Best Debut Short Stories 2021

by Yuka Igarashi

  The Georgia Review

  THE FIRST TIME I SAID IT

  Isaac Hughes Green

  I HAD BEEN out on the court for a hot minute. I’d woken up around noon, had a bacon, egg, and cheese from the bodega downstairs from my apartment, headed to Tompkins, and started working in. The summer sun blazed down on New York City—its heat thick like the bacon grease Dad used to save in cans next to the stove, or thick like Anna who sat behind me in history class and wrote our initials with a heart around them on the corner of my notebook, or thick like my hair when I’d tried to freeform it that summer after Afropunk. I’d won a few games that morning but lost more, so instead of being on the court sweating, I was on the sidelines stealing glances at the lifeguard on the deck of the tiny pool between the courts and the Zen garden. Eventually I got hungry again. So I walked to the pizza shop on the corner of Tenth and Avenue A. I got my usual chicken, bacon, and ranch slice with a healthy addition of red pepper flakes and Parmesan. Then I took it back to the courts and sat down and started to eat. I was halfway through the slice when I heard someone calling out to me.

  “You wanna run?” asked a dude who looked kind of like Bo Jackson in his Nike ads.

  I looked around.

  “Me?” I said, thinking of the game I had just lost and the slice I’d just paid for. I was a transplant to New York, which meant I’d never be called to play just because I knew someone. The court was always full of strangers.

  “Yeah. You.”

  I got up. I looked him in the face to see if I recognized him. Maybe he’d been sitting on the sidelines when I’d dunked for the first time a few weeks before. Maybe he’d seen that game where I drilled four three-pointers and had just as many assists on those overgrown high schoolers the summer prior. Maybe he was the kind of guy who didn’t pick his team based on who’d been winning and who’d been losing. Maybe he was an altruist who just wanted to see everyone have a good time. I tossed my slice in the trash and got up off of the park bench.

  “Wait,” he said while looking over at another player on the other side of the court. I looked over too and saw another guy who was a little taller than I am. I’d been tall up until about my junior year of college—the tallest one at our family gatherings. Then all of my little cousins had a simultaneous growth spurt. They sprouted up past my 6′1″ to NBA-worthy 6′4″s and 6′5″s. And I was left looking up at them at the Christmas party, wondering if those special shoes that added an inch were really as undetectable as the advertisements said they were.

  “I think we’re good,” the guy in the tank top said.

  I looked over at the piece of pizza I’d thrown away in order to walk onto the court. I looked at the young man who’d picked me, then dropped me. I looked at his girl sitting on the sideline. I walked toward him until I was close enough to see the beads of perspiration shining on his forehead and shoulders. My heart sped up. My veins throbbed in my arms and neck.

  I’d never said it before.

  I mean, sure I’d cussed people out. But this was something different. The level of disrespect I’d been shown merited that special word. The one that conveyed the pain and the connectedness. The one that said I wasn’t having it with this affront to the fledgling sense of self I’d been piecing together against great opposition since little.

  As I worked up the nerve to say the word for the first time, the most significant times I’d heard it said before flashed through my mind like a parade of bikers past the hookah spot on a Thursday night or like the emotions I’d had for those White girls in college who started talking about how they’d fucked a drug dealer a few weeks before me right after we were finished.

  I WAS BORN in Durham, North Carolina, but I grew up in a safe, sheltered environment—the kind that the Fresh Prince was thrust into after he said goodbye to his moms and made it to Bel-Air—in the suburbs of Virginia just outside of Richmond. We had four bedrooms and an oak bandstand out back. A record-label executive had used the house as a summer getaway before we’d moved in. It was a refuge for us too. But somehow the word permeated the walls that my parents tried to build around our family. As I got older I heard it used on street corners, at the YMCA summer camps and church youth groups that my parents made me go to, and in popular music. To me and to my family it was a reminder that even if we had enough money to eat at restaurants whenever we wanted or to go for rides down the James River in my father’s boat, we could still be brought down to a summation of what we looked like and what people thought of us in two short syllables. And so we didn’t use it. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t out there waiting to be turned on us.

  I was ten years old and I was in somebody’s barn with a hoe in my hand. There was rusted farm equipment everywhere. We’d passed signs that marked where slaves had been whipped and by whom, which I made sure to point out to my teachers as they casually walked by. They called it a field trip, but it felt like torture. After an entire unit on slavery and the great inequities it had enacted on the African American community, my fifth-grade class had been shipped out to some former plantation and asked to till the fields like a couple of us would have in olden times.

  I said, “No.”

  “It’s just an exercise,” Mrs. Martha replied.

  “Look, Jazmine is doing it,” Mrs. Peggy chimed in.

  I swallowed my pride and went out into that field. I could hear mother earth calling out to me. Reminding me like my parents had during Kwanzaa and Juneteenth that my ancestors would be proud to see me getting my education. Reminding me that I was their wildest dreams made manifest. Reminding me, like Grandpa did, that sometimes the cotton grew up high where he and the rest of my ancestors could pick it without bending over, and sometimes mighty storms allowed my ancestors to stay inside for the day and share stories about where they’d come from and who their people had been.

  I raised that hoe and no sooner than I did, did I hear “You just don’t want to do it because you’re a nigger!” come from Brittany McCourty’s mouth.

  “Me?” I asked.

  I was one of two Black kids in my class—the other of whom was across the way making short work of an imaginary row of cotton with a smile on her face—but it still surprised me to hear myself referred to that way.

  “My dad said that there are good black people who want to get jobs and be a part of society and there are niggers who just want to lay around and live off of other people’s hard work.”

  “You’re not supposed to be using that word,” I said.

  “Maybe if you weren’t acting like one I wouldn’t have to.”

  I cried then, quietly and to myself. My tears fell from my cheeks and stained the reddish-brown soil below as my hands worked it into neat rows and columns like so many men and women before me. I thought about speaking up, and then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “We want to talk to you about something,” Mrs. Martha said.

  “It’s okay,” I replied. “I don’t want to make a big deal about it.”

  “Well, it’s a little too late for that. You can’t walk around using the B-word toward people and expecting nothing to happen.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Brittany McCourty said you did.”

  “I didn’t call her that.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Is it because you said something you shouldn’t have?”

  “No.”

  Mrs. Martha cocked her head to the side.

  “We’re going to have a talk about this when we get back to school. I won’t tolerate profanity, and I certainly won’t tolerate lying about using it.”

  “I just want to go home.”

  “You will. And your mother will be waiting to speak to you about what you did today.”

  It turned out that she was. And she wasn’t happy. Neither of us were.

  I MOVED AWAY from the predominantly White town I spent my early childhood in and came back to my home state of North Caro
lina. We were moving back to a community with roots in Black culture and entrepreneurship. It’s what the family needed. At least that’s what my dad told people when they asked him. His hair was graying and he was becoming overweight, which I thought was a natural part of growing older. In reality it was probably due to the stress of supporting a family, raising a “spirited” child who wanted to be an artist when he grew up, and hitting a glass ceiling. Hard. Toward the end of our time in Virginia, I overheard strained conversations during which he spoke in his White voice to defend himself from his bosses at his finance job. I didn’t understand all of the words he was using. But where he used to laugh and joke, he now sounded like he’d rather be talking to anybody else—like he’d taken it as far as it was going to go. Later on, when people asked and he started spouting off a spiel about how Durham had been the home of the world’s greatest Black-owned firm and that he’d always wanted to start his own business, I stayed quiet or gave him the benefit of the doubt or some combination of the two.

  Uncle Jimmy died. Then Grandpa died too.

  I watched my father try to hold it together as I grew older—old enough to realize that’s what he was doing. My parents still tried to protect me by enrolling me in private schools and settling in another White neighborhood. But my father made sure I knew I was Black in small doses of unchecked realness that never ceased to surprise and amaze me. One day we were driving on Old Chapel Hill Road. We passed a branch of the old Black-owned bank that had helped my father start his company and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield building. Oaks and pine trees lined the streets. We got into a turning lane by the gas station on the corner—the one that had the cats that liked to jump from the pork rind shelf onto cases of Budweiser. Who knows what was going through his mind. Maybe he’d been having trouble keeping up with car payments on the Mercedes we were riding in and wanted to prepare me in case we had to make some changes. Maybe he missed his brother and his father and hoped I’d be able to help him fill the void. He played NWA for me. “Real Niggaz Don’t Die” off of Efil4zaggin a.k.a. Niggaz4Life:

  Die, nigga! We are born to die, nigga

  You’ve been dyin’ for four hundred years

  He turned down the music for a second and then looked at me.

  “Remember, son. You my number one nigga on the trigga.”

  I smiled.

  It wasn’t how he usually spoke—Black voice or White one. But it still felt genuine. Even coming from a financial analyst. I could see his struggle and my own, and somehow, that word bridged the gap.

  I WAS EIGHTEEN. I had saved up a little bit of money and moved out of the house and onto a friend’s couch back in Virginia. I was trying everything I could to be independent but didn’t really know how to do it. After overstaying my welcome at my friend’s place, I started camping out in hotels and libraries. Eventually I bought an RV to live in and got ripped off by the seller and then a mechanic once it broke down. I decided to take the train to Durham just before Thanksgiving. And I got into a disagreement with my parents on the way. They yelled through the phone that I needed to get my college degree.

  “You need structure! It’s fine to want to be an artist, but you need to go through the proper channels!” my mother said through my cell phone’s tinny speaker as the Amtrak Carolinian I was riding on made its way through Rocky Mount.

  “It’s a side hustle,” my dad added. “Name your favorite artist, and I bet I could look them up and find out what their day job used to be.”

  I ended up staying in yet another hotel—a discount one, because I was running out of money—about a mile or so away from my parents’ house. The first night I was there, I went outside to have a cigarette. As I was walking toward the exit door, I could hear what sounded like a house party from one of the rooms nearby—men’s voices rapping to Tech N9ne and the sound and smell of bottles of beer. It seemed a little dicey, so I decided to stay the course and head outside.

  The heavy metal door closed behind me as I took a Marlboro Light out of a white-and-gold packet and lit it between my fingers. I thought back to when I used to steal those same white-and-gold packs from my mother’s purse and glove compartment when I was younger. I wouldn’t ever smoke them back then. I’d just throw them away. It hurt me to see her hurting herself. And if I’d had a mirror, I suspect it would have hurt me to see the look in my own eyes at that exact moment too.

  I wanted to be the big homie.

  I wanted to be looked up to.

  I wanted people to hear about me before they saw me.

  And I never for a second thought twice about the fact that all of those things were more important to me than actually creating anything worth looking at.

  The door squeaked as a man about my own size and build walked out of the hotel hallway into the empty parking lot I was standing in and asked for one of my cigarettes. He leaned on the railing next to me and placed it in his mouth.

  “You got a light?”

  “Yeah.” I handed my lighter to him.

  “What you doing out here?” he asked.

  “Just handling some business.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “I’m from here,” I said, my eyes narrowed, my disposition wary.

  “Oh, you’re from here,” he said in a voice that mocked the concerned tone in my reply.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “Then what are you doing staying at a hotel?”

  “I-It’s hard to explain.”

  “Can’t be.”

  “I don’t always get along with my parents.”

  “Oh. Okay. I’ve met young guys like you before. A few of them are back inside the room with my brother right now.”

  “What are you all doing?”

  “You really want to know?”

  I said nothing.

  “Wait here. I’ll go get them.”

  The man disappeared through the door. I waited outside in that empty and secluded parking lot, even though something was telling me to leave. All of a sudden the door burst open. The music was loud from the hotel room as people began to empty out of it. In a flash, I was flanked by twenty men in various shades of Black—African Black, High Yellow, Mixed, and Part-Red. They all followed and took their cues from one man among them who was the tallest and best looking. He wore a neon-green shirt, a gold chain, and a devious smile.

  “This young man told me he’s having a disagreement with his parents. Told me that’s why he’s staying at this hotel,” the guy I’d given a cigarette to said to the taller one.

  “I don’t know. You didn’t mention he was so skinny,” the taller guy replied.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I asked impatiently.

  “I’m Will. This is my brother. These are my employees.”

  “What kind of work do you guys do?”

  “Construction when we can get it.”

  “What about when you can’t?”

  “You already worried about that? We haven’t even offered you a job yet.”

  “I didn’t know you were going to.”

  “Well, you have to earn the offer.”

  “By doing what?”

  I looked around and realized that all twenty of the workers’ eyes were on me.

  “Maybe we don’t need everybody,” the smaller brother said.

  “You’re right,” the bigger brother said. He waved his hand and ten or so of the men went inside.

  “Do you have any skills?”

  “I make art on my computer.”

  “Right. But practical ones.”

  “No.”

  “Well, we can start you off well above minimum wage. We’ll give you a check that’s better than any you’ve ever had before. Ask any of my guys,” he said before turning to the ones left. “You all just started with me and your check hasn’t ever been better, has it?”

  “Yeah,” they said in a disheartened tone. Their clothes were shabby. Their shoulders were thrown forward and their gazes were piercing. I thought back to stories I’d he
ard from my cousins about people who were jumped into gangs and exploited. My fists clenched as I sized them all up.

  “I appreciate the offer,” I said. “But I’m about to go to New York.”

  “Nigga,” the taller brother said. “You don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand?!” I asked as I thought to myself about how the way he used the word was both familiar and threatening.

  The men laughed to themselves.

  “You can’t just be out here dolo.”

  “I’m from here,” I said.

  “Yeah, he from here,” the shorter brother mocked me again.

  I could see the taller brother getting frustrated. The sinister smile that had crossed his face during our entire interaction was giving way.

  “What’s in New York?” the taller brother asked.

  “I’m gonna go to school,” I said. “Art school.”

  “He’s got dreams,” the taller brother said in a half-mocking, half-serious tone. He patted me on the shoulder, and I could sense that I was off the hook for whatever I’d been on the hook for before.

  I GOT A portfolio together and applied like my life was on the line. Soon afterward I was admitted to Pratt. After convincing both of my parents that I could learn how to make money doing what I loved by getting an arts degree, I moved to Brooklyn and made an honest attempt at doing so. Sophomore year rolled around, and I moved into what had once been a sweatshop. The building had been converted into loft spaces where young artists lived as many as five or six to a room. The apartment I moved into had wood floors and a big common space with bay windows and a heater that hung from the ceiling and sounded like a low-flying plane when you started it up in the winter. I’d found the place on Craigslist. When the landlord had taken me to see the unit, the tenant had yelled at him for not scheduling the visit first. But the space was huge, and when I brought a few of the friends I’d made in art school to see it we all agreed it would be a great idea to move in.

  One was from Connecticut. He was a model and a photographer. He rolled his own cigarettes from a blue bag of tobacco and painted when he wasn’t shooting or writing in his tiny brown notebooks. Another had introduced me to the model. He was one of the first people I met at Pratt and was a friend who was slowly becoming a rival, because we were competing for the same people’s attention and the same school-sponsored grants. The third was a shy girl from France. Once we were living together we began to have parties, and we had so much space that we could host bands and upward of a hundred people at a time.