A Particular Kind of Black Man

by Tope Folarin

  “Oh, we were just getting to know each other.” Mrs. Reynolds says. She looks at me and winks, and then she reaches over and grabs my hand.

  * * *

  At the conference I see hundreds of black people greeting each other as if they’ve known each other all their lives. I have no idea where they’re from—I’ve never seen so many black people in one place before. Everyone hugs a few seconds longer than normal, hands remain attached after the shaking is done, and they all stare at each other with a fierce hunger in their eyes. I feel out of place amid the talking and laughing and hunger, especially since Mrs. Reynolds seems to be the center of attention. She drifts around the room, holding people close and pausing every few seconds to pose for a picture with a cluster of excited kids.

  After a few moments a loud voice from somewhere above tells us to move to the auditorium. AJ and I find a couple seats close to the stage. I sit and open the glossy program that someone shoved into my hand as I was walking down the aisle. A few seconds later I stare at AJ with my mouth wide open: his mother’s name is right there on the first page. Apparently she’s the Opening Speaker. I can’t believe it. I’m about to ask AJ for an explanation but he’s palming his Game Boy again. I look back down at my program.

  I turn the page. Printed across the top are the words “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”: Black National Anthem.

  I’ve never heard of such a thing.

  I begin to study the notes of the song to determine if the words fit the melody of the national anthem I grew up with. I hear someone coughing into the microphone and I look up; Mrs. Reynolds is up there in a bright purple and green caftan, and everyone claps even as she raises her hand. She laughs and waves her hand again and again until everyone responds with a respectful silence.

  She begins by talking about the history of black people. She tells us that the first humans in the history of the world were from Africa, and how literature and math and science were developed in Africa while white people were living in caves in Europe. She tells us that the first great civilizations in the world were in Africa and that even Jesus Christ was a black man. And then she lists all the things black people invented that white people have taken credit for: Stoplights. Lightbulbs. Gas masks. Potato chips. The telegraph. The cheers grow louder with each invention she names, until she screams “the artificial heart” and everyone rises to their feet.

  “We have to reclaim our history!” she cries. “If we don’t we won’t have a future!”

  I’ve heard many of these things before, but in an entirely different context; my father has often told me that African Americans are fond of creating stories about all the great things they’ve done because they don’t know how to deal with the reality of their lives. I always believed my father, always chuckled under my breath on the rare occasions when one of my teachers brought up the topic of African American inventions in class, but now I can’t help it: I jump up and begin clapping as well. I feel a wild sense of triumph coursing through me.

  Mrs. Reynolds tells us about the NAACP after we return to our seats. She speaks about the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909, and someone named W. E. B. DuBois, and other people I don’t know, issues I cannot fully comprehend. But I don’t really care about all those names and places and events—to me, her narrative is most important. The fact that one triumph has always followed another, and that this conference is, in a way, a continuation of the story she is reciting so proudly. Even in Texas, in the middle of Dallas, we are somehow a part of all of that.

  I am.

  When she finishes she raises a program above her head, and everyone begins to cheer again.

  “Before we go any further, we must honor our ancestors, the spirits of all those who have come before, and the spirits of those who shall follow,” she says. “We must sing together.”

  At this point an elderly black woman ascends the steps to the stage and shuffles to the piano at the far end. She begins to play, and after a few bars the entire auditorium joins in.

  Lift ev’ry voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty . . .

  I just listen because it feels like the right thing to do. The song sounds nothing like “The Star Spangled Banner.” It sounds older, somehow, and more poignant. In their singing I hear pride and affection and joy. I also hear pain and sadness, and a yearning to overcome, especially when they sing the chorus:

  Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us

  Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us . . .

  To my right, I see a tall man peering at his program. His hair is short and wavy. He sings the song with a passion that startles me. Before each verse he sucks in a gallon of air, and in those breaths I see his desire to connect to everyone, to make the moment last. He looks down at me and nods. He’s smiling. Tears are glistening on his cheeks. Out of nowhere I close my eyes—almost like I’m praying, but I’m not, or at least I’m not trying to—I close my eyes and I imagine that I have always been here, that I’ll always be here, that I’ll never leave.

  * * *

  One day, when I arrived home from school, I saw my father sitting on the couch in his Saturday clothes. He cleared his throat and asked me to call my brothers and Mom for a family meeting. Once I had done so my father stood and announced that we were moving to Dallas at the end of the summer. He began laughing as he told us that he’d found a new job there, something at a factory that would pay him much more than he earned at the mechanic shop. He also claimed that he would be able to sell ice cream there, that once we settled in he would make even more money than he’d made in Utah. Mom was ecstatic; she leaped up from the couch and gave my father a big hug. Tayo nudged me and when I glanced at him I saw that his eyebrows were raised. I raised mine as well but my heart wasn’t in it. We moved all the time, so I should have expected this. But I was furious. What bothered me most was the abruptness of my father’s announcement, how resolute he was. I could do nothing to change his mind. I felt like we’d only arrived in Cirrilo. I knew once we left I would never see my friends again, just like I’d never seen any of the other people I’d left behind.

  But I was also feeling something I’d never felt before. Was I excited? Not quite. But something close. We were moving to Dallas. Dallas! With each passing second this word grew larger in my mind. Dallas. Dallas. I loved the sound of it. Dallas. We had never lived in a big city before. Only a series of small towns with nothing but dry land and old people and slow-moving cars. In Dallas I would finally be around people who were like me. I knew I was ready for this moment. More than ready.

  And I began to frown as my father spoke, because he could never know that I approved of anything he did, but for the first time I could remember I felt like there was a possibility that my life was actually about to begin. My real life, the life I’d always envisioned for myself, the life in which I was popular and good-looking and people gathered around me because they needed to hear every word I had to say. And now I realized that I could only have this life in a place where no one knew me. A place where I could start afresh.

  A place like Dallas.

  * * *

  AJ and his mother come by for dinner a few days after my father’s announcement. My mother prepares an entire spread for them—eba, goat stew, fried plantains, pepper soup, jollof rice, the works—but she claims she’s feeling ill a couple hours before they arrive, and she remains in her room the entire night. Tayo’s not around either; he’s off somewhere playing ball. But the rest of us have a wonderful time. As Mrs. Reynolds and AJ eat I continually scan their faces for flashes of disgust or disappointment, and save for a single exception (AJ eyes the massive hunk of goat meat on his plate with an expression I’ve never seen before, something akin to surprise, maybe closer to fear, but he quickly recovers, gulping down the meat with a brave smile, the thick, brown liquid trailing down his chin) they seem to enjoy the food. My father puts on some Ebene
zer Obey after we finish, and he teaches AJ a few Yoruba phrases. Femi and Ade dance in the living room. Mrs. Reynolds motions to me and I move from my seat to the one next to her. She leans close.

  “How do you feel about moving?” she whispers.

  I look down at my hands, at the hairs poking through my skin.

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “I’m kinda sad, but it’s weird, because I’m also kinda happy.”

  She laughs and rubs my back.

  “I know you’ll miss me,” she says. She leans closer. “You have nothing to worry about. You’re going to have a great time there.” She pauses. “And take care of your father, you hear?” I nod. She reaches down and squeezes my hand. Then she rises and joins my brothers in the living room. She laughs and waves her hands and wiggles her thighs, and then she bops her head to Obey’s drums.

  At about ten or so, Mrs. Reynolds wipes her brow and sighs. She hugs my brothers and then she announces that she has to get back home before her husband returns from work.

  At the door, as Mrs. Reynolds and Dad say goodbye, AJ and I shake hands for the final time. It’s a dazzling performance, a duet of holds, snaps, and slaps. I add a tiny flourish at the end, a double-snap–fist-bump combination, and AJ beams at me. It’s a moment right out of the movies, the teacher approving the final efforts of the student, the moment just before the scene where the teacher tells the student that he is ready for the trials ahead, whatever they may be. AJ doesn’t say this to me—he rushes outside instead, his mother is calling him from the car—but I know that I am ready. Ready for Dallas, for the black kids I’ll meet there, for whatever the future will reveal to me, one bright minute at a time.

  * * *

  I can’t keep doing this. If I continue to indulge this impulse, I will definitely lose track of what actually happened to me, and what didn’t. And I can’t allow that to happen, because then I’d be lost.

  I have to remember what’s real.

  * * *

  On my first day at Lyndon B. Johnson High School my first-period teacher asked me to come up to the front so she could introduce me. She stammered as she tried to pronounce my name. It’s Tune-Day, I said, listlessly. She nodded and continued to speak, and after a few moments I noticed that everyone was staring up at me, that the room had gone silent. I walked slowly to my desk. By the time I sat I could tell that everyone had already forgotten I was there.

  The bell rang, and I edged out of my seat. I looked around and saw everyone doing their own thing. I was relieved that no one approached me. I walked slowly toward the door; my bag felt heavy even though it was empty.

  My family had arrived in Dallas about a week before, and my father had insisted that my brothers and I take a few days off school in order to unpack and become acquainted with our new lives. We now lived in a cramped three-bedroom apartment in a hulking, decaying edifice on the south side of the city. Our rooms were smaller than we were used to, and our neighbors a good deal closer, but otherwise our new apartment was pretty much like the one we’d just left. The kitchen featured chipped Formica countertops and an oven that didn’t work, like our oven in Cirrilo. The bathroom was just as filthy. And the shit-colored carpet in our living room smelled the same—a revolting blend of vomit and mold—even after my father took the rare step of hiring a professional to come by and clean it.

  On my first night in Dallas, I slipped outside after the rest of my family had gone to sleep. Partly I did this because I wanted to explore our new neighborhood myself. Once we arrived my father had repeatedly told us that he had moved us into an “emerging neighborhood,” which had sounded good, but I hadn’t seen anything yet that justified the label. The other reason I left is because my parents had spent the entire evening arguing with each other. They were so loud that I couldn’t really understand what they were saying; their words took flight and flapped angrily over our heads. Up to that point I hadn’t spent much time thinking about their relationship, whether they truly loved each other or not. All I knew is that since my stepmother had arrived from Nigeria she and my father had fallen into a natural partnership. At least it seemed so to me. I couldn’t really imagine my father with anyone else. Or her. Earlier that week my father had brought home flowers for her, and she’d dropped them in a vase near the window. I caught her staring at them more than once, a smile glimmering to life on her face each time. That first night in Dallas, though, as Mom screamed at my father with all the rage and passion and affection of someone who is begging to be released from something, the love between them, or the lack of love, became the living, pulsing, all-consuming center of my world. Tayo, Femi, Ade, and I just stood there with shock on our faces. I don’t think our parents even noticed us. At the end Mom screamed, “He cares about me! And he has money! Real money! And he treats me better than you!” And then she strode into their bedroom and slammed the door. Afterward my father looked stricken. Genuinely confused. He followed her into their room after a few minutes, and we didn’t hear anything else from them. I went to bed then, we all did, but I couldn’t fall asleep. After some time I decided that the only thing that would make me feel better was some fresh air.

  Outside the air was a bit cooler than I expected, but there was enough light for me to see what was going on. Furtively, I began to walk. Up ahead I saw a brigade of low, shining, Popsicle-colored cars inching up the street in front of our building. Where were they going? And what kind of cars were those? They looked bizarre. And menacing. Bright splashes of graffiti glittered from the sides of buildings and on billboards, even the stop sign at the end of our street. I could not read a single word. Maybe I would learn how to read graffiti in school. Across the street was a concrete basketball court where a few kids my age appeared to be playing a sport that resembled basketball, only the sport they were playing was about a million times faster. Was I fast enough to join them?

  No, I wasn’t. Not now.

  With each step I grew more scared, more aware of the fact that I was moving away from where I was supposed to be. Before long I found myself jogging back to my building.

  Suddenly I realized that I missed home.

  But which home? Home, in my mind, was a jumble of the various places I’d lived. My favorite bookshop in Hartville right next to my favorite pizza place in Cirrilo. Friends from Bountiful and Cirrilo and Hartville laughing and gossiping with one other. The place I missed did not even exist.

  When I came back in I saw Mom sitting on the couch. Her round, polished face was lit in flickering fragments by a tiny candle on the table. She was wearing brown sandals and a light-blue wrapper. Her arms looked skinnier than I’d ever seen them.

  “Where have you been?”

  I didn’t have an answer so I just shrugged. She patted the seat next to her. I sat.

  She looked miserable. Even her hair seemed to reflect her mood—instead of the Afro that occasionally crowned her head, or the beautiful long hair that poured down her shoulders on most weekends, her hair was in messy plaits. We didn’t really say much to each other. She asked me a few questions about the books I was reading and told me what songs on the radio she really liked, but we also sat in silence for stretches of time. She had always been distant, and despite her happiness, or maybe because of it, in the days before we left Cirrilo she had drawn further away from me, from all of us. There were many times when I imagined that I had a different stepmother, that my father had married someone who was consistently kind and more attentive. A motherly figure would have been enough, a teacher, the mother of a friend, someone to give me advice, hold my hand every now and then. Yet, despite myself, I still yearned for my stepmother’s love. She wasn’t the mother I’d always wanted but she was the mother I had, and because I had grown accustomed to her presence I remained hopeful that our relationship would develop, that one day we would even become indispensable to each other.

  And now I was sitting next to her. There she was. I can see her chest rising and falling, the faint down on her cheek. There she is.

 
; After about twenty minutes she rose and told me she was going to sleep. Then she reached down and held my face. “I just want you to know that you are a beautiful person,” she said. Then she leaned in close. Almost like she was about to kiss me. “Take care of your father, OK?” she said. She looked like she was about to cry. She turned around and walked away. I sat there for a few minutes afterward. Even then I knew. I knew what was about to happen. My heart was beating fast. I wanted to chase after her and hug her. I wanted to run outside and scream as loudly as I could into the night.

  A few days later she was gone. Ade and Femi were gone as well. That night my father calmly told Tayo and me that Mom and our brothers were staying with someone else. We asked him what he meant but he just shook his head. Then he told us to finish up our chores like nothing had happened. A rush of shock and panic flooded my chest, a sensation that I recognized from the time my biological mother had become ill and returned to Nigeria seven years before. I couldn’t believe that she had left us. I just couldn’t. I refused to believe it.

  * * *

  Someone was tapping my shoulder. I turned around and saw a short white kid with blond hair and hazel eyes squinting up at me.

  “Hey dude, welcome to Dallas! My name’s Sam.”

  I mumbled my name.

  “Yeah, I heard,” he said, cheerily. “What does that mean?”

  I sighed. I had answered this question countless times in my life. Usually I offered a long response that was part Yoruba etymology and part family history, but on this particular morning I was too tired for all of that. I decided to use my backup response instead:

  “It’s French.”

  “Oh.”

  Sam looked confused, and I enjoyed seeing him try to process what I’d said. He gave up after a few seconds, and we continued into the hallway.