The Black Kids(12)

“You can’t disenfranchise a huge portion of the population and not expect shit to go down. I mean, what they did to him is awful, but really, Rodney’s just the tip of the whole goddamn iceberg.”

Harrison nods enthusiastically and adoringly. The way he looks at her makes me want to gag a little bit. She’s just my sister, not Che or Mother Theresa or, like, Naomi Campbell or whatever.

“Yes, Josephine.” My mother sighs.

This is how we spent a good number of dinners in high school: Jo ranting about her injustice of the week, the rest of us agreeing with her and occasionally interrupting to say “Please pass the peas/salt/hot sauce.” There are so many battles Jo and I don’t have to fight. We’re lucky black girls. My parents worked really hard to make us so. It’s like Jo feels guilty for all that good fortune. Why can’t you just be lucky? Be happy? Be grateful, they think. Harrison’s a white dude, so maybe all our good luck he just thinks of as his birthright. Maybe that’s why Jo can be indignant with him, why they can be indignant together, without all the business of being too grateful getting in the way.

“You know, you haven’t asked to see my ring yet,” Jo says to my mother.

“I didn’t know there was anything to see.”

Jo reaches her hand across the table. My mother looks over at the ring and takes my sister’s hand in hers, bringing it in closer. It seems that right there, in that moment, the full weight of my sister comes crashing down on her head.

“It belonged to my mother,” Harrison says. In the center of the ring is a big pearl from some prize oyster. It looks like Harrison dove into the depths himself to pick it out special for Jo, it fits her so perfectly. It’s ornamented with a halo of tiny diamonds and sapphires that rests on a simple gold band. It doesn’t look particularly expensive—at least not compared to the mass on my mother’s hand—but it is elegant.

On the wall above Harrison’s head, there’s a simple framed photo of Harrison and Jo at the courthouse. He wears an ill-fitting blue suit, something grabbed last minute at the big and tall store. She wears a simple white minidress with long sleeves. I know that dress, like I know nearly everything beautiful in my sister’s closet, but I can’t remember why. I know it like I know the blue satin dress that looked like the sky and nearly showed her ass. It was ruined when she got too drunk and spilled wine on herself at my father’s office Christmas party. Or the black suit with the slightly cropped shirt she wore to my grandma’s funeral. My great-uncle Wally’s wife, Evaline, made a fuss about how disrespectful Jo was for wearing pants and a crop top to Grandma Opal’s funeral, but Grandma Opal was a sassy old bag herself—her words, not mine—so Jo looked straight at Great-Aunt Evaline and said, “Grandma thought you were boring.”

“Your parents are okay with this?” My mother shakes a bit as she speaks to Harrison, a soda bottle about to blow.

“My mother is dead, and I don’t much care what my father thinks,” Harrison says. There’s an edge to his politeness now.

This is not going to end well. I’m glad my father isn’t here. Once he yelled at some guy my sister was seeing the summer after her freshman year of college just for bringing her home too late. “Nothing good happens after midnight!” he said.

“I’m an adult! We were just talking,” Jo said.

“You can talk in the daytime. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck!” he said.

I swear, sometimes my parents sound like the white people in a 1950s sitcom—minus, like, the segregation, etc. I wonder what Harrison’s parents and grandparents were doing then, which side they were on. Did they sign petitions or hold up signs and fight alongside us, or did they stand idly by? Or worse? I wonder if my mother’s wondered the same thing, or Jo. Maybe that’s what my mom really meant by “Your parents are okay with this?”

Anyway, in moments like these, I’ve found that it’s best to provide a distraction. I take my foot out of my shoe and lift it to the card table.

“I ditched school and cut myself on a dirty beer bottle today. I should probably get a tetanus shot, right? It kinda feels like my foot could fall off.”

“Get your foot off the table, Ashley,” my mother says. “Now.”

“It’s not a real table.”

“Tetanus is for nails, not beer bottles,” Jo says. She seems vaguely annoyed I’m there. But she always seems vaguely annoyed at my general existence. Of course she’s not grateful.

“Why were you ditching school?” my mother says.

“Senior ditch day,” I lie.

“Were you drinking?”

“No. We cut through a construction site to get to Michael’s house.”

She can tell I’m lying, but she’s too mad at Jo to have any anger left for me.

“Let me see.” Harrison takes his big bear hands and places them around my foot. “Once when I was a kid, I was on the roof helping my dad with this project he was working on. Anyway, I stepped on this nail, and it went clean through my Chucks. Ripped right through my foot.”

For a few seconds, my mother and sister forget to antagonize each other. Both stare at Harrison, enthralled.

“Did you have to go to the emergency room?” my sister says.

“Nah, my dad said it was too expensive.” He laughs.