This Side of Home (16 page)

I wonder what Portland looks like from the sky. Up there, rolling hills watch over the City of Roses, and the Fremont Bridge canopies over drivers coming and going from east to west. Up there it is just a normal winter day. In those clouds there are no traces of racial slurs being shouted in school halls, and the dust from the newly constructed buildings hasn't risen that far.

We leave Marine Drive and go home.

I ask, “So what are we going to do?”

Tony doesn't answer.

I get an upside-down feeling in my stomach. “You don't want to be with me anymore?”

“I do. I just, I need time to think.”

As we ride home, I am thinking of Essence and Nikki right now. Thinking how maybe they are right. Maybe I should stick with what I know. What I know is Devin.

Tony pulls into his driveway.

“I guess Tasha has a point.” I barely get the words out. “Blood is thicker than water.”

Tony turns the engine off. “But you can't survive without either.”

We decide to go to the dance as girlfriends, instead of with dates. Kate is the one who suggested it. “My dad is more likely to let me go if he thinks I'm just going with friends,” she said.

It's fine with me, since I don't have a date. I haven't talked to Tony for a week. I'm not sure if we're broken up or not. I guess he's still thinking. I don't even know if he's coming to the dance.

When we arrive at Richmond, I can't believe how different the gym looks. It has become a palace. The tables in the gym each have centerpieces with flowers floating in water. There is a photo backdrop with white pillars on each side and a fake staircase that looks like you can really walk up it. Music spills onto the dance floor, overflowing from the DJ's
turntables. There are bodies all over bodies dancing and splashing in the sound waves.

Malachi, Ronnie, and Roberto are standing against the wall, looking too cool to dance, so we girls are on the dance floor together. Across the room, I see Devin dancing with Cynthia. I close my eyes and move to the beat.

We dance for three songs straight, but then a song comes on that none of us like, so Nikki and Essence persuade Ronnie and Malachi to get in line for pictures before they sweat out their hair.

Roberto, Kate, and I sit at a table with a few other girls who are giving their feet a break. Two girls I've never seen before come up to us. One has short red hair, the other, long gold curls. “Kate?”

They flock around Kate, who screams, “Oh, my God, what are you doing here?” She jumps up and hugs each of them.

The redhead says, “We came with them.” She points over to Vince and Bags.

“Duh!” Kate says. “I forgot you went out with Vince.”

Vince has a girlfriend? I feel sorry for her.

Kate introduces her St. Francis friends. The redhead seems nice. But Goldilocks barely acknowledges the rest of us. She sits down and starts gossiping with Kate. “I have to tell you the new news,” she says. She
dishes out all the scoop about St. Francis—which teachers are sleeping with each other, which students are using, who's had an abortion. She tells us how some sophomore at St. Francis got busted for drugs being in his locker. Apparently he'd been dealing at their school for the past two years.

I wonder why
that
didn't make the news.

“Hey, where's Tony?” Goldilocks asks. She stretches her neck out like an ostrich. The redhead joins her, standing on the tips of her toes like a ballerina.

“I see him! I see him!” Goldilocks yells. She is blushing and starts smiling and fixing her hair. “Oh, my God, Kate. Your brother is so hot.”

Kate stands and waves him over. I turn and look behind me. Tony is walking toward us. Goldilocks is right. Tony looks good. And he's not even dressed up. He's in jeans and a T-shirt. Everything inside me trembles.

When Tony gets to the table, he only looks at me, as if no one else is sitting at the table, like he doesn't even know those other girls. “Will you come outside with me?” Tony asks.

Goldilocks looks completely annoyed that he didn't speak to her.

Kate smiles and gives me a reassuring look. I smile back at her.

Tony and I walk outside. I can hear the music
from inside vibrating the walls. One of my favorite songs. Tony stops just past the front door to the gym and turns to me. “I told my dad.”

I don't say anything. Not because I don't want to, I just can't find the right words.

“Look, I know things are—”

I don't let Tony finish. I pull him close to me, and we kiss and hold each other. I know this doesn't mean things will be perfect, but I also know that this is what I want.

I hear the door open and close, then open and close again, and my lips don't pull away from his. The door opens once more and someone calls my name.

“Maya?”

I know that voice.

“Maya?”

It's Nikki.

The next morning, I am up before the sun.

I stay in bed for a while, wishing I could fast forward through the explaining I'm going to have to do for the next couple of days. But I know I can't stay under these covers all day, so I get out of bed, shower, and go downstairs.

Dad is sitting at the dining room table drinking coffee and eating a toasted bagel. He starts his days early and always with caffeine. “How was it last night?” he asks. “Did Tony show up like I told him to?”

“What?” I sit next to Dad. “You talked to Tony?”

“I saw him sitting on his porch looking lovesick and pathetic. I've worked with young men for decades now. I know that look.”

I can't help but smile at that part. I take half of his bagel and smother it with cream cheese.

“I asked him why he didn't take my beautiful daughter to the winter formal.”

“How did you know about us?”

“I know everything,” Dad says. He smiles and drinks from his mug.

“Dad—”

“I. Know. Everything,” he repeats.

I laugh. And all I can say is, “Thank you.”

“You don't ever have to hide things from us,” Dad says. “And, you know, you can't control everything, Maya.”

“Especially not my heart.”

“Or anyone else's.” Dad looks at me, and I look away because I don't want to cry. “If Nikki doesn't want to go to Spelman, you can't make her feel guilty about that. She has the right to change, Maya. So do you.”

I lay my head on Dad's shoulder.

Dad hands me the other half of his bagel.

When Nikki comes into the kitchen, Dad gets up from the table and goes to the family room.

Nikki went out with Ronnie and the rest of the crew last night after the dance so we haven't talked at all yet.

She passes me without saying good morning and
goes straight into the kitchen. I can't see her, but I hear cereal pouring into a bowl, the opening of the fridge, a long pause, the pouring of milk, and the door of the fridge closing. A chair scrapes the kitchen floor, and I can tell that Nikki is sitting at the island.

I just want to get it over with so I start talking, not getting up from the dining room table, thinking maybe talking in separate rooms will ease the tension of a face-to-face conversation. “I'm sorry I lied to you, Nikki.”

All I hear from her is the crunching of cereal.

Her spoon clanks against the bowl.

A full minute passes.

And then she says, “Why did you think you couldn't tell me?”

“I was going to. But—” I stop myself from making excuses. “I was ashamed. I was mad at myself for liking him. I mean, he's the guy who benefits from Essence having to move. How can I love him? And things at school have been so crazy. I just, I— Look, there's no good reason,” I say.

I hear Nikki's chair rake the floor again, and then footsteps. She comes into the dining room. She just stares at me but at least we're in the same room.

“I'm sorry I lied, okay? But it took me a while to even admit it to myself. I was afraid—”

“Of what?” Nikki yells. “What could you possibly be afraid of?”

“Afraid that Tony would change me like Kate has changed you!”

With these words, I have officially ruined any chance of this being a kiss-and-make-up conversation. My words spill out of me by accident, like when someone knocks over a cup. They splash into the room, and I'm afraid that they will leave permanent stains on our relationship.

“What are you talking about? I haven't changed,” Nikki says. “Just because I've made new friends doesn't mean I'm not the same person.” Nikki goes back into the kitchen. “You really need to get over the fact my best friend is white.”

Best? I've always been Nikki's best. And Essence has always been
our
best. I walk into the kitchen.

“How can you have a problem with me being Kate's friend when you're dating her brother?”

I get a glass out of the cabinet and hold it up to the refrigerator, pressing it against the water dispenser. “Look, Nikki, Tony is not changing me—not for the worse. He's not asking me to take him to Popeyes for
soul food
, and he's not surprised that I don't love hip-hop. He's not prancing me around—his new black friend—like I'm a trophy or something.”

“Yeah, but he's hiding you. And that makes him better?”

I drink a sip of water. “I'm the one who didn't want anyone to know.”

“You know, nobody cares if Maya Younger dates a white boy but you. Race doesn't matter anymore,” Nikki says. “And for the record, I'm not mad that you're with Tony, a white boy. I'm upset because you lied about it.”

“You can say all you want that race doesn't matter, but the reaction to those posters that hang on our school walls says it does, and Principal Green's over-compensation to make the white kids feel included says it does.” I am yelling even though I am trying not to. I pause only to catch my breath. “And the difference between Tony and me is that we talk about these things. We address them. You and Kate want to function in this love-sees-no-color world, but if your friends don't see your color, then they don't see you. Because black is who you are, Nikki. And it matters.”

I have a bad habit of always wanting the last word. I keep talking even though I know I should just apologize and walk away. “I like Kate, I do. I mean, she's actually grown on me. But really, it seems like every question she asks is about you being black, not about you being you.”

Nikki stands up and washes her bowl. Her back is
to me, and we don't speak to each other for a while. The running water swallows the room's silence. “Sometimes I just want to exist, Maya. I can admit that Kate is annoying sometimes. But she's not racist. She's not asking us questions to be mean,” Nikki says. “But the store clerks? Those people who watch me while I'm shopping in
their
stores—those are the people who get me. Okay, so maybe it matters. I get it. It's just exhausting to always have to respond to it.” Nikki turns to me. “You know people call
you
the black one.”

“Huh?”

“When people ask how do you tell the Younger twins apart, people say, ‘Maya is the one who acts black. Nikki acts white,'” Nikki tells me. “And the first time I heard that, I confronted the person, made it a big deal. But then I just ignored them. Just kept being me. I'm not saying I'm right—it's just my way of dealing with things. I can't care too much. It, it—”

“Hurts.”

“Yeah.” Nikki sits next to me at the island. “I go to those stores because it's my way of standing up to it all, of telling them—and myself—that I belong, that I deserve this kind of stuff, too. Most times, it's not a problem, but I have definitely walked into one of the boutiques or restaurants on Jackson and felt people staring. Kate and I have gone places where
the store clerk speaks only to her, helps only her. And I guess I could shop somewhere else, but I go because this is my neighborhood and I'm not going to hide. If they want to be here, then they're going to have to see me, learn how to interact with me.”

There is silence again. Nikki's index finger traces invisible shapes on the island marble. I untwist and retwist my hair. Untwist and retwist.

“Am I a hypocrite?” I ask.

“You're a black girl who fell in love with a white boy.”

“And a black girl who cares about race and class issues.”

Nikki leans back in the chair. “You can be both.”

Mom tells me, “Some people will like you and some won't. What's more important is: Do you like yourself?”

I've been keeping that in mind today. I hear her saying it to me as I take Tony's hand and walk down senior hall.

There are stares and whispers, but we just keep walking. I don't let go of his hand.

Team One is sitting in The Lounge complaining to Mrs. Armstrong about how we don't want to go to the diversity assembly.

“Why not?” Mrs. Armstrong puts her teacher voice on, like she doesn't already know why, like she is in support of the assembly. But I know that she and a few other teachers tried to get Principal Green to change his mind and have our annual black history celebration.

Tony, Charles, and I all look at one another trying to figure out who is going to answer her. Star won't make eye contact. She is giving her hand a tattoo with her blue marker. I am peeling an orange.

Charles speaks, telling all the reasons why we should go with tradition. And Tony adds our new
idea about inviting Richmond alums as guest performers and speakers.

“All good reasons,” Mrs. Armstrong says. “And I love your plan to bring alumni here.” Mrs. Armstrong staples together sheets of paper, making the handouts for her next class. “So it seems you all want the same thing as Principal Green.”