Tamika was frustrated. She’d forgotten a shoe to bring to the party, and was mad at the way her outfit looked. Her mother was pushing her to get out the door.
I stood against the counter, giving her a soft smile. I just wanted her to smile once. I knew she probably would enjoy herself once she got there, but just wanted her to cheer up.
“Why are you looking at me?” she shot.
I shook my head, still smiling and feigned looking away.
After a while she seemed to soften slightly, and leaned toward the door.
I took a step toward her.
She moved away, pretending to be annoyed and raised her eyebrow.
I stood stock still, smiling softly.
Gradually, she took steps toward me… getting closer and closer…
Talisha came down the stairs.
She and Alex weren’t doing so well, and had their first big fight. She was acting as if it didn’t bother, though it was apparent to everyone that it really did. She reached into the fridge for a drink.
Tamika finally got so close she looked up at me pouting, and put her head upon my chest. I wrapped my arms around her, but her arms remained limp. Slowly I reached down…
Mrs. Pinkney came down the stairs yelling at Talisha for her to get ready. She rummaged through some stuff on the table looking for her bag.
I lifted Tamika’s arms and placed them around me. She giggled, but they remained limp. I crossed my arms around her back, nuzzling her head gently.
“I don’t wanna go…” she murmured, finally hugging me back.
“Tamika, we gotta go.” Her mom said, distractedly looking for her keys.
I grabbed Tamika tighter, and she giggled.
“Tamika, do you know what it is you’re going to sing?” her mom asked.
“No.” she said, half smothered in her chest. “I don’t feel like singing.”
“You’re gonna sing.” Mrs. Pinkney said.
“Mom, don’t make her sing if she doesn’t want to, ok?” I pleaded.
“She’s gonna sing.”
“But she sounds so good when she really wants to.”
Tamika hugged me tighter.
“And besides,” I added, “She’s sick.”
Tamika laughed.
“She’s not sick. She’ll be fine.”
“Ok. Just don’t force her.”
Mrs. Pinkney and Talisha headed out to the car.
Finally, Tamika sighed and released her grip, following her sister and Mom out the door.
As she was about to go through, I held her hand back and planted a kiss on her cheek.
She smiled, and left.
After I sent Natalia and Joshua to bed, I wrote my Mom and Dad a letter.
I don’t feel close to them and want to be. My mom had sent me a package, and then I’d talked to her on IM and told her I’d write her a real letter back.
Tamika and I had been talking earlier about the barrier I have towards some people, especially towards the white American suburbanite.
Though I have nothing really against them personally, I find I have trouble relating to them.
Tamika agreed with me, but pointed out that perhaps on occasion that much of the division was my fault too, because I automatically assumed they would not understand me.
I’m already a shy person as it is, and don’t go out on a limb to explain myself to people; just letting them assume as they wish and not bothering myself about it.
What I realized the other day, however, is that my parents are white—American—suburbanites. That’s where they grew up, more or less, in Connecticut.
I have an Uncle Jim; my dad’s brother, who is rather reclusive. He constantly seems to evade us, and doesn’t participate in family affairs much, though he lives nearby. We rarely hear anything from him.
And I don’t want to end up like him.
So, I was honest. I poured myself out into the letter, telling my parents how I felt.
I don’t feel like we’ve ever been close… ever since I was very little. I remember talking to my mom when I was extremely young, when she’d found me crying. When I told her it was because I had no friends because they hated me because of my skin colour; she didn’t know what to say. She just stood there dumbfounded a moment, then admitted to me she didn’t know what to do; except to assure me that one day I would have friends.
Ever since then, I felt the chasm between my parents and myself grow. I stopped telling them about the daily beatings, about the abuse, about the emotional destruction that had happened when I started falling in love. I stopped telling them about everything. All through late elementary and high school, I can’t think of a single time I told them about… anything. I remember just going off by myself a lot.
They were pretty liberal with me, and let me go out when I pleased for the most part. I remember one time when my Dad realized I was sneaking out of the house at midnight. He asked me what I did while I was out. I shrugged and told him I was riding my bike. He told me to make sure I locked the door.
And so I did.
I would disappear into the woods, and sometimes go for a day or two. Sometimes my parents would go out on trips and I would go off by myself on my snowmobile. One time I was out for 3 days on my own, when the snowmobile broke down and I survived by killing a rabbit.
I never told them of the time I killed a bear which had attacked me at the dump either.
I didn’t tell them about the knife fights at school, the gang wars, the street fights I had been in, the times when I had been threatened with guns, the things I had seen some of the kids do…
And the chasm widened.
I imagined that they wanted to know… my mom would ask me questions about girls sometimes, and I would respond with the name of a girl I liked. My mom would nod her head with a “Hmmm. That’s good.”
I could tell she didn’t know quite to say… but I was only a kid. I didn’t know how to respond either… it wasn’t like I was going to volunteer information like that… the stuff I felt hurt so bad I didn’t know how to talk about it. Like how her girlfriends had written me nasty letters about being white, or about the love letters I had sent anonymously until I was found out because I was the only one with that level of English literacy, or about the girl who had a crush on me but wouldn’t go out with me because she wasn’t used to guys being nice to her, or about watching the jock of the school French kiss the girl I had a crush on in the hallway simply because he knew I had a crush on her…. The list goes on, and I digress.
In all honesty, I have no idea how we could even start talking again. But I knew I had to give it a shot.
Tamika seems infinitely curious about me. She wants to know all kinds of things about me, working on a deeper level rather than just finding out peripheral things about me. She works to find out the way I work.
I still don’t usually let out much without prodding… but rather than prodding she’s gently peeling back layers of protection and slowly finding out things about me.
I remember trying to play the Moment game with my parents.
I suppose it might be one of the reasons I originally created the game; just to work to understand people the way no one had every bothered to understand me.
But it was awkward. My little brother was far too hyper to take it seriously, my mom seemed embarrassed and uncomfortable; nervously laughing at the questions, and my dad was mostly unreadable. My sister seemed to appreciate the game, but also seemed to find it weird to speak on deep terms with her brother.
Maybe it’s a communication problem that the family inherently has. My parents work very well together, better than any couple I’ve seen. I admire them a lot and strive to achieve the kinds of things they set out for themselves in my relationships. But they came from families where communication was in many ways fundamentally messed up, so it is apparent to me that they wouldn’t find situations with their kids easy to deal with.
I plan on going home for Christmas; we’ll see how that goes.
Mrs. Pinkney called me to check up me, and then handed the phone over to Tamika. She had had a pretty good time, and had sung really well, really feeling God help her through it. She had started higher than she normally did, but had hit every single note. She had felt God’s presence while singing and knew it wasn’t her causing the music at all.
She passed me to Ronnie, her cousin. He amiably grilled me on who I was, but I flipped it gently and he ended up telling me more about himself than anything else. I won his approval, and got Tamika back.
She said she missed me, echoing my feelings.
