Before the Ever After(3)

Ollie, who my dad used to call my son from another father and mother,

which always made Ollie duck his head to hide how red his face got

to hide how big his smile got.

Ollie says he doesn’t really remember the story of being a baby in a basket but sometimes the story lives inside his eyes when kids ask What are you?

You Black or white or Spanish or mixed?

And Ollie has to shrug and say

Maybe I’m all those things.

And maybe I’m something else too.

Once, when Ollie told my dad about kids always asking him this,

my dad just gave Ollie a fist bump and said You know what you are, Ollie?

You’re a hundred percent YOU.





Rap Song


Make me a rhyme, little man.

First day of school, first grade, Beastie Boys blasting from the car radio.

We’re driving home, me with my lunch box open on my lap cuz my after-school snack was always what I didn’t eat at school—grapes, carrot sticks, apples and peanut butter, whatever, I dug it out, sitting in the back seat of my dad’s car.

September sun shining in on us, Mama home or maybe visiting the grandmas, so much I don’t remember. So many places where there’s white space where memory should be, and some days I wonder if my own mind is going like my dad’s. But that year, he was still Daddy. Still playing ball and driving me from school whenever he was home.

Make me a rhyme, little man, my daddy said, glancing through the rearview at me with my mouth full but my head moving to the Beastie Boys.

And then I must have swallowed. Must have said My name is Zachariah

and I’m on fire.

Can’t go no higher than Zachariah.

You got skills, son, my dad said.

Yeah, I said back.

Yo

I know

I think I got ’em from you.

Cuz you’re Zachariah too!





Unbelievable


The first time my dad heard one of my songs, he asked Who wrote that?

We were in the kitchen and it was pizza night with extra cheese, extra sausage and lots of olives.

I was singing because of that.

And I was singing because it was summer and because the pizza smelled so good and the whole day was only for us—no coaches calling, no practice, no game to study, no fans just me and my daddy—Mama in Arizona visiting the grandmas. So it was just us men and our pizza and all the rest of the takeout we were planning to have with Mama gone.

So I was singing about all of it—the summer, our bright yellow kitchen, the good food and me and my daddy alone together.

I don’t remember how old I was, but I remember my daddy’s smile.

You wrote that?

And me with a slice almost to my mouth, stopping and saying Yep, it was all made up by me.

Then going back to singing, a song about pizza and summertime,

a song about all the good things already here

and the good things coming too.





On My Daddy’s Shoulders


I was on my daddy’s shoulders when crowds gathered around us

pushing autograph books, T-shirts and scraps of paper into his hands.

I was on my daddy’s shoulders when a band marched through Maplewood playing a song someone wrote about the speed in his step

and the power in his hands.

I was on my daddy’s shoulders when the TV ran their interviews

with him recounting the plays of the Super Bowl game when the guy on the other team let the ball fly right through his hands.

I was on my daddy’s shoulders when the crowds grew smaller and the coach said Maybe next game—you need some rest, then looked up at me and smiled, trying not to stare too hard at my daddy’s shaking hands.





The First Time, Again


I used to be a tight end, my daddy says, laughing.

But what I really wanted to be was a wide receiver.

Now I’m just wide.

The first time he said it, we all laughed even Mama

and she usually just smiles when something is funny.

The second time he said it, I said

It was funny the first time, Dad.

The third time he said it, I said You always say that.

No I don’t, this is my first time, he said.

Stop messing with me, Daddy.

No, YOU, my daddy said, stop messing with me!

My daddy never shouts. But he was shouting.

My daddy never cries. But he started crying then.





Tears


My daddy cried every day the year his father died.

He tells me this each time I scrape a knee or stub my toe or watch a really sad movie and try to hold back my tears.

I cried the whole year, my dad says.

Three hundred and sixty-five days.

But I wasn’t born yet, so I didn’t see it.

And two years later when his mom

lost her leg because of a disease called diabetes, my dad said, he cried because he didn’t have the money to make life comfortable for her. You know, he said, a fancy wheelchair, ramps, a new house where she didn’t have to pull herself up on her crutches to reach for everything.

And two more years later, when he signed his first contract, my daddy said he cried because

now he could buy that wheelchair

and that house and help his mother and his sister move into it together