by Randi Pink
I dove toward Bryan. He did not appreciate my intervention, so he turned his hatred to me. He lunged toward my arm and caught the sleeve of my sweatshirt instead of flesh. His tiny teeth were bared in rage, his eyes ready to pop out of his face.
Aunt Evilyn cupped her hands around Bryan’s butt and lifted him from my sleeve. “That’s it, sweet, sweet boy,” she said softly, huffing for breath. “That’s it.” She sounded like a concerned mother kissing a boo-boo. She stuffed him back into her purse and out of sight.
Molly’s family inspected her leg for marks. “That little monster bit our Molly!” said the twentysomething man in khaki cargo shorts. “What’s your name, ma’am? Something has to be done about that animal.” He removed his phone from his pocket.
I almost pitied him. Challenging Aunt Evilyn was a fool’s errand. She was about to eat him in ways Bryan could only dream of. I waited for the downpour of insults. The attack of dignity. Anything. But nothing came from Evilyn’s mouth.
Something snapped inside of me.
“Wait just one minute there,” I said before swatting his phone from his hand. “There are seven signs in this park. Seven signs. Don’t believe me? Let’s count together.” I pointed to the first sign staked near the tennis court. “One!” I yelled. Then I pointed to one nailed on the pine tree. “Two!” I yelled louder. Then the one by the walking bridge, and the pond, and the entrance, and the restrooms, and the pavilion. “Seven!”
“If anybody here needs to be reported, it’s your ass for blatantly ignoring the rules of a public park. The signs are there for a reason,” I said, scanning the audience for the other young couple with the Frisbee. “The same goes for you!”
They looked surprised, then offended.
I spun around like a madwoman. “That’s the problem with you white people! You think you can do whatever the hell you want! You think the rules don’t apply to you, but when you suffer the consequences of your own broken rules, it’s the evil black person’s fault. Bryan was in her purse, contained by his owner. He wasn’t bothering anybody. But your precious Molly was off leash! Provoking Bryan! If anyone needs to be reported, it’s you!”
Silence.
Then a handful of applause from the mothers whose children had been knocked over by the Frisbee-retrieving retriever.
“Woo!” one of the young white mothers said. “Damn right! That dog nearly gave my Kenny a concussion.”
She pointed at the Frisbee family, and they slowly backed away and disappeared.
Molly’s owners stood still, shocked by my outburst. Molly whimpered as if encouraging her owners to tuck tail and leave. Then the man snapped Molly’s leash on and picked up his phone.
“I’ll drop it this time,” he said pompously, before walking away. “You’re just as white as I am, you know,” he added.
My blond hair got caught in a breeze and swung into my line of sight. I ran home, leaving Aunt Evilyn standing in the middle of Edgewood Park.
ABSENT
“Mom, can I stay home?”
“Of course. I knew you weren’t feeling well when you missed revival last night. Rest well, baby. The rest of y’all, come on,” screeched Mom.
Mom and Dad weren’t angry about the fight. They’d always told us to take up for one another, and since Alex was fighting for Toya, no punishment necessary.
At school, on the other hand, Alex got ISS (in-school suspension) for two weeks. Alex and I had always wanted ISS. It seemed easier than regular school. No forced social interaction, no reading aloud, no cafeteria; just cubicles filled with books. That’s not punishment, that’s paradise. I was happy for Alex. He deserved it.
While I was thankful for the day off, I couldn’t shut down my mind. Deanté, Alex, Mom, Dad, Aunt Evilyn, the twins, Josh—even Braveheart made its way into my brain. The bagpipes, oh dear God, the bagpipes. Mostly, I kicked myself for calling my brother a loser to his face. I knew that I needed to stop talking, but my woman motor took over.
My woman motor was usually fueled by estrogen and premenstrual syndrome, but between Deanté’s lecture and Josh’s attack, I was an atomic warhead of built-up anger, disappointment, frustration, anxiety, and confusion. Typically, I could aim it away from my brother, but Alex just happened to be there when I exploded. It felt like a release, but this time regret was left in its wake—that’s how the woman motor works.
I turned on the television for distraction, and it just made me angrier. My favorite channels were littered with black women fighting like cats on reality shows, or half-naked singers bouncing their behinds inches from the camera lens. I tried watching the morning news, then during Montgomery’s Most Wanted segment, there were not one but two Latoyas listed. One for tax evasion and the other for possession of a forged instrument, whatever that means. After that, I flipped the TV off and threw the remote.
The only decent thing about PMS was the hibernation sleep: ten, twelve hours easy. I squeezed myself into a tight fetal ball and fell asleep quickly.
* * *
I flew out of my bedroom window. When I looked to my left, my arm was covered in translucent feathers, and extra cartilage helped me climb toward the clouds. I knew it was a dream and I didn’t care one bit; flying was just as exceptional as it looked. Gazelles, deer, bears, and lions grazed together in my backyard. No species trying to eat the other, only harmony. The absurdity of prey and predator made me laugh out loud as I climbed upward. The clouds wet my skin; black skin, Toya’s skin. I knew that the wetness of the clouds would frizz my hair, so I looked for a place to land and dove toward a grassy stretch of green. My feet touched the earth, and then I planted myself firmly at the fifty yard line of Edgewood High School’s freshly mowed practice field.
“Haven’t heard from you in a while.” Jesus motioned me to sit next to him on the bleachers.
My wings shrank into regular arms as I walked toward him. Taking my seat, I realized that I hadn’t called on Jesus as much as I had when I was Toya. “Yeah, I’m sorry.”
“Your mother is right, you know.” He didn’t elaborate, because I knew he was talking about Alex—and he knew that I knew. “So, are you enjoying life as Katarina?”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Actually, that’s not entirely true. It’s much more complicated than that.”
“Complicated?” he asked.
“Just … being white is not as easy as I expected.” I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie.
“Well, nothing ever is.”
“Why, though? I mean, why grant me a wish, then set me up to be assaulted and called names?” I felt the frustration rising from deep inside. Though it was a dream, I had complete control over myself. I knew exactly what I was saying and doing.
He knuckled my tear away from my cheek before I realized it was there. “You begged me. You cried, screamed, yelled, and cursed for years, Latoya. I said no well over a thousand times, and then, we gave you what you asked for. Exactly what you asked for. Unfortunately, sometimes what we want is not necessarily what we need.”
“Can you stop playing games, and just tell me what I should do?” I said louder than I’d intended.
“I cannot.”
I stood to my feet. “Fine. Well, I want to be Brazilian tomorrow.”
“That’s not a race, it’s a nationality.”
“Whatever!” I stood over him. “That’s what I want to be next. Can you do it?”
He shook his head no.
“What?” I asked in disbelief.
He shook his head again, and his pewter eyes peered so deeply into mine that my head began to ache. “Wake up.”
* * *
When I opened my eyes, my nightshirt clung to my skin like a Band-Aid. The sweat made the green squiggly veins in my forearm glisten in the newly risen sun.
“White,” I said to myself. “Thanks for nothing.”
The clock read 5:07 a.m.—way too early to start getting ready for school, but I couldn’t go back to sleep. I pulled the co
vers over my chin and tightened myself in like a caterpillar. The dream haunted me. In all our interactions, Jesus never seemed disappointed in me, but when he’d looked into my eyes, I felt his anxiety. His desperation for me to understand something I couldn’t grab ahold of.
I reflected on my prayer—anything but black, Lord, anything but black. It was the most sincere prayer I’d ever prayed. Before that night, faith felt like an ethereal, unattainable thing. I loved the Lord, but I hadn’t truly believed that the faith of a mustard seed could move mountains. Then something powerful happened. After I buffed the dent from Deanté’s Jordans, a switch flipped inside me from questioner to believer. And I’d never been so sure of anything in my life: White would be better.
Now, I wasn’t so sure.
* * *
I quietly entered the bathroom and turned on the computer to search the Internet for evidence of Jesus answering unanswerable prayers. After nearly fifteen minutes, the frustratingly slow hourglass converted into a workable arrow, and I Wikipediaed “Miracles of Jesus.” His marvels were neatly categorized into a gallery. The cures were first, including things like healing the blind, cleansing lepers, and fertilizing barren women. Then came exorcisms, followed by resurrections, both fairly self-explanatory. The last set of miracles was the most impressive—control over nature.
Walking on water was my Sunday school teacher’s favorite phenomenon, so I knew a fair amount about that one, but there was one that hadn’t been adequately explained to me—transfiguration. After a full thirty minutes of research, I barely understood it myself. My interpretation was: Jesus wanted his disciples to realize that he wasn’t just a prophet, he was the full-on Messiah. So he took them up a Colossus-style hill and transformed into something undeniably awesome. That way they would know, once and for all, that he was the Son of God. That was cool and all, but it wasn’t the part that got my attention.
While Jesus was up there, he brought two of his dead buddies along—Moses and Elijah. Moses was the first of God’s prophets, and Elijah was a great prophet, too. Both Moses and Elijah performed mighty works back in the Old Testament days, and they’d both experienced rejection from their own people. That was the connection. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that I was as awesome as Moses or as fabulous as Elijah. From my brief research, I surmised that Jesus had a soft spot for the rejected.
I clapped my hands and shut off the computer.
* * *
“Man! Did you pay the water bill?” Mom yelled from downstairs. When Dad didn’t answer, I knew that he hadn’t. Mom’s intentionally heavy steps echoed from one bathroom to the next, and finally up the stairs toward my room.
“Toya,” she said, banging on my door like the police. “Let me in, I need to tape your commode. Your daddy’s already dropped loads in two of the downstairs bathrooms, so y’all have to squeeze your butts closed till you get to school. I can’t take this shit!” She paused. Wait for it … wait for it … “Lord forgive me.” Mom rarely used curse words that weren’t in the Bible; when she did, she’d spend ten or so minutes asking for God’s forgiveness. “Lord, Lord, Lord, please forgive me.” As she walked away begging for God’s clemency, I heard Alex urinating into our unflushable upstairs toilet.
While I was certain Mom would let me take another day off, the pong of morning urine and downstairs double doo-doo began permeating my muggy bedroom. Besides, Alex elected to take the day off from ISS, and I didn’t want to deal with his awkward energy. I threw on a knee-length blue jean dress with two oversized pockets large enough to hold on to my hands if they began shaking, when I heard a knock coming from the bathroom.
“Toya?” Alex said softly.
“I’m sorry,” I answered. “Oh, and thanks for the whole Josh thing. I was so proud of you. You turned him into a big pile of pitiful. I couldn’t believe—”
“Look at this on your way to school,” he interrupted before sliding a booklet under the door. “It’s for Roseland’s pop quiz.” I heard his bedroom door closing.
“Alex?”
The door stopped before meeting its latch. “What?” he asked.
“Has anyone said anything to you about Toya?” I asked. “I know it’s a long shot, but I was just wondering if someone, I don’t know, misses her.”
“They don’t matter,” he sighed. “Why don’t you get that?”
“Does that mean no one asked or—”
“No,” he snapped. “No one.” His door slammed.
Skimming through the booklet, I saw he’d highlighted the especially important sections—Alabama’s state bird, tree, and flower. The yellowhammer, Southern longleaf pine, and camellia, respectively. A single tear fell from my right eye.
* * *
In the Fiat, I sprawled across the entire backseat.
“You okay?” Mom asked. “You didn’t eat any of the black-eyed’s in the refrigerator, did you? I think they went bad.”
I ignored the question and squeezed myself into a tight backseat ball.
“I ate the whole pot last night, and I feel just fine,” Dad replied.
“You didn’t see the green film floating on the top? That was mold. What you trying to do, man, kill yourself?”
“Tasted good to me. I thought it was okra.” Dad shrugged. “Humph, maybe that’s why I had to go twice this morning.”
I plugged my ears, but I could still make out the damn fools, and shut up, womans all the way to school. When the car slowed, I unblocked my ears.
“Okra is more Kermit green; mold is a brownish green. You been living in Alabama almost fifty years, and you don’t know the difference between mold and okra? You crazy, man.”
“You know that I’m color-blind, you mean ole mule!” Dad missed a gear and stalled out.
“Dad!” I yelled, almost involuntarily. “Why do you always have to stall out at the entrance of school? Everybody’s looking.”
He readjusted the stick shift toward neutral. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’ll try to—”
“He just can’t drive worth a damn.”
“Mom!” I shouted. “Stop treating Dad like shit all the time! Can’t you see he’s trying?”
Dad spun his head toward me, completely shocked. “Latoya, don’t you ever—”
Mom held her hand in the air, shutting him up. “Lord forgive her,” she said to the ceiling of the Fiat. “You can take a day if you—”
“No,” I interrupted. “I can do this.”
GRIDIRON
Edgewood prided itself on Josh, the most popular, handsome, talented, and kind football player in school. He volunteered at the food pantry, was elected Student Government Association treasurer, and dominated not only football but track and field and swim, too.
On the surface, he was impeccable. Edgewood’s very own Prince Charming. The perfect height, the perfect build, and Lord knows, the perfect color for Edgewood. I’d imagined us married, sharing a last name, a home, and the responsibilities of his father’s dealership. Sharing children with lightly sun-kissed skin and loose curls. I’d scribbled his name on the next-to-last page of all my notebooks, filling the empty white spaces with hearts and arrows and fat-legged cupids. I’m sure every other girl at Edgewood High School had done the same. My pulse raced when he asked me to pass the honey mustard. His lowly condiment request possessed the power to improve my day, and that’s too much power for anyone, especially Josh.
Meanwhile, I’d reserved a special place in hell for Deanté. Deanté—the opposite of everything I’d held dear. The predetermined villain of my story. Granted, Deanté earned much of my disdain, but I was in no way faultless. Honestly, I knew that I was no better than Lucy and the rest of the Gus Von Marchers. I’d prejudged him in the same way they’d prejudged my big brother. Deanté was right. No matter what he did, or said, or wore, he was still black. And in Montgomery, Alabama, black is a threat, even to other black people.
I hated Edgewood High School. I hated Lucy, I hated the twins, I hated my own self, but most of all, I hated J
osh. The blood in my veins began to heat up at the hopelessness of it all. There was no remedy, only a slew of unsuspecting girls to be led into that upstairs bedroom, and not nearly enough Deantés to save them.
I gulped, remembering the pea-sized chunk of saliva he’d lodged into the back of my throat. The memory of it wouldn’t go down, and I wasn’t sure if it ever would. I still tasted his sour, aggressive tongue; its texture was coarse and harsh like a Brillo Pad extracting baked-on grease from a dish.
I stood in the frenzy of changing classes, but I heard nothing. The noisy, chaotic hallways of Edgewood High went completely quiet around me. A freshman girl dropped a handful of papers, the Jordans pointed and laughed, Mrs. Roseland waved, but I was no longer there. It was as if I’d developed a force field that filtered out everything except Josh Anderson. My own world of Josh where all I could see was his smirk. All I could smell was his funk. And all I could feel was his erection forcing its way into places I didn’t want it to be. I felt trapped by him, cornered by his repulsive existence.
I needed to break free from the bubble of Josh, and I knew the only way to do that would be to expose him. But exposing him seemed like an insurmountable task. He was their golden boy, their …
* * *
“Fuck it,” I said.
I shouldered my way through the hallway toward the no-pay pay phone. If I didn’t find a way, I might never rid myself of the lump in my throat. The only idea I could come up with was to call and report Josh to the principal’s office. The media center was empty with the exception of the helper, who was fast asleep as usual, so I called the principal’s office, hoping they did not have caller ID.
“Edgewood High School. May I help you?” said Ms. Wade, the Gatekeeper. To my surprise, she had a pleasant phone voice. I guessed it was a put-on for parents or upper-level management, but I had a straight-shot view of her through the library window—lo and behold, she was flipping a damn catalog.