The Domino Effect (16 page)

“Come up where?”

“To my house, my home, in Connecticut.”

“Where are your parents going to be?”

“They’ll be around,” she said, and walked off without me.

I kept pace a few steps back.

“You’d have to sleep in my little brother’s room,” she said.

“Alright,” I agreed, from behind. “But you might want to warn him about my underwear — there ain’t much to it.”

“He’ll sleep downstairs or at a friend’s.”

“Probably for the best.”

When we reached her dorm, she faced me at the foot of her steps. “So, you want to come?”

“Sure thing, Bella Faccia,” I said, wrapping my hands around the small of her back.

“Good,” she said, taking my ears in her mittens. “Because I still need to talk to you about something.”

“Let’s talk right now,” I said. “You’re my favorite subject. I could talk about you anytime.”

“That’s sweet,” she said. “But I don’t want to do it here, at school. I want to be home.”

Thinking about where Brenda lived, her house, her town, her room, made me feel very privileged.

“Can I ask you something?” Brenda interrupted my imaginary parade through her world. “Didn’t it feel good to talk about what happened to you?”

“Yeah,” I cracked. “I feel 13 again.”

“Danny!”

“No, it did. It did. I feel kind of, I don’t know…”

“Happy?”

“Yeah, happy, I guess,” I shrugged. “But not just that.”

“How then?” she asked. She leaned into me like I had wisdom to share. Now that was a good one.

“I don’t know. I had this feeling like the world had it out for me, you know? Like I was from a different place or something, and different rules applied to me, and at any time, someone could just say ‘boo’ and I’d crack into a million pieces.”

“And you don’t feel that way anymore?”

“Not so much,” I admitted.

“What?” she asked, squeezing my hands. “Why are you smiling?”

I didn’t even know I
was
smiling.

“I don’t know — it’s stupid,” I said quietly as a group of girls giggled past.

“Come on, tell me!”

“You have to promise not to laugh.”

“I promise,” she said.

“Alright,” I said, and looked around. “It’s just that I sort of feel, sometimes, like I’m a character in a comic book or something, who once had all this power, and then lost it, but now it’s coming back again.”

She stared into my face without expression. I waited for some kind of response, afraid I had just sold myself out as a lunatic or a kid still waiting on puberty. She kept that empty expression. I swallowed as she leaned toward me and whispered, “You don’t really think you’re a superhero, do you?” Then she broke into this huge smile.

“Oh, see!” I threw my hands in the air. “That’s what I get for sharing my secrets!”

“I’m just joking,” she hugged me, still laughing. “I swear!”

“Alright, alright.” I playfully fought her off. “But just for that, I’m gonna show up at your parents’ house with my superhero costume on!”

“No, no,” she begged, crumpling onto the stoop.

“And let me tell you another thing — there ain’t a lot to it, so they might want to, you know, spend the night downstairs or at a friend’s house, too.”

“Stop!” she cried and stomped her feet.

I hadn’t seen her laugh like that all year. She quickly wiped away tears before they froze to her face.

“Alright,” I agreed, bumping her as I sat down. “Only if you promise to forget I told you that.”

“I promise,” she nodded, calming herself.

We sat on the steps, hunched over our knees with puffs of smoke in front of our face. She tucked her arm inside mine. “I’m really going to miss you during the break,” she said.

“You, too, but it’s only a couple weeks until New Years.”

“Promise to be good while you’re home?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

The night before break, Terence seemed electric. The hoop team’s success, and the support of that success, had him acting a little more relaxed, a little more alive. Still, it had to be tough, being so far from home. His bags had sat piled next to the door since morning. That night, he paced the room and talked as I stuffed my backpack with dirty clothes.

“First thing,” he said, rubbing knuckles into palm. “First thing I’m gonna do is go see my girl, make up for some serious lost time.”

He stomped to his desk and handed me the framed picture. “That’s Tonya, man. She fine.” He didn’t have to tell me that. I’d seen her, sneaking peeks when alone in the room. She was beautiful — black skin and white teeth, bright eyes, slender with straight hair curled into shiny, wide ribbons for the prom, her and her red satin dress tucked into Terence, who was wearing a tuxedo. He took the picture back and returned it to his desk.

“And then, yo, it’s off to see my boys.”

He didn’t hand me the picture of them, but I felt like I knew the four of them, including Terence, grouped together, mugging for the camera, making silly gestures with their hands. They seemed like pretty nice guys who had been friends for a long time.

His pictures always made me a little sad, but I looked all the time. I had no pictures of my own.

“And Moms be cooking up a storm, all week, man,” Terence continued.

He picked up his ball and dribbled it across the room.

“Is that your family?” I asked, nodding toward the desk, pretending I hadn’t seen the picture before. He dropped the ball and brought me his family in a frame — mother, father, son, daughter — all sweaters and blouses and perfect smiles in the perfect light. Other people had pictures in their rooms, but Terence was the only one with the classic shot. They seemed so happy. The American family.

Terence went back to bouncing his ball and imagining his homecoming as I looked at the picture, like it was the first time. Then I asked him something I’d been wondering about all along.

“Your mom’s white?”

“What?” he yelled, barging back from beside his desk. “The hell you talking about?”

“This,” I said, pointing at the picture. “She’s white.”

She had sort of smoke-colored skin with a bob haircut. Her surefire smile said she could do anything.

“You crazy, man,” Terence insisted, taking the picture from my hands. “You know that?”

“Maybe, but what’s that got to do with your mom being white?”

“She ain’t white!” he demanded in my face. “She’s light-skinned, that’s all.”

“Alright,” I conceded, halfheartedly. “If you say so.”

“Damn right I do!” he said, walking back to his desk. He put the picture back, picked up the ball, and cradled it as he sat.

“Never mind then,” I said.

He shot the ball in the air a few times.

“Your sister’s cute,” I said, back to packing.

“Yeah, thanks,” he mumbled.

“She looks like your mom,” I noted.

“Mmm-hmm,” he nodded.

“Except she’s black.”

He jumped up. “My mother is black, you simple-ass fool!”

He reminded me of the angry horse-caller-guy I’d met in the lobby on the first day of school.

“Relax,” I said with raised hands. “I’m just breaking your shoes a little.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he cooled himself. “I know.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said leaning back in his desk chair, shooting the ball in the air again with an exaggerated flick of the wrist. “Mom’s Creole, that’s all.”

“What’s a Cree-hole?”

“Cre-Ole,
man,” he huffed. “Don’t you know nothing?”

“I guess not,” I said.

“Creoles is folk from down around New Orleans,” he said. “They a mix of Africans and French, mostly, and they ran New Orleans back in the day.”

“That’s how you know French.”

“Yeah, I had some in school, too, but Moms is fluent. She teaches up at Baylor University, so we speak it at home all the time.”

“We speak Italian at home sometimes, too, but it’s more like ‘listen to me or I’ll smack you in the mouth,’ type stuff,” I joked.

“Oh, yeah,” he laughed, “we have them talks too, but they all in straight Negro… if you know what I’m saying.”

“Probably better than French.”

“You got that right,” he nodded. “Besides, Pops don’t play that French business anyhow.”

“Now he’s black.” I nodded toward the picture.

His father was black as the black of a brand new blacktop.

“Yeah, Pops so dark you can hardly see him on a cloudy day.”

“I don’t know,” I laughed. “He looks sort of hard to miss.”

“He’s a big man,” Terence said proudly. “Played some ball back in the ABA, too, and I can’t wait to school his old butt when I get home.” He bounced me the ball. “You must be looking forward to getting home, too, to the NYC,” he said with a knowing smile.

“Oh, yeah,” I lied, like my big city life was full of excitement.

Chapter 10

B
eing at home, especially for long periods, was still tough for me. The house itself stood as a great big sign of defeat, since it had been bought to keep me safe. Then, after we moved in, each room was filled with argument, silence, and regret. I hid out in my room, the third floor attic space. There was still some funk in the room from the hours, days, months I had spent alone there, and especially from that moment Pop had found me bleeding.

Two years later, the marks on my knuckles and the back of my hand were barely noticeable, and I didn’t think of my room as a fortress anymore. I had learned to like my little space. Colored light came through the small, stained-glass window. The walls were slanted and I had set my single bed across the middle of the room with a dresser at the foot. The old floor bowed as I walked around, tending to the posters that had come loose in my absence. I pressed them back in place. The old radiator hissed and, when cranking the knob, I noticed a jewel box that had fallen under the pipes.

I pulled out the disc and dropped it into the player on top of the dresser. A piano tinkled a nice little melody and Springsteen began a story about being a kid and getting older. I figured it was a song about standing up, too, so when the rhythm picked up, I stood up, too, and strummed along with an imaginary guitar and sang all the words to “Growing Up.”

I played this song all afternoon in my room, keeping an eye on the clock so as not to be surprised when Pop came home. No surprises for him this time, either.

Pop, being a teacher, was on break, too. Things were better now, but we had our moments, and it could still be tough when the two of us were alone. It could be stiff and uncomfortable, like we didn’t really know each other anymore. He’d usually come around and ask me some question, like “How’s it going, Pal?”; and I’d say something back, like “Good,” and then, usually, after some silence, I’d go to another room. That’s how it was when we were alone together, and that’s why I dreaded the shopping trip I had agreed to take with him to get ingredients for our Christmas Eve dinner.