The Black Kids(37)

“It feels like school is this maze and they keep giving you cheese to help you find your way through it. But then they release you out into the world and you have to figure out how to be your own cheese. Do I want to be, like, brie or cheddar or mozzarella or that random fancy moldy shit my mom brings out for parties? I just want somebody to tell me what to do.”

“When in doubt, get moldy,” I say.

Our conversation is interrupted by yelling. From up on the roof, I can see the Parker boys across the street, their hunting rifles aimed at their prey.

My uncle Ronnie’s silky braids fall down his back, and his hands stretch up to the sky as he yells, “Don’t shoot!”

“I gotta go.” I hang up on Courtney.

Mr. and Mrs. Katz run out into the cul-de-sac.

“This man was pounding on our door, trying to break into our house,” the Parkers yell.

“Should I call the police?” Mrs. Katz says.

“My brother lives around here,” my uncle says. “Craig. Craig Bennett.”

The Parkers keep their rifles aimed steadily at Uncle Ronnie’s head.

“I’m sure there’s been a misunderstanding.” Mr. Katz walks very slowly toward them. The Katzes are wearing near-matching pastel-yellow polo shirts, like they just got back from a doubles match. But that’s just their life.

“How come you don’t know where your own brother lives?” the simple Parker says.

“That’s my uncle!” I stand up and yell from the roof.

“I had the wrong house.” Ronnie talks very, very calmly to the Parkers, like he’s talking a man off a ledge. “It was a mistake. Please, my daughter is in the car.”

Inside the truck, my cousin Morgan watches, paralyzed. It’s been some time since I’ve seen her, and my first thought is, Her arms have gotten kinda pudgy.

I wiggle down off the roof so that I land in the bushes below. Barefoot, I run through the backyard toward the street. The bushes scratch along the length of my arm, and it starts to hurt as it hits the night air.

“Stop!” I pant.

Morgan starts to open the car door, and Uncle Ronnie yells at her to stay in the car.

“What’s going on here?” My father stumbles out the front door of our house with the pellet gun.

“Craig!” my uncle says.

“Ronnie?” my father says.

“You know each other?” the Parkers say.

“He’s my brother,” my father says, gun still raised.

“See, he belongs to the Bennetts,” Mr. Katz says, and exhales deeply. Like Uncle Ronnie is a pet or a slave, or, I guess, family.

“I said that already,” my uncle snaps.

The Parkers lower their rifles and shrug. “Sorry, yo.”

Mrs. Katz looks over at me. “You’re bleeding, dear.”

Morgan gets out of the car and walks toward us. Up close, her freckles make it look like she’s been tanning through a screen door. Her hair color looks like it came out of a box—wine or dye—but that’s from the shameful Scotsman buried deep under the family tree. When I go to hug her, you can still feel the fear in every freckle. Every inch of her trembles.



* * *




The last time my cousin Morgan came to stay with us was when Uncle Ronnie and Auntie Eudora went on their belated honeymoon. Morgan’s older sister, Tanya, came too. Tanya and Morgan are light-skinned, with long curls like Jo’s, and they always made it a point to remind us of how we were the darkest in the whole family, even though we really weren’t that dark, comparatively. Anyway, my cousins weren’t particularly pretty or smart or funny, just light-skinned. The world had already taught them that was enough, I guess. Ronnie and Auntie Eudora got divorced several years ago, and Eudora moved all the way to Las Vegas. Now Ronnie’s a single dad trying to make it in the world, which I guess during the middle of a riot means making sure his livelihood doesn’t burn down. Tanya’s away at college, which is good, because I don’t think I could handle both my cousins at once.

Whenever Jo and I would beat them at anything, Tanya and Morgan would start in: “Whatever. You black as coal.”

“You black as the La Brea Tar Pits.”

They must’ve just gone on a field trip.

“Black as a butthole!”

“We are not black. We’re brown!” I’d yell.

“Ignore them,” Jo said.

Jo and I both somehow knew that whatever they said to us, we weren’t allowed to respond with the obvious insult, which was that they were poor. So instead we refused to share our toys and got into a fistfight the last night before they left, which may have culminated in some biting, and Uncle Ronnie and Auntie Eudora never left them at our house again. Until now.

Morgan doesn’t want to be at our house. I know this because she says very loudly over and over, “Do not leave me here.”

Uncle Ronnie pretends not to hear her.

“?‘Sorry, yo’? Yo?” Uncle Ronnie says. “Seriously? Those motherfuckers—”

“Don’t start in front of the girls.” My father sighs.

“Motherfuckers pulled a gun on me in front of the girls,” Uncle Ronnie snaps. “I think I can call them motherfuckers, right, girls?”

“Two guns,” Morgan says.