From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun (10 page)

As I stepped out of the shower, I could hear Mama singing softly in the kitchen
O happy day . . . When Jesus washed. When He washed. He washed my sins away.

“I made toast and eggs scrambled hard like EC said you like them,” Kristin said, putting a plate down in front of me. “And grits.” She smiled. I guess Mama had been giving her some soul food lessons. I looked over at Mama sitting across from me, wondering what she was getting from Kristin in return. Kristin brought two more plates to the table and sat in the seat between us.

The grits were lumpy but I ate them anyway, stirring my eggs into them and scooping it all up with my toast.

Kristin picked at her food, doing that eating-everything-separately thing again. She spread a tiny bit of jelly on her toast and took a small bite.

“So,” she said, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Anybody want to hear a joke?”

I chewed silently, without looking up.

Mama must have nodded, because she continued. “A piece of string walks into a bar and the bartender says, ‘We don't serve string . . . ' ”

“Frayed knot,” I said.

“Guess you heard it already, huh?”

I looked at Kristin. She looked a little tired and for a moment, I was sorry I had cut in on her joke. “About a hundred years ago.”

“Funny.” Kristin smiled. “You don't look that old.”

Mama laughed. Kristin had caught me off guard, so I smiled and stuffed a chunk of toast in my mouth.
This part is easy,
I thought. We three here in the house with no one around wasn't hard at all.

After breakfast, I played a video game while Mama and Kristin went about fixing a picnic lunch. Kristin had suggested we go to Prospect Park, but Mama said she felt more like lying near some water, so we decided on Jones Beach. They were talking easily now. Kristin had a strange laugh, like a cough almost, that rumbled from the back of her throat.

“I didn't bring a bathing suit,” Kristin said, heading toward Mama's room.

“Bottom drawer, right side,” Mama yelled from the kitchen.

A few minutes later, heading back into the kitchen, Kristin stopped at the foot of my bed and kicked it.

“You hate me?” she asked, smiling.

I shrugged, keeping my eyes on the game. “I don't know you.”

She kicked the bed a few more times until I looked at her like she was losing her mind. Maybe she was crazy.

“What do you want to know?” she asked. She had her hands in the pockets of her shorts, and the way she stood—kind of like a gangly white boy—made me want to smile. I had never met a lady, besides Mama, who was so . . . so
relaxed.
I felt the side of my mouth turning up. She stood the way I was always trying to stand, sort of cool and calm and collected. I could almost picture her saying, “No problem.”

“Nothing,” I said.

“I'll tell you anything.”

I could see the outline of Mama's blue bathing suit underneath Kristin's T-shirt. She had small breasts. Her legs were long and kind of tanned. Nice legs, I guess. If you like that. I wondered if Mama had touched them and how.

“How long you been,” I stuttered, “you know?”

“Gay?” She smiled and the dimple on her cheek appeared. “G-a-y. You can say it. It's not a four-letter word.”

I looked away from her, embarrassed. The way she talked made me think of somebody younger, someone familiar . . .

“Gay,” I said.

“Forever,” she said, pulling her pale hair up off her shoulders into a ponytail that she twisted into a bun. When she moved her hand, it fell again, sweeping across her shoulder.

“What's forever?” I asked, growing annoyed.

Kristin shrugged and sat down on the edge of my bed. “As long as I can remember.”

“You never had a boyfriend?”

She smiled again, but this time got a faraway look. “A couple. But they were, you know . . .” She looked at me a moment and smirked. “No, I guess you don't know.”

I shook my head.

“They weren't my type.”

“And Mama's your type?”

Kristin nodded.

“Why?”

“Well, she's smart and kind and beautiful and driven . . .” She eyed me. “You can't see it, huh?”

“How come you two can't just be friends?” I asked, going back to my game.

“Because we like each other more than that.”

“More than what?”

“More than
friends,
” Kristin said, as though I should know that already.

“What's the big difference?”

Kristin and I looked at each other. She scooted back on the bed until she was sitting right next to me, our backs against the wall. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs. Mama! That's who she reminded me of. The old EC. The one who was fun and playful and laughed a lot. The one who moved like she had been born walking. Kristin moved like that. And talked and laughed a bit like that.

“Okay,” she said. “Who's your friend?”

I thought for a moment and told her it was Ralphael.

“Do you like going to the movies with him?”

I nodded.

“And spending time with him?”

I nodded again, not knowing what she was getting at.

“Okay. Now, would you like to
kiss
Ralphael?”

“No!”

She threw her hands up. “That's the difference.”

“But you're not
supposed
to want to do that.”

“Who says?” Kristin asked.

“It's gross.”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling. “I'm not a big fan of kissing guys either.”

I blinked. Put my game on pause. “Kissing guys really grosses you out?” I asked.

“Let's just say it doesn't . . . appeal to me,” she said.

I thought about it for a moment. “It grosses EC out, too?”

Kristin shrugged. “I can't speak for her.”

Mama came in with the picnic basket slung on her arm.

“Sandwiches, chips, potato salad, cookies. Anything I forgot?”

“It really grosses you out, Ma? Why?” I asked.

Mama looked puzzled. Kristin was trying not to smile.

“Mel has a question for you, EC.”

Chapter Nineteen

At Jones Beach
, Kristin led us to the area that was mostly gay. It was strange seeing so many of them all coupled up in one place, but it made it feel less weird to be there with Ma and Kristin. If Sean and Ralph had been with me, they probably would have lost it. We passed a group of people that Kristin knew and she stopped and introduced us. I eyed a black man sitting between his white boyfriend's legs. When he looked over at me and smiled, I turned back to Kristin's friends, all white except for one girl who looked a little bit older than me. Later, Kristin told me the girl was the adopted daughter of one of the couples. There were a bunch of little kids running around back and forth between Kristin's friends and the water. I didn't know so many gay people had kids. A part of me wanted to go back and talk to the girl, ask her if it was as weird for her as it was for me. But another part of me had no desire to be with other gay people. Next thing, I'd have a whole world of them hanging out at my house or something.We moved down the beach and settled on our blanket about two hundred feet away from Kristin's friends.

“We could've sat with them,” EC said, peeling off her T-shirt and shorts. The roll of fat that she had been worried about was long gone. She pulled a pair of sunglasses from her bag, slid them on, and lay back on the blanket.

Kristin gazed out at the water. “Nah,” she said. “I wanted quality time.”

Mama smiled but didn't say anything. She reached across me, grabbed Kristin's hand, and squeezed it. I swallowed.

The water lapped silently up onto the sand. A few yards away, a group of men were setting up a volleyball game. A black dog ran up to our blanket and sniffed at my sneakers.

“C'mon, Magpie,” a redheaded woman called and, just as quickly, the dog ran off.

Kristin scooted closer to me, wrapped her arms around her knees, and sighed.

“I'm gonna walk,” I said, grabbing my notebook.

“I'll walk with you,” Kristin said, jumping up.

I started to say something but didn't. It was a free country.

We walked silently for a while. Kristin kept digging her toes into the sand, then shaking them off.

“I hate sand,” she said, “but I love the beach. Isn't that weird?”

I nodded.

“I guess I'm weird,” she said. “But it's so beautiful here. I like it in the winter, too. Have you ever been here in the winter?”

I shook my head.

“We should come sometime. Nobody on the beach. It's perfect. Sometimes aloneness is so perfect.”

“I wear it like a coat,” I said, and Kristin looked at me like she couldn't believe those words had come from my mouth. Then she smiled.

“I hate the cold,” I said. “I don't think I could stand the beach in the winter.”

“Layers. Lots of layers and you won't even feel it.”

I looked out over the water. The waves were calm today. “I wouldn't come here in the winter,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Just wouldn't.”

We continued walking.

“I've always wanted a family,” Kristin was saying. “I lost mine.”

“How?” I asked, still staring at the water. Kristin was talking softly. I wondered if Mama was asleep back on our blanket or nervously waiting for us to return.

“They found out I'm queer,” Kristin said, tossing her hair. She looked like a girl then—stubborn and hurt. “They stopped speaking to me. Wrote me off.”

“Oh.”

Had I written Mama off? She must have been afraid. Afraid that she'd lose me. And all the while I had been afraid, too. Of what everybody would think. And of losing her.

The beach was getting crowded. A group of women put down a blanket a few feet away. One of them smiled at Kristin.

“What about Christmas?” I said after a long time had passed.

Kristin frowned, then shielded her eyes with her hand and looked out over the water.

“What about it?”

“Who do you do it with?”

“Family.”

“But I thought you . . .”

“Not the family I was born into,” she said. “The family I made for myself. Close friends.” She took her hand away from her eyes. I stopped and took off my sneakers.

“You have EC's feet,” Kristin said, staring at my toes.

I curled and uncurled my toes. The sand felt soft and hot against them.

What would Ralphael think if he saw me and Kristin walking along Jones Beach? I guess he didn't really care. At least, that's what he said when he called me. Tomorrow we were planning on going to see a movie or something. He said Sean was down South for the next week before school started.
Maybe,
Ralphael had said,
he'll come back thinking different.
Yeah, I had said, not believing for a minute it would happen, but hoping. Maybe.

“Maybe this Christmas will be different,” Kristin was saying. “Maybe we can all go away somewhere. Me, you, EC, and whoever you'd like to bring. That would be nice.”

I could bring Ralphy. He's cool about Mama and Kristin. Or maybe I'd bring Angie . . . if she was still speaking to me. If she would want to come. When I looked at Kristin, her eyes were uncertain behind her glasses and filled with something . . . hope. I wanted to ask her what it felt like to have a family still alive somewhere and not be able to talk to them. Did it feel like it did with my father? Hollow and empty sometimes, and sometimes it didn't matter? Or was it like the disappearance of the common toad, just all of a sudden, the last one died and it's like it never ever was?

“Can we sit a minute?”

I nodded and we sat at the edge of the water.

“You miss them?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Kristin said. She leaned on her knees so that her chin stuck out a little and she smiled. Her smile was nice, I decided, honest and sad. “Sometimes a lot.”

“If you don't have a girlfriend . . . it's kind of just you by yourself?”

She nodded. “I still have my friends . . . but it's lonely.” A sandpiper darted past. “Yesterday,” Kristin said, “I was thinking about buffalo. Can you imagine being the last to die off?”

I shook my head. “I'd want to go in a crowd.”

“Me, too,” Kristin said softly. “Me, too.”

We sat there without saying anything for a long time. People passing by must have wondered about us—how strange we looked together—a black guy and white woman sitting silently, staring out at the water. But I didn't care anymore what people were thinking. Some part of me was starting to move inside of myself, shutting out all those nosey eyes and nasty things people can think to say.

“If I had to be the last one like myself,” I said, “I'd want to run and run. Hard as I could until I couldn't run anymore. Least that way I'd have felt the wind on my face once more before I kicked off.”

“And the sun,” Kristin said, smiling.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “The sun.”

Chapter Twenty

Sometimes you have to start
at the beginning and work your way back. As Kristin and I sat talking, something began melting inside of me. I don't know how to say it, don't know how to write it in my notebooks. But some small closed-up space for Kristin started opening, growing, filling itself in. Like an eclipse—the way the moon rushes out to cover up the sun. That moment with Kristin on the beach was like an eclipse—and quick as it had come, the moon pulled away and the sun was back. No one stops to think, though—that maybe there is a reason for the darkness. Maybe people have to be reminded of it—of its power. At night, we go to sleep against the darkness. And if we wake up before morning, a lot of times we're afraid. We need it all, though—the darkness and the light. The Melanin and the Sun. Mama and Kristin.