by Naima Coster
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike
As if we had them not.
His tongue twisted and tangled, but the teacher let him suffer through it.
“Now, what’s Shakespeare saying here?” A customary silence rolled over the room. “Gee?”
Gee felt his bottom teeth slide in front of the top ones. Mr. Riley stared at him, as if he were trying to transmit an answer to Gee’s head. If he knew it, why didn’t he just say it?
“I don’t know,” Gee said finally. Mr. Riley didn’t skip a beat.
“He’s saying you shouldn’t be afraid to shine. Well, not you—all of us.”
Gee felt he should say something, anything, to make Mr. Riley move on. “Unh-hunh.”
“Like a torch. A torch doesn’t exist for itself. It exists for others.”
Mr. Riley waited for someone to pick up the conversation, to offer a thought, but, thankfully, the bell rang, and the class scrambled to leave. Mr. Riley shouted instructions for the next day’s homework, and Gee, his book bag on his shoulders, was turning toward the door when the teacher called him to the front of the room. He handed Gee a folded sheet of loose-leaf paper.
“It’s my address,” he said. “Your mother and I made plans for dinner.”
“We’re going to your house? Is that allowed?”
“It’s totally appropriate. My wife will be there and my daughter.”
Gee wondered now whether he was being set up. “Your daughter? Does she go to Central?”
Mr. Riley laughed. “She’s seven months.”
Gee slipped the address into his pocket and turned to leave. Mr. Riley caught him by the arm.
“You’ve been doing very well these last few weeks.”
“All right.”
“Even if I can tell you’re hoping I’ll skip you. I see you slouching down in your chair.”
Gee said nothing.
“People notice you, Gee. Whether you want them to or not.”
Gee sometimes had the strange sensation he was being recorded, as if this footage would be played back for him later so he could see how he’d acted and decide whether it was right. Mr. Riley talked to him, too, as if Gee’s whole life were a test, or an after-school special, and the objective was to choose wisely, otherwise everything would be lost. Jade was the same way. No wonder the two of them had bonded.
“I’ve got math,” Gee said.
Mr. Riley patted him on the shoulder. “See you Friday night.”
In the hall, students were dawdling and shuffling, trying hard to avoid going to class. Gee headed for his locker and saw Adira there waiting for him. She leaned against his locker, her arms held tight to her chest. He got closer and saw that she was crying. Gee ran to her, and she threw her arms around his neck, her mouth at his ear. A girl had never come at him like that, and Gee was stunned. He tried hard not to think of how she felt in his arms. Something was wrong.
“These girls,” Adira sobbed. “These white girls. They pulled my hair.”
Her hair was tied into two buns, uneven now, drooping on either side of her head. She must have looked so cute before—she always did—in her pink turtleneck and faded jeans, her cream-colored sneakers. She was always putting together outfits like it was the eighties or something.
“They started asking me if my hair was real. They just came up behind me. And I ignored them, but they kept going, so I turned around and said yes, and then they said I was lying, and it was fake, and they started pulling my hair. I caught one of them by the hand, and I pushed her away, and then her friend got in my face and said, ‘Don’t touch her, you black bitch,’ and then they walked away, like it was nothing.”
Adira started weeping again.
“You want to tell somebody?”
“They were just trying to make me mad. If I go to the principal, then they win.”
Down the hall, a few other kids were watching them, but no one came over to ask what had happened, to see what they could do.
“We should get them in trouble,” Gee said. He was channeling Jade, he knew. It was the kind of thing she would have done. She had never worried about being a snitch.
Adira groaned and pressed her fists into her eyes. “You think they’ll get in trouble? I love you, Gee, but sometimes I swear you don’t know nothing.”
She shook her head at him and grimaced—he disgusted her—then gathered her backpack and stomped away. Gee called after her, but she didn’t turn around. Across the hall, two white girls leaned against their lockers, watching. The blond girl gaped at him; the other, a redhead, seemed to be smiling at him meekly, as if to commiserate, but Gee couldn’t be sure; she wouldn’t look him in the eye.
He didn’t open his locker to drop off the address or pick up his textbook. He drifted down the hall, dazed. He kept hearing Adira crying, telling him he knew nothing. He saw her tears spilling freely, her wet cheeks, and destroyed hair. Without wanting to, he found himself defending the Central students in his mind. It’s not most of them, he thought. There’s always one. And then, involuntarily, before he could stop himself: One is all it takes.
Gee had few memories of the trial for the man who killed Ray. When he tried to piece it together, he could conjure up a vision of himself taking the stand, a little boy in a too-big blazer, although, of course, the memory wasn’t real, and he hadn’t watched himself testify from the benches in the courtroom. He knew a woman with a squeaky voice had asked him questions he hadn’t known the answers to. He had said he couldn’t remember, or he didn’t know, and each time, he had the sinking feeling that it wasn’t what anyone wanted him to say—not the judge or that questioning woman, or Wilson, or Jade. But they had told him to only tell the truth, and nobody had explained whether there was something that he was secretly meant to prove.
In Gee’s memories, the man who did it wasn’t there, although he must have been. If Gee tried to recall him, he managed to, but he knew this, too, was all invention. He dreamed up a man who was a composite of images he’d seen on TV: a broad male body in orange clothes, a tattoo circling a muscular neck, handcuffs linking wrists.
Gee didn’t know his name, and he didn’t know what he and Wilson had been fighting about. No one had ever explained it to him, not then or in the years after. He didn’t know whether Wilson had been caught up in a debt, a deal, or something else. His mother had given him the version of events appropriate for a six-year-old, and never bothered to fill in the rest.
Wilson had disappeared afterward. He had been their family, and then he was gone, cut off, probably by Jade. His sister Carmela had disappeared, too, although she had watched Gee for a while. Weeks? Months? He couldn’t tell. Everyone they’d known before was gone, except Linette. Even Ray had been wiped away the moment Jade took his picture off the wall.
After school, Noelle caught the bus from the station downtown, half a mile from Central. She rode north, and the bus left her on the side of an access road with no sidewalk. She kept far onto the shoulder as she walked, the mud mucking up her glossy black boots. It was a while before she reached the old gravel road, its long slope down through a cavern of trees. Then the three houses: the first painted salmon pink, the second, the one that had belonged to them, still midnight blue. The last belonged to Ruth, her mother’s only friend.
Bailey was reading a comic book on the porch swing. They waved at each other. He was an eighth grader, like Margarita, but he seemed younger than his years. He loved his comics and gardening, and whenever Noelle and her sisters came over with Lacey May to visit, he went on doing whatever he had been doing before. He wasn’t bad or boring, just quiet.
Noelle asked for Ruth, and Bailey led her inside their pretty green house. Ruth was in her bathrobe, eating yogurt from a giant tub and watching the news. There had been a fire in Raleigh, a whole family burned alive in the middle of the night.
“Noelle, honey,
what are you doing here? Is everything all right? Where’s your mama?”
“It’s just me.”
Ruth seemed to read her situation instantly. She sent Bailey out front, led Noelle to the yard.
They sat on the brick patio overlooking the vegetable garden. Bailey was growing beets and cabbage, radishes, and raspberries, the fruits edging out of their buds into the sun.
“He sure loves these plants.”
Ruth mm-hmmed at her. “They keep him company. It can get lonely out here, you know. Your mama called this morning to invite me to some emergency meeting for concerned parents. That’s where she is right now, isn’t it?”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“People get all worked up over nothing. What do I care if these kids have a better shot now than they used to? Who am I to stand in the way? We all get good breaks and bad ones. That’s life.”
Noelle didn’t see the point in arguing with Ruth, in saying that maybe she ought to care about what happened to other kids in the county, maybe she ought to care about the trouble Lacey May and the other parents were causing. She didn’t want to upset her, not when she needed her help, not when she was already so much better than her own mother.
Noelle didn’t realize she was welling up until Ruth started digging in her robe for tissues. She thrust a crumpled twist of paper under her nose.
“Honey, what’s the matter? This will all blow over, one way or another. Your mom is just agitated right now.”
“It’s not about her. Or school.”
“Go on.”
“I need to set up an appointment at the hospital. Women’s Health? Maybe I could ride with you one day you’re going to work, and you can show me where to go?”
“You need pills or something, honey?”
“I’m past all that.”
Ruth stared at her. It didn’t feel bad to have the woman look at her, and Noelle wasn’t ashamed. All the women she knew were having sex or had had it. And Lacey May hadn’t been much older than Noelle when she’d married Robbie. What she felt instead was trapped, like she’d been cornered into confessing to what everyone did in the dark, as if she were the only one.
“You can’t go to the hospital,” Ruth said. “They won’t be able to help. But there’s a clinic forty minutes away. I’ll take you there. How far along are you anyway? It might be too late.”
Noelle told her how long it had been since her last period, and Ruth squeezed her shoulder.
“That’s good news,” she said. “Don’t you worry. It’s probably no bigger than a prune.”
Noelle let Ruth hold her, and it felt good to be drawn close. She wished Ruth hadn’t said anything about the size. It was easier not to wonder what she thought about it all, the big questions they posed during the debates at school—When does life begin? Where do one person’s rights end and another one’s start? They were questions without answers, as far as she was concerned, but what was clear to her was that she couldn’t have a baby. It would bind her to Lacey May, to Hank, and that house forever. She’d amount to nothing, no one, her life swallowed up before she’d ever had a chance.
She knew Ruth would understand, not only because she was a nurse, but because she’d chosen to be a free woman: to live alone, to raise her boy, to have a career. Even if they weren’t kin, Noelle was struck with pride every time Ruth rose from one of their visits to say, I’ve got to get to my shift. She’d disappear into the bathroom and emerge smelling like roses and hot soap, her face gleaming and red, her eyebrows plucked too thin. She’d pour out fresh coffee into a shiny thermos, kiss Bailey good-bye, and leave him with money for a pizza or instructions on how to warm up his dinner. Lacey May would leave, too, drive them all back to Hank’s house, where she’d sit on the couch with him, watching television and drinking the beers he liked, until she followed him into their bedroom, and Noelle could hear them from the basement, her mother’s disgraceful moaning, all their creaking and bumping, the shuddering floor. It was payment for a life Lacey May never could have afforded on her own. What would be the point of anything Noelle had ever dreamed, if she wound up just like Lacey May?
Ruth took her by the hand and helped her stand, as if she were in a delicate condition. “Come on,” she said, steering her back toward the house. “We’ll sort this all out.”
Mr. Riley and his wife lived just east of downtown, in a part of the city that was rough but being revitalized. It was mostly old millhouses, empty lots, and a few larger houses, bought up and awaiting renovation. The Rileys lived in a complex with a hair salon, tattoo parlor, and bicycle shop. Their unit was at the end of a bare courtyard, across the road from a row of sagging blue houses.
Gee and Jade had to be buzzed in, and they climbed up a pristine white staircase that reminded Gee of school. They reached the third floor and found Mr. Riley and his wife waiting for them in the hall. Mr. Riley was wearing a bow tie and slacks, a crimson apron around his waist. His wife wore a blue-and-white head wrap, blue stone earrings, a matching denim dress. On her hip she held their baby girl, in a onesie printed with the words I AM MAGIC.
They greeted Jade and Gee with hugs and kisses on the cheek. Mr. Riley introduced his wife, Andrea, his daughter, Katina; they both bore his last name.
The apartment was a single room with floor-to-ceiling windows, a couch and sitting area, an eat-in kitchen. Two bicycles were mounted on the plaster wall. A long staircase led up to the loft where they must have slept.
It was smaller than Gee would have imagined but also more beautiful. He found himself thinking Mr. Riley had too much and too little all at once.
“I know what you must be thinking about the stairs,” Andrea said. “But we’re very careful with Katina. And we’re going to move as soon as we’ve saved up for a house. Where do you all live?”
“The east side,” Mr. Riley answered for them. He was pouring Jade a glass of wine she hadn’t said she wanted.
“That makes us neighbors,” Jade said.
Mr. Riley shrugged. “I suppose. This is practically downtown.”
“It’s the east side, baby,” Andrea said, and she changed the subject by asking Gee if he wanted root beer, carrot juice, or coconut water.
Gee went to serve himself, but Andrea waved him off. She moved quickly, even with the baby tucked into her side. She had heavy breasts and tired eyes, a wide, open face. It was a surprise to Gee how pretty she was, and he wondered how Mr. Riley had found a woman like her.
They poured drinks and set the table, and when they sat down to dinner, they found they didn’t have much to say to one another. Gee had asked in the car what the point of all this was, and Jade had said, Connections are a good thing, Gee, but even she didn’t look so sure anymore.
Andrea had made a big salad full of squash and red onion and raisins, and a creamy pasta filled with vegetables Gee couldn’t recognize under the thick yellow sauce.
“I hope nobody’s got any allergies.” Andrea had the baby in a sling now. “This has got soy and nuts and all the things that will make you sick if you’ve got an allergy.”
“But no seafood,” Mr. Riley said with a smile. “Andrea is vegan. Kept it up all during her pregnancy, too.”
Gee felt his stomach turn. He gazed down at the pasta, which had smelled appealing, like hot cheese, a moment ago. They didn’t say grace or anything, so they all ate up, and it was quiet, until Jade asked what had brought them to the area.
The Rileys mentioned Jersey smog and too much rent. They said this was a good, growing city, where you could still find free parking downtown. You never had to wait for a table at a restaurant. You could drive west to the mountains, east to the coast. And there were black people, which mattered to them both. Andrea explained her job at the university to Gee: she took donors out to play golf and to watch football games, and, in exchange, they wrote the checks that built new dining halls and science labs.
Gee wasn’t surprised anyone would write Andrea a big check. He imagined her playing golf in a stri
ped shirt and pants, a little white beret. He felt himself go hard, and he was washed over with guilt. She had been so nice to him, waiting on him, asking how he liked the food. She was too good for Mr. Riley, too beautiful. Gee liked her big, soft body, her thick eyebrows, how her daughter clung to her. It was almost too much when she slipped a breast out of her dress to feed Katina. When he looked up again, he was relieved that he couldn’t have seen anything even if he tried.
Was this what his mother had wanted him to see? Mr. Riley’s big-breasted wife, his apartment with fogged-up windows and a bedroom hidden upstairs? Was it supposed to make him grateful for Central, for the chance to go further than she’d been able to, as far as someone like Mr. Riley? It didn’t seem like that exceptional a life, but it was still more than he had ever imagined for himself and more than he knew how to get.
Jade was the one stoking the conversation now, explaining how relieved she’d been to meet Mr. Riley at the town hall.
“I knew it would make a difference,” she said, “for my son to have someone to look up to at Central. Somebody who looks like him.”
Gee glared at his mother. She sounded so corny. He hadn’t heard her flatter anyone ever in his life. What was so special about Mr. Riley anyway?
He thanked her, beaming, holding up his wineglass, as if he were going to propose a toast to himself. “You know that’s why I went into education,” he said. “For our boys. When I was in school, I was always looking for a vision of a successful black man. I didn’t know my father either.”
“I knew my father,” Gee said. “He died. But I knew him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Andrea said. “How long has he been gone?”
“About ten years,” Jade said, skimming over how he’d died. She never told people that Ray had been killed, and Gee had gleaned it was the kind of thing he shouldn’t mention either. He felt heat pooling in his chest, his hands. He needed to find a way to empty himself, to discharge his embarrassment and rage, but he stayed put, his teeth clamped together.