Authors: Kelly Milner Halls
Her name is Raffina, pronounced “ruff-eena.” I’m not even sure I’m spelling it right. Maybe it’s spelled Ruffina, but I don’t think so. I glanced at a homework assignment she turned in for Human Relations 2, and I’m pretty sure it was an a not a u. Whatever, it doesn’t matter what her name is, or how she spells it anyway—what matters is that I wanna hit on her, and I’m not sure if I should or how to even start.
She’ll be the first girl I’ve tried to ask on a date since I got TKO’d in the seventh grade. That’s if I ask her. I’m not sure about that yet. If you’d been coldcocked by a petite blonde when you were thirteen, you might hesitate to think of yourself as God’s great-red-hot-lover-boy gift to girls too. I owe my nondating history to Debra Quarantino.
Girls think I’m shy. I know that. I’m not all that shy, really—I just don’t like making a fool of myself. Again, this is mostly thanks to Debra. It’s amazing how quickly a thing can happen and change a person. One minute I was walking down the hall, full of myself and confident and feeling, in all my mostly pubescent glory, like a quasi-dude of a stud-muffin, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on my ass wondering how a Mack truck had made it into Nicholas Murray Butler Junior High.
What had happened? All I’d done was run my finger down the middle of Debra’s back. That was all. I remember she had on a white blouse and I could see her bra strap, and I’d seen other guys do the same little flirty trick with girls they’d liked. So I came up behind Debra and let my left index finger slide down the length of her little cute spine. Pretty funny, huh? Pretty James-Bond-hitting-on-Miss-Moneypenny cool, right? Not quite.
I never saw Debra’s right hook coming. It caught me next to my left eye, which in a nanosecond was seeing stars. I honest-to-God had no idea why I was sitting on the hallway floor or how I’d gotten there.
I think I jumped up pretty quickly. I’m sure it was before a standing eight count would have been finished. Debra, maybe a little surprised by her own strength, just looked at me and said, “Knock it off!”
I said, “Okay.”
It’s not like everybody in school knew what had happened. I’m not sure anybody even saw. But when you’re thirteen and this is how your first foray into the world of flirtation goes—well, most people would tend to be slightly careful afterward. “Slightly careful?” I could have joined a monastery for all the female action I’ve had these last three years.
The Debra knockdown punch is the excuse I’ve given myself for
not
asking anyone out until now, for not flirting with anyone until now.
Until Raffina.
So there’s the Debra deal, but there’s one other thing too.
I know this shouldn’t be anything, shouldn’t matter, but for some reason it does matter to me; Raffina is black, and I’m white. Of course, she’s not really
black
any more than I’m really
white.
She’s kind of dark brown, no, kind of medium brownish. I’m definitely sort of beige or something, light beige, tinted pink or red depending on how much time I spend in the sun (I don’t tan; I just burn). Maybe a better way to put this is that Raffina’s ancestors came from Africa, and my ancestors came from … I don’t know … not Africa. Someplace like England or Germany or Canada or something.
Our school is mostly white kids. Make that beige kids. Has anyone anywhere ever been pure white? “Pure white,” what the hell does that even mean? Like who? Queen Elizabeth of England? Eminem of Detroit? Debra Quarantino, flyweight champion of Butler Junior High? To even to say the words pure white together related to race is stupid, like I’m some kind of Nazi or Aryan nation idiot. But think about it: Debra was a white girl, somebody whose culture and stuff I knew, and look at how terribly things went with her.
Human Relations 2. That’s the class Raffina and I are in together. Could there be any worse place in the universe to be sitting right next to someone you’d really like to hook up with than Human Relations 2? I mean, come on, we sit here every day from nine thirty a.m. until ten twenty-five a.m., and we hear about human reproduction. We sit about a foot apart, her arm next to
my arm, her leg next to my leg, and in the front of the room is our teacher, Mr. Adams, talking. We’re hearing all these words—
sperm, vagina, scrotum, penis, ovum
x—I mean, damn. DAMN! How can you be cool and hit on a girl you like while you’ve got all that shit ringing in your ears?
If she wasn’t African American, would I feel the same uncomfortable way about all these words being said in front of us together—
urethra, clitoris, labia, erection?
If it was Debra, how would I feel? Is it racist to even think about that or ask that question? I’m not being a smart-ass. I honestly don’t know. People give other people shit for being politically correct. Nobody ever seems to think about how ignorant and full of crap you can sound if you
don’t
pay any attention to what you say.
I know that race shouldn’t matter. I mean, in terms of my thinking she’s beautiful, in terms of my wanting to get with her, it sure doesn’t make any difference, but the truth is that I just don’t really know anything about African American people. Like I said, our school is almost all white. Shit, even our school team name is the Highlanders. Who the hell are Highlanders, like, Irish guys or something? The guy who jumps around with the cheerleaders at football games is a redheaded kid wearing one of those plaid skirts, and at really cold night games, his skin looks kind of light blue.
The thing is, I don’t know squat about Raffina—not only on a personal, one-to-one basis, but on any level at all. What does she like to eat? Where does she live? What are her parents like, and how would they feel about their daughter hooking up with a white kid? Where would she like to go on a date if I ever got the balls to ask her? If Raffina was Debra, I’d just put on a video of
Rocky
and get the hell out the room. I know that I wouldn’t ask
Raffina to watch
Gone With the Wind
or something like that where slavery was happening, but wouldn’t it be kind of obvious and weird and like I was trying too hard if I slipped on a DVD of some “black” movie like
Barbershop or Boyz n the Hood?
Now, say what you want, but if Raffina was white, I wouldn’t be worrying about this kind of stuff. I’d still be worried about a Debra-like result, but not the race crap.
So why am I attracted to her? It’s not because of the porno I’ve seen of black people having sex, ‘cause I’ve seen porno of white people too, and both types of porno are equally sick and stupid and turn me on the same amount. I’m not attracted to Raffina because of her race, I’m attracted to her, well, just because I
am.
How can you explain attraction? She sits next to me in a class where we hear all this stuff about sex. I scoot my chair back from hers, just a few inches back, so that I can look over at her without her noticing. She has fairly large breasts and no gut and a nice butt and great legs. Okay, maybe that sounds shallow, but she does. I like to watch her chest as she breathes, the way her breasts rise and fall with each breath she takes. She’s gorgeous, a thousand times sexier than Debra Quarantino, who after that moment in seventh grade always looked pretty tomboyish to me. I’m not gonna talk about the role Raffina plays in my late-night fantasies—I’ll admit, though, that at those moments, color has nothing to do with anything. It’s her parts—those breasts and legs and ass—and it’s her, just how nice she is and funny—her laugh, her smile, her eyes. I like to think about us lying around after, like, after we’ve hooked up, just lying there talking and being together.
The main thing about Raffina is that she’s always nice to me. Actually, she’s always nice to everybody. Every day when we come into class, I always say hi, and she always smiles and says
hi back. I ask her questions sometimes, even questions that I already know the answer to, just so I can be talking with her—and she always answers me. It’s really hard to imagine her throwing a punch at me. Also, she’s smart in addition to being good- looking and sexy. So, she’s nice and smart and pretty—why the hell
wouldn’t
I want to hook up with her? Why? Well, in addition to my memories of Debra, there’s this one other little fact …
Did I mention that my dad was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1948? Yeah, my dad’s a bit on the older side. He was 46 when I was born and 48 when my sister came along. I was born in Alabama too, but we moved away when I was still a baby.
But in 1963, when Martin Luther King and the freedom marchers were trying to kick racism’s ass, one of the worst atrocities against African Americans happened right there in Birmingham. Some white racists threw a bomb into a black Sunday school, killing a bunch of little kids. What if one of the guys who threw that bomb was related to my dad and me? What if my dad, who still lived in Birmingham back then, thought, for even a second or two that what happened at that church that day was all right? Could my dad be a racist too? I’m not just talking about white guilt here—my own or my dad’s. Let me put it another way—my dad doesn’t have a lot of Tupac posters or framed glossies of Dr. King up around the house (of course, he doesn’t have any Slim Shady posters either).
I’m sitting at the dinner table with Dad and Mom and my little sister, who’s two years younger than I am.
Mom’s made a pot roast and potatoes, and we’re having peas for a vegetable. Do black people eat this kind of food? What’s a “collard green” anyway? I was born in Alabama, but I don’t remember ever eating anything there.
We start to eat, and I decide this moment is as good as any.
“I’m gonna ask this girl out,” I say, staring down at my plate the whole time.
“Oh, really,” Mom says, a little too enthusiastically.
I flash on the thought,
Why the big surprise, did you think I was gay or something?
But I don’t say anything.
Dad just keeps eating. He’s got a forkful of peas balanced and ready to go into his mouth when I say, “She’s black.”
I glance at him quick to check his reaction. I’m wondering if any of the peas will fall off his fork or something. None of them do. He doesn’t even hesitate to put the fork in his mouth.
Mom says, “Oh, that’s nice.”
I wonder,
What the hell does that mean?
I look over at her, and she’s cutting a piece of roast with her knife and fork.
My little sister asks, “Why is she black?”
I say, “What?”
My sister says, “I mean, do you like her just because she’s black, or do you like her for other reasons, too?”
I flash for a couple seconds on Raffina’s breasts and smile and legs and how friendly she always is to me. I flash on us in bed together naked, just talking and being together after—
I say, “Other reasons, too.”
My dad says, “That’s good. She’s a nice girl?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Dad says.
My sister takes a mouthful of potatoes and, muttering, says, “I hope you have better luck this time than with ol’ Debra Quarr-beano.”
Why on earth I ever told my little sister about Debra’s right hook, I’ll never know—as I recall, when my sister got to seventh
grade, she was being hassled so I told her. Let’s just say there are some mistakes we never live down.
Mom, her ears all perked up, asks, “Debra who?”
I say, “Never mind.”
But so much for Birmingham, Alabama.
So today’s the day.
I want to get to Human Relations 2 a little early. I’m wearing a very cool North Carolina, light blue basketball jersey. I’ve never been to North Carolina. I’ve never even seen them play. But I like this shirt, the color and the way it fits me. I’m hurrying to get to class so that I can watch Raffina walk in, watch her body as she weaves her way through the desks and moves slowly toward me and sits down. I have this whole scenario planned out, where she’ll look up and make eye contact with me and then I’ll be sorta James Bond cool and hit her with the perfect line about going out.
Only when I get to class, she’s already sitting there, and this turns my entire plan upside down. I smile through my nervousness, worried that I probably look like some moron with my gigantic, phony grin. She smiles back.
I drop my backpack onto the floor next to my seat and slide in. She looks really great, more beautiful than usual. But somehow all my brilliant lines, my grand plans disappear. I’m like some kind of mute.
We sit through the whole stupid class, and all I recall hearing are the phrases “coital motion” and “fetal nutrition.” It amazes me that school can wreck anything … I mean
ANYTHING!
Finally the bell rings, and before I can even move, Raffina is out of her chair, heading for the door.
I feel so shitty, so cowardly, that I can’t stand myself. For half a second, I wish I was a little kindergarten kid in that
Birmingham Sunday School and that I’d been blown up. Then I feel guilty and totally stupid for even thinking that way, so I gather my stuff up as quick as I can and hurry after Raffina. I see her in the hallway and manage to catch up, but just as I’m ready to reach out and touch her shoulder, I notice her beautiful dark skin under the white blouse she’s wearing. I can see her bra strap too. I freeze like I’m in some kind of weird, drug-induced flashback. And suddenly, as if she’s just sensed me standing there, Raffina turns around and walks toward me. I don’t know what to say, so I force a smile again.
“You look pretty happy today,” she says.
I feel the tiniest rush of confidence, and so I answer, “I am. It’s a pretty great day.” I think about finally getting up the nerve to ask her out, to hook up with her, to lie around in the afterglow, putting the ghosts of Debra Quarantino behind me forever …
Raffina laughs and says, “I know.”
I hesitate. She knows? How does she know? What does she know? Does she know about Alabama? About Debra?!
I barely squeak out, “You know?”
“Sure, no sixth period today, early dismissal?”
I’d forgotten all about that. It’s not important, but again, all my planned words just evaporate. I had my lines down perfectly, having practiced them over and over last night before I went to sleep. Now I’m all messed up again.