Honey and Spice(33)
In west Whitewell, there were literal limits to how many Black kids they allowed in a club, although they obviously never made this explicit, having the decency to pretend that it was because they were overcrowded. These clubs were full of hip-hop and white kids that rapped along to it—but when faced with too many real, breathing Blacks that weren’t confined to a consumable form of entertainment for them, they panicked.
There needed to be just enough niggas (Kendrick said it and therefore, so could they) in the club to make them feel cool, enough dotted around, so they could feel diverse. Enough Black guys for white girls to say, “Everyone tells me I dance like a Black girl.” Enough Black girls for white guys to proclaim with J?gerbomb-spiked breath that they ain’t ever kissed a Black girl before, like you were the lucky one, something like The Princess & the Frog, except the Black girl would remain the exotic curiosity and the white guy would feel transformed into something elevated, something unique, perhaps a little dangerously deviant. They needed just enough Blacks in the club to make them feel cool. Too many Blacks, however? That was going too far. Too much Black would make them feel too white.
East Whitewell—or Eastside—was where Aminah and I went to do the bulk of our grocery shopping: bell peppers, scotch bonnets, plantain, okra, rice, cheap packs of ramen to inhale during brutal all-nighters (ramen so bad that it could be used to plaster into broken ceramics. We saw it on TikTok. Somehow, this didn’t stop us). Eastside is where we got our hair supplies, where aunties, carrying swollen blue plastic bags with leaves sticking out of them, spoke loudly in Yoruba and Twi, Urdu and Gujrati. Eastside was the place where Aminah and I took turns to go to the Jamaican shop and order, faced with straight-faced “We nuh ave dat,” till Ms. Hyacinth served us whatever she wanted to serve us. And Eastside was the side of the park where the basketball court was.
It was far too far. At least a twenty-five-minute walk. It was a trek. And we had been walking down the plush park path as a foursome, Aminah and I on one side, Kofi and Malakai on the other, but at some point Aminah and Kofi had drifted ahead and together, leaving Malakai and I to hang back awkwardly behind. Technically, we could have just caught up with them and disrupted our discomfort, but that would mean severe cockblocking and apparently neither of us were that selfish. So, we’d been walking in excruciating silence for the past five minutes, the only noise being our shoes crunching on autumn leaves, kids squawking in the background, and our friends’ bizarre mating ritual up in front. I guessed it was up to me to make it bearable. The labor of a Black woman in this society really is unending.
I inhaled a brisk gust of fortifying air and looked up at Malakai. “Okay, uh, I guess I should say I’m sorry for the whole drink thing. Actually, I am sorry. It was embarrassing. I moved mad. My bad.” I surprised myself by meaning it.
Malakai shrugged and shot me a small smile. “Thanks. I kind of deserved it, though. I was being a dick.”
I laughed, half-surprised “What? No.”
Malakai kicked at some leaves and rubbed the back of his neck in what was an obscenely sexy move. “I was being shitty. I knew it. I’m sorry.” His eyes searched mine, as if he needed me to know he meant it.
I glanced away from him because his eyes’ knowing focus made me uncomfortable, lasering through my skin. “It’s cool.”
Malakai cleared his throat. “Look, uh, full disclosure? Dr. Miller sent me some of your work. Your writing on pop culture and society and that essay on, like . . . what was it? The distillation of Missy Elliot’s contribution to Black feminism? Where you dissected her music videos? That was mad.” His face broke into a shadow of the playful smile I’d seen the other night. “Actually, I was kind of pissed at how good it was. Then I listened to more of Brown Sugar and that made me even more pissed.” He laughed. “You were right. About a lot of things. And, even if I didn’t agree . . . I just think you have a really interesting perspective. A cool voice.” He paused as if catching himself and cleared his throat. “I just thought I’d tell you that. She sent it to me. She’s been talking about you to me—without ever mentioning your name—since I transferred at the beginning of the year. I got kinda jealous.”
“Why, you got a crush on her?” The main function of the question was to distract myself from the fact that Malakai liking my work elicited a bloom of pleasure in me.
Malakai laughed and rubbed his chin. “Don’t you?”
“Obviously. She’s fine as hell.” I made eye contact with a terrier, waddling along with its owner. “Thank you, by the way. For saying all that. About my work, I mean.”
“Trust me, if I could have chosen to not like it, I would have.” His voice was bone dry. It struck against me, eliciting a spark.
I clamped on my grin and, glancing up at him, admitted, “I watched Cuts.”
Malakai’s gaze snapped to me. “Is this where you tell me all the ways you hated it as rightful punishment for my behavior?” He was joking but he wasn’t, his eyes softened with gentle wariness.
“Not gonna lie, I was kind of disappointed.” I paused long enough for the curve in Malakai’s lips to collapse infinitesimally. “Disappointed that I didn’t hate it. . . . It was good. Really good. Which sucked for me, obviously, because I fully planned on going back to Dr. Miller like, ‘I thought you said this guy was smart?’”