I scan the near-empty beach for a face I recognize. On my left, three young white men wearing wetsuits wax shortboards. On my right, two teenagers hide beneath a blanket, their bodies mashing into each other. One rolls on top of the other as though they’re in a bedroom with the curtains drawn and the door closed. I look away and notice someone approaching. He’s wearing a black shirt and khaki pants, the uniform for the pizzeria opposite the pier. He walks close enough that he blocks the wind. When he cranes his neck to get a look, I meet his pale-green eyes, the color of a sea much farther south than here.
Though his jaw is squarer and his body leaner now, I recognize him: Peter. I wonder if he spent much time with Aubrey after we graduated. After a few paces, he turns around and passes by again. This time I follow. His hips switch when he walks. He was the only male dancer in high school. Everyone made fun of him for being gay, myself included. He swore that he was straight. We didn’t care.
Peter walks to the pier bathroom. Sand cakes in the shape of a spiral, like a dried-up Milky Way, around the drain in the urine-soaked floor. He walks into the handicapped stall and leaves the door open. As he watches from beneath thick, dark eyebrows, I follow and lock the door behind me.
Later, he zips up his pants while I do the same. My belt buckle clanks as I tighten it. I stare at the tiled wall where dark grime covers the grout. In the corner of my eyes, I see him watching me.
Daniel, right? he asks. How long you around for?
Couple days.
Am I going to see you before you go? he says. He pulls out his phone and hands it to me. He’s creating a new contact. My first name is filled in but not my last. He does not know it. It is my mother’s: Henriquez.
I didn’t know much about the Henriquezes until recently, when Mom began telling me more about our family history. Henriquez, she said, comes from her biological father, but she rarely talks about his side of the family and mostly tells stories about her mother’s relatives. Her mother’s father, Richard, was the son of Indian indentured servants, born in a hut on the outskirts of the coffee plantation where the man who purchased their debt lived. His birth certificate, which Mom tracked down along with other documents of our family history, labels him a Coolie.
Richard married a light-skinned Black woman, Sylvia, my great-grandmother, a descendant of enslaved Africans. (I don’t know what their wedding was like. Did they jump a broom; did the Indian relatives speak their home language, and if so, which one?) Shortly thereafter, they had six girls, including Velma, my grandmother. I assume they gave them his last name. When Grandma married, she, like all her sisters, took the name of her husband and gave his name to their children. Even after Grandma left him, she kept his name: Henriquez.
My mother was born Joyce Henriquez, but she barely knew her biological father. When Mom was young, Grandma left him, married another man, and moved in with him. He worked on a coffee farm in New Monklands, a small village in the island’s southern hills. Whenever I ask about them, Mom tells the same story: Grandma grew up during the 1930s strikes and hunger marches, so she always wanted to escape Jamaica. About a week after Independence Day, she finally did, leaving behind Mom’s stepfather and her two children. The next morning, as Mom’s older sister did her own hair, their stepfather sat Mom down between his legs. He held her still with his knees. One calloused hand gripped her head. The other drove the comb, scraping the skin and ripping kinks. It was a plow tilling her scalp, uprooting weeds until he left for the fields.
They followed that routine for months. Then Grandma saved enough money to send for her daughters. Mom left her stepfather for Spanish Town, and eventually the States.
Mom says her stepfather is the closest thing to a father she ever had, but she never took his name. I don’t remember it, or Grandma’s family name. I wouldn’t even know how to find the name the Indians had before they arrived in Jamaica, though people saw enough of them in me to call me Coolie when I was growing up on the island.
Despite going to high school with me, Peter knows nothing of the history of my name, the name of Mom’s biological father, a man who did not raise her, whom I have never met. I don’t want to give it to him. I just want to leave.
I enter a fake name and a fake number. I run my hand along the back of my neck, where fuzz has long since overgrown my lineup.
What’re you doing back? Peter asks.
He leans against the paint-chipped stall, standing between me and the door. He smiles when we make eye contact. His crooked front tooth leans over the other in the way dancers cross their legs.
When Aubrey died, I say, I wanted to come back for the funeral, but I couldn’t swing it. Bought a flight for the day I could afford. Figured I been gone too long.
Peter shifts from side to side. I wonder if he knew her, if her passing still hurts.
You hung out with Aubrey?
Not really, Peter says.
Never talked?
She was in one of my classes. Called me fag a few times, but you know.
Everyone in high school was homophobic. She was meaner than most. Our classmates said she kept her daddy’s pistol in her glove compartment, even when she parked at school. The whole cafeteria saw her rip a fistful of hair out of the head of her onetime best friend, Jess, who stole her boyfriend, and watched as the school security officer bent Aubrey’s arm behind her back and paraded her to the dean’s office. But the girl I knew wasn’t heartless.
The slaps of flip-flops against heels echo in the bathroom. Peter looks through the crack between the stall door and its wall. Behind him, I see a silhouette of a tall man moving toward the urinal. Peter’s reddened neck beads with sweat. He motions to me to keep quiet. When the man leaves, Peter tucks in his shirt, its black cloth wrinkled from my hands.
I peek through the gap to see if anyone else is there. It’s empty. I turn around, meet Peter’s glance, and then look away.
Would’ve thought y’all hung out after high school, I say.
You ain’t been back in a while, he says, if you thought everyone was cool with each other after we graduated.
I been gone a minute.
Folks still call me fag when I see them. I’m guessing you still closeted?
Been out since college.
Anybody down here know?
Ain’t keep it a secret, I say. I just ain’t talk to nobody.
Peter shrugs and then says, I’ll just say this: Aubrey wasn’t the type of person who’d hang with me.
No rumors, no small-town gossip about Aubrey. Not totally surprising. Last I heard from a friend, she moved up north to Maryland after high school. I saw on Facebook that she got engaged. As far as I could tell, she had finally escaped our shit town. So what was she doing back here in her ex’s car at three a.m.?
I check the time. I’m late. I hope my friends know more than Peter does. I return his phone and open the stall door. He says something behind me, but I don’t hear him. I rush out of the bathroom. The sun overhead is so bright now that it makes me squint. My eyes scrunched, I see the contours of the wood planks on which I walk and the boxy buildings to my right. Mostly, I see the sky, blue and pale as though painted with a light brushstroke.
I think I hear Peter’s footsteps behind me, but I don’t turn around. I need to get to the bar to ask my friends what they know about Aubrey. If they find out that I want to track down Brandon, they’ll tell me dogs who stick their noses where they don’t belong get hit.
That saying always reminds me of my father. He’s Trinidadian. His father was middle-class and Lebanese. His mother was poor and Black. I don’t think they married, but my father spoke so highly of his father that I assume he knew him. I imagine he came by once a year in late December after Boxing Day. He stood at the entrance to my father’s home and passed them unwrapped presents. They were hand-me-downs from his lighter-skinned family. My father held tight the gifted clothes his mother couldn’t afford. He looked up at his father, silhouetted by the sun and wearing a shirt whiter than the one
in his hands. My father must have hated his mother and her hut for keeping him from his Lebanese siblings. He must have hated her last name and donned his father’s: Ali.
My father left Trinidad to go to the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. There, he met my mother, who had longed for home throughout her years in the States and eventually returned when she was in her mid-twenties with her first son, my brother. She found work as a secretary in the Life Sciences Building.
I imagine my father looked at Mom twice because her hair was curlier than it was nappy. According to Mom, he asked her out and she said no. The next week, he asked again and she said she was too busy taking care of her son Junior, who mom named after her younger brother. The third week, she realized he wouldn’t leave until she said yes. They began dating when he was an undergraduate. He told her that when he graduated, he would take care of her son as if he were his own. Mom got pregnant before that happened. They married. Unlike Grandma, Mom kept her last name.
When I was born, they named me Daniel Ali. They walked me in a stroller at the Mona dam every Sunday. My father always kept his distance from my brother and criticized Mom for not caring for me correctly. He often told her to cover me from the sun. Otherwise I would get too dark. She always protested. He always told her that the Alis were not dark-skinned people. They were not, he implied, like my brother.
They separated when I was too young to remember. Mom moved to a house in Liguanea by the university, and my father lived somewhere on the other side of Sovereign Centre. I spent every other weekend at my father’s house.
The first time my father beat me, he squeezed my wrist at the mall till my dark-brown skin bruised purple. The next time, he backhanded me and his watch scratched my face and blood pearled on my cheek. The next time, he threw a bowl of cornflakes at me. He missed and the bowl shattered against the wall of his home. Then he punched me and my nose bled. The next time, he tried to throw me into his car. My forehead hit the doorframe and I landed half-in, half-out. When I came to, he told me he was sorry. He loved me. The last time, he picked me up and threw me into the mirror. The glass broke into shards and sliced my side. I went to the hospital.
I later learned that, in the following months, Mom applied for a green card, saved what money she could, and hid her travel documents in a plastic bag in the freezer. One June morning in the late ’90s, when I was seven, I stepped out of my bedroom and saw suitcases piled by the front door. Mom told me to get my three favorite toys. I brought her a spinning top, a sack of marbles, and a LEGO car my brother and I built. We took a taxi to the airport. On the ride, I asked where we were going. She said to America. I asked for how long. She didn’t reply.
On the flight, I sat between Mom and Junior. After takeoff, Mom fell asleep and Junior stared out the window at the clouds. I spun my top on the seatback table. When it fell under the seat, I poked Mom’s arm. She stirred awake. I poked her again. She said stop. I asked how long we’d be gone. She said for good. I asked if Daddy was coming. She said we were starting over. I left the top on the floor.
At first, I continued to write Daniel Ali on my homework. Every time my brother saw it, he told me my father didn’t love me. When Mom overheard him, she asked me to use her last name. She told me stories about beatings that I had forgotten. After a year, I gave in and started using my mother’s name: Henriquez.
I kept my father’s last name as a middle name. I was Daniel Ali Henriquez. Sometimes I hyphenated them: Henriquez-Ali or Ali-Henriquez. Sometimes, when I remembered the night he threw me into the mirror, when he told me that I was special because all the Caribbean’s people came together to make me, I reverted to Ali.
When I was in high school, I asked Mom if he beat her. She said he never touched her. I said I didn’t believe her. She told me she scared him one night when she was nursing me and he wanted to argue. He curled his fingers into a fist. Mom grabbed a kitchen knife and pointed it at him. After that, he never tried to hit her again.
The night Mom told me that, I lay awake in bed, staring at the too-close ceiling. The Florida night tinted it blue and its rough grain looked like carvings of waves. As I lay in bed, I recalled the way my father looked when he tucked me in at night. The night and shadows of my father’s house tinted him the same color as my ceiling. Looking down at me, he was the tallest person I had ever seen, but the darkness made it hard to tell just how tall he was or if he was there at all.
The next day, I dropped my father’s middle name and took the name Mom kept throughout their marriage. I became Daniel Henriquez.
On this beach, where I once knew most high schoolers strolling by, I expect to hear someone call out my name. But no one knows me. They’re all teens who were children when I was in high school or adults who must have moved here after I left. A town of strangers where my home once stood.
I turn down the street and look over my shoulder to see if anyone is following. No one. I turn back around. The two teens who were making out on the beach walk toward me. Sand falls from them with each step. Red-and-blue bruises spot their necks, but they don’t seem to care. They grin and watch each other, and I wonder if Aubrey and I looked at each other in the same way before we knew we had feelings for each other, when we were too young to read the signals that we sent each other, too inexperienced to ask or act. Their stare holds for so long and with such an intensity that I think I have not looked at anyone in that way in a long time, maybe since I was last looking at Aubrey.
When I pass them, the blond boy turns toward me. His eyes narrow and his brow tenses. I cross the street. One of the wet-suited surfers walks toward me. I look down at the ground but feel his eyes on me. Does he smell the bathroom? Or does he smell Peter? I pick up my pace.
When I make it back to the car, I slam the door shut and lock it. I turn around and still no one stalks me in the lot. I face the road and watch the people pass by. The clothes look the same, but the brands are different from the ones we wore. They don’t look back at me. They probably don’t notice me. I press my fingers hard into my palm, breathe deep, and face the water. In the distance, the sky’s blue pales, as though faded, and the ocean matches it. I look for the line separating the two but can’t see it.
Beds
On my way out of Flagler Beach, I worry about seeing my old cross-country team. When I last saw them, just before I left for college, we drank in Twig’s backyard, filling the time by searching for someone to laugh at. When someone slipped up, we cracked on him and insults came raining. A voice raised, protesting and fighting back until someone else made a fool of himself and all eyes turned to him and we began all over again. Just remembering all those offensive jokes embarrasses me. When I see them today, if one of them calls me a fag, will I avert my eyes? Or, worse, will I laugh with them as though nothing has changed?
I sigh as I cross the Intracoastal. The sea’s salty scent gives way to overgrown grass. On my right lies the paved trail through marsh where alligators occasionally sunbathe. I keep driving, merge onto 95. There are more cars than I expected. No matter how hard I push down on the gas, everyone seems to fly by. Where are they rushing to through this no-man’s-land?
After a few miles, I exit onto Palm Coast Parkway, near equidistant from where they killed Trayvon and from where they locked up Marissa. The four-lane road, tall streetlights, and winding sidewalk belong in some bigger Florida city. I turn down Old Kings, drive to the bowling alley, and enter its bar at midafternoon. A twangy guitar and a country singer’s deep voice fill the room, lamenting a lost truck or dog or wife. All the people I knew who loved country in high school were self-professed rednecks. My cross-country team preferred pop punk and metalcore. The runners I knew never would’ve listened to this.
My teammates circle around beer pitchers at the U-shaped bar. In the red light, their faces look pink. Jason has grown jowls, Mack a belly, and Rob both. Ben and Steve gained muscle, so their biceps bulge out of too-small sleeves. But their eyes mimic those of the skinny boys with whom I once ran
across this county.
For a moment, I watch them. It has been a long time since I’ve been the only Black person in a white crowd. Twig turns around and yells my name. The rest join in. They slap my hand, my back, my head. By the time they’re done, I’m holding a cup of beer and a shot of whiskey.
I’m driving, I say.
Mr. High School English Teacher got soft? Jason says.
Shit, you could drive a straight line after two drinks, Ben says.
Maybe you could, I say, passing the drinks back. I sit next to Twig. He has several new tattoos and a brown-red, thickly settled beard now. He looks down at his cup and asks where I’ve been. As I answer, I inspect the ridge above his cheek, where there’s a line of freckles like a crooked Orion’s belt and a dark color collecting like recently fallen ash.
Quit being fags, Mack yells from the end of the bar, and get over here.
Twig laughs and we turn to them. They try to shove another cup into my hands and I refuse again. Then someone tells a story about the time so-and-so drank so much in class he fell asleep and pissed his pants. The time so-and-so got slapped by his ex-girlfriend in the stairwell. The time so-and-so pulled a knife on so-and-so in the hallway.
When our laughter settles, I ask, Anybody go to Aubrey’s funeral?
They shake their heads.
Anyone hang with her after we graduated?
They look away.
Anyone see her around?
Twig puts a hand on my shoulder and says, We ain’t really keep in touch with her. Ain’t even see each other much recently.
Always figured y’all still kicked it, I say.
Life gets busy, Twig says. Half of us moved. The other half just working.
All the Water I've Seen Is Running Page 3