Color Me In Read online

  Janae looks up and nods at me as I approach. She sees everything, a skill she likely gets from Anita, although that’s about it in terms of their similarities. Janae has this avant-garde vibe that makes her both intimidating and alluring at the same time. She takes after her father, with eyes so big and brown you’re likely to get lost in them. Janae rarely pipes up unless she really has something to say, unlike Jordan, who has something to say at all times about everything.

  “Ever heard of an iron?” Jordan says judgily, tugging on my wrinkled shirt. “You remember everyone, right?”

  Her friends nod. We’ve done this every week—the same song and dance around Jordan and Janae having to explain to their friends why I only just started coming to church, why I’m not in youth group, why I can’t tan, and why my last name sounds like a brand of matzo ball soup.

  “Your mom said we have to walk back. They don’t have any room in the car,” I explain sheepishly.

  Jordan sucks her teeth as loudly as Anita, so I back up a few steps to give her and Janae space to say bye to their friends.

  Jordan is Anita’s carbon copy, the younger twin by a whole fifteen minutes—a fact she will never let Janae forget (like either of them had a conscious choice in the matter when they were barreling toward the birth canal).

  “How long do you think until dinner?” Jerry asks, as if he didn’t have eggs and waffles a few hours ago.

  No one has answered him when the youth group organizer, Darnell, guilts us into gathering the pamphlets out of the pews just as we head toward the door. Darnell is a twenty-something social activist and a Harlem celebrity, famous for being on the front lines of all local community affairs and for always wearing some sort of political accessory. Today he has a pin on his lapel with a raised black fist on a white background.

  His long dreads fall down his back, tied together with a colorful scrap of fabric, and make a swishing noise as he walks. Darnell has that untouchable artistic swagger that makes every word that comes out of his mouth sound like a call for a revolution. It also doesn’t hurt that he is the type of Michael B. Jordan handsome that makes me go hot and dizzy every time I look at him.

  “Nevaeh, have you thought any more about joining the youth group?” he asks, walking through the aisles behind me. “It’s not so much about religion as it is about community.”

  I know he’s trying to make me feel welcome, but the last thing I need is to join a Christian youth group, no matter how inclusive it is.

  “Not really,” I say, rubbing my cheeks to make an excuse for the reddening caused by his smile.

  Jordan looks over but returns to gathering pamphlets as soon as I catch her eye; I’d bet fifty dollars that she, along with everyone else, has a thing for Darnell.

  “Well, you are always welcome, even just to sit and observe.”

  I smile and nod, hoping that will appease him.

  “Oh, and, Nevaeh, I think you dropped this.”

  He hands me a program covered in my chicken scratch—I must have dropped it running away from the Grays.

  I snatch it back.

  “This is some powerful stuff. Let me know if you change your mind.”

  Writing is the only thing that has ever made sense to me. It’s how I deal with all the feelings and thoughts I don’t know how to talk about. But I don’t share my writing, not with anyone. I mean, Stevie has basically been my only real friend since I was five, and even he hasn’t seen anything I have written.

  “I’m so hungry, I think I’m going to die!” Jerry whines, as if he ran the length of the city carrying a boulder rather than walking within a hundred-foot radius picking up paper.

  We look up to Darnell for permission to go, and he nods, so we bounce before he can think of any additional chores.

  Outside, we get hit with the thick, sticky New York late-August heat. It’s like when you hold something greasy and then try to wash it off, but somehow the mixture of water and soap and oil turns into this terrible paste. Except in this instance, the greasy film now covers your whole body and everywhere you turn smells like pee.

  The church is only twelve blocks from the house, but nothing moves quickly in Harlem.

  My cousins greet almost every person we pass on the street, accepting compliments on their attire and Pa’s sermon. The passersby pinch Jerry’s cheeks and smile at me awkwardly, unsure whether I expect to be addressed or just happen to be here by coincidence.

  I wonder sometimes what it would have been like if I had grown up in the city and gone to church every Sunday like I have this summer. Maybe I would know the songs and clap along. Maybe I would hold hands with the other congregants and leave with a sense of purpose. Maybe I would walk through Harlem, comfortable in the loud chaos of the streets, and smile at everyone I pass rather than avoiding eye contact.

  Maybe it would feel like home.

  We stop at Lucia’s, a Dominican-owned beauty salon a few blocks from our house, to look at the faded posters of models plastered to the window with layers of yellowing Scotch tape. Inside, women in hair rollers sit under massive hair-dryer domes that make them look like aliens. They cackle as they pass around the pastries they swiped from their church potlucks before heading to Lucia’s for their weekly group therapy session. I watch Jordan and Janae scan the styles with their eyes—they have photographic memory when it comes to hair, especially Janae. Today she has thick box braids with metal cuffs placed randomly throughout, like little bursts of glitter woven into her masterpiece.

  I take my hair out of the messy bun that I always wear it in and shake it out. The mop of loose brown curls spreads across my shoulders and down my back.

  “Hey, Ney, how come you’ve got down hair?” Jerry asks.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s just what he used to call people in shampoo commercials when he was young,” Janae swoops in.

  “And?” I probe.

  “And white people, when they take their hair out of a ponytail or a bun…it falls down,” Jordan says matter-of-factly.

  Jerry jumps back in, irritated to have his older sisters speak for him.

  “Yours does too, Nevaeh. It falls down!”

  “My hair is different than yours. I can’t just oscillate between styles like your sisters,” I snap.

  “Aw-si…,” Jerry tries to sound out the syllables.

  “You don’t have to use your big words to make him feel dumb, Ney. You know he didn’t mean anything by it. Plus, it’s true. You do have white-people hair,” Jordan claps back.

  Jerry stares up at me, sorry that he upset me, even if he has no clue why. He doesn’t know I’ve gone to bed every night wishing I had hair like theirs, thick and vibrant, like a piece of art unique to their people. (My people?)

  There is a poster in the salon window at my eye level, some ’90s female hip-hop group with relaxed, asymmetrical bobs—the hairstyle is terrible. I point to it.

  “What about this, Jer? Do you think I could rock this?”

  Jerry giggles, distracted and happy again.

  “Let’s keep it moving,” Jordan says, so we do.

  On the corner of our block we pass a group of guys. One of them, tall and sexy, calls out, “Yo, J!”

  All three of my cousins look at him, but I can tell it’s Jordan he’s calling. She can tell too, and her smile stretches for miles.

  “When you gonna introduce me to Lightskin?” he asks flirtatiously.

  Jordan’s face falls to her toes. I’ve got the only thing close to “light skin” in our family, an off-white blip amid a stunning array of deep chestnut and mahogany.

  His muscles are hard to ignore. They flex as he holds his arms out in front of him to spray his face with the type of bottle that my mom uses to water plants.

  Jordan storms off without answering, leaving the cute guy behind.

  Jana
e grabs my arm to stop me from going after her. “She’s just salty because she’s been hoping all summer that he would ask her out.”

  Janae nods in the direction of the cute guy, who’s still staring at me in a way that makes my intestines twist and tighten around each other. I look away. If I get stabbed by Jordan’s piercing glare again, I may not survive.

  We spot my aunt out on the stoop with her sunglasses on, scanning the street like she’s sure something is about to go down.

  “Where have you all been? We’ve been waiting for years!” Anita yells.

  “Coming!” my cousins chirp back in unison, and hurry toward her, unfazed by the casual absurdity of her accusation.

  I slow my pace and allow enough distance to grow between us.

  Sounds from the small homegrown churches built in brownstone basements cascade from each corner of the block. Most of the old Harlem has already been reborn into a whiter, watered-down version of itself, but every once in a while, I stumble across a snapshot of what I imagine it used to be. Pa told me that these are some of the last churches in the city that still hold a second service on Sunday, which means it’s only a matter of time before they disappear as well, but not today. Today, the choirs from these underground sanctuaries sing with such power that you wouldn’t know their time is numbered.

  Standing there alone, I evaporate into the music as it makes its way through the heat like a desperately needed breeze, cooling the dehydrated street with sounds of the past.

  Chapter 3

  My grandpa bought this brownstone fifty years ago and renovated the whole thing himself. It’s been maintained in perfect condition because my uncle Ezekiel is a carpenter and can fix just about anything.

  Every inch of the place is covered in photos, most of which are of my mom and Anita from their childhood. It’s easy for me to get lost in the images, the only access I have to their past. Anita’s white teeth shine through the huge smile that she flashes in every photo, declaring her fierceness with a proud, blinding gaze.

  My mom used to wear her hair natural when she was young. She had curls so huge they looked like the spiral slides at the playground, but as she moved into her teenage years, she began to flatten her hair, straight and smooth, until it eventually ended up on top of her head in a tight, round knot that holds her together and upright. At the end of the first wall of the living room, my grandmother hugs my mom on the day of her high school graduation. My mom’s scowl is half hidden under the red cap and tassel, but Grandma smiles like Anita, a cosmic blast, only bigger and brighter.

  It is the only way I knew my grandmother to be: unwilling to waste a single moment of life on anything but joy. She came to America from Jamaica when she was in her twenties, wooed by my grandfather and the thrill of adventure. The void since she left the world five years ago hurts like a hole punch perforating my heart.

  Images of Jerry, Janae, and Jordan continue the photo gallery. This next chapter of our history surrounds the prominently displayed photo of Barack and Michelle Obama, who watch over us with love.

  I am represented as well. My photos from kindergarten to high school are lined up in chronological order on top of the smooth, recently polished china cabinet; it’s a spot in the hallway that leads to the dining room from the kitchen. The space is isolated, as if there was nowhere I fit, so they decided I’d be best left on my own.

  Delicious smells waft out of the kitchen, where Uncle Zeke is putting the final touches on dinner. Zeke doesn’t go to church, so on Sundays, when everyone else heads to service, he cooks the family a proper supper. His parents forced him to go when he was younger, but the minute he turned eighteen, he stopped. No one is allowed to ask him why or even talk about it.

  Dinner is always the same: broiled salmon steaks, green beans, mac and cheese, and biscuits.

  “You all pray in the pews,” Zeke says, “but I make the gospel in the kitchen.”

  Ezekiel is really big. Like should-have-played-football-or-become-a-bodybuilder big, and the huge platters of food he carries through the door look featherlight in his monstrous hands. All eight of us appear around the table right as the dishes touch down, summoned by the scent of familiarity and cheesy goodness. But before we can dig in, we have to engage in a carefully choreographed dance of extension cords and fan placement.

  Pa has yet to enter the twenty-first century and refuses to outfit the building with air-conditioning (he claims the cold air brings sickness), so we each carry around a fan to plug in next to us wherever we end up.

  An empty chair sits next to Pa. He hasn’t stopped setting a place for Grandma since her passing. Secretly, I like that she still has a spot at the table, but I’ve heard Anita say she thinks it’s unhealthy.

  Once we’re all settled, we bow our heads as Pa prays.

  “Make us thankful for this food and bless it to the nourishment and strengthening of our bodies, in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.”

  The hum of the fans mellows the clanking plates and scraping forks as everyone digs in. Jerry gets through his first helping so quickly that it’s possible he might have just swallowed everything whole, in direct opposition to Pa, who chews each bite of food to the point of disintegration because he claims it’s better for his digestion.

  “Jerry, we are approaching the next stage of your manhood, eleven, your final year of primary school. What do you expect to gain from your studies?” Pa asks in his deep, gravelly voice. He enunciates each syllable with the same care he took to choose each word. Pa’s parents were descendants of slaves in North Carolina who became missionaries and moved to Liberia during the Back-to-Africa movement to start a school and family in the late 1890s. Growing up, Pa learned that it was of the utmost importance that he present himself in a formal and proper manner, a belief he has maintained into his eighty-sixth year.

  “I heard that the classroom has a pet and each kid gets to take it home for a weekend,” Jerry answers, between shoveling food into his mouth. “I think it’s an iguana.”

  We all roll our eyes. It’ll be a cold day in hell when Anita allows a reptile into this house.

  “Mama, I need you to sign the consent form for the college trip,” Jordan pipes up. “I saved my half of the four hundred dollars, and it’s filling up.”

  Jordan tries to look confident as she confronts her mother in front of an audience, but Anita stares her down with such intensity that I almost expect her to combust.

  “Auntie! You went to that fancy school, didn’t you?” Jordan pleads with my mother for backup.

  My mom gives a barely visible nod of support.

  “Tell her, Auntie! Tell her it’s worth the money! It’s an investment in my future!”

  Nobody moves. You don’t talk about money in front of other people, even family, not in this house; it’s one of the rules.

  “What are you looking at?” Jordan barks in my direction. “Not all of us have rich Daddy’s credit card number memorized—”

  “We’ll discuss this later.” Anita silences Jordan and points her fork at me. “So, Nevaeh, sophomore year. Do you have to decide on a foreign language? Janae and Jordan take Spanish.”

  My face burns with embarrassment at the unexpected spotlight, but Zeke jumps at the chance to take the stage.

  “Sophomore year! I remember it like yesterday. Patrick Ewing was out with an injury after game two of the finals. Latrell Sprewell was killin’ it, but he just couldn’t cut it against the Spurs.” He shakes his head with such disdain you would think a family member had passed away unexpectedly—such is the tragic life of a die-hard Knicks fan.

  Uncle Zeke loves to talk, especially if he can throw in some vintage NBA facts, which he always finds a way to do.

  “That was the year I was going to make it onto that debate team if it killed me,” he recalls with fondness. “The team took a trip to Washington, DC, and that meant you got to mis
s half a week of school going to museums and seeing the sights. I had to go down there and let them know to get ready for Zeke Thomas!” He stops to take a sip of water.

  “So you made it happen? You made it onto the team?” Janae asks.

  “No,” Anita interjects. “But I did.”

  My uncle winks at Anita and Janae laughs, unaware of how lucky she is to have parents in a loving marriage. They are so happy it’s sickening—high school sweethearts, Anita and Zeke are something out of an unmade ’80s Brat Pack movie with Black people.

  My mom hasn’t said a word or eaten much. She just moves the food around on her plate. Anita follows my line of sight and notices the same thing. She begins to say something but then stops herself. It’s hard to imagine Anita in a situation she can’t talk her way out of, but this seems to be one.

  “Corinne, have you started looking into work? I can put a word in for you at the flower store next to my workspace if you want. You’ve always made the prettiest bouquets,” Zeke says, cutting through the silence.

  He’s right. My mom used to make huge, elaborate bouquets. She would go to the flea market and find the most amazing vases and spend hours putting exotic, colorful flowers (ones you had to touch to make sure they weren’t plastic) into a magnificent arrangement. My mom looks at my aunt with moist eyes, unable to speak.

  “Corinne’s not working at a flower shop, Zeke,” Anita hisses. “She’s gonna get what she deserves after twenty years with that man, and—” She stops herself and looks at me, swallowing a rage so big I can hear it move back down her esophagus. “And then she can start fresh.”

  Anita looks straight into my mom’s eyes so she knows the words are meant for her.

  “She’ll open her own flower shop if she wants, but until the divorce papers are signed, she’s fine right here. All she needs is family.”

  “God would not test her with any obstacle she cannot handle,” my grandfather adds after pausing to chew and drink from the water glass beside him.

  My mom pinches her eyelids closed, sending her emotions back deep, deep inside herself while the rest of us sit here and pretend not to notice.