All about Skin (25 page)

The line is a thin, crooked path from the front bumper straight to me. The rims and wheels looked wasted on his car now, like he knows his car is sad and he's trying too hard. A pinstripe done by a blind guy—that's what I bet my dad'll call it when he sees Osniel's car pass our house later. And maybe that's what I'll tell Osniel, if he ever asks what I was going for.

I can finally breathe right once I slide into my front seat, but my hands won't stop shaking. I hold them out in front of me; shiny red chips stick to the sweat on my palm. I don't brush them off on my jeans—I keep them on me, the stubborn flakes itching a little and sparkling. After curling my fingers over the specks to protect them, I stick the key in the ignition with my other hand. I throw my Civic in reverse and steer out of the spot, doing it all one-handed, riding out like a pimp or a gangster. And even though Papi has told me a million times this is
not
the safe way to drive—that God gave me two hands and won't think twice about taking one back if I don't keep both on the steering wheel
at all times
, Papi says—I do it anyways just to keep Osniel's fist shut. I drive home going way faster than I should because I need to beat Papi home—I don't want him to catch me acting stupid, with only one hand on the wheel after everything he's told me. Maybe—if I have enough time before Mami asks, “And school?” and Papi asks, “Any car problems?” like they do every day, talking over each other because they know they're asking the same thing—maybe I'll even wash my hand.

Ashley Young

For my father and Trayvon Martin

Dayne woke to the usual sound of racket and litigation. She never remembered to turn off the TV after the evening news, and every day since the start of her “vacation,” she awoke to the sounds of the Trayvon Martin trial.

She rolled her brown, bald head into the comforter and faced the tiny bedroom window that overlooked her New York City neighborhood. The tambour of George Zimmerman's lawyer questioning a witness came in clear, though her ears were still adjusting to sound.

It was the day before closing arguments. Zimmerman's lawyers were pushing for an acquittal, dismissal of witness testimony, the entry of murder reenactments—anything the jury could view that could convince them he shot Martin in self-defense. The Florida state prosecutor—a handsome, blue-eyed, dark-haired lawyer predicted to woo the allfemale jury—spent the last round of cross-examination theorizing about Zimmerman's motives.

Dayne had been watching the trial for days. It was hard to shake the shrill voices of news commentators speculating whether Zimmerman acted out of his own racist assumptions when he shot and killed a black, hoodie-clad teenager or if he was honestly defending himself against imminent danger.

It wasn't as if she hadn't experienced being followed herself. Slightly androgynous, Dayne sported hoodies over her long, curvy frame during her college days trolling the University of North Carolina's campus with her peers. But when she ventured into the surrounding neighborhoods in her solid-black hoodie, she suddenly warranted stares, and white women crossed the street to get away from what they assumed was a tall, menacing black man. And if she ever thought of entering a store, there was always a clerk following close behind, asking if she needed help while watching her every move.

In those days, she'd just chuckle at their ignorant behavior. But watching the trial, she considered herself lucky that her often mistaken gender but unmistaken race had never led to violence.

The constant streams of Trayvon's photo between trial breaks made Dayne's stomach turn. To calm her nerves, she rose from her bed to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee, a workday habit she couldn't seem to break. Next to the coffeemaker, the answering machine flashed a bright red “2” in the messages-received box. Dayne knew she was the last woman in the city with an answering machine, but she kept it; it was her way of keeping in touch with her father.

He'd left his daily message, the one she listened to every morning as the coffee brewed. He'd been trying to say he missed her since she left for New York City a year ago, but instead, had only been able to rant about current events and the weather. Even so, the rattle of his husky voice reminded her of home.

“Hope you're watching the trial. Damn shame what that man did to that kid. Fifteen and armed with a soda and a pack of Skittles—and Zimmerman requests an acquittal? This coming from a lawyer who opened the trial with a joke? Dayne, honey, just 'cause we got a black president in the White House don't mean a black boy can't get shot down for fitting some idiot's profile … Well, I'm off to the site. Foreman's got me working six men on this job and your old man's gotta beat the sun … Okay, I'll be talking to ya.”

Dayne smiled as she shook her head. She could see him tucking his shirt into work jeans with his shoulder supporting the rotary phone, watching the same TV set he'd had since she was a kid. But when her eyes looked back at the trial returning to session, her mouth turned flat. She knew her father was right.

Race politics keep this world crazy
, she thought as she poured a cup of coffee.

The next message was from Sachin, the first friend Dayne had made in the city. Ever since he had declared himself her official New York tour guide, his messages were always friendly, slightly formal requests to meet. Dayne suspected it might by his coy way of trying to date her but he'd never made a move, which suited her just fine.

Dayne got back in bed with her coffee and returned to the trial. She couldn't decide if she would be up for being social after her three o'clock therapy appointment.

Dayne missed her fifteen-minute window to try and hail a cab. Even though she could have taken the subway, she was running behind and assumed a cab would be faster—but she hadn't accounted for the number of cabs that would pass once they noticed her complexion.

She quickly slipped into jeans and a T-shirt, gathered her bag, and headed out onto Broadway. The thick, garbage-ridden heat hit her temples as she opened the front door, and Dayne fought back nausea as she walked to the street's corner.

She stood at the corner, shifting her weight in her boots and waving her hands to the passing cars. Every time she attempted to hail a cab, she couldn't help but feel like she was back in Ms. McGregor's first grade classroom, wildly waving her hand with all the answers but never being called on. She shook the memory as she noticed the time on her watch.

Yellow cabs whizzed by like an angry horde of bees. If the cab wasn't already full, the driver would slow, take a glance at Dayne, then speed away as if her very presence were offensive.

Dayne crossed the street in hopes of catching one at the opposite corner, only to see a white man in a collared shirt and khakis take the place where she'd once stood. Suddenly, horns honked as a cab buzzed through three lanes just to get to the corner's new occupant. Dayne watched, her hand still hanging in the air.

You have got to be kidding me
.

The cab sped away while Dayne's arm twinged with pain. She shook it, adjusted her bag where sweat marks had collected under her shirt, then took a deep breath and began again.

Dayne was seconds away from sending a “Running late” text when she noticed an older white woman watching her. The woman had bright red hair and was awkwardly stork-like in her miniskirt, wobbly from stomping her pumps against asphalt. She was neither frumpy nor pretty, but determined-looking, with a frown that transmitted Dayne's own frustration.

“This is disgraceful,” she said, gently moving Dayne aside and holding out her long, pale arm. “In this day and age, you can't catch a cab? It's disgusting. I can't believe it.”

Dayne couldn't help but feel embarrassed and made little eye contact as her new cab-flagging ally cursed about “a fuckedup racist society.” They stood for a few minutes before a cab pulled up.

The woman stepped back and opened the passenger door for Dayne.

“Where you going, sweetheart?” Her voice was still sharp from cursing.

“Broadway and 42nd.”

“You heard the lady,” the woman yelled to the driver in the open window. “Broadway and 42nd.”

Dayne finally looked the woman in her bright blue eyes and offered her a quiet “thank you.”

“You're welcome,” the woman said as the cab drove away, “and I'm sorry.”

On the ride over, Dayne bit her lip to fight tearing up.

Shit. That was the most decent thing a white woman has done for me in a while
.

Then she thought of her boss.

Dayne worked as the assistant of the media and marketing department for an independent gallery on the Lower East Side. It was curated by Vanessa Waters—daughter of art philanthropist Author Waters—a pale-skinned woman in her sixties who, after years of gilding on her father's coattails, decided to start a small business of her own.

Dayne found the part-time, hourly gig in the city paper and highlighted the fact that it could lead to “potential full-time employment.” She could hear Vanessa's shrill voice the day she was hired, filled with promises of “income increases” based on Dayne's “progress and improvement over time.” But now Dayne questioned whether Vanessa was blind to the efforts she'd made. Dayne worked three gallery events in one week and tolerated Vanessa's increasingly rigorous demands before she requested a “mental health week.” Dayne hadn't told anyone she'd taken the days in hopes of never returning.

No one knew except for her therapist, Janice.

When the cab came to a stop at 42nd, she meagerly tipped the driver and crossed the street to Janice's building. Her office was in the penthouse, a small corner suite down a hall of reception desks.

She'd been seeing Janice since she moved to New York. When the daily drone of city life shocked her into insomnia, Dayne answered an ad for a private, affordable therapy practice. By doing so, Dayne had to shed an inherited shame: Dayne's father rarely showed emotions, and as an unabashed daddy's girl, she'd always followed suit. This wasn't helped by the fact that he'd always lamented in his slow southern drawl, “White people deal with their problems with therapy and medicine. Us black folks just learn to live with them.” So she'd never told him she was becoming accustomed to the catharsis of her weekly confessions, convinced she could get much better advice from a woman she paid to listen to her talk. Some days, she felt like Janice was the closest thing to her.

Dayne approached the open door of Janice's office and headed to her place on the coach near the window. Janice was sitting at her desk when she came in.

“Welcome, Dayne,” she said with a small smile. “Let me finish up these patients' notes, and I'll be right with you.”

Dayne put her bag on the floor and watched as Janice finished her notes. Janice was a caramel brown with waist-length dreads that swung over her desk as she wrote. She looked light in her summer wear, white capri pants and a floral-patterned shirt.

“Thanks for waiting.” Janice closed her notes and swiveled her chair closer to Dayne. “How's the vacation been?”

Dayne almost forgot she'd mentioned it last session; she looked down at her hands with guilt.

“It's not really a vacation. I took the week off to get away.”

“Isn't that what a vacation is?” she asked.

Dayne didn't respond, so Janice tried to catch her gaze. “Tell me what you mean.”

Dayne was quiet a moment longer. Then, she met the glow of Janice's hazel eyes.

“Janice, I'm never going to get promoted. Vanessa's been promising me a salaried position for months. But every month I watch her promote some pretty, white, and willing new college graduate. Meanwhile, I'm barely holding onto my hourly wages.”

Janice sat back in her chair and listened.

“I'm just feeling exhausted, you know. Watching my coworkers take credit for events I promoted. Stepping in for Vanessa when her attitude flares up with the artists. Correcting stupid little mistakes for the head of the department—mistakes I wouldn't make if I had the position, a position that I was promised but never offered.”

Dayne was out of breath when she finished. Janice leaned in.

“Are you willing to stay, knowing it may never be offered to you?” Janice asked, her cadence calm, inviting.

“That's the most fucked-up thing,” Dayne said. “I keep sticking around, working with a dizzying amount of attention to detail, thinking that Vanessa will notice, pretending like I'm not sick of arriving to work to her empty promises. What kind of idiot does that day after day?”

“Don't go there. You're not an idiot. If I've learned anything from talking to people these last ten years, it's that we all do what we do for a reason, most likely because someone taught us to.”

Dayne frowned, then chuckled.

“What?” Janice asked, smiling. “What did you just think of ?”

“My father,” Dayne said. “If anything, my father taught me how to work like a dog for so little.”

“Talk more about that.”

“My dad has worked for white men his whole life, building lavish pool decks and kitchen interiors for low, unpredictable pay. He's struggled. And I know he's struggled even harder because he's a black man.”

“What kind of effect do you think that's had on your father?”

Dayne looked down at her lap until the answer came to her.

“He became the great pretender. He'd tell me it was the weather that bothered him when he came home—he dismissed his anger as some physical pain. But I knew even then he was never being paid well enough or treated fairly. After Mom left, he worked almost seven days a week, and he developed this smile. This smile I knew he'd put on, all big and fake for his employers—and he'd bring it home with him. He couldn't shake the need to pretend. Even with me.”