Tutored (7 page)

“You threw out my letter,” she said.

He offered his daughter a very monotone “Yes.” Then he excused himself and went back to his room.

Her dad lived for American Movie Classics. A James Cagney movie was on. Wendy didn’t absorb enough of his performance to tell if Cagney was on the wrong or right side of the law. She knew enough about the actor to know that he wore a trench coat regardless of whether he was a crook or a cop.

Her dad took his seat five feet from the TV screen.

She hated when he played her off cool like that.

“You have no right to throw my things away!” she shouted at him. “I want to go to a historically black college.”

“Over my dead body,” he replied.

“Dad, my going to an HBC is not going to kill you.”

“And you’re sure of that?” He reached for his cup and stirred his evening tea, then took a sip.

“There’s nothing wrong with going to a black college. Plenty of successful people have done it.”

He laughed and said, “Name three.”

“Easily,” she said. “The astronaut Ronald McNair. The
60 Minutes
commentator Ed Bradley. And, last but not least, Oprah Winfrey.”

“All flukes.”

“Dad, come on.”

“This is my house, Wendy. I have a right to discard anything I don’t want in it.”

“Why are you such a control freak?”

“I just told you this is my house.”

“I’m sixteen years old.”

“You are my daughter before anything else; I don’t care if you’re sixty. And one thing’s for sure, Barack Obama didn’t go to a black college.”

“No, Dad, he just went to Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church.”

“He was never present for those radical speeches!”

“Denial is more than a river in Africa, Dad.”

“Wendy, Barack Obama is clean and articulate.”

“Where have I heard that before?”

“No one could confuse President Obama with some gangster. You are not going to a black school. I do not want you around that element.”

“What element—college students?”

“They are not college students.”

She shook the brochure in his face. “I guess it’s a mirage, then.”

“You’re going backward, Wendy. This isn’t the nineteen-twenties. Those schools were created because we weren’t allowed to go to the regular schools. They were a consolation prize. They are secondary. You can now go to the regular schools, and that, Wendy, is what I plan for you to do.”

“Why can’t I go to the school I want to go to?”

“How do you expect me to rest nights with my mind racing with thoughts of you, my only child, in the atmosphere of drive-bys, dope addicts, and hos?”

“Hos?” she asked. “What makes you so sure there are hos at Howard?”

“I MapQuested that school, Wendy. It’s right by the projects.”

“It’s also near the Capitol. Did MapQuest tell you that, too, Dad?”

“Young lady, a lot of people don’t have any choices, but you do. I’ve sent you to the finest schools. You’re groomed for the Ivy League.”

“Translation: I have been cooped up with white people for the past eleven years.”

“Be that as it may, a lot of people would kill to attend the schools you’ve gone to. You should be grateful—”

“I am grateful. I value my education, Dad.”

“Then it’s settled. You will not go to Howard or any other black college. I’m not going to let you do this. I want you to be around safe, predictable people. You are
not going to worry me into an early grave risking your life around those people.”

“Why do you keep saying ‘those people’?”

“You’re not a child, Wendy. I don’t have to explain everything to you.”

“You’re not explaining anything to me. You’re talking like a lunatic.”

His voice rose. “How dare you call your father a lunatic!”

“I said you were talking like a lunatic, I didn’t say you were one, Dad.”

“I have a right to my beliefs.”

“They are not very informed beliefs. Anyone can tell you that Howard is a selective school.”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“It
is
, Dad.”

“Look, there was a time when the black community carried itself with dignity and class. We turned out Nat King Cole and Harry Belafonte. Now what do we have? Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube.”

“What does that have to do with me going to the college I want?”

“I have sent you to the finest private schools. You could have your pick. You could go to one of the Seven Sister schools!”

“So it’s all right for me to go to a women’s college but not a black college?”

“Exactly.”

“Why?”

“Think of your future. What would an employer think? Don’t stigmatize yourself unnecessarily.”

“Any place of employment that would think like that is a place I wouldn’t be comfortable working for anyway!”

“This is getting very circular. Wendy, I am not going to argue all night. You don’t need to apply to one of those schools. Choose another. There are thousands of others. You may think this is what you want, but you are just going through a phase.”

“This is not a phase!” Wendy pointed to her father’s skin.

He shook his head. “The future, Wendy, is not black.”

W
hen Hakiam got to the apartment, he found Malikia in a car seat. This struck Hakiam as strange because Leesa didn’t have a car. But there the baby was, propped in the seat by the plastic-covered couch. The TV was blaring a video that was heavy with the b word, and the air was heavy with the smell of fried hair. Leesa brushed past him with a new hairdo, which was shoulder-length and all of a sudden straight and swishy. He also noticed she had a new tattoo. It was the word “mother” stenciled into the center of her back.

“Where did you get that?” he asked his cousin, pointing to the car seat.

“They were giving them away at the social services center.”

Hakiam walked over to the seat and rocked it with his foot. At first, Malikia seemed amused, but within seconds, she got fussy and broke into her customary low cry.

“Why didn’t you leave well enough alone?” Leesa asked him.

Malikia started crying harder, and Hakiam thought,
Babies are such wimps
. They needed an endless supply of petting and hugs. Constant soothing.

“This world is rough,” he told Malikia. “So you gotta be tough.”

“Great advice,” Leesa said before going back into the bathroom. “How do you like my hair?”

“It’s unbeweavable, Goldilocks. Don’t you have to work tonight?”

“Nope.”

The voice from the TV changed to another rapper. The radiator coughed. The streetlight sliced through the blinds, making horizontal lines across the room.

Some kids down the hall were playing with a ball and paddle. It made a repetitive sound.
Thump. Thump. Thump
.

Next door, a plate broke when it hit the floor. “Shit,” someone said.

Hakiam heard another bang from the hall and went out to investigate.

He saw two kids, about four or five years old, who had set down the ball and paddle and were playing in the trash chute, sticking their heads in. Hakiam considered running over and telling them to stop, but he soon nixed the idea. They looked like the type that would kick Hakiam in the shins rather than listen.

He went back inside and took an extra blanket from Leesa’s room. He grabbed a pillow and arranged it on
the armchair. He took a look over at Malikia in her car seat on the floor. She started crying.

“Darn you,” Hakiam told her.

That really got her open, toothless mouth to bawling.
Here we go again
.

Leesa walked by him, smelling of a Giorgio perfume knockoff.

“You going out?” he asked her.

“Yep.”

“Who you going out with?”

“What’s it to you?” she snapped.

He plunked his feet on the end table, closed his eyes, and nearly fell asleep. Then he jumped up and said, “I almost forgot.” He retrieved the bag that Wendy had given him.

Leesa stopped in her tracks. “Where did you get that from?” she asked.

“The girl.”

“What girl?”

“The girl from the center.”

Leesa’s eyes went back to the gift. She curled her lip at him and said, “What makes her think I want her charity?”

“You want everybody else’s,” he muttered.

Leesa took the outfit out of the bag. She held the onesie to her as a half smile leaked out. She looked at her daughter, then back at her cousin.

“So, you like this girl?”

He shrugged. “She’s all right.”

“She got an extra room?”

L
ife is an issue of circumstance.

All Wendy knew of life was living in a primarily white area, attending primarily white schools, and associating with primarily white people.

Like the only chip in the cookie, she was used to it, but that didn’t mean she felt comfortable. And though she had never been asked explicitly “What’s it like being the only black girl in class?” she had an answer ready in her head.

So what’s it really like?

It’s like not getting invited to a birthday party
.

It’s like not being invited to a birthday party for a person you know just as well as the people who are invited
.

It’s like not being invited to a birthday party for a person you know just as well as the people who are invited right in front of you, as if you were invisible
.

Invisible, not in the way little kids fantasized about, but like Ralph Ellison described in his famous book.
Most people thought that being a different color would make everyone see you. Actually, it was just the opposite. You were more likely to be ignored. You got talked about like you were just not there.

When Wendy was young, it affected her more, but as she’d gotten older she could choose her company a little better. She befriended Erin and Erin befriended her, and somehow when you had one person at school who you could really trust and relate to, life was livable.

But that didn’t mean that there weren’t still times.

After spring break last term, Wendy had walked past a group of girls who were discussing their vacation to Cancún. They had their forearms side by side, and were comparing their tans and telling each other:

“
You are black.
”

“
No, you are black.
”

“
No, no
, you
are black.
”

Wendy remembered thinking,
If only it were that simple
. Color was the easy part. Black was also a culture. Wendy doubted that these girls ever had black-eyed peas to welcome in the New Year or danced the pop and lock at a family picnic. And beyond cultural expressions, she wondered if these girls had any concept of consciousness. Did they know anything about Angela Davis or Sally Hemmings? Or were they stuck in a one-dimensional experience of race? A pigeonholing, based on sight only.

The hope of gaining a more complete understanding of her race had led Wendy to volunteer at the center. Today marked her two-month anniversary.

When Wendy saw Hakiam approach, she slipped a
bookmark into her schoolbook and set it before her on the table. She wore a lace-inset tank top, low-rise jeans, and a crocheted wrap as a belt.

“You look different,” Hakiam told her.

“It’s laundry day,” she answered.

“It ought to be laundry day every day.”

He sat down beside her, hoisted his feet onto the desk, and yawned audibly.

She pushed his feet to the floor and spread out her tutoring folder.

There was a stare-down for a minute or so, then finally he asked, “What are you waiting for?”

“Hell to freeze over,” she answered.

“I thought you were here to tutor, Tutor.”

“Did you read the passages you were supposed to?”

He snorted and said, “No.”

“Listen, Hakiam, let’s get one thing straight—”

“I know you’re on me, Wendy.”

“I’m on you?” she said.

“Yep, you dig me.”

She gave a patronizing smile. “I think you have things wrong. I only went out with you because I thought we would have something to talk about, but I was wrong. And if you think that you can just come here and waste time—”

“Like you’re so busy with other people.”

“It’s not my fault that people who have already proven that they can’t complete high school in the traditional setting also happen to be the same group of people who have trouble completing their GED in this nontraditional
setting. You know the saying, ‘You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink’—or in this case, think.”

He shoved in closer to her and she shoved herself away.

He tipped back in his chair and threaded his hands behind his head.

Wendy went back to paging through her calc book and began to pick up on a weird vibe. She noticed the way he was eyeing her tote bag, which hung on the seat next to her.

“Is there something you want out of my bag?” she asked him.

He wiggled his eyebrows and told her that she better keep a closer eye on her stuff.

“Now, why would I have to worry about that with just you in the room?”

“I’m just saying, don’t tempt an honest person.”

She took her tote bag and brought it in close to her body. “I won’t tempt an honest person or you.”

He smirked at her remark.

“Don’t tell me you’re a thief, too, Hakiam?”

He tried to suppress his grin. “All right, I won’t tell you,” he said.

“Don’t you care how you’re inconveniencing people?”

“They’ll get over it.”

“How would you like it if I stole your wallet?”

“There ain’t nothing in it. Go to town.”

“What if there were something in it?”

“Well, I guess I wouldn’t like that.”

She gave a perfunctory smile and said, “That’s the breakthrough I was looking for.”

Then she rose from the chair and stood up tall. “Hakiam, you need to go cold turkey.”

“I have. Since I been here in Philly I ain’t lifted nothing. Besides, when I did steal back in Cincinnati, I wasn’t one of those people who stole just to steal. That’s sick.”

“You can excuse away anything, Hakiam.”

“Just about.”

Her nails dug deep in her palm, and she thought hard before she said this next part to him. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you get a job?”