During the drive, I mulled over what I would say to Keith when we met. For years, I had been imagining what it would be like to meet my black father, the side of me that had always been the hardest to dig out. My father would be blacker than I because no part of him was white and (more importantly) because he was raised by black people. Black skin and kinky hair were one thing, but a black mind was another. When a black person saw another black person on the street, they expected them to share certain ideas with them about white people, about speech, even about the way they walked. When a black person saw me on the street, they expected the same. But I didn’t talk like many of them, and my hair was nothing like theirs. Worst of all, my family was white. The question was, did I have a black mind? And if I didn’t, could my black father help me make it black?
Though I had been happy and relieved about the success of my travel plans (and also how good it felt to deceive my parents after they had been deceiving me all these years), it wasn’t long before I began to worry about the potentially explosive situation I was walking into. On the phone the night before, Keith had assured me that his wife and daughters were really looking forward to meeting me. I knew he could tell me anything he wanted to about what his wife and daughters thought about me (or the idea of me at this point, anyway), but the reality could easily be different. They might resent me; they probably would. Who was I, anyway, but some remnant from my birth father’s life that he had never properly disposed of? Someone who was still learning how to do her hair properly because no one could show me how to—or no one chose to, I corrected myself. Someone who didn’t even know how she was black.
• • •
As I stood on the doorstep of their modest stucco ranch in Southeast Detroit at 5:31 p.m., this doubt finally overflowed in my mind and shook my fist, which I had raised to the door. The door was a fleshy pink color, and the paint was peeling. I pushed my knuckles against the wood and made myself hit it, hard. My stomach had begun to churn the moment I pulled up to their house, and I knew that I would have to be very careful and calm myself down fast, or a spasm of hiccups would be the Mitchells’ first introduction to me. The door flew open.
“Hi.” A woman in her mid-forties, with chin-length, straightened hair, and nails like talons greeted me. She wore a fuchsia silk shirt and pants set, pastel-colored eye shadow, and lipstick that shone brightly in the dying sunlight.
I smoothed my flowered skirt, could almost see the reflection of my plain and naked face in her eyes. “Hi,” I said.
The woman wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t frowning either. In fact, it was hard to determine exactly what was going through her mind. She held the door ajar, with just enough space for her small, slight frame. There wasn’t possibly enough room for me to pass by her and enter the house.
I fiddled with my fingers and tried to imagine myself back home. “I’m Keith’s daughter,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. “I mean his first daughter.” I winced. “I mean, his daughter from a previous…”
“I know who you are,” the woman said evenly. Then she opened the door and stepped to the side.
My stomach fell; I had been right. She didn’t want me there. Maybe I should just turn around and go home. I hesitated on the doorstep, but almost against my will, my feet moved me forward.
A heavy brass mirror hung on the opposite wall, which was painted the same awful fleshy color as the door. There was one tiny window in the hallway, almost completely covered by royal blue velvet curtains. The overall effect was that of a fun house; it was creepy in a campy sort of way.
The woman stepped behind me and shut the door. Now that I was safely inside, I wanted to leave more than anything. I reached up to my hair, which I had collected in a tight bun at the back of my head. At least they couldn’t have a quarrel with that.
Mrs. Mitchell eyed my small duffel bag, slung over an arm. “You can put that right over here, by the couch,” she said, gesturing toward the corner. “You’ll be sleeping on the pull-out couch tonight.”
“Thanks,” I told her and dropped the duffel in the corner.
“Ma, is she here? Is that her?” a voice called from down the hall. “She thin as Dad thought she would be?”
I felt my face color.
The woman was watching me. “Yes, she’s here, Maya,” she said. “Right here in the foyer.”
I heard a giggle from behind a wall. Then a door opened, and a face peered at me. I tried to study the face to see if it looked anything like mine, but she was too far away. “Sorry,” she said. “Not trying to say anything about thin folks. Wish I was one of them.” She stepped out of the room so I could see all of her. She was shorter than me, maybe 5'4", and had wide hips, a round face, and the beginnings of breasts. Her hair was straightened, like her mother’s, and her skin was the color of oak. She had to be thirteen or fourteen.
“It’s good to be thin,” said Mrs. Mitchell. She was 5'2" and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. “All my kin is thin.”
Maya laughed. “Not all,” she said.
Mrs. Mitchell rolled her eyes.
“Give it a rest already, Ma,” Maya said. She turned toward me and smiled, and it was a wide, generous smile. Something about her reminded me of Kit. “It’s Alex, right?” She held her hand out toward me.
I felt the muscles in my neck relax a bit. “Yeah,” I said. He must have told her the name I preferred. I shook her hand.
I hiccupped and then covered my hand with my mouth, almost instinctively.
Maya’s hazel eyes sparkled mischievously. “Hiccups, huh?” she asked.
Mrs. Mitchell folded her arms across her chest and tried to smile. “Why don’t we sit down at the table? Everything’s ready.” She gestured for me to follow her, so I did. We walked through a dimly lit hallway that was plastered in photos. Everyone was smiling widely in the photos; every woman’s hair was straightened, and every man’s hair shaved close to his head. In the corner at the end of the hallway, I saw a glass case containing what looked like at least fifty miniature crystal unicorns. Some were clear, others pink- and blue-tinted. Maya noticed me watching and laughed. “That’s our unicorn shrine,” she said. “Mine and Ma’s. We been collecting them since I was three. Aren’t they something?”
I leaned down so that I could get a better look. Afternoon sunlight from a nearby kitchen window shone in and bounced off the sharp and rounded corners of the animals. The unicorns sparkled as they pranced, stared, and slept. Some were grinning and others looked strangely placid. I was conscious of Maya’s eyes at my back as I examined them, but I couldn’t feel what she was thinking.
“They’re really something,” I said, rising. Really something strange.
Mrs. Mitchell turned and gestured around the corner. Her face was as somber as it had been when she first opened the door. “This way,” she said.
My legs suddenly felt like they were underwater, pulling so much weight with each step. Why had I come here? I hiccupped again.
“You know, Dad hiccups when he’s nervous, too,” said Maya.
I spun around to face her, my face hot with surprise. There was a tightening in my stomach, but not from embarrassment; from excitement. Maya’s eyes glittered with laughter. This was something like Grandpa’s, Dad’s, Jason’s, and Kit’s eyes, how they all were connected by the same, cloudy gray color. I had hated the hiccup response for years, and now I wanted to somehow cut it out of me and keep it in a box, to carry around and show everyone whenever I wanted to.
Maya nodded. “Grandma Mitchell too. That’s funny, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. Before I could say more, a hand grabbed my elbow and pulled me around the corner, then spun me around. The room was lit with candles; a tiny bouquet of wildflowers sat in the center of the table. There were six places set with fine china and shining silver utensils.
“This is our dining room,” said Mrs. Mitchell. “Please have a seat.”
Heavy footsteps clumped down the hallway. “We�
�re ready to eat!” A young girl who looked about eight flew into the room.
“Jordan, stop yelling!” Mrs. Mitchell yelled. “We have a guest.”
Jordan, who had cornrows decorated with translucent multicolored beads, screeched to a halt in front of me. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, looking me over. “You don’t look like Grandpa,” she said.
I hiccupped again, then put my hand in front of my mouth.
Her eyes, which were light hazel, widened. “You hiccup?” She clapped her hands. “Grandpa hiccups too!”
Mrs. Mitchell rolled her eyes. “Jordan,” she said. “You didn’t even introduce yourself.” She gestured toward the girl. “Alex, this is Jordan, my granddaughter. She’s staying with us this month while my daughter Kylie is on vacation.”
I nodded; I had no idea Mrs. Mitchell had had another daughter before she met Keith. This made me feel a little less strange in their house—I wasn’t the only distant relative.
Jordan leaned into me, and began to whisper. “Grandpa got a big, wide nose, like Maya, and he don’t like a child to interrupt him, especially when he’s eating, so make sure you just eat quietly, to yourself.”
“Jordan!” Mrs. Mitchell exclaimed. “Enough! We are sitting down to dinner.”
Jordan pulled back and fixed her eyes on her grandmother. It was as if she had just noticed her standing there. “Well, where’s Grandpa?”
That was the question that I had been wanting to ask ever since arriving.
“That’s not your concern,” said Mrs. Mitchell. “You need to sit down at the table and get ready for dinner.”
Jordan put her hands on her hips, and shifted her weight to one foot. “She came to see Grandpa, didn’t she? How am I going to sit down, ready for dinner if Grandpa’s not here?”
Mrs. Mitchell rolled her eyes, but I could see she was suppressing a small smile.
The front door slammed in the other room. “I’m back!” It was the voice of my father. “I got the bread.”
“Please,” Mrs. Mitchell told me, gesturing to the table again. “Sit down.”
It was a command more than a request, so I nodded and walked toward the table as lightly as I could. Jordan broke from Maya’s arms and ran to me. “I’m sitting by you,” she said, pulling me to the far end of the table. “Let’s sit … here.” She pulled out the chair on the left end of the table and pointed to it.
There wasn’t anything to do but sit down. So I did, and Jordan scrambled to situate herself right beside me.
“They didn’t have wheat so I got French,” said Keith, walking down the hallway. “I hope it’s okay…” His voice trailed off when he turned the corner and saw me sitting at the table. “Alex! You’re early!” He was smiling. The sound of his voice is the sound of his words. Those words on the paper were also his arms and his legs and his head and his eyes staring at me now. He was taller than I’d expected, at least five inches taller than me—6'1" or 6'2". He had muscular arms, although the beginning of a belly poked out from under a thin dress shirt. But his face was kind, and in that way, reminded me of Reggie’s.
Mrs. Mitchell snickered. I was grateful that her attention was no longer focused on me. “She’s not early,” she told Keith. “You’re late.”
Keith looked at his feet, but I could still see his jaw sagging. “Traffic,” he said slowly, and with considerably less enthusiasm. “Traffic was a bitch.”
Jordan elbowed me and hissed, “He said ‘bitch’!” Then she covered her face with her hand and started to giggle. I told myself not to look at her because I knew that I might start laughing, too.
Mrs. Mitchell looked like she was going to say something else, probably scold him for swearing, when Maya said that everyone should sit down, that she and Ma had prepared a beautiful dinner. I could see that trying to keep track of everything and everybody would be difficult, if not impossible here. Things moved a lot faster than they did at my house.
Keith smiled at Maya, almost gratefully. “Good suggestion, pumpkin,” he said. Then he told me he was sorry to be late.
After Maya, Mrs. Mitchell, and Keith all found seats around the table, Jordan was asked to say grace. She clasped her tiny hands together and bowed her head.
Jordan was right; Maya and Keith did have the same nose. It was flat and wide, almost touching the edge of their cheekbones. Her earlobes, however, were unattached at the bottom, like mine, but Keith’s were not. And my ears lay flat against my head while Maya’s and Keith’s were bigger and stuck out a little. Maya was my half-sister, I realized.
“In the name of the father, son, holy spirit, amen,” Jordan began. Her eyes were tightly closed, and her voice had taken on a deep, somber tone. I scrambled to clasp my hands and bowed my head. “Bless us oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
“Amen,” said everyone. Then they began to cross themselves. Trying to appear like I did this every day, I crossed myself also.
“Does your family pray before meals?” Mrs. Mitchell asked.
I felt like I had been caught shoplifting. I wanted to pretend I had answered already; I wanted to lie. “We don’t usually,” I said finally, “But I can.”
I wasn’t sure about how I felt about organized religion, though I always resented the inevitable proselytizing we received from Grandma Kirtridge whenever we went to visit her. Dad thought it was all “a bunch of bull to keep people separate, self-righteous, and cowardly,” so we had never prayed or been to a church service in our lives.
Mrs. Mitchell and Keith exchanged glances. I had given an odd answer to her question, and I don’t think they knew quite what to make of it.
“You don’t pray in your house?” Maya asked. She seemed to genuinely want to know.
“Well, no, not exactly,” I said.
She stared at me. “Do you go to church? What religion are you?”
My hand was dancing under the table. “Well, we don’t really have one, though our grandmother is Christian.”
Mrs. Mitchell smiled. “Your grandmother’s Christian? What denomination?”
I tried to remember if my grandmother was Protestant or Catholic. She had probably told me a million times, but now, for some reason, it was eluding me. Keith and Mrs. Mitchell looked as interested in this line of questioning as Maya.
Under the table, Jordan grabbed my jumping hand and steadied it. I squeezed her back.
“She’s Catholic,” I said. “And we were baptized Catholic. Our parents just never had the time to take us to church. We’re a busy family.” I hiccupped again and put my hand over my mouth. “Sorry,” I said.
Keith didn’t acknowledge that he had heard either the hiccup or my apology. I couldn’t remember if the story I had just told was true, if we had been baptized when we were babies. Something about it sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t pinpoint what.
“Well, we’re Catholic,” said Mrs. Mitchell, reaching for a bowl of tossed salad.
I nodded, mostly because I didn’t know what else to do. For the first time, I noticed the polished oak cross on the opposite wall. There was also one in the foyer, I recalled, hanging above a mirror.
Maya passed me a steaming bowl of basmati rice. Keith picked up a platter of lemon chicken, and selected a fat piece. The room was quiet for a moment while everyone focused on passing and serving. Under the table, Jordan didn’t let go of my hand.
Mrs. Mitchell was the one who broke the silence. “You know, our church is so important to us,” she said. “I don’t know how any of us would have made it this far without it, or without our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. We’ve had so many challenges.”
I shivered. The way she said it, The Lord Jesus Christ, made him sound like an intimate lover, almost. I knew you weren’t supposed to love a human being as much as Jesus if you believed in him, and so I wondered how Mrs. Mitchell meted out her love for Keith.
“What kind of challenges?” Jordan asked.
/> I snuck a look at her from the side but couldn’t see a trace of sarcasm or malignancy. It seemed like a question that she actually wanted to hear the answer to.
Mrs. Mitchell’s chin shot up, but she wouldn’t acknowledge Jordan. She looked at me.
“Keith lost fourteen years of his life to alcoholism,” she said. “In fact, he almost died from the disease.” She watched me for my reaction, but I was trying to emit nothing.
“I’m also a recovering alcoholic. I’ve been sober for ten years now. Keith’s been sober for nine.”
Jordan’s hand gripped mine tightly; it felt like my bones were crushing together.
I had heard once that there are certain people whose lives are governed by extremes, extreme indulgence on one end, and extreme asceticism on the other.
“AA, our church, its pastor, and of course praying got us up out of that life,” Keith said. Mrs. Mitchell took his hand. I had been confounded about what tied them together, but now I could see it. “I surely would be dead by now, except for all those people, and a little help from the Almighty,” he continued, smiling uncomfortably.
I wondered what he thought about the fact that this was the first thing I learned about him.
“So don’t drink,” he said suddenly, pointing his fork at me. “That’s your lesson.”
Mrs. Mitchell laughed, but I didn’t think it was funny.
“No, seriously, hon, do you drink?” he asked.
I shook my head. I had never been attracted to drinking or drugs, mostly because the idea of putting something in my body that I couldn’t control terrified me. But now I was thinking that there could be another reason why I never drank; maybe Keith had encoded specific messages in my nerve synapses that would fire whenever the opportunity to do so presented itself. There was such a thing as genetics, predetermined factors written in the body, so why not? Anything was possible.
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