“Yeah. Now that I know I’m about to get a meal, ask your questions.”
“Good. Let’s start with the basic stuff. What year did you found the Coalition?”
“I can just send you all that stuff, Ryann. The articles of incorporation, certificate of non-profit status … Why don’t we just have dinner and …?”
“Spencer.”
“Okay. Fine.” He sighed. “Me and Greg first started talking about it … man, I don’t even know when. But we didn’t actually set up the non-profit, with paperwork and all that until 2007. So, it’s been around nine plus years.”
“What made you want to start this particular kind of organization?” Ryann was still typing, not looking up as she did.
“We’d both been down for three years, and …”
Ryann’s fingers stilled. She looked up, her face just as still as the rest of her. “What do you mean?”
Spencer stared right back at her.
“You know what I mean,” he said.
May as well put it out there now. If they were going to do this project, and if they were going to spend any personal time together, he wanted her to know. Because even though there was a chance it wouldn’t matter, there was an even greater chance that it would.
“I want you to say it. So I can be sure that I’m underst…”
“I was incarcerated,” Spencer said baldly. “From the time I was eighteen to the time I was twenty-one.”
Ryann shoved her iPad aside. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Why would I have?”
“Because we sat in this very house, Spencer and you told me all about your family, and your Daddy running off with the woman from church, and the …”
“And the story stopped when I moved to DC. That’s when the trouble began.” He shrugged.
“What trouble?”
“Is this going to be part of your … funding request narrative?”
“I don’t know,” she said right away. “It depends what you did.”
Spencer folded his arms and leaned forward onto the counter between them. “Does it matter? Especially if this is supposed to be a redemption story.”
“I don’t know what kind of story it’s going to be until you tell me,” Ryann said, studying him.
“Don’t worry. Nothing that should make you afraid of me,” he said wryly. “Possession with intent. I was a kid. A dumb-ass kid from the sticks who came to DC and wanted to run with the dope boys.”
Ryann’s shoulders visibly relaxed and she pulled the iPad back toward her.
Spencer tried not to be disappointed; tried not to make himself hope that it wouldn’t matter to her. Even the women who said it didn’t matter held on to some trepidation once he shared this part of his personal history. The ones who didn’t care about the crime, worried about the effects of the time he’d been locked up. The ones who didn’t care about the incarceration itself, worried that he might—deep down—be morally bankrupt. Few believed that the story was precisely as simple as he’d told Ryann it was.
He was a stupid kid, who left a house of women, and moved in with his father—a man who was only slightly interested in parenting, newly-married to a woman who resented any reminder of the previous wife. Spencer was often on his own, wrestling with the complicated and conflicting emotions of wanting the approval of a man he wasn’t even sure he respected. On the streets, when he started running them, respect was a much simpler concept. It was all black-and-white out there. No shades of grey.
“So,” he said to Ryann when she still hadn’t spoken. “You want to pick this up some other time? Back in my office?”
Her eyes darted upward and met his again. “No.” She shook her head. “Why would I? You’re here now. Let’s finish it.”
Studying her face, Spencer searched for some sign that she was only feigning acceptance of what he’d told her, but saw none. All he saw were her frank, light-brown eyes. Not light like his, which were more hazel. Hers were like coffee, heavy on the cream. When she wasn’t all made up, like now, her eyes looked soft, warm even.
“Did you and Greg know each other before?” She started typing again. “Or did you meet him when …?”
“I knew him before,” Spencer said. “You don’t make friends in prison. At least not the kind you want to kick it with on the outside. Not if you know what’s good for you.”
“So … what? Y’all was sitting on the cellblock conspiring to change the world when you got out?”
Spencer grinned. This was the smart-mouth he was used to. “Somethin’ like that.”
Ryann smiled without looking up at him, still typing away. “See? Now that’s a story I think we should tell.”
Despite her protest about the amount of food, Ryann threw down right along with him once it came. The delivery had taken longer than expected, and by the time they sat in the living room to eat, they had already covered a good amount of ground.
“About the movie, though. Tone’s movie? Was it real? Like authentic?” Ryann asked while biting into a broccoli stalk.
“What? You think I’m like the drug-dealing expert now?” he teased. “I was the worst drug dealer in the history of the game. Lucky I didn’t get my ass shot. Prison was the best thing that could’ve happened to me.”
“I’ve heard people say that. But let’s be real …”
“I would’ve been dead otherwise. Or worse yet, I would’ve survived, and lived my entire life hustlin’. You ever see those dudes who been in the game too long? The OGs? Fifty-five and wearing their caps turned backwards, and their damn jeans hanging too low?”
Ryann spluttered into laughter. “Yeah. I have.”
“And ain’t that some sad shit? Don’t let nobody fool you. That’s no kinda life. Even if you manage not to lose your life.”
“And how’d you figure that out so early?” she asked. “At the ripe old age of twenty-one.”
“You really want to know?” Spencer asked seriously.
“Yes, I really want to know.”
“Proverbs 22:6.”
Ryann gave him a look. “So, as a PK, you may know what that is, but I don’t know Bible verses just off the top of my head.”
“’Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’”
For a moment, Ryann said nothing at all, and their eyes held. Spencer couldn’t read in hers what she was thinking, and then she was looking back down at her plate of food.
“But you did,” she said quietly. “Depart from it.”
“That scripture isn’t a guarantee of perfection,” he said. “It’s just a caution to parents to give their children the compass. The direction they go in is always going to be a matter of free will. But with the compass you give them, they’ll always know to look for their true north in God.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a religious man. Are we about to have some church up in here?”
“Nah,” Spencer said slowly. “Because I’m about to do some more straight-up ungodly stuff to you later.”
“Not tonight you’re not.”
“How ‘bout tomorrow night?”
Ryann pulled in her lower lip as if she was contemplating the offer. “We’ll see.” She stood with her plate of food, her second helping only half done, and reached for Spencer’s.
“This where I get dismissed, huh?”
Pausing, she shook her head. Her eyes softened as she looked at him, then grew mischievous again. “No. You’re not being dismissed. I’m glad we talked. But you wore my ass out. I think I’ll turn in early, write some stuff up tomorrow and send it over to you so you and Greg can tell me if you’re comfortable with it.”
He could have protested, tried again to insist that he stay, but something told Spencer that he would make more headway with her by leaving now, than he would by spending the night.
“Sounds good.” He pushed himself up and stood, following her into the kitchen and bringing with him the remnants of their meal.
They cleaned up her kitchen side by side, not speaking at all, and then Spencer retrieved his shirt and shoes and put them on. Once he had, Ryann walked him to the door. They stood there, once he’d opened it, looking at each other, neither of them sure what to do. They were in a strange, undefined place, and neither of them knew which direction to head in next.
Finally, haltingly, Spencer leaned in. He kissed her softly on the lips, and turned to leave. Then, remembering something, he stopped and faced her again. Ryann was looking at him expectantly.
“Remember the night,” he said. “When we found out you weren’t pregnant?”
“Spencer, I …” Ryann was already shaking her head. “Let’s not …”
“No,” he said, touching her arm lightly. “Lemme me just … That night? How I felt? I wasn’t relieved.” He shrugged. “I just wanted you to know that. I wasn’t relieved.”
“She asked about me? Why? Isn’t she doing alright?”
“Call her and ask her yourself, Joyce,” Spencer said. “Or one day, regret that you didn’t.”
“I’m the one who’s due a phone call. An apology. Me, and my wife.”
Spencer rolled his eyes.
He didn’t care that his sister was gay; and didn’t care that she was married to a skinny White woman who seemed only to wear yoga outfits. But part of him couldn’t help but feel exasperated whenever Joyce threw out the phrase “my wife.” Mostly because she did it so often. As if to constantly remind the world that it was now her right, whether they liked it or not, to have a wife instead of a husband.
He had gone to New York for the ceremony, which was officiated by a woman with a beard. Or a man in a dress, he couldn’t quite figure out which, because there was lipstick involved and it was all very confusing.
Joyce’s wife, whom he found it more comfortable to refer to as her “partner” was named Misty. Once, when Spencer had joked to her and Joyce that it sounded like a stripper name, neither of them had laughed.
“It would be great to be on speaking terms with our mother, of course. Especially now. But the ball is completely in her court.”
Spencer shook his head, but said nothing. It was difficult enough concentrating on shopping in this fancy grocery store, without having to get through his sister’s opaque way of communicating at the same time.
Whole Foods was the closest to his house, so he went there every weekend. And every weekend he did what he was doing now, ambled through the aisles, never sure where to find the “regular” stuff that wasn’t packaged in green or beige, to denote healthy, organic and—as far as he was concerned—taste-free products.
“What do you mean, especially now?”
“It’s a little early to say anything, but Misty and I have been talking about starting a family.”
Spencer paused in front of the cereals. Their mother was going to love that.
“We didn’t know how we were going to do it, but we’ve figured it out I think,” Joyce continued. “We’re adopting. There’s this little girl in Guatemala, who …”
“Wait. Guatemala?” Spencer repeated.
“Yes. We’ve been sending her money for a year or so, through a charity we support. She lives in a Catholic orphanage there, and last year during her sabbatical, Misty went to see her and just … fell in love with her.”
Misty was a Classics professor at NYU. It was hearing about her profession that made Spencer comment on her name that time. ‘Misty’ just seemed like such a frivolous name for a Classics professor had been his point. But yeah … that hadn’t gone over too well.
“Okay, so …” Spencer rubbed a hand over his chin. “So, call me stupid, but why couldn’t you just adopt an American baby? You guys live in New York City. I bet you could wander into some hospital in the Bronx and have some woman sign her kid over to you before she even leaves the maternity ward.”
“What you mean is, why don’t we adopt a Black American baby,” Joyce said.
“Yeah, Joyce. Why not? I could tell you some stories …”
“We’re trying to avoid all of that,” Joyce cut him off.
“Avoid all what? Messy Black people?”
“Don’t start with that shit again.”
It was a familiar argument that they just couldn’t seem to stop having, he and his elder sister. When he had moved out of their mother’s house all those years ago, Spencer and his sisters had gone different ways. They took the path of college and professions, and he took to the streets and wound up in prison.
Now, it was as though they hadn’t even come from the same womb. Joyce lived an upscale life, full of esoteric ideas, and fancy people, many of them longtime friends from the elite liberal arts college she had attended. The way she spoke, and dressed, her concerns, like where to get the best red wine in the city, were foreign to Spencer. She probably shopped at Whole Foods, not out of convenience like him, but because of its selection of French cheeses, and because she understood exactly where everything was.
May attended a larger university, and was more down-to-earth than Joyce. But she had married a brother who prided himself for being from a long, unbroken line of Kappas, since the inception of the fraternity; something that for the life of him, Spencer couldn’t think of as important.
And to both his sisters, Spencer’s flashy clothes, street-wise mannerisms and even his overly-confident, strutting gait were a source of occasional embarrassment. During one visit to New York, Joyce had told him to “try to keep his shoulders level” when he walked into the room at a party he was attending with her and Misty. Just to get her even more agitated, Spencer spent the next few minutes explaining to her—and Misty—that in prison, it was best to cultivate a walk that said you knew that you might have to kick someone’s ass any minute, and welcomed the chance to do it.
He suspected that both his sisters explained him away to their friends with a whisper behind a hand, ‘yeah, he was running the streets when he was young. Didn’t really grow up with us’ or something along those lines.
“Kids in the States come with different issues, Spencer,” Joyce said, in that condescending tone he hated. “Family ties that haven’t been completely broken. Mothers who get off the drugs and ‘want a second chance’. Or worse yet, we’re not trying to adopt a baby and then get into some protracted court battle when the daddy gets out of prison and realizes his rights were terminated.”
Spencer bit his tongue to prevent himself from saying what he really thought, which was that despite her locs and the Afrocentric art hanging all over her expensive apartment; and despite the healthy check she wrote each year to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Joyce would just as soon distance herself from the real problems of the Black community. And a poor, Black, ‘local’ baby would invite those problems right into her home, even if only symbolically.
“And anyway,” Joyce continued, probably sensing the judgment in his silence, “I knew if I asked you, you weren’t going to help.”
“Asked me what?”
“Misty and I considered asking whether you would donate your sperm to impregnate her, and …”
“Hell nah. You out your fuckin’ mind?”
“See? I told her you would react that way. Although it doesn’t make sense to me that you wouldn’t want a child from your sperm to be raised by your sister. It …”
“A child I would have with your girlfriend!”
“Wife,” Joyce corrected.
“Whatever. I don’t want your wife to be my baby’s momma. That would be some twisted shit.”
“It wouldn’t. It’d be just as though she was bearing a child with my DNA …”
“Except that that’s not possible. Because you’re a woman, and so is she.”
Joyce made a scoffing sound. “We know that. That’s why …”
“No. So yeah, maybe you’d better move ahead with adopting that little Guatemalan baby because anything to do with my sperm and your wife is a non-fuckin’-starter.”
“Understood,” Joyce said, bitterly. �
�I would expect nothing less from our mother’s son.”
“Whatever, Joyce. Enjoy your weekend and say ‘hi’ to Misty.” Spencer ended the call and then took a moment to shudder.
~10~
“You’re not saying anything.”
Ryann was pacing back and forth in his office, taking wide strides in her high, high shoes. Today, she was in a pale blue pantsuit with a short jacket and pant that hugged her backside and thighs. It had taken a little while for Spencer not to be distracted as he tried to read the proposal she’d put together. But once he got into it, he was impressed by how much her narrative humanized the Coalition, and him and Greg as its founders.
“You’re very good at your job,” he said finally, looking up.
“Damn right I am. So, tell me what you thought.”
“You made us sound like victims of a system that railroads young, Black men into the criminal justice system.”
Smiling, Ryann sat in one of the chairs opposite his desk and nodded.
Pursing his lips, Spencer folded his arms and leaned on his desk.
“You have a strange look on your face,” she said.
“It’s just …”
“Just what?”
“That’s not our philosophy here at the Coalition. Victimhood. We’re about empowerment and personal accountability.”
“So what you’re telling me is you don’t think the criminal justice system railroads young, Black men?” She looked incredulous, and even a little pissed.
“Not at all. Of course it does. But here, behind these walls? We don’t emphasize what society did to us. We’re all about how we can focus these men on how to operate despite a society that tries to keep them down. So that victim narrative … it ain’t what we’re about. They’re the masters of their own destinies. That’s what we teach.”
“Easy for you to say. You served a light sentence.”
The Lover Page 9