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I stare at the last three words on the screen. “Love you bye.” Clearly, he was in a rush but did he mean what he wrote? Of course, we love each other but it’s a philia-type love. The kind C.S. Lewis wrote about in his book explaining the Four Loves.
Philia is that stage where it’s friendly and brotherly love. We’re friends. Friends care about each other and caring about someone means you have to have love for them. It makes sense. I’m sure that’s what he meant by “Love you bye”. That’s what I keep telling myself. I’m trying to keep calm and carry on like those last three words don’t mean that he’s in love with me. It only means he loves me as a friend.
For the most part, I’ve kept JJ’s letters private. Naturally, paper letters didn’t get forwarded but this is an email, I can send it wherever I choose. So I screenshot and highlighted those last three words before sending it to Jessa.
What do you think this means? I ask her.
I think it means just what it says. He loves you.
Just friend love?
Why don’t you ask him instead of asking me?
I can’t do that. It’ll be weird.
Jessa sends an eye roll emoji. All these games you two are playing. Stop it.
We can’t get involved.
Can’t or don’t want to? Are you afraid it’ll mess up y’all’s friendship?
I stare at Jessa’s questions. I’ve been asking myself the same things. JJ is my friend—my best friend. I’ve known him longer than I’ve known Jessa and Xavier.
When I was eight years old, we moved from Atlanta to Smalltown, Tennessee. I cried on the first day of school because the white patch on my left cheek had just begun to show up. It started out as a small white dot, but by the time we’d moved to Smalltown in early August, it had tripled in size. And that wasn’t the only place white dots and patches of skin were appearing. I had another one on my knee and an additional patch was forming where the sun don’t shine.
The first day of third grade was hazy, muggy, and swelteringly hot. I wore the uniform khaki pants instead of shorts because I didn’t want anyone to see the white patches on my legs. I’d been to two doctors and they both said the same thing: I had vitiligo. It was also on my face in two places: my cheek and my nose. At school, I could hide my legs but there was nothing I could do to hide my face. Mama said I was too young to wear makeup. She and Daddy told me to be brave. They told me the right friend would love me as I am.
I listened to them and went out of the house with my head held high even though tears were falling down my face. I gave my eyes one final swipe before I walked into the school building with my parents.
I was more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I was also late, but it was excusable because it was the first day.
After I handed the teacher my school supplies, she welcomed me and told me to pick a seat. There were two available. One in front of a girl whose upper lip curled up like she suspected I stank. And another was in front of a white-looking boy with tightly coiled, frizzy, ginger-colored hair and glasses. He looked as nervous as me. I had to make a decision fast because standing by the door wasn’t an option.
I chose to sit in front of the boy with the ginger hair. Two pencils were already on my desk. When I sat down, one rolled to the ground.
The boy with the ginger hair picked it up for me. I turned to say thank you and saw that he had deep brown eyes that I could’ve sworn had flecks of gold in them. His face was dotted with freckles. He stared back at me, but I uttered a thank you and turned back around.
On the playground, the frizzy-haired boy read a Percy Jackson book under a tree while I tried to find a friend. Most of the girls were playing tetherball. I didn’t know how to play so I stood off to the side and watched, hoping to learn the game. When I felt like I had it, I asked to play.
This one girl, whom I now know as Tisha, said “Go away, cow!”
I didn’t let her scare me off. Instead, I stood firm and told her that I wasn’t a cow. I explained that the white patch on my face was called vitiligo.
“Ewwww!” She screamed. “Cow-face has a disease, and we could catch it. Run y’all!”
All the girls ran away from me.
I had two options, tell the teacher or stay there and try to play tetherball by myself. Since my Aunt Didi had told me that “snitches get stitches” I gave the tetherball one good hit. It swung around the pole and back into my face, hurting my nose. I ran to the big tree where Deep Brown Eyes sat reading but I went to the other side so he couldn’t see me crying.
The next day I couldn’t bear to wear pants again. It was too hot. I put on the khaki skirt and Mama straightened my hair so that it was half up in two long flowing ponytails and the back came down over my shoulders.
“You are fearfully and wonderfully made,” Mama told me. I let her voice repeat over and over in my mind as I went to school.
I took the same seat in front of the boy. He didn’t speak, and neither did I. From what I could tell, he was shy and wouldn’t speak to anyone. Not even the teacher when she called on him to play get-to-know-you games with the class. I thought maybe he was mute.
At recess, I tried to make friends with a different group of girls. They ignored me like I wasn’t there. “Go away, Spot!” One girl barked at me like I was a dog.
“I just wanna play,” I said.
Then Tisha came up and pushed me. It’d rained the night before and there was a big mud puddle behind me. I fell backward, stained my clothes, and ruined my freshly straightened hair. The teacher saw what happened and called my parents.
At home that evening, my parents argued about whether or not they should send me back or enroll me in a private school. My grandmother, my mom’s mom, made me pineapple upside-down cupcakes. “Something sweet heals the soul,” she’d said. Grandma had dementia and she wasn’t supposed to be cooking but she politely told my mama that she would do what she “darn well” pleased. Grandma was tough stuff like that, and she was also the reason we’d moved to Smalltown.
I didn’t go to school for the rest of the week because I refused and threw a fit. By Friday, Mama decided she would talk to the school principal and teachers. She said she knew most of them because they went to school together. I didn’t care who she knew, I wasn’t going back to that school.
On Sunday, we went to church with Grandma. It was the second-biggest church in North Smalltown. They had a children’s church and I begged Mama not to make me go in there.
Forever optimistic, Mama said, “Church won’t be like school. You’ll find a friend here. I just know it. I’ve prayed on it and I know it’s already done.”
She believed in prayer but I was on the fence about it. Nevertheless, I went to children’s church and still felt lonely. Then, in walked the boy from my school, the one with the deep, brown eyes with flecks of gold, and another little boy who looked like him but had darker skin. Their features were almost identical except the other boy had curly mixed-ish type of hair. They had to be related, I thought. Maybe cousins. Curly Head found friends instantly, but Deep Brown Eyes sat in the corner. With no book to read this time, he began to pull the thread out of the hem of his shirt. That got my attention. He was a thread puller!
Nervous as all get out, I cautiously walked over to him. “Hey, you not from ‘round here, huh?”
He looked up at me, his face full of confusion like he didn’t understand a word I’d said. I tried again.
“What’s your name?”
When JJ tells this story, he says I said “Wash yo name?”
He acted like he didn’t understand so I repeated it slowly and loudly, thinking maybe something was off with his hearing.
Finally, it seemed like he understood. “M-my name is Jonah. Jonah Jourdan.”
He had an accent. I didn’t know where from at the time. “My name is Clove. These white patches on my face ain’t contagious or nothin’. I have vitiligo. It’s a skin condition that slowly turns my skin white. But you can’t catch it. I promise. It’s not a disease. I’m a really nice person, but don’t nobody believe me.”
He stared, making me feel like I’d said too much. I was trying to explain everything in one breath, so he’d give me a chance and not make fun of me like everyone else had.
Jonah Jourdan looked like he wanted to say something to me, but his mouth wasn’t moving. I felt like I’d explained myself for no reason and made myself look stupid too. I pivoted on my heels.
“Je te crois,” JJ said. At the time, I didn’t know that was French for “I believe you”.
He stammered terribly through his next words in English. “S-sometime...when the sun set...there be clouds. The clouds have many colors. I think it is pretty. I-I think your skin is pretty with both c-colors.”
It was the kindest thing I’d heard yet. From then on, I made up my mind to call my vitiligo patches “clouds.” My mama’s prayers had been answered; I’d found my friend.
Thinking about all of that makes me think of Mama and how she was always optimistic, hopeful, and cheery. When I’m scared, discouraged, or don’t know what to do, I hear her voice saying, “Chin up, buttercup,” and then reciting the Bible verse from Psalms about how I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. It’s ingrained in my brain.
Sitting alone in my room with my pillow getting soaked with tears, I pick up the phone and call JJ. We said no phone calls, but this is different.
I listen for the ring, but it goes straight to voicemail. I begin typing him an email, but a fourth of the way through, I realize it sounds too sad to send. I delete it and cry myself to sleep.