Authors: Xenia Ruiz
“You’re in big trou-ouble,” Kia said. “We’re gonna go to jail.”
“Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to jail,” I assured them. “He’s probably just going to give me a ticket. Everybody got their
seat belts on?”
I pulled over and before the cop reached my window, I had my license and insurance card out of the wallet.
“Everything alright?” the cop asked.
“Yeah,” I answered briefly. I had learned from years of experience that you don’t volunteer more information than necessary
when being questioned by cops, particularly suburban cops. Whatever he said I did, I wouldn’t argue with him; I’d just take
the ticket and leave. A few months ago, I might have argued just on the matter of principle, but now, DWB stops didn’t faze
me.
“You were weaving a bit back there,” the cop pointed out.
“My hand kind of slipped off the wheel, that’s all.”
He bent down to look into the passenger side and then into the back. Through the rearview mirror, I could see the kids looked
scared. Undoubtedly, they remembered the visits made by the police to their home when their father was around.
The cop smiled and waved at them. “Hey, kiddies.” Then he turned to me. “Have you been drinking, sir?”
“No.”
“My brother doesn’t drink. He has cancer,” Jade said curtly.
I looked over at her slowly and gave her a dirty look, but she looked back at me defiantly. She knew I never used cancer as
a crutch. I didn’t want nor did I expect any special treatment because of it. When I turned back toward the cop, he was skeptically
eyeing my head underneath the crocheted skullcap as if he were trying to decide whether to believe Jade or if I was just another
bald-headed Black dude. I almost wished I had worn my doo-rag, then I really would’ve fit the profile.
“License and insurance, please,” he said. I handed over both cards. He walked back to the cruiser to check my driving record
and verify that I didn’t have any outstanding warrants. If I hadn’t been so mad at Jade, I would’ve smiled thinking of his
disappointment when he discovered I had never even had a moving violation, just a lot of DWBs, but of course, those weren’t
a matter of record.
“They make me sick,” Jade said bitterly. “Stopping you ’cause you were weaving. With all these drunks driving around.”
“Don’t say nothing to me,” I told her quietly.
“What? What did I do? ’Cause I told him you had cancer?”
I didn’t answer her and just shook my head slowly, disappointedly, a characteristic of our father’s when he tried to make
us feel guilty after we had done something wrong.
“Don’t be mad, Big Bruh.” When I didn’t say anything, she resorted to her old childhood antics of giving me attitude right
back. “Fine. Be mad.”
The cop returned and handed me back my cards. “I’ll let you off with a warning. This time.” He didn’t leave right away and
I guess he was expecting me to thank him, but I just looked at him and dismissed him with a slight nod. “Bye, kids,” he added,
waving at the kids before walking away.
We drove in silence, the kids falling asleep as I drove farther and farther away from the city. I could see Jade in my peripheral
vision, her head turned away from me as she looked out of her window. Tears would not save her this time. When I reached her
house, I got out and helped her carry Kia and Daelen, the bags and leftovers from the car. After putting the kids in their
beds, she followed me out. “Adam, wait.”
“Bye, Sis,” I said, still walking.
She pulled me back by my jacket. “Are you going to walk me down the aisle, or do I have to call somebody else?”
“You know I’ll be honored, Babysis.”
She clung to my jacket. “Don’t be mad at me. I can’t stand it when you’re mad at me.”
When we were younger, I used to give Jade the silent treatment whenever she did something that made me angry. I would make
her wait on me hand and foot, make her give me her allowance, and make her cry until she would beg me to be her “friend” again.
Once, Mama caught me commanding that Jade get down on her knees and beg for my forgiveness as I impersonated Yul Brynner in
The King and I: “When I say kneel, you shall kneel; when I say beg, you shall beg.”
Mama gave me the biggest beating of my life. Afterward she said,
“Don’t you ever demean your sister, or any woman, like that again.
” I never forgot that lesson.
I kissed her cheek. “I’m not mad at you. Anymore.” It was true; it was hard for me to hold on to my anger these days. That’s
how I knew God was at work in my life.
There was a certain peace that followed my surrender to the Almighty. Knowing that He had the power over my life and death,
and that there was nothing I could do to change that, made me less afraid. Pastor Zeke said it best when he told me,
“When you relinquish the desire to control your future, you obtain peace.”
This was in direct contrast to what I had been taught all my life, in school and work, that I alone controlled my destiny,
that I was the architect of my future. By giving me the strength to get through the cancer the “second time,” by bringing
Eva back into my life, He had given me a second chance.
I wasn’t sure what to do with my feelings for Eva, so I wrote a poem. I couldn’t bring myself to give it to her though, because
it made me feel so vulnerable. I just couldn’t take the chance that she wouldn’t reciprocate my feelings and so, I put them
on hold, pretending they didn’t exist. Our conversations centered on our writing, work, and topics such as which version of
the Bible was the best. One thing we didn’t talk about was the past, or the possibility of any future between us.
Eva had invited me to Eli’s birthday celebration, which was to take place in her backyard the day before my surgery. Since
she had consented to be a bridesmaid in Jade’s wedding, I felt a small obligation to go. Maya and her family were there, as
was Simone, surprisingly unescorted. I met Eva’s father—a quiet, reserved man—who seemed uncomfortable in a social setting
and left after about an hour. He seemed cordial enough, not at all like a man who was prejudiced against Blacks, but then
again, Eva may have told him we were now only friends. Eva also introduced me to her ex-husband, Anthony, and I was surprised
she had invited him, given his history of marital infidelity, although I knew he was still Eli’s father. Anthony bore a remarkable
resemblance to Tony, right down to the fixed smirk meant to intimidate. Eli appeared to be extremely close to his father and
grandfather, and his spirits had improved dramatically; even his limp was barely noticeable from the last time I saw him at
the hospital. A few of Eli’s friends from ISU stopped by, including a student who had recently emerged from a coma caused
by the shooting. When he first arrived, Eva couldn’t take her eyes off him, and I could tell by the way she looked at him,
with a combination of envy and sadness, that she was probably wondering why Tony, who had also been in a coma, hadn’t been
spared.
Eva and I didn’t get much of a chance to talk since she was busy grilling and serving. She was wearing her blue velour warm-up
suit, the same one she wore that fateful night, our first and last night together. After Eli’s friends left, and her small
family circle remained, the talk turned toward the future of affirmative action, which was headed toward the Supreme Court.
“What people fail to realize is that affirmative action was designed to make amends,” Eva was saying. “A sort of reparations
for past discriminatory practices created by the majority. It’s not a handout. We didn’t ask the University of Michigan to
give Black and Hispanic applicants twenty points for their ethnicity.
They
came up with that.” I glanced at her periodically as she began to cut the strawberry shortcake.
“A few Blacks and Hispanics get into college, or move into a neighborhood, and they think ‘there go our jobs, there goes the
neighborhood,’” Alex chimed in.
“But don’t you see? That’s what they’re afraid of,” Maya said. “That we’re going to take over. That’s why they’re getting
rid of everything. Just when we get wind of all the loopholes they’ve had access to all these years, they decide to change
the rules.”
“‘They, they, they’” Anthony jumped in. “Who’s ‘they’? You guys sound paranoid.”
“They!”
Maya shouted at him as she jokingly grabbed him by the collar. “The government, the Republicans, the powers that be who are
so threatened by change—take your pick!”
Alex dabbed Maya’s head with a napkin as if she were a boxer coming into her corner. “Calm down, honey,” he said.
“Am I the only one who thinks we should go back to the time when
we
didn’t rely on
them
to give us
anything?
” Anthony almost pleaded, knowing he was outnumbered. “There was a time when we helped our own with businesses, built our
own schools. We have to continue helping our own.”
Simone then took the center of the circle. “Look, Mr. Black Republican. That was then, this is now. We can’t go back in time,”
she said, punctuating her words with jabs of her fork in Anthony’s chest. “Meanwhile, ‘the powers that be’ are getting rid
of financial aid so our boys—and girls—have to join the military in order to get money for college. Then they end up in some
godforsaken country fighting the next Vietnam or Iraq. And I’m not just talking about African and Latin Americans, I’m talking
about the working class of this country.”
“No one’s forcing them to join the military. They can take out loans, work—”
“And be in debt for life?”
“That’s the American way.”
“What makes me so angry is that the people who originally benefited from affirmative action are now its biggest critics,”
Eva jumped in, eyeing her ex-husband with accusation and vehemence. It reminded me of the first time I had seen her debate,
ironically about the same subject, the first time we met that rainy day in August.
“Are there any conservatives in the house? Where’s my son?” Anthony spread his arms helplessly. “Adam?”
Up until then, I hadn’t contributed much to the discussion and had pretty much kept to myself in a corner of the deck. I had
been sipping on tamarind smoothies and stuffing my face with grilled tilapia,
platanos,
and vegetable kabobs since I was supposed to stop eating before midnight in preparation for my surgery. It wasn’t that I
didn’t care about issues like affirmative action. Ever since my fight with cancer, especially with the upcoming surgery, and
given that my mind was in a higher place, I had begun to pick my battles more discriminately, placing importance on the things
I could handle or change. As with chemotherapy, I was about treating the problem, not wallowing in it. For the time being,
discussions regarding affirmative action, the government, even the red tape involved in my own field had taken a backseat.
Eli was busy playing basketball with his cousins Marcos and Lucas, and their rambunctious shouts, combined with some Christian-Spanish
rap music bumping on the stereo, drowned out his father’s call for help.
So I spoke up. “I think we can talk about a topic until we’re blue in the face, but in the end, if we don’t have the power
to change the system, what good is talking?”
“Some of the greatest grassroots organizations were started by just talking,” Eva said.
Our eyes locked as she continued slicing and serving the cake. The moment that followed was one of those awkward interludes
when everyone started looking at their feet or into space, waiting for someone else to save the day. But because Eva and I
had acquired a special intimacy since we became reacquainted, we knew our exchange was less confrontational than everyone
assumed. My eyes traveled sheepishly to her warm-up suit and I wondered if she thought of that night whenever she wore it.
It was Eli who came to the rescue, calling for any takers to play him a game of two-on-two, and I was more than happy to oblige.
I hadn’t played fifteen minutes before Anthony bulldogged his way in, running the court in his dress slacks and Enzo loafers,
trying to show me up and slipping a couple of times in the process. I tried not to make the man look bad in front of his family,
particularly his son and nephews, but I was pumped, fueled by my new slim build and outlook on life. I could see Eva watching
us apprehensively, her ex-husband and ex-boyfriend, as if she were afraid we would end up rolling around on the court like
schoolboys fighting over her. Considering I was not performing at my top game, and I had one of the twelve-year-old twins
on my side, Anthony was one pretty bad player. We beat him and Eli in the first game, and turned down his challenge for a
rematch, mostly because I was beat. Limping across the court and holding my side, I sat down in the wooden glider under the
big oak tree.
Maya walked over, followed by King, who ambled over to me and began nudging my knees, waiting for me to pet him. I did, cautiously,
still nervous about being around dogs. On the deck, the group had resumed talking, though on a less serious topic, evident
by their voices rising and falling with excitement, then erupting every so often into laughter.
“How are you? I haven’t seen you in a while,” Maya said, sitting down next to me and rocking the glider.
“I’m good.”
“Eva says you’re having surgery.”
“Yeah. Tomorrow.”
“I’ll say a prayer for you.”
“Thanks. I’ll take all the prayers I can get.” I smiled my gratitude. Lively laughter exploded from the deck. “What are they
talking about now?”
“Our high school days, how mean Eva was to all the guys,” she said, smiling up at Eva. “Man, they hated her, but they wanted
her. It killed them that they couldn’t have her.”
“Men always want what they can’t have,” I said.
“And women, too.”
We rocked the glider slightly back and forth, not speaking, as snippets of their conversation floated down toward us.
“Remember David Correa?” Alex asked Eva, elbowing her. “Man, that crazy nut was writing love letters to you after one kiss.”
“He was not. It was one poem,” Eva protested.