THERE
YOU ARE
Amberjack Publishing
1472 E. Iron Eagle Drive
Eagle, ID 83616
amberjackpublishing.com
Copyright © 2019 by Mathea Morais
Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, in part or in whole, in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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Book design by Pauline Neuwirth, Neuwith & Associates.
Permissions and Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data TK
ISBN 978-1-948705-585
eBook ISBN 978-1-948705-592
For Chioke
’Cause you know and I know that you know who I am
—PHIFE-DAWG
2014
EACH SUMMER OCTAVIAN MUNROE considered not going back to teach art at Winslow Academy for New Beginnings in Berringford, Maine, but every fall, like the yellowing of the trees, he returned. And as the slow days of summer abruptly made way for the hectic school year, he was always reminded of the ending of his own childhood summers—not getting ready for new backpacks and freshly sharpened pencils—but of climbing into a seat of the ancient Screaming Eagle roller coaster at Six Flags. The sprawling amusement park was a simple half-hour drive from where his family lived in St. Louis, but it was still a place they only went to right before the school year began. Now, as he blasted Royce da 5’9” and wiped the dust from the black-topped tables in his classroom, he remembered the feeling of the safety bar being lowered across his lap. And the cars that moved slowly down the rickety track, leaving nothing for him to do but hold on and hope that the bolts were sound, to scream at the top of his lungs until the ride ended.
So that year, when Andrea Applegate, with her long blonde hair, walked into Octavian’s art class on the first day wearing a t-shirt with the hand-written words #BlackLivesMatter on the front, he knew the ride had definitely left the loading station.
Octavian never expected that at nearly forty years old, he’d be living in a place like Berringford. He no longer heard heavy basslines out of passing cars, no longer passed out and missed his stop on late-night subway rides, and he was sure he was the one black friend everyone in Berringford claimed to have—even if their relationship was simply a nod at the Shell station. But nothing had prepared him for the way his eyes filled with tears when full moonlight illuminated the snow-covered field behind his rented cabin, and so he stayed. It wasn’t only the wide silent spaces or the groves of sky-high pines that kept him there. Nor was it the Winslow kids with their broken-hearted complications that bolstered Octavian’s still tender sense of peace. He also stayed because nothing about Berringford reminded him of St. Louis—where his past lurked like a stray in dark alleys, and ghosts hung out ten deep on corners.
Students at Winslow battled with an endless variation of tricks played on them by their own minds. They suffered from bipolar and borderline personality disorder and were oppressed by wild anxieties. Their minds seethed with voices and they tried to escape endless suffering via their grandfather’s pills, or starvation, or other attempts at death. They were sent away to hospitals and rehabs and, finally—after no one could find a way to help them, they came to Winslow, where it was Octavian’s job to teach them how to throw pots, blend hues and shades, to rub charcoal with their thumbs until it became shadow. Originally, Octavian worried that his associate’s degree in arts education wouldn’t qualify him to work at Winslow, but after his first year, he understood why it didn’t matter. He was a body in a room full of kids no one knew what to do with anymore.
Something about the new girl in the homemade t-shirt seemed familiar and Octavian wondered whether she’d been there before. Winslow was part of the hospital/home heavy rotation for some, but Octavian was pretty sure he’d remember a name like Andrea Applegate. It reminded him of “Bonita Applebum.”
“Good to meet you,” he said walking over to her. “I’m Mr. Munroe.” He cleared his throat. “Nice shirt.”
Andrea scooted onto one of the high stools and hooked her boot heels over the bar at the bottom. She looked down at her shirt and said, “I almost had to punch a guy this morning when he said ‘doncha mean all lives matter?’”
“Don’t they?” Octavian said.
Andrea cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes at him. “They do, but that’s not the point.”
“What’s the point?”
Behind her, other students began to come in. Some were hidden under hoods or long hair, whole selves locked tight like the curves of a scallop shell. Others entered loud and turbulent, intent on letting the world know that they never, under any circumstances, got enough attention. Andrea’s eyes moved like rapid-fire around the room and Octavian was reminded that he didn’t know this girl yet. Every kid in that building had a story of what got them there, and he had to be careful not to joke too much or be too stern. It was a constant act of balancing the scales—placing stones on one side to make sure the pile of sand on the other didn’t spill onto the floor.
Andrea turned back to Octavian and said, “The point is that black lives have never mattered. Not to the cops, not to the people who make the laws. Saying black lives matter is actually saying that black lives should matter the same as all other lives.”
“Jesus, Andrea, are you really still on that shit?” Summer had done little to ease the hateful emptiness in Josh Williams’s eyes as he dropped a heavy hand on Andrea’s shoulder making her jump. “See,” he said. “Like I told you this morning, you need to chill out.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Williams,” Octavian said. “Why don’t you have a seat?” To Andrea, he extended his hand. “Welcome to art class, Ms. Applegate.”
Andrea looked at Octavian’s outstretched palm and said, “I apologize, but I can’t.”
“Can’t what?” Octavian said.
“I can’t shake your hand. I have, like, OCD or haphephobia, or something. I can’t deal with touching people, or people touching me.”
“Okay,” Octavian said, concealing his offending hand in his pocket. “Like I said, nice shirt. Have a seat.”
On the table in front of them, an old lamp from the school’s storage space cast a rusted glow over an apple he pulled from his landlady’s orchard and a sunflower, whose rugged brown face Octavian couldn’t resist that weekend at the farmer’s market. He often started his class this way— a simple piece of paper and a pencil with no eraser. Within moments, the gentle hum that descended over drawing children filled the room.
“Mr. M., can I listen to my music?” Andrea asked, as she pulled out her headphones.
“Nope.” In the beginning, Octavian had allowed them to plug their ears with the little white ear buds. He understood the connection between music and art better than anyone, so who was he to stop them? But after a few days, he reconsidered. Even what they called hip-hop was a genetically modified hybrid that held no mark of its original funk and jazz DNA. He brought in a turntable and a stack of records and tried to use Sonny Rollins, Gregory Isaacs, War, and The Last Poets to summon the parts of themselves they didn’t even know existed. The parts that perhaps could bring peace to the tumult that plagued them on a daily basis.
Of course, there had been a chorus of complaints. Don’t you have any Drake? Or Flo Rida? Can’t we listen to Beyoncé? He ignored them, and by mid-semester they were humming John Coltrane melodies in the lunch line and finding him in the halls to ask, What’s that song called, you know the one that goes…? and, Hey, Mr. M., you think I can find that that Bird record
you played on iTunes?
Andrea put her headphones back in her bag with a frown. Octavian walked behind his desk and took out Curtis Mayfield’s There’s No Place Like America Today and turned on the receiver. He lowered the needle on “Billy Jack,” the song that had been spinning in his head since he woke up that morning.
The speakers came to life and Andrea said, “Oh, cool. I love this song.”
“Of course you do,” said Josh. But by the time the horns came in, even he was tapping his feet, if only lightly, under the cover of the table.
The next class, Andrea Applegate arrived wearing a threadbare purple Jimi Hendrix t-shirt and carrying a copy of Billie Holiday’s Lady in Satin in her backpack. She handed it to Octavian and said, “Can you play this? I love to listen to Billie when I draw at home.”
Octavian took the record, making sure his fingers didn’t touch Andrea’s, and once the class had settled in, he put it on. Billie’s fierce voice crackled through the art studio and told Octavian that he wouldn’t know what love was ’til he learned the meaning of the blues. That’s when he realized what was familiar about Andrea. It wasn’t that she’d been there before or even that she made him think of a song by A Tribe Called Quest. It was that she reminded him of Mina Rose. She didn’t have Mina’s dark gray eyes, but she did have that same stormy look, and she stared into Octavian the way Mina once had. And even though he wasn’t supposed to look at the shape of his students, especially the girls, he still noticed Andrea’s frame. It was solid like Mina’s, with the same curve to her hips. And Mina had loved Billie Holiday. Listened to her when she wrote those solitary stories she refused to share.
Octavian thought about how tenuous the balance of his own pile of sand and stones had been when he last knew Mina. Back when she used to sit in the window of his loft, the broken skyline of downtown St. Louis behind her, smoking away the things they couldn’t talk about. On the record player would be Sly & Robbie, or a Prince bootleg, or Astrud Gilberto. Something that would make Octavian reach over and pull her to him.
“Tell me about Trinidad,” she would say, sliding her thick, bare legs under the cornflower sheet they’d stolen from her mother.
“Again?”
“Yes, again.”
And he would tell her about how, before his mother died, they had taken a family vacation to Trinidad. How every day his father, Cyrus, had taken him and his older brother Francis to get Bake & Shark sandwiches from the roadside stand. At the beach, Francis, who had always been a delicate swimmer, had waded bravely into the sea glass green water while Octavian’s mother, Cordelia, helped him fill his bucket with bumpy lavender starfish that stuck to his palm. Finally, he told Mina the part he knew she was waiting for. The part about how they had stayed at a B&B owned by an old couple—a black man and a white woman—who had been married for over fifty years.
“In Trinidad,” he would say, “it wouldn’t matter that you were white. We could be together and no one would care.”
It wasn’t true. He knew that it mattered everywhere, and even if it didn’t, it mattered to him. But it was what she wanted to hear, so he had said it. What harm would it do, he reasoned, to say it one more time?
When class ended, Octavian handed Andrea back her record and said, “Thanks for bringing this in. I haven’t heard it in a long time.”
“I’m so psyched,” she said. “I just found this at the thrift store in town.”
“You’re right to be excited. That’s a rare recording.”
“How do you know it’s rare?”
“I used to work in a record store,” Octavian said. “Started when I was about your age.”
“That’s so cool,” she said. “You must have a ton of records then. Do you have this one?”
Octavian nodded. “I do. But, like most of them, it’s back in my father’s closet in St. Louis, so it’s been a while since I listened to it.”
Andrea’s clear eyes widened like soup bowls, and the girl who, only a few days before, had declared she couldn’t stand human touch, seized Octavian by the arm. “You’re from St. Louis?”
Octavian looked down at her pale fingers clutching his arm. She blushed and immediately released him. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that so many of my favorite musicians are from St. Louis.”
“Yeah?” Octavian said. “Me too.”
“And I don’t mean Nelly or Chingy,” she said. “Well, I like them, but I’m talking about Chuck Berry, Josephine Baker, Fontella Bass.”
“Fontella Bass? Seriously?” Octavian couldn’t help laughing. Mina had every Fontella Bass album.
Andrea laughed. “Are you kidding? Her album Free saves my life every time I listen to it. I’d do anything to go to St. Louis. Can you take me there?”
A silence opened up around them that made Octavian straighten his back. Thirteen other students had put papers on shelves, books into bags, pushed stools under tables, and Octavian hadn’t noticed. “I can’t take you there,” he said, adding clarity to his voice.
“Why not?” she asked.
Octavian smiled. Taking no for an answer was not something Mina did well either. “Okay, Ms. Questions, now it’s my turn. Is home hard for you to go back to sometimes?”
Andrea drew her lips into a thin tight line.
“Right,” Octavian said. “Home is hard for me to go back to sometimes, too.”
At the end of the day Octavian was getting into his car and putting the key in the ignition when he felt the buzz of his cellphone in his pocket and saw a text from Bones.
Tave, Closing Rahsaan’s. Having a party next month. Inviting everyone. Please come home.
St. Louis had been coming for him since early that morning, when every television channel forced him to look into Michael Brown’s down-turned eyes in his standard-issue graduation-day photo. Octavian had tried to look away, but like everyone else, he watched as Michael Brown’s murder unfolded and told the world a story as old as St. Louis itself. Told the story of every one of Octavian’s friends growing up who had some kind of run in with St. Louis cops—even his boy Ivy, who was white. Some of them had come close to death, others were lucky only to get fucked with, and then there were those like that kid Jason in his graduating class who got locked up for unpaid parking tickets and died in jail waiting to get bailed out. The story of Michael Brown wasn’t something new. It was just being televised.
It made Octavian remember things he had worked years to forget. Like his brother Francis when he was barely fourteen, his cheekbone purple and bruised, lips thick and swollen, who laughed and said, “Tave, when cops hit you, they hit so hard, that shit don’t even hurt.” And the way his own seventeen-year-old wrists burned, the cuffs too tight, a police officer’s face close enough for Octavian to see the brown edges of his teeth as he said, “You look like you want to go to jail tonight.” And Mina. Her gray eyes pleading when she begged him to leave St. Louis, even if he didn’t want to leave with her.
Octavian left, not when she asked him to, but eventually. His father still lived in the same apartment where Octavian grew up, still walked the same five blocks to his job at Washington University every day, but since Octavian moved away, he and his dad met in a different place each year under the guise of taking a vacation together. Really, it was because Octavian couldn’t go back. It was too hard, with not only his mother, but his brother gone, too.
Octavian picked up his phone and looked at Bones’s text again. No matter how long it had been since he’d been back, the thought that Rahsaan’s Records would no longer be there made a cold sweat build in the hollows of his armpits.
Octavian knew what was coming next. He’d been having panic attacks since his mom got sick when he was ten years old. The only thing consistent about them was the unpredictability in what might bring them on. Sometimes they came when he thought he was fine and then went underground right when he expected one to take over. He’d go years without having them and believe he’d got them beat, onl
y to be faced with a daily succession for the next three months. It was always an unfair fight, but Octavian bareknuckle boxed with it every time. This one he’d felt coming since he met Michael Brown’s televised eyes. Now it was clear his attempts at bobbing and weaving it had failed.
Octavian pried at the fist that tried to wrap around his heart and fought against his lungs’ refusal to take a dedicated breath. He forgot about the breathing method he learned the one time he went to a therapist. He didn’t count backwards from nine or remind himself that there was no reason for flight or fight. Instead, he curled into himself, like a child surrounded by bullies on the playground. Darkness hovered like a menace at the corners of his eyes and his mouth filled with bitter bile. He thought about how maybe this time, it actually was a heart attack and that the red edges on the periphery of his eyes were in fact his brain closing in. This time, he really was dying.
In the flashing moment between the next inhale and exhale, Octavian had a different thought, this one about his father and how he owed it to him not to have to bury both of his sons. He opened his eyes and saw his hands coiled into tight fists. His feet, in his Clarke Wallabees shoes—the same as his father’s “teacher shoes,” about which Francis and Octavian teased Cyrus, and yet also the favorite footwear of Wu-Tang’s Raekwon—pressed into the floor. Octavian heard his heart slam a rapid baseline in his chest and he tried again to slow his breath.
Criminal Minded, you’ve been blinded.
It was the one thing that worked, reciting KRS-One lyrics.
Looking for a style like mine, you can’t find it.
The menace at the edge of his vision turned and crept away.
They are the audience, I am the lyricist.
Octavian wondered what KRS would say if he knew how many times he had pulled Octavian back from the abyss.
Sometimes the suckers on the side, they gotta hear this.
The rush of blood in his veins began to slow. Octavian rubbed his sweat-covered palms along the legs of his teacher chinos. I bet Raekwon never wore chinos, he thought. He blinked away at the children’s coloring book outline of his surroundings and smelled the cooling asphalt of the parking lot after the hot day. His phone buzzed again in his pocket and his hands shook as he took it out. His father was calling. Octavian pressed the ignore button and said aloud, “Jesus, I can’t get two inches away from that fucking town today.” Outside the sky had begun to give way to twilight. Octavian waited a few more minutes until his breathing felt steady, and drove home.
There You Are Page 1