The Black Kids(26)

“You gotta adapt with the times,” Ronnie always says.

“Just come here.” My father puts the phone on speaker as he prepares his morning coffee.

“I’m not leaving Mama’s store,” Ronnie says.

“Dammit, Ronnie.” My father says this often when he’s on the phone with my uncle.

“Hug yourself!” Richard Simmons says.

“Is that Sweatin’ to the Oldies?” Ronnie says, and my dad quickly takes him off speakerphone.

“Tell him to bring Morgan here, at least,” my mother shouts as she crunches her elbow to her knee.

My cousin Morgan and I should be close because we’re the same age and grew up less than twenty miles from each other, but there are palm trees and freeways and brotherly beefs between us, so we’re not. When my grandmother died, she didn’t leave a will, and so Uncle Ronnie and my dad decided that Ronnie should take care of the store and stay in her old house with his family, which is where he’d been staying all along. The house is mint-colored with a large front window and a small front porch, perfect for watching the world go by. There’s a lemon tree in front that drops its fruit in the front yard. Uncle Ronnie’s neighbors steal the lemons, which he doesn’t mind, because what’s he gonna do with that many lemons, anyway? Sometimes passing kids will take them to pelt each other with, and when they do, the street is covered in lemon splats. When we were little, Morgan and her sister Tanya liked to throw them at Jo and me. Lemons hurt when they hit you; not like softballs, but definitely more than Nerf balls. Once Morgan hit me in the head with one and actually knocked me off my feet.

The video comes to an end and we get to my favorite part, where the success stories dance off into the sunset. My favorite is a man named Michael Hebranko who somehow lost 780 pounds sweating to the oldies, which is like making six and a half of me disappear. I saw him on Oprah, and it made me cry. I couldn’t imagine all that hunger just weighing on your heart for years.

We land once more on the news. The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza was hit. The rioters didn’t burn down the mall or anything, just did a bit of light looting. Baldwin Hills is where our parents used to take us to sit on Black Santa, even though the first year we did it, I guess it was a bit of culture shock, because my mom said five-year-old Jo threw a huge tantrum and insisted he wasn’t the real Santa. It was important to our mother that we sit on and demand things from a jolly black stranger, instead of a jolly white stranger.

These things matter, she said, even if you don’t know it yet.

It seemed a little silly when I was little, but now I think she was right. If all the heroes in our stories are white, what does that make us? I’m glad we left out cookies and dairy-free eggnog for a fat black old man, even if he was imaginary. The face of our joy had gray whiskers as nappy as the hair atop my head and blasted James Brown Sings Christmas Songs and the Jackson 5 Christmas Album. I like that, for the brief window he was real, Santa looked like what I’d imagine my grandpa to look like, if I’d still had one.

I wonder if my cousin Morgan took pictures with Black Santa, or if these things don’t matter as much when you’re surrounded by black people as they do when you’re surrounded by white people. In any case, Santa’s definitely safe. It’s April. Morgan, however, is not.

“What’d he say?” My mother walks over to my father now that we’ve cooled down.

“He said maybe.”

“You hear that, Ashley? Your cousin’s coming. Maybe.”

“Hey, can I stay home from school today?”

She pauses briefly to consider it. Too briefly. Before she can continue, I try to make my case.

“Since Morgan’s coming…”

“No.”

So much for that.

“But I can take you to school today, if you want,” she says. “It’s been a while… we could drive through McDonald’s for breakfast! You used to love doing that.”

“Mom, I have to get into my prom dress in, like, three days.”

“Right. It was just a thought…” She pats me on the shoulder, then turns and heads up the stairs.

On television, the brunette reporter chases down passing looters. Her hair’s lightly flipped, and she wears a white mock turtleneck under a denim shirt tucked into denim jeans, like she went through her wardrobe and decided that only denim on denim was appropriate to wear in a riot. She catches up to a Latino man in a thin white tank top, with a handlebar mustache and socks leaping up to touch the bottoms of his baggy basketball shorts. Her voice is shrill as she jogs besides him, mic in hand.

“What did you get?” she asks.

“Shoes,” he says.

“Where do you live?”

“Right here.”

“Why did you do this?”

“I don’t know. Because it’s free.”

“Don’t you know that it’s wrong?”

The looter shrugs and runs away, the shoes boxes practically spilling from his arms.

Outside, the Parker boys hold real guns; hunting rifles, I think. It’s early, but they sit on their lawns in the fresh morning dew, taking breaths like little bombs. Their lawn chairs sag in ratty squares beneath them.

I told you earlier that Tim and Todd Parker blew up our mailbox when we first moved into our house. We weren’t sure if they did it because we’re black or because they’re delinquents, but it’s probably both. They’re almost thirty now, with faces that drip straight into their necks, and they still haven’t moved out. My mother says one or possibly both of them are simple, but simple don’t excuse racist.