Good visit? asks the receptionist who signed me in earlier.
Think so.
She looked happy.
Hard to tell.
I ask her where the restroom is and walk down a small hallway. I enter a windowless, dark-gray room. The light buzzes. A metal bar runs along the wall by the toilet and one runs along the shower in the corner, where a metal bench hangs. The room smells of urine. I turn the faucet on and splash ice-cold water on my face. I scrub at the sweat on my cheeks, but my skin still feels slimy.
As I dry my face with the scratchy paper towels, I wonder when the last time I saw my grandmother was. I was in high school. There were no grays in my hair. Baby fat still rounded my hairless cheeks and jaw. Whiskers sprouted on my face in patches. It’s no surprise she didn’t recognize me.
Someone knocks at the door. I exit and walk to the front, which the midafternoon sun tints yellow. The nurse sits behind her desk, opens a binder, and asks me to sign out.
She don’t smile much these days, she says.
I figured.
The nurse looks down at a small gold watch.
You coming back?
Not sure.
It’s good for them, you know. Having someone to talk to. Even if they don’t remember it.
My flight is early tomorrow morning, I reply, realizing I may not see Grandma again. Then I walk to the door, ready to drive to Desmond’s, where I’m long overdue.
Lies
I ride down Florida Park, a street lined by some of the only sidewalks in Palm Coast. As a teenager, when I could not sleep at night, the sticky Florida heat keeping me up, I imagined all the things Aubrey and I would do when we graduated high school, and when my dreams turned farfetched, I pictured us living in a house on this street. Over the canal in the back, we would build a mahogany dock and keep a small boat for gigging and a large one to take out with friends. On cool summer evenings, we would sit on the canal’s cement wall, legs dangling over the edge, and drink Shock Tops until the moon rose. We would wave to our neighbors’ silhouettes on their back porch. They would wave back. Or we would invite our friends over, drink too much, and fall asleep on the couch next to each other, not because we couldn’t make it back to our bed but because we were still too reckless to control ourselves. The teenage fantasies of a boy with no money and little sense of the world beyond his suburbs and even less experience dating come rushing back, their images blotting out the town around me.
A car honks. I turn into the F section and pull into a driveway where green reeds push through its cracks. Desmond sits on the step in front of his door and smokes. His plumlike skin is dark, tinged with purple. He wears a white tank, mustard Timberland boots, and black basketball shorts with a white Nike sign. He still dresses the same. He doesn’t light up with recognition when we make eye contact through the windshield; he waits as though this is just another Saturday and I a regular visitor.
I step out of the car, make a square with my fingers, and hold the fake camera to my eyes. He stands up, turns to what he used to call his good side, and crosses his arms. Then he crouches and turns the camera to me. I point my two arms diagonally to the sky like an archer aiming for the sun.
Damn you hit them with the Usain Bolt, he says.
With the paparazzi out here? I got to do it for the streets.
My voice sounds deeper than usual. The words move quicker and drawl.
For the island, he says.
Put it on my back.
Put the Coolies on the map.
My voice and his fall into the same rhythm like rappers trading lines over the same beat.
Damn, Brown, he says. Been a long time since I seen you.
I’m saying though. When the last time they seen Black and Brown?
Des holds his hand out and I grab it without thinking. Our fingers clasp. We shake. His arm circles my back and mine his. Our chests touch. I smell cocoa in his lotion. Then we separate and snap. Moments later, I still feel his hand on my back.
So what you doing in town? he asks.
Man, you already know.
Missed the funeral.
Couldn’t get off work.
When I look at Des, the folds in his forehead like waves viewed from above, I wonder if he thinks I’m lying. I wonder if he thinks I didn’t come because I’ve lied about my relationship with Aubrey.
Mom says that all Jamaican men, myself and Des included, love to lie. She said that when she returned to New Monklands as an adult, all the women told her my Coolie great-grandfather was a liar. A woman named Beatrice told Mom he spent many afternoons in her home after his wife left. She spoke to Mom from a chair outside her house. In the picture Mom took, she wore loose fabrics that billowed out over her body and age ridged her face like a dry valley seen from a plane.
Beatrice said my great-grandfather always came by when she was cooking supper, while her husband worked in the fields. The stew was not yet thickened from hours of heat and the salt pork’s fat, but my great-grandfather always asked for a taste. She passed him a spoonful. He joked it would taste better with a hunk of meat. She told him to let her know where to find some. Then he told her stories his parents told him about India until it neared the time for her husband to return.
After his first few visits, Beatrice asked what his wife thought of him visiting other women when no one else was around. He told her his wife thought Jamaica wasn’t good enough for her, so she left him. She moved to the States to find a rich man where the streets were paved with gold.
Mom told me that wasn’t true. His wife, my great-grandmother, moved to Flatbush, where she shared a bed with her cousin and took care of a white woman’s children. She wrote letters every week. Because he was illiterate, Grandma read them aloud to him. He always asked her to write back that he would join her soon, but he never did.
After my great-grandfather passed, Grandma fulfilled his promise and moved to the States to live with my great-grandmother in Flatbush. Some years after arriving, Grandma went to church with her mother and bumped into a man she grew up with in New Monklands. He had just arrived from the island with his daughter. They reminisced about their childhood—the look of spring, so unlike the one they were living through in New York, and the games they played—and he confessed that, when they were teenagers, he told the local boys they dated in secret. Grandma laughed. He continued as if he didn’t hear her, saying that he always had a thing for her, that they should go out now that he was here, that they should make good on the stories he told. Grandma tried to tell him that she was too busy, and he said he was flexible. Eventually, Grandma told him she didn’t want to go out with him. He said she hadn’t changed. She always thought she was too good for her own kind.
As I watch Des, I want to tell him the truth but can’t look him in the eyes. Head cast down, I run my hand with the grain of my hair. Des coughs loud enough to stir me from my daydream. He stubs his cigarette out on the front step. The burning end streaks black on the gray concrete. Then he tucks what remains behind his ear. The creased paper smells even more of smoke than it did when lit.
We step inside. In the front room, a worn leather sectional sits next to a coffee table covered with remotes, Essence magazines from the ’90s, and a King James Bible. Against the front wall, next to the blinds yellowed from dust, is a TV and several videogame consoles that they don’t make games for anymore. On a bookshelf, a framed picture of Des at his kindergarten graduation sits next to one of him in his high school cap and gown. Between them is an empty frame for a college graduation picture.
Ain’t a thing change round here, I say.
Cleaner than it used to be.
How you figure?
Remember when we had that fish tank? asks Des.
The one with no fish in it?
Made Ma throw it out.
Des slides open the glass door and steps onto the screened-in back porch. The carpet is dark blue and rough. We sit on white rocking chairs with floral-patterned cushions. He lights his stub
bed-out cigarette, inhales, and then perches it in the ashtray on the coffee table.
You mind? he asks.
I shake my head. You go to the funeral?
Yeah, he says. I mean, Aubrey’s people weren’t my people, but I went. Must’ve been the only nigga there. Walked in a little late and everyone turned to look at me. All white. When they turned around, bro, I thought they were going to rush me. But ain’t nobody do nothing. They turned back around and I seen what they was looking at. Her face on the projector. Her big old brown eyes looking back at us.
That look, I say.
That look though.
That look like she knows what you ain’t even thought yet.
Looking at me like that at her funeral, he says. He picks up the cigarette and drags. In the backyard, grass grows long in patches. The brown-yellow soil rises in inch-high hills and falls in divots like a windswept beach shore. In the distance, dark-barked longleaf pines cluster together in an undeveloped lot.
Can’t believe you ain’t go, Des says.
Me neither, I say. But I’m glad you went. I know y’all weren’t close, but I’m glad you went for me.
Nigga ain’t nobody go for you.
My fault, I say. I ain’t know you know her like that.
I ain’t say all that, but she treated me good ever since we did community service the summer after junior year. Des shakes his head. So dumb, bro. We’re about a month from summer and I got to bring the water bottle with vodka to school.
In the distance, thunder rumbles. The reedy grass leans to the right in a cool wind, then returns upright. A shadow falls over the backyard.
Hot out there, Des says. We was out there on the movie theater road. Wearing bright vests so cars could see us coming. Pants to be safe. I think I could’ve worn shorts and been fine, but we ain’t have no choice. So we was out there in pants in the summer and, you know, by eight a.m. it’s already ninety degrees so we was sweating out there. Walking up and down that road, picking up trash. Man, I would’ve died if Aubrey wasn’t there.
Forgot she got community service after scrapping with Becky in the cafeteria, I say. Y’all talk a lot out there?
Bro, tell me why she was the only person I talked to. Everyone else had beef from back in the day or ain’t like Black folks or I don’t know what. But Aubrey, bro, we talked every day. At first we just cracked on you. She made fun of your voice a lot. Talking about how, when you started talking to her, your voice would get high-pitched and shit. That puberty middle school shit, you know what I’m saying?
I don’t remember none of that.
I bet you don’t, Des says. Shoot, I don’t think I could live with myself if I remembered my voice cracking every time I talked to the girl I was feeling.
How you know she ain’t lying?
Ain’t no use lying.
The wind picks up, coming steadily, cool and moist. The clouds roll in above and the backyard turns gray.
At first, he says, we cracked on you. Then we cracked on the people we were with. Especially the big old bald-headed white dude telling us what to do. He was way too big to be out there in that heat. Aubrey kept saying she thought he was going to pass out one day and she wasn’t going to help him neither. She was just going to watch him bake.
Man, she was ice-cold.
Something cracks loudly in the distance, like a far-off explosion.
Ain’t it early in the year for a summer storm? I say.
They been coming later and later and earlier and earlier.
Forgot what this feels like, I say. It don’t rain up north.
It don’t rain in New York?
Just drizzles. What they call rain, we call drizzle.
The wind blows harder now, and that along with the clouds’ shadow cools the day. In small scattered spots, the soil darkens, but I still can’t see the water.
Came in one morning quiet as hell, Des says. I mean, she was always quiet at first because it was early and hot and sometimes she was still drunk from the night before. But this was different. I cracked on the bald dude when he walked by and she ain’t even hear it. She was so in her head she ain’t know what was going on. I ain’t say nothing about it because I ain’t want to pry or nothing like that.
She wouldn’t tell you anyway, I say.
You’re probably right, he says. But then, out of the blue, she looks up at me and asks, What you going to do when you get out of here? So I say, If I get out of here. Hit her with the slickness, you know what I’m saying? Let her know the kid’s deep and hears her words and shit, but I can speak her language too. So I’m thinking she’s going to be impressed when she says, Ain’t no use talking about no ifs. That’s how you get stuck here. I should’ve said, You can get stuck here even if you think you going to get out, but I ain’t say nothing. So she says it again. How you getting out?
The falling water thickens a little, resembling barely visible glass shards. Larger clumps of the soil darken.
What’d you say? I ask as Des lights another cigarette.
I’m getting to that, bro. You always rushing niggas.
Man, you out here trying to smoke a whole pack and still not tell the story.
All right, bro, all right, he says, laughing. I said I wanted to build cars. Wanted to be there from start to finish. Not just put the engine in or design the body but draw what it looks like. Make prototypes. Go back after seeing it and draw it again. Fix what’s wrong. Do that a million times till the car is lean with fierce eyes and enough room under the hood for a fat engine. A spoiler if it looks right. That’s what I told her. Said I wanted to get out by making the flyest cars.
That’s the dream.
Cars would be mad expensive too. Can’t just have any old person rolling through in a Desmond original. That’s what I told her. And she looks at me and says, I can get one for free though, right? I should’ve said, Yeah, but I said, I’ll give you a discount. She laughed so I figured she was feeling better. Then I look at her and ask, How you getting out?
With a heavy gust of wind, the rain picks up, sounding like the steady pitter-patter of a crowd walking down the street.
She looks at me and says she don’t know. Her daddy just got back from jail. Parole violation. Second time in her life he came home from upstate and had to go right back to jail. Second time she went to jail to visit him and heard him talk about how he’s going to do everything by the book when he gets out. Second time he gets home and says it’s going to be different this time and before you know it, it’s back to the same old shit.
The falling water thickens, casting a veil over the backyard that seems to rush the day to dusk.
She told me about that night, I say. Never said what her dad was doing that got him in a cell. I ain’t ask. Enough Henriquezes been to jail for me to know better than to ask. Folks always say they ain’t done nothing.
Niggas in the pen stay tight-lipped, man, Des says. Probably ain’t matter to her anyway. All that matters is that whatever dirt he doing took him away from her.
Right, I say. And she been mad at him all these years. She been talking about how she was going to tell him off and all the shit she going to say to him when he got out. But then he made it home and she seen his dumb face smiling, not wearing no jumpsuit or nothing, and she couldn’t help but being happy. Gave him a big old hug when he came in. Then everybody’s getting beers out the fridge. He gives one to Aubrey too even though she underage. They go to the back porch, drink, celebrate. But soon enough her daddy and her mom start yelling at each other. Her sister tries to calm them down and then they start yelling at her. She ain’t having none of it. Gets in her car and goes to her boyfriend’s. Aubrey gets mad and starts arguing with them, talking about, Why y’all chase her off? Then her parents start yelling at her. Aubrey ain’t have nowhere to go so she walked outside and lay on the hood of her car and looked at the stars. Her dad came out and asked her what she was doing and she ain’t say nothing. Just got in and drove. Said she drove to my house and sat in
the driveway. Turned the lights off so she wouldn’t wake up my mom. Thought about knocking on my window but ain’t want to wake me up. Wish to God she would’ve knocked.
The moist soil is so thick in the air it feels like we’re rolling around in mud.
I ain’t know all that, Des says. She just told me her dad was being an asshole. Said it was typical but she ain’t got to be there. Said she ain’t know how she was going to get out, but she was good as gone. She’d go to Gainesville or Orlando or Jacksonville. Hell, she’d move up north and live with her grandma in Maryland if she had to. All she knew was she wasn’t staying here.
With a crack of thunder, a bright streak of lightning, and steady gusts of wind, the rain swells.
Aubrey wanted to run away from her father, but she remained here longer than she planned. Even when she did escape, she moved in with her mother’s relatives up north. I doubt she could ever completely cut off contact with her mother.
My own father’s words followed us across borders. When Mom was pregnant with me, Grandma and Auntie B returned to Jamaica for a funeral and stayed with Mom, my father, and my brother. According to Mom, one day at dinner, he blamed dishes left in the sink on her. Then he turned to Grandma and Auntie B and complained that he did all the housework and took care of my brother. (He rarely cleaned, almost never watched Junior, and never cooked.) He paid the bills. If it wasn’t for him, Mom and Junior would be homeless. Before Mom could respond, Auntie B cut her eyes at him and asked him who shared whose blood? My father was slow to respond. Auntie B asked again whose relatives they were; Mom’s or his? When he didn’t say anything, Auntie B told him not to forget who belonged to whom.
Even after we left Jamaica, my father talked about us to Mom’s friends and family. When we lived in New York, Mom occasionally heard from relatives that my father told them she was addicted to drugs, she beat me and Junior senseless, and she was too crazy to take care of the kids. Once, he got Grandma’s number and told her Mom abandoned him and kidnapped his children. When Grandma and Mom talked about it, Grandma said she didn’t know why she let that Trini run Mom out of her home.
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