by John Vercher
“Can you blame me?” Bobby laughed, a bit too loudly. He noticed Robert notice.
“I don’t suppose I can,” Robert said. “I should get to the hospital. His family is likely on their way there.” They both stood. The feeling of lightness returned, and Bobby pushed the backs of his knees against the bench to steady himself. “Do you need a ride, or…”
“No,” Bobby said. “I’m going to catch the bus.” They fidgeted, hands going from pockets, to arms crossed, shifting weight from foot to foot. “Listen, there’s something I have to do now. Something I have to take care of and I’m honestly not sure how it’s going to turn out. I know that sounds mysterious and what not. But this.” He pointed back and forth between the two of them. “Can we do this again? Talk?”
“Yeah,” Robert said, turning up the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, we can do that.”
Bobby scrawled his address on a matchbook and handed it to Robert. “Tomorrow, late morning sometime?”
Robert nodded, took the matchbook. Bobby stuck out his hand for a shake. Robert looked at it, then moved it to the side as he stepped towards him. He put his arms under Bobby’s and wrapped them around his back in a tight embrace. Bobby’s arms hung in the air but Robert held on. Bobby drew Robert closer, and Robert placed his hand on the back of Bobby’s head, pulling his face to his chest. Bobby paused there, tense, then let go and wept. He shook with sobs, his breath almost ragged. Robert shushed him and pulled him closer still.
“Breathe,” Robert told him.
A toxic reservoir of fear and anger, resentment and sorrow, emptied from Bobby with each tearful exhale, but each inhale brought something new: safety. He felt safe. Though Bobby was a grown man, Robert’s arms felt strong and secure. Protective, the way he always thought a father’s should, the way he’d always wished his mother’s would. Though he was terrified of what he knew he had to do now to make things right, his father was here.
Bobby calmed and he and Robert stood back from each other. Robert wiped a tear from his own eye. They gave each other a tight-lipped nod and walked away. Bobby turned.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said. “That you lost your baby. Did you know if it was a boy or a girl?”
Robert shook his head no. “Thank you. When you see your mother tonight, go easy, huh? Talk to her.”
Bobby nodded and gave a half-hearted wave as he walked in the direction of the bus stop.
“YOU’RE EITHER REALLY early or really late,” the bistro hostess said to Bobby as she held the door open. He’d missed the chance to pick up a lunch shift, but it was too early for the second shift to filter in, so he headed up to the smoking section. His stomach growled. In all that had happened in the last few hours, he’d been too lost in his head to realize he hadn’t eaten. He decided to make use of the employee discount while he waited to send someone home for the night. He wondered if Aaron would be working.
When he reached the top of the steps, he saw Michelle. She sipped a soda and read a textbook. When she saw Bobby, she rolled her eyes and went back to her book. He sat at the two-top next to her, their backs to each other. Bobby fished for his cigarettes but had given the matchbook to Robert.
“Hey,” he said. Without looking up from her book Michelle reached back and handed him a jet-black zippo with a Misfits skull logo. He lit up and her arm shot backwards again, opening and closing her hand impatiently until he dropped the lighter back into her palm.
“Thanks,” he said. She grunted. A Flock of Seagulls drifted from the overhead speakers. He laughed to himself as “I’d Run So Far Away” played. Not a terrible idea, he thought.
“The Eighties station,” he said to Michelle’s back. “Russell must be the manager on duty again. He’s the only one who likes this crap.” She flipped to the next page in her book and gave an exasperated sigh. They sat in silence until the server brought Michelle her food and took Bobby’s order.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“I’m studying,” she said.
“Okay, cool. Sorry.”
Flock of Seagulls faded into “Take On Me.”
“I’m asking Russell to put me with another trainer tonight,” she said.
Another server brought Bobby chicken fingers and fries. Ravenous, he stuffed his face. “I’m not even on tonight,” he mumbled through a mouthful of food. “Just trying to pick up a shift. But it’s cool, I get it.”
“Do you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that bullshit last night with you and your boy Aaron. Is that really what you’re all about?”
Bobby stopped chewing and looked out into the restaurant as if the right answer to her question rested somewhere in the plastic decorations and retro movie posters that hung all over the restaurant. The right answer couldn’t be found, however. There simply wasn’t one.
“After the last few hours, I couldn’t begin to tell you what I’m all about,” Bobby said. “Truth be told, I don’t know if I could before, either.”
Michelle stood up with her plate of food in hand and sat in the chair next to Bobby. Her straight black hair fell over her right eye. She tucked it behind her ear but it slid forward and back into her face so that she had to repeatedly pull it back. Bobby wanted to ask her why she cut her hair that way if it meant always having to do that, but he wanted her to stay. Tonight, she had a blue gemstone in her nostril and one of those hoops through her nose like a bull.
Bobby ran his tongue over his teeth to make sure there was nothing in them.
She tucked her hair behind her ear again.
“How do you not know?” she said. “You either are or you aren’t.”
“Aren’t what?” Bobby asked. “I’m confused.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I think you are.”
“Can we start this over? I have no idea what you’re talking about now.”
She leaned forward. “I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked. “You’re mixed, huh?”
Bobby sat straight up and looked over his shoulders to see who might have heard. Despite the reunion with Robert, Bobby didn’t want anyone else to know. Not yet. He’d made no secret of his feelings about waiting on black tables, because of what they ordered, how they behaved or how little they tipped. He’d be subject to no small amount of humiliation if he didn’t reveal his truth on his own terms, if at all.
The server working their section leaned against the bus stand and rubbed at his nose with his knuckle, trying to pick it without looking like he was trying to pick it. Too far away to hear.
He looked past Michelle and down the steps to the main dining room, not far from where they sat. No one there, either. She craned her neck to get in his face, not confrontational, but not letting him look away, no spite in her eyes, just an intense curiosity, even something that looked like understanding.
In just two days, Bobby’s life had flipped like a film negative. That which should have been light, now darkened. Perspectives changed. Colors reversed. It had been so easy to pass before Bobby met Aaron because then he only had to lie to himself. He was Beast in the first issue of X-Men, still a mutant, but hiding in plain sight, never to be discovered unless he took off his shoes and revealed his mutant feet. When Aaron and Bobby met, with Aaron trying so hard to be his version of black, Bobby could feel the hairy blue mutation of Beast trying to break through, so he had to be careful not to slip. He never brought Aaron around Isabel. Bobby tried to shame him for pretending to be like “them”, when “them” was “him.”
He watched Michelle continue to look to him for an answer. The day left had him tired, but optimistic, protective, and yet somewhat vulnerable.
He nodded.
“I knew it!” She slapped the table. He gestured for her to lower her voice and saw that his hand shook, though it wasn’t because he was afraid. He felt light, like he did in the park, like the head rush of that first cigarette when he hadn’t eaten all day. Unburdened. Michelle leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed over her
stomach, satisfied but still curious. “Why the act, then?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” Bobby asked.
“Black folks not tipping. All the crap Aaron said last night.”
“That’s not an act,” Bobby said.
“Well, no, not for him, I know.”
“Yeah, not for me, either.”
She puffed air through her lips. “That’s jacked up.” The fire went out of Bobby’s hot air balloon at the sound of the judgment in her voice and he stood up to leave. “Wait, what happened?” she asked. “Where are you going?”
“This was a mistake. You know what? I was lying to fuck with you. Ha, ha, big joke, you fell for it. Forget I said anything.”
She pulled on Bobby’s wrist and motioned for him to sit. She still had that look, like she didn’t mean any harm, so he sat back down.
“I’ve never told anyone that,” he said. “Ever. So maybe there’s more to it. Maybe dial back the judgment.” He held up his thumb and index finger. “Just a little.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Bobby took a puff from his inhaler. His lungs relaxed but the medicine gave him jitters on top of what he already felt so he fished out another cigarette and sparked up. Michelle rested her cheek in her hand.
“What?” he asked.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Tell you what?”
“You said there’s more to it. Tell me everything.”
He did. He couldn’t help himself. He told her about Isabel’s drinking. Living with Grandpap. The fight in the alley and the first time he found about his father. The night they got kicked out. How he learned at too young an age to position Isabel at night when her snores didn’t sound right so she wouldn’t choke on her own puke. He told her about how he met Aaron and how he lost him to prison. How between working almost every day since before he was even old enough to do so and Mom’s diner tips that they were sometimes able to make the rent on time. And he told her after twenty-two years, just hours ago, he’d met the father he’d thought abandoned them, the father he thought was dead.
Michelle never spoke. She hung on every word.
Bobby slumped back in his chair. He felt like the first time he finished the mile in gym class, exhausted but exhilarated. When he looked at his watch, he was shocked to see he’d been talking for more than an hour. Michelle dragged her fingers under her eyes and grabbed a napkin to blot away her mascara. She heard him, listened to him, and she didn’t judge him. He’d removed the sack of bricks from his shoulder and poured them all out on the table for her, but there was still one stuck on the bottom, all twisted up in the fabric that wouldn’t come out. Until he did that, he’d never feel free, though shaking that brick loose would likely remove any chance at real freedom. When he finished, they both let out a deep breath at the same time and laughed. They went to speak at the same time and laughed again.
“You go ahead,” she said.
Do it. You’ve told her everything else. Tell her everything. She asked.
“I think I’ve said enough,” he said.
“Go on.”
“I’ve just never said any of that shit out loud,” Bobby said. “And now I’ve done it twice. It’s like I stepped back and was watching someone who looked like me say it.”
“So why tell me?” she said. “Your dad, I get. Why trust me?”
“Because you asked?”
“I’m being serious.”
“Me, too.” He truly didn’t know. After last night, she’d had every reason to run around the smoking section, laughing and pointing at Bobby, outing him. But when she didn’t, the rest of the story just came. It took her asking for him to figure why he told her everything and it was a harsh realization.
“I guess I told you because I don’t have anyone else.” She scrunched her mouth and Bobby saw pity. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” she asked.
“Look at me like I’m some stray puppy.” His voice grew louder. “I’m fine.”
“I never said you weren’t,” she said. Her tone stayed even and low. Bobby shook his soft pack for another cigarette but only tobaccos shavings fell into his hand. Michelle pulled two from her pack and lit them both in her mouth and handed him one.
“So let me ask you something,” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“How did you decide? You know, how to be?”
“I don’t follow,” she said.
“You don’t look white. But you talk pretty good.”
“Well,” she said. “I speak well.”
He rolled his eyes. “Whatever. You know what I mean.”
“I don’t think I do,” she said.
“How did you decide what to be?” he asked. “Come on, don’t make this weird. Fine, how did you decide whether you wanted to be black or white?”
She sat back and laughed. “Oh, man. You’re not just mixed. You’re mixed up.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Okay. I’m not mixed.”
Bobby leaned forward in his seat and whispered. “Shut up. You’re white?”
“What? No.”
“Then what?”
“Black, dummy. Both my parents are black.”
Bobby flopped back into his chair. “No way.”
“Why is it so hard to believe?” she asked. “Because I’m light-skinned?” She made air quotes. “Or is it because I ‘speak so well’?”
“Both, really,” Bobby said. “The way you talk, for sure.”
She shook her head and stubbed out her cigarette. “So, until that day in the alley, you thought you were white, right?” Bobby nodded. “When you found out about your dad, did the way you talked change? Did you come downstairs, grab your dick and be all ‘Hey yo, Pops, me and Ma Dukes, we Audi. Five Thousand, G?’”
Bobby held back a laugh and shook his head. “That sounds even weirder when you say it.”
“You know what I mean. You didn’t start wearing your baseball hat sideways, and shell-top Adidas and listen to rap and—,”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I know what you’re trying to say, but it was different for me. I’m different.”
“You’re not, though,” she said. “You were black for years and didn’t know it, but you didn’t talk ‘black.’” She made quotes in the air with her fingers. “You didn’t dress ‘black,’ didn’t do any of the things you think are black, because people, people like your grandfather told you that that’s the way it’s supposed to be. That if you’re black, you automatically talk, dress and act a certain way.. But you didn’t then and you don’t now. All of this, Bobby, this ‘talking white’ or ‘acting black’ nonsense? Some kind of racial programming to act a certain way? It’s crap. Bullshit. And I think you know it. I think you always did.”
She sat back and rubbed her hands on the top of her legs and looked at Bobby again as though she waited for him to talk. But he had nothing. Within minutes, she had eviscerated every excuse behind every piece of rhetoric he’d been fed until he convinced himself he believed it, her words adamantium claws to the guts of an enemy, spilling out onto the floor, desperately grabbing at their viscera to keep it within, while realizing the futility of it all. They both let out another deep breath and she stood.
“I have to pee,” she said. “To be continued.” She put a hand on Bobby’s shoulder and let it linger for a brief second as she walked past and he turned to watch her walk away.
He couldn’t wait for her to get back. He picked at the callouses on his hands again and wondered if this feeling was what kept Isabel going back to the booze, the lightness that all this honesty afforded him. He’d hidden himself for so long, he didn’t know what it felt like to truly share something—share himself—with someone without worrying about being judged or the consequences of truth. He wasn’t afraid of Michelle or what she would do with all these things he’d told her. Maybe he should have been. But the way she looked at him made him want to tell her more and
more. Everything. The idea overwhelmed him and his eyes burned.
“God, you’re such a weepy little bitch today,” he said to himself. He looked up to grab a napkin from the other side of the table when he saw Aaron at the bottom of the steps. Staring. Standing there who knew how long.
Watching.
Listening.
He couldn’t hear us, Bobby told himself. Not with Michelle in front of him and over the music and down at the bottom of the steps.
No fucking way.
God damn it, when did he get here?
Still he stared. Bobby waved to him and Aaron walked into the kitchen as though he’d been snapped from a trance. Bobby had hoped he’d be in tonight. The plan, putting the rest of the money in Aaron’s pickup and then talking him into turning himself in and maybe even absolving Bobby, it all seemed like a solid plan, at least better than no plan at all. That was until Aaron appeared like some Goddamned eavesdropping ghost. Then the bottom fell out.
Bobby felt a hand on his shoulder and jumped. Michelle squeaked.
“Jesus,” she said. “I washed my hands. Relax.” Bobby gave a nervous laugh and she looked at him quizzically as she sat back down. She started talking again, but all Bobby saw were comic book conversation bubbles over her head, filled with shorthand symbols and squiggly lines. A thought cloud hung over Bobby’s head where Aaron’s face morphed into the Red Skull, pointing a Luger at Bobby’s head.
Bobby chewed on his thumbnail as he leaned against the edge of the busser’s station. Michelle finished taking a drink order and came up to the computer.
“He didn’t hear anything,” she said.
“How do you know?” He took another pump from his inhaler.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, how can you have asthma and smoke?” she asked.
“It’s a talent. How do you know he didn’t hear anything?”
She sighed and sent the order back to the kitchen, then leaned on the bus stand next to Bobby as they looked out over their station. “I don’t,” she said. “But come on. Over the music? Downstairs? And who knows how long he was even standing there? I’m sure it’s fine. Just relax. You’ve got happier things to think about, anyway. Right? I mean, your dad. That’s so crazy.”