Читать книгу THE CORNER BETWEEN MY LIFE AND HERS - Tina Medley-Galloway - Страница 4

When you’re from the south people expect you to have a certain “twang” when you talk—a distinctive dialect distinguishing your upbringing and locality. I never possessed such a “twang,” my father made sure of it.

“It’s too cliched”, he would tell my mother, “makes them assume you’re a nigger.”

My mother horrified by the word would gasp—eyes wide and mouth open.

“Don’t use words like that, Arun. That word is filthy.”

“No,” he would say “it’s a description. A label but it no more applies to a race of people than the word trailer trash.”

She would gasp again, this time covering her ears with her hands shaking her head in disagreement.

“It’s filthy, like calling a woman a bitch.”

When she would say this he would smile and respond, “I agree bitch is a filthy word.”

I was always sitting next to her at the dinner table, silent from the adult nature of the conversation but taking in every word.

My father was aware—a realist. He went to school in the south and loved the south but he was also alert to the fact that the good ole boys were still alive and well, maybe not wearing sheets but less obvious means of oppression. He had experienced it, it grew within him instigated him to succeed but untraditionally—he was nontraditional in his thinking. This way of thinking made him a threat and an enemy to many—those that thought it was too much for a black man to think so much of himself. Nevertheless, my father never knew the south as a place who denied slaves their freedoms; it was a land of opportunity for him.

The kind of oppression that my father was more closely connected to—the kind he fought against was not based on skin color but “class-ism”—a prejudice based on social status and income bracket. My mother never understood this; she was from the lowest of classes imaginable. She was used to indifferent glances from the children who frequented the town of her birth from June until August, when school was out and the island was on fire. These seasonal dwellers moved throughout the island oblivious that life existed apart from and without them, like the town packed up and displayed a closed for business sign throughout the winter months. Months, that her father would pitilessly search for odd jobs to keep the lights on and some food available for his two beautiful fair skinned daughters. Daughters, that he hoped would one day figure out how to hop on the back of one of those grand SUV’s leaving town for the summer and never come back—leaving behind that pseudo oceanfront paradise.

I only visited the beach a few times in my life, mostly when my father would initiate the chance to watch the waves crash as a tourist and not as a local. He would walk my mother and me to the shoreline, looking back at our oceanfront hotel and say “this is how it looks to everyone else.” These comments were intended for my mother rather than me, so she would smile but the look of fear and shame, and longing remained in her eyes—throughout dinner—throughout the ride home.

My aunt never took us to the beach. I never made it back to the beach until many years later when a beautiful woman (how cliched) asked me to accompany her on a deeply arousing skinny dipping trip.

During this trip, she asked me, “Why are you afraid of the ocean?”

I said, “Because I can’t swim.”

She said, “But we aren’t even that far out, there is no need to swim.”

I did not have a reply for her. I did not really know why I was afraid of the ocean but whenever I thought of it, I could imagine my mother’s eyes wide like saucers—fear erupting like a volcano of memories. The beach always gave me an unsettled feeling, like I did not really belong there. These are the same feelings that came bottled up on the shelf and sold for .99 cents throughout my entire life. I purchased that bottle often, if not daily, for the rest of my life.

I was not born of extravagant means or of extraordinary occurrence. Life began rather calmly for me on a cold November night in Charlotte, NC. My father serenely drove my mother, who had announced that her water broke just minutes before, to Charlotte General Hospital. She was quickly checked in and insisted on natural childbirth. Five hours later, I was born. Lillie, my mother, thought I was a child of God because of the brevity of her birth pangs. She imagined me as a future leader of the church, a saved man. She imagined me much like my father, a strong Christian. I turned out to be neither.

Arun, my father, was the pastor of a small non-denominational church (part Christian, part “Arun”) in Charlotte. His congregation of 35, along with a smattering of relatives my parents still kept in contact with, gathered in the lobby of Charlotte General’s maternity ward waiting for the news of my birth. Relatives told me later that my father walked through the double doors of the waiting area—his head tilted downward and his eyes fixated on the glassy white marble floor. Everyone stared at him, afraid to ask if the birth was a success. His facial movements were ambivalent, but his demeanor solemn. He paused for effect before smiling a broad smile, clasping his hands together high above his head in delayed applause and shouted, “It’s a boy. Jeremy Rose.” It was a fitting beginning.

I have scattered memories of my mother and father, deposits of places and times that we shared—vestiges of my father’s voice and my mother’s smile—in my head. Warm thoughts dance throughout my mind of our southern style home with ivy growing up the brick walls that held our lives together. Music often accompanied these memories—Jazz—Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis with starts and stops of Frank Sinatra and Lena Horne. I remember the stops more than the starts.

On my tenth birthday, my parents died in a tragic car accident. They were driving on the interstate from Washington DC back to Charlotte. My father, the guest speaker at a religious seminar, was too tired to drive from multiple speaking engagements. My mother always slept in the passenger’s side during those long road trips. I was told he did not notice the tractor-trailer swerving lanes, obviously lacking rest or experience. The crash was an intermingling of steel and blood on the side of Interstate 85. I had been at home watching cartoons that Saturday morning; a teenage neighbor was hired to baby-sit me for the weekend.

The shattering news of their death was first given to my Aunt Glenda, then she to me. It made sense that Glenda was told first. She was an adult and my closest family member. I had no siblings. She was my mother’s only sister, a member of my father’s church and one of the few family members (thankfully) who did not interpret my father’s dedication as harsh and unyielding. He would spend hours upon hours shut up in his upstairs study, preparing sermons for Sunday service or discourses for various religious seminars and organizations. My mother was often found sitting by the fireplace crocheting or listening to old Jazz records waiting for him to emerge from his study. He would come down late in the night and I would hear them whispering in the dark. My memories never included exactly what they were saying.

My father was not born in the United States but rather in Ethiopia, in the city of Addis Ababa. His birth mother (I never knew her name), died during childbirth, and his father (I never knew his name either), died just one year after of “unknown causes.” An American family of “dignitaries” (as they liked to be referred to as) also lived temporarily in Addis Ababa. The wife, Karen Rose, occasionally volunteered at the orphanage where my father was sent after his father’s death.

Karen, my grandmother, took a liking to my father, preferring his smooth Hershey chocolate skin, curly hair, and almond-shaped eyes to the other young children in the orphanage. He was a happy baby, smiling often, displaying his lifelong premature laugh lines. The Roses eventually adopted my father at the age of four and moved back to the United States, Washington DC.

Upon adoption, they shortened my father’s more formal African name to Arun to ease in his acclimation to American life and culture. They didn’t have any other children, and by the time I was born, my father had isolated himself from his family so much due to his staunch religious beliefs (The Gospel According to Arun being one of his favorite books) and his refusal to practice Law, my mother was the only family I knew my father to have.

From pictures, you would think that my mother and father’s families shared many things in common since they were both white. In reality though, my mother was born into a poor family in the Northern part of North Carolina—a stone’s throw from the barrier islands that made up the Outer Banks. The town she was raised in, Kitty Hawk was made famous by The Wright Brothers who had made their first airplane flights there in 1903. At that time, Kitty Hawk had 3,000 residents and 99% of them were white. The majority of the town lived modestly but were not considered poor. My mother was a part of the 4% below the poverty level.

For most of her childhood, my mother lived in moldy unclean trailers, her parents working odd jobs (cleaning boats, cleaning large oceanfront vacation homes) to sustain the family, while my father lived in a large meticulously kept brick home in an expensive and prestigious part of Washington DC (Georgetown). His father (Christopher Rose) maintained an impressive title working for the United Nations and had held several leadership positions within the Peace Corps. Christopher, who was known throughout Washington DC and New York for his stand on equal rights and programs to aid in peace relations with African nations, possessed several advanced degrees and awards of achievement. Many times I would hear family members refer to my father as “just like his old man,” or “chip off the old block.” I imagined that Christopher was also a strong man. I never really knew though, I had no frame of reference.

My father met my mother while studying at The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill). My mother had gone on a full scholarship to study education and my father was studying Law. I heard it told many times as a love story—the highly intelligent African student (anomaly) met his southern small town white princess. Lillie was drawn to my father’s tall stature and engaging personality; she loved to listen to him, his voice powerful and intoxicating. She often said she knew from the moment she met him that he would be somebody special one day. He was so different from the boys she had grown up with in Kitty Hawk. He loved her innocence and naivete. They spent every minute together. Him talking about his dreams and hopes for the world; her listening—the physical representation of those hopes glued to his every word. He was strong in opinion, desire. Lillie was not, but with him, she did not have to be; he was enough for them both. My father, known for being an overachiever, completed a Law degree and a PhD in Divinity at UNC-Chapel Hill.

It was while finishing his last year at UNC that my father began questioning the religious teachings of his youth. He would tell me many times that his parents, who were Lutheran in name only, sent him to Sunday School to learn about God and the Bible and it was there that he learned the most about religion. Growing up though, he never questioned his father about why he had sent him to Sunday school when his daily actions belied his claim to believe in God. It was not until that last year of school that he finally decided to “open the book” and “look closer at what God was really telling him.” Therefore, after he completed his PhD, he decided to take the money that his father had given him as a graduation present and move his new family to Charlotte. It was here in Charlotte that he brought his new take on Christianity and religion to the masses. His acceptance was slow, but at the time of his death, his teachings were gaining attention and his congregation growing incrementally.

From family accounts, I had heard that others felt he would hold his titles over them, feeling that this superior knowledge gave him the right. Maybe he was much like Christopher in that way, taught to give excessive importance to the acquiring of station and prominence. I never thought of him in that way; he was brilliant, sparkling like the radiance of the sun. For a young boy, you did not realize shortcomings and errors; you did not see any of those things. All you saw was a man dreaming to make the impossible, possible. I saw someone who others respected, who they looked up to and admired. I remembered looking at him, his Sunday sermons full of fire and luminosity. I would always remember him like that. Even after he died, his image always stood tall, erect.

After the sudden death of my parents, I went to live with my Aunt Glenda and her two sons, Andres and Christian. Their house was not far from the house I grew up in. It was two streets down in the same town. In the eyes of those who knew closely the demographics of town, the two streets that separated my aunt’s house from the house of my parent’s might as well have been oceans from each other, separating one social class from another. Overall, though, it was as easy a transition as possible for a ten-year-old boy who had just lost both of his parents in death. The house was a small modest brick residence surrounded by other small modest brick residences. There were three bedrooms; I moved into the room with my oldest cousin Andres. To accommodate our new arrangement, Glenda bought us rusty bunk beds (from a yard sale). My cousin Christian (the youngest) was still wetting the bed, so I preferred to sleep in the room with Andres. If Andres minded a new roommate, he never let on.

Andres took the top bunk and “graciously” gave me the bottom bunk. He would often keep me up at night, annoyingly shifting his body weight against the decaying metal bed frame. The corroded metal would clang together producing an overwhelmingly bothersome screeching sound. To my knowledge, it seemed that Andres was oblivious to these sounds, often accompanying the screech with his own orchestral reverberation of loud intense snoring. In the mornings, Glenda would wait for us boys in the dated, but-homey kitchen with a fresh offering of orange juice and undercooked eggs at the breakfast table. She would give me a knowing look; she saw my heavy eyelids and blood-tinged eyes.

During these nights, I would stare at the ceiling counting imaginary sheep per Glenda’s instructions. That never really produced anything except invented stories in my head that resulted in even longer periods of insomnia. On one particular day, Andres having snored relentlessly the night before, I came to the breakfast table moody, despondent and in desperate need of TLC. Glenda noticed, giving me two runny undercooked eggs instead of my usual one. She was always chipper in the mornings, for what I could never really wrap my head around.

“How was your sleep last night Jeremy?” Was her upbeat greeting.

She had gotten into a habit of singling me out in the mornings since none of the other boys suffered from the same acute lack of rest as I did.

I mumbled, “Fine.” I grabbed a biscuit to sop up the excess egg yoke.

Andres snickered and I shot him a deadly look. At that moment, I wondered: Was his nighttime torture on purpose? Before then I had never really considered that this could be a cruel and sinister plot against me by Andres, but his snicker made me question his motives.

“When did you get to sleep last night? I walked by the room at 2am and your light was still on,” Glenda asked.

I heard her footsteps the previous night outside of the bedroom door, knowing that she would probably question me this morning for the light being on. I had turned the light on at 12:30am when I realized that Andres’s snoring was not letting up anytime soon. By 2am, I was immersed in my well-worn Spider Man comic book.

“He was reading that damn comic book again,” Andres grunted.

“Don’t say damn,” was Glenda’s quick reply. She had a knack for singling out the “swear” words in a sentence. She quickly followed up by saying, “Go get ready for school.” The comment was directed toward no one in particular and all of us at the same time. All three of us boys jumped up quickly to get ready for school.

That night when I had returned to my room, I noticed a bright red notebook on my bottom bunk with a perfectly penned stick it note attached. The note read:

“Jeremy, write down your thoughts in the notebook at night. It will help you sleep. Love Glenda”

Thus began my nighttime ritual of writing sleep deprived, incoherent doodles before bed, and my subsequent obsession with self-expression with words.

Before my parent’s death, I spent time with my cousins (Andres and Christian), but I could never really say we were close. Most of our previous experiences were spent—me curled in a ball at the base of the chair my mother sat in when her and Glenda would drink coffee and chat about “family business”—listening intently. I was never made to go outside and play stick ball with the boys or watch cartoons on the television. I seriously believed I possessed a wisdom that far exceeded the age and intellect of my cousins. After we all moved in together, the same patterns continued.

Andres and I were close in age, sharing a room for years, but that was where the closeness ended. Christian was the baby, five years my junior. He often walked around, thumb in mouth, a sad somber look on his face. I could vaguely remember him talking at the breakfast table before school or laughing at a television program. He was a silent inaudible child. It was not until I became much older that I realized that maybe he had a lot bottled inside, he was just afraid to say it.

Andres was the opposite—tall, athletic, handsome, and talkative (even though most of what he said I regarded as garbage). Christian and I grew up around him instead of with him. He consumed the house with his conquests. His football trophies dominated the mantle above the non-working wood burning fireplace. Newspaper clippings of his spectacular feats covered the old white Maytag refrigerator door. My aunt, a deeply religious woman, believed that every pass he caught, that every defender he defeated defined his special favor by God. She required that the three of us attend church services every Sunday and special Bible class on Wednesday nights.

We were known in our neighborhood as the three attractive, well-mannered boys, walking slowly every Sunday and Wednesday in bow ties and freshly pressed overly starched light brown khakis behind the heavyset stringy haired white woman to church. Once Andres’s football schedule became too demanding during the week, he was allowed to skip the Wednesday class. Christian and I were not; we continued our ritual obediently and without question. I guess we needed extra time with God since we were obviously not blessed by him.

I would sit in those church services doodling stories in my notebook. Glenda glanced over from time to time, imagining that I was taking notes on the sermon. She would flash an approving smile and nod her head in recognition. I would look back at her, grateful for her naiveté and continued my doodling. Andres would sit with his arms folded staunchly across his chest, counting down the minutes and seconds until the Amen was said and we could leave. He would bolt for the door every Sunday and hang out in front of the church after services with some of the other naysayers who were also required to attend. They wore obvious looks of disgust and belittlement on their faces making it a point to say at least one sarcastic comment each time to passersby.

One of the naysayers was Kyle Adamson. Kyle lived down the street from us. His father, Pastor Adamson (I never knew his first name), took up the position of minister after my father died (preaching that he was continuing his legacy). Kyle and Andres were both on the football team, avidly working out and practicing throughout the week together. I also knew Kyle to be obnoxious, arrogant, and completely free of any moral limitations at all. Kyle would kill animals in the neighborhood and call it fun. He would grab the breasts of younger girls in church and dare them to tell their parents. He was notoriously reprehensible. Andres loved him. They would stand outside of church on Sunday daring any of the other more reverent children to cross them. Moreover, when that happened, they would humiliate you in front of their legions of admirers. I had been the victim of their venom once or twice. Once I realized that this had become a way for them to subliminally derogate the church and those in it, I chose to stay inside with Glenda after services. It was my way to reduce any backlash from my generally quiet reclusive ways, which Andres and Kyle did not understand nor even attempt to.

Kyle and Andres would often say that I was “kissing up” to Glenda and the other adults at church because of my disinterest in spending time torturing the younger patrons. In my mind, it was not “kissing up,” but more a place of comfort. Being an only child, this new dynamic of family was unknown to me. I was shy and introverted; the idea of opening myself up to another’s impressions of me seemed daunting. Sometimes though, when Glenda would notice if I was spending too much time in the back pew subconsciously listening to church gossip and affairs, she would encourage me to go play with the other children. When she would strongly persuade me to go outside and play, I would comply, going out the back entrance. I never wanted to go out the front entrance because I knew that Andres and Kyle were outside waiting for some unsuspecting prey to come into their paths. A few other children were also shrewd enough to also go out the back entrance. One such person was Eve Newmont.

Eve Newmont was the darling of the church. I called her that because she was, to most of the adult church members, the walking epitome of what a southern church girl should look like, with her perfectly coiffed long black ponytails and immaculate department store dresses, accented by unmarked white patent Buster Brown leather dress shoes. Her father was a lawyer and her mother a middle school teacher. Eve had two much older twin brothers (she was 13 and they were 19), who had left the home for college recently. This left only Eve at home, so I understood her elitist attitude toward the other children who were not blessed to be the sole focus of their parents attention. At one point I had also been that child, but now (no fault of Glenda’s, she did the best she could), I was one of three instead of one of one.

Eve took a strange liking to me right away and when I would run into her hanging around the back entrance to church she would always say “hi” and ask, “What I was writing in my notebook?” Eve being a girl, I didn’t think she would understand the over-sized super hero faces I was drawing or the short stories about Captain Hero and his ascent to planet Krypton. Thus, I never showed her my notebook and she never asked more than once. Eve was talkative and would dominate most conversations about stories of her two older brothers; most sentences started the same way, “Josh and Ronnie said.” I had never met Josh or Ronnie since they had never come to the church, which according to Eve, was because they didn’t believe anything Arun said. When Eve first said this, I felt a twinge of volcanic anger brewing within me, but after hearing, her repeat the same mindless words repeatedly my senses dulled to her comments. I started to realize that they weren’t her thoughts, and she was just a young impressionable puppet repeating the words of two jock-strapped morons.

On Eve’s thirteenth birthday, her parents hosted a party in her honor. When Arun and Lillie were alive, I was often invited to these types of events as an excuse for parents to invite my father to their homes. After their death, my invitations waned drastically (I didn’t mind though). Surprisingly this year I received an invitation, hand delivered by Eve herself to our front door step. Her mother, an eagle faced olive skinned women, sat in the blue Buick outside our home while Eve explained to me what time to arrive and what to wear to this event. She also made a point to mention that Andres and Kyle were not invited (she didn’t mention Christian at all and I didn’t ask). I noticed the special delight she took in relaying those conditions to me, the twinkle in her eye when she over emphasized NOT INVITED. The church had a way of instilling an either “you are with us or you are against us” attitude in regular attendees. Overtime, I noticed this way of thinking infiltrate the character of even the most staunchly nonconformist of personalities. Glenda stood back behind the doorway listening to our interchange, every so often bringing attention to her presence with a cough or a clearing of the throat. Eve always acted mature beyond her thirteen years and so successfully ignored Glenda during most of the conversation but made it a point to say, “Have a nice day ma’am” before turning and leaving.

Eve’s mother must have been relieved when she finally saw Eve emerge from our home because she gave Glenda a fast flick of the hand in good-bye and drove off (she obviously had other homes to visit and limited time for chatting). I didn’t know what to make of the invitation, not entirely sure if I even wanted to attend. I liked Eve but could barely call her a friend. I wasn’t sure what other children would be at this party since Eve was also a bit of a loner. Her parents on the other hand were social butterflies of the church. I imagined that most of the other attendees would be children of friends of Eve’s parents; I may be the only person Eve personally invited or wanted to invite. Glenda must have been thinking the same thing because she brought it up that night at the dinner table (which also required mandatory attendance).

I had just devoured my helping of stewed chicken with undercooked rice (most things Glenda made were undercooked). Andres sat across from me making sure to load up on as much protein as possible. Christian, well he was typical Christian, happily eating his food in silence.

“So Jeremy was invited to a birthday party this weekend.” She made the comment casually in a very matter of fact way.

I was just about to ask to be excused from the dinner table but with that sank back further into my chair, preparing myself for the next sentences.

Andres spoke first. “Whose birthday?” He wore a look of puzzlement on his face probably mentally indexing the dates of all the IMPORTANT people’s birthdays.

“Eve Newmont,” Glenda replied.

I waited patiently for Andres insulting comment but none were forthcoming. We sat in silence for a minute then Glenda spoke again, “So we will need to get you something to wear tomorrow. I don’t want you going to the Newmont’s looking homeless.”

Glenda was a stickler on the dress of young boys. She felt khakis required extra amounts of starch in the ironing process or they just weren’t “professional looking.” She also felt that you weren’t dressed unless you wore a bow tie. I hated bow ties, the way they made my neck feel imprisoned by cotton and small amounts of twisted metal. I secretly wished for the day when I could toss bow ties from my wardrobe. For now though, I knew a freshly starched pair of khakis and a nice new bow tie were in my immediate future.

“May I be excused?” I asked hoping to cut this conversation short. I pushed my chair back quickly creating a scraping noise against the severely aged hardwood floors. Glenda was not ready to end the conversation but instead of addressing my question, she just continued talking about things that none of us were interested in. I focused my attentions on the charcoal-looking ceiling fan in the adjacent living area. The only thing I really heard after her ten minutes of ramblings about the Newmont’s and how they only invited people they liked to their home, was that tomorrow we would go to the local Salvation Army store to look for a “new” dress shirt and khakis for me.

Andres excused himself first in the middle of one of Glenda’s sentences, claiming that he forgot he needed to call a teammate to get a ride for practice tomorrow night (practice was on Wednesday and everyone else in the family had bible class that night). Glenda nodded approval at his departure and then settled her attention on me (Christian still sitting there picking at his chicken bones).

“So are you excited?” She asked me.

“No,” I said. I wasn’t, I didn’t even know if I really wanted to attend, but knew that Glenda would not allow me to NOT attend given that the event was being held at the Newmont’s home and she had never been invited there herself. Andres though knew of Eve’s two older brothers who were known in school as beating all of the track and field records as well as being superb soccer players. He didn’t make any additional comments at the table, but later that night he questioned me about the upcoming festivities.

“Excited? He asked when I had settled into my bunk that night.

“About what?” I was caught off guard having forgotten about Eve Newmont and her birthday party hours ago.

“The party. You know that silly girl’s party?” I knew Andres knew her name as well as her brother’s name but in obvious mock disregard for them or their importance, he casually “forgot” her name. This was typical Andres, not interested in acknowledging anyone as important but himself.

“Not really.” I paused. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Is she like, your girlfriend?” Andres, who at this point was laid out on the top bunk, looked down at me with a smirk on his face. He was obviously inferring that Eve and I were in some way attached. This was furthest from my feeble mind; I was still stuck on Spider Man and his supremacy over Batman. Girls—and especially me linked to a girl—were furthest from my thoughts.

The rumor around school and church was that Andres and Kyle both had girlfriends. Andres was “linked” supposedly to Stephanie Kramer, a long raven-haired senior. Kyle was supposedly dating Emily Myers who had left for college earlier that year. Emily was also a member of our church but hadn’t been back to Charlotte in months since she’d left for college in September. I say supposedly in reference to both Kyle and Andres’s relationships because I never really saw them do anything with these girls except an occasional trip to the movies or school dance. Therefore, I didn’t understand what the big deal was with claiming to have a girlfriend.

“No, she is not my girlfriend. I don’t even know why she invited me.” I was being honest. I still questioned Eve’s invite to her birthday party but didn’t dwell on it too long.

“Seems like she wants to be your girlfriend.”

I ignored Andres’s comment and turned off the lights. I could hear Glenda’s steps outside the door and didn’t want her to come into the room and continue this conversation.

The next day after school, Glenda had placed two dress shirts on the lower bunk and a semi-worn pair of green khakis. She made it a point to mention to me that green khakis were “all the rage” in Kitty Hawk when she was growing up and only worn by the truly wealthy and elite. She showed me the label, “Ralph Lauren,” which was supposed to mean something significant to me but did not.

“These are nice pants. Eve’s brothers wear Ralph Lauren,” she told me after forcing me to try them on several times with a variety of bow ties. She settled on the green khakis with a white dress shirt and a striped green bow tie. I looked at myself in the mirror and admitted subconsciously that I did like the look. I usually wore the same color khakis (brown) so the green was a new twist. Glenda also insisted on cutting my hair with the flowbie that she had just recently purchased at the dollar general store. The flowbie created an uneven and alternative hairline, but was better than the unruly curls that had grown recently from my lack of grooming.

After she had completed her “makeover,” she took a step back taking in the whole scene. She stood looking at me for minutes without words and I could see a tear forming in her left eye.

“What’s wrong?” I asked questioning how my haircut could be the cause of tears.

“You just remind me so much of your father,” she said wiping the tear from her eye with a crumpled swatch of tissue. I felt an uneasy knot developing in my stomach but didn’t feel any tears forthcoming. I had cried often when my parents first died, afraid that if I went to sleep I would somehow wake up and realize that I had never known them and they were just a dream. I would realize that Glenda was my real mother and that Lillie and Arun had never really existed, I had somehow imagined that I had these above average, almost above-human parents (especially father). I was so afraid to sleep that I would stay up most nights. Eventually those thoughts passed, but I don’t think the fear ever really did. At this moment though, staring at Glenda’s teary eyes, I was astonished that no tears formed at the mention of my parents.

I didn’t say anything when Glenda mentioned my parents, but the thoughts stayed with me even later when everyone had retired to sleep. I tossed and turned repeatedly and my insomnia started to kick in. Andres seemed to be sleeping extra hard that night, the result of exhaustion from extensive football practice and the stagnant air conditioning, snoring louder it seemed than even humanly possible. It wasn’t the snoring though that kept me from sleeping that night. It was the “fear.” It had returned just from the mere mention of my parents by Glenda earlier that day. It was on that day that I promised myself I would somehow make my parents proud of me. I would—how I didn’t know—carry on the Rose name in a manner that my father would be proud of. I would somehow make our name respected like it had once been when they were alive, and not like now, where they were just thought of as a memory and not as real living human beings with a physical presence. After counting about a billion sheep, I finally drifted off to sleep, but not before pulling out the pictures of my parents from beneath my mattress and crying what seemed like a million silent tears.

Glenda was sure to wake me up early the next day to prepare for Eve’s birthday party, which started at noon. Andres was already up, sitting at the kitchen table buttering his bagel and humming mumbled tunes to himself. Christian had gotten up early that morning to help Pastor Adamson clean the church lawn with another group of young boys.

Glenda presented me with the offering of the newly washed and pressed green khakis she had me try on the day before. They smelled of cheap laundry detergent, three sprays of starch, and the lingering burning tang of the iron. I took the khakis and went to take a shower and get dressed. Andres must have noticed that the khakis were green and Ralph Lauren (something he did not see the day before). He was lying on the top bunk when I emerged from the bathroom; the pants that I had strategically laid out on my bunk were now on the floor in a crumpled pile. I didn’t say anything, just picked them up, and placed them back on my bed. I was not going to comment on Andres’s rudeness but he forced me to by bringing it up.

“Nice pants dude.” He was such an ass sometimes.

“I know,” was my reply. I was also an ass at times.

“No, I’m serious. Ralph Lauren.” He said this like I knew who that was and really cared. I just smiled and picked them up with the dress shirt and went to the bathroom to change. I came out about ten minutes later, impressed even with myself when I glanced in the cracked oval mirror above the bathroom sink. I could see the resemblance between my father and myself. I could also see my mother in me, her nose, and lips. This was only a split second though of introspection because Glenda was already knocking on the bathroom door asking me if I was ready to go. I turned and looked at myself one last time before I left.

When we arrived at the Newmont’s home, I remembered visiting here before with my father. Eve lived on the lake—large custom-built homes with manicured palm trees accented by hired landscapers, who trimmed and pruned, twice weekly. Her neighbors all like her, most students of the various prep schools in the area. This was a neighborhood were good southern boys wore deeply pressed khakis with Izod shirts and girls wore vibrant Lily Pulitzer sundresses. All the homes in the subdivision shared a common color scheme, and the rows of houses blended together as we drove down the connecting maze of streets. When Glenda had finally found 1619 Hastings Lane, I was surprised since the house looked like the other 100 houses that we had passed with the exception of the large “CONGRATS EVE” sign on the front lawn. I also noticed the small replica of a frog on the lawn that sprinkled water, Glenda had a similar one (from dollar general), but this seemed out of place on the Newmont’s immaculately kept lawn.

Other families were arriving with children in tow carrying large boxes wrapped in exotic colored gift-wrap. Glenda had purchased a gift for Eve at the dollar general store, but I hadn’t seen it yet. It was wrapped in plain white paper. Glenda parked the car behind the row of other attendees cars and walked with me to the door, carrying the modest-looking gift.

Mrs. Newmont was already standing at the front entrance greeting those that arrived so there wasn’t a need for bell ringing. She noticed my attire right away and commented on it. Glenda beamed, obviously satisfied with her selections. “You’re such a handsome young man, Jeremy. Glenda, you do so well with the boys,” she said while pointing me in the direction of the kitchen where the other kids were. I turned as I walked away, watching Glenda chat with Mrs. Newmont at the front door before waving a goodbye to me and leaving.

I saw Eve sitting at the kitchen table dressed in a white and blue striped sundress with matching white ankle length socks with bows and patent leather dress shoes. She was sitting alone while the other kids milled about around her, a spectator at her own birthday party. It was strange that she wasn’t talking to the other kids. Glenda had told me that I should personally thank Eve for the invitation so I walked over to her. Her face lit up with approval as she noticed me walking toward her.

“You look like my brothers. Like the outfit,” she said when I was within hearing range. I nodded my head knowing that was the look Glenda was after. Obviously it had worked.

“Thanks for inviting me,” I said. She didn’t comment, just grabbed the seat next to her extending an unspoken offer for me to sit with her. I sat down. We sat in silence observing the comings and goings of other party attendees but not actively participating. After about twenty minutes of sitting in silence, the only communication being random children approaching Eve to thank her for the invitation, she turned to me and spoke, “My dad really liked your dad.” She paused and then continued, “He likes that we are friends.” I wanted to say that we never really “talked”. Eve dominated most conversations and even now at her own birthday party I was silent. The words didn’t come, so Eve kept on talking.

“So what are you going to do with your summer?” I hadn’t really thought of it, but it was now May and we would be getting out of school soon for the summer.

“I don’t know, haven’t thought about it,” I replied.

“I’m going to soccer camp for two months,” Eve said.

“Good.” I dangled my legs from the chair nervously. I was not yet tall enough for my feet to touch the floor.

“Maybe you should come to soccer camp too. My dad would pay for it.” Why Eve thought I would want to come to soccer camp was beyond me, and why her dad would pay for me was even stranger.

“Why?” I asked.

Eve was obviously taken aback by my question, her approval changing to an obvious look of disapproval. “Dad says all boys should play sports. He thinks your dad would have wanted you to play soccer. They were friends, you know.”

Yeah, like Eve and I were friends. I knew that Mr. Newmont and my father had spent time together outside of the church, but them being friends was a stretch. I didn’t say anything in response, and Eve continued talking as if ignoring my silence.

“Dad will probably ask your aunt about it.” I knew that Glenda was not open to what she would consider charity, and I so highly doubted that she would even mention the offer of soccer camp by the Newmont’s. I knew that this was how it would turn out because other children and adults had offered “courtesies” to me since my parents died. My parents hadn’t been rich, but we were better off financially then Glenda was since Ralph (her ex husband) left. Other church members, supposed friends of my parents, felt that I should have more “opportunities” than what Glenda was providing. Glenda was a proud woman and would decline most of these offers. She would often say that because she was a single parent people thought us boys were deprived in some way.

The birthday party did end up being semi fun. We played several group games and toward the end of the party, Eve’s parents presented her with a large birthday ice cream cake decorated in pink and white. Eve wore a bright smile on her face and seemed to soak in her parents approval. Just when I was getting bored, Glenda arrived to pick me up. She stood in the doorway for a few minutes, nodding her head in agreement, as Mr. Newmont mouthed words I couldn’t make out. After about twenty minutes of this, she waved for me to come on. When I got to the door, I remembered to say thanks for the invitation to Mr. Newmont who was still standing next to Glenda at the front entrance. He just smiled as Glenda and I left. In the car Glenda shook her head and said more to herself than me, “You know, I think I hate the Newmont’s.” She never said a word after that about what Mr. Newmont said to her nor asked if I enjoyed the party.