A Particular Kind of Black Man

by Tope Folarin

  My father had never been happier. He was working at a mechanic shop and trying to get his ice cream business started up in Cirrilo, and he wasn’t really making that much money, but he often told me everything was lining up just the way it should. Just you wait and see, he’d say to me, and then he’d nod rapidly, like nine or ten times in a row, which was something he’d never done before. I knew he was happy because Mom seemed genuinely happy, which I didn’t even think was possible. But there she was—laughing at everything, buying cheap-ass toys for each of us, preparing ornate meals each night, doing this weird Nigerian dance all over the house, all flailing arms and jiggly thighs, even picking up my brothers and me from school every now and then. Dad had no clue that she would be leaving him in about three months, but then again how could he? Now that I think about it, I know she was already in love with someone else—that’s why her smile was so fluorescent.

  Femi and Ade were finally figuring out America, and Femi had lost his accent. They had both memorized all the lyrics to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song by then (even though Dad had forbidden us from watching it—when we asked him why, he told us the black people on that show were not good role models), and whenever they wanted to piss me off they’d corner me and start screaming at the top of their lungs, NOW THIS IS A STORY/ALL ABOUT HOW/MY LIFE GOT FLIPPED TURNED UPSIDE DOWN. . . . I’ll admit it: I often fantasized about strangling them. Slowly and methodically. I don’t even care how that sounds.

  Tayo was happy too—he was the starting point guard on the seventh grade team (I was coming off the bench for the eighth-grade team), and he had figured out all kinds of things that would escape me for at least another decade or so.

  Like: how to talk to girls without stuttering like a dumbass.

  Like: how to throw a perfect spiral.

  Like: how to be black.

  This was my main problem. I had no idea how to be black. I mean, I was black, I am black, I can’t change that, but I had no idea how to be a black American. An African American. Even though I’d spent my entire life in America, I had no idea how to be black like Will Smith, like Michael Jordan, like many of the black people I frequently saw on TV. I always felt somewhat bewildered when I saw them, especially when I saw a group of black people together—at a concert, on a team, at a church service, in a classroom. The way they greeted each other, the way they laughed . . . they seemed to share something in common that was completely lacking in me. The few times I told my father how I felt he responded the same way: he told me not to worry, that if I worked hard enough and became successful, people would want to be like me. I took solace in his words for many years.

  Then I started eighth grade. This was in ’95. The year I grew almost six inches. The year when Tayo began to transform from what he had been—my clone, basically, Tom Brokaw with an Afro—to this unrecognizable person who walked with a hitch in his step, who used words I didn’t understand, who wrote rap lyrics he recited with gusto, who said “What’s up?” all the time while jutting his head up just slightly. It looked so damn cool, the head thing. I tried to do it a couple times, in private, but in the mirror I looked like an amateur head banger. Not so cool.

  I wasn’t the only one who noticed Tayo had changed. My father yelled at him about the way he walked; he asked Tayo if something was wrong with his legs, why he was limping everywhere. Femi started asking him for advice about clothes and girls, and if Tayo wasn’t around he’d ask me, but I could tell he wasn’t really interested in my answers. And the girls at school began to linger around Tayo between classes and during lunch. One day I even saw him walking down the hallway with an eighth-grader, Rebecca, who I had a crush on. They waved at me as they walked by, and I couldn’t help but notice Tayo’s broad smile, and how beautiful Rebecca was, how her chest bounced slightly as she moved away from me.

  The thing that was most perplexing about Tayo’s transformation was that my brothers and I were basically the only black kids in town. Cirrilo, Texas, was just like Hartville, the town in Utah we’d left two years before—they were both small towns with a single police station, a single movie theater, and like zero—OK, maybe one or two—black people. Yet by the middle of the school year I could picture Tayo hanging out with Will and Jazzy Jeff on an episode of Fresh Prince; I could even imagine him leaping and swaying on Soul Train (a show that I’d only seen once in my life, many years before—it was yet another show that my father had forbidden us from watching).

  So what had he done? How had he changed?

  I didn’t know. But I felt like he’d somehow managed to crack a code to a new, mysterious, thrilling way of living. I wanted to crack that code as well.

  I wasn’t interested in learning anything from Tayo; he was my younger brother, after all, and how much did he actually know about black people? And besides, I was supposed to be teaching him things.

  No, I wanted to meet and befriend a black American. Someone my age. Someone who would teach me how to dress and walk. What to say and how to say it. Someone who would be patient with me and teach me how to be in the world.

  A black best friend.

  But how in the world was I—a kid who was living in nowhere, Texas, a kid who had met only one or two black kids in his entire life—supposed to meet someone like that?

  * * *

  His name is AJ. AJ Reynolds. I have no idea where he’s from. One day he just strolls into my fourth period health class like he’s always been there. He’s wearing a pair of baggy jeans and a black shirt that has the words FIGHT THE POWER emblazoned in red on the front. His hair looks magnificent; the sides of his head are shaved, and rising from the crown of his head is a beautiful column of glistening black. This column is perfectly shaped, not a single curl out of place. As he introduces himself to the class I absently rub my hair, which my mother sheared with our ancient family clippers the night before. I can’t help but notice how lopsided my own haircut is, the patches of bald skin beneath the rough, uneven stubble.

  At the end of class AJ walks right up to me and stares at my shirt. I look down and see Michael Jackson staring up at me. I’m an MJ fanatic and I’ve somehow convinced my father to purchase five MJ shirts for me over the past few months, but this MJ is my favorite MJ: his nose is just right—this MJ’s gone under the knife only once or twice—and his hair is curly, but not too curly, and his skin is the color of a Werther’s Original. MJ is smiling widely, and just below his face a disembodied glove shimmers faintly (“faintly” because even though I’ve only allowed my mother to wash the shirt two times, most of the glitter has already disappeared).

  AJ gazes at me with an odd intensity. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Then he smiles.

  “Dope shirt,” he says.

  Is “dope” good or bad? I’ve heard the word on the radio a few times, but I still can’t figure out what it means. Maybe it’s something bad—my father once told me that I can never smoke it. But AJ’s smile gives me hope. I smile back tentatively. Then AJ sticks out his hand. I do the same, and prepare myself to shake his hand firmly and confidently, just like Dad taught me at the beginning of the school year. Instead, AJ grips and slaps my hand into a series of holds until, somehow, my hand returns to its original position when he’s done. He laughs when I stare at my hand as if he’s performed a magic trick. He says don’t worry, man, I’ll teach you. He spends a few moments showing me the mechanics of his special handshake, the exact instant when I’m supposed to clench and release, and the ease, the smoothness, with which I’m supposed to pull everything off.

  “Not bad,” he says, after I’ve awkwardly executed his handshake for the fifth time.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. You gotta practice, though.”

  AJ strides out of class and I feel all those eyes behind me, tracking his sauntering steps away from us. I stand there staring at my hand, turning it over like it’s a new thing.

  That night, after dinner, I call Tayo into our bedroom. He does his head nod thing and then he rubs his
eyes. I stick my hand out at him. “Let’s go,” I say. Tayo glances at my hand, and then back at me.

  “What?”

  “Come on, man,” I say, and once he places his hand in mine I begin to do AJ’s handshake. At the end Tayo stares at me, his eyes large with admiration.

  “Where did you learn that?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “I’m serious,” he says. “You have to teach me how to do it.”

  I spend the next few minutes showing him how to do the handshake. I stumble a couple times but Tayo doesn’t notice, or he doesn’t care—he listens intently and asks me many questions. I feel special. He hasn’t paid this much attention to anything I’ve said in months.

  * * *

  AJ and I don’t speak much in the days following our initial encounter; he doesn’t have much time for me because he becomes the most popular kid at Cirrilo Middle School the moment he arrives. A loose knot of humanity buzzes around him wherever he goes, amplifying his every utterance, muffling every other sound but its own sweet drone. He acknowledges me briefly whenever I greet him, nodding and even smiling on occasion, and every now and then we practice his handshake. Sometimes after first period, sometimes in the cafeteria during lunch. Usually, though, AJ turns away after he sees me, his eyes darting around to find the two girls who’ve already proclaimed their affection for him: Natalie, the prettiest girl in school, and Rebecca, the chestiest.

  I’m disappointed that he’s too busy to spend any time with me, but I follow him around anyway. I study him from afar. I shadow him during classes, between classes, during gym, everywhere. I watch the way he swaggers slowly from one place to the next, as if he has all the time in the world. I see the way my friends smile at him, their eyes bright and animated, and the way my teachers frown slightly whenever he greets them. I feel how the temperature rises whenever he enters a room, the way everyone leans forward just as he’s about to speak. I listen closely to each word he says, and in this way I begin to learn bits and pieces of the strange but beautiful language that AJ speaks so fluently. Words like “fresh” and “dope” and “homie” quickly become a part of my personal lexicon. These words feel leaden in my mouth when I say them, heavy and unnatural, so I repeat them to myself while staring at the mirror. Sometimes I even jab the air for emphasis on certain syllables, just like AJ does.

  * * *

  Of all the things I remember from this time in my life, Mom’s expanding happiness seems more genuine, more real than anything else. She was generous with her hugs and smiles in a way she had never been. She offered me kind words when I was feeling down. She spoke softly whenever I made a mistake. She and Dad seemed more content than they’d ever been, and even when they bickered it never seemed serious, and usually Mom was teasing Dad (though it always took him a few moments to get the joke).

  But I sensed that her happiness had nothing to do with me—even at her happiest she seemed unable to hold my gaze for more than a few seconds. I also had a feeling that her happiness had little to do with my siblings; she didn’t really spend much time with any of us, Femi and Ade included, and even when she was around it always seemed like she was on her way somewhere else.

  Sometimes during the weekends she would dress up in her Nigerian clothes and ask Dad for the keys to the car. Each outfit was more spectacular than the last, and she’d tell us that she was going to visit a friend in Dallas. I didn’t pay much attention to what she was saying though maybe I should have. Every now and then I would stand at the window as she drove away. I wanted to travel to Dallas with her. To learn more about the person she was when she was away from us.

  But most of all I wanted to go to Dallas. It was only an hour away, but I had been there only twice, and each time I’d remained for only an hour or so. I wanted to spend more time there. I felt like Dallas was a place where wondrous, impossible things happened. And I knew there were black people there, lots and lots of black people. I wanted to hang out with them.

  Even if I somehow made it to Dallas, though, I had no idea how I’d go about meeting black people. And I had no idea what they would think of me.

  * * *

  I meet AJ’s parents shortly after he arrives and, unlike their son, they immediately take to me. His father, a gruff, bespectacled man who dresses like an aging college professor—all tweed and ugly ties and wrinkled dress shirts—often volunteers to drive me home after school. AJ’s mother hugs me warmly when we see each other for the first time in the school parking lot. Then she holds my face. “You are an incredibly beautiful person,” she says.

  I feel warm inside for days afterward.

  About a month after AJ’s arrival, Mrs. Reynolds calls my house out of the blue and asks my father if she can take me to the annual Texas State NAACP Conference in Dallas. Dad’s in a good mood, so he consents without asking her a single question. I don’t know much about the NAACP, and my father’s description (“Oh, it’s just a bunch of black people who get together to complain about stuff”) isn’t really helpful. But I don’t care; I’m just excited that I’ll be spending an entire day away from my house, hanging with AJ and his mom.

  Mrs. Reynolds comes by to pick me up the following morning. She’s a tall, thin woman whose hair seems to reside in a different dimension from the rest of her body. Every time I see her something dramatic is happening atop her head—a frizzy ’fro one day, luxuriously straight hair cascading down her slight shoulders the next—but when I open the door on the morning of the conference her hair is in a short, neat, plaited pattern. It’s a cold, drizzly day, and she’s wearing a long gray coat that reaches almost to the floor. She nods solemnly at me, and when my father wanders by with sleep in his eyes to see me off, she pushes the door open and smiles before mumbling some words in a melodious, incoherent language. My father looks quizzically at me, then back at her. “Excuse me, madame,” he says, and she nods and repeats her indecipherable words.

  My father glances at me a second time and I shake my head because I have no clue what she’s saying. I look around her at AJ in the car, but he’s staring at something on his lap, his high-top fade gleaming like an exquisitely polished exclamation point. When I look again a moment later, I see that he’s busy playing a Game Boy.

  Now Mrs. Reynolds seems confused. She repeats her words a third time, and my father stares at her without comprehension. Mrs. Reynolds stares back at him, and for the first time in the few weeks I’ve known her I see something like doubt worming its way onto her face.

  “Excuse me, sir, but I thought y’all were from Africa?”

  “We are,” my father says, proudly.

  “Well, why didn’t you respond?”

  “I didn’t know what you were saying.”

  “But I was talking African.”

  My father bristles, and I look down because I know what’s coming next.

  “There is no such language as African,” he says, disgust dripping from his voice, and right then I try to step forward and walk to the car. I want to stop the conversation before it takes control of them and everyone wakes up dazed and wounded, wondering where all the bombs came from, but my father places one of his thick hands on my shoulder. He bolts me to the ground. Mrs. Reynolds plows forward.

  “I know there isn’t a language called African, but I was speaking Swahili. Doesn’t everyone in Africa speak Swahili?”

  My father steps forward, crouching almost like a lion.

  “What did you just say to me, woman? Who told you that?”

  “I read it.”

  “And where did you read it?”

  “A few books.”

  “Well, all of your books are false!” my father thunders, and I recognize the angry power in his voice. I start tapping his hand to remind him where he is, but he shakes me off.

  “They aren’t false,” Mrs. Reynolds replies. “I know what I’m talking about.”

  My father squeezes my shoulder, and I don’t say anything because I’m willing to take the punishment if hi
s anger subsides even a bit. But then Mrs. Reynolds smiles loudly, flashing the kind gap between her two front teeth.

  “Ekaaro,” she says, and she bows slightly.

  I turn around and look up at my father. He frowns and furrows his brow. Mrs. Reynolds is chuckling. “What did you say?” he asks, cautiously.

  “Ekaaro,” she says again. “Isn’t that what your people say to greet each other?” My father shakes his head, and then he begins to smile, and then he blinks rapidly. He utters a quick stream of excited Yoruba. Mrs. Reynolds laughs, and she responds in English.

  “I know some Yoruba, but I don’t speak very well,” she says. “I spent a few months in Nigeria about a decade ago, and I picked up some words while I was there. I try to keep my language skills up by listening to Nigerian music, but it’s hard.”

  My father’s face is a portrait of joy. He laughs loudly.

  “Ah, you got me!” he says.

  “I know, I know,” she says. “I just can’t help myself with Nigerian men. It’s so easy to wind you guys up!”

  I hear my dad laughing. “What can I say? My wife says the same thing. I am guilty as charged.” He pauses. “Anyway, don’t mind me. Thank you for taking my son to this conference. I really appreciate it. And please feel free to come by whenever you wish. My wife makes wonderful Nigerian food, and there is always an extra place at our table.”

  “I will, thank you for the offer. And thank you for allowing your son to come with me.”

  They stare at each other for a few moments, and I start walking again to break their reverie. My father releases my shoulder; he’s waving emphatically when I glance back to say bye.

  “Stay out as long as you need, and thanks again!” he bellows.

  Mrs. Reynolds opens the back door of her car for me and I wait for AJ to move but he shakes his head. “Naw, man, you can have shotgun,” he says.

  After I’ve settled I look in the rearview mirror and see AJ bent over his Game Boy. “Why’d it take so long,” he says.