After (21 page)

Natalie Houston

13

The boy watches
rap videos by young Black men with names like Nelly, 50 Cent (is that what he thinks he’s worth?), Ludacris (is that a sly judgment on his existence?), Black men in braids and baggy jeans, sleeveless undershirts, and gold chains, bristling with attitude and anger, sublime behind the wheel of Benzes and Land Rovers, driving through ghetto streets, rhyming out loud about casual, incidental murder, death, and destruction of other Black men who look just like them. He loves school and is always prepared in his classes, and he feels deep in his heart the quiet, brave soul of Emily Dickinson and her poems that Miss Cole has them read aloud in her American literature class. He loves the way French rolls off his tongue, how the vowels play like happy children in his mouth, the alphabet,
a, be, de; je ne sais pas
, a concoction of melody and meaning that set his spine tingling.
Je ne sais pas
—how could those words, that
song
, mean “I don’t know”? In algebra the hard, substantial resilience of the equations energizes him.

Art is the only elective he’s got this year. When he opened the door to the classroom on the first day he saw a wall filled with prints and reproductions—Picasso’s
Guernica
, the Mona Lisa, photographs of the pyramid at Giza, an African sculpture of mother and child, a mural by Diego Rivera, a collage by Romare Bearden, a darkly haunting photograph of a man sitting in a bar in Harlem by Roy DeCarava.

His classes are a respite from the raw, unfettered push and pull and tug-of-war to find a place, to become anonymous yet known, invisible yet designated by a group—ghetto fabulous, rock-and-rollers, nerds, preppies, the Whites, the Blacks, the cliques all offering shelter and status. This is high school. Ninth grade. This is what Juwan has told them.

All this, the profane and the beautiful, makes up his son’s world. Negotiable, all relative, Carson thinks, a world without borders, built on quicksand. Carson feels he has been granted a passport into the headquarters of that universe on the day he goes to school for a meeting with the principal, Mr. Mitchell, not about Juwan but to discuss the house he wants to list with Carson. After the meeting Carson decides to walk the wide corridors of the modern school, its wall-high solid glass windows lit with streams of light. He passes “smart rooms” lined with desks with built-in computers. On the second floor he passes the in-progress Black history mural that fills one long wall, protected by scaffolding. Although only a freshman, Juwan has a coveted spot on the project. Carson hears a bell ring, sharp, jarring, the only nostalgic moment in his survey of the school, and there is the cacophony of classroom doors opening, youngsters spilling into the halls.

The fierce, almost strained silence of the moment before is shattered as the sound of bawdy, raucous laughter and conversation surrounds him. There is a blur of backpacks, jeans, braided hair (he can hardly tell the girls from the boys), energetic bodies. Lockers open and slam shut. Teachers stand in the doorways of classrooms, herding the students down the hall from a safe distance. A young blond teacher who looks no older than the kids he passes asks if she can help him.

“I’m looking for my son, Juwan Blake.”

“Sorry, I don’t know him,” she says with a smile. “If you check in the office they can tell you where his next class is.”

“Thanks,” Carson says. He’s not really looking for Juwan, has no desire to surprise and embarrass him by showing up in one of his classes. But since he’s here, it would be nice to see him. Carson checks his watch and sees it’s a quarter to twelve. Juwan told him he has his lunch around this time. Maybe he’ll check the cafeteria, ask one of the kids where it is.

Back on the first floor, Carson is struggling to remember what Juwan wore to school. Just as suddenly as the corridors seemed to overflow with students, they are now emptying. But farther down the hall, near the end of the wall-length line of lockers, he sees two boys walking, arms around each other’s waists. They walk slowly down the hall away from him, dreamily oblivious to the sound of his footsteps behind them. Their hands are fondling their shoulders, grazing their backsides. The sight of this display clenches Carson’s heart in a vise of disgust. These are the last kids on earth he wants to direct him to the cafeteria, but the main office is at the other end of the hall, a hike he figures is unnecessary.

Carson quickens his stride, walking faster to catch the boys. As he nears them, a flood of recognition halts him. He knows the boys, is sure now who they are, he thinks, as at the sound of his encroaching footsteps the boys both turn to look over their shoulders. Juwan moves his arm from Will’s waist, furtive, quick, but too late. “Dad, what are you doing here?” he asks in a husky whisper, his eyes bright with fear.

“What’re you two doing? Why aren’t you in class? What’s going on?” Each question brings Carson closer to the boys, but not close enough to stop Juwan’s sudden desperate bolt down the hallway, dropping his books as he runs out of Carson’s sight.

Will stands his ground, stooping to retrieve Juwan’s books. When he stands up, Carson is at his side. “Keep your hands off my son.” He issues the words slow and harsh, his voice a brutal warning.

Will stares at him, unflinching. “I don’t mean no disrespect, Mr. Blake, but I’m not ashamed of anything. You can’t make me feel that way.”

“Maybe I can’t, but I can keep you out of my house. I can put my boy in another school, one where you won’t be,” Carson says, grabbing Will by the front of his T-shirt. The boy’s light brown eyes are tense and unapologetic as he breaks free of Carson’s grip, pushing Carson away with a strength that reminds Carson of the boy’s youth and vigor, and that he might not prevail in a showdown.

“You don’t know nuthin’ about Juwan. Nuthin’ at all if you think we won’t always be friends,” Will says, his voice smug and hard, the mere sound of it implying an understanding of Juwan that Carson has never dared. “If you think you can tell him what to do, or who to be, you don’t know him at all.” The boy casts a withering look of dismissal at Carson, rolling his eyes, turning away from Carson in a silver-quick shift of shoulders and legs that sets in motion a studied, precise, yet dallying retreat. Carson stands in the hall beaten and bloodied by the boy’s retort and the memory of Juwan’s slender arm around Will’s waist, his fingers dug into the back pocket of the boy’s jeans.

He wants the house
and the boy to himself, and takes Roslyn and Roseanne to his mother’s home after school and tells her he’ll pick them up later in the evening. Bunny is in Chicago for three days attending a graphic design firm conference. Sitting in the kitchen waiting for Juwan to come home, he keeps seeing the look of terror on his face when he recognized Carson, and remembers the sound of his books thudding to the floor, and the sight of him running away.
Where is he?
Carson wonders, looking again at the kitchen clock. It’s seven-thirty. He’ll be damned if he’ll call that boy’s house. If he went there…if Juwan actually runs away…how will he tell Bunny what he saw? Where did all Will’s anger come from, the disrespect? He’d never seen that side of him. He’ll have to tell Bunny. Maybe now she’ll understand his concern. He’s sitting in the kitchen, waiting for Juwan. The way Jimmy Blake waited for him.
No, not like that,
he thinks. He loves Juwan. He hasn’t been the perfect father, but Juwan knows he loves him. He’s not like Jimmy Blake at all. And what he wants is what’s best. The boy is fourteen. There’s still time.

He’s at the kitchen table, mulling over, practicing a thousand approaches to his son, and yet when Juwan walks into the kitchen after entering the house, Carson can only shout, “I don’t want that boy over here again.”

“Were you spying on me, Dad?” Juwan asks solemnly, letting his book bag drop to the floor at his feet. He stands against the kitchen counter, looking at his father through eyes reddened from tears.

“If I spied on you, believe me, you would know it,” Carson shoots back, encouraged by the charge to stand up. “That boy’s arm around your waist, you fawning all over him, leaning on him. No son of mine…”

“No son of yours
what
, Dad?”

“Acts like that. Lets another boy touch him that way.”

“We weren’t doing anything wrong.”

“You don’t call that wrong?” Carson explodes, moving closer to the boy, striding up to him, longing to be face-to-face now, to make and win his point.

“No, it’s not wrong. It can’t be.”

“Is that what they tell you at school?”

“Dad, I like Will. I like him a lot. He likes me.”

“You don’t know nuthin’ about Juwan,”
that’s what Will told him. He said it once, then said it again.

Carson grabs Juwan, who flinches and shouts, “What’re you gonna do, beat it out of me? Like those people you used to arrest? Put me in handcuffs? Throw me in jail?
Kill me?
”

It is the last two words that stop Carson’s heart, that when he has regained his breath pump him full of so much anger that he shoves Juwan onto the floor beside his book bag, where he lies, his face a mask of stunned outrage.

“You can say anything you want to me, but I don’t want that boy in this house again, you hear? You’ve got a choice to make. You better make the right one.”

Carson can barely find his way to the bedroom, where he sinks onto the bed. Before tonight, he didn’t know anything at all about his son. What he feels. What he thinks. Whom he loves. Or what his son really thinks of him.

“I can accept
what he told me, Carson, about him and Will, whether you do or not. I can’t accept what he told me about your banning the boy from our house. He wants you to love him and he wants you to show it,” Bunny says when Carson tells her what he saw.

“I do love him.”

“Not so that he can tell.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“He didn’t need to.”

“Look, I can’t handle all this right now.”

“You’ve got to handle it. What’s more important to you, Carson, meeting Natalie Houston or saving your relationship with your son? Meeting her won’t give her son back to her. It won’t do anything to repair the damage between you and Juwan.”

“Bunny, I’ve got to do this.”

“Why?”

“To find some peace, maybe an answer to a question that won’t go away.”

“You’re looking in the wrong place. How can you meet that woman, how can you talk to her, when you can’t even talk to Juwan?”

“I will, Bunny, I promise I will.” Carson throws up his hands defensively against the onslaught of Bunny’s charges and the specter of his son’s unfulfilled need of him.

“He deserves more from you.” Carson hears the pinched sob, looks at Bunny and sees the tears, a sculpted scar staining her cheeks.

“When I’ve done just this one thing.”

“It’s always one more thing, Carson. First you write her. Then she writes you and wants to meet. All the time you give to her, your son needs.” Now she’s crying audibly, her face plump from the pregnancy, a twisted, anguished mask.

“There’s enough of me for Juwan,” Carson insists, hoping this edict will halt Bunny’s display.

“He doesn’t know that.”

“What you’re asking isn’t easy.”

Bunny wipes her eyes with a tissue that dissolves into a snowflake-like flurry of white on her chest. “Why is meeting Natalie Houston easy? Because she’s a stranger? Is telling her you’re sorry you killed her son easier than talking to your own? If you can’t look at Juwan with acceptance, how will you love this baby? How can you love any of us, really?”

“You’re going too far now, Bunny. If you have to question that after all this time, then what can I say?” Carson’s last-ditch retreat into nonchalance is unconvincing even to him.

“Say that
your
son means more to you than
hers
,” Bunny shouts.

“Did he also tell you he asked me if I was going to kill him?”

“Only because he was afraid of you. Can you imagine how deeply he must’ve been hurt to dare say that to you?”

“Paul Houston is here with us, Bunny, has been since that night. I never meant for him to get between me and Juwan.”

“You turned away from our boy a long time ago. And I blame myself. I should’ve stood up for him before now. But nothing’s been as important as what happened to you and to us the night of the shooting. That’s how we’ve been living.”

“How else could we live, Bunny? You know so much. Just answer that. How else could we have lived?”

The letter
from Natalie Houston arrived the day after he dreamed about her. In his dream she was a woman of enormous stature, her face hidden behind a veil as she loomed over a minuscule version of Carson huddled like a stowaway or contraband at her feet. In the dream his greatest fear was that she would lift her veil and reveal not just her face but the history of his world and her universe. This time he told Bunny about the letter the day it came, told her matter-of-factly after he read it and said, “She’s willing to meet me. I’m going to call her,” leaving the room before Bunny could say a word.