I put my elbows on the table and watched her. Outside, thunder clapped hard, then rumbled back into oblivion. For some reason, I started thinking about my father. He and Mama had never been in love. They went on a few dates or something. Then he moved off somewhere and said maybe they could stay in touch once he settled in a new place. But I guess he never really settled anywhere because he never called.
I frowned and thought about how stupid people can be sometimes. They’re always asking me how does it feel not to have a father. How can I know the answer to that? I don’t have anything to compare it to. It feels the way it feels. Like if you were born blind. I hate when people start talking about how they feel sorry for blind people because they can’t see the beauty of a rainbow or the soft yellows and grays and browns of new kittens. Like a blind person’s life isn’t as good because they don’t have something that other people have. I mean, how could you miss something you never had? People are so caught up in trying to force their own world onto everybody else’s that they don’t even get the fact that the other person doesn’t care. It feels like it’s been me and Mama since the beginning. It feels right and whole and good.
“Do you ever think about Jonathan?” I asked.
Mama laughed. The laughter sounded kind of nervous but I wondered if I was just imagining.
“Jonathan was a long time ago,” Mama said, looking off again.
“But I’m part him,” I said. “I mean, he’s my father.”
“Depends how you define ‘father,’ doesn’t it?”
When she looked at me, she was smiling but there was a lot of sadness behind it. Maybe she was missing him. Maybe I shouldn’t have even mentioned it.
“Actually, I have been thinking about him, Mel. I’ve been thinking about all the men in my life . . . a lot.”
“Don’t get corny on me, Ma. If you’re thinking about getting married, forget it. A couple of dates here and there, but that’s it. I’m not going to be calling anybody Daddy.” I laughed, thinking about this. “Can you imagine me calling someone Daddy? That’s craziness.”
Mama didn’t say anything but she wasn’t smiling. Then she rose and walked past me into my room, which is off of the kitchen. I kept watching her. Waiting for her to say more. Waiting for her to explain that “growing time” thing. But she just mumbled something about having to get dressed for work and walked on through the house to her bedroom. If anyone would have asked about that moment, I would have said I didn’t feel anything. Maybe I didn’t.
Our apartment is small. There’s a living room at the front of the house. The next room is Mama’s, so you have to walk through it to get to the living room and back through it again to get to my room. Then there’s the kitchen and the bathroom, which falls off of my room like the bottom of an “L.” Sliding doors, made out of heavy carved wood, separate Mama’s room from the living room, where there are so many plants in the two windows that when the doors are slid open, it looks as though you’ve walked into somebody’s jungle. I water them, feed them, and keep them growing. Mama pushes them aside sometimes to look out onto our noisy block. There’s a door separating my room and Mama’s but we never close it, except if I’m studying late at night and don’t want to keep her up or on Saturdays when she likes to sleep in.
After a moment, I got up and followed Mama into her bedroom. She had sat down on the edge of her bed and was leaning forward to check herself in the full-length mirror on the wall.
“You didn’t explain the ‘growing time’ thing,” I said, leaning against the headboard. “Don’t keep me hanging.”
Mama smiled. “I’m bringing somebody home tonight I want you to meet.”
I made a face. “Why do I have to be here for your date?”
“Because this somebody is important to me.”
“And?”
“And you’re important to me. So I want the two important people in my life to come together.”
“Can’t we go to a restaurant?”
Mama smiled again. “Your treat?”
I watched her paint half circles along the bottom part of her eye with black liner. “Don’t put that gunk on,” I said. “It makes you look old.”
“I don’t mind looking old. Everybody over thirty looks old to a teenager.”
It actually didn’t make her look old. It made her eyes look bigger and prettier and made me wonder who was out there so worth impressing.
“Can Ralphael and Sean come?”
“Uh-uh. No friends tonight.”
“Please . . .”
Mama looked at me, smiled, and shook her head. “Don’t even try it,” she said, knowing if I wanted to, I could say please with enough sweetness to make her change her mind.
“This isn’t about marriage or anything, is it, Ma? ’Cause I’m not walking down anybody’s aisle.”
Mama laughed nervously again. “I can’t get married, Mel. The world doesn’t work that way.”
I had no idea what she was talking about but I was relieved so I backed off the begging for Sean and Ralphael. Shoot. Let them eat at home for once. Mama didn’t bring men home that often. I figured the least I could do was sit down and have a meal with one. After all, Mama’s dates never hung around too long. And usually, after one or two dates with the same guy, Mama was ready to move on.
Chapter Two
Ralphael and Sean came over a little while after Mama left for work and went straight to the refrigerator before coming into my room.
“Man, put those faggot stamps away!” Ralphael said, leaning over my bed to watch me separate land tortoise stamps from baby seals. The stamps had just come in the mail from Greenpeace.
“This is the last one,” I said, pressing an elephant seal stamp over its picture in my book. I knew it was faggy to collect stamps but I didn’t care. It was something I liked and as long as I didn’t start wanting to kiss on Ralphael and Sean, I was okay. A long time ago, I figured out there was two kinds of “faggy.” There’s the kind that I guess if I thought real hard, I kind of was. That’s the “faggy” that really isn’t super macho and has notebooks to write stuff down in. Not diaries. Notebooks. Girls keep diaries. The other kind of “faggy” was the really messed-up kind. That kind actually wanted to be with other guys the way I get to feeling when Angie comes around. That kind made me want to puke every time I thought about it—which wasn’t a lot.
Sean sat down on the edge of my bed and eyed my notebooks. “What’s those?” he asked. The three of us had been friends for forever and they had been coming to my house for forever. Forever Sean had been asking “What’s those?” every time he saw my notebooks.
“Nothing,” I said. This is what I always said.
“We bumped into Angie,” Ralphael said. He smirked. “She wants you to call her sometime.”
My stomach jumped. Angie made me feel dizzy in weird places. When I saw her on the street, she always smiled all slow and shy. It was the kind of smile that makes your mouth dry up on the spot. I checked my pocket quickly. The ragged piece of paper that she had written her phone number on was still there. I hadn’t gotten up the nerve to call her. I had wanted to talk to Mama about it, but no time ever seemed to be the right time anymore. If she wasn’t in class, she was at the gym or at work or out having dinner. Then there were the nights she called to say she wasn’t coming home at all. Not like I was scared to be in the house by myself or anything. . . .
“You ever going to call her?” Ralph asked.
I shrugged. “The summer’s not over yet.”
“Yeah, right!” Sean laughed. “You just don’t have the dollars in your pocket it would take to treat her right.” He punched me on the arm. Sean was small for his age and a bit mean. His mother and father fought loud and publicly and this must have had something to do with him going off at times for no reason at all. I felt a little bad for him but that wasn’t the reason we were friends. We had grown up together, had played freeze tag in second grade, baseball in third, and I don’t know how many millions of v
ideo games together. Hanging with Ralph and Sean was like breathing to me. I couldn’t imagine anything else.
“Let’s head out,” Ralphael said. “Since your refrigerator is so tired-looking, we might as well go grab a slice or something.”
I slid the book of stamps into my desk drawer. “I can’t hang long,” I said. “Mama’s bringing some man home for me to meet.”
“Tell your mama to bring me home,” Sean said. “That woman is so fine!”
“Yeah, so what would she want with your ugly butt?” Ralph said. “Melon-head’s mom needs a nice older man, like me.” Ralph checked himself out in the mirror on my dresser and smiled. He’s fifteen, a year older than me and Sean, and the tallest, and, as far as girls think, the best-looking. He’s dark like I am, with what Mama says is a nice-shaped head. It’s an okay head, I mean, as far as heads go. He has dreads, too. But when you think about it, his head looks a bit like a lightbulb. I guess Mama can’t see this.
“Your mama hasn’t brought somebody home in a long time,” Sean said, leaning back on my bed.
“Yeah, Mel,” Ralph said. “What’s up with that?”
I flicked the side of his head as I walked past him. “What do you mean, what’s up with that? Who am I—the dating game? She’s been busy with school or work, or working out. Whatever.”
Mama had been spending a lot of time at a health club she had joined in the city. The one time I went with her, I couldn’t help noticing how dark she and I seemed among all these white people. I don’t have a lot of reason to spend time with white people—they don’t live around here or go to my school. I mean, I have white teachers but they’re teachers, so they don’t really count. Mama must have introduced me to ten women friends of hers and it made me feel a bit strange, like Mama had some secret community I hadn’t even known about. I mean, not like I would want to spend time with a bunch of women (I’m not that kind of faggy, either) but it was interesting that she hung with all of these white ladies. There was one sister there and she was a little on the fine side so I spent most of my time trying not to look like I was watching her work out. After she left, I went into the part of the gym that had a pool table and television, got a soda and watched TV until Mama was done exercising. If you ask me, it’s a pretty fancy health club. I don’t see why Mama needs to spend money on exercising when there’s Prospect Park not even five blocks away from us. But she says a lot of lawyers go there and maybe she can network and hook up a good job for after she’s done with law school. Whatever.
“Your mama must be going to his house instead of bringing him home,” Ralph said. He and Sean started laughing and slapped each other five but I didn’t see what was so funny. It was true.
“She’s busy working and stuff.” I was getting a bit annoyed. So what if Mama had a little something going on the side. It wasn’t anything important. She was a grown-up. If she wanted a boyfriend for a little while, it wasn’t my business. He’d be gone soon enough. Then it’d be like it was before. Mama and me talking quietly in the kitchen, being close. Being there for each other.
“Remember that one guy,” Sean said. “The big one that worked for the airport or something. Man, that was one ugly brother.”
“I know who you’re talking about,” Ralphael said.“That guy with the big butt. He was bowlegged, too. Mel, your mother must have gone temporarily blind that day.”
“And what about that bright-skinned guy with the cross-eyes?” Sean winced, like he was smelling something that had gone bad.
“He wasn’t cross-eyed,” I said, defending Mama. “He was an accountant.”
“Man, I’m sure that guy’s parents had to be walked every day.”
“If they didn’t chew through their leashes,” Sean added.
Ralphael slapped him five, then looked at me. I wasn’t smiling so they stopped laughing. “We’re just busting on you, Mel.”
“Hey,” I said, shrugging, trying to act like I didn’t care.
“So who’s the new guy?” Sean asked.
“I don’t know. She just said I have to be here. This one must be important or something ’cause she said you guys can’t come.”
“I didn’t want to come anyway,” Sean said.
Ralphael leaned against the mantelpiece across from my bed. “You never really had to be home for the other ones. We just all sort of ended up here. Maybe she’s going to marry this guy or something.”
“Wrong,” I said. “She said she’s not marrying anyone.”
“Yeah, right,” Ralphael said. “Fine woman like EC’s gonna get snatched up in no time. You just don’t want it to happen, that’s all. You better start getting ready, though. Shoot—I’ma go home and pick out a suit.”
“Me, too,” Sean said. He looked at Ralph and they burst out laughing.
Both of them make me sick.
ALONE
Some days I wear alone like a coat, like a hood draping from my head that first warm day of spring, like socks bunching up inside my sneakers. Like that.
Alone is how I walk some days, with my hands shoved deep in my pockets, with my head down, walking against the day, into it then out again.
Alone is the taste in my mouth some mornings, like morning breath, like hunger. It’s lumpy oatmeal for breakfast when Mama doesn’t have time to cook and I still don’t know how much oatmeal and water and milk will make it all right. It’s Ralphael and Sean, my supposed-to-be homeboys, going off without me to catch the new Spike Lee flick in Manhattan, then running up to me in the park where I’m shooting hoops by myself, and having the nerve to tell me all about it. “But why didn’t y’all come get me?” I ask, and they shrug, say, “We figured you were in your house wanting to be alone.”
Some days alone creeps between my shoulder blades and hollows me out.
Today, alone is a pair of new jeans wrapped up in white tissue, folded neat inside a brown box from Macy’s. Today, alone is this empty house and a tiny note beside the box: Dear Melanin Sun, I miss you. Love, Ma.
Chapter Three
Mama was in the shower singing at the top of her lungs. It was a halfway decent song but she was pretty much ripping it apart. It was almost eight-thirty and her “date” was supposed to have been here a half hour ago. Neither one of them seemed to be in a big hurry, though, since Mama still had the water running and the bozo hadn’t even phoned to say he’d be late.
I tapped on the bathroom door.“Never trust a man who comes to a date late and doesn’t even call,” I yelled over the running water. “Means he doesn’t care about you.”
Mama turned the water off. “Never trust a son who’s full of assumptions,” she called back.
“What?”
“I never said anything about a man coming over.”
I stood there for a moment feeling stupid, my hands shoved dumbly into the pockets of my pants. I knew I wasn’t going crazy and I could have sworn she had said this was a date.
“You mean you made me shower and put on clean clothes and be here for some lady friend? And Ralph and Sean couldn’t even come?” I stood there waiting for an answer. The silence in between seemed to fill the apartment.
After a few moments passed, Mama opened the bathroom door and emerged wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, her hair and face still damp. “Yep,” she said, pinching my cheek as she passed. “Remember Kristin? She was one of the women I introduced you to at the gym that day. I said she had graduated from my law school the year before.”
I followed behind her, relieved but aggravated. “Shoot, Ma, I thought this was the big one.” I vaguely remembered a Kristin—I mean I remembered the name but didn’t have a clue what she looked like. But if she was that fine sister I had sat there watching, then I was more than glad I had hooked myself up a bit.
The doorbell rang and I jumped up. “I’ll get it.”
Mama cut me off at the pass. “I’ll get it,” she said, smiling. “Didn’t we get eager all of a sudden?” she said over her shoulder.
I sat on the couch and
tried to look like it was no big deal. And it really wasn’t. Until Mama came back in with Kristin.
“You remember Melanin Sun,” Mama said. Kristin smiled and stuck out her hand.
I glanced at Mama and saw she was waiting for me to make the right move, so I stuck out my hand stiffly and mumbled, “Nice to meet you.”
Not only was she not the fine sister. This woman wasn’t fine or a sister. She was white. White white. Like shampoo commercial-girl white but with glasses. And those straight white-people teeth you know must have cost her parents a million dollars in dental bills. She had that shimmery white-people hair that has a whole lot of shades of brown and blond running through it and a dimple in one cheek. When I glanced at her face, her eyes were bright and grayish—that scary bright gray that you have to look away from fast or else risk getting stuck trying to figure out how far and deep they go. Okay—maybe she was a little bit pretty. The worst part, though, was that this Kristin lady was dressed almost exactly like me. We were both wearing blue shirts and jeans. Mama looked kind of pleased by the whole thing but I wasn’t. I stood there silently, thinking about the gray polo shirt I had almost put on.
Kristin was looking at me like she was trying to see right through me, like she knew me from somewhere. I tried to think of something clever to say to get those eyes away from me, but all I could come up with was a stupid “You look nice” that sent both her and Mama into a fit of laughter.
I excused myself and went to set the table. There had never been a white person in our house. There weren’t white people in our world. That was it. In a nutshell and hung out to dry. No use for them in this neighborhood. This was our place—people of color together in harmony, away from all of their hatred and racism. I didn’t dislike white people, I just didn’t think of them. For years and years, they had fought hard to stay separate from us, and when we finally said, “Keep your stupid land, we’ll find a place of our own,” they had to come over to it and check it out. I didn’t care that Mama and Kristin hung out at the gym and had gone to the same law school. Kristin wasn’t a part of us and it bothered me that Mama had invited her into our world. How didn’t matter. I wanted to know why.
From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun Page 2