One of Our Kind, page 14
Kamau bounds into the kitchen. Snack time. He pushes his step stool over to the pantry, opens the door, and buries his entire head inside it.
Jasmyn shakes her head and laughs. “Careful up there, baby,” she tells him.
He pulls out a bag of microwave popcorn. “Can I have this, please?”
“Don’t we usually save that for movie night?”
He sticks out his bottom lip and widens his eyes, giving her his how-can-you-resist-this-face face.
For a moment, Jasmyn finds herself overwhelmed by his innocence. He expects to be happy and for life to be fair and for the world to say yes to everything he wants.
She takes the bag from his hand and kisses his forehead. “That cute face is not always going to work on me, you know?” she says, even though she knows it will absolutely always work.
The look he gives her says he knows it, too. He pushes the stool over and together they watch the bag inflate in the microwave. “Smells so good,” he says, and licks his tongue all the way around his lips three times.
Jasmyn laughs. “You know your pops makes that exact same face?”
Naturally, he does it again. “Can we watch a movie tonight?” he asks.
Ordinarily, on a school night he’s only allowed half an hour of TV, but today feels special. Maybe it’s because she’d had the day off or because what Kamau said in the car reminded her of exactly why she’d agreed to move to Liberty in the first place.
“OK, why not? Let’s see if we can get Pops to come home early and we’ll have movie night in the middle of the week.”
She texts King, who, miracle of miracles, doesn’t have to work late. He brings home pizza and an enormous bouquet of stargazer lilies, her favorite.
“These are beautiful,” Jasmyn says, hugging him close. “You spoil me.”
King kisses her. “It’s my job to spoil you.”
Back in the kitchen it takes her a little while to find a vase big enough, but she finally does. She rearranges the flowers, plucking away the occasional brown filler leaf and removing the powdery orange anther from the stamen. She’s stained many a shirt by brushing up against them.
The first time King ever gave her flowers was on their second date. It was a much smaller mixed bouquet with only one or two lilies, but their scent lingered for days and she decided they were her favorite. King has been buying them for her ever since.
From the family room, she hears Kamau squealing. No doubt King is tickling him. She laughs to herself. They’re so silly, her boys. Sometimes the best times are the unexpected ones.
She reminds herself to tell King what Kamau said about fitting in at school. He’ll be so happy at this latest proof that they’d thrive here.
The accident with the Wellness Center van and Officer Godfrey edges its way back into her mind. She shakes her head, dislodging her suspicions. She’d been paranoid. She still does want to find out more about the old Black Lives Matter chapter, though, and makes a mental note to find some time to do it.
She turns off the kitchen light and heads to the family room. King and Kamau are both happy here. For the most part, she is, too. She reminds herself that people will always find one hundred percent of the trouble they go looking for.
King and Kamau are already digging into the pizza and Jasmyn plops herself down on the couch beside them. Kamau wants to watch the Miles Morales Spider-Man movie for the hundredth time, and they agree.
King nudges her. “Look at us being spontaneous,” he says.
She grins at him. “We should plan to do it more often.”
“Ha!” says King. “I see what you did there.”
“Shhhhh, you’re missing it,” Kamau says.
“No, we’re not, baby,” Jasmyn says. “No, we’re not.”
18
The next two weeks are busy, and Jasmyn’s workload is heavy with mostly drug-related cases. As tired as she is, she’s grateful that, for the most part, she’s been getting her clients off. The police work on one of the cases is so shoddy that the judge has no choice but to throw it out. Between work and everything else, she’s barely had any time to research what happened to the Black Lives Matter chapter.
King spends most evenings working late into the night. He’s doing due diligence on a huge spa chain interested in stocking Awake. “We land this one and the returns will be through the roof. We’ll be flying high, baby.”
“We pretty high already,” Jasmyn said back to him.
He still hasn’t gone back to volunteering at Mentor LA, yet somehow manages to find time for the Wellness Center. Jasmyn has to talk herself into not resenting it and being patient with him for a little while longer. She knows it’s not that King is choosing the spa over serving his community. She knows that he’s working hard to prove himself at his job and that he needs time to decompress. It bothers her, though, how much time he’s spending with the likes of Nina Marks and Carlton Way and Catherine Vail. She doesn’t know how he stands it. Still, he promises that he’ll go back to volunteering as soon as his work calms down and she knows he will. It means as much to him as it does to her.
On the Wednesday of the second week, they had attended their first parent-teacher meeting at Kamau’s school. The evening kicked off with a “state of the school” address delivered by the administration. For an hour Principal Harper and others talked about the previous year’s achievements and about what they hoped to accomplish in the coming year. He told them that their teacher recruitment efforts had already paid dividends as evidenced by the middle and high school students having some of the best standardized test scores in the country. The next year’s goals included additional extracurricular activities as well as a larger preschool play yard.
The school’s entire staff stood behind him onstage while he spoke. Jasmyn marveled at the sea of shining Black faces. It reminded her of being young and in church with her grandma watching the choir perform. She’d felt the same praise and gratitude in her heart back then.
Throughout the presentation, Jasmyn squeezed King’s hand over and over again. It was all so damn impressive. Kamau really was getting the best of everything. An excellent education taught in an excellent facility with excellent teachers and resources.
After the state of the school, they headed into the individual parent-teacher meetings. Kamau’s Language Arts classroom was more put together and beautiful than any she’d ever been in. It was impeccably neat and bright with primary colors. The walls were decorated with book covers, famous quotes, grammar rules, student projects, etc. The teacher, Ms. Abi, was tall and thin with a short Afro and merry eyes. She welcomed them in and offered them snacks and tea. Behind her on the whiteboard the kids had all written Welcome Parents. Jasmyn picked out Kamau’s handwriting easily.
As soon as they were settled, Ms. Abi began. “Well, your son is very bright. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that.”
King laughed. “Nah, you can tell us,” he said, and Jasmyn laughed along with him.
Ms. Abi continued on. She praised Kamau’s maturity and his reading comprehension skills, which were well ahead of his peer group.
The rest of his teachers were similarly effusive about his attitude and abilities. The school therapist said he was shy but made friends at his own pace.
“Baby, are you getting teary over there?” King asked when they were back in the car.
“No,” she said as she sniffled and laughed at the same time.
He grabbed her hand across the console and kissed it. “I feel it too, baby,” he said.
She’d known of course that every one of his teachers would be Black, but it was still a joy to experience. What a relief not to have to worry if he was being truly seen. How many studies had she read that showed Black children thrived with Black teachers? That showed Black boys mentored by Black educators were more likely to attend college? Too many.
“All we need now is to get him into a sport,” King said. “Liberty has a good little league.”
Jasmyn laughed. “Our baby can barely catch a ball, let alone hit one.”
“All the more reason,” King said, and laughed too.
* * *
≈
The housewarming party is King’s idea. “We been here a little while now. It’s time we let folks see how we’re living.”
They’d been in bed when he brought it up. Jasmyn put down her crossword puzzle and side-eyed him. “Since when do you care about throwing dinner parties?” she asked. “You trying to impress somebody?”
King just looked at her. “You don’t think it’d be nice to have some folks over and get to know them better?”
“And to show off a little bit,” she prodded.
“Nothing wrong with being proud of what we got,” he said.
She supposed he was right, even though the King she’d married didn’t throw dinner parties to show off. He manned the grill at cookouts and drank Red Stripe beer with his boys.
As changes go, though, this one seemed harmless enough. Besides, Jasmyn thought, it wasn’t as if she could change him back.
Keisha and Darlene are the first to arrive. One look at them and Jasmyn can tell they’ve been arguing.
“Girl, I need a drink,” Keisha says into her ear while they’re hugging.
Instead of a hug, Darlene offers her hand for a shake. “It’s lovely to see you again,” she says. If anything, she looks even sleeker than she did on their double date. Her hair is slicked back into a low ponytail. She’s wearing a beige silk pantsuit and pale pink “barely there” makeup.
Charles texts to say that he and his wife, Asha, will be late. Most everyone else arrives over the next thirty minutes. Angela and Benjamin Sayles kiss Jasmyn on both cheeks. She resists the urge to ask them why they hadn’t told her about the old Black Lives Matter chapter. Carlton Way, the Wrights, and Catherine Vail arrive within a few minutes of one another. Nina Marks gets there last.
An hour into the party, Jasmyn finds Keisha standing outside next to the bar the caterers set up.
“Can’t believe you’re serving French food,” Keisha says.
All Jasmyn can do is shake her head. “Wasn’t my idea.”
She’d wanted to have a buffet-style dinner catered by the Caribbean place she and King both loved downtown. But King wanted passed hors d’oeuvres and seven courses.
“Baby,” he’d said. “Let’s get outside our comfort zones.”
Put that way, it was hard for her to say no.
Keisha shrugs. “Food’s good, though,” she says. She snags a canapé from a passing server. He, like all the other servers, is white.
“They don’t got Black people in France?” Keisha asks, laughing.
“Blame King,” says Jasmyn. “He set this whole thing up.” He’d gone out and found them a full-service caterer, who was responsible for everything from the food to the decor to music. At the end of the night, they would do the cleaning up as well.
“Anyway, never mind about all that,” Jasmyn says. “You seem off to me. Why are you out here drinking by yourself? Where’s Darlene?”
Keisha sips her drink and points with her chin.
Jasmyn turns to look. Darlene is standing next to the pool laughing with a woman dressed so similarly it’s uncanny. “Who’s that?” she asks.
“Oh, you didn’t meet her yet?” asks Keisha. There’s a kind of bemused laughter in her voice. “That, my dear, is Asha. Charles’s wife.”
Jasmyn looks back at the woman. She’s tall and dark-skinned with wavy shoulder-length black hair that’s either a wig or a weave. “Not what I was expecting,” she says.
“Me neither,” says Keisha. Her voice is flat. “Do you think they look alike?” she asks, jutting her chin in their direction.
Jasmyn studies Asha and Darlene. They look so much alike they could be sisters is what she thinks. “A little” is what she says.
Keisha gives her a look making it plain she knows Jasmyn isn’t being truthful. “The fact that they use the exact same plastic surgeon might explain it,” she says.
So she had been right. Darlene had gotten plastic surgery. Just as she’d suspected, Darlene’s lips and nose were thinner than in the wedding picture Keisha had shown her.
“Three guesses as to who their doctor is,” Keisha says.
Jasmyn looks back at her. “Who?”
Keisha points to where Benjamin Sayles is talking to Carlton Way.
“Get the fuck out,” says Jasmyn. “For real?”
“For real real.”
“Small world,” Jasmyn says.
Thirty minutes later, the servers spread the word that dinner is ready. Jasmyn drifts toward the formal dining room along with everyone else. She and Kamau and King never use this room, opting instead for the breakfast bar or the cozy, less formal dining area just off the kitchen. When they’d first toured the house, Jasmyn couldn’t imagine what she’d do in a house with two dining rooms, especially one this large. She’d joked maybe they could buy a long table and sit at opposite ends like one of those fancy rich white families you sometimes saw in movies on premium cable.
The dining table shimmers as candlelight bounces off the polished gold flatware and crystal glasses. Instead of a single centerpiece, the caterers had opted for three ornate gold candelabras with tall, white, tapered candles and small gold bowls with floating flower petals. Tall standing vases with orchids and white roses are scattered throughout the room. There’s a string quartet in the back corner.
“Fancy,” Keisha, says, laughing at her side. “Even got seat assignments.”
Jasmyn laughs, too. “Another one of King’s ideas,” she says.
Assigning the seating was her only duty for the party. She’d once read somewhere that at dinner parties couples should be split up to encourage mingling with strangers and acquaintances. Jasmyn followed the advice but didn’t put anyone too far away from their partners. King is across from her, flanked by Asha on one side and Darlene on the other. She has Keisha on one side and Charles on the other.
The string quartet begins playing as soon as everyone is seated. The servers pour water and place napkins on everyone’s laps. Across from her, King smiles wide.
The first course is an amuse-bouche involving caviar and sea urchin. Vichyssoise is next, followed by escargot and then foie gras. By the fourth course, Jasmyn is already full. She spends most of the dinner talking with Keisha and Charles about the Mercy Simpson case and explaining the ins and outs of how grand juries work .
Just before the dessert course, Carlton Way clinks his fork against a glass and stands.
Jasmyn frowns over at King. Why is Carlton standing up to give a speech? This is not his house or his party.
But King just shrugs. She’s going to have to talk to him about the blind spot he has when it comes to Carlton.
At least Keisha seems to understand. She leans over and whispers “The hell?” into Jasmyn’s ear.
Carlton raises his glass. “I know I speak for everyone when I say thank you to Kingston and Jasmyn for welcoming us all into their magnificent home and hosting us so beautifully.”
“Hear, hear,” says Benjamin Sayles.
Asha and Darlene both clink forks against their glasses.
Carlton smiles and continues. “Now, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge what we have made together here in Liberty. This country being the way it is, many of us never thought we’d get to this place in our lives. But here we are.”
This time it’s Angela Sayles with the “Hear, hear.”
“We’ve certainly come a long way,” Carlton says. “But we still have a long way to go.” He holds his wineglass higher. “Eyes on the prize,” he says.
Just as they had at the Wellness Center, everyone repeats it in unison. Everyone except her and Charles and Keisha. Jasmyn wants to ask them what the prize is exactly. Even more money? Even bigger houses? Fancier French food and even whiter waiters?
Jasmyn doesn’t wait for Carlton to sit before she stands. Maybe it’s because Carlton and the others made Liberty feel like a place with Black people, but not for Black people. Maybe it’s because come Monday morning she’ll go back to working for all the people who have so little.
Jasmyn stands, compelled the way she always has been, to do what she sees as the right thing. “I have something to add,” she says.
“Yes, of course. You can go ahead,” Carlton says, as if she was asking for permission. He sits.
She looks around the table, making sure to catch everyone’s eye before she begins.
“First of all, I am very glad to be here in Liberty with you all. And like Carlton said, I never imagined my life would take me from the projects to a place like this. We are all very fortunate,” she continues. “And that is why we must give back.”
“Hear, hear,” says Keisha and then Charles.
“I’m not just talking about giving money. I’m sure all of you already donate to all the right causes. What I’m talking about is donating time. We need to get out there. Into the projects. Into the inner cities. Into the prisons. We need to mentor our kids and bring the next generation up. We need to be teaching them our history. About where we’ve come from and all we accomplished. About our resilience. About the beauty of our culture. We need to organize. We need to be out in the streets marching. For people like Tyrese and Mercy Simpson. We need to get out there and protest and be seen. Let them see the size and strength of us. Let them see they can’t break us.”
“But they can break us,” says a voice from the far end of the table. Catherine Vail.
“I’m sorry?” says Jasmyn, confused.
“You said they can’t break us. I know it’s a metaphor, and I’m not an activist like you, but I never understand when people say things like ‘they can’t break us.’ Of course they can. They can break our backs with their batons and our skin with their bullets. We are breakable. We break.”
