by Randi Pink
“Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad.” Alex bounded from the Fiat and headed to the ISS wing. “Bye, Toya.” He gave me a quick side-hug.
Mom and Dad beamed at us before sputtering away.
“Today’s going to be big.” Deanté stood in the school breezeway. “You must be scared as hell.”
I smiled. “It’s not even first period yet. How is it that you already know everything about me?”
“How many times do I have to tell you? Nothing happens at this school without me knowing about it.” He winked.
“Who do you have first period?” I asked.
“Howard,” he replied. “Why?”
“I’ve got Roseland. You don’t think they would notice if we skip out, do you?” Roseland might not, but Mrs. Howard certainly would.
His eyes widened. “Oh, they won’t notice.” Liar. I was testing him to see if he wanted alone time as badly as I did, and there it was.
I’d never imagined myself walking to the practice fields alone with Deanté. The practice fields had a bit of a reputation—it was the place to make out. As we walked, he kicked at the dirt and held his hands in his pockets.
“When are you planning on changing back anyway?” he asked a bit too eagerly.
“Tomorrow, I think,” I said, wondering if it would be that easy. If Jesus would simply poof me back to black upon request. My nerves started to kick in. What if he said no?
As we reached the bleachers, Deanté sat down first and looked up at me like Hampton did when he was a puppy. This was a boy who wanted something.
He took my hand and feather tingles ran up my spine. “I’m glad. Sit. I have something to tell you.” I squeezed in close, though there was plenty of room. “I wanted to kiss you that day at the probate. I didn’t because … well, because I…”
“You’re not really white, are you?”
He laughed. “No. I should have kissed you last year or the year before that or the year before that. I’ve wanted to for that long. You’re the strangest girl that I know.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“That’s not what I meant. No, strange like the best kind of strange.” He lifted his hand to my cheek. “Like … special, or wonderful. I’ll kiss you tomorrow. When you look like you’re supposed to look, taste like you’re supposed to taste, smell like you’re supposed to smell. Then I’ll kiss you.”
I eased his hand away from my face and planted a soft but passionate kiss on his lips. My hands floated to his hair, shorter than my shortest fingernail, soft as cotton. My pinkie made its way to the deep-dish dimple on the left side of his cheek, where it ate my entire nail. His lips were full and he tasted like minty toothpaste. This should have been my first kiss. Whether it lasted a minute or an hour I couldn’t tell. I knew that this was who I was supposed to be with.
The ocean whooshed and we pulled apart. “I’m sad that’s over,” I said.
His eyes were still closed. “Me too.”
“Open your eyes,” I said. “We have to get back.”
On the way back, we held hands and laughed about the day ahead. We agreed that Alex was a genius.
The intercom blared. “Toya Williams, please report to the principal’s office. Toya Williams, please report to the principal’s office.”
Deanté said, “Uh-oh, should you go?”
“It’s probably about tardiness. I’ll just walk by and see if it looks serious. You go on to class.” I planted a public kiss on Deanté’s lips. “What the hell, right?”
“That’s right.” He flashed his dimple and I took a mental note to stick my pinkie in there again tomorrow.
When I reached the office, Mom and Dad stood in the lobby, holding on to each other. Mom looked like she would fall over if he wasn’t standing sturdy for support. I had never seen him support her, ever. When I got closer, I saw that both of their eyes were bloodshot and puffy. In that moment, curiosity turned to terror.
“What are you doing here?” I dropped my book bag and ran to them.
“I called them.” The Gatekeeper had long abandoned her catalog shopping.
“Katarina, have you seen Alex?” asked the principal, standing two feet away in all his glory.
“Who the hell is Katarina?” Mom inquired.
Dad leaned into Mom. “I think that’s what she’s calling herself now.”
Mom stabilized herself, wheeled her arm back, and slapped me so hard that I spun around a full revolution.
“I told you not to abandon your brother!” It was as if every one of her prior screams were practice for that very moment. It was jolting. Her knees buckled and she fell into a heap on the carpet.
“Ma’am, please!” said the principal.
The secretary grabbed his forearm. “No, let them be.”
“Forgive her. She’s…” Dad trailed off, and lifted Mom.
When I oriented myself, the tingle in my cheek disappeared. “What the hell is going on?”
I looked from Mom to Dad. They looked equally disgusted with me.
Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. I thought it might be one of Alex’s letters, but the bright pink markings ruled that out. “This was posted in your brother’s ISS cubicle. Among other places. And now we can’t find Alex anywhere.”
The unmistakable penmanship of Amera and/or Amelia—loopy and bubbly with tiny hearts and stars above the Is.
My hands began to tremble. “Where is he?” I asked, still staring at my words.
“Flip it over,” Mom said furiously.
I DID IT ALL FOR YOU, TOYA. I’M DONE.
Alex
Dad steadied his voice. “He’s gone.”
GONE
What a word. Gone: two consonants, two vowels; still it packed a profound punch. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?” I asked my father.
“We were hoping you had the answer to that question.” Dad held on to Mom.
“She didn’t even notice he’d left.” She gave me the angriest look I’d ever seen from her. “You didn’t, did you?”
“When was the last time you spoke to Alex?” asked Dad.
“She’s so desperate to hang with these white folks that she probably forgot her brother’s name—”
I was going to turn back to black tomorrow and everything was going to be just like it used to be, and Deanté would stop teasing us, and we could just drop out and get GEDs and go to the George Wallace Community College to get my grades up so we could transfer to wherever in the world we wanted to go to. Alex and Toya. Toya and Alex. We could go to Alabama State and I could pledge Gamma Pi, and he could pledge Gamma Phi. He would like that. He could finally fit. I’d say that we spent more than enough time around white people, so it would be interesting to engulf ourselves in blackness for a bit.
Then again, Alex always had an obsession with big cities, so maybe we could go off to New York University. If I made straight As in junior college and never missed a day or was late ever, maybe they’d let us go together. Or he could go to Harvard and I could find another, less-smart-people college in Boston so that I could be near him. It was a trick. Jesus was just teaching me a quick lesson, and let me tell you something, it totally worked. All I wanted in the world was my big brother. I didn’t have to breathe or walk or speak or eat or drink or kiss or shower or anything ever again as long as I could have my big brother back.
* * *
“Jesus?” When I spoke, I realized I was running. I’d never been much of a runner, but I’d made it to the shadowy part of the woods on the way to our empty castle. Surely Alex was there waiting, in on the joke. “Jesus? Jesus? Jesus!”
I never knew one person had so many tears inside them. Braveheart tears were child’s play in comparison. I wept the longest, hardest cry of my life, and I looked forward to the dry headache that followed, knowing that meant it was over.
The strangest vision flew through my head. Bella Swan, from the Twilight series, lying in the woods for four chapters waiting for Edward, the vampire, to return. Those
chapters were the boringest in the series, so I got up and walked toward the road.
“Hey,” Jesus said.
“Don’t give me that crap. Where have you been? I called you!”
“I heard you,” he said.
I let a few moments pass before I spoke. “Okay. If you heard me, why didn’t you help me?”
“I gave you what you asked.”
I couldn’t believe that he’d tried to teach a lesson in a time like that. “I get it. I’m a horrible sinner, but would you mind returning my brother, please?” I needed to believe that it was possible; it was holding me together. “Actually, just erase the last few weeks so I can do it all again.”
“I cannot do that,” he replied simply.
I let out a nervous laugh. “You must be joking. You can turn a black girl whatever race she asks, you can hear millions of prayers at once, and you can’t bring my big brother back to me? Tell me where he is!” Involuntary tears streamed down my face. I never hiccuped or shoulder-jerked at all; they simply fell out of my eyes like raindrops from the open sky. “Tell me what to do.”
“I can’t say.”
“So why are you here? Go away! It’s all your fault! You ruined everything. You let me turn into this! I was happier before; I had my brother and my mom and dad, and Unsolved Mysteries and Alabama Thrift. Leave me alone.” My nails dug into the gravel, unloosing tiny rocks mixed with asphalt from the surface. I couldn’t even tell how I’d wound up on the ground, but my knees ached, so I assumed I’d fallen hard knee-first. “Actually, before you go, turn me back into Toya!”
Jesus gently placed his hand on my forehead.
The change couldn’t have taken more than a minute. I felt my lengthy blond hair being drawn back into my scalp like a pasta maker in reverse. The pigment tingled just below the surface of my skin, pushing through the white. My thighs thickened a bit, making my jeans tug at the seams. And a quick breeze inched my ear, which was no longer covered by a sheet of hair.
I looked up at him. “It’s all my fault, isn’t it? It is.” I crawled toward the woods to lean on a thick tree trunk.
“It’s not that simple, Latoya. I just need you to know that you have a lot left to do here. You’re supposed to be on this Earth for a while, and I’m here so you don’t do anything stupid.” The last part shocked me. I would never imagine Jesus using the word stupid in any situation.
“How am I supposed to live in a place where my brother despises me?” It was a grief that I couldn’t explain. A pain worse than pain. I turned toward Jesus. “Why didn’t you tell him to talk to me? What kind of God are you?”
“One that you should trust.”
He’d stumped me. Maybe because I didn’t have any other option or maybe because I couldn’t think of anything other than the pain.
“You didn’t tell me” was all I could think to say.
“You know that I couldn’t,” he replied. “You didn’t heed my warnings.” It may have been cruel timing, but he was right: Him, my mom, even Deanté tried, but I was too preoccupied with myself to pay attention to my ailing brother. Jesus walked toward me and rubbed my upper back. I lifted myself up with the help of the tree.
“Now go home,” he said.
I began walking. I didn’t think of how long it would take or the fact that I wasn’t wearing the appropriate shoes. I just did as Jesus instructed. A few steps along the path, I saw it. A shiny, glowing quarter peeking through the dirt. A single beam of sunlight penetrated the woods, so I held the found quarter to the sun. Its outer grooves were pronounced, like it had never suffered a fall. Its president smiled a tiny bit wider than on regular quarters, and he looked more platinum than silver. I slid the quarter safely into my pocket, and then I saw another. When I bent down to pick it up, I saw another one, leading deeper into the woods. Three or four feet to the right of that one lay another, and then another, and another. An hour or so later, my hands and pockets were overflowing with brand-new shining quarters.
Hope.
When I finally reached the edge of the woods, Gus Von March stood in the distance, but the quarters led the way to the empty castle. After a few more miles, they became less frequent—one every half block or so. Then, at the base of Colossus, they disappeared altogether, so I went around. I just couldn’t find the strength to take it on alone.
I saw Dad’s Fiat parked haphazardly in front of the house. Hampton didn’t run up the driveway to meet me like he usually did; he staked out the mailbox instead, waiting. I ran to my room. Mom yelled after me until Dad told her to give me space—she actually listened for once. I sat long enough for the sun to sink and the spider to construct the most intricate web I’d ever seen from her. “All the other spider ladies are going to be so jealous.”
I heard more than two voices downstairs, but none of them was Alex. They sounded like my evil aunt Evilyn and cousin Joyce, who’d made the trip all the way from Tuscaloosa for some mess. They’d never understood Alex. They seemed to think he was strange or weird, so their presence pissed me off.
The doorbell rang for the first time in months, which meant someone knew to stick something long and sharp in the hole where the button used to be. Alex! I opened my bedroom door to stand at the top of the stairs, but it wasn’t Alex. It was our handyman neighbor, Hank, who had never bothered to come by our broken house since we’d moved in, but there he was when someone went missing.
Everyone stopped their conversations to gawk at me. I just walked back into my room.
When the door almost met the catch, Evilyn said, “That poor gal. How’s she doing, Cam?”
I reopened the door. “Ha! You don’t care how I’m doing, and you know it! You’re just here because your old, decrepit ass doesn’t have anything better to do, and my missing brother trumps reruns of Family Feud. Well, I think this is just cruel, you showing up after all the hell you’ve put me and Alex through. Since you’re being cruel today, I’ll just be honest. Evilyn, freshman year you told me that I looked like a man. Your words changed the course of my life and ruined my self-esteem from that moment on. I looked up to you, you foul old bat. As for the rest of you, why are you even here? You hate Alex. How dare you all stand in my father’s home? My father, the same man you called a loser, a failure, an idiot, or worse. Go home. All of you low-down, sorry, sad excuses for family members. You too, Hank!” I slammed my bedroom door behind me.
My dad kindly escorted every one of them from our home. He never swore or raised his voice, but he started with “You heard her, out.” Mom mostly sobbed into the pillows. Meanwhile, I sat on my two-seater, counting my quarters. I counted and recounted all night long. Never slept or lay down or even moved from that one spot. I just sat there upright, counting, until the spider undid her masterpiece and the sun peeked through the trees. Thirteen dollars exactly.
There was a vigorous knock on the door and yelling from the front porch. Dad opened the door. “Yes?” Dad’s voice was tired and worn.
“It’s Deanté. I’m here for Toya.” His voice was frantic.
“You are welcome in my home,” said Dad. My heart melted for my father, who had rarely welcomed a soul into his house but allowed my friend over the threshold without question.
He banged on my bedroom door. “Toya!”
“Come in,” I replied weakly.
He found me sitting cross-legged, surrounded by my quarters. He stopped at the entrance to my room.
Deanté said, “You look like you again.” His eyes were glassy.
“They’re his favorite, you know? He hates dimes, he says they’re too small and easy to lose. They’d slip right through his fingers when he tried to put them in the drink machine at school. Nickels, Lord knows he’s always despised nickels. His nickname for nickels was Jan Brady, or the middle child.” I chuckled while Deanté just stood there, looking horrified. “You get it? They’re sort of like fillers when a dime is too high and a penny’s too low. They’re stuck in the middle of all of it. They don’t quite fit into the flow of
things, kind of like him.” I took a breath to make sure that I still could. “Pennies were the worst, because they made his hands smell like butthole, he said. Weird, though, he always said that if he had a daughter, he would name her Penny.” I held a quarter in the air. “He revered the quarters. Every so often, he’d spout on about their usefulness: arcade games, air hockey, bubble gum machines, parking meters, McChickens, Quarter Pounders, laundry—he could go on and on like Bubba could about shrimp. The quarters made sense; I thought…” My voice cracked from too many hours without water, and I broke, right there on my bedroom floor. “I thought they’d lead me to him.”
Deanté lifted me in his arms and placed me gently on my twin bed. He sat with me until I fell asleep.
YOU’RE WEIRD, BUT I LIKE YOU
The next hours were a blur. One of God’s ways of protecting us from overwhelming hurt was a short attention span. Ask any mother to describe the pain of childbirth and she can’t remember it. I do recall Deanté’s vague account of Josh crapping his pants and the twins being kicked out of show choir. Apparently Mr. Holder made a dramatic scene in rehearsal, telling them how they could never be his Dolly P.’s, because Dolly was as sweet as pecan pie and they were bitter Louisiana lemons. Deanté seemed confused by the reference, but I understood perfectly.
Mom and Dad treated me like a Fabergé egg: lovely, irreplaceable, and breakable. Mom kept apologizing for the slap and Dad kept telling her to quit apologizing. Meanwhile, I was mostly worried about them. I’d always thought they were ill-equipped to deal with most of life’s curveballs—but they surprised me. Mom spent the remainder of that night screaming and crying, but afterward flooded social media from the bathroom computer. Dad retreated into himself, walking for hours and quietly going about the business of paying for the empty castle. The most reassuring thing about my parents was they watched that night’s episode of Unsolved Mysteries. In the major ways, they didn’t change, which I appreciated more than they knew.