Blair drove through the streets with the windows down. Jhene Aiko was on the radio singing about a time when she was young and wanted to have fun.
Blair had lied.
She told her family she needed to go to the gallery. Truth be told, she needed a moment to herself. Blair pulled into the park and ride area at Lake Lacroix. It was incredibly beautiful; she understood why Raven spent so much time here. The water glistened and made waves as the fisherman worked. The sun warmed Blair’s skin, but there was a slight chill. Blair felt the cool breeze through her locs with the windows cracked. It was never cold in Lake Lacroix, but with Blair’s icy spirit, it could have been a blizzard in November.
She backed into a far corner off to the left, the closest to the water and furthest away from everyone. She threw the car in park and rummaged around in her purse until she found it. She searched through her glove box, tossing stacks of napkins until she found her lighter. Blair lit up a joint, closed her eyes, and inhaled. She took one puff . . .then one more . . . Sour smoke filled the car. Blair didn’t smoke often because it made her restless, but this time she needed it to calm her mind. Family time spent together was rare these days. Everyone rushed off in different directions and found reasons to be apart. Carter still wasn’t speaking. Blair made a mental note to text Ms. Margaret again. And Raven. How could I have ever forgotten about Taylor? Raven told her about it so many times. She and Raven had always been close, and Blair valued their relationship. So many of Blair’s colleagues complained about their children, expecting perfection from them and nitpicked at so many things. Blair felt lucky that Raven still considered her an ally against high-school and teenage life. Raven was a worrywart, and that worried Blair. Maybe that made Blair a worrywart too, and maybe that’s where Raven got her issues from. Mother and daughter.
Blair spoke to Ms. Whitaker the week prior for an update on Raven’s in-school sessions. Ms. Whitaker discussed Raven’s growth from last year until now. She mentioned Raven’s struggle with Carter’s move in. She ended the conversation casually mentioning Raven was friendly with a boy named Amir.
“Excuse me?” Blair whispered and gripped the phone tighter. She wasn’t sure she heard her correctly.
“Raven is friendly with a boy,” Ms. Whitaker repeated. She explained that Raven often discussed Amir in their sessions.
Blair felt slightly jealous. Just slightly. Raven was trusting Ms. Whitaker with information she hadn’t even mentioned to her yet. And when had that changed? She and Raven discussed things together, and now Raven was doing her own thing. But that thought saddened Blair too. Isn’t that what you want your child to do? Be independent when necessary? Take the world head on?
Blair puffed again and sank lower in her seat. There had been so many other things on her mind that she couldn’t keep everything straight. Something or someone always suffered when the family feuded.
Blair snorted as smoke caught in her throat. She coughed and blinked back tears. Her throat burned.
Blair carefully inhaled this time....
There was something about going home to a beautiful Black man every day that still excited her. As her relationship with Khalil grew, their priorities changed, and their focus shifted to the future, and creating their legacy. Raven often asked about her grandparents, but Blair rarely talked about them. There wasn’t much to say in her opinion. She didn’t have a typical childhood, but it wasn’t a bad one by any stretch of the imagination. She would show Raven pictures. There was an endless array of photos from the Grand Canyon, Empire State Building, and other places the family visited. This was all she would give Raven, coupled with a few tidbits of wisdom.
“The family you create is more important than the family you come from,” she told Raven. That was her way of ending the conversation when Raven asked. Raven probably had so many questions that she had shushed along. The memories, although not as colorful as some people’s, made Blair sad. She tried to empower Raven to be the best brown girl she could be, but Blair cut off large parts of her own history by trying to move forward and create something new.
Blair Trinidad was an only child. She didn’t have any siblings or cousins. It was just her and her parents. It was always that way. Blair’s parents were older and more mature than her friends’ parents. They were intellectuals; they went to museums and read books. They spent their weekends at medical conferences for Dr. Trinidad, the Black Veterinarian. At times he referred to himself as just that . . . a Black Veterinarian. Blair didn’t know if it was a way of stating the obvious before white people found out, or if he wore it as a badge of honor. Blair’s mom was a schoolteacher. When the Trinidad’s neighbors gathered around the tv for Sunday Night Football and family fun, Blair took Spanish lessons. A future ‘necessary life skill’ they promised.
Blair was in her dorm room at Xavier University when her dad’s lawyer called her. Her parents had passed away in a car crash coming back from a conference. A drunk driver hit her parents, and no one survived. Blair remembered it so clearly . . . She spoke to them right before they got on the road. They were excited because normally none of the conferences were in driving distance, but this conference was the exception. “Stretch out on the highway,” Mr. Trinidad had said.
Her world instantly changed.
Burying her parents at twenty-years-old changed her as a person. She went from the world being at her fingertips and age being her advantage, to it being her disadvantage. It was an empty feeling having no one connected to you. Not anymore.
Who do you go to for answers? Who do you talk to when you don’t understand deductibles? What was a deductible anyway? She was now forty-four years old, and she still didn’t quite get it. Blair knew nothing about life when she became an orphan; her parents navigated these things for her. For months she lived life in a stupor, struggling to cope.
One particularly bad semester when Blair almost flunked out, she took an African American studies course. Blair was versed on her lineage and where she came from. Mr. and Mrs. Trinidad understood regardless of their social status and Blair’s lighter skin, she was still a Black woman in America. As Malcolm X put it best, she was the most disrespected, unprotected, and neglected person in America. For that reason, Mr. and Mrs. Trinidad made sure to tell her she descended from royalty. The world just hadn’t caught on yet.
In class, Blair heard the stories of her ancestors differently than she ever had before. She read and read whatever she could get her hands on relating to her people. She felt a deep, visceral reaction to the plight of her ancestry. Blair learned about Queen Nandi, Henrietta Lacks, Claudette Colvin, Shirley Chisholm, Arthur Ashe, Recy Taylor, Sidney Poitier, Angela Davis, Ella Baker, and so many others. It was like she was hearing these stories for the first time. She wanted to break through to a society who judged her father solely for his skin tone and not his medical degree he so desperately clung to.
The right side of Blair’s brain woke up. She was analytical. Methodical, even. She had been this way for so long. When she got a taste of melanin, she knew she was starved. Her thirst for all things Black was deep-rooted and needed. She read books and joined protests. Her permed and pressed hair was replaced with bantu knots, then later in life, sister locs. Blair’s once comfy, casual style was replaced with pointed pieces adorning her body. Ankh tattoos, crystals around her neck, and shea butter on her elbows. Blair wore less make-up. She rolled with just sun and skin these days.
Cinderella had arrived at the ball, and honey, she wasn’t going back.
Not that Blair’s parents didn’t teach her all the things about being Black, but they were still old school. “Don’t make White folk mad, they don’t like to think you’re smarter than them,” they used to warn. Her parents were so old school and so brainwashed by American society; they taught their daughter to be good enough for White people. They taught her to demand an opportunity at their table, and when she finally got that opportunity, she had to be better than them. Blair wanted to build her own table.
Blair wondered why Mr. and Mrs. Trinidad discussed the stock market and other important, but not so important things. Yet, when it came to Blair’s skin tone, the conversation became a cautionary tale of survival about how to beat them at their own game. Blair didn’t want to beat them. She just wanted to create her own path and something that would last. For her, that started with a solid foundation and family.
Blair’s phone beeped and it was a text from Nana.
Nana: Talked to Cocina’s counselor at the program. She can receive visitors starting this week.
Blair puffed some more before her phone screamed at her from her Bluetooth speakers and interrupted her thoughts. She looked at the caller ID. Ms. Margaret. Blair had talked her up. She didn’t have the mental space right now, so she let the phone ring. Besides, she was a little . . . uhh. . . lifted.
“They often try to label little Black boys. They give them diagnoses which follow them for life. ADHD, impulse disorders, Oppositional Defiant Disorder. I’m not saying those things aren’t real, but a lot of times, I believe for our little Black children, trauma would be the better explanation. So many things look like mental health disorders but can be better explained by examining their trauma.”
Ms. Margaret gave Blair pamphlets to take home and read. Blair perused them. She noticed some things sounded a lot like Khalil and Cocina, and that scared her.
“For some people, if you’ve experienced anything traumatic in your lifetime, it affects you as you get older. It can affect every aspect of your life, including your health, how you cope with stress, how you feel about others, and how you feel about yourself. Trauma affects everything,” Ms. Margaret explained.
Blair thought about Khalil’s stomachaches and headaches. Cocina always seemed to be sick, and Carter sniffed and sneezed around the house. Carter jumped at anything that was loud, and the food.
That was still an issue.
No matter how much food they gave him, he would still hide it in his room.
Blair watched the water. She still wouldn’t give up on her family, and she certainly wouldn’t give up on Carter. She ashed the last small piece and started her car. She exited the park and ride area and headed for Sycamore Street.