Something like right, p.14
Something Like Right, page 14
One day, a girlfriend of mine told me she saw him around town, but I knew Keith was scheduled to work. I hopped in the car to bring him home. To keep him safe. I picked Zay up from school and got him ice cream to keep him calm. I found Keith parked in a lot with another woman in his truck. He said they were chatting and he didn’t want her to stand in the rain.
I saw red.
When he came over later that night, I had the police waiting for him. They knew all about the drugs and everything else. I don’t know what I wanted to happen. What I expected to happen. I was just so angry. So hurt. And tired of being both. He got sentenced to 12 years.
For years, I blamed Keith for abandoning us. I made Zay believe he didn’t care about us. But it was never true. We had our own issues, but he never would have left.
Keith always wanted to be there. He was there. Behind the glass.
* * *
LESSON 4.2
Ice Cream Melts, Eventually
I’m a little kid, seven or eight, riding around with Ma all over town. I’m holding an ice cream. Strawberry. Pink with the little red flecks of real fruit. We drive around town and the ice cream in a waffle cone as long as my arm melts faster than I can eat it. It feels like we’re driving forever.
Then we find Pops hiding in plain sight. My ice cream is more than halfway melted now, pink trails of sugar and milk sliding down my forearm. He’s parked at a gas station. It starts to rain, low rumbles beyond the clouds finally giving way to a first few drops. The sky is a dark gray. I can barely make out Pops’s features by the dim light inside the truck.
“Daddy!” I shout, bouncing in my seat. The liquified ice cream that remains sloshes in the cone. He smiles weakly and turns his attention to my ma, his expression contorting into one of serious concern. All the sound whooshes out of the environment. A woman with curly hair emerges from the passenger seat of the truck. Ma’s hands on the steering wheel, her grip so tight the veins protrude through her skin. The rain comes down harder.
Ma’s mascara runs down her cheeks as we speed home. It looks just like the sticky strawberry lines running down my arms. I hold the now-empty cone with both hands in the center of my lap, staring down the circle to its other end like a telescope. I see nothing.
* * *
I jolted awake and settled my breath, sipping from the glass of water on my nightstand. Almost every night the week after I told Feven I loved her, I had the dream. This same dream. About the night my pops left. The night Ma wrote about in the scrapbook. I grabbed it from the nightstand, clicked on the lamp, and flipped to that page.
I’ve always remembered this night, but I never knew the story. All my life I thought my pops didn’t care enough about us to stay out of trouble. But that’s not true. One decision in life can change a million things, but the choice Ma made changed the most important in mine.
It took my father away.
I didn’t know what to think. I slammed the scrapbook shut and tossed it across the room, like I could make it feel the same pain as me. Why tell me now? Why this way?
How was this supposed to make anything better?
I dialed Ma, but she didn’t answer. Of course not—middle of the night. But it’s probably a good thing. I couldn’t think of anything nice to say.
I turned back over, but I couldn’t go to sleep. When I closed my eyes again, I saw Feven and me, holding each other tightly in an empty corridor at B.A.S. Our bodies pressed together, hands searching parts of each other we had only explored with our eyes before. We kissed fast and messily, misaligning lips and clacking teeth. Kissing for too long when the other stopped early, or stopping too early when the other kept kissing. It was volcanic and dramatic, and every second of it only made me want Feven more.
My emotions whirled inside me. Is this how it feels to lose someone? My stomach twisted. Everything had been so good just a little while ago. How could Feven be pulled away from me so fast? I had gone from her rock to nothing more than a stone for skipping. My brain bounded around questions I was scared to get answered.
If you love somebody, it can’t be now and not later, right? My heart ached at the thought that I’d never meet anyone like Feven ever again. Did I miss my chance? Had there ever been one in the first place? Nothing had ever hurt me as bad as hearing her say we weren’t in love. I sat in bed feeling hot all over, then cold, then hot again.
“Knock, knock.” A voice came from my cracked bedroom door. Smith stepped in cautiously. “You were talking in your sleep a little while ago. I heard you in here rustling. Everything alright?”
I didn’t say anything. Smith came into the room and shuffled around innocently, looking at some of my papers from school and some of the pictures from back home I had taped to the wall. He held a rectangle in his hand—something wrapped in brown paper. Smith sat at the foot of my bed and spoke out into the room, almost like nobody was there to hear him.
“Did you know I grew up with your dad? Known him since we were kids.” He gently rubbed the rectangle in his hand.
“I didn’t know that. You’re from the city?” I sat up in bed.
“I moved down here when I was eighteen to find a job. Just barely finished high school and didn’t want nothing to do with college. I heard there was good work down here. The kind you do with your hands. My type of work. Figured, what did I have to lose?”
“Got stuck down here too, huh?” I asked
Smith chuckled.
“If anything has me stuck down here, it’s that woman. We’ve talked about moving a thousand times, but don’t let her fool you, she’s comfortable here.”
“Did you know my aunt Mel from when you were younger?”
“No sir, and it’s a good thing I didn’t. Melanie wouldn’t have blessed me if I sneezed in those days. I wasn’t worth two cents, looking back. But time was on my side, I reckon. Live long enough, do enough good—you start to change. Maybe end up being who you’re supposed to be. Find who you’re supposed to find.”
A moment of silence passed between us.
“Your dad though. He was a trip. He really struggled for a while.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard.”
“But I’ll tell you what. Every time I saw him, no matter what kind of shape he was in, or what he was doing, or where he was going, he always talked about you. You and your mom. I gotta get it together for my son. I just need some time. I gotta get my old lady back.” Smith imitated my pops’s squeaky drawl.
I leaned into Smith’s words with my legs crisscrossed. I’d never really heard anyone talk about my pops except my ma. Smith made him sound like a mess. A loveable mess.
“You know, Zay,” Smith paused and seemed to gather his words.
“No matter what is happening with us, no matter the choices we make, there’s always something going on under it. Your pops was in deep water—for a long, long while. We all thought he was drowning, but under the surface … he was always swimming toward the shore. And he made it. He made it back. Not a lot of people can say that. Whatever is going on, just … keep your eyes on the shore. You’ll get there, okay? You’ll make it.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Smith.”
“Anytime,” said Smith as he rose to leave. “And, uh, well … this is for you.”
He handed me the paper-wrapped rectangle before he left the room. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and pulled a journal—a small black notebook—out of the wrapping. A neon sticky note affixed to the front read:
Been passing by your room watching you stare at the ceiling. Seem like you probably got something on your mind. This ain’t new, but I only used up a few pages—mostly on bad poetry about your aunt. I won’t tell her if you don’t. Anyway, if you want, feel free to write some of them thoughts down. The ceiling keep us dry, but it ain’t no answers up there—trust me, I know from experience.
Keep the journal. It’s yours.
—Smith
I smiled and opened the journal, flipped past the first few pages with scribbles on them. I grabbed a pen from my nightstand and held it until I almost forgot it was there. But words came to me eventually, and I made my first entry.
When our hopes and dreams dissipate like melting ice cream, or when our hearts break and bleed, our emotions spill out and leave a trail back to the damage, like runny mascara. And if the people we love, or decide to love in the future, follow that trail, then maybe they can figure out why we’re so fucked up. But that’s hard work. Not everybody is built for it.
And I’m honestly not sure it’s anybody’s job but our own.
LESSON 4.3
Balance Is Key
“I want to go back home, Aunt Mel.”
I broke the silence between us at the breakfast table, tapping my fingers anxiously on its chipping surface. I hadn’t spoken to Feven the entire winter break. School would come back in session soon, and I got anxious every time I thought about facing her.
“Okay,” Aunt Mel said, chewing her food and scrolling on her tablet. “Figured you’d want to go visit eventually. Did you look at the bus schedule? How much money do you need?”
“No, not like that. I want to go back home. For good.”
“You can’t go home yet. School isn’t over,” she said without looking up.
“I don’t need to finish school. I need to leave,” I huffed, getting up from the table.
“Sit down, Zay,” Aunt Mel said sternly.
I paused, turned, and sat back down.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I sighed and put my head in my arms on the table. “I don’t know,” I gritted out.
“You do know, boy. Say what you feel.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“The important stuff usually is,” she insisted.
“It’s about … it’s about Feven.”
“Do I need to go get Gerald?”
“No, Aunt Mel,” I whined. “It’s nothing like that. Ugh.”
“Okay, just making sure. So, Feven. What’s the problem?”
“I like her. Been liking her. But she doesn’t feel the same way about me.”
“How do you know she doesn’t? Did she say that?”
“I mean, basically. And even though she acted like she did sometimes, I guess she was just pretending.”
“Don’t make assumptions, Xavier. If she was acting like she liked you at any point in time, maybe she really did. Maybe something changed. It happens.”
“See, this is why I don’t like talking to you,” I snapped.
“Why? Because I tell you the truth?” Aunt Mel said boldly.
“No! Because you don’t have any feelings! Everything I say is just a joke to you. This hurts. And you act like it’s just … whatever.”
“It’s not just whatever. But you can’t feel your way through everything. Sometimes you have to face yourself and take a good look at what’s really happening.”
I stared at her, a lump forming in my throat.
“You know, you are just like your momma. Sensitive. Falling in and out of love, chasing after it and ignoring everything else, letting life swing you to one extreme or the other. I done seen you in there moping around, but I wasn’t gonna say nothing. Big difference from when you walked around here with a pep in your step packing up snacks for the library. You gotta find balance. Now, did this girl ever say she wanted to be your little girlfriend or boo or bae or whatever y’all are saying these days?”
I thought for a moment, my spirit free-falling.
“No.”
“Hmm. So, you felt like she liked you. She showed you some things that may have communicated that to you. But she never confirmed. Maybe you never asked. Either way, the communication was not there. So, when everything changed, did you try to understand her feelings? Or did you lean into your own hurt?”
“I leaned in,” I said reluctantly.
“Of course you did. You wanted to show her that you were bigger and better than whatever was pulling her away from you. But that ain’t your job, baby. Same thing I had to tell my sister. That ain’t your responsibility. If somebody likes you, and wants to have something with you, they have to make space for you. You can’t buy your own lot in their life and start building a home. They have to welcome you. They have to be ready.”
“They have to choose me,” I added, remembering Feven’s words from the community center.
“So, you know that much,” she acknowledged. “This hurts for a lot of reasons, Xavier. I’ve seen that same look on your face on Tameka’s more times than you know. Feven is a beautiful, amazing girl. I’d be sad for you if I didn’t know that this will pass. There will be plenty of other girls that will make you cry. You’ll make them cry too. You just have to hope for more happy tears than sad ones.”
“So, what do I do?”
“You go back to school.”
I rolled my eyes and put my head in my arms again.
“You go back to school, you finish the year, you head back to the city, and you keep being you. Learn from this. But keep being you.”
I ran my sleeve across my damp eyes, but the wetness kept coming. Aunt Mel got up from her seat and came to lean over me as I sat and cried. She wrapped me up, my head resting on her hip, and rubbed my back. I cried harder, wiping the ever-replenishing tears away.
“I love you,” she proclaimed. “And I have to love you ’cause you family. But I don’t do it because I have to. I do it because you deserve it. Don’t let nobody give you less than that, you hear? And don’t you give nobody else less either.”
She rubbed my back a little more and set me free from her embrace.
“You good?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I sniffled, sleeve to nose this time.
“Alright. Go get cleaned up. Wipe your face. I don’t want Gerald to come out here and see you crying. His sensitive ass. He’ll start crying too, and I ain’t got the time—I got homework to finish.”
* * *
I thought and journaled, journaled and thought all day. Ripping pages out and beginning again. Chucking my pens across the room when I got too frustrated. Aunt Mel’s words bounced around in my mind. It felt almost impossible to remember what was real between me and Feven and what I had imagined. The times I had only seen what I wanted to see.
Maybe I had been a little … obsessive with Feven. How was I wrong for that? She was pretty, funny, and smart, and she cared for me. Before I came to Broadlawn, I had never felt seen by anyone. Then I met this girl who was everything anyone could hope to be, and she made me feel good about myself. It was hard to explain why that meant so much to me. But maybe explaining it wasn’t the point. Maybe it’s all in the feeling.
Maybe that’s love.
Love isn’t what people say it is. Most people don’t love each other at all. They need each other. And when they’re done needing each other, they move on. If they ever come back, it’s not because of love, it’s because they needed more. Two people can be so empty that they keep taking from each other, over and over, calling it love. But I never want to be one of those people.
* * *
I know that Xavier has witnessed all the things that can go wrong with love. I pray we haven’t ruined him. I hope he has a chance to see everything that can go right. I hope someone will be tender and caring with him and love him for who he is. I hope he forgets all the terrible things he knows can be true, if only for a moment.
It may not last forever, but we should cherish it all the same.
You can’t will people toward you. You can’t control them. But after the apologies, after the pain … if there’s room for a second chance of any type, we have to be open. Be open to what the love might look like, even if it’s not what you imagined. You may not end up with what you wanted, but you’ll get what you were always meant to have. I guess I’m pretty lucky—I was always meant to have Zay’s father. To have Zay.
To have love.
People may not remember our apologies, but they’ll always remember our silence. If we get the rare chance for a re-do in life, we have to change. It’s the only way. A second chance is a precious gift. And I hope that it’s a gift my son is willing to give his father and me.
The knight has finally returned and things are almost perfect. All I’d ever known of love was that everything could be taken at a moment’s notice. One lie, one mistake, one breach of trust could bring it all crumbling down. But now, I’m living the type of love where you don’t imagine any of the bad possibilities. You don’t have to.
The type of love where you just … live.
* * *
LESSON 4.4
A Precious Gift
“Hey there, Zay!” Dottie called from behind the counter at Doug’s Donuts. “You want the Zay Special? I got a fresh batch coming out of the oven in five.”
I smiled. If you’d have told me back in August that one day I’d eat enough donuts to reach first-name basis with the bakery staff, I would have laughed in your face. But hey, life is funny like that. You never know what’s coming to you.
“Maybe in a minute, D,” I responded. “I’m waiting on somebody.”
I took the table between the coffee carafes and the biggest window in Doug’s. The first and only place I’d sat since I first came here with Smith and he encouraged me to talk to my parents. Now, all these months later, I couldn’t keep my knee from bouncing, anxiety like voltage streaming through my body. Tameka would be here any minute. And then what? How would this tiny donut shop even survive the magnitude of the seismic event to come? How would we survive?
I watched from inside the shop as Ma swerved into a parking spot. She took a few minutes, probably to calm herself down, before she stepped out and jangled the chime as she opened the bakery door. She searched until she laid eyes on me, then smiled. I stood as she made it to the table and we took each other in.
