See No Color (15 page)

Her first response was a frown when she saw me. “What's that about?”

“By ‘that' you mean this new haircut?” I asked.

“Yeah … or whatever it is,” she said, peering at me sideways, like I was some kind of new zoo animal. “Is that really your hair? Or is it fake?” She shook her head. “Whatever. It just doesn't look like you. Sorry.”

I laughed. “You're underestimating the value of looking like someone else. Sometimes it's better.”

Kit stuck her tongue out at me. “And sometimes it's not,” she said, and left the room.

By evening I had to get out of the house. Just moving, walking, could sometimes quiet my mind. I knew we needed milk, so I grabbed some change and quickly walked out the door before Mom had a chance to say anything.

Anil's Market was just six blocks away, but by the time I walked in, I felt like myself again. Walking by the oak trees and seeing their leaves blowing around in the wind but not falling down calmed me somehow.
Hair grows back
. Every time I pulled at my too-slick ponytail, I felt a little sick. So I put my hands in my pockets and tried to think of something else. Before long, I was remembering Reggie's touch and smiling to myself. Until I walked into the shop and spotted a group of black kids congregating at the counter. They weren't from West High, but they might as well have been. They lived in the neighborhood and watched me as I watched them: silently, and in judgment. I went straight to the back, where the cold stuff was housed in refrigerators, but it was already too late because they had seen me. I pulled at the ends of my ponytail. At least they couldn't come at me about my hair.

I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a gallon of two-percent milk. They were silent, taking me in as I walked up to the counter. I hadn't counted on seeing anyone of importance while running the errand, so I was wearing a five-year-old pair of faded jean shorts and a ratty T-shirt. My Tevas completed the look. I smiled at them and at their friend who was working the cash register. There were four of them: two girls who looked about my age, a guy who looked older, and another guy behind the counter. One of the girls rolled her eyes at one of the guys as I approached.

“Four fifty-six,” said the guy behind the counter. He grabbed the milk and put it in a plastic bag. I dug in my pocket for the five I had grabbed.

“Nice shorts,” the girl's voice came from behind me. The guy beside her laughed. My face burned.

“What are they, Jordache?” she continued, and the guys almost fell out. They were holding their sides, covering their mouths with their hands.

I put the five on the counter and waited for my change.

“She don't never speak,” said the boy. “Maybe she mute or something.” The girl giggled.

The kid behind the counter got himself together and cleared his throat. “Okay, enough already. She a paying customer. Let her alone.”

The girl snickered. “Oh, Jamal's working for the Man now, he can't be playing with the likes of niggas.”

I winced. Jamal handed me my change, and I picked up the bag and walked toward the exit.

“Your hair do look nice though,” the girl called out as I pushed the door open. “You actually decent now.”

I kicked sharp stones on the sidewalk all the way home, trying to cut my big toes, thinking about how Reggie could have been one of those kids. If he hadn't already known me from playing baseball, he probably would make fun of me just like all the others. He was nice to me, sure, but maybe just because he wanted something from me.
And he doesn't need anything from you anymore
. Had I really done it? Had I touched him, let him touch me everywhere? I punched my fist into my hip bone.
You are not the same; you will never ever be the same. He's probably out right now, telling everyone he knows about it.

• • •

Reggie ran his cool, light fingers from my scalp to the base of my neck. “I can't believe you did it,” he said.

I sighed. We were in his living room the next day, the television tuned to
Jeopardy
, but neither of us was really watching. “It was your idea.” His touch made my skin prickle, deliciously.

He took his hand from my hair. “How can you say that?” His dark brown eyes looked genuinely hurt. “All I told you was about my mom and my sisters, and what they do. It wasn't meant as a
suggestion
. You were just going on and on about how you hated your hair, so I thought I'd offer you another option…”

I slouched down into the couch. “You don't like it, do you?”

Reggie reached for the bowl of chips on the coffee table in front of us. “I never said that.” His biceps rippled nicely under his T-shirt.

I worried that he would catch me staring, so I looked away. “You didn't have to.”
Yeah, this is going to look so pretty.
I laughed at the absurdity of it all. “There's really nothing to apologize for, anyway. I don't like it either.”

He shoved a few corn chips into his mouth. “Really?”

I laughed again. “Yeah, really.” My right hand moved toward his right arm, almost with a will of its own.
Stop. Now. You like him, but you are not what he really wants. Quit lying to yourself.
I ran my finger across his bicep, transfixed.

“Girl, what you doing?” he asked, crunching the chips.

I shrugged, repositioning myself on the couch so that I was facing him, straddling him with my knees. I kissed the top of his earlobe, then the middle, then the bottom.

He pulled me toward him, and pushed his hands up my shirt under my bra.

I shivered.

He pushed his hand down back the way it had come, so that it was fondling my ass. “Grandmom's taking a nap in the other room,” he whispered in my ear. “Let's go to my room.”

I nodded and moved myself off him, and off we went.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A
t the bottom of the house, trapped in a filing cabinet, my father's words spoke to me from decaying paper. That night, time stretched out and covered me, so that I thought I no longer had a body, so that there wasn't any such thing as my birth or my death, sex, conception, so that my parents had not even given me up, so that everything had happened, had always happened all at once, and I didn't have to choose or act. All of it, even my legs that couldn't keep up anymore, and my right arm that was no longer strong, would pass into oblivion anyway. Yet still, in the hot darkness of June, lying on top of my covers, sweating, he would not be silenced:
There was a lot of things that could have been better between your mother and I. I would have liked the chance to know you. This will be my last letter to you in awhile. I think I sent enough. Hopefully some day, when you're ready, we can see each other.

“Shut up!” I said into the darkness. I pressed my hands over my ears and then sat up. The green light of my electric clock flashed in my eyes: 2:10 a.m. I moved to the edge of the bed, kicking at its side gently with my heels, like I used to do when I was a kid.

“He's not going away,” I said, turning over my hand so that my palm faced me. Was it his? “He never left.”

The next morning, I Googled his name and Detroit. It wasn't very difficult; the third name I clicked on and there it was:

Keith Mitchell, 2887 51st St., Detroit, MI, 313-995-4322.

The address looked the same as the one scrawled in the corner of those twenty letters I never received. I stared at the digits long and hard, not really believing that it had been so easy to find them.
I didn't even have to open a book on searching.
I didn't know much, but I knew that I was lucky.

It was afternoon before I felt ready. I picked up my phone.
Father, father, why did you do it?
The way I felt about him was the same way I felt about Reggie, I realized: I just wanted him. He was also the only key I had to my mother. I looked at my bedroom door, making sure that it was locked.
313-995-4322
. If I typed the numbers fast, I didn't even have to think about it. The phone rang; my grip on my phone tightened.
313-995-4322
. The phone rang again. Maybe no one was there.

“Hello?”

My lungs could have been collapsing. I had the feeling that I was falling on a roller coaster, weightless and headed straight for the ground.

“Hello?” the voice said. It was a young voice, filled with irritation. The wrong number? The wrong Keith? A landline?

“Is Keith Mitchell there?” I asked. My hand was getting sweaty, so I tried holding the phone with just my fingertips.

“Yeah, just a sec,” said the voice, just like I was the pizza guy checking on a delivery or something. I heard the phone fumbled, then feet stomping, and then, “Dad! Phone!”
Dad?
It was probably only a few seconds, but it felt like five minutes before a heavier, more balanced set of feet shuffled to the phone. “Hello?” His voice was lower than I would have thought and also a little bit scratchy.

“Hi,” I said. I kicked at my bedposts.

“Who's this?” he asked.

Your daughter. How are you?
I stifled a laugh; the whole thing was ridiculous. Maybe I should just hang up.

“Look, I got things to do. So if you're a telemarketer, go bother someone else—”

“This is Alexandra Kirtridge,” I blurted.

“You're … Who are you?” His voice changed; it was a little more hesitant.

“I'm Alexandra Kirtridge,” I said. “You sent me letters.” I was pacing across the carpet like it was my spot in center field.

“Alexandra?” His voice kept on getting quieter.

“Yeah,” I said.

I heard some shuffling in the background and then a few doors shutting. I had the feeling he was moving into another room. “I wasn't expecting to hear from you,” he said.

My stomach churned. This was a bad idea; I knew it. “I'm sorry, I—”

“No,” he interrupted me. “It's not that. I want to talk to you. I … I been wanting to talk to you for sixteen years.”

I exhaled slowly.
My father is still alive.
I think that was the first moment I had consciously contemplated that he could have been dead.

“Just after I got no answer to the letters, I didn't think I'd hear from you.”

I bit my lip, trying to think of something to say. What he wanted was an explanation, and I didn't have one.

“I mean, I know I shouldn't have sent them in the first place, that that put you in a strange spot,” he said.

“I just got the letters,” I said. “Just now.”

There was an audible pause. “Oh.”

Someone laughed downstairs.

“So, you live in Detroit.”

“Yup, the Motor City. Or at least, used to be,” he said and then laughed. Nervous. Also slightly familiar. “You ever been?”

“No.”

“You should come sometime. It's a great town—lots of good jazz, lots of good food and good people. And our baseball team ain't too bad, either.”

I laughed, grabbing the Tigers like a lifeline. “Yeah, the Tigers, they always seem to be so close to winning it all.”

Another awkward pause.

“So, you live in Madison,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Always seemed like a good place,” he said.

“Yeah, it has its strong points,” I said. I thought about mentioning the beautiful parks, the strong schools, all the items that everyone had to mention while bragging about Madtown to others, but everything sounded stupid in my ears. That was why the silence started off small but then grew bigger and bigger until I was afraid to say anything at all because it would not take up enough space to beat back the strangeness.

“Alexandra, you know,” he was saying, before I realized it. “You're always welcome to come out here. To visit, I mean.”

I winced.
To visit.
I would be a visitor.

“My mother. What is she like?” As usual, the question was out of me before I even had time to consider its effect.

He coughed. “Your mother … She was beautiful. And sad.”

Was.
I put my hand over my mouth, even though no sound was coming out.

“She shouldn't have died when she did,” he said, and there was a touch of something—maybe anger—in his voice. “I told her a million times not to mess with that stuff, but she never listened. I tried to get her into rehab, but once she made up her mind, that was it.”

Who was she?
I closed my eyes and images of Charlize Theron and Angelina Jolie appeared, and then disappeared just as quickly. What remained was nothing.
There was enough pain having me. After that you went toward pain with your head thrown back and your mouth full of laughter. Your addiction was to forgetting me. The things you did to forget.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.” I was trying to gather enough momentum to get up, grab a pen and paper, and write some of this down. Who knew when and if I would ever have the chance to get this kind of information again? But my legs seemed to be locked underneath me; I could not figure out how to move them.

I hadn't even known that I missed her.

“I know this must be a lot for you,” he was saying.

I breathed in, and when my lungs reached capacity, I wanted to hold the air there forever; I never wanted to exhale again. “I have to go now,” I told him. “I have to rest.” I sat down on my bed, exhausted suddenly.

“Yeah,” he said. “You should rest.”

I lay back. “It was nice talking to you.” That was the same phrase I used to get off the phone with my grandmother.

“You too,” he said. Then he asked for my phone number, and I gave it to him.

I was just about to hang up when he said, “You should really come visit sometime. I would really like to meet you. And also have my family meet you. My wife and my daughter … I didn't even mention them, did I? Anyway, I know we'd all like to meet you. Please think about it, Alexandra.”