Displays of affection do not necessarily come easy to me. Yes, when Nigel was still in his crib, perhaps it was easy to press his soft feet to my mouth and kiss them. Or lift him up by the underarms and nuzzle my nose against his belly as he giggled. But as he grew and began to look more like me in cant of body and cadence of walk, I found myself withdrawing. One day when Nigel was about seven, I picked him up from school—St. Moritz, a truly wonderful school—on Brighton Lane.
Nigel climbed into the passenger seat, his eyes reddened.
“Well, spit it out.” I leaned across to clip his seatbelt on.
“This kid said I was a cow.” It was farm day in class. The students had taken a virtual tour of a farm. At one point, the class came upon a field of amber-colored grain. A spotted cow grazed. Some genius child made a connection between Bessie and the mark on Nigel’s face. I didn’t want to scar Nigel with an overreaction on my part or act as if the teasing would hurt any less in the future. He would need a tougher skin to survive.
“That’s silly.” I started the car. “Ignore that kid, okay?”
“Yes,” Nigel said.
“We’re having cheese ravioli tonight.”
He smiled weakly. We drove off. Having settled the issue, I placed it in a box at the back of my mind, closed the lid, and removed the skeleton key. I had a federal court brief to write, and if it didn’t go over well, I’d take the blame. We’d lose the account.
We were nearly home, stopped at a red light. Vehicles flowed through the intersection. A scooter. A sedan. A tour bus. Maybe if I applied third circuit state court precedent, I could create a procedural pathway that would—
Nigel hiccupped. Not a hiccup. His head was ducked between his shoulders. He had been crying the whole time, silently. He covered his face when he noticed me watching him. Such grace. Suddenly, Nigel seemed so small, as if the Bug’s bucket seat might snap shut on him like a Venus flytrap.
I swerved the car into a gas station at the last major intersection, just three or so turns from the house. I reached out but found I couldn’t touch him. How had I become one of those fathers who were deathly afraid of showing any sign of tenderness? What was I doing to us?
I had been ignoring my son’s predicament. Instead of engaging with his pain, I did everything to minimize it. The kid who called Nigel a cow wasn’t unusual. Other kids cast similar aspersions, bullied him like it was their jobs. More would in the days to come. But I’d heard of a way to help people like Nigel. I knew what I had to do.
I put the car in drive and took us home to Penny.
Several nights after One Cent Day, Zora sent a message reminding me that I was to represent at City Hall. This was the first thing she said about the event since our brief encounter at the Myrtles, so of course I forgot all about it. We were eating dinner.
Penny looked up from her creamed spinach. “Something important?”
“BEG wants me at the press conference for the emergency ordinance signing.”
“With the mayor?” Nigel asked.
“That’s right, son.”
“Oh no,” Penny said. “You can’t act all chummy with that fascist.”
“She’s not a fascist. She’s just trying to look tough before election season.”
“Human rights don’t have a season.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I said. “As the BEG spokesperson, I have to be there. It’s just politics.”
I got the impression that Zora and the mayor were frenemies at best. But since Chamberlain had always supported BEG, someone from the group had to be there. I saw it as a plum assignment, a sign of trust in my abilities and in accordance with my desire to ingratiate myself quickly into the upper echelon of BEG. Eckstein would see my face on TV. It would be proof of my involvement—of the firm’s involvement—in the lives of the black community.
Zora instructed that I be ready to declaim BEG’s platform, its mission statement, its accomplishments both recent and distant in time, and most important, its support for the government’s action. BEG was about the safety and security of all peoples. It was BEG that lobbied for the safety patrols that watched over the Tiko and our house. It was BEG that filled in the void left by the collapse of the original ADZE with new youth work programs and the like. It was BEG that kept radical elements from passing truly discriminatory laws like the one in the next state over that required all blacks to accept tracking implants. After helping Penny and Nigel with the dinner dishes—she washed, he dried, I put away—I locked myself in the guest room and stood up reading policy and jotting speaking points on a legal pad. I scratched out lines, tore out whole pages and tossed them into the wastebasket.
As sunlight crept through the lace curtains—a design to my imagination of disembodied moth wings—it struck me that in all my years as an agent of the law, Nigel never saw me in action. Early in my career and before Nigel was born, Penny often visited court to watch me plead. Mama was present for my first argument before the state supreme court. Even Jo Jo, through some awesome trick of fate, wandered into a cross-examination I performed at a suburban law center. But Nigel, of all the people who mattered, was outside this circle of experience. The thought of my son getting to watch the old man do his thing, even if it wasn’t an actual legal proceeding, filled me with a kind of manic joy. I rose from my desk and stretched, smiling like a tomcat. I patted my stomach. I could’ve stood to lose a couple. I pulled one of the short curls on the top of my head. It was turning kinky again. There wasn’t enough time to freshen it up.
I crossed the parking lot of the Reinhardt Upliftment Center, leading Nigel and Araminta by the hands. Araminta, despite being a pest to the very core, was compliant, even pleasant. But Nigel’s face was reddened by my display of parental affection. I squeezed his hand harder.
Reinhardt was in the Tiko, on the site of an old commercial sector. Long, long ago, in the very same place that we walked, Jewish, black, Irish, and Italian immigrants sold jewelry, hand-cobbled shoes, and small-batch candies from storefronts. The buildings that made up Reinhardt were once a paint factory—Pure American Paints—if memory served. Eventually, they outsourced most of production to Bangladesh. But that was only after much of the original plant was destroyed in a boiler explosion.
Colorful placards banged against light poles in the breeze. The placards were printed with slogans: STRIVE TO ACHIEVE! WORK WITH US NOT AGAINST YOURSELF! IF YOU BREAK THE LAW, THE LAW BREAKS YOU. Arrows pointed down at the pavement. There was nothing of note on the pavement.
“It’s smaller than I remember.” Nigel pulled his hand from mine and held the glass door open for us. I couldn’t tell if he was being ironic. Reinhardt was one of the biggest complexes in the black part of town. It had once actually been outside the Tiko, but at some point, the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the Tiko reached out like an amoeba and swallowed Reinhardt.
Reinhardt contained a restaurant, a physical-book library, a police substation—Douglas’s hive—an after-school work-study program, and even a Reform AME church. People went to the center to pay utilities, register themselves, and process government assistance requests. A body could spend an entire day at Reinhardt and never fail to come across something of interest.
“That’s because the last time you were here,” I said, “you were a lot smaller.”
“My daddy ain’t never let me come in here,” Araminta said. “He say it’s a joke.”
“That’s a small-minded attitude.” I myself was a beneficiary of Reinhardt’s programming. When I was a freshman in high school, I was selected with only ten other black kids from across the City to serve in their ambassador program. It was a huge boost for my self-confidence. A few times a month, I was transported from the rather pedantic concerns of Ms. Leni’s Southern American history course (we learned mostly about the battle for states’ rights) and Mr. Himmle’s calculus class (my least favorite hour) to events like the press conference. We were talked about using cliché-ridden metaphors, told we were the flowers of our community—the brightest petals, who through diligence and deference would sprout into future leaders. They even gave us blazers, each embroidered with a tulip crest. I patted my crest for good luck before events. We greeted people, opened doors, and carried trays of bacon-wrapped kale. I looked pretty sharp in my navy blazer and khakis, let me tell you. Sometimes, even as an adult, I found myself absentmindedly stroking a phantom tulip on my chest.
Nigel broke away and turned to us. He held an imaginary microphone and a real index card. Some of my notes were on the card. In typical Nigel fashion, he had already run me through a few hypothetical questions in the car. He got that from his mother, his desire to see me succeed. I didn’t deserve him. I didn’t deserve either of them.
Araminta ripped the card in half and stuffed it in Nigel’s shirt pocket.
“What’s the big idea?” I asked. Nigel laughed.
“Mr. Nigel’s dad,” Araminta said, walking backward through Reinhardt’s lobby. She motioned for the imaginary mic, which Nigel handed over. She thrust the mic at me while Nigel took imaginary pictures. “Would you rather be the Ugly Duckling or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?”
“The swan,” I said. “Although there is a certain utility to that nose.”
Nigel tweaked Araminta’s nose. She playfully slapped him away.
“Mr. Nigel’s dad,” Araminta said, “how come dogs and fruit flies have been to space but no girls?”
“Girls are already in space.”
“I mean girls my age,” she said.
The dark scent of red beans burbling in a pot. The salty tickle of seafood gumbo. The effervescent pinch of black pepper against catfish batter. We came to the pride and joy of Reinhardt, the Respectibility Cafe—yes, the name was misspelled from the start, but that was another story. All the employees were disadvantaged youth, like I had once been, though I never worked there. The youth participants were not necessarily poor or illiterate, mind you, just born of black parents.
Here, in a program administered by BEG, young people received the training they needed for careers in the food service industry, which certainly beat their other prospects: jail time or the welfare rolls. Look at that girl scribble an order. See that boy wipe down a food tray. My chest swelled at the thought of all the young people the little eatery had ushered into lives of quiet dignity.
I held up my imaginary microphone. “Dear Mr. and Miss Children, what has perfectly white fur, a cat’s head, a dog’s floppy ears, and—”
Someone stared at me from the other side of the glass separating the hall from the cafe. Someone very familiar but absolutely foreign at once, like a twin I’d never met. Where had he come from? He hadn’t been there a moment ago. The coldness in his eyes froze me in place.
“Cousin Supercargo!” Nigel said.
“Supercargo?” I mouthed. I forgot this was one of the facilities where he worked. I pointed at my head in recognition of his head, which was as bald as a freshly shorn sheep’s belly. The sliding doors opened.
“What y’all doing up in here?” He wiped his hands on his apron.
Nigel hugged Supercargo as exuberantly as always.
“What happened to your dreads?” Araminta asked.
“That’s a long story, missy,” he said.
“Wait. How do you know him?” I asked Araminta. But they ignored me, and for a moment, as they chatted, I felt completely invisible.
“I learned some more music by heart for my school musical,” Nigel said.
“Oh yeah?” Supercargo said. “So you’re good to go for next week.”
“He’s only the bench warmer,” Araminta said.
“Understudy.” Nigel shoved Araminta. “Mr. Riley says I’m the backbone of the band.”
“That’s nice.” I didn’t like the fact that Riley, as a teacher at the School Without Walls, saw my son more than I did. Maybe I could somehow get Riley transferred. Nigel didn’t need additional father figures. I was the first, last, and only. “No shoving,” I said. But no one heard me. I was starting to panic. What if I remained invisible forever?
“I thought you were the star,” Supercargo said.
“This kid named Monte is. His father donated money to refurbish the teachers’ lounge. That’s okay. I like Monte. I get to be a member of the band. The second keyboardist. I play the hard parts.”
I took several deep breaths. I realized that in my transparent state, I could finally leave the struggle behind. I could let go. Float through the acoustic ceiling tile. Up through the gray cumulonimbus clouds. Into the ionosphere. Set a course for the dark side of the moon. If I flew overnight, I could land on that quiet little orb by morning. Set up a chaise lounge and a tray of white chocolate bonbons. Nigel would be fine. Supercargo would see to it that he got home safe. Penny would ensure that he survived the vicissitudes of being born alive into a world covered in poisonous barbs. Wait—no.
“Can we talk for a sec?” I said. Supercargo and I stepped away from the kids. “Seriously, what happened?”
“They cut it.”
“But who?”
“Who else?” He rubbed the smooth brown crown of his head. “The police popped me the night of that terror at the mall.”
“What did you do?”
Supercargo shot me a look of anger. “You sound like them.” The police had suspected that he was involved and interrogated him for almost twenty-four hours. He didn’t have to explain the rest. Under the Dreadlock Ordinance, the cops could give any arrestee a haircut if they deemed the person unsanitary. It seemed like a sound policy. With so many thousands of men locked up in close confines, the authorities did what was necessary to prevent infestations of lice and fleas. I saw it with my own eyes during a Scare ’Em Straight field trip in middle school. Even the largest prison in the City was bursting at the seams. Nobody wanted an epidemic.
Still, I couldn’t remember a time when Supercargo hadn’t sported a stereotypically Afrocentric hairstyle. When we were boys, he had cornrows. Later he grew a truly magnificent Afro. Although I believed that dreads were a way to draw unwelcome attention from the authorities—clearly what happened here—I knew Supercargo took great pride in his locks. Presumably those locks had been tossed into the incinerator at the City jail, along with part of my cousin’s identity.
I grabbed his shoulder and gave him a half-body hug. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” He rocked from foot to foot, an edge to his voice. “Maybe when it grows back, I’ll get a permadoo like you. Nobody mess with me then.” He glanced into the cafe. “Say. Your boy old enough. You should let him volunteer sometime.”
“I’ve got bigger plans for him than working somebody’s grill.” The words spun out of my mouth faster than I could catch them. “No offense.”
Supercargo smacked his lips. “You’ve always thought you were better than me.”
“Can we not talk about this now?” I checked the time on my watch.
“That’s right.” He undid his apron. “You’re Zora’s patsy.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“She asked me first. I refused. I want nothing to do with it. I resigned from BEG the other day.”
“What? Why?”
“ ’Cause they playing us. You see what they trying to do with them laws. They going lock down the Tiko even more than it is now. They going profile us harder and scoop up anybody for anything. And BEG going to go hand in hand with them? Want me to be a part of that? No, sir. Cannot be me.”
“Aren’t you being a bit hyperbolic?” I asked. “And aren’t you the guy who signed me up with BEG?”
“That was a mistake. I thought I could get them to take on some real challenges. To fight what’s happening. Like the way ADZE used to. This City trying to eat us alive, and all Zora want to do is grovel for government grant money to cover her salary. What’s the point if we doing the man work for him?” Supercargo closed his eyes and inhaled, his chest expanding for several long moments. He turned without saying bye and disappeared into the stockroom.
Shortly thereafter I was up on a platform surrounded by dignitaries. The press corps waited below shoulder to shoulder. There were three walls and a series of panel windows that looked out on Reinhardt’s garden, where some young volunteers toiled over a watermelon patch. Mayor Chamberlain stepped up to the microphone, raising it slightly. I liked her because, against the odds, she’d beat out the corrupt father-son dynasty that preceded her. Her signature bouffant hair never looked higher.
“Much has been said about the present state of unrest in our fair city since the occurrence in our beloved Myrtles commercial district,” Mayor Chamberlain said. “I have been monitoring the streets. Particularly around the area of the Tikoloshe Housing Development. We’ve seen an uptick in violent-crime arrests, and it is clear to me that this part of our community is on the verge of complete and total social unrest. Most important, we will bring the black supremacist group known as ADZE to justice. They will be punished for their reign of terror and for corrupting citizens of all ages to their hateful cause.” She gripped the podium with one hand and raised a sheet of paper with the other. “This is a list of actions designed to address the problem. You can be assured that this administration is doing everything in its power…”
The police chief had already spoken, as had the emergency services administrator, two members of the council, an FBI agent, a woman from the power utility, and a guy who dealt with the City’s parking meters. How could people talk so much without running out of words? My coat sleeves felt awkward against my forearms. I felt oppressed by the formality of it all, like a butterfly under glass. My armpits were moist. I hoped the woman from the power utility, now standing next to me, didn’t notice. Because of our height difference, her nose was right there.
The mayor continued. “My plan will curb violence by extending the curfew at the Tikoloshe Housing Development from weekends to seven days a week.”
The non-press audience members clapped. What did she mean by extending the curfew? She couldn’t just lock people in the projects. Could she?
“I’ve already secured a contractor to raise the Tikoloshe fence and extend its parameters to encompass eight nearby blocks.” The applause continued. “This is, of course, in response to the grenade that was thrown over the existing fence that destroyed a culturally significant statue of Ida B. Wells. If ill-intentioned persons can’t get close to the development, then they can’t harm it or our people.” Mayor Chamberlain leaned forward. “There are many other initiatives, but I’m proudest of our new collaboration with federal authorities, which allows our stalwart City Police Department to hand violators of certain laws over to those authorities for deportation to the African nation of Zamunda, pursuant to an existing treaty entered under the administration of former president Palmer.”
My face was hot. Supercargo was right, and I had dismissed him! The mayor’s plans would strip rights from me, Mama, Supercargo, and everyone who looked like us. I couldn’t be a party to it. I had to find a way out. But then I spotted Nigel at the back of the room. He and Araminta were playing some kind of game with their hands. Even here he was so oblivious to what our society wanted to do to him, as he should be. I couldn’t walk away from the plan. I was standing five feet from the mayor on live television in front of hundreds of thousands of people. Octavia was almost certainly watching, as she kept up with everything political. Eckstein was probably watching, too. I couldn’t lose my resolve.
“We believe that these laws”—Mayor Chamberlain pulled the mic closer—“which I will soon sign into effect, are reasonable improvements to certain ordinances already in force. And these laws are only for the health, safety, and general welfare of our citizens. Our only aim is to create peace in our time.” Chamberlain spread her arms out. “As you can see, we have a consensus among our city’s leadership, including the City’s historic and award-winning civil rights organization, the Blind Equality Group.”
Cameras trained on me. Nigel and Araminta looked up. I gave a tiny wave.