With a Voice that is Often Still Confused But is Becoming Ever Louder and Clearer

by J. R. Hamantaschen

  The social punishment for Keith’s transgression was swift. Keith was deemed an insensitive asshole, a racist, and far worse. Various minority associations expressly questioned whether to report him to the Diversity Commission for knowingly creating an inhospitable academic environment. Ever since, Keith’s resentment toward his classmates was obvious, writ large with every suspicious, hurt glance.

  It was too bad, because Michael had kinda-liked Keith, or at least respected him, and Keith had been nice-enough to Michael, at least at the pre-semester receptions. But then again, maybe Keith didn’t know Michael was black.

  Michael was very light-skinned — Ice-T light-skinned — the product of a black father and a sallow pale white mother who must have shared distant relations with Casper the Friendly Ghost. So if Keith harbored any racial prejudices, it may not have mattered, because it’s quite possible he didn’t even realize that Michael was black.

  Keith hadn’t done much to endear himself to his fellow prospective classmates at those pre-semester receptions. Keith had been too probing with his classmates, and his mood perceptibly soured when the life histories of his classmates all seemed to present the same narrative: Ivy League or equivalent liberal arts undergraduate program, maybe a year or two stint in the Peace Corps or some other pleasurable year or two of “time off” or “funemployment,” and a fair amount of students with lawyer or alumni parents. Even the same well-heeled locations kept popping up: Upper East Side, Manhattan; Montgomery County, Maryland; Newton, Massachusetts; Orange and Marin Counties, California; obnoxious parts of New Jersey and Long Island and Connecticut. All well and good, and all to be expected.

  So Keith may have come off as ornery and spiteful when he managed to smuggle details of his lower-class upbringing into practically every conversation, cementing from the outset his personal narrative that’d become his ossified stock-and-trade. Son of a bricklayer (when he didn’t know what the Dalton School was; “what do I know, I’m just a bricklayer’s son”); his true-blue Chicago roots (“You’re from Chicago? Me too,” began some unfortunate classmate. “What part?” Keith asked. “Highland Park,” answered this unfortunate classmate, marking himself with the geographical equivalent of a top hat and monocle. “Oh. I’m from South Chicago. You know, Chicago-Chicago.”), and so on and so forth. The irony, of course, was that this salt of the earth narrative was Keith’s distinguishing feature that entitled him to a sense of superiority, grounded bizarrely in a sort of anti-elitism elitism.

  Even while Keith was in full rampage mode, he was at least pleasant toward Michael. Michael had an ambiguous background, his hometown wasn’t one that Keith linked immediately to a lifestyle of unexamined privilege, and Michael knew a factoid or two about the Pullman strike and Chicago labor history. And in turn, Michael admired Keith’s chutzpah. Michael was especially amused at how Keith would bait some environmentally conscious student by talking about his appreciation of vegan food, and then when that unsuspecting student would talk about some fancy-sounding dish, he’d take the wind out of the conversation by proclaiming his choices had nothing to do with such effete, luxury tastes, but were merely the result of him growing up as a child being unable to afford animal protein.

  Who knows why Keith decided to send out that article? He was a smart guy, and must have known he was ostracizing himself from his classmates in one fell swoop, one click of the mouse. Who knows? Maybe Keith blanched a bit when he noticed that the female students — almost all of them younger than he — gravitated toward guys like Michael; articulate, bleached-out minority boys, acculturated enough to belong but still exotic enough to be attractive. So maybe this was all stuff Keith noticed; then again, maybe not, or maybe this was all exaggerated inside Michael’s head, and was nothing more than a sounding board for his own insecurities and doubts.

  He and Keith could probably sit down and get along, if they really tried, if Keith hadn’t been so chastened by his swift rebuke that it was doubtful he’d extend any olive branches anytime soon. Although this was anathema to admit, Michael was more hyper-aware of the sexual opportunities his race afforded him than any jealous racist could ever be. These opportunities always came about thanks to “open-minded” white and Asian college girls pre-programmed with the belief in black “alpha male” masculinity. That Michael wasn’t particularly well-endowed, or didn’t present himself as some symbol of black male virility, hardly seemed to matter at all.

  As a little joke to himself, whenever he suspected any of those girls was picking him up based solely on his race, he’d divert the topic to books. Look how well-read this Negro was! Why, maybe they could even take him home to Daddy! He’d lie and tell them his favorite book was the Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. Oh, they recognized that, maybe from some college reading list. Ooh, Afro-centric! In the Invisible Man, one of the female characters was a naive white woman who objectifies and reduces the main character, who is black, to a crude Mandingo stereotype in order to fulfill her sexual fantasies of being savaged by a black man. Perhaps those girls has been absent from class when that character had been discussed.

  >< >< ><

  Back at his apartment, Michael wondered about how Keith would view him after reading his admissions packet. It was all here. Maybe he’d be exonerated from Keith’s resentment? His LSAT score was a little low, but his GPA was about-right, he went to a good school, had undertaken a challenging major, had strong personal recommendations.

  But who was he kidding? Everything came down to that admissions essay.

  Michael wasn’t proud of it. Not at all. Maybe he’d once been proud of it, when he felt the world owed him something, when he’d been a bit more rakish and rapier-like in spirit. But maybe … since he’d been willing to profit off his personal story to get into the law school of his choice (and the college of his choice, and …), maybe getting Keith back in his good graces could be just another accumulated benefit of what he revealed in his admissions essay.

  >< >< ><

  Michael had been twelve years old. He walked into his living room; more accurately, he was in his living room. He doesn’t remember walking in, or how he got there, or why he walked in, he just remembers being there. The room was unusually bright and well-lit — maybe it was midday and the windows were open, or maybe it’s just an imaginary lens flare, his memory setting up the scene. There was no way to know for sure, because his memory was his only reference point.

  He remembers a long, rectangular marble table. In his mind’s eye, the living room shrunk to the size of the table, and he floats in and sits down. To his right is his father, Charles. Physically, Charles looks just like how Michael remembers. He’s thin, caramel-colored, his minor facial blemishes — what he always called his freckles —looking dark and angry. His haircut is short, military-style, his face shows the mild creases that come with creeping age, but he looks healthy and fit, physically strong.

  But something’s different. Charles — Father — was the only authority figure Michael and his younger brother ever had — their mother had died long ago — but he doesn’t look like an authority figure anymore. He looks tired and expectant.

  There’s a man sitting across from Charles, and Charles is crouched, hunched over, forehead level with the other man’s chin. The other man is animated, and as he talks and gesticulates and seems to get bigger, Charles folds and nods until his stance seems to form a backward capital “C.”

  Michael was that rarest and most coveted academically accomplished minority — one raised by a single black father — but it was a testament to the power of the details he included in his academic admissions essay that he never even felt the need to mention that fact.

  This man who sat across from his father … he never revealed his name, but there’s no doubt in his mind that his father knew who he was, and that this was one exchange of many. He was a white man, that he remembers, and he has the impression that the man is long and tall, in a spindly way. The deta
ils of his face … details isn’t the right word, because there are no details, just impressions. Sometimes, he pictures him as a man with wild, flaming red hair, but that can’t be true, because that requires a degree of ostentation foreign to this type of man. In another survey — another attempt by his mind’s eye to recreate this man — he pictures a well-dressed pallid skeleton, which was accurate in capturing the man’s angled slim build and something about his precision. Something about the precision and structure of bone captured the ineffable gestalt of this man who sat across from his father.

  “Sit down, Michael,” the man said, but how the scene played out, Michael was already sitting.

  Michael’s little brother, Andrew, aged five, sat next to the man, with an oversized spoon and a full bowl of his favorite soup, chicken noodle. The bowl was still full but not steaming. Andrew was holding the spoon and licking his lips, bobbing back and forth trying to stay comfortable in his chair, his attention passing between both this strange man and his father, but his fascination clearly belonged to this strange man.

  Michael had no way of knowing or verifying this, but he felt that only that strange man was capable of giving his baby brother the proper authority to start eating his soup.

  “Glad you can be here with us. Are you glad, too, Andrew?”

  The little boy nodded as little boys nod, nodding not only his head but his entire upper body.

  “Good, good. Are you glad he’s here, Charles?”

  “Uh huh, I am.” Charles turned toward him. “Glad you’re here too, Michael. Glad you could make it here, uh huh,” but his attention was divided and as he spoke his eyes kept flitting back toward this strange man.

  Now the man was looking directly at him, and Michael could see his eyes, the only detail he knows — knows with every core of his being — that he remembers absolutely. The man’s left iris is black, a deep rippling black with sweet, inviting light undulations, and in the center is a light blue star. The man’s right iris is also black, a deep rippling black, undulating and breathing, this time in the middle is a red hammer, or maybe a red bull, something red and spiked. The man knows people must be fascinated by his eyes, so he locks eyes with Michael for what feels like several minutes, until he begins to nod slowly, perhaps thinking to himself, yes, the boy understands.

  As the man stares at Michael and nods, his left hand gently directs Andrew’s face toward the lukewarm bowl of soup. The top layer of the little boy’s face becomes submerged, and the boy stays motionless for a couple seconds, until his little right arm signals resistance and bats out like a playful little kitten. The man softens up and lets Andrew come back to the surface. The little boy is smiling and giggling and clapping in his uncoordinated way, and the man lovingly mimics the little boy’s clapping. “Did you like that?”

  “Again!” Andrew shouts, and, used to having his excited outbursts rewarded with oohs and aahs and affections, looks around at Michael and Charles for adoration.

  “Again?” the man asks.

  “Again!” and his little brother claps harder and leans in, giggling, oily chicken broth smeared across his face and nose.

  The man guides Andrew’s head back down — his hand seems strangely fitted to the little boy’s skull, somehow reconciled to it, as if his hand had been molded to an optimum size for manipulating the heads of compliant little boys — and again Andrew is immersed in his lukewarm soup. He’s blowing bubbles in it now, and a there’s a telltale noodle flopped over the side of the bowl.

  Charles looks on, but he doesn’t blink and isn’t enjoying any of this. Michael had never seen such resignation and capitulation. If Charles had been opened up, there’d be nothing but a shrill lonesome whistling.

  Andrew was back above the surface of the soup, clapping.

  “He likes it. Doesn’t he, Charles?”

  “Uh huh, he likes it.”

  Those undulating multicolored eyes and that smile; there was nothing inherently noteworthy about his smile, but there was a fearful symmetry there, an indication of something, that with more time or more experience or more knowledge, Michael could discern some relationship of significance between the contours of that smile and those eyes.

  >< >< ><

  And here another scene, back again in his house, some short time later, still a twelve-year-old boy. There is the ambient noise of something crisping, the sense of being enclosed by logs burning in the fireplace, the rasping lick of heat and fire and curdling and warmth, but there’s no source that he’s aware of. There’s a closed door — the room he shared with his little brother, and he wants to go investigate — and he’s in an impossibly long, narrow hallway.

  He’s looking down this long hallway and there’s an intimated shape at the end, a suggestion, but now something is lumbering toward him, now past him. Halfway past him, staring. He has a sense impression of some combination of an elephant and a giraffe, something about the bulk, the thickness, protrusions he can’t see and a triangular shape stretching out above him.

  He can’t reconcile these senses and shapes but he comprehends what he is dealing with. It’s some version, some essence, of that man from the living room.

  He remembers a feeling of immensity. At that time in his life, he associated it with big trucks, where the driver had to check all his mirrors, look behind him, engage in a whole drawn-out process in order to back out. Beep Beep Beep. That’s the feeling he had; that this huge, complicated thing was moving past him, and that a whole series of behind-the-scenes operations were being undertaken to grant him the courtesy of stopping this towering thing.

  He dreams of a moment when it speaks to him but he can’t hear what it is saying as a result of some clangorous din, and that inability to hear this missing information jolts him from unconsciousness and makes him aware of something worse.

  But that never happened. He knows what it said.

  It turned toward him — there was an end to it, and that’s where the face was, the same face with the symmetrical smile and the blue star and red hammer of an eye — and it said to him, without looking at him, “Your father is dead. As you assumed. I’m taking your brother with me. I don’t owe you an explanation, but just know that I deserve this. Your father did this to himself. You should be grateful to me for this.”

  And then it lumbered past him, with that marked gait, hobbled somehow, like a giraffe with the bulk of an elephant.

  His father was dead. That’d been accurate. How he was killed was extreme and the cause of much consternation, but there was nothing so extreme that couldn’t be explained away by normal means. So the murder of his father and abduction of his brother were investigated. Michael told the authorities what he could, about the strange white dapper man with intense eyes, but he knew nothing beyond that. It never went anywhere, and signs and articles and pleas for the community to look for his darling little brother continued unabated.

  He can still throw his brother’s name into Google and still find sites and information about his abduction.

  That last fact, it’s true. He can still do that. That’s something that made it into his personal admissions essay. That, his father’s death, the aftermath, of growing up with godparents … all of that ended up in his admissions essay. He even had something cute in his admissions essay, something about how he wasn’t telling the full story because it was too painful, but was just presenting the material facts descriptive of his experience, just as trained attorneys need to be able to understand and present the key facts of a client’s case, blah blah blah… .

  Thanks to these leaked emails, he had his admissions essay right in front of him but he refused to read it again.

  That’s not how he felt at the time he wrote it, right? He’d presented his feelings, his anguish, his adjustment process — the process of living with godparents, of never getting to see his younger brother growing up, how it affected him, enraged him, molded him, inspired h
im — all that, he told himself, was presented truthfully and honestly, and to omit those experiences and feelings would be tantamount to libel, because that was the experience which formed him most as a person. He omitted facts that were unhelpful — facts no one would believe, facts that would have him labeled as delusional or crazy — because he knew there would be nothing to gain from sharing them. He couldn’t share any of it, not even any explanations for the quirks of his that people found perplexing, such as why he couldn’t stand the sight of elephants or giraffes or even whales, for watching them languidly drifting past him, even through glass at an aquarium, made him feel tiny and helpless.

  “You should be grateful to me for this.” That’s what it’d said to him. Those words vexed him, mocked him, wrenched him, cut something deep, deep, deep inside him and twisted. He had no indication of what that meant, but surely it wasn’t some mocking prognostication, some goading about how Michael would end up basing his identity around this incident, how his sweet little brother would be the beneficiary of indescribable suffering and he’d be the beneficiary of unlimited academic opportunity … no, surely, no.

  But he had nothing to go on, no way to guide him, nothing to do, no connection or no understanding, so on those endless creaking nights when he’d submerged all his tormenting thoughts, that one phrase always slipped through his mental armor. He’d spin it over in his head, and the curse would work its magic and remove all hope, for then he couldn’t even take pride in his accomplishments or achievements.

  “You should be grateful to me for this.”

  >< >< ><

  He saw Keith the next day while heading to their 11:00 a.m. Property Law lecture. They met eyes and didn’t speak or signal or indicate to one another, and he couldn’t read Keith’s expression at all, though there was some expression — something — there to be interpreted. A broker of peace, perhaps.

  “You should be grateful to me for this,” the man with the colored eyes had said to him.