jamal Coleman, the father in Florida whose kids watched the police shoot him to death a week ago,” I said. “I’m going.”
“No. You’re not.” Mom spoke with such finality that I almost agreed with her. “I don’t have to remind you of all people that my grandfather Joseph was murdered and the police were not on our side, do I? He used that special Green Book, tried to find a place where no white people would bother him, and they still found the man. An entire family was destroyed. The police didn’t want to hear about it then, and they don’t want to hear about it now, particularly when they’re directly involved in all this foolishness.”
“I’m with your mom on this one,” Dad said, always the unified front.
I cleared my throat.
“Tomorrow, I turn eighteen, and that means that I’m officially an adult,” I said.
Happi’s eyebrows leapt up to her baby hairs as I stood to clear my place at the table.
“I’ll be an adult who makes her own choices. Who gets to live out loud. And what I want to do is my part to make society better for us all. So that no more families are destroyed. Especially the ones that look like ours.
“So you can be with my mom on this one all you want, but I’m still going.”
&n
bsp; 7
For Malcolm Smith.
Father of Kezi. A letter.
WRITTEN MONDAY, APRIL 16—1 DAY BEFORE THE ARREST
Dear Daddy,
I stopped calling you Daddy in public a long time ago because I need my street cred. Don’t worry though. I know you’ll always think of me as your little girl. You see, I know a lot of things. For example, I know you’re nervous, wondering what type of job I can get majoring in African American Studies and History. And I know you’ll be proud of me no matter what. And I of course know you’ll support my dreams even if you don’t always get them.
But as I sit here and contemplate all of these things I know as confidently as my own name, I realize you probably have no idea why I want to pursue this particular degree in the first place. Well, it’s because I’ll be able to dig into our stories. I can do my part to help pull together the threads of our past to form a better view of our historical tapestry.
When I’m delving into my research, it’s like I’m a detective on a case, following a trail of clues as far as it can take me. At the end of this chase is a less opaque understanding of what we’ve gone through as a people. It’s a call that I want to answer again and again.
Anyway, I was able to use my super sleuthing skills on something closer to home. As soon as I sat down to write my report about The Negro Motorist Green Book for my AP Human Geography class, I knew that I wanted to keep exploring. It made me think not just about how Black people were living during the period of the guide but specifically how our own family was navigating this country. That led me to calling up Grandma DeeDee and mapping our relatives’ moves through time. And the result of that search is what you’re holding in your hands right now.
It’s called narrative nonfiction. Basically, I took my conversations with Grandma DeeDee and learned about our past loved ones. These pages hold the story of Great-Grandma Evelyn. I’m so proud of this, Pops! I’ve started talking with a POC drama troupe about maybe filming something for my YouTube page and everything. I’m even thinking of having Happi play Great-Gran Evelyn, but she doesn’t know it yet. Do you think she’ll say yes? It’s going to be a series about how real people used the Green Book to travel through the US, told through the eyes of our family. It’s my way of having her legacy live on. I think she’d be proud.
And I know I haven’t mentioned the elephant in the room about you and Ma getting mad at me during dinner. But I’m hoping that when you read through this, you’ll understand why I have to go even though you don’t want me to. Evelyn had to run away when trouble came knocking on her door all those years ago. But now that we have the chance to at least speak up and let ourselves be heard, I’m never going to stop fighting for that. Because it’s not just for me. It’s for all of us.
Love,
Kezi
8
EVELYN
SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 1937—
80 YEARS, 8 MONTHS, 16 DAYS BEFORE THE ARREST
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
“Oh, how I miss my hair,” Evelyn thought aloud wistfully as she tugged on a silky tendril.
It was all there of course. God needn’t update the official count on her head. But it was gone just the same. A brief rustle of wind lifted the bangs from her face then gently guided them back down. To mock her. One small consolation was that the strange, straight strands hanging limply down to her shoulders, jet-black and shining with pomade, would not stay that way long.
Beside her, the neighbor’s dog had her tongue splayed out of the corner of her pointy mouth; she was beyond panting. My, my, Evelyn’s companion was shuddering from heat exhaustion. Evelyn leaned over to caress the animal sympathetically and laughed when the golden retriever shrugged her hand off. It was too hot for affection.
This was a warmer summer than last by several degrees. And as such, it was but a matter of time before the droplets of sweat and splashes of chlorinated pool water would find their way into Evelyn’s tendrils, where they would curl and kink and knot her locks back into her preferred halo of an afro. To be clear, Evelyn liked to think that her hair would be as desperate to return to its nappy roots in the height of winter, with air as dry as a cotton ball. Ah. Cotton. Like her old hair.
No more distractions. She swiped her hair from her eyes one last time and stared at the flyer like it was the answer to all the prayers she hadn’t bothered to utter this entire summer. The creases from the neat square she folded the paper into when she wasn’t admiring it had rubbed off some of the ink, but it was no matter. She knew the words by heart: Thank you for your sponsorship of Warm Springs. We welcome you to...
“Is that Evelyn Hayes?” said a dull-witted voice.
Evelyn cringed. Antonin Cerny was a stereotype, unfortunately. Each dimpled cheek, sharp angle of chiseled jaw, and gorgeous hole of nostril seemed to correspond with the loss of an IQ point. He was very, very handsome. Like his daddy, Mrs. Cerny liked to say. Emphatically. But Antonin Sr. had been nowhere to be found for fourteen years now. So Evelyn wouldn’t know.
“Yes, Antonin,” Evelyn replied as she slipped the paper into her pocket. “I changed my hair, not my face. Or my address.”
Perched atop her family stoop on West 122nd Street was where she felt most regal. If Evelyn sat at the highest step of the staircase, with her back pin straight, it didn’t matter that she was missing the scepter and crown. Residents of their thriving Harlem neighborhood would stop by, pay their respects. Never mind it was just to find out if Mrs. Hayes was taking new customers, or ask about Mr. Hayes’s shoulder, or check in on Calvin at Morehouse. I still can’t believe that boy went all the way down to Atlanta. I wish my son would fix his mouth to tell me he was going to Georgia! Like the white folks in the North aren’t bad enough. Well, anyway, tell your ma I stopped by...
Church had been over for hours, but Antonin was still dressed in his blue slacks and white button-down shirt. His growth spurt had finally kicked in this summer, but his wardrobe hadn’t caught up. He liked the way girls looked at his growing chest and his ripening forearms. This was not conjecture. The boy had been dumb enough to tell Evelyn that one lazy afternoon two weeks ago. Then he’d asked her if she ever looked at him that way, and Evelyn had pushed Antonin from her throne, all the way down, down, down to the sidewalk, just as two friends from school were walking by. Of course she had looked. He had turned his head and grinned as he let the girls help brush him off and usher him away.
But here he was again, leaning on the iron railing like he rented the place. (Not owned.) His feet were planted firmly on the sidewalk, but he still looked at Evelyn in thinly muffled, enraptured fear. She pretended not to notice.
“So what emotional turmoil are you currently enduring, Miss Evelyn?”
“What are you talking about, boy?” She crossed her arms to underscore her words.
“I don’t claim to know everything, but I do know women.” He chuckled to himself. The dog almost lifted her furry head to see what was so funny, but seemed to realize she didn’t care. “And what fifteen years with my mother as my mother has taught me is that when a woman changes her hair in such a drastic manner, we all better watch out.”
Not bad.
“And what do you think I’m...enduring?”
Antonin considered her thoughtfully, even biting his thumbnail in that way he did when he was thinking hard.
“By the looks of it...” he said as he sat down beside her. Their elbows kissed. He didn’t move. (She didn’t either.) “A broken heart.”
“Of course you would go straight to—”
“But not regular heartbreak,” he said, speaking louder. “Whatever you’re dealing with has poked a giant hole through your soul.”
Hmm.
Maybe there was something going on underneath that bed of waves of a head after all.
Nevertheless.
“I was supposed to go somewhere with my daddy, but I changed my min
d and didn’t want to anymore,” she said. There. A change in subject.
“But you’re a girl. Aren’t you supposed to do everything they tell you?” He meant it in the nicest way possible.
Evelyn glared at Antonin, cocking her head so that the daggers she was shooting at him would lodge firmly in his pitch-brown irises.
He put his hands up in surrender. “Hey, I don’t make the rules. And if I did, I wouldn’t make them that way.”
“Well, my family doesn’t live by ‘the rules’ much,” she said. “My mama probably makes way more money sewing clothes than my daddy does at the post office, for one.”
“How is Mrs. Hayes? I haven’t seen her at church lately. My mother wanted to show her how she styled the new dress she made her.”
The electricity between their bones, piercing through skin easily, fizzled at the mention of Evelyn’s mother. She pulled her arm away (okay, reluctantly) and embraced herself.
“Do you ever fear you and your mother are too close?”
Antonin chuckled. “Never. It’s been me and her my whole life. I’d be more afraid if we weren’t close.”
He looked at her with an eyebrow raised. He’d made the sharpest of points.
“Mr. Cerny, I hope you listened hard to Pastor’s sermon this morning!” Evelyn’s father’s voice boomed as he rounded the corner and approached the stoop. People on the block liked to say Mr. Hayes had a preternatural sense of awareness. That he could tell who was near his daughter at all times with just a sniff of the air.
“Yessir,” Antonin said, leaping to his feet. He held out his hand in greeting as Mr. Hayes walked up the steps. Her father ignored it.
“James 1 verse 15,” Mr. Hayes bellowed. He paused, waiting for Antonin or Evelyn to recite. When they continued to stare at him blankly, he shook his head as if to say, had they not been at the same service he’d attended this morning?
“...after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” Mr. Hayes looked meaningfully—no, menacingly—at Antonin as he ended on death. No need to spell it out more explicitly than that.
One of the Good Ones Page 5
