Between Lovers (28 page)

I repeat, “Nicole's mother is coming to Oakland?”

He nods in the same rhythm that I always do, a rhythm I inherited from him. He says, “I couldn't catch up with you last night, wanted you to be the one to tell Little Nikki. I didn't know what your schedule was like after your signing, so I figured I should come up here and at least see her off the plane.”

My daddy is smarter and wiser than I will ever live to be, a doer and a user of words. A master communicator. He knows the power of his own voice, recognizes how words can move, how the right tone can inspire, motivate, heal, make angry people smile, give hope in a time of sorrow, become light in someone's darkest hour.

Yesterday when I called my old man and told him what Nicole's mother had said, all I wanted was to lay the groundwork on getting them to have a civil conversation somewhere down the line.

But my daddy is a man who is always in motion. He knows that his task is monumental and his time on top of this soil is limited. Maybe that's why he never rests long enough to let dust settle on his shoes. Maybe that's why he attacks every problem with a sense of urgency, with immediacy. As long as the world keeps turning and things keep burning, he'll keep running to put out the fires that others have created; he'll keep helping. He's a walking angel, taking care of the world, helping strangers, putting his big arms around the people he loves.

I've seen a few things in my life and times, have seen my old man do a lot. This is the first time I'm sure he's created a miracle. This is almost like seeing him moonwalk on water.

He tells me, “She decided that she wants to meet with her child.”

“Okay.”

“But under her own terms. She'll give it one hour.”

“She'll come two thousand miles for one hour? You gotta be joking.”

“Sixty minutes. No more, no less.”

I chuckle. “She has rules.”

My old man grunts. “Yes.”

“Like mother, like daughter.”

“A very structured woman,” he says with a chuckle of disbelief. “I have her flight information. Her plane will land soon.”

Daddy came up from L.A. on Southwest this morning; they have shuttle flights every hour on the hour. He can be up here, and then back home in less time than it takes to watch a Kevin Costner movie.

He said, “I tried reaching you at your hotel room last night, then on your cellular phone.”

“You should've I-paged me. I was out late.”

“With Nikki?”

“Yeah. I was with Nicole.”

He pulls his lips in. That's his not happy face.

I say, “I didn't get a message.”

“You know how I am about leaving messages. Either a person is there or they are not.”

“You need to step into the new millennium.”

“Well, some things are better left old-fashioned. Not all change is good change.”

And for the first time, I don't believe him. He wanted to see what my events were like, what kind of people came to read the books I write. I think he was surprised that they are respectable people who could sit in the front row at his church.

I ask, “Is Nicole's stepdad, any of her sisters, any of her brothers coming?”

My daddy tells me, “Her mother is coming by herself.”

“Why did—what did you say to make her hop on a plane and fly to Oakland?”

My old man shrugs and grunts at the same time. “It wasn't me.”

“What do you mean it wasn't you?”

“We prayed together. Prayed long and hard. That took more out of me than doing three services on Easter Sunday. Then when we hung up, she was still unchanged. She said she had to go because a movie with Denzel Washington was coming on, then after that she was going to watch her favorite movie because it was on television too.
Imitation of Life.”

“Uh huh. Nice to know that Nicole is less valuable than a rerun.”

He chuckles, sips his brew. “Few hours later she called me back, sounding upset.”

“Upset? Was the movie that bad?”

“Surprised me too. Said that she had to go to Oakland.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that. I tried talking to her, telling her to start with a phone call to our little sheep and establish, more like reestablish communication, because it has been a while.”

“What happened between the time you hung up and when she called you back?”

“She didn't say.”

“How would watching a movie about a black woman passing for white—”

“Son, I have no idea. Maybe it was the Denzel movie.”

“Denzel does have that effect on women.”

He laughs a bit. “Maybe it wasn't any of that. That woman marches to her own beat. Has her own view of the way the world turns.”

Silence.

A man leaves his
San Francisco Chronicle
on the next table. My old man reaches over and gets it before it gets bussed to the garbage. He puts his round glasses on, flips from an article on a new herpes vaccine for women, to another regarding nine gay tolerance bills waiting for the governor's John Hancock, and settles on an article that reads, “S.F. mayor's Open Door attracts ‘diverse' crowd.”

I stare out the window. A woman with pink hair, pink leather coat, pink boots, blue eyes, bright tattoos, and silver earrings in her eyebrow and bottom lip passes by smoking a rolled-up cigarette.

This world is so wild.

“At some school out in Greenville, South Carolina, can't remember the name,” Daddy says, “female students have to wear knee-length skirts, young men have to wear dress pants and ties, like we did when I was coming up, and all dating must have a chaperone, even holding hands is prohibited.”

And they will all grow up to be perverts.
I think that, but I say, “Then there's San Francisco.”

Daddy nods, puts the paper down, grunts again before he says, “Still, when all is said and done, Willie has been good at cutting through the bureaucracy. He works from his gut.”

“Just like you.”

“Not many of us left. You do what you feel is right.”

He takes his glasses off, slips them in his pocket, sips his cocoa, the green-and-white paper cup getting lost in his huge dark hands.

I say, “I hope that, you know, my book, the parts I read, the questions—”

“It's fine, son. I already knew what to expect. I was at one of your events before.”

“When? I didn't see you.”

“You didn't see anybody. It was on the computer, in
Black Voices,
I think. Your mother and me logged on and we sat there, watched the questions people ask. I went into another one of those chat rooms. It's amazing what people talk about when nobody can see them. I guess everything that has been created for the sake of good is being used for illicit purposes, so why not the Internet.”

“You don't leave messages but you use the Internet.”

“The church has a web page. We have classes, Internet training, have to teach our people that technology is nothing to be afraid of.”

Silence.

He asks, “Is Nicole at peace with herself?”

I shrug.

He grunts.

I say, “I met her friend.”

He grunts again.

I say, “That was her on the front row, asking questions. The one with the red hair.”

He says, “I was born at night, but not last night. Looks like she had it in for you.”

Then I grunt.

I wait for him to ask about Ayanna, but he doesn't.

He says, “You be careful, son. Be careful. You're dealing in complicated matters. Affairs of the heart are always complicated. People do things that have no rhyme or reason.”

We stare out the window at the crowd. People-watch. Two men pass by laughing. One has his hand deep in the other's back pocket; the other has his arm around his boyfriend's waist.

My old man shakes his head. He says, “The world has changed. No matter how hard you try to steer society in one direction, it goes in its own. Some for the good, some for the bad.”

He says
society,
but I hear the word
children.

He puts his chin in the web of his hand.

I ask, “You ever want to give up?”

“Time to time.”

“But you don't.”

“No. But black people don't seem to care like they used to. We have hundreds at rallies, where we used to have thousands. We have thousands when we used to have tens of thousands.”

I sip my chocolate.

He smiles. “Seems like it's always easier to help strangers than the people right next to you.”

Silence. I hold on to that silence like it's a bastard child who needs love. I'm thinking that it seems like it's easier to get praise from a stranger than from the person across the table.

He asks, “Why are you so determined with Nicole?”

I think about telling him about the mile twenty analogy, about how it hurts more to stop than to keep going, how if I win, if I endure, this could be the greatest love story ever told, but I don't think he'd get it. It's not internal for him, he's on the outside looking at a situation that owns no rhyme or reason, and he's not connected to Nicole on the same emotional level that I am, so I just shrug.

He says, “I'm not doing this to condone Nicole's lifestyle.”

“Don't expect you to.”

“I love her, have loved her as a daughter, as part of our extended family ever since you brought her into our lives, and I have prayed for her since she left Los Angeles in despair, the same way I have prayed for you to overcome your suffering—”

“I'm not—”

“Hear me out. I have prayed for each of you to receive understanding this past year. I'm not condoning her. Not condemning her either. I want that understood.”

“I understand.”

“My job is to help and to heal. I'm not the one who has to judge anyone for his or her actions, getting older has made me realize that. Her father was a good man. We fought a lot of battles together.”

“No doubt.”

“No doubt?”

“Uh,” I say. “That means I agree.”

He nods. “No doubt.”

I sip my hot cocoa.

My father goes on, “He wouldn't want to see Nikki torn apart from her family like this.”

“Well, her mom doesn't make it easier.”

“You say it's her mother, and it is, but in reality it's both of them. From what I hear, Nikki doesn't call her siblings, hardly returns their calls since she came up here. I'm trying to rectify that. That's all. The rest of it, I leave that between her and her Lord.”

I nod.

He goes on, “Just like you haven't been in touch with all of your people, your brothers, your aunts, your uncles. You've been busy since this came about.”

“I've been working.”

“Everyone works, son. That's no excuse.”

“They have my number.”

He tells me, “Just don't build a wall around yourself.”

He glances out the window, watches a parade of people for a few.

A man passes by holding up a sign that announces his T-cell count in tall, bold letters. That sight is more than enough to derail our conversation.

Daddy grunts. I do the same.

We walk. My father wants to move a bit so his leg won't get too stiff. He collects refrigerator magnets, so we stop in a few shops and I buy him a few. Momma likes music boxes, so we get one of those. We look at charm bracelets that aren't charming, miniature cable cars, check out a few small Golden Gate bridges that aren't gold, but some funky rust color, just like the real one.

And when his leg needs rest, we stop, I grab tofu, brown rice, and an oat-filled California Suncake. He grabs a muffin. We sit inside another Starbucks, get fresh hot chocolates, and we talk like two friends who haven't seen each other in a while. A father and son sit shoulder to shoulder, and talk. We talk about Momma. About my three brothers. About my old man's fourteen living siblings. No talk about protests or my career. This time we just talk about family. With hearts as open as the sky, we talk and we talk. Not many sons are blessed with that kind of relationship.

Then my c-phone rings. It's Nicole. She's upset.

She says, “Somebody else called me.”

“I already know about your mother.”

“Not about that. They called and told me Ayanna was at your signing.”

“Yep. She left before it was over.”

“What the fuck is going on? Why didn't you call me and tell me?”

“I'm with my daddy right now. We're talk—”

“Your daddy's here?”

“Yep. Came to meet with your mother.”

“Is this a conspiracy?” Her breathing thickens; I imagine her massaging the bridge of her nose. “First South Africa, then Ayanna, now this crap. Okay, fine. Where is this meeting to take place?”

“Your house?”

“No. Never. I'm not welcome in her home and she's not welcome in mine.”

I pause. “We'll figure something out.”

“Tell your daddy I said hello. Kiss, kiss.”

We hang up. My father's eyes are on me, listening to my every inflection, reading my body language the way he reads the Word. Now our conversation changes, goes back to Nicole. To me. To putting up the foundation before the walls, to living in a house with no floor.

I ask, “You believe in soul mates?”

“I believe in people being equally yoked.”

“Is that enough?”

“Even then you have to work at it, you create your own soul mate.”