Hold Love Strong (24 page)

D
onnel called.

“So I got something to tell you,” he said, sounding out of breath. “You there?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“All right,” he said. “So, I'm just gonna come out and say it.”

“Go ahead,” I said, fitting awkwardly into wonderment, my head spinning with questions. Was he coming home? Did the DA drop the charges? Had there been a settlement?

“OK,” he said. He breathed. He started. He paused. “So, nigga. So, shit. So, I'm in love.”

I laughed.

“Swear to God,” he said.

“Who?”

“Me.”

“No,” I said. “I mean how?”

“You don't know her.”

“How do you know who I know?”

“Cause she ain't from Ever.”

“Nigga,” I said. “How can you be in love?”

“Shit,” he sighed. “You the last nigga who should be asking me that. Don't you know anything's possible?”

“So where did you meet her?” I asked.

“Waiting for the train. Before the fight. She makes me want to do things.”

“Do things?”

“We're spiritually connected.”

She was headed to classes at college. She was a student at Columbia, smart as shit, Donnel said, thick as a motherfucker.

“I mean, just the sound of her voice and I almost dropped to my knees and started praying. We've been writing every day since I got locked up. Now, you tell me what that means.”

“What you say?” I asked.

“About what?”

“To get her to talk to you.”

“Nothing.”

“You said nothing and she just started talking to you?”

“No,” Donnel snapped. “I asked her where she was going.”

“And what she say?”

“Nigga,” he scolded. “I just told you she was in school. She was going to class. Shit. I'm telling you. I swear to God. This woman is beautiful.”

Donnel swore he was going to take her somewhere nice, somewhere in Manhattan, some five-star restaurant, then to the hottest club. Then he said, “Fuck that, fuck that. I'm gonna take her to the top of the Empire State Building. Then, I'm gonna take her to hear jazz. Maybe some nigga will be playing the trumpet.”

“Since when do you like jazz?” I laughed.

“Nigga,” he said, “I've always liked jazz. Shit, I might even love it.”

Donnel told me what their lives would be like together, how they'd move down south. She could come to Atlanta if she wanted to. He described how she had a birthmark as big as a dime at the outside corner of her left eye and dimples too.

“And dimples that blink when she smiles,” he said. “Her whole face: shining. You should see the picture she sent me. You can't even imagine how fine she is.”

There wasn't the slightest degree of anger or restraint in Donnel's voice, not a hint of burning or sadness. He was simply testifying, announcing himself by identifying another's uniqueness and glory. He talked about getting his GED. So he could go to college like her. So he could help their kids with homework. Never in my life had I heard Donnel go into a tirade over his future. Never in my life had I heard him so convinced and so determined to convince someone of what he said without once raising his voice or threatening them.

“You want to hear something?” he asked.

“What?” I said.

“Hold on,” he said. I heard a rustle of paper. “Never mind.”

“Never mind what?”

“This shit I wrote,” he said, then softly added: “This, I don't know, I guess, poem.”

“She's got you writing poetry?” I laughed.

He laughed. “I told you. I'm done. I'm telling you: I'm gotten.”

A
ll night, I wrote. I put my headphones on. I listened to Eric's Discman until the batteries died. I scribbled and jotted and scratched out. I edited and unedited. I tore paper out of my notebook. I chewed the end of the pen. I gnawed. I gasped. I sighed;
Fuck.
I vacillated between believing I could do it and knowing I couldn't. I fell asleep with my head on the kitchen table, drool oozing from the corner of my mouth, soaking the corner of the page beneath my cheek. My Aunt Rhonda came home, shook me, slapped my face, and woke me up.

“What you doing?” she asked.

Barely awake, my eyes dry and heavy, I handed her the bulletin and application.

First, she flipped through it quickly. Then she turned the pages slowly, her face expressionless.

“College,” she said.

“I got to write a personal statement,” I said.

She skimmed through the application's last few pages, put it back on the table, and looked at me, her brown eyes swollen with the depths of too many thoughts, too many wants, too many declarations.

“Get some sleep,” she said.

“But I got to write,” I said.

“Tomorrow,” she said, her voice stern. “You can take care of this tomorrow.”

I skipped school the next day and my grandma called in sick and so did my Aunt Rhonda. And Eric was there. And my uncle was there until the middle of the morning when he left to go to parole. And when I grew frustrated and said I didn't think I could do it, my grandma told me I had to, that I had no choice. So I kept writing. I did so because I wasn't writing just for me. I thought if Donnel knew what I was doing he would kill me if I stopped. So his absence was also pulling the writing from me, compelling me to keep going. So I did. So I wrote.

The heat in our building was broken again and our apartment baked with a dry, desert heat that caused everything from my nostrils to my teeth to be chalky. The windows of the apartment steamed. I sat at the kitchen table in a white tank top and shorts. My grandma, my Aunt Rhonda, and Eric came in and out of the kitchen. Occasionally they called my name, shouted words of encouragement, argued over previous suggestions and edits they were convinced I had to make. I worked feverishly. Every word was a weight, a concrete block I pushed and pulled and dragged up a hill.

I wrote a paragraph, read it aloud, and my grandma and my Aunt Rhonda and even Eric offered their opinions.

“Let them feel you. Write like you mean it! You know what I'm saying?” said my Aunt Rhonda, relying on rhetoric to inspire me. “Stop telling them what you think they want to hear! And get your spelling right. You know how white people is about spelling!”

“Capitalize the first word of every sentence,” said Eric, preaching
one of the few grammar lessons he could recall. “And don't mix up your
b
's and
d
's.”

“Go ahead!” my grandma said. “Go ahead and let those folks know who you is!”

What did I write? What did I finally compose? What song did I sing? Honestly, I kept it simple. I was not the type to fabricate details or go over the top concerning the facts of my life, my wants, my wishes. I delineated. I explained. I constructed an introduction that was simultaneously a whisper and slap in the face. I said my name is Abraham Singleton. I made my grandma and Aunt Rhonda cry. I stuck strictly to irrefutable evidence. I said my mother had me when she was thirteen, then she became a crackhead and then she was murdered but before even that she was dead to me. I didn't bother explaining what such a loss meant. I let the fact hang there on the page. I wrote four, five, six, seven; a total of ten pages. I told Brandeis I never knew my father; that my uncle, Nice, was incarcerated for two crimes, armed robbery and loving his family and a woman more than he loved himself, a crime against his own humanity, his essential potential. I explained how he isolated himself, disappeared himself from our lives. He didn't write letters. He didn't respond to ours. Put behind bars, he excised himself from the universe but not because he was selfish or deviant or vile, but because he wished for us not to be limited by his confinement. If this was my chance to be heard, to be free, then I was speaking. I wrote about Donnel, how he had bathed me, raised me, shielded me. I said Psalm Twenty-three, verse four:
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.

“There you go,” my Aunt Rhonda cheered. “Hit them with the biblical!”

Then I wrote about how it felt without Donnel. I didn't go into the details of his activities. Rather, I gave the details of his absence. I
described the holes each day bored in my chest. Then I wrote about my grandma. I explained how she named me, built me, and demanded that I dream no matter how many nightmares sank their teeth in my head. I said as much as going to Brandeis was for me, it was for them, my family; Ever; every brother and sister I loved. I stole that line from the United Negro College Fund television commercial and told Brandeis that I was living proof that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. And I'd seen wasted minds. And I didn't want to waste mine. I refused to.

T
he library was closing in an hour. It was dark outside. The fluorescent lights in the library only had the strength to make the library a grey dusk, so people had to get right up close to the books to read their Dewey Decimals. I sat at one of the rickety cubicles, my back to the door, reviewing my personal statement for the last time before Ms. Hakim would help me type it in school. Kaya sat to my right, pointing out when I misspelled words and suggesting last-minute adjustments. Cherrie stood over my left shoulder. We had already said hello and talked about what I was doing and how my family was.

“College,” she said. “I always knew you was special.”

Cherrie was singing in Pastor Ramsey's choir. Luscious had joined them. Cherrie was at the library to photocopy Song of Songs.

“Me and Luscious gonna put it to music,” she said, her jowls jiggling with each hard syllable. “We gonna sing it for real. Do you know how good that girl can sing? She just closes her eyes and lets it go.”

She put both of her hands on her big, round belly.

“You know from here; down deep. It's like…like the sound of
ain't afraid of nothing.
It's good, you know. To hear a voice like that. But you know that. You remember how your mother used to sing? Shit, Jelly used to kill it.”

I stared at Cherrie. I had signed up for the SAT. I would take the examination in two weeks. I had met with my Legal Aid lawyer and he said things were still up in the air, my guess was as good as his. Who knew what the DA and the judge would do with me? I couldn't remember my mother ever singing louder than a whisper, or a time and place she sang to me. I suppose I was as close to crying as a cloudless sky could be to rain without raining. What do I mean? I was ten thousand feet high, sun shining, with unending visibility, but in my throat, an ocean swelled and heaved.

“You know I got a tape,” said Cherrie.

“Huh?” I said.

“A tape,” she said. “Me and Jelly used to tape each other singing. I know I got at least a couple of them.”

The library door opened. Then the cold wind outside slammed it closed. In came my uncle, walking like the slamming door wounded him, dragging himself into the library like a sack of broken eggs, wrecked with exhaustion. He was getting off the job he just got swinging a twenty-pound sledgehammer working demolition for minimum wage. Beneath his arm were the books he finished reading. His eyes were down. He stopped and massaged his right knee. He flexed it, bending and straightening his leg. Then he saw me, walked toward Cherrie, Kaya, and me, and stopped when he reached us.

“What's that?” he asked.

“My personal statement,” I said.

“It's finished?”

“I think so,” I said.

“It's good,” added Kaya. “Real good.”

My uncle put his hand out. “Let me see it,” he said.

I handed it to him. He read, his face six inches from the pages, intense, immersed in every word.

“Now, Roosevelt,” Cherrie said, fearing my uncle's critical eye so using his given name to remind him we were in a public place. “He ain't got to be Shakespeare. Abraham just got to get the message across.”

I glanced at Kaya. Then I looked back at my uncle. He finished reading. Dust from the drywall he'd leveled all day powdered his brown skin, speckled his eyelashes, eyebrows, and the edges of his ears. His lips were parched. He looked up and studied me. His eyes were the only part of him untouched, unsoiled. He must have read ten thousand books while locked up, maybe a hundred thousand. He closed his eyes and nodded yes slowly. Then he opened his eyes and they were soft, wet.

“There's a lot about Donnel,” he said. He handed the papers back to me.

He looked away and thought for a moment. Then he held his books up. “I was just gonna return these and get the ones they got on hold for me,” he said. “You almost finished?”

“Almost,” I said.

He smiled. “I'll wait for you.” He looked at Kaya. “If it's all right with you.”

Cherrie left. At ten minutes before five, I finished, Kaya kissed me good-bye, and I said I would call her later. Not counting the librarians, only my uncle and I remained in the library. He stood at the back, flipping through a book he had taken from the shelf. I put my personal statement in my backpack, stood up, and walked to him.

“You ready?” I asked.

He closed the book he was reading and held it up for me to see. “
Moby Dick,
” he said. “Call me Ishmael. Man versus the sea.”

He put the book back on the shelf.

“You should let D see it,” he said. “You should send it to him.”

E
verything was waiting. I waited to hear from Brandeis. And we waited to hear from our Legal Aid lawyers, who waited to hear from the DA's office and the judge. Were we in or out; nay or yea? Would I be accepted to Brandeis? Would our cases go to trial? Would the DA be flexible, the judge lenient? Would they accept a plea? Because I would write one. I would have written ten thousand of them a day, every minute of every hour. Donnel would do anything, he said, any length of probation, any anger management therapy, any counseling, group sessions, or community service to get out of doing time.

“Nigga,” he said. “I'll clean every subway station in Queens with a Q-tip if need be.”

I checked the mailbox for the response from Brandeis every day. Sometimes three or four times, and even on Sunday. I asked people with mailboxes near our mailbox and those whose last names began with an
S
if they happened to get an envelope addressed to me. Nobody had.

The waiting was a plague, all encompassing, inundating. Everywhere I looked, I saw waiting. People at the bus stop: waiting. People at the barbershop, the beauty salon, outside on the street, the young men hustling: all waiting. And how about the nine men on the basketball court who were not shooting a foul shot, and the men and women in church thanking Jesus, praying that their children rise with pride, take every opportunity of a society deemed free: were they not waiting too?

When Donnel and I spoke all we talked about was waiting. But although he never said it, I knew the waiting hurt Donnel more than it pained me. Because waiting was his living. He had no escape from it. He was locked in with it. And everyone with him was waiting. And he couldn't be kissed or hugged, he couldn't be consoled or told an answer would come soon in the moments he most needed it. He had spent Thanksgiving waiting. And Christmas waiting. And New Year's. Then Valentine's Day passed. On the phone, he asked me what I did for Kaya.

“I wrote her a poem,” I said.

“A poem,” he laughed. “You trying to be me?”

Kaya was accepted to every city college and university she applied to. So she was deliberating, weighing the benefits of leaving Ever versus the costs. She could go to Queens College or Hunter; or she could go to Brooklyn College or City College; or she could go to Wellesley, or Temple in Philadelphia.

“I like the way that sounds,” she said. “I go to Temple University. Makes it sound holy, doesn't it? Like I'm studying to be an angel or something. But what happens if I get homesick? Or what happens if I need something? You know, what if I want you to hold me, not just talk on the phone?”

March came and we were still waiting. I hadn't done my laundry in weeks. I hadn't cut my hair, gotten a shape-up, or tended to the fine hair that made a sparse tangle on my cheeks and chin. And no matter my
age, no matter how my hormones raged, no matter how Kaya smelled or what she did or said, I did not think about sex or the shape and feel of her body.

“What's wrong with you?” she said, pouting when I didn't respond to her come-on and nuzzling. “You acting like someone died.”

On March ninth, the judge sentenced me to two years of probation and fifty hours of community service, and Donnel plead guilty. He had to. Between the fight, and how he fought against the police when they arrested him he was facing anywhere between three to ten years depending on which charges stuck and which did not.

“I can't just give up that much,” he said. “If I fight it and lose. Shit, they might try and keep me locked up until my hair goes white. There's things, nigga, things in life, that I want to do, you know?”

So they gave him three to five with the chance to be paroled anytime after thirty-six months. Every night I lay in bed, wide awake, too exhausted to sleep. I thought about Donnel. I wanted to blow up and extinguish where he was. I wanted to roll over, hit his shoulder, and say,
D, you snoring,
and hear him, still half asleep, say,
Then put a pillow over your head.
I couldn't leave him where he was. I wanted to call Rivers and tell him the whole thing was off, withdraw my application from the pile of applications sitting somewhere on some desk. And sometimes I wanted to pick up the phone and say:
Rivers, what's up? Yea or nay? Be honest. Tell me.
I couldn't take it. Nothing suppressed my hope for Donnel not to be where he was, that we'd wake up from it. Nothing eased my impatience. When was Brandeis's answer going to come?

I never called Rivers. Not at night. Not during the day. No matter how greatly I craved to. No matter how much I wanted to go to Brandeis. No matter how much I wanted to quit on it. Not ever. I could do no such thing. But it was never because of the hour it was, and it wasn't because of the cost. I didn't assume Rivers was sleeping or too busy to talk to me. Rather I couldn't call because I wouldn't. I was an indefati
gably prideful brother. I refused to accept the possession of desperation, which, of course, was all I had become; desperate to learn; desperate to be educated; desperate for Donnel to be free; desperate for the opportunity to fully realize the most fundamental, the most basic element of my life, me. And desperate not to be afraid of leaving Ever, of Brandeis, of the unknown it might make me.

Another day came and went. And then another. And then Saturday, March 18th, the third Saturday in a four-Saturday month, came and by the end of the day my waiting was worse than any waiting I had ever known because not only had another day passed, but Donnel had cried on the phone when I spoke to him and he told me he just knew college was for me—he had dreamed it and written me a letter about his dream. Did I get it? But when I checked the mail nothing was there, not a single flyer or bill. Not at 10:00 a.m., not at noon, not at 4:00 p.m. or at six, not at eight, or ten, or midnight or a quarter after one in the morning when I finally accepted there would be nothing.

“Sometimes it don't come,” said my grandma, hoping to console me. She was sitting on the couch, watching some infomercial because she couldn't sleep either. “Sometimes, Abraham, there just ain't none.”

I mumbled good night and closed the bedroom door, and once again, I spent the night lying in bed, staring into the blackness of the room, feeling the way a boy on a timber raft in the middle of the ocean must feel, lost and isolated and fighting to maintain a sense of self, a sense of significance in the black vastness enveloping him. My uncle slept behind me. I listened to the night. The bed squeaked each time my uncle's lungs filled. Some pipes knocked. Eric slept on the mattress on the floor. He had a cold and his nose was stuffed, and he wheezed so deeply it sounded as if he might inhale all of Ever, its bricks and concrete through his one clear nostril. For hours, I lay there. But I didn't pity myself. I knew that whatever defeat I was near, Donnel was nearer.

Before dawn I got out of bed and went to the kitchen. I was not
hungry. I was waiting. I opened the refrigerator. Then I closed it and stood in the blue dark. There was the sound of keys at the front door. Then the door flew open and my Aunt Rhonda, simultaneously turning on the light and slamming the door closed, rushed into the apartment like she had just won the Lotto, her chest leaned forward at a forty-five degree angle, her chin jutting out, her eyes aglow, her overstuffed purse with the broken zipper swinging from her shoulder, paper and envelopes and miscellany jutting from its top.

“Momma!” my Aunt Rhonda shouted. “Oh my god! Momma!”

She wagged her left hand over her head like it was on fire and failed to notice me standing in the kitchen or what time it was, that everyone was asleep or, in my case, should have been asleep. She breathed heavily and yet seemed unaffected by her shortness of breath. She crossed the room. She pounded on the door of the bedroom she shared with my grandma.

“Momma,” she boomed. “Momma, wake up!”

She shouted like we lived down a hole instead of a two-bedroom Ever Park apartment shaped and as big as a lowercase
t,
the kitchen ten feet straight ahead from the door, the bedrooms abutting it, the bathroom just to the left of the couch. She stormed toward the kitchen then flicked on the light switch. She was shocked to see me, but her shock did little more than cause her to pause.

“Abraham!” she said. “What you standing in the kitchen for?”

My Aunt Rhonda was thirty-five and she had gained thirty pounds from her chin to her knees since Donnel had been arrested. She couldn't stop eating. She ate for comfort, company, and solutions, as if that box of Oreos, bag of Cheetos, and half gallon of Dolly Madison ice cream might bring Donnel home. She swung around, stepped over the threshold of the kitchen door, and planting her hands on the walls, she leaned forward and called for my uncle and Eric.

“Everybody!” she shouted. “Momma! Wake up!”

She turned and looked at me, a determined, joyous gleam banging from her eyes.

“Abraham,” she announced, “you won't believe it!”

She held up her left hand for me to see. Around her chubby finger, the ring was a sliver of gold thread, the diamond like a chip of something, a crumb of crack, a flake of glass, one of the small glow in the dark stars children stick on a ceiling.

“I'm getting married,” she said.

She ripped the ring off her finger, handed it to me, and told me to feel how heavy it was. I held it up to the light. The jewel was nearly opaque but not opaque enough to see anything but a blurry smudge where shine should have been.

“David,” she said.

“What?” I said.

“Dave,” she stressed. “Jamel's brother. We're getting married.”

Still holding the ring up, I shifted my eyes to her. I could have laughed. I could have cried. I was shocked and amused and mildly wounded.

“Doo-Doo?” I said incredulously.

She snatched the ring from me and jammed it back on her finger.

“David,” she said. “He hasn't been Doo-Doo since we was kids.”

“Since when have you-all been together?” I asked.

She dismissed my question, sucking her teeth, flapping her hand in the air.

“Me and him have always had a thing. We just been too scared. You know, we've been dancing around each other for years.”

Half asleep and holding her old bathrobe around herself, my grandma walked into the kitchen. “Rhonda, what the hell is you yelling about?” she asked, squinting in the kitchen's light.

My Aunt Rhonda held her hand out for my grandma to see. My grandma looked at the ring for a split second, then she left my Aunt
Rhonda's hand hanging in the air and shifted her eyes to me, her eyebrows buckled over her sleepy eyes, her face still asleep so drooping.

“Momma,” my Aunt Rhonda said. “Can you believe it? For forever. That's what he said. Me? Rhonda? I ain't never thought no one would ask me to be with them like this.”

“Who asked what?” said my grandma, snatching the tips of my Aunt Rhonda's fingers from the air and studying the ring.

“David,” said my Aunt Rhonda.

My grandma shifted her eyes to me. She needed clarification.

“Doo-Doo,” I said.

My grandma couldn't believe it. “Doo-Doo? Jamel's brother?”

My uncle walked into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes in the light.

“Look!” said my Aunt Rhonda, snatching her hand from my grandma's grip and thrusting it in front of him. “Its on my finger and I still can't believe it!”

My uncle looked at the ring.

“I'm getting married,” said my Aunt Rhonda.

My uncle studied the whole scene, every inch of the ring and my Aunt Rhonda and my grandma and me. Rhonda was getting married? He could have said a thousand things. But he said nothing about the ring, nothing about what he thought. Instead, he pointed at my Aunt Rhonda's purse.

“What's that?” he asked.

He reached out, grabbed the envelopes jutting from the top of my Aunt Rhonda's purse, and held one up.

“It's here,” he said, lifting his eyes to me. He handed the envelope to me. “Open it.”

I studied the outside of the envelope for far too long. I read my name and our address and the stamp and the postage meter's faded red ink and the return address in the upper left corner: Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts 02453.

“Abraham, shit!” burst my Aunt Rhonda.

She stomped her foot and snatched the envelope from me. Her excitement over her ring gave her no patience. She tore the envelope open with her teeth, spit the piece of paper on the floor, and tore the letter out. The envelope fell to the floor. She unfolded the letter. She read it silently.

“What?” begged my grandma. “What's it say?”

My Aunt Rhonda raised her hand over her head. “Oh my God, oh God,” she said.

She bent over as if she'd been struck with cramps. Then she stood tall, clapped the letter against her chest and looked at me, her brown eyes wide and welled with something inexplicable, something she didn't know she'd come home with.

My uncle snatched the letter from my Aunt Rhonda and read the beginning to himself as quickly as he could, his eyes whipping left to right. I tried to read his face. I tried to understand.

“Roosevelt!” shouted my grandma. “Jesus! What's going on? What's it say?”

“All I got to say is you better not miss my wedding,” said my Aunt Rhonda, laughing and crying, her voice swollen with exuberance.

“Oh Jesus,” said my grandma, breathless in her shift from confusion to understanding, holding her hands to her cheeks. “Oh Lord have mercy, He heard me. He finally, finally heard me.”

I
t was the first time I wore a suit. It was white with three black buttons. My shirt was black and it had black buttons too. Black were my patent leather shoes, black was my belt, black was my tie, and black was the cane my uncle called my “accoutrement” with a hint of a French accent.

“Accoutrement?” I laughed.

“Accoutrement,” he smiled. “Look it up if you don't know what it means.”

“Oh you owning the day, Abraham,” said my grandma. “Every hour, minute, and second of it.”

With a disposable camera, she took pictures of me doing everything. I tied my shoes: click. I brushed my teeth: click. I took the gallon of milk from the refrigerator. Click, wind, click. Like dapper naval men, my uncle, Eric, and Doo-Doo wore similar white suits. Click, wind, click: my grandma took pictures of them too.

Then like an eager student with the right answer, my grandma waved
the disposable camera over her head. “Get together!” she shouted. “Get over there in front of the couch! Stand like you mean something!”

My grandma wore a white dress, bloodred shoes, and a bloodred shawl draped over her shoulders. Her hair was done, and the smoldering scent of her old hot comb lingered in the air longer than her perfume when she spoke or moved.

“Rhonda, baby!” she called out. “C'mon. We need you for a picture.”

My Aunt Rhonda stood in the bathroom, her face inches from the mirror. She put on makeup, one hand planted on the edge of the sink.

“Coming!” she shouted. “Hold on!”

There was a knock on the door. I unfastened the chain latch and unlocked the locks. I opened the door and Luscious confidently walked into the room, perpetual sensuality beaming in her eyes. Eric, Doo-Doo, and I swallowed. I looked at my uncle. His face was patriotic, as if the anthem of his country was playing, its flag unfurled. Was she there to take him back? Was she there to open her arms and hold him? Or was she there to throw rejection in his face, tell him how dare he think how he thinks, do what he does, be who he was after being so far, so silent?

“Oh, Luscious,” burst my grandma. She darted across the room and hugged Luscious hello. “Oh lord, it's good to see you.”

Luscious hugged my grandma back. Then when they let each other go, she stepped forward and stood a foot in front of my uncle. He dropped his eyes. She waited. And when he finally mustered the courage to look her in the face, he lifted his head and said, “Hey,” the single syllable the penitent purr of a bass's deepest string.

“I thought about what you said,” she said, her tone fierce and strong.

My uncle waited for clarification. He tried to be patient. Then, lacking confidence, he guessed at what she meant and hesitantly raised his arms to embrace her.

“Don't get no ideas,” Luscious said, pushing his arms down. “I'm
here cause you said it was important to Abraham.” She shot her eyes at me. “That ain't the case?”

I looked at my uncle. I knew damn well my uncle hadn't wanted her there for my sake. And I knew Luscious didn't really arrive just to support me. It would only be a matter of time, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, before they smiled at each other, and the door that was their love would swing ajar.

“Yeah,” I said. “It means a lot. For real. Thank you.”

My Aunt Rhonda came out of the bathroom. She wore a white dress too.

“Let me get this picture!” shouted my grandma. “C'mon. Get together. We gonna be late! Get close! Everybody!”

We stood together and my grandma held the camera to her eye.

“On the count of three,” she said. “One, two, three: say
Graduation!
”

“Graduation!” they said.

But I didn't say it. It was not because I didn't recognize the significance of the event. Rather, it was because I was struck by absence. The day, would forever be without Donnel. I breathed in my grandma's declaration and I stood shoulder to shoulder with my family, and we positioned ourselves to look historical, unconquerable. My uncle held his hands together, lifted his chin like he was keeping his face out of rising water and wore a countenance of tranquility. Luscious stood beside him, one foot slightly in front of the other, smiling like a queen loved by a king without a single failing. Eric squinted and clenched his jaw as if, for the sake of the world, he was holding back the power that filled him. Doo-Doo stood behind my Aunt Rhonda, his head peeking over her shoulder, his arms wrapped around her waist while she leaned against him. And me? I was the first person in the history of my family, in the hundreds and thousands of never-known generations, the millions of brothers and sisters sacrificed on shores, drowned in seas of
water and concrete, to graduate high school. It was a new millennium, June of 2000. I put my left hand in my pants pocket and made a V with the index and middle finger of my right hand, a peace sign, and holding it over the left of my chest, I stared straight ahead, my countenance chiseled, a bedrock foundation.

“Just look at you,” said my grandma. “You all so beautiful.”

We walked down the dark stairs, out of the dim lobby, and into the gold and diamond light of midmorning. Then, with three dozen brothers and sisters in vibrant hues and matching shoes, hats, and clutch purses, blasting shine from gold necklaces and earrings and bracelets and rings; blasting shine from smiles and gold teeth; blasting shine from glossed lips and earthen-toned skin; blasting in finery; blasting the magnificent blasting that drummed in our chests, we waited for the bus to take us to graduation. On the opposite side of the crowd, Lorenzo Davis was there because his stepbrother was graduating. Lorenzo wore baggy black dress pants and a large, pressed, untucked white shirt with razor creases down the arms. He tilted his head and watched me and my family out of the corners of his eyes. When I felt sure that he wasn't watching us, I watched him. We took turns. Then I looked too soon and we made eye contact. My first instinct was to look away. But I couldn't be afraid just like I couldn't be afraid of college, of leaving Ever no matter how afraid I truly was. That is, as if being afraid was crying, I wouldn't let myself do it. For Donnel, I refused. So I didn't look away. And neither did Lorenzo. Then Lorenzo did something I still can't understand. He smiled a half smile, cool as he could be, nodded his head not out of ire or disrespect, but with appreciation, and gave me a lazy thumbs-up. With a level of zeal that I found embarrassing moments later, I reciprocated, nodding then giving him a strong thumbs-up and holding it there, before letting my hand drop slowly.