Kai’s eyes are beautiful, and make his gaze seem unusually piercing and perceptive. And he has a strong, rangy neck which he cranes slightly forward when I speak. And I spoke a lot.
Most of what I said just came spilling out of me, like I was some kind of idiot. I even told him about the egg thing, which I know must sound really weird to someone who has no frame of reference to reassure himself that I am not in general a weird person. And in between, I was stuffing my face in a frenzy, even though I wasn’t hungry, feeling like a dork the entire time.
And then Kai mentioned his mother being white and I asked him if the conversations they had about race were different. I immediately regretted prying like that, but he just nodded and said he didn’t mind talking about it.
Once he started talking, I was relieved, because it meant I would be forced to shut up for a minute and get my bearings.
“The thing is, when one of your parents is white, you don’t think that. Not consciously. You don’t think, ‘my mother is white’. She’s just my mother. And the really stupid part … at least it’s stupid when I say it out loud, is that I never related her to other white people.
“You know what I mean? I never made that conscious association. I never thought for instance, ‘my teacher is white, like my mother.’ Or, ‘the bank teller is white, like my mother.’ I could think of her separately, and not as part of a racial group. Does that make sense?”
I nodded, already kind of surprised at how much he was saying, to me, some girl he just met.
“Anyway, I’m just telling you that so you’ll understand,” Kai continued. “How much of a surprise it was, when I realized that I had to think of her that way. At least sometimes.”
“When did you realize it?”
Kai smiled and shook his head. “To be honest, I don’t think I did. At least, not on my own. My pops had to point it out to me. Not once, but repeatedly. The first time I remember it happening though was when I was like seven, maybe?
“We were at Chuck E Cheese for a party and I was getting rowdy with a couple other kids, I think we turned a table over by accident or something like that. And my mother was cool about it, and I remember she said to my dad, ‘James, it was just an accident’ and went to get napkins to clean up.
“But my dad snatched me up and pulled me aside and he said, ‘Listen to me. When you’re out here cuttin’ up, don’t think you’ll find shelter in your mother’s whiteness. Time’ll come when even she can’t protect you.’”
“Wow,” I said. “You were seven when he said that?”
“Yeah. And of course I didn’t get it at the time. But I remembered it, because of the words he used: find shelter in your mother’s whiteness. Because remember I didn’t even think of her as white, really. And shelter? Like in my kid’s mind I was thinking, ‘Mom’s not gonna let me live with her anymore if I’m bad?’”
Kai laughed at the memory. I smiled at the sound of his laughter.
“Anyhow, that was the first time I remember my dad talking about me as separate or different from my mother in some way. And as I got older, he talked about me and him as being separate and different from her.”
“How did that feel?”
Kai shrugged and scratched his jaw, thoughtfully. “I don’t remember feeling any way in particular about it. I mean, the older I got, I started noticing it myself, right? The way people would look from her to me and back again when we were out somewhere, just the two of us. You know … the usual curiosity and stuff.”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said.
I know those looks, because I’ve probably been guilty of them myself, those slightly longer than usual assessments of white mothers with Black children. Searching for common features, wondering if the kid might in fact be adopted, and then chiding myself because what the hell did it even matter?
“And if we talked about it at all, my dad and me? It was always out of my mother’s presence. And after a while there wouldn’t be as many of those talks, but looks we exchanged, or an unspoken understanding about how our world was not the same as her world.”
“Wow,” I said, aware that it was the second time I’d had that reaction since he started telling his story.
“So, in answer to your question about whether my folks know I’m out here? I think … I’m pretty sure my pops knows I am. I’m equally sure my mother doesn’t.”
I forced myself not to say ‘wow’ again, and instead gave him a wry smile.
“Are your … parents still together?” I asked hesitantly.
Kai laughed at that. “Very much so. Although I can see why you would ask.”
I nodded again.
“The funny thing about it, is that my parents are as together as two people can be. They have a good marriage far as I can tell, I’ve hardly ever seen them fight, and my pops … he’s pretty clear that she’s the love of his life. So …” He shrugged. “You can search me. I don’t know … That’s why I said it’s complicated.”
“That is complicated. Like …” I squint, trying to formulate a way to ask what I want to ask.
“You won’t offend me,” Kai says shaking his head. “Don’t worry.”
“Well … do you think your dad can be who he is, if he’s married to someone he doesn’t talk to about this stuff? I mean, this is
