Lakewood(29)

Charlie said it was weird sometimes. People were always asking him “No, where are you really from?” They wanted to hear him say Detroit or Chicago or out East; they didn’t believe he could be born in Lakewood. Or sometimes they said, “Oh. No wonder you talk so white.” “And that was the, you know”—he made his fingers into quotation marks—“the not racist people.” As he spoke, Lena considered apologizing to him. She hadn’t thought he would interpret the question as “What do you, fellow black person, feel about this mostly white place?” She had been more interested in what it was like to realize your childhood hometown hosted a secret government operation. But as he continued talking about how his family in Chicago couldn’t resist saying how light he was, how mixed, how he was basically white, how one uncle kept saying it was better for him in the long run to look that way, Lena could hear the relief in his voice. As Charlie spoke, his eyes focused on Long Lake. He ignored all her attempts at trying to make eye contact. She could tell it was maybe the first time he had ever spoken about this.

“In high school,” Lena said, “people were always teasing me about how I talked. This group of kids would call me Your Majesty, the Queen.”

Lena’s grandma used to say the difference between us and them is they try as hard as possible to never think about us, and we have to think about them all the time. Tanya said the way to build strength in knowing who you are is to understand and acknowledge all parts of yourself. When Lena was feeling petty, she thought it was easy for Tanya to say that because she had rich lawyer parents who, yeah, were black. But she got to go home to a big house, secure they would always have nice things. It sounded like something she had read on social media. In a big-box store it would be reduced to a sign that read CHERISH YOU!

“Like the Queen of England?” Charlie asked.

Deziree said there were good and bad people of all races. And really, maybe you shouldn’t trust anybody completely until they proved they were going to treat you right.

“Yeah. At first, I thought they were flattering me in a weird way. Then I realized it was because they thought I talked and acted like an old white lady.”

“What does the queen sound like?”

Lena ran her hand along the grass. The clouds were gathering, darkening. Rain was coming. “Like Harry Potter, I guess. Prissy.”

He laughed. “Harry Potter is not prissy.”

“He talks like he pours champagne on his cereal.”

Charlie laughed harder. When he stopped, he finally made eye contact. “Am I being weird?”

The only places in Lakewood where Lena regularly saw people who weren’t white was at work and when she went to the one Chinese restaurant in town. In the grocery store filled with people, it was sometimes uncomfortable to look around and realize no one at all looked like her. How had Charlie done this his entire life?

“No.” She told him one thing she noticed is how obsessed with control most people are. Like those kids at her school. They wanted to think their way of being black was better than her way of being black. While that’s not racist, she thought it was tied into it. As long as we can be thought of as static, Lena said, as all the same, we’re never going to be just people.

Lena took a long look over at Charlie. He seemed relaxed, thoughtful. “Charlie,” she said softly, making sure her voice didn’t carry, “don’t you think it’s really fucking weird all the observers are white?”

He opened his mouth, shut it. Charlie turned and looked around. She knew as he did it that whatever he was going to say would be dishonest. Charlie sat up straight. “Does that cloud over there look like an octopus to you?” He pointed. She looked toward the cloud. Beneath it was a solitary woman standing by the lake.

“Only if I squint. It looks more like one of those big cactuses to me.”

Charlie told her one of the most interesting things about Lakewood: It’s one of the few rural areas in the state that has a legacy of black land ownership. He spoke to her in a teacher’s slow, easy rhythm while keeping his eyes on the woman. His dad was related to one of those families. He came to visit, met Charlie’s mom, and ended up building a life here.

The wind was picking up. Lena didn’t like being aware of it and its different moods. She missed city sounds, the bass leaking out of some bro’s car, sirens at night, dogs barking at each other as they passed on the sidewalk, wheels on the road. Lena plucked out a long blade of grass and twirled it between her thumb and forefinger.

“We should head back.”

When they returned to the office, they were separated. Dr. Lisa told everyone to write down a description of an object and put it in a sealed envelope. They had two minutes to describe a location. Then 20 seconds to write down a color. In a completely skeptical voice, Dr. Lisa told them to inhabit a double consciousness. Keep your brain as open as possible to the other person. Let your thoughts find a mutual place, like tuning in to the same radio station. Don’t overthink it. When you’re tuned in, listen to the static of your own thoughts, but also the bursts you might be receiving from your conversation partner.

Lena kept turning to look at Charlie from across the room, as if it might help them to synch. His hair was cropped short and it emphasized how small his ears were for such a big head. A grass stain was on the right shoulder of his white dress shirt. No thoughts came to her that seemed obviously from someone else. She imagined instead that Dr. Lisa was going to show everyone their answers. Everyone else, including Charlie, would have read each other’s minds perfectly, somehow connected.