Mina felt her eyes fill with tears again. She focused on trying to find another tape on the floor. “I wish things were different,” she said.
“Well,” Clarissa said, “so do I.”
They were quiet for a few minutes before Mina asked, “What about Ivy? Do you think he would understand this?”
Clarissa shrugged and laughed. “I guess, if he were the love of my life, I’d have to make sure he did,” she said. “And as much as this matters, it’s not all that matters, you know what I mean?”
It was Mina’s turn to look out at the thick night sky. “I think so,” she said.
TRACK 13
Can You Stand
the Rain?
SPRING IN ST. LOUIS was Octavian’s favorite time of the year, even if it didn’t last long before summer kicked it out the door. He loved being able to smell the fresh-cut lawns and hear songs blasted out of car windows.
The windows in Mina’s kitchen were open wide as they sat at the table and Mina shuffled the cards. He liked the way her strong hands made a classic bridge, cards neatly falling one on top of the other. He liked the way she looked, too. She wore a skin-tight t-shirt under her giant Dickie overalls, and the chunky turquoise bracelet he’d given her for her birthday slid up and down her arm as she dealt. She’d hennaed her hair again, a dark auburn color that deepened the gray of her eyes. She glanced up and caught him looking at her and blushed.
“Why don’t you put on some music or something instead of sitting there staring at me,” she said.
“Oh, I can’t look at you now?”
“Not like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know what you’re thinking and Kanta is gonna walk through that door any minute.”
“Then we should be out,” Octavian said. He wasn’t a fan of Kanta.
“Okay, but let me beat you at this game real quick.”
“Like that’s going to happen,” Octavian said. He got up and put the Black Sheep CD into Kanta’s new player, which sat on the kitchen counter.
Nearly a week had passed since Octavian and Cyrus had clinked Waterford glasses across the kitchen table, but Octavian still hadn’t said anything to Mina about getting accepted into Cooper Union. He knew Mina would see it as fate, as their futures intertwined in some universal karmic plan. And when she lay soft in his arms singing Dinah Washington songs, the two of them living in New York City sounded like the best plan ever. But, when his clothes were on and his back was turned, he thought twice and worried. He worried because Mina didn’t. She thought all they had to do was get out of St. Louis and get to New York City, where the two of them together would somehow break down racial barriers with her new perspective on their old-as-God interracial relationship.
Octavian had planned to tell her about Cooper. Over and over he’d planned it. But every time he started to, the words caught in his throat. Now, looking at her, bobbing her head and dealing the cards, while over the speakers Dres offered him the choice to get with this or that, he thought that maybe she was right. They could go to New York. He didn’t really think that they could change the world, but at least things would be different than they were here.
“Mina,” he said.
“What’s up baby?” she said, looking at her cards.
Octavian opened his mouth to tell her, but right then Kanta walked in. Her sway spoke of a dinner party where she’d had plenty to drink. She pulled out the chair between them and sat down hard. Octavian immediately began to gather the cards off the table.
“Octavian,” Kanta said, “I want your opinion on something.”
Octavian glanced at the front door. “Okay.”
“I got into an argument with this idiot tonight at dinner because I think that black people, African Americans, should leave the dorky, uncool professions—like science and medicine—to the boring white people. And that they should stick to doing the cool things, the things they’re good at, like drumming and dancing. I’m right, right?”
Octavian looked at Mina. “Time for me to go.”
“Kanta,” Mina said in barely a whisper, “you need to stop talking right now.”
“Why?”
“Because you have no fucking idea what you’re saying.”
“Sure I do.” Kanta laughed. “Tell her, Octavian. I’m right, aren’t I? You know. You’re not out there trying to be white, trying to be a nerd, trying to be smart. You’re an artist. You’re expressive. Black people are so much better at that than white people are. They’re just so much cooler. Tell her, Octavian.”
But Octavian had already pulled on his sweatshirt and was beginning to walk out of the kitchen. He stopped and turned around.
“Actually, Kanta,” he said, “your daughter is right. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” He looked at Mina. “I’ll be out front.”
From the porch he heard yelling, doors slamming. The sound of stomping up the stairs. Mina came out onto the porch, her face drawn up. “I’m sorry,” she said and lit a cigarette.
“It must suck to have a mother who is a racist bitch,” Octavian yelled the last part, hoping Kanta would hear. Mina handed the cigarette to him, but he waved it away and walked over to the other side of the porch. The air vibrated with cicadas and Octavian wished they would slow down their erratic rhythm, or at least bring it together, so that his heart knew where the beat began.
“I got accepted to Cooper,” he said.
“What?” Mina rushed to the other side of the porch and tried to hug him, like none of what happened with her mother had actually happened. Gently, he pushed her away.
“When did you find out?” she said.
He had planned to lie. To say that he’d found out that very day, but his mouth was a honeycomb of anger. “I got the letter last week.”
The electric charge that had bolted Mina across the porch blew like a fuse and she went dark. “You’ve known for a week and you’ve haven’t told me until now?”
“Shit,” Octavian said. “I didn’t know I had to report to you at a certain time. Forgive me. I thought this was my life.”
“Oh, c’mon, Tave, you know we’ve been waiting to hear from Cooper. It’s all we talk about.”
“No,” he said. “It’s all you talk about.”
Most of the time, Octavian appreciated the way Mina let the drama between them dissipate like fog, but other times, like right then, he wanted her to wild out, to get up in his face, to call him names, maybe even call him the one word he knew she never would. The one he knew her mother must say—at least inside her own head—when Octavian walked through the door.
Mina waved her hands across the air between them as if to erase what she didn’t understand. Around him the open windows of her neighbors made Octavian uneasy. It was Clayton after all. A black boy and a white girl arguing could mean an easy phone call to the cops. Maybe it was better that she stayed quiet.
Mina flicked her cigarette across the front lawn. “Fuck you, Tave,” she said and turned and went inside.
Octavian stood there for a moment and then started to walk away from the house. It would only take about an hour to walk home and he knew it would really piss Mina off if he left without saying anything. She didn’t even ask why he might not want to go, he thought. She didn’t even think about what it would mean for him to pick up and leave Cyrus, to leave Francis. He felt the vice grip tightening on his heart and stopped at the end of her front walk. The two times that he had walked home from Mina’s house, it was the afternoon and he still got stopped by the cops and asked where he was going. Both times he was told to hurry up and get his ass back into U. City before they found a reason to take him in.
In the back of his mind he heard Brendon. See, you shouldn’t even be over that way, not at this time of the night, with this crazy white lady talking about how we shouldn’t be doctors, and you dependent on her daughter to get you home safely? What kind of shit is that?
Arou
nd him, the lights of Mina’s neighbors shown down like eyes of accusers. Octavian knew he’d have to make a choice soon. Standing alone in a Clayton neighborhood in the dark was even more dangerous than walking home.
I don’t have time for this shit, he thought. He turned and walked back to the house. He lifted the giant iron door knocker and let it drop. Mina opened the door quick, like she’d been standing right there.
“I need you to drive me home,” he said.
“Oh, you don’t need to tell me about getting into the one school you know I want you to get into for a week, but now you need me to drive you home?”
“Mina,” Octavian said quietly. “I need to go home.”
“And?” She said, her gray eyes burning. “Your legs hurt or something?”
“No, but in case you hadn’t noticed, I am black and you live in Clayton.”
“What the hell does that mean, in case I hadn’t noticed? I know you’re fucking black.”
“Oh, and that’s a problem?”
“No, it’s not a problem, Tave,” Mina said.
“Next thing I know you going to be like your mother in there talking about how we should stick to shucking and fucking jiving and not strive to be anything else, right?”
Octavian felt the dark, watchful neighborhood pressing against one side of him and the bright foyer, with Kanta upstairs and Mina saying all kinds of shit, pressing against the other. He cursed. Brendon was right. He shouldn’t even be over that way with nowhere to turn.
“I can’t believe you,” she said.
“Believe it or don’t,” he said. “Just take me fucking home because the longer we stand here arguing, either your white neighbors or your white mother is going to call the white fucking cops and I’ll be going to jail.”
They drove in silence, even though it was Saturday night and the underground hip-hop show was on KDHX. Octavian wondered if she noticed when they passed two different cop cars on Hanley Road, but he didn’t say anything. In front of his building, Mina jammed the car in park and lit a cigarette. He knew she wanted to talk, but he didn’t. He slammed the door and didn’t look back.
The apartment was silent. Cyrus slept, Francis was still away and his mother was dead. Octavian wanted to revel in the peace of solitude, but he couldn’t shake the angry squall in his stomach. He went in his room and wished Francis were there. Wished they could stay up late talking shit and watching Trading Places or Weird Science. He started to take out his comic books, but the sight of the Dark Knight made him think about Mina during the climbing tunnel days and he shoved the box back into the drawer. He pulled out his record crates, but he felt like he could smell her fingertips on his records, so he turned off the lights and switched on the TV. When James Earl Jones came on dressed as the disturbing ominous Thulsa Doom chopping off the head of Conan the Barbarian’s mother, Octavian laughed out loud.
“Damn, Mina girl,” he said. “What the hell part of my life haven’t you infiltrated?”
He changed the channel to BET, but videos were no better. Prince serenaded the thick-browed twins in “Diamonds and Pearls” and Octavian thought about how, if he was with Mina, with her legs wound up around his, she would crack jokes about how the video made no kind of sense. When a New Edition video came on and Octavian’s pager buzzed on the night table, Octavian picked up the telephone, said, “Fucking Johnny Gil. He’ll make a punk outta anyone,” and dialed her number.
“Tave,” she said.
“What?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” he said. He could hear her listening to the new Cure album she’d bought the day before.
“For not saying what I wanted to say, for saying what I didn’t mean to say. I was mad, but I shouldn’t have forgotten about the whole walking home thing. That’s not cool.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
“And Kanta.”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t believe she said those things.”
“I can,” he said.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier about Cooper?”
“Because I’m not sure.”
“You said you would be sure if you got into Cooper.”
“Yeah, ’cause I didn’t think I’d get in.”
“But you did.”
“But I did.”
He could hear her creaky old bed as she got up and opened her window. He could see her sitting in there, wearing a long t-shirt and panties. “You smoke too much,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “Why aren’t you sure?”
He took a deep breath and said, “Because of Francis.”
“Francis?”
“I need to know he’s going to be okay. I don’t want to leave Pop here to deal with Francis by himself.”
“But your father wants you to go.”
“Okay listen,” Octavian said, “I’m going to try to explain something to you that I’ve never explained to anyone before.”
“I’m listening.”
“There’s no way for me to separate myself from my brother and no way to separate Francis from, I don’t know, being Francis. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” Mina said.
“I know it sounds crazy, but before I can even know what I, Octavian, want, I have to be sure that Francis is going to be alright first.”
“I understand,” she said.
“How?”
Mina took a deep breath. “Because that’s how I feel about you sometimes.”
TRACK 14
Slow Down
SUMMER IN ST. LOUIS started in May and dragged a needle across the soundtrack record of Octavian and Mina’s love montage to a screeching halt. It was nearly impossible to be in love when it was so hot it made you angry.
The front door of Rahsaan’s opened and closed every few minutes and scooped clouds of boiled, damp air into the store, so it didn’t matter that the old AC cranked in the back so loud you couldn’t hear music over it. Still, it was the summer to bump Mary J. Blige’s What’s the 411 and Eric B. & Rakim’s Don’t Sweat the Technique. In Mina’s car, Gang Star’s Daily Operation stayed on and Brendon kept Brand Nubian and Poor Righteous Teachers playing in heavy rotation.
They rushed out into intermittent rainstorms seeking relief, but the water was already lukewarm by the time it hit the ground. The trees ached as they stretched big, dark-green leaves in every direction but were only able to offer large swaths of meaningless shade. Night took forever to arrive, the light lingering still when the metal gate in front of Rahsaan’s slammed shut at ten. And the heat did not abate with the sunset. In fact, it hung harder over the city and itched like a wooly electric blanket.
They rode in air-conditioned cars, blowing smoke out of barely cracked windows. They congregated in the Pavilion or at the Waterfall and drank sweaty beers and smoked weed until at last the heat became one of them, another person to entertain. They searched for house parties that someone had heard about in Kirkwood, the Central West End, downtown in a loft.
Sometimes when they got there, the party was already busted and people were scattered in the streets, making plans of where to go next. Sometimes the party would be going on and they’d roll in, three, six, ten deep hoping for air conditioning and cold beer, or a back patio and a good stereo system. Nights ended in fistfights in the Steak ’n Shake parking lot, in the park behind Flynn Park School, at the Galleria.
Francis came home at the beginning of June. The six months he’d been gone left him with a line of seriousness between his eyes. A line that did not go away when he smiled, or when he stood with Cyrus and watched Mina and then Octavian graduate from high school. And it was still there as they told Francis their plans for moving to New York City.
Soon he had a new girlfriend, a mixed girl with freckles named Deena, who he met at AA. Francis and Deena sat in Cyrus’s kitchen smoking cigarettes and drinking endless cups of coffee until they pushed their chairs back from the
table and went to a meeting.
The day the air conditioner at Rahsaan’s broke, Bones nearly fainted and went home early. Ivy, who always drank more in summer, handed Octavian a beer right at noon. Octavian took the beer because Brendon had already called him a sellout twice and reminded him that the blacker the berry the sweeter the juice. Octavian was drunk by the time he got to a party at Brian Finklestein’s giant home in the Central West End.
Mina had been blowing up his beeper all night with 007s. He didn’t really feel like talking to her, but when someone put on that damn Pearl Jam song that she hated, Octavian wished she were there to talk shit with, and he went to find the phone. Brian’s parents’ sprawling black-and-white kitchen looked as if a meal had never been prepared there. There was no sign of grease on the stove, no stray cloves of garlic hidden under the kitchen cabinets. There was, however, Keisha Putnam standing right by the phone, biting her bottom lip.
She slid a manicured hand around Octavian’s waist when he walked over. “I heard you got into Morehouse?” she said.
“I did.”
“I’m going to Spelman in the fall.”
Octavian didn’t pick up the phone. Instead he cleared his throat. “I think I’m going to go to New York,” he said, “To art school.”
“That’s too bad,” she said without letting go. “I was hoping you and me could spend some time together.”
Octavian never told Mina this, but his freshman year of high school, Octavian had summoned every bit of shy-boy courage that he had and asked Keisha to the homecoming dance. Without even thinking about it, she’d said no. And when his boy Jason had asked her what was up, Keisha told him she’d never go anywhere with Octavian with his bad skin and his strange style. Not to mention his wide-ass nose. “But,” she’d said, “his brother Frankie, now he’s fine. He can take me anywhere he wants.”
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