“Can’t I come over any time I like because I miss my woman? Can’t I deliver a special gift for my baby girl?”
I perked up. “That box is for me?”
“You know it is.”
“James, I know you haven’t been shopping at this hour.”
“Who said nothing about shopping? I been playing cards, and I been playing wel .” He pul ed off the top of the box with a flourish, revealing a waist-length fur jacket, junior size 7 — too big, but I’d grow into it.
“James,” my mother said, feeling the soft fur, “tel me you did not win this in a card game.”
“Yes, I did. My buddy Charlie Ray was playing so bad; al his money was gone so he put this coat on the table.”
My mother said, “James, you have to take it back. That coat belongs to someone.”
“You are absolutely right. It belongs to me. And soon as she comes over here and gives me some sugar, it wil belong to Dana. Come on, baby girl, p-p-put this on, and let your daddy see how p-p-pretty you are.”
I paused for a second at the hitch in his voice, but he smiled and I knew that it would be okay.
The coat was piled on the floor beside him, and he held his arms outstretched. Feeling like I was in a movie, I hugged him around the neck and kissed him loudly on the cheek. James smel ed sweet, like liquor and cola. To this day and for the rest of my life, I wil always have a soft spot for a man with rum on his breath.
I think about the world and the way that things take place and in what order. I am not one of those people who believe that everything happens for a reason. Or, if I am, I don’t believe that everything happens for a good reason. But the first time that I encountered my sister, Chaurisse, when I wasn’t under the careful supervision of my mother, was at the Atlanta Civic Center in 1983. There’s only so much that you can chalk up to coincidence. I believe in the eventuality of things. What’s done in the dark shal come to the light. What goes up comes down. What goes around comes around. There are a mil ion of these sayings, al , in their own way, true. And isn’t that what’s supposed to set you free?
The citywide science fair was held on the day of my fourteenth-and-a-half birthday. This was my own private holiday that I celebrated each year.
My real birthday, the ninth of May, was real y my mother’s day. She made a big deal of it, forcing me to dress like a pageant queen for a special meal at the Mansion restaurant on Ponce de Leon Avenue. The waiters brought food I couldn’t identify and my mother would say, “Isn’t this nice?
Happy birthday! You’re growing up.” Mother’s attempts to make it special for just the two of us only reminded me how isolated we were. She and James were suspicious of outsiders, worried that someone might know someone who could expose us. You know what they say about southwest Atlanta.
On my fourteenth-and-a-half birthday, I set my alarm for 5:37 a.m., the precise minute of my birth, and shuffled a deck of playing cards. I’d heard that there was a way you could use an ordinary pinochle deck to divine the future. The first six cards I dealt were hearts, and I hoped that this meant that there was love in my future. My mother laughed and sang a chirpy Sam Cooke song about how a girl of sixteen is too young to fal in love. And I told her that I may not know what love is, but I did know what exclusivity was. Now that real y surprised her, me using that word. I learned it in school, not in English class, but in the guidance counselor’s office. Miss Rhodes was her name. I’d been sent to her because I had been caught exchanging kisses with three different boys in six weeks. “There is something to be said for exclusivity, little girl.”
High school was difficult for me. Any guidance counselor worth her salt should have understood that something heavy and barbed was behind the hostile attitude I adopted whenever I was cal ed into her office. In my heart, I was a nice girl, and a smart one, eager to study biology. During my last year in middle school, I’d studied endlessly to pass the exam to be admitted into the math-and-science magnet. I crammed each night, memorizing the names of the noble gases and the quirks of various isotopes. I studied hard even though I was sick with fear that I would not be al owed to accept an invitation if Chaurisse decided that she wanted to go to Mays High School.
James and Laverne lived on Lynhurst Road, just a half mile from Mays, which had just been built as the flagship high school of black Atlanta.
Because of her zip code, Chaurisse was entitled to enrol , even if she wasn’t accepted into the magnet program. My mother’s apartment was only three miles away, but we were in the district of Therrel High, which didn’t have a magnet at al . I received my acceptance letter in June, but I had to wait another month to find out that Chaurisse was accepted to Northside High School, which specialized in the performing arts. Apparently she was somewhat gifted with woodwind instruments.
It would be too easy to say that I rejected high school before it had a chance to reject me, but even now, when I drive down 1-285, I feel a stirring in my stomach when I see Mays High School on the right side of the expressway, not so modern now, but stil imposing against a backdrop of kudzu and pine trees. I remember how it felt to be a student there, feeling like a trespasser, afraid each day that Chaurisse would change her mind about Northside High and the piccolo, deciding instead to claim my place.
About two weeks into the ninth grade, I decided that having a boyfriend, a real one, an exclusive one, would tether me to my school. That was the purpose of al the kissing that caused me to be banished again and again to the guidance counselor’s office.
The reason that there were so many boys in such a short time was that I’d catch each of them passing notes to, looking at, or even talking to some other girl within days of making an overture toward me. I couldn’t bear it. I dumped them and set out again. I would give any boy a chance if he seemed interested — I felt I couldn’t afford to be particular — but again and again I was disappointed.
Not even the nerdy boys could be trusted. Just a month before my fourteenth-and-a-half birthday, I’d gotten tangled up with Perry Hammonds. He was tal and lanky and styled his hair into a high-top fade that was always in the need of a good mow. I picked him because he liked science, just like me, and because he seemed to be too weird to have other girls to cheat with. He was in the eleventh grade and had never kissed a girl before.
(I liked the idea of historical exclusivity.) So, while working after school on our biology practicum, I let him kiss me. What I didn’t realize was that there was a difference between
