The Chosen One, page 12
We all comply and make a mental note of the scene unfolding before us. “White people,” Earnell says, leaning into the middle of our group. “You know I brought Freddy to witness this malarkey and protect us from evil.”
None of us really drinks, given the history of addiction we’ve all seen in our own families, but Earnell decides he wants to get drunk tonight.
“Why?” I ask. “I told you what happened at Professor Alexander-Grant’s house. I’ll pass.”
“Well, I’m going to live it up. Keli’s right. We should have fun like normal young people for once in our lives. I think I’ll regret it if I never let loose. Maybe the alcohol will help.”
Earnell scurries off to find liquor. Keli, Gabby, and I dance to a few more songs before making our way to the basement to watch people play beer pong. As soon as I get to the bottom of the stairs, I’m surprised, and thrilled, to see Bryce standing in the corner talking to some friends and dressed as someone from ancient Greece or one of the Lord’s angels. I can’t tell which it is.
“Bryce!” I shout eagerly. “What are you doing here?!” He gives me a hug and says he just felt like coming out tonight, even though this is “Satan’s lair.” “If we are to master the dark,” he says jokingly, “we must first study and cultivate it.”
Bryce introduces me to his friends, two white boys that look like they belong to the frat and are dressed as Beavis and Butt-Head. I can tell by the way they shake my hand and avoid eye contact, just like Rhode Island Zach, that they’re uncomfortable around me. We all stand in a circle for a few minutes talking. Well, they are talking about paddleboarding, which I’ve never heard of.
“Dude, the key is you gotta balance right in the middle of the board to stay up,” one of them says. “No, dude, you push your weight toward the outside of the board for optimal balance.”
I feel invisible. I never get used to being erased, no matter how often it happens. White people always make you invisible when they don’t know how to handle the reality of your being, even when you are standing right there.
Just like at the Dartmouth Club of Cleveland a few months ago, before I get to campus, where I am only one of two Black people in a room full of white and Asian faces. The party is at a big fancy house in the suburbs of Cleveland. I wear a sleeveless black cocktail dress that my mother found at the Goodwill and slick my hair back even though I still don’t think it looks right, it never does. I stand outside the house for several moments, trying to work up the nerve to ring the doorbell. I slowly walk up the stairs, watching my Black toes protrude from the silver high-heeled sandals I’m wearing. Black shame at having Black feet with unpedicured toes, since I couldn’t afford it, bubbles to the surface. The shame mutes me again. I pause and decide to turn around and leave. Just as I am walking back down the stairs, the door swings open, and a nicely manicured, severe but warm white woman calls, “Where are you going? You’re part of the incoming class of 2006, right? I saw your picture in the email. Please come in!”
The woman relieves me. She is so friendly and welcoming, I regret almost leaving. She whisks me into the party and introduces me to several people. With her and her white flesh as my ally, they don’t make me invisible. They welcome me with open arms. I want her to stay with me the entire night, but eventually she is pulled away and I am released to the erasers again.
I circulate throughout the room. So many faces, white and Asian, don’t make eye contact. I’ve learned that not all minorities are playing on the same team and sometimes other people of color can be more racist than white people. I move between the groups trying to find another ally until I exhaust myself and leave. This is my introduction to Dartmouth. I should have known that it would be more of the same.
That these paddleboarders would treat me as if I am an alien from another planet. Bryce notices what’s happening and becomes visibly flustered. “Guys,” he says, his voice shaking a bit. “Echo is my friend and she is amazing. She is also Black, which I’m sure you have noticed. What you may not be aware of, though, are the subtle ways you are treating her differently. You’re not really including her in the conversation, which is isolating. This is a party. We’re here to have fun, so we don’t have to go much deeper than that tonight. I just wanted to point that out and it’s definitely something we can talk more about later. On that note—”
Bryce says, turning toward me, “Do you want to go upstairs and dance?”
I am so thrilled by his invitation, I don’t care anymore about being erased by Halloween Beavis and Butt-Head, who stand in shock with their jaws on the floor. I eagerly nod my head yes, but not too eagerly, and follow him toward the staircase.
“See what I did with my privilege there?” he says, smiling with pride.
“Literally could you be more dreamy,” I say out loud, before slapping one of my hands over my mouth in embarrassment.
Keli and Gabby do silly happy dances as we pass, which I try to prevent Bryce from seeing as we make our way up the stairs. Earnell, who’s coming down, says, “Look at this, the man wins again. I’m just a Black pawn on your chessboard, but if you break her heart, I’ll kill you.” He raises his bottle of beer, carefree and unbothered, maybe for the first time in his life, by white supremacy and losing the girl.
Bryce and I find an open spot and dance to DMX, Ice Cube, 50 Cent, and Dr. Dre. It feels criminal to dance with someone so melanin-deficient to this kind of music, but I submit to the rhythm of the night.
“I’m surprised you dance so well,” I say.
“Why?” he says jokingly. “Because I’m white?”
We both laugh. The bass-heavy songs land like bombs right in the middle of the dance floor. We have no choice but to comply with their demand that we release ourselves to the hypnotic beats. We flow, we twirl, we shimmy with glee until the music suddenly slows down. A ghoulish, digitized laugh blares from the speakers before a parade of raunchy slow jams begin. “Time for naughty fright night,” the DJ announces. Bryce and I stand awkwardly in front of each other, noting that others around us start to press their bodies together seductively. I want to press myself deeply into Bryce, but I know his Bible fills the space between us.
He looks down at me and smiles kindly, like he always does. The ringlets of his curly blond hair, which is not in a ponytail now, fall down the sides of his face.
“Shall we do this?” he asks while extending his hands out in an invitation to slow dance.
“We shall,” I say, taking them as he pulls me into his chest.
We slow dance like two old people at a church party. The heat of our bodies is not fully unleashed so we are not entirely comfortable pressed against each other. His body is muted by religion, and mine by fear.
As the music becomes explicitly more sexual, I feel the hardness of his longing on my hip, which I knew was there all along. Finally, I think to myself. I melt into him. His body feels better than I could have ever imagined. I turn around and grind my backside into him, like I’ve seen the girls do in the music videos and like so many others are doing now. I forget the Black shame temporarily and meet him as just another human needing to be touched and seen in Rumi’s field. I don’t care if I failed a course and barely passed the others. I don’t even care if my mind is unraveling and I’m mentally ill. This moment has given me more value in myself than anything else in my life. Someone finally wants me.
I do what comes naturally after a moment like this, at least in the movies. I turn around and kiss him. My eyes are closed so I don’t see the disgust on his face. I only feel the jerking of his body away from me, painfully away from me. The space between us again filled with the fear of crossing lines he never dreamed he would, and the consequences that often follow such actions.
“I can’t,” he says. “It’s not like that between us. You’re amazing… but… I just can’t.” He leaves, prancing away, just like Manda Panda before her incident with Trevor. Why didn’t I notice before that Bryce prances too?
“You’re amazing, but…” pounds my insides like molten lava trapped in a volcano. “But,” I repeat to myself over and over. It hasn’t happened yet, but I know his “but” is the cliff off which I will finally end myself. I didn’t do it on the hiking trip in the woods, but this has finally pushed me over. There is no purpose to my life if no one wants to love me.
The realization rains down like hail, clobbering me mercilessly, but I don’t make a sound. I don’t even wince from the hurt. I run from it. Out the door, into the crisp fall air again, across the campus, and back to my dorm room to pack a few important items and the last of my savings. Six hundred eleven dollars and eleven cents. I pray it’s enough. I peel off my bloody skeleton costume and snatch Jesus off the wall. “We’re going home,” I tell him. The portal and its spinning reminder of everything wrong with my mind taunts me. Mandy is nowhere to be found, per usual. I wonder what adventures she’s getting into now. Wherever she is, I hope she’s avoiding him and his fangs.
Then, away. Out to a taxi that whisks me to the airport, where I’ll catch the first flight to Cleveland tomorrow, the only place I belong, where I’m a human being and not an invisible Black creature of the night that no one wants to love. Darth, resurrected from his burning palace on his favorite night of the year, trampling Jennifer’s promised lands with that wicked smile, prepares to carry me back to the den of trauma and suffering that raised me. I won’t leave the place that made me again. Not ever.
PART II
The Last Supper
The Last Supper. A ceremony of release. Orchestrated by us for her rising. Everything reborn in the light. A timeline of healing. Reserved only for that purpose. Home is where the Chosen One must heal. When one timeline is healed, all timelines are healed.
Old wounds, the deepest, finally mended. Pain released, then forgiveness rolling down like water.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Home.
The word takes root deep inside, but nothing grows. The soil is barren, without sustenance. I’ve been “home” for one day, but it already feels like an eternity. I didn’t know leaving for such a short amount of time could change the core of you this dramatically. Before I left, I imagined the entire world was like my neighborhood. In just a few months, Dartmouth exposed me to wealth, privilege, and different kinds of people from all over the country. Exposure changes what grows inside a person, blossoming new ideas, beliefs, and thoughts. Then you can never go back to what you were. After Dartmouth, I feel like spring and this place, my home, feels like midwinter, dark and brooding.
I will have to make this place home again, I think to myself, but I know it’s impossible. My home is the in-between now. The space between where you were and where you’re going. The problem is I don’t know where I’m going. Wherever it is, I’m not headed to an Ivy League degree anymore. That dream is shot, just like Mr. Walsh predicted.
Now, pregnant with spring, but deep in winter’s bone, I see he was more than right. He was prophetic. It’s all my fault. I should have been less stubborn and tried harder. I spend hours horizontal on my bed, ruminating. I stare at the ceiling. Full of cracks. Just like my life.
Time takes a break from ticking forward and tosses me a rope. I grab on and whir through the past. Over there where I lost my first tooth. The three of us—me, Dre, and Rone—passing the bloody tooth between us, studying it. Then Dre trying to blow air into the empty hole to see if I would inflate like a balloon. Mom hanging one-dollar bills down my pink with white lace dress for my tenth birthday. Ten candles on the cake she made from scratch. Can I blow them all out in one breath? I can. I’m a big girl. Everyone claps.
I close my eyes and wait. At first, I don’t know what I’m waiting for. When a wave of regret washes over me, I realize I’m waiting for my real life, the one I should be living, to come and rescue me from this reality. I wait a few more hours. Nothing comes.
I watch my mother, wearing her favorite apron (pink with gold stars), perfectly flip a pancake without splattering any batter. I can never seem to do that. I think it’s the hesitation that gets me. She doesn’t hesitate. Just a flick of the wrist and it’s done. This morning is no different. The pancake travels halfway to the ceiling before returning to the pan on its other side. No batter lost. She may not have gone to college, but I have no doubt my mother could have been a five-star soul food chef, given the right circumstances.
I’ve been avoiding my family’s questions about Dartmouth. I know eventually I’ll have to answer, but I try to put it off or change the subject as long as I can. Whatever I tell them, it can never be the truth. I’m too embarrassed and disappointed in myself to reveal my failure. I’ll lie till I go to the grave, I decide.
“So you gon’ tell or not?” Dre asks, interrupting my end-of-life planning.
“Tell you what?”
“Oh, OK. That’s what we doing. We gon’ play games. Mom, Echo playing games so that means something bad must have happened. Smells fishy to these eyes.”
“Eyes don’t smell, fool. Wrong senses. I finished my classes early because I’m a genius. So I don’t have to go back until the start of second semester after New Year’s in early January.”
“Huh,” Dre replies skeptically.
“That’s real good, sis,” Rone says with a hint of sadness in his voice. I pick up on it, but don’t press further.
“Who would have thought?” My mother beams with pride. “Our very own Albert Einstein sittin’ right here in dis’ beated-up ole apartment. Didn’t think ya momma knew folks like dat, did ya? I’on know what da hell he did, but I knows he was real smart. Just like you. You really somethin’, girl.”
My eyes fall. I quickly change the subject.
“Anybody need anything from Chesterfield? Gotta go re-up my stash of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Starbursts, and Jimmy Dean’s hot sausage. Cain’t get none of that at Dartmouth.”
“Oh yea, I was gon’ tell you to pick up some oxtails today. S’posed ta be good luck. I wanna celebrate you finishing yo first semester by cooking a nice dinner this weekend. Oxtails, greens, black-eyed peas, cornbread, and a lemon pound cake.”
“You cookin’ all dat dis weekend?!” my father exclaims in glee. “Then shit, I’a be back early fo sho. Shit. Round seven den. Won’t even go ta Shorty’s and hustle Butch out da rest’a his paycheck. Save dat fa next week.”
“Only two things can bring you home early from gambling, nigga. Food and I won’t mention tha otha one in front of chirruns.”
“Ain’t no chirruns here,” Dre interjects.
“Hush, boy, you da youngest’a of ’em all. You always gon’ be my baby boy.”
“But why you goin’ all the way to Chesterfield? Chapman’s is right up the street. Dey got all dat and oxtails.” Something in my mother’s voice changes. She sounds near and far away at the same time.
“Chapman’s closed four years ago,” I respond confusedly. “Don’t you remember? John Boy moved to Florida to take care of his father. He opened Chapman’s down there.”
“Huh?!” Dre sits up in his chair. “What is you talkin’ ’bout! Chapman’s neva closed. You been doin’ white people drugs up dere? You must be high.”
“Chapman’s not closed, sweetheart,” my father interjects. “Just went up dere yesterday ta get a pack of cigarettes. Damn near seven dollars a pack now, but deys open fa sure.”
“Fifteen or sixteen should be enough,” my mother says, still facing the stove, and increasingly sounding not like herself. Her voice becomes hollow and wispy. Devoid of her somehow, but full of something else.
“Fifteen or sixteen,” Rone says. “I’ll eat dat many myself. Better get like…”
“The Last Supper,” my mother interjects. “We’ll have it this weekend. It will be special. Healing.” My mother finally looks in my direction, locks eyes, and smiles with nostalgic serenity, as if an angel has just come down from heaven and blessed her in the light. It’s strange, but my brothers and father don’t seem to notice. I look down to avoid her piercing, ethereal gaze.
“Well, I’ll be back in a bit,” I say uneasily. “See ya’ll later.”
Nothing could have prepared me for what I see on my walk to Chapman’s. The Joker riding again. He rode all the way from New Hampshire in the snow and cold on his tiny bike with the big wheel to continue his campaign of terror and confusion against me. This is not possible. I don’t react. I just look in disbelief at the little blue house across the street from our apartment building. The one where Chico, a childhood friend, broke his wrist after a raucous game of hide-and-seek. The too-big silver bracelet sliding right off his awkwardly turned hand. Chico was hiding in the closet. Came jutting out in a flash, tripping over his father’s work boots, landing hard on his right hand, his wrist buckling, then cracking under the weight of gravity pulling him down. This is the same house we went ghost hunting in when Chico’s family moved out a few years later and it stood abandoned and hollow. And the one the city tore down two years ago after drug dealers moved in and turned it into a trap house.
Standing.
I must not have seen it when I came home late the other night. Not only standing—renewed. Shining, like Ladles with the same celestial glow. Freshly painted baby blue with white trim again.
I walk up the stairs of the porch and peek through the windows. Empty, but new inside. Sparkling hardwood floors and windows. I turn the doorknob. Surprisingly the door creaks open. I slowly enter and begin swinging through memories. Playing video games in the living room for hours, washing dirt off our hands after making mud cakes in the backyard, and licking the cake spoon when Chico’s mother makes one of her famous chocolate cakes. It all comes flooding back.
I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to be a kid again. Carefree and without the pressures of almost-adulthood. It was easy then. There was a kind of freedom. We just didn’t know it. We were all in a rush to be adults. We were convinced that once we didn’t have to do what our parents told us, we would be liberated. We didn’t know that life, for most of us, is a never-ending cycle of doing things you don’t want to do, but have to, and that freedom is like the rain. Sometimes it’s there. Most of the time it’s not. Obligation is the defining state of being for adults. I shake my head at our naiveté, at our rush to stand in these cells of obligation.
