by Naima Coster
“He was a baker,” Jade went on, “like my mother-in-law, who made that pie.” Linette had sent along a plum pie that was cooling on the counter. “Like I was saying, it means a lot to me that Gee’s got someone at Central looking after him. Those concerned parents have been quiet since school started, but the rumor is they’re working on something. I don’t think they’ll get the program reversed, at least not until after Gee graduates. It’s the environment I worry about, the messages he might get.”
For all her boldness, Jade was good at citing risks, naming all the things that could sabotage a life. In the weeks after a homicide in the neighborhood, elementary school kids did worse on tests. Teenagers without fathers were more likely to wind up parents before graduation. Black boys got sent to the principal’s office more. He’d been listening to her spout these facts for years, as if they were land mines he could avoid, if only he knew where to look.
“Gee is lucky to have you,” Mr. Riley said. “My mother didn’t know how to guide me. She wanted to, but she didn’t know how. I had to figure things out for myself, especially in college and ed school. Over time, I came up with this mantra that got me through—”
“Oh, Lord.” Andrea rolled her eyes. “Here he goes.”
“I don’t mean to preach, but maybe it’ll help the young brother.” He pointed his glass at Gee and cleared his throat. “You ready?” They were all quiet, even the baby, waiting for his grand pronouncement. “If they’re going to look at you, then you’ve got to give them something to look at.”
“Come again?” Jade said, but Mr. Riley went on, speaking to Gee.
“They’re always going to be looking at you. To see if you measure up. To see if you’ll make a mistake. They’ll try and see if you’re really as smart as they’re afraid you are. And you’ve got to answer their question. You’ve got to show them what’s what. Don’t hide your light under a bushel—that’s in the Bible, but it’s the same as what we were talking about in class. A torch. You’ve got to be a torch.”
Jade’s voice cut soberly through the room. “My son doesn’t have to be anything. He’s got a right to be at that school, and if those white kids don’t have to prove they belong, then neither does he.”
“Well, there I disagree with you. You see, the torch is a metaphor—”
“I don’t care about your metaphor.”
“It’s Shakespeare’s.”
“When it comes to my son, my opinion is the only one that matters.”
“And Gee’s,” Andrea said, her voice sweet and clear, but Gee didn’t miss the challenge in it.
The women smiled at each other.
“That’s right,” Jade said. “What matters is what Gee wants.”
There was an opening then for someone to ask him what it was he wanted, his opinion, but no one did. It was Andrea who broke the quiet, asking who wanted pie. Mr. Riley rose to help her, and they busied themselves brewing coffee and making plates. Jade remained at the table with Gee. She smiled at him and arched her eyebrows at the Rileys, their backs turned, but Gee didn’t smile back. He wished he were home, in his room, a picture of Andrea in his head. His shoulders ached from the way he’d been sitting at the table this whole time: too stiff and alert.
He thought about Adira, those white girls who had pulled her hair. He hadn’t told his mother, and he didn’t think he ever would. If there was someone he knew who was a torch, it was Adira, and it hadn’t spared her. Her parents couldn’t spare her, and neither could Mr. Riley, or Jade. Whatever was going to happen would happen—to Adira, to him, to everyone. There was nothing the grown-ups could do to watch over them, really, although they liked to talk as if they had control. They could go on talking, as far as Gee was concerned. It was mostly for themselves anyway. It was what they needed to get by.
Gee was especially quiet on the drive home, and Jade played the rock station hoping they’d air the tracks she knew, the songs that had helped her say, Fuck you, to anyone who didn’t like her precisely the way she was. The music gave her courage, the clarity of rage. It was the perfect antidote to Mr. Riley’s influence, but Gee didn’t seem interested.
A Nirvana song came on, and she turned the radio up. “Listen,” she said.
Gee kept his eyes away from her, the lights reeling past on the freeway.
“Listen,” she said again, and he indulged her.
The song had its own kind of groove, the beat a hypnosis that sent her head swinging from side to side. Gee stayed still.
“What’s this song even about?”
“I don’t know,” Jade said, realizing it for the first time. She knew the lyrics, but they didn’t matter much to her. It was more about the way the music made her feel. It was Kurt Cobain, his gruff voice, reciting the same line over and over. It was a prayer, an incantation. The guitar riff cracked her wide open.
She wanted Gee to know this music was for him, that irreverence and rage weren’t just for white boys. He could get a little drunk if he wanted to; he could play in a band; he could say shocking things, wear a dress, pierce his ears, any part of his body that he wanted; he could scream and break things, as long as they belonged to him and it wasn’t in her house. She didn’t want him to act out, but she didn’t want him to worry too much about how the world would see him either. He’d wind up only punishing himself. She wanted him to be free.
“So, what do you think?”
“I have no idea what he’s saying,” Gee said. “But it’s all right.”
He started to bop his head along, and Jade felt her heart might explode. To be a mother was like this: to fight desperately to hold on to yourself most days, to struggle against the snare of your child, to focus on his future instead of your own. And then, suddenly, to feel bowled over by your love for him, to feel his breath is your breath, your music his music, and you are the same. It was a sensation she hadn’t had in a long time. She let the feeling fill her.
When she dropped him off at home, she didn’t offer any vague excuses about where she was going. She told him good night and then she left.
León Henriquez lived in a cul-de-sac on the southern edge of town, off the road that ran between the two university hospitals. The houses in his neighborhood were tall and white; they looked like wedding cakes lit up in the dark. The cars were parked on large paved circles at the bottom of the pitched lawns. Jade pulled into a spot and climbed to León’s door, let herself in.
He was in the parlor, sitting cross-legged in an armchair, a book open in his lap. He held up a finger for her to wait a moment, then he snapped the book closed and went to her. He kissed her, softly, wetly, then brandished the book before her.
“Epigenetics,” he said, tapping the cover. “It’s not all bad news. There’s good evidence that we can rewrite ourselves, our genetic code, for the better. We can, in a way, rewrite our history.”
“Is that right?” Jade shrugged off her jacket, led him back to the armchair, and settled into his lap. León was always reading about the world’s problems, one tome after another. It seemed to calm the unease he felt about his big house, the gap between his life and his patients’. The reading, at least, gave him an outlet, but Jade didn’t care to hear his case studies about inequality, trauma. She took his book and set it on the side table.
“So how were they?” León asked.
“They were the uppitiest black people I’ve met in my life.”
“Ever?” León laughed, disbelieving. His hair and beard were all silver, a fan of lines around his lips and temples. He had clear green eyes, little amber orbs around his pupils. She loved to look at him.
“You’re too far in now, no? Gee will want to be seeing them again.”
“How do you know what Gee wants?”
“Weren’t you saying he needed a mentor?”
“All that teacher wants is to try and get him to prove he’s just as good as those white kids in his school.”
“That doesn’t sound so different from what you’ve been trying to teach him
.”
“It’s one hundred percent different,” Jade said. “I’m teaching him how to live up to his own standards—not anybody else’s.”
“Ah,” León said. “My mistake. Still, he’s at an age where he’d benefit from a man in his life.”
“Don’t start,” Jade said, and she tried to pull away. León held her tightly. “What would you have me say? This is Dr. Henriquez, I sleep at his house sometimes?”
“How about, This is León. I’ve known him for many years, and we care about each other very much?”
“Gee doesn’t need any more challenges.”
“Don’t you think it would bring the two of you closer if he knew the truth?”
“I’m his mother. We don’t need to know every little thing about each other.”
Jade crossed her arms to show that she was displeased and done with the conversation. She could be petulant with León, and it wasn’t just that he was thirteen years her senior. He wasn’t afraid of her moods, even the ones that were infantile. She could be petty or fussy or ecstatic, and he would look at her, every time, as if there were no piece of her that he couldn’t enjoy.
“I suppose I’m jealous.” León tilted her head upward, kissed her chin. “They got to have dinner with you and your son, and I still haven’t had the pleasure.” His voice turned low and serious. “One day he’ll go away, and you’ll have to start living your own life again.”
“I can’t see the point of looking that far ahead.”
“Fine,” he said. “Then let me preoccupy you with the here and now.” He kissed her throat, used his tongue to trace a curve along her neck. Jade capitulated eagerly. Why argue when there was this?
León carried her into the library, set her atop a cabinet filled with books. When they were together, he played the role of devourer, and it felt good to surrender to him, to rest. Jade shut her eyes and leaned back, turned all her attention to the feeling of León, what he was doing to her body. Her head scraped against the wall, and he sank into her, the books rattling inside the cabinet. She came first, León after, and when she opened her eyes, he was staring at her, stern and resolute. She left for the shower, and he followed.
They stood under the water, soaping one another. His body was lean and golden, patterned with hair along his thighs and chest. His severe expression was gone, and he was grinning, exultant, ready to approach the same topic, as if this time she’d change her mind.
“Maybe you could come live here after Gee leaves.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you worried about Linette? She’s welcome, too.” He winked, but Jade couldn’t play along. She had to speak so he would hear.
She knew she wasn’t very old. By the time Gee left, she’d still have years before she turned forty. She could conceive a child. She could marry. She knew women doctors her age who were just beginning to get engaged, to plot their lives. But it was the openness of her life after motherhood that she liked to envision. She knew she couldn’t pick up where she’d left off as a teenager with her fishnet stockings and heavy metal albums, but she wouldn’t remain standing still either. Gee would enter his future, and she hers.
“The life you want, I’ve already had it, even if it didn’t last long.” She kissed him. “Maybe if I’d met you first,” she said, even though it was blasphemous.
“I’m not talking about you becoming some kind of housewife. I want you to have your own life. I am so proud of you, and all you’ve done.”
“I think when Gee is gone what I’ll mostly want is to be alone.”
“We could be alone together.” He smiled at her, unflappable, even as she was turning him down.
She cupped his face in her hands. “Hear me, León. I can’t see it. I won’t live the same life twice.”
The clinic was two floors, brick, and a gray-tiled roof. If not for the reflective windows, it could have passed for a squat and sprawling house.
The building didn’t unnerve Noelle until she entered the lobby and saw the receptionist encased in bulletproof glass. She slipped her ID through a shallow trough, waited to be buzzed in. It was only when they were in the waiting area that Noelle realized the security wasn’t to protect the staff from patients; it was in case someone came in with a gun, shouting about the sanctity of unborn life.
Ruth seemed unfazed, fishing through a stack of magazines for something to read. She was dressed in her scrubs so that she could go straight to work after she dropped Noelle off at Central. The appointment wouldn’t take long. She’d be back before sixth period.
“I’m missing an English test,” she said.
“That’s all right. Think of all the things you’d miss if you weren’t here.”
Noelle had wondered whether Ruth would try and talk her out of it, but she hadn’t tried, not even once. She reached for Ruth’s hand, and Ruth gave it, without looking up from her magazine.
When it was her turn, Ruth waved her off with a smile. The room was large and smelled of castile soap and hot water, as if someone had just been in to clean. A quick and forceful nurse weighed her, took her vitals, sat in a chair across from the examining table to explain the procedure. It took a while for Noelle to recognize her; she looked so different in her mint-green scrubs, without her dark lipstick. She was the woman who had spoken at the town hall, the one who had pissed off Lacey May so bad that she decided to stand up and speak about the campaign.
The nurse asked whether she had any questions. “We’ll go through the consent forms in a moment,” she said, “but only once you’re ready and you understand.”
“Your son goes to Central.”
Jade startled and looked up from her clipboard. She searched the girl’s face and couldn’t place her. “Do you?”
Noelle nodded. “My parents—they won’t be informed, will they?”
“The only people who know will be the people you tell,” said Jade. “You can tell everyone you know, or no one at all, for the rest of your life. It’s up to you.”
The girl screwed up her face in concentration, folded her hands primly on her knees. Jade watched her and resisted the urge to say more. Plenty of providers gave pep talks, especially to the younger patients, to say they were fine, it was fine, everything was fine. Jade had learned it was better to say less, to be swift, unceremonious. At sixteen, she’d been full of lust and opinions, capable of real feeling and sound judgment. She hadn’t needed lectures or coddling; most girls didn’t. They needed choices.
Jade gave her time.
“I’m ready,” she said finally, and signed the forms.
Jade explained they’d give her an exam, then if everything looked good, they’d move on to the procedure. She placed her hand on top of Noelle’s knotted fingers to give her a pat, and the girl started to weep.
It wasn’t that she was unsure or worried it would hurt. She wasn’t afraid. It was this woman’s hand—soft and brown and perfumed. It encircled hers so easily, and it embarrassed Noelle how good it felt to have a woman touch her, an elder who was beautiful and warm, and who had nothing to say. How did women get to be like this, so tender and wide open?
Jade handed the girl tissues. When she had calmed down, Jade asked her how she had known about her son and the school.
“I don’t know him, but I remember you,” she said. “My mother was at that big town hall. She’s one of those concerned parents. She’s a racist.”
Jade looked at her, measuring. “Well, we don’t get to choose our mothers.”
If Noelle had to pick, she’d have chosen someone like this nurse, like Ruth.
“Your son,” she said. “What’s his name?”
Gee started sitting with Adira at lunch to make up for that day at the lockers. She forgave him quietly, and he saw that she didn’t need his company or protection at all. She had already formed a little crew at Central, a mix of kids she’d known before from church and her neighborhood, as well as new friends who’d already been at Central, including a few white girls. Gee wo
uldn’t have been surprised if, by year’s end, Adira was elected homecoming queen. If someone could do it, it was her. She was beautiful and funny and real. It comforted him to imagine her in a crown. It would be a victory for all of them, a symbol that the drama among the parents couldn’t touch the school. They’d cast their own votes, choose their own queen.
At lunch, Gee busied himself with his food, let everyone else do the talking. He made sure to laugh from time to time to register his presence, to show he was there and he wasn’t a weirdo. It worked fine. He was doing just that when a girl approached the table, asking for him by name. She was long haired and slim faced, too sweet-looking for her dark clothes.
“You’re Gee, right? I’m Noelle. I want you to audition for the school play. Measure for Measure.”
“Did Mr. Riley send you?”
“It was my idea. I wanted to find you.”
Someone at the table oohed, and Gee knew enough to suck his teeth, murmur at them to shut up.
“Gee?” Adira interrupted. “In a play? What kind of play?”
“It’s Shakespeare,” Noelle said. “Can I speak to you alone?”
Gee followed Noelle as she weaved through the lunchroom. She brought him to a quiet corner by the vending machines. She dropped in her quarters, asked what he wanted. She bought him a bag of sour candy and a cherry soda. He didn’t know why she was being so kind.
“I made a deal with Mr. Riley. I missed a test, and he said he wouldn’t fail me if I agreed to stage direct his play. It’s kind of perfect. I needed a distraction anyway.”
“But he’s not the one who sent you?”
“I already told you, it was my idea. This play is going to be a lot of time, a big commitment, and I want to make sure it’s cool people doing it, not a bunch of jocks or whatever.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I’ve heard good things.”
“From who?”