Heads of the Colored People(21)
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She had just returned from a movie with Violet—where not one but two guys had asked for her phone number, though three had asked for Violet’s, pronouncing their approval of her “thickness” with grunts, smiles, and by looking directly at her butt—when her mother said, “You got a phone call, from a boy.”
It couldn’t be one of the boys from the theater already; that would make anyone look desperate.
“Who is Rolf?” her mother asked with a smile, “and why didn’t you mention him before?”
Fatima nearly floated up to her bedroom. She thought about calling Violet but called Rolf back instead, waiting, of course, for an hour to pass, a tip she had learned from Violet in the event of a hypothetical situation such as this.
By now, and with some authenticity, Fatima could intone the accent marks in places they hadn’t been before, recite all the names of all the members of Cash Money, Bad Boy, No Limit, Wu-Tang, Boyz II Men, ABC, BBD, ODB, LDB, TLC, B-I-G-P-O-P-P-A, Ronny, Bobby, Ricky, Mike, Ralph, Johnny, Tony, Toni, and Tone, if she wanted. But when she called Rolf, all they talked about were skateboards and the Smiths, in whose music Fatima had dabbled before Violet.
“The Smiths are way better than Morrissey,” Rolf said. His voice was nasal but deep.
“You can barely tell the difference since Morrissey’s voice is so overpowering,” she said, from her pink lip.
“No, but the Smiths’ stuff is way darker,” Rolf said. “You should hear the first album. Then you’ll get it. I’ve got it on vinyl.”
“Okay,” Fatima waited.
She noticed that he didn’t invite her over to listen or offer to lend her the album, but he did call back two days later and ask if she wanted to hang out over the next weekend, “like at the mall or something, see a movie?”
Fatima counted to twelve, as per the rules (the universal ones, not just Violet’s) and said, “Yeah, that’d be cool.” She almost left the “l” off the end of the word, but caught herself. “Which mall?”
“Where else?” Rolf said. “The Montclair Plaza.”
This would be her first date, and though that was the kind of thing to share with a best friend, especially one with more experience, Fatima felt—in some deep way that hurt her stomach—that Violet didn’t need to know about Rolf, not yet at least. She would keep her lips glossed and parted, her two worlds separate.
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The week leading up to the first date, Fatima tried to play extra-cool, asking Violet more questions than usual when they spoke on the phone. Neither of the guys from the movie theater had called Fatima, but one of Violet’s three had asked Violet out, and she was “letting him stew for a while before I let him know. Anyway, I thought you wanted to check out Rush Hour this weekend.”
“This weekend?” Fatima said.
“This weekend.”
“I told my parents I would babysit this weekend, I forgot,” Fatima lied, feeling a bit like a grease stain on a silk shirt.
“Since when?” Violet pushed.
“We can go next weekend, or during the week,” Fatima said, and changed the subject.
Before they got off the phone, Violet said, “I guess I’ll call Mike back, then, and tell him I’m free after all.”
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Fatima would say that she wasn’t embarrassed by Violet or Rolf, but she wasn’t ready for them to meet. She felt relief, then, when their first and second dates went without a hitch—and ended with a gentle but sort of indifferent kiss—and even more relieved that Rolf was okay with seeing each other during the week so that Fatima wouldn’t have to explain to Violet why she suddenly had other plans on Friday and Saturday evenings.
“Tell me more about your other friends,” Rolf had said on the phone one night, when Fatima was starting to think she might love him. He knew Emily from school. He knew she went to an AME church.
He’d met her parents and siblings by then, though she still hadn’t met his. When he first came over to the house, he shook hands with Fatima’s father—noting Mr. Willis’s height with a “Whoa, you’re tall”—and hugged her mother and patted her six-year-old brother’s head awkwardly, in a way that reminded Fatima of someone stroking a rabbit’s foot for luck.
At dinner Rolf chatted to excess, complimenting the drapes, the silverware, and Fatima’s frowny-faced eight-year-old sister and indifferent younger brother. She wasn’t sure how nervous either of them should be. She found his foot with hers under the table and smiled silently, “Calm down. Be quiet.” She tried to signal, but Rolf prattled on, “I think it’s great that you as a black family are so successful.”
No one addressed Rolf, but her parents stood to clear the dishes. She heard their irritation in faint whispers from the kitchen, could see it in their eyes even with their backs turned. Fatima declined dessert. “We have to get to the movies. We’ll get some candy there,” she said.
Still, she and Rolf were together a month later, and her parents hadn’t expressed any concrete disapproval. A month later, she was only just telling Rolf about Violet.
“I guess my other best friend,” Fatima responded, “besides Emily, is Violet.”
“Violet,” Rolf repeated. “Cool name. She’s not at Westwood, is she?”