A Particular Kind of Black Man

by Tope Folarin

  “But you can graduate from Bates.”

  “That’s not what I want to do.”

  “So what about me?”

  “I love you.”

  “Then why are you going back?”

  “I just told you.”

  “But we’re perfect here. Why would you even think about messing that up?”

  “I’m not trying to mess anything up.”

  “What are you chasing? Why are you always running? Why can’t you just accept when something beautiful is happening?”

  “I’m not chasing anything. I just have a feeling that this is the right decision. Why is that so hard to understand?”

  “So we’re going to do the long-distance thing.”

  “I don’t think it’s as bad as you’re making it out to be. We’ll talk every day. I’ll come up and visit. You’ll come down and visit.”

  “It won’t be the same. Just watch.”

  “I told you it wouldn’t be the same.”

  “I don’t get why it can’t be. I even put off all the lights. Just the way you like. So it’s like we’re in the dark together.”

  “But I can’t feel you.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “I feel nothing.”

  “I still can’t believe you did this to us.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ll fix it. I promise you. I promise.”

  Why am I acting this way?

  “So what do you think?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I think it’ll be good for us.”

  “Don’t you think it’s kinda early for us to do something like that?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that my internship pays really well, so you won’t have to worry about finding anything for a while.”

  “So you’re saying I can go down to DC and mooch off you.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m just saying you don’t have to be stressed out about trying to find something.”

  “I have to think about it.”

  “What’s there to think about?”

  “Tunde, we’re going to be juniors next year. I just declared my major. I have to have a productive summer so that I actually get a job when I graduate.”

  “But it’s DC! There’s so much to do! You’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out.”

  “So even if I come down and I get the most amazing job in the world and make a million dollars do you think living together will work for us?”

  “I just want to give it a shot. I want to give us a shot.”

  I’m on my back and Noelle’s facing the wall. Her back and my side are touching. She’s breathing slow and deep, like she’s asleep.

  She turns toward me. A few of her locs brush my arm. They feel soft and bristly.

  I move closer to her. She lets me kiss her but she pulls back.

  “There’s something I want to ask you,” she says.

  “Well, there’s something I want to show you,” I say, and I touch her chest. She grips my hand and places it back on the bed. “I’m serious,” she says.

  I laugh. “OK, what’s up?”

  “It’s maybe kinda personal.”

  “OK.”

  “This has been on my mind for a while, but I haven’t said anything. But you’ve got this internship and you’ve been making all this money this summer . . .”

  I pull back from her and stare up at the dark ceiling.

  “You need some money?”

  “No, dummy. I made just as much as you this summer.”

  “True.”

  “No. I was thinking that maybe you should visit your mom.”

  “Who?”

  “Your mother. Your real mother.”

  For a few moments her words are just words. I can’t comprehend them. As each word begins to shimmer to life in my head, though, I feel something dark and furious rising in me.

  “What did you say?”

  “I’m just wondering why you can’t use some of your money to visit Nigeria. I mean, you’ve never been there, and you always say that you never went because your Dad didn’t have any money. Well, now you do. Why can’t you go now? Why can’t you visit your mom?”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why not?”

  “Cuz I just can’t jump on a plane and show up.”

  “Why not? That’s your family.”

  “But I don’t know them like that. I can’t even say that I really know them.”

  “But they’re family, right?”

  “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It just doesn’t. And why are you even bringing this up now?”

  I feel Noelle moving.

  “Tunde, how long have we been dating?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “I’m serious. How long?”

  I feel myself getting angrier though I don’t know why.

  “Is this like Jeopardy or some shit?”

  “We’ve been dating for ten months.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “The point is that I don’t really know you.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  She pauses.

  “I know the same you that everyone else knows. The person who’s so driven, who’s always trying to win something. Who can’t stay in one place. But I don’t know who you actually are.”

  I sit up on the bed.

  “So you’re basically saying that I’m fake?”

  “No. I didn’t say that.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the fact that there’s a part of you I can’t reach. You won’t let me get inside. I’ve tried so hard and I just don’t think I can do it.”

  “OK, so like I said, you think I’m fake as hell and that I’ll be less fake if I see my mother. Right? Is that your logic?”

  “No, Tunde. I’m saying that you hurt like hell and you might not even know this anymore because you’ve spent your entire life coping. And I’m saying that you’re probably hurting because you’ve been missing your mom. And I’m saying that you finally have some money and you’re a grown-ass man and you don’t have to wait for your daddy or anyone else to give you permission to go see her. Just go.”

  “Well, it’s good to hear that all that crazy Iyanla shit you’ve been listening to is helping you out, but please don’t psychoanalyze me.”

  Noelle sits up, walks across the room, and flicks on the light. At first I’m blind, but then I see her face. It’s puffy and her eyes are red. She’s wearing my Morehouse T-shirt and nothing else. Her anger has made her even more beautiful, if that’s possible. I feel my anger slipping away but I hold it close to me.

  “Tunde, fuck you,” she says. She reaches by the foot of the bed and grabs a pair of jeans. She shimmies into them and then sits on the chair by the door and slips on her shoes. When she’s done she looks at me.

  “I’ve said my piece. Do with it what you will.”

  She rises and touches the doorknob.

  “Where are you going?”

  “You’re being an asshole and I don’t want to be with you right now.”

  “All right. Whatever. Peace.”

  Noelle shakes her head. She’s still facing the door. She doesn’t move.

  “If you weren’t so obsessed with yourself you’d understand that I’m actually trying to tell you something else.”

  “So now I’m obsessed with myself?”

  She sighs.

  “Look, Tunde. I love you. You know that. But I can’t be with a robot. You’re a robot now. So until you fix that shit, we might have to slow this down.”

  “So you’re breaking up with me?”

  “I’m going now,” she says, and then she walks out and closes the door behind her and a few moments later another door closes and she’s gone.

  I turn off the light and go back to the bed. Something comes to me an
d I leap off the bed and turn the light back on. Yes, she left her purse. I feel a small twinge of satisfaction and hope. Maybe she’ll come back soon.

  Something tells me she won’t.

  I miss her so fucking much.

  I feel like I’m in a nightmare I can’t wake up from.

  But she’s right. I know she’s right.

  Grandma, it’s been so long since we talked, and I guess that’s mostly my fault but I just want you to know that I’m coming to see you soon. I can’t tell you how excited I am. Soon I’ll be able to see you with my own eyes. So much has changed in my life since we last spoke, and I have so much to tell you that I’m not even sure where I’ll start. But I’ll figure it out.

  2004

  I don’t know where to look. Directly in front of me, a short wiry man is chopping an animal carcass to bits. The blood is spurting away from the meat in ecstatic waves; it rains down on his skin and shoes. The man looks up and smiles at me. His front teeth are missing. He holds out a slab of flesh in my direction—I shake my head quickly and continue moving forward.

  Around me people are screaming from stalls stocked with colors and smells I have never experienced before. To my left and right rickety buildings trickle by, none of them looking particularly hospitable. Or safe. Bright brown faces gawking at me from windows and doorways. Everyone’s looking at me as if they know I don’t belong.

  I peel my shirt from my chest, but it settles back where it was before, fabric and sweat and skin forming a tighter bond. I instinctively reach for my phone but I realize it’s useless here, that my data plan did not travel across the Atlantic with me.

  I am in Lagos, Nigeria, and I am looking for my mother.

  My cousin places his hand on my shoulder and gently nudges me to the left. I pause to glance at him. He looks so much like my mother that maybe he should have been my mother’s son. The sun is throbbing above us. It’s beating a strange rhythm into my body, something I’ve never felt before. He points down the street, above the stalls and bobbing heads. I nod and begin to walk, but then my cousin grabs my arm.

  “Are you sure you’re ready?” he asks.

  I smile confidently. It’s actually a frown disguised as a smile; I’m sure anyone can see this.

  “Yes. I’ve been waiting for this a long time.”

  My cousin smiles kindly, but there’s something indecipherable there, in the corners of his lips.

  We walk past a tall, crumbling building. The exterior is composed of some kind of yellow stone, now chipped in many places, and the roof is tin. Green vines finger every available crevice, and long lizards scoot across the walls, so fast and green that it seems like they’ve been exiled from an ancient myth. I glance at my cousin again. He smiles ruefully.

  Before us stands an arch. We pass beneath it into a wide courtyard. All around us the windows reflect the light, and clothes are strung from lines that crisscross the open space above our heads. I glance up at the sky—the sun is beaming down on me, like a booming flash before an impossibly large camera takes my picture. I have never felt this uncomfortable in the sun, so aware of how conspicuous it is. Has it always been this bright? Maybe a different sun shines over this courtyard. An angrier sun.

  I’m afraid I might go blind staring at the sun like this, so I look down, and only now do I realize that the ground beneath my feet is pure gold. The wind is picking up. The windows are screaming with light. I look back up. Now I see the sky peeking through the gaps between the shirts and pants, and I can’t tell if the sky is too low, or the clothes too high, because the water-blue air above my head seems close enough to touch, and the clothes are so distant that they look like multicolored clouds, clouds with buttons and zippers and pockets and sleeves.

  My thoughts are too loud, too loud. I close my eyes.

  In the darkness, with my thoughts bumping against my eyelids, I begin to breathe more easily. I listen to myself inhale and exhale. I feel my cousin again, his love for me passing through his hand into my shoulder. My heart slows some. I feel the heat from the sun settling on my face. I do not have to look up at the sky to know that the sun has returned to its normal size. When I open my eyes I see the clothes swaying gently from the clotheslines and the decaying concrete beneath my feet. The windows are still shining, but benevolently.

  I feel my body returning to itself, and now I understand why I lost my composure: I can no longer hear the din of Lagos, the cars and buses and curses and pidgin. My anxious thoughts expanded themselves to make up for the sudden absence of sound. Even now, looking around, the silence is amplifying everything. This silence feels permanent, not like a placeholder for something to come.

  Ahead I see a small clearing, and freshly turned earth. Two gravestones are poking up out of the ground. I hear my cousin saying That is where your grandfather and grandmother are buried but I don’t immediately understand what he means. I keep walking because I want to see my grandfather’s grave. I’ve heard so much about him over the years, and I know that he’s the one who constructed the building in which I now stand.

  I don’t realize that my grandmother is dead until I see the dates on her headstone. I look for my cousin so I can scream at him for not telling me before, but he’s already crying.

  I kneel and touch the ground. Tears are streaming down my face. My cousin kneels next to me and rubs my back as I trace my fingers over the delicate indentations on my grandmother’s headstone. I glance at my grandfather’s headstone, which looks just the same, except it indicates that he died twenty years ago. For a moment I can’t believe that these austere stones are all that remain of their lives.

  A lizard scampers across the space in front of me, chasing something I can’t see. My grandmother is the only person I know here, the only person I really know. For my entire life she was just a voice on the phone, someone I loved but never saw. I’m not sure I’ll ever accept the fact that she will never be anything more.

  My cousin stands, then he lifts me up. We stare at each other.

  “I know that you are probably angry with me,” he says. “But our uncle told me not to tell you. He said it was better that you find out about our grandmother here with your family, so that we can support you.”

  “When did she die?

  “About two weeks ago. They buried her here last week.”

  I shake my head slowly.

  “What about my mother? Where is she?”

  My cousin touches my side. “All in due time. There’s something I’d like you to see,” he says. “Follow me.”

  We walk across the courtyard until we come to a wooden door with a metal doorknob. My cousin knocks and someone opens it. Inside people are calling out my name, pulling me in. I look back at my cousin. “This is our family,” he says. “They have been waiting for you.”

  Their smiles are brighter than any I’ve ever seen in America. Their hugs feel genuine. And the voices I hear greeting me resemble the voices I’ve heard on the telephone my entire life. Yet their faces are different from what I imagined—each time someone speaks to me they cancel an alternate version of themselves in my mind. I quickly understand that these deaths are necessary: my relatives don’t know it, but they are clearing space in me for themselves.

  But this isn’t the joyful reunion that I expected. They seem happy to see me, but subdued. There are no tears or dramatic gestures. I see my sadness etched on their faces.

  The voice, when I first hear it, sounds like a match striking sandpaper. It ignites a calm that spreads quickly around the room. He tells us to hold hands and bow our heads. He begins to pray in Yoruba. I can’t fully understand what he’s saying. My cousin nudges me and whispers in my ear: “That is our uncle, the oldest member of our family now that our grandmother has died. He is your mother’s oldest brother. His name is Uncle Wale.” I nod. Have I spoken with him before? I’m not sure.

  My uncle says “Amen” and my chest vibrates, like the skin of a drum. I open my eyes, and again I see all those faces, faces that are so
open and warm. Some of them begin to chatter at me again. Others pass by me with tables and chairs, pots and dishes heaping with food, greeting me as they pass.

  The voice that greets me now sounds like Aunty Ona, who I speak to once or twice a year, generally on holidays, but she doesn’t look anything like I imagined. Her voice is reedy and thin, and each sentence she utters ends with a kind of wail, as if the sentence wishes to continue but there aren’t enough words to power it. But the woman standing before me is stout and strong, with a large head and long, vertical scars on each cheek. She leads me back to the courtyard with a hand that is more powerful than my own. And the voice that is teasing me now sounds like Uncle Kayode’s—his face somewhat matches the face I created for him so many years ago, but I missed essential details. The nose, for example; Uncle Kayode’s nose is slimmer than I imagined from his voice, and he does not have the receding hairline that his doppelgänger, once secure in my head, hid with hats of various sizes.

  I’m having this experience again and again, voices and faces initially seem out of focus, but then the blurriness fades. Reality clicks into place.

  As I stand here, in the middle of this courtyard, I realize that I’m only beginning to understand what an extended family is. What it means. Back in America I’ve spent a lifetime parsing the slight physical distinctions between my father and brother and me. Each minute difference is meaningful, for we all resemble one another. Growing up, my brother’s lighter skin and my father’s short stature seemed to mark the outer boundaries of our genetic possibilities. I found comfort within these boundaries because they clearly marked the space where my family lived. They distinguished us from everyone else. But now, of the fifty or so who are gathered here, I am seeing all kinds of faces, all kinds of noses, so many shades of black, people I would not recognize as family members if they weren’t here, and the boundaries of my family extend outward with every glance. And because they all look so dissimilar, and yet alike, I know that I will look at myself differently when I next see a mirror, that there are countless possibilities within me that I am only now discovering.