For All Time

by Shanna Miles

  I turn slowly on my heels and look down at him from my higher position on the stairs.

  “And what else did my father say about me?” I ask, curious to know whether he fell on his habit of backhanded compliments or decided to go for half lies to sweeten his deal.

  Norman blinks, obviously pleased I’ve decided to engage him in some sort of wordplay.

  “Ah, well. He said you were well raised…”

  I take a step down, closer to him.

  “… considerably trained in the arts…”

  I take another step, and he clears his throat.

  “Did he say anything about my beauty?” I ask.

  Norman chuckles under his breath as if I’ve made a joke. I stare at him, waiting for an answer to a question he was sure he didn’t need to reply to.

  “Did he?” I press, a little bolder now. I won’t pass any paper-bag tests, my skin is far darker than your average lunch sack, and my hair isn’t straight as a ruler. If Norman is as shallow as he seems to be, then I’m sure that’s what he’s looking for—light, bright, with no naps in sight.

  “Well, uh, he didn’t really say. Everyone applauds a girl’s bright complexion, yes, but there are other laudable qualities. He let us know up front that you were dark-skinned so there would be no surprises.”

  “ ‘Us’? Surprises? When exactly did we have this discussion about my future?” I take another step down, so I’m now on the first step with him, close enough to smell the cigar smoke still clinging to his sweater vest. I look up at him through his lashes. I can tell he’s had little experience with girls, dark-skinned or otherwise. I’m much closer than good manners would allow, much closer than any good girl would dare, but I am not a good girl. I am an angry girl.

  I hear the creak of the floorboards as Mr. Milton and my father approach from the den. Norman jumps down a step as if he’s been stung, but I hold my ground and my stare as the two approach.

  “When, Norman?” I snarl.

  “Oh, you two are still getting acquainted. That’s good to see,” Mr. Milton announces cheerily as he waves his pipe in the air, missing my tone entirely. Father isn’t nearly as excited to see Norman and me talking.

  “Norman was just telling me about how long you and Daddy have been planning to get me down here,” I say, fighting the fury rising in my throat.

  “Really? I’d say it’s been about six months since we first had a chat about it, eh, Joseph?”

  My stomach drops, not just because it’s the first time in a long time I’ve heard anyone use Daddy’s first name, but because six months ago my mother was still alive, still making firm plans for my first year in college.

  He always meant to defy her. He always meant to do this.

  “Well, you really should have included me in the discussion,” I say, exaggerating my shock. “I don’t think your nephew and I suit at all. He seems to be able to overlook my dark skin, but I’m not able to overlook… him.”

  The words feel good out of my mouth, but it’s Daddy whom I’ve misjudged. I thought there was no way he’d show who he really was in public. He’d never risk his reputation to drop the mask.

  I was wrong.

  24 TAMAR

  I CLENCH MY EYES AND steel myself for the blow, but it doesn’t come. All I can feel is Daddy’s hot breath billowing out near my face. I take a step back and peel open one eye to look at him, surprised to see Mr. Milton holding tightly to each of his arms.

  “In this house, even if the women speak out of turn, we don’t hit them,” he says angrily and with just a hint of surprise. Daddy grunts and snatches his hands away, only to trudge up the stairs. I don’t look at him as he goes. I don’t flinch when Mr. Milton lifts my chin up with his hands, peering down to get a better look at my thinly veiled bruise.

  “He do that?” he asks.

  I nod quickly, an infinitesimal move he can feel, even if he can’t see it. A tear teases the corner of my eye and I squeeze my eyes shut before it can be fully born.

  Mr. Milton sighs loudly. “I had my suspicions.”

  He turns to his son. “Norman, pick up that pipe.”

  “But…,” Norman protests, and immediately bends down to do as he’s told.

  “We’ll get your arrangements settled for your trip to Atlanta the day after tomorrow. We observe the Sabbath quite strictly here.”

  “Of course,” I croak, my voice choked with emotion and gratitude. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  I tell myself that guilt will keep me from sleeping and that if I never sleep again that penance will be enough, but I do sleep, the evidence of which is clear when I’m jarred awake by clicks against my window. The taps come sporadically, too far apart to be the hands of a clock, sharp interruptions in the still darkness of my room.

  Moonlight from the window pools in the middle of the floor, bright enough that I don’t need a lantern to see the ground below.

  I’m shocked, not by Fayard’s presence, dark and unashamed in the bushes, but by my ability to keep breathing as I take him in. It feels like it only takes a breath for him to scale the magnolia just outside the window, and just one more before he’s standing right in front of me, wincing as he sets both feet down. He bends his knee a few times. Instinctively, I reach out to him, to touch him and soothe that pain like it wasn’t me who caused it. I stare at my rebellious arm and snatch it back.

  “I want my money,” he says plainly.

  “I know.” I don’t ask how he got here or how he found me.

  “I. Want. My. Money,” he repeats.

  “I—” I start in on my excuse and notice the black eye to mirror mine, the split lip, the blood on his shirt, the dirt at the hems of his pants. “What happened to you?” I reach out a hand again, this time to touch his face. He knocks it away.

  “Don’t pretend that you care,” he spits. His voice is low, but these walls may be thin. I can’t be too sure.

  “I do care. I just… I am sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? I beat Spark for a cool five minutes for stealing from me before I figured out he wasn’t lying. Do you understand how long that is in a real fight?”

  I shake my head.

  “No, you don’t, ’cause you’re a high post girl and you’re used to bloodless competition. You’re the worst kind of people. High class folks who talk about ‘us’ but are really just out for themselves. I bet you weren’t ever really going to Spelman, just sold me some story so you could make it to Slick downstairs with a little change for yourself. What you think you’re gonna do with the money? Buy a new dress? Some sheet music for that sad instrument you play?”

  “It isn’t sad,” I say weakly, glad for the barrage of insults. I deserve it.

  “It is! Just as sad as you, so beat-down you can’t tell when somebody sees you. You couldn’t wait a day for me to figure something out? You couldn’t leave me an address so I could write? Come and see you?” he finishes in a rush.

  “I don’t want your help!” I cry, trying hard to keep my voice down. “I didn’t have time. I could wait all day, all year, all my life and look up and find it’s passed me by from all the waiting.” I spit, “I might as well be a slave.” I’m rambling about possibilities like I’ve got any idea what comes next. He’s a stranger, but there’s this familiarity that is so scary to me. “I’m not making any sense,” I add, my tongue slow and stupid with guilt.

  “So you steal instead?”

  “I didn’t mean to do that! I’d lost an earring and I thought that maybe I’d dropped it when I was in the room, your room, and the money was just there. You were gone and I knew there was no way I could say goodbye or ask you and it just seemed like the universe was giving me a chance to get what I really wanted.”

  “And you never thought about me?” The pain in his voice is tangible; it rises at the end, accusing me. I know the question is deeper than a thought. He saw what I saw. I’m not just a girl who got greedy and he’s not just a boy on a train. There is something else pulsating be
tween us, real and elemental, like ocean currents.

  A part of me wants to give in to it, align myself with him, become we instead of I, take a chance. The other part of me knows that this can’t be right. This time, this place, this moment is off-balance, the wrong boat for us to climb aboard together. We haven’t figured out who we are by ourselves, let alone together.

  “I just met you,” I say, and even as the words come out of my mouth, I know it is the biggest lie I’ve ever told. His shoulders fall inward, crumpling from the weight of my betrayal.

  He closes the space between us and leans forward, his lips just a finger’s width from mine. Our eyes meet, and my heart stops, waiting for the kiss that doesn’t happen. He backs away, anticipation leaking out like steam from a kettle. Suddenly I ache like I’ve never ached for a kiss, for his arms to wrap around me. I’m desperate to feel the sense of rightness that was there when he kissed me, before the visions, something other than this painful loneliness digging into my body and scooping me out.

  This will be the last time I see him. I know this like I know the sun will rise. This is the last time we will be together, and it will be my life’s great tragedy. Not this house with Norman, not Daddy’s superior love for Patience, but tonight in this little room in North Carolina with a porter boy.

  I’m surprised at how quickly I give in. I’d hoped that maybe I was stronger than this. I didn’t want to be the kind of girl who folds after a kiss. I was wrong. I find the money bag packed neatly next to my clothes in the chifforobe.

  Fayard shakes his head, a slow, pitying movement, and allows himself to collapse onto the windowsill, his bad leg jutting out like a punctuation mark. He opens his mouth once and closes it again, thinking, and then says, “You don’t have to hurt people just because somebody hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

  I’m not sure how to answer him. Sometimes I act without thinking, and sometimes I overthink so much that the decision gets made for me, but I know I won’t ever get over hurting him. I hand him the bag just as the first rays of dawn start to light up the sky, inky blue shot through with violet and lavender.

  “So where are you headed?” I ask, wanting to tease out just a few more minutes with him.

  “I’m a city kid. Chicago, maybe? Baltimore.”

  There’s this rising halo of light around him as he’s indulging me. I have no right to keep him here or to subject him to whatever punishment my father would inflict if he found him at my window, but I can’t let him go. Not yet.

  “I’m not going to Spelman.”

  He blinks hard.

  “I don’t have to marry Norman. I messed that up for Daddy. But he’ll never pay for school now.”

  “What’s your plan?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. Go back home. Maybe I can stay with my sister and teach music until her baby comes.”

  He frowns and leans against the windowsill, like he’s tired of the conversation, and my stomach drops because I know this is it.

  “I’m gonna keep this quick because there’s no need to drag it out. I’m not saying I forgive you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hold a grudge on the road. There’s enough money here to get us set up for a little while with my mother’s cousin in Harlem. We won’t even have to share a room if you don’t want to,” he adds with a slight smile.

  “You would do that for me?” I ask, my voice so small I can barely hear it over the subtle roll of thunder outside.

  He opens his mouth but the thunder snatches it, and then I realize the sound is in the house. Someone is banging on the front door.

  We both turn to the window and see a girl standing in front of the house, huge with child, her hand on her hip like the handle of an angry teapot.

  “I guess Norman had his own plans too,” I add.

  There’s rumbling inside, and I’m glad I locked my door. It only takes a few minutes for the scene to blow fully out of control as the girl’s father, rifle in hand, gets into a screaming match with Mr. Milton right out there on the front lawn.

  “So?” Fay asks, his eyes pinned on me rather than the ungodly scene below. “Will you come with me?”

  The sun is up now, the halo on full blast, surrounding Fay with a spotlight that must be coming from God himself.

  I don’t need to think about my answer this time. I kiss him and my whole body is a live wire, a plucked string vibrating to the tune of possibility. I pull away and run to the dresser, ready to fill the world with music.

  25 Columbia, South Carolina, Present Day

  TAMAR

  THE SOLOIST SWITCHES TO SOMETHING with a bit more bop, a rendition of some K-pop song I can’t remember the title of. I pull my head back from Fayard’s shoulder and smooth my thumb across his eyebrows.

  “Remember the first day we met?” I ask.

  “Vacation Bible School. Y’all had just moved from across town and I was like, I don’t know, thunderstruck might be the word. I was smacked by that thunder when you walked into the church basement with those little purple overalls you liked so much.”

  “Wow, I don’t remember what I was wearing.”

  “I do. You wore them at least once a week, but that first day you had on this white crop top. You still got it somewhere?” he asks, lost in the memory.

  “Uh, that was two cup sizes ago, and don’t act like you weren’t scoping out all the girls’ “crop tops.”

  “I love fashion,” he jokes.

  “I did not want to go, but Mama was determined to get us back to the church with everything that was going on after quarantine. What was that girl’s name? The one who liked to break out into a praise dance every time Reverend Trish gave a sermon?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “You know! The one with the super-hairy legs.”

  He’s thinking, the little lines etching into his forehead, and for a few moments I get to stare and soak in all the details. How he smells—soap and Murray’s pomade, ironing starch and the tiniest hint of pine from the air freshener in his car. I need to memorize his face and hope I’ll be able to see him just like this in my dreams when they put me under at the cryogenics center. There are these freckles under his eyes, pinpricks of cocoa against a pristine canvas. Boys always have better skin than girls, but his glows. It’s not just good skin care or genetics; it’s something from the inside that lights up every cell. He’s good, a genuinely pure soul, and I want to keep him preserved in my mind just like this. Solid, clean-smelling, kind, and unworried. Hopeful.

  A shadow passes over us and breaks the moment.

  “Awww, look at you two!”

  “Barbie?”

  Barbara Engelman is the best Mock Trial lawyer in the state and beat me several times in regionals. Then she beat our entire team junior year, the last year I was able to compete. Someone else got the title this year. Not because Barbie lost a step, but because she didn’t compete at all.

  “I thought you were in Israel,” Fay says as he stands to give her a side hug.

  “I was. Spent a year with my aunt and uncle to see if I liked it. Now I’m back. Are you guys running off to elope?” she asks, tossing her hair over her shoulder. Barbie has the best hair: super thick, super curly. It makes her look like she should be playing a harp in a castle somewhere. Of course, she hates it, but we always hate what makes us stand out.

  “T’s running away from me. She’s going to some summer program in the Dominican Republic,” Fay replies.

  “The DR? Really? I spent two weeks there the summer of freshman year. It was this language-immersion camp thing. My Spanish is still shite but I did learn to French kiss,” she says, and winks. “Did you decide what school you’ll be at in the fall?” she asks as she takes a seat next to Fay and plops her bookbag between her legs. It’s covered in buttons and patches from all over the world. Even though we’re the same age, she’s got this confidence that makes her sit up straighter, a shine to her eyes that lets me know she’s seen things, talked to people twice her
age about everything from politics to sex, and they listened. I’ve never been jealous of anyone, I’ve always felt it was a waste of time, but looking at that beat-up Jansport gives me a twinge of longing like nothing ever has. Barbie is what freedom looks like.

  “I was looking hard at Clemson but finally went with Brandeis. My father’s a rabbi. Why rock the boat? So, spill. Where are you landing?”

  She’s so expectant in her signature red half-moon glasses, waiting for my answer, for Fay’s, like she doesn’t even see my oxygen tank. I wonder if she knows about me, but she has to—everyone knows.

  “I’m looking into a gap year,” Fay mumbles, his long arm arcing over his head so he can scratch the back of his neck. It’s one of his tics. He gets itchy when he lies or when he’s nervous. The other arm slides into his pocket. I don’t see, but I know he’s rubbing his rosary beads raw with this thumb.

  “T? What about you? When you come back from the DR?”

  “Me too,” I say quietly.

  “Are you guys sure you’re not eloping?” she says, not catching the slightest change in the mood. “The way you gunned for me at state the last two years I just knew you were gonna go for political science and go right to Princeton. I heard Randy Shivers from Spring Valley, got accepted there. He won Best Witness last year, remember?”

  I shrug as if this is all a big joke, but I can’t muster a smile.

  “Don’t answer. None of my business, but, Fay, if you don’t have plans for the summer, there might be an opening for a four-week thing at NASA I heard about. It’s a joint partnership between Brandeis and Howard University. They’re, like, trying to get more religious people and more Black people to pursue space exploration as a goal. Totally free. I know it’s late, but one of the guys got into this freak safari accident and there’s a space open.”