The Black Kids(65)

Then she pushes me into the pool.

My dress billows up around me as I sink to the bottom. It’s red and looks like flames, or blood, and it’s actually a really pretty disaster, like something that should be in Vogue. I’m so embarrassed that I don’t want to get out. I want to stay here at the very bottom of the pool, next to these dead flies, thinking about how I got here.





Nigger: A Brief Personal History by Ashley Bennett


Age 6. Somebody scrawls it across our front gate in black spray paint. My mother refuses to tell me what it means, not yet.

Age 7. A woman lets it slip while she’s complaining to her friend at the grocery store until she notices Jo and me standing behind her and turns bright red.

Age 9. Some boy says it to Jo at school, and she punches him in the gut. They both have to serve detention together, and my parents threaten to pull her out of the school but don’t. Late that night, she comes into my room and tells me she wishes she’d punched him harder.

Age 10. Three men yell it at me from their peeling Nissan while I’m pumping my mom’s gas in a gas station by the water on our way home from visiting Hearst Castle.

Age 11. There’s the Special-Ed kid hiding in the clothing racks in the kids’ section at the mall. He whispers it at me as I walk past and giggles when I turn my head. I’m too tall for most of the stuff in the kids’ section but too skinny for most of the juniors’ section. He keeps repeating it so that it’s like a chant or a mantra.

Age 15. Boys like Michael and Trevor sing along with songs at house parties. All these white boys raise their pale hands in the air and shout it like it’s theirs. I drink until everything, including their voices, is a dull blur.

Age 17. This.

Nèi-ge—Um…

Nigger. The word is like a stone I want to pin me down.



* * *




When I finally float back up to the surface, everyone is staring at me. Michael and Kimberly have gone who knows where. Nobody helps me as I struggle to hoist my body onto the deck. The hair Morgan spent hours doing has lost any pretense of straightness and is getting larger by the minute. My dress is heavy on me, and the weight of it pulls me down. My mascara stings my eyes; I’m not crying, but I might as well be.

As I begin to walk back toward the ballroom, this kid yells out, “Can’t we all just get along?” and the entire yard erupts in laughter.





CHAPTER 17


LASHAWN SITS BY the fire near the double doors, waiting. He looks angry, like something deep inside is waiting to burst out of his chest.

“Are you okay?” he says.

“What?”

“You’re drenched! Come with me,” he says.

I’m too tired not to. I walk with him silently through the ballroom.

“Yo, Brian, can I get the key?”

White Brian hands it over to him without question. The black kids look over at me. Candace says, “Damn, sweetie, you okay?”

I shake my head. The news hasn’t yet made its way to them. It will eventually, as these things do.

I follow LaShawn through the hotel lobby. Everybody stares at us as we pass. He takes out a key card and swipes it, and soon we’re on an elevator.

“That’s messed up, what she did to you,” he says. His voice is smooth like honey and comforting, and his fingers are long and thin and elegant. I’ve never noticed that about him before.

“I deserved it,” I say.

“No, you didn’t,” he says.



* * *




We exit on the tenth floor. The suite is probably like the one Michael’s family has rented for us. There’s a sitting area, a dining area, and a separate bedroom. For a moment, it feels as though we’re in our own little house, and I realize I don’t know why he’s brought me here.

“There’s a robe inside the closet,” he says. “Change in the bathroom, and we can try to use the blow-dryer on your dress.”

When I walk out, LaShawn has the news on. It’s the fourth night of rioting and things are crazy, but not as crazy as they were. He motions for me to sit down next to him.

“That’s two blocks from my house right there.” He points to a building in flames on the screen. “My sister, my mama, and my grandmama, they right there. And I’m here. Dancing. What kind of man does that make me?”

He looks at me as though expecting an answer. I wish I had one, but I don’t. Nothing worth saying, anyway.

“Do you want me to fix your hair?” he says, and points to the bird’s nest of shame atop my scalp.

“Okay.”

I sit down between his legs. It’s kind of sexual, being between a boy’s legs like this, my head gently resting against his crotch, but also really comforting. It reminds me of when I was younger and Lucia used to French braid my hair before school.

“I do my sister’s hair ’fore she goes to school,” he says, as though he’s in my head.

“You know how to braid?”

“Didn’t I just tell you I do my sister’s hair?” He laughs.

“Can you do two French braids for me and then pin them together in the back, please?”

“Just you wait, I’ma hook you up!”

His is an easy laugh, and it makes me wish we’d been close all these years. He takes off his tuxedo jacket and neatly drapes it across the chair. His cummerbund is the color of a robin’s egg. He gets up and disappears into the bathroom. I hear him rustle through the drawers until he’s located the dryer.