The Black Kids

by Christina Hammonds Reed

  “Lucia?” I want to tell her everything. I want so badly for her to tell me how to make everything better.

  “ ‘Baila esta cumbia,’ ” she sings. So I do.

  My father enters the kitchen and we dance with each other. He laughs and twirls Lucia around.

  My mother comes down the stairs, her Jheri curl in flat wet rings around her face, and my father looks up, guilty, ’cause he’s been caught being a dolphin with somebody else.

  My mother looks askance at Lucia, and Lucia abruptly stops dancing. I feel a quiet nimbus beginning to swell in my mother. Best to provide a distraction before it rains, I decide.

  “I spoke to Jo this morning,” I blurt out.

  My mother stops looking at Lucia and my father together and turns her attention to me. “You didn’t think to tell us this earlier?” she says.

  My father starts to scratch above his eyebrow. “How is she doing?”

  “She’s fine. She says she’s a communist now,” I say. I don’t dare tell them that she’s been out doing whatever the hell she’s been doing in the middle of the riot. Jo would never forgive me if I did.

  “That’s what college kids do. They go to college. They try these things on,” my dad says.

  “But Jo’s not in college,” I say.

  “I’m gonna call her,” my mother says.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say.

  “Your sister’s gonna be the death of me.” My mother collapses into a nearby chair.

  Lucia quietly leaves the room. I think my mother’s afraid that my father’s having an affair with Lucia. That’s not it, though; I think Lucia and my father just understand something elemental about each other. I overhear him telling her things he’s never told us, things I’m not sure he’s ever told my mother. The less my parents talk to each other, the more he seems to talk to Lucia. Being an adult sometimes seems even lonelier than being a kid.

  Like the story he told her about his friend Quincy’s Uncle Earl. He and Quincy used to shoot hoops in the park by their house, and Quincy was the happiest kid ever. Quincy had a momma and a daddy who were both teachers at the local high school and who seemed like the happiest teachers to ever teach, and even sat and laughed together during their lunch breaks like best friends instead of married people. Quincy’s uncle had been Daddy’s third-grade teacher and taught him about Frederick and Booker T. and how it was important to stand up straight and be a good man, even if nobody expected it of you. One day, while he and Quincy were shooting hoops, they found Quincy’s uncle lying really still on a park bench. He could’ve been anyone, but they knew it was Earl because of the birthmark the shape of Texas on his cheek. After that, Quincy and Daddy didn’t play ball at that park no more. Then, Quincy’s parents didn’t eat lunch together no more. Finally, Quincy moved with his momma back to Louisiana, where she was from, and Quincy’s daddy ate lunch in his classroom in California all alone.

  “That was the first person I knew who died of a drug overdose,” he told Lucia. But not me; I’d just overheard because I’d been standing outside the kitchen the entire time listening. Lucia and my dad both feel slightly unknowable to me. Their lives before me are so foreign to mine and yet also somehow not so foreign to each other, some invisible bridge crossing the years and thousands of miles between them.

  Sometimes my mother gets strangely competitive with Lucia over weird things, like she did with my prom dress. Lucia and I had already driven around together shopping for dresses, and I was pretty certain I’d narrowed it down to the final two. She’d taken me to somebody’s abuela on Santee Street who had gnarled hands that made exquisite things.

  “None of your friends will have one of her dresses!” Lucia exclaimed.

  I told my mother this, and she looked up over her reading glasses and narrowed her eyes like she was deciding something.

  “We should pick out your dress together,” she said. “The two of us.”

  “But Lucia and I already—”

  “I’m your mother.”

  And that was it.

  We went to the Neiman Marcus near Rodeo Drive, which was full of crusty old farts with big fat baubles dripping from their ears and necks and fingers like candy tumors. Many of the salespeople are up their own asses for having the good fortune to serve such wealthy, important people. I didn’t want to be there.

  The first dress my mother saw that she liked was the pale pink of a ballet slipper. She held it up to my body, and we both tried to ignore the women in black following us like shadows. The next dress she picked up was the bright yellow of a canary, or sunlight, and against the dark of my body it popped brighter still. The navy dress was too adult, but the gold beading across the top was exquisite, heavy and weighty, which made the dress feel too important to put back down. The women in black didn’t say anything to us, even as they talked to the ladies around us: “What size?” or “What occasion are you looking for?” or “We just got that one in!” It was like that scene in Pretty Woman, except we weren’t hookers in thigh-highs and my mother didn’t need some john’s charge card to afford anything in there. Being a rich black woman in a fancy store is like being a trashy white hooker in a fancy store, which tells you something about everyone in that fancy store. The dress my mother settled on was red, like fire, and one of the more expensive items in that section, which is exactly why I think she plopped it down on the counter. I liked the dresses I’d picked out with Lucia better, but I didn’t dare say so.

  My mother walked over to a cash register in the far corner, slightly removed from the section we’d been in before. The cashier was young, with delicate features like a model, or a statue. As we walked over to him, he said, “Hellloo, ladies!” like we were old friends who’d walked into a club.

  “Did anybody help you gals today?” he said.

  “No,” my mother said firmly, and we heard the shadows whisper behind us.

  “Omigod, I fucking love this dress.” He ran his fingertips over it like it was gold. In his voice, I heard a bit of the South, from which I assume he’d fled.

  In the car on the way home, my mother said, “Your sister got her dress from a thrift store.”

  “I remember.”

  “She didn’t even ask me if I wanted to come with her.”

  “Maybe she didn’t think you’d want to go to a bunch of thrift stores.”

  “I would’ve gone.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, because sometimes my mother says things out loud as though she simply wants to hear the thought, and not because she needs a response.

  When we got back home, my mother poured a glass of wine for herself and sat down on the couch.

  “Try it on for me again,” she said.

  I ran up to my room and pulled the dress over my shoulders.

  Then I ran back down the spiral staircase to the living room. My mother and Lucia both sat on the couch. Lucia clapped when I came in.

  “Que bonita,” Lucia murmured.

  I twirled around the living room feeling the tulle in my hands. Tulle is a wonder, scratchy and dense, yet somehow managing to look like clouds.

  CHAPTER 16

  MY FRIENDS ARE glitter bombs. Their hair is straightened and curled and teased and doused in sparkle. Their dresses dangle in garment bags like satin spooks. There are still things to be done—makeup, nail polish, a careful evaluation of the evening’s expectations. They shriek as they stumble out of Courtney’s car and into my driveway. Then, we shriek together.

  Courtney bares her fangs as soon as she reaches me. “Look!”

  “What are you doing?” I say.

  “I bleached my teeth!” She smiles like a carnival clown and twirls, as though somehow that’ll help showcase her mouth better.

  “But your teeth weren’t yellow,” Heather says.

  “I mean, they were a little, kinda,” Kimberly says.

  “Who’s that?”

  “My cousin.”

  “Since when do you have a cou
sin who lives with you?”

  “Since there’s a riot.”

  My friends peer in at Morgan’s pain and recoil.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Her father’s store got looted. They took everything.”

  I don’t tell them that it’s our store too, kinda sorta.

  “Dude, that sucks.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Should we say something to her?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like… Sorry about your store?” Courtney declares.

  “Yeah, let’s do that.”

  My friends enter the room together. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Kimberly look almost timid.

  “Sorry about your store,” the three of them say in unison.

  Morgan looks over at me and raises her eyebrow, and I shrug.

  “Who are you?” Morgan says.

  “I’m Courtney. This is Kimberly and Heather.”

  Morgan looks at my friends intently. Then she starts to laugh. “Didn’t Ashley try to drown one of you guys when she was little?”

  Kimberly widens her eyes and then narrows them. “That was, like, forever ago.”

  * * *

  We run up the stairs and through my house in a pack.

  Upstairs, we paint nails and pull on dresses and talk extensively about Kimberly’s virginity. We paint one another’s pouts the same shade of period red. Miraculously, the color works on all of us.

  We blast 2 Live Crew’s As Nasty as They Wanna Be. Our adults, Tipper Gore, and the courts hate it ’cause it’s obscene, so we love it. Even feminist Heather. When we’re just girls alone, we can gyrate on each other and yell filthy lyrics out of our pretty mouths without anybody thinking we’re asking for it, whatever it is.

  “I’m gonna miss you guys so much next year.” Courtney sighs.

  “We’re not going anywhere. We’re gonna get old and wrinkly together and be like the Golden Girls,” Heather says.

  “Courtney is Rose,” Kimberly says. “You’re Dorothy. Ashley’s Sophia. And I’m Blanche. ’Cause she’s the sexiest.”

  “Dorothy’s the sexiest. Blanche is a ho. Besides, you can’t be Blanche; you’ve never even had sex,” Heather says.

  “Why the hell am I the old lady?” I say.

  “They’re all old ladies.” Kimberly shrugs.

  “Sophia’s the funniest, anyway,” Heather offers.

  “Wait. Am I Rose ’cause you think I’m dumb?” Courtney says.

  Kimberly glues on our fake eyelashes; years of pageants have made her an expert. When she finishes, she blows across our eyelids like Tinkerbell. While Fresh Kid Ice raps, together we flutter our new lashes, revel in our new faces, and will tonight to be magical.

  * * *

  Trevor and Michael arrive in Trevor’s dad’s vintage Rolls-Royce. It’s impeccable and sleek, a haughty glossy white with off-white tire rims. Courtney wanted to rent a limo, but limos are apparently on the list of things Kimberly finds tacky. There isn’t enough room in the car for all of us, so Courtney and dateless Heather are going in Courtney’s date’s car.

  Courtney met her date at a support group for adopted children. She started going to meetings earlier this year, and at lunch she sometimes tells us stories of international orphans rescued from abject misery and brought all the way across the world to live in, like, Chatsworth. Rusty’s parents adopted him from Korea, but they’re white. This is gonna be our first time meeting him. She’s shown us pictures; he looks very handsome, lithe with thick, dark hair down to his shoulders. Heather spent weeks telling anybody who’d listen how lame prom was and how it was the ritualized subjugation of young American women. Then at the last minute, when she decided she wanted to be subjugated after all, there was nobody left to ask her. We watch Trevor and Michael pull up and get out. We shriek again and run back down the stairs to the front door, to our boys, transformed.

  If Trevor’s tuxedo is a joke, the powder blue of a lazy afternoon, Michael’s is the sleek still of midnight. They hold our flowers in plastic boxes with pins topped by pearls.

  * * *

  Courtney’s date, Rusty, is an hour late to meet up at my house. Together we sit around the living room, waiting to take pictures and raging against the melting of our faces. Uncle Ronnie sprawls out on the couch, so we position ourselves around his body, like we’re at a wake.

  “Don’t mind me,” Uncle Ronnie groans. He wasn’t groaning before my friends came, so either his pain meds are wearing off or he’s being theatrical. Knowing Uncle Ronnie, it’s probably both. “Where’s your date, Ashley?”

  I point at Trevor, who goes over to shake Uncle Ronnie’s hand, all formal-like.

  “I remember my prom. Better not do none of what I did.” He laughs and then moans.

  “No sir,” Trevor says. “Definitely not.”

  “Boy, I didn’t even tell you what I did.” Ronnie laughs again.

  We sit there awkwardly for a few moments until Courtney opens her mouth to speak.

  “So, did you get shot at? Did they beat you up? Were you scared? Did your life, like, flash before your eyes?”

  “Jesus Christ, Courtney,” Heather says.

  “What?”

  Uncle Ronnie struggles to sit up a little bit. “I was scared.”

  My friends stare at him expectantly.

  “That was my mama’s store. Ashley’s grandmother. She started that store back in ’51. Do you know how hard she had to fight to keep it? A woman by herself—and a black woman at that. She kept it running through the Watts riots and the recessions. People tried to buy her out twice, but she refused. I was scared, but only because I didn’t want to see everything my mama worked for go up in flames on my watch. Those looters, though? I wasn’t scared of them. Not physically. They weren’t going to hurt me. Not much, anyway. They’re angry as hell, but it ain’t at me.”

  My friends sit there flabbergasted.

  “Why don’t you kids go ahead and put on some television,” he says.

  We can’t decide between the news and MTV, but Courtney says, “I don’t want to watch depressing shit right now, it’s prom!” so MTV wins. My mother runs around the house looking for where she put the film for the camera.

  I think Ronnie’s fallen asleep—his eyes are closed, body still—when I hear him start to harmonize with Eddie Vedder as he sings, “ ‘Ohhhh, I’m still alive.’ ”

  “How do you even know this song?” Courtney asks, and Uncle Ronnie looks at her like he’s trying to figure out if she’s asking because he’s black or old, but it’s probably both.

  “I know everything,” Uncle Ronnie replies, and Courtney nods as though she believes it.

  “You have a really good voice,” Heather says. “You could be a singer. Like, professionally.”

  “And she should know; her grandfather owns a studio,” Kimberly chimes in.

  “I came close.” Uncle Ronnie sighs. “You know, I almost went on tour with the Delfonics.… You kids too young to know who that is? But there was Mama to take care of… and the store.” He drifts off.

  I never knew this about Uncle Ronnie. How many other things don’t I know? I realize I’d kinda rather stay here and find out. It feels wrong to leave my family right now, in our hour of need, or mourning, or whatever it is.

  “Anyway, let me leave you kids to it.” He starts to stand, and Michael and Trevor rush over to help him up.

  Before he hobbles out of the room, Uncle Ronnie leans over to me and whispers, “They don’t got any black kids at your school?”

  I think of the black kids yesterday with their fists raised in protest and how I should’ve joined them. Or like how I shouldn’t have even started this shit in the first place. And how, once it started, I should’ve done something to stop it. Last year, LaShawn was prom king. Today, I wonder if he’ll even be allowed at prom. As if he can read my thoughts, before I can say anything, Uncle Ronnie shakes his head and walks away.

  With the adult out of the way, Trev
or and Michael start whipping their heads around to the block of Pearl Jam videos. When Pearl Jam stops jamming, Trevor loses control of his head banging and flails into the coffee table, sending Heather’s glass of water flying in an ill-fated splash so it looks like she peed her pretty dress.

  “Jackass!” Heather screams.

  “Can we all just get along?” I hear Rodney King stammer on the MTV News bulletin as I walk down the hall toward the bathroom.

  * * *

  Rusty looks like a skater or a surfer, like even in his dressy tux, his body wants to be balanced on a board somewhere, moving. He greets everybody with, “Hey, dudes!”

  His face seems to be built around his broad stoner smile, as though everything else is an afterthought. Yesterday, a Korean kid only a year older than us was shot to death in front of a pizza parlor in K-Town, his shirt so bloodstained that it looked like it had a big black hole in the middle, an empty space in the image where his heart and guts should’ve been. I wonder if Rusty saw that and thought, Maybe, in some other version of my life, that could’ve been me. I wonder if he looked at that kid laid out and saw himself with a bloom of blood across his chest, a victim, the way I look at dead black kids sometimes.

  In Koreatown, seven thousand people attend a clean-up rally on a baseball field.

  “We will not retaliate. We will wait with patience. We will forgive with love.”

  These are their prayers.

  * * *

  Outside, Morgan floats in the pool on a flamingo, tracing her finger along the surface of the water in lazy circles. She wears dark glasses and one of Jo’s old bikinis like she thinks she’s in a different movie from the one we’re in.

  Michael sits down next to her. He’s rolled his pants up so that his bare feet dangle in the water. He leans over and says something to her and my cousin says something to him, throws back her head, and laughs so you can see her one gold crown.

  “It’s time for pictures, Michael!” Kimberly calls across the backyard. Michael scrambles to throw his shoes and socks back on before jogging over to the grass, where everyone is getting ready to pose.