Juda’s Secret

Juda has almost no secrets.

We know that he once wore something called “community clothes,” a funky collection of shirts, pants, skirts, and dresses, free to anyone living on the commune. We know that he moved around a lot, taking up residence in an abandoned tipi, an empty yurt, and even a VW bus for a while. Since we have known him, he has had a similar restless nature, moving every two years, flipping houses, and not for profit but because of an unexplained need for change. We also know he is kind of spooky, believing in all manner of spirits, ghosts, and anything else that floats. We know that it took three tries, three egg donors, and one surrogate for him and his partner to have one precious child. And this too he credits to spirits that follow him.

We find all of this charming. Less so, the information that his brother would just as soon call us niggers as by our names. Just as disturbing are the accounts of family discussions after the murder of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. His is a military family. A law enforcement family. A racist family. We have listened to his accounts of “family discussions” and felt for his uncomfortable place as an outsider in his own family.

If there is a secret behind Juda’s chapters, it is rooted in his curious connection to black people and culture.

In one of our meetings, he admitted that the police murder of Alton Sterling, a black man in Louisiana, had consumed him, and that without meaning to he had watched the video of Sterling being killed again and again. Sitting at Juda’s dinner table, we were too caught up in the pain we experienced in watching that video to ask the question that lay hidden in the back of our minds: you felt it too? One should only need to recognize abuse and the humanity of its victim to feel hurt and outrage, and so our question should have been moot. But we live in a world filled with people who could not see Sterling’s humanity, and Juda’s family made up just a few of those people. So the second question, the one we seemed to find a thousand ways to ask without asking, is where the hell did Juda come from? How does one come from a family like his and become someone who teaches the work of Toni Morrison to imprisoned women in a maximum-security prison?

We never got a clear answer to this question, partly because while Juda is comfortable talking about his whiteness, he freaks out, and rightly so, at any question that situates him as better than most white folks. He has no desire to be Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, or Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side, or Hilary Swank in Freedom Writers. He has no purple cape with which to fly around saving black people from racism or white people from being racist.

So when we pushed him to write about the obvious elephant in the room, whiteness, Morrison’s white characters, and even white guilt, he had what can only be described as a conniption.

“You do realize that you being a white dude who read Song of Solomon in a tipi requires an explanation, right?” Cassandra said.

“Morrison wrote a whole book about whiteness,” Piper said. “You can write a couple of chapters.”

“But white guilt? That is a road that leads to nowhere good!”

“We know that Morrison isn’t writing for white people, Juda. But she has plenty of white readers, and Lord knows she doesn’t mince any words for their sakes. You are one of those white readers, and you can’t just ignore that fact.”

Juda stared at Winnie, who never pushes anyone to do anything they don’t want to do.

“It’s not like her books don’t have white people in them,” Winnie said.

Juda cocked his head at her. If he were a meme it would say, “Girl, please!” And if he were a GIF there would be two snaps and a swipe down.

“I didn’t say they were good white people,” Winnie said, laughing.

“And a lot of the good white people,” Piper added, “are so blind that you have to laugh at them.”

Juda’s face loosened. “Funny white people.” He smiled. “Maybe I should write about that.”

“What are y’all talking about? Morrison is not funny. There’s nothing funny about Beloved,” Cassandra said. “Dead baby equals the opposite of funny.”

“But she does make us laugh at some of the white people,” Juda said.

“Okay, now you have point,” Cassandra said. “A crazy white girl running around in the woods calling herself Miss and looking for velvet is kind of funny.”

“Sad too,” Winnie said. “But definitely funny.”

We all laughed. And then we made a list of them right then and there—all the white people that Morrison had made us laugh at over the years. It wasn’t that long, but we were laughing and to us that meant that these characters mattered.

Perhaps it should have felt strange to be sitting with a white friend making fun of these white people, but it didn’t. It does, however, make us return to a nagging question about where Juda came from and how exactly he became the person he is. The closest he ever came to answering this question was when he told us a story about his teenage self, a boy who scratched the inside soft spot of his arms until they bled. His mother demanded that he stop, but he could not resist the delicious satisfaction of scraping the hard scabs that formed like newly dried lava, peeling them away until his arms oozed the raw insides of his body. Exasperated, she took him to a dermatologist, who—still holding onto the raw arms with his clammy hand—asked if the boy had been anxious lately. The younger version of our friend shrugged his shoulders and braced himself for what he most feared the doctor would say: “Ma’am, I’m afraid to break it to you, but your kid is queer.” Of course, what the doctor really said was “Do whatever you can to stop him from scratching.”

The first time his mother wrapped the boy’s arms, glaring at him as she did it, she used too much gauze and too much pressure. He could hardly bend at the elbow, making him look like a half-finished mummy, which is exactly what his brothers—with the cruelty of blood—called him. But he didn’t care. He just wanted to get to the itch, which was now out of reach, like everything else in his life.

When we asked Juda how the boy survived those long years between that moment and Song of Solomon, he gave us an answer so unlikely that we became hysterical.

“Oh, it was was Soul Train,” he said. “Soul Train saved my life.”

We picture him alone, his five siblings outside playing while he is breathlessly waiting for the Soul Train theme song and the bouncing train to explode across the screen. He is dressed like he is one of the show’s dancers, bright colors and hip hugger jeans that he won’t dare wear to school but saves for these moments. He studies the long brown bodies and the promise of their free expression. And when he can no longer hold himself back anymore, his arms and legs shoot outward and he is spinning like a disco ball, shiny and light.