by Ibi Zoboi
“I can’t believe you’re telling me this,” I say as her words sink in.
“Yeah, me either. And I don’t agree with Daddy. Neither does Mommy. Just so you know. But Junior . . . I don’t know if it’s some masculine thing to try to impress Daddy or if he’s just not smart enough to figure it out himself. But he kinda parrots back what Daddy says, so . . .”
So this whole time it’s been someone else putting ideas into Junior’s head? And my Uncle Marcus thinks all of us are Oreos because of the way we live? I look over to the card table, where they’re setting up a game of spades. Uncle Marcus is laughing at something a man next to him is saying—so hard that he’s bent at the waist, hands clasped to his knees.
“Don’t hate Daddy,” Della pleads. “He loves you guys. And listen, I’m majoring in journalism, not psychology, but I think he misses your mom. And maybe he wishes he’d been brave enough to leave, too.”
“My dad says some messed-up things about Black people sometimes,” I say after a moment. “My mom, too.”
Della laughs again. “So does Daddy. I have a friend at Howard who’s half Black and half Chinese. She says some of the meanest things about Chinese people sometimes. But she’d rip us to shreds if we ever repeated it—as she should.” She shrugs. “It’s just what we do. We’re always harder on our own people.”
Finally, Ellis gets the speakers set up and they start playing old doo-wop, and Motown, and slow, steamy D’Angelo and Prince songs that are entirely inappropriate for a family gathering.
When the spades game is done, we line up at the tables around the side of the house to fill our plates. We have all the food Junior organized in the kitchen, along with the meat and veggies Dad and Uncle Marcus grilled and the dishes the guests brought. The spread is admirable: deviled eggs, hush puppies, fried chicken, collard greens, mac and cheese, hot links and ribs, corn on the cob, and more. The pitchers of drinks I made are sitting on their own table, and we haven’t even set out all the desserts Junior baked. Everyone urges Nana Paulette to get in line first, but she insists on standing behind the table to help serve. She looks too happy to be argued with.
Della saves me a seat at a table that just happens to be right across from Junior and his girlfriend. Even if I feel a little better knowing his comments were spurred by my uncle’s feelings, I don’t know that I’m ready to forget the things he’s said to me.
His girlfriend smiles as I sit down. “Hi. I’m Lita.”
“Joni,” I say, surprised that she’s so friendly. “Their cousin.”
“I only have one cousin.” She sighs as she forks up a bite of mac and cheese. “I wish I had more, like y’all.”
“There’s just five of us,” Della says. “Four this weekend, without Emma.”
“I guess it’s nice having fewer people to leave when you go away.” Lita bumps Junior’s shoulder with hers. “I’m going to miss this guy a lot.”
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Georgetown. My parents’ alma mater, so I almost didn’t have a choice.” She shakes her head, but I can see the pride in her eyes. “And I’m trying to get Marcus to apply so he can join me after his gap year.”
It’s strange to hear her call Junior by his actual name, but even stranger to hear his girlfriend use the same term that he snarled at me for saying only hours ago. I look at him to see if he noticed, but he’s staring down at his plate, his mouth full.
“I don’t know—with me in DC too, he might end up in California or something,” Della says. But even her smirk can’t get Junior to look up and join this conversation. “Joni’s going to Spelman in the fall.”
“Probably,” I say, though I know in my heart it’s where I want to be.
Lita’s face lights up. “You are? Oh, I’m so jealous. That was on my list, but . . . you know. Georgetown. My parents are die-hard Hoyas.”
Junior finishes his plate before we’re even halfway done with ours and stands up immediately, mumbling about having to go finish the birthday cake.
“You want help?” Lita asks almost reluctantly. It’s clear that she’s perfectly comfortable sitting here with Della and me.
“Nah, I got it.” He gives her a soft smile and rubs the back of her neck before he leaves.
“Girl, you gotta tell me all about DC,” Lita says to Della. “I’ve only been there a few times, and it’s always with my parents.”
They start discussing the differences between Bloom and Washington, DC, and Georgetown and Howard, and I zone out, taking in my surroundings. The song on the party playlist changes and Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” comes on—an old song I know because Dad likes to put it on while he’s attempting to cook. He usually ends up dancing too much and burning things.
My grandmother starts bopping in her seat, and on the other side of Della, Terrence calls out, “What you know about Marvin Gaye, Miss Paulette?”
Nana Paulette just laughs, one hand waving in the air as the other taps the cane leaning on the table.
Aunt Virna whips her head around to look at him. “What do you know about Marvin Gaye, little Terrence?”
“I’m about to show you, Miss Virna!” He leaps from his chair and pulls her to her feet so they can dance.
More people get up, including my parents. Mom usually rebuffs Dad when he tries to get her to dance with him in the kitchen, but this time she willingly lets him twirl her around the table. It makes me smile.
I get up to dump my plate and wash my hands, and narrowly miss being pulled into the dance party. Uncle Marcus taps my arm on my way to the porch and I think he’s going to try to get me to join them, but he just scoops me into a quick hug and kisses the top of my head.
Inside, I use the bathroom, and as I’m walking back to the front door, I hear noises in the kitchen. I follow them to find Junior standing at the counter, carefully icing the cakes he made last night. He’s almost done.
“Hey,” I say.
He startles, then turns around and nods. “What’s up?”
I didn’t know I was going to say anything until I was standing here, but we’re all alone and I feel like I can’t let the opportunity pass. “Do you remember calling me an Oreo? The last time I saw you.”
His hand pauses, hovering next to the cake. I don’t wait for him to answer.
“It hurt my feelings. Especially since it came from you. I go to school with almost all white people and they say really crappy things to me. Even my friends, sometimes. It’s not my fault where I grew up.”
“Sounds like you need some new friends.” But there isn’t much fire, if any, in his voice.
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe I’ll find better ones when I get to college. But maybe you should think about not judging someone before you really know what it’s like to be them.”
Junior turns around. “What about you? Last time you visited, all you did was talk about everything that’s different here. How you couldn’t believe we don’t have a nanny, and that it smells weird out here and it’s boring and you’d hate to live in such a small town. And your dad . . . Look, I like Uncle David, but sometimes he says some weird shit.”
Did I say that? All these years, I haven’t been able to shake what Junior said, the name he called me. But judging his life and his home . . . Even if I didn’t mean to, I get how deeply that would hurt, same as his words hurt me. And I don’t remember saying it, but the conviction in his voice convinces me it’s true—that maybe he’s been struggling with that memory as much as I’ve been wrestling with mine. It makes me feel awful, that I was so careless with my words.
“We’re not some poor Bamas you have to feel sorry for,” Junior grumbles. “Some of us like living here.”
“I don’t think that,” I say. “I’m sorry for what I said, Junior. All of it. But you can’t judge me based on what my dad says. I don’t like it, either, but he gets defensive when we call him out, so I stopped speaking up.”
“Well, it wasn’t cool that I called you an Oreo. Sorry about that
.” He’s quiet for a moment, then lets out a long, slow breath. “To be honest, it’s not just you that’s said stuff like that about Bloom. People around here talk that mess. They can’t wait to leave. Even Lita . . . I don’t think she’ll ever come back once she leaves.”
“Her parents did, right?”
Junior shakes his head. “She’s not like her parents.”
“Did you ever think about culinary school?” I gesture to the cake and the kitchen in general. “All the food was so good . . . and obviously you know how to crack the whip.”
He shrugs. “Thanks. It’s not hard. And I guess I’ve thought about going into hospitality management, but that means leaving Bloom, and like I said, some of us don’t want to leave.”
“Couldn’t you take classes in Saint Louis or at one of the other schools near here? That’s not so far. Not like going to DC.”
“You some kind of guidance counselor?” The corner of his mouth turns up in a tiny, quick smile. “But, yeah. Maybe I could.”
I return his smile with one of my own. It’s funny how my fear can push me to do something that might lead to one of the best experiences of my life while Junior’s fear threatens to hold him back. And strange that I didn’t see that we’re battling the same thing, even though our lives and ambitions are so different.
I guess, deep down, we’re not so different.
He clears his throat. “You want to help me finish up this cake? We’ll burn the place down if we try to do eighty candles, but if we line them up like this . . .”
I stand next to my cousin and grin.
Nudge him in the side as I say, “Hand me those matches.”
Samson and the Delilahs
Tochi Onyebuchi
Sobechi knows the power his voice has over them.
Sure, the uniform helps, though it’s still a little loose around the waist and his shoulders haven’t quite grown all the way into his jacket, and the khaki pants spill onto his dress shoes. But his striped tie is expertly knotted, and a silk kerchief pokes its head out of his jacket pocket to provide just the right amount of accent to the whole outfit. He’s good with his hands, though he knows he needs to get better. He can do the claw to accentuate a point, can spread his arms just wide enough to highlight how far ahead his argument is from his opponent’s, can do that thing where it seems he’s holding the entirety of his point in one hand like a snowball, tight and succinct enough for the judges to see and analyze and nod their heads at. But it’s his voice, he knows. His voice does the heavy lifting.
His mother sometimes makes him practice his speeches with his eyes closed. At first, he protested. “Mummy, if I can’t see my audience, how can I tell how they are hearing my words?”
“Eh-eh, are you talking with your eyes, now? Are you seeing with your mouth? It is called de-bate, not SEE-bate. Now, go on. Start over.”
And, just like that, she had taken apart his position. And it had helped. Late at night, when he used to practice in front of his mirror, perfecting his posture and trying to keep his hands from wandering, his eyes would rove everywhere. He would get so nervous, staring at himself. When he would pause, he would look at the ceiling, and the first few times he did it in front of Mum, she had taken off her slipper and smacked him over the head with it.
When Sobechi practiced in front of both his parents, Daddy would usually have his back turned, working pots and pans over the stove, and the familiar, pungent smell of beans and peppers Mum used for moi-moi would fill the air. You could open all the windows in the house and fan your arms until they were about to fall off, and you wouldn’t be rid of the smell.
Then, over dinner, they would critique his performance. Daddy would ladle the bean pudding, shaped like slanted pyramids, onto everyone’s plates while Mum went straight to the chase. “You shuffle, left oo right, ugu left oo right, like ants ah live in your pants. You cut your hand this way; oya, cut it like this.” Her hands and arms dance, and Sobechi wonders what on earth speech she’s trying to give. “And you hunch, always. You hunch like you fi enter small small room. Stand up your back.” She demonstrates in her chair, makes her spine into a pillar holding up the sky.
Daddy occasionally glances up from his fried rice and moi-moi to smirk at Sobechi during the critique session. Solidarity.
But it’s Mummy’s words that live inside Sobechi as he speaks now to his audience. He has given this closing statement enough times that the words just come out of him. He doesn’t even hear them anymore.
Then the rapturous applause.
The clapping continues long enough that Sobechi knows his team has won. Even before they make the announcement, he can hear their victory. Just like Mummy taught him to.
The center judge, an older white man with a head full of silver hair, shuffles the papers before him. His face looks like it was carved out of a cliff. Sobechi knows it intimidates the others, his teammates and his opponents alike. But he recognizes that type of face. That impassive expression that betrays nothing. That waits for you to make the mistake. But that man is on their side. He has been converted. So has the African American woman to his right, and the older white woman to that center judge’s left.
The center judge clears his throat. “The committee will take fifteen minutes to review the arguments made by both teams, then will announce its decision.” He bangs the gavel, and everyone starts moving at once.
Coach Carter emerges from the wings and beckons the team, and they huddle backstage. Angelica moves slower than the rest of them, head bowed low, and Coach puts a hand to her shoulder. “Angie, hey, you did fine.”
She has her fists balled at her sides, shoulders tense beneath her suit jacket. She’s practically trembling. “Fine? I botched our entire argument. I couldn’t remember point number two and had to skip literally the most important part of my speech.” Tears well up in her eyes, and Coach places his arm around her shoulder and pulls her in, whispering, “It’s okay, Angie. It’s okay.”
Grayson has already loosened his tie. He smells victory in the air too, but he reacts entirely different. He lets himself go, messes up his blond hair a bit and sticks his tongue out as he drapes an arm over Sobechi.
“Not that it matters,” Grayson says too loud. “Slam-Dunk Sobe put the team on his back. As usual!” At a sharp look from Angelica, Grayson raises his hands in self-defense. “Look, we got this in the bag. It’s a Reynolds Wrap. You see how they’re clapping for us out there?”
“For him,” Angelica growls.
“Hey,” Coach says. “We’re a team, okay? We win and lose as a team.”
But Sobechi pays no attention to them. He looks at the curtain, looks past it. His lips move silently, going over the words he’s spent weeks memorizing, the bits of improvisation he’s sprinkled throughout, which lines landed, which ones didn’t, whether that joke should have been moved elsewhere, whether he emphasized the right syllables in the right words in the right sentence. He’s already thinking about the next round. Nationals.
But the biggest reason he doesn’t confer with his teammates is that he has to rest his voice.
Kids stream out of the arts center into the waiting arms of their parents, some sobbing, others completely limp, unable to move their arms and hold the parents who hug them so tightly. Sobechi’s mother, in a yellow-patterned gown and gele so bright her outfit practically glows in the night, waits by their Subaru Legacy. Her smile, when she sees the plaque in Sobechi’s hands proclaiming him the best Individual Interlocutor of the Northeast Consortium Regional Debate Competition, is genuine. Even after all this time, no matter how many of these he brings home, Mummy’s smile is genuine.
“Come here, my son,” she says, arms wide open.
Coach isn’t far behind. “Mrs. Onyekachi, your son was a wonder to listen to once again.”
Sobechi’s mother’s dimples show when she smiles. “Why, thank you, Coach. He practices relentlessly, always so focused.” Her Nigerian accent has practically disappeared. In its place is the Briti
sh inflection Sobechi uses during competitions. It gives their consonants sharp edges. She switches into it so swiftly that it’s like she never left England all those years ago to meet Daddy in America. “We are so very proud.”
“With a voice like that, and with his skills at oratory, he’d make an excellent lawyer,” Coach says.
Mrs. Onyekachi laughs with a hand to her chest. “Or a minister.” She hugs Sobechi tight to her side. “His cousin is a pastor in Providence, Rhode Island. We say he learned how to talk reading the Bible.”
“Oh.” Coach Carter chuckles. “Well, either way, Sobechi is very gifted, but you already know that. Sobechi, make sure to have some fun next weekend, all right? We won’t start prepping for Nationals until next month, so enjoy your time off, all right?” He winks at Sobechi. “A pleasure, as always, Mrs. Onyekachi.”
“The pleasure is mine, Coach,” she says.
The ride home passes in silence, except for the soft whispering of Sobechi in the passenger’s seat redoing his arguments.
When they round the corner into their neighborhood, Sobechi sees a car, a van, and a U-Haul truck outside the house next to theirs, and a family carrying things indoors. A man and his wife struggling with a large couch, a girl holding a plastic bag full of various knickknacks in her teeth, her arms laden with totes and other assorted baggage.
“Ah, I knew they’d sold that house,” Mrs. Onyekachi says as they pull into their driveway.
Sobechi stares, doesn’t know why he’s so entranced. It’s nighttime, so he can’t see all of the things the new family’s moving inside.
His mother nudges him in his ribs. “Oya, go and help them carry their things.”
Sobechi is exhausted, but he knows better than to complain, so he climbs out of car, puts his plaque back on the passenger’s seat, and heads their way.
“Oya, come come come.”