7

I can’t remember his face, but I think about him before I sleep. Sometimes it’s his eyes sometimes his hands, sometimes his Jordans, sometimes his voice. I know him only in fragments and I can’t erase those fragments. They torment me. I say nothing to Reverend Olumide, who tells me that he is thrilled with the progress we are making. He says the struggle to live with the Lord is lifelong and constant. He tells me to pray always for deliverance. You don’t have to be alone in this, he says. The weather is warmer so he wears short sleeves and shirts unbuttoned at the collar. He tells me to stay vigilant, that temptation will still come. He writes down Bible verses for me to read, on white index cards in dark blue ink with letters almost as perfect as a computer’s. I take the cards—Genesis 4:7, Luke 5:32, First Corinthians 6:18—and put them in my pocket without looking at them. I have a stack on a shelf in my closet. They remind me of all the things I should do.

I don’t do them. Instead, on days when practice ends early, I take the long way home, detouring through Georgetown and lodging myself in the slow-rolling traffic on M Street so that I pass the store where he works. From my car, I see the faceless mannequins in runners’ spandex leggings and neon sports bras leaving exposed milky white mannequin midriffs. I see running shoes stacked high to the ceiling and the trickle of white-haired men and old but fit women who can afford the thirty percent location markup on a pair of shoes. The workers wear black shirts. I see them in fragments through the crowded display case, an arm here, the back of a brown head, a ponytail. I want the whole. I’m drawn to the whole, but I drive on overwhelmed by my embarrassment. My sneakers curve upwards like banana boats because I ran them through the wash.

My father wanted to buy a new battery for my car after I told my parents that I took an Uber home when the engine wouldn’t start. He insisted on coming with me to retrieve it from school and frowned with confusion when the car started immediately after I turned on the ignition. Maybe it’s the spark plug, he said. I said, we should get home and look at it there. I had a headache and my stomach still felt uneasy. My father followed close behind me in his Range Rover. My palms were sweaty against the steering wheel.

Each time I pass, I tell myself that tomorrow I will stop, but when tomorrow comes I don’t stop because I’m scared. The devil always comes in fragments until you experience eternity in its consuming entirety, Reverend Olumide says. I say the next day I will stop because random acts of kindness should not go unrecognized, but the next day comes and I can’t piece together what I would say to those eyes and I drive on, past the Key Bridge and up MacArthur Boulevard where I roll down my windows and inhale the spring smells of wet earth and new leaves, and sometimes scream into the passing wind so that my voice is hoarse and my throat sore when I get home. Since when did you start drinking so much tea, my mother asks me, every day tea, tea tea, as if tea is going out of fashion, she says. But I know she is secretly proud because she likes that I am adopting one of her British habits.

Meredith would know what to do but we don’t speak anymore so I can’t ask her for help. Instead we sit across from each other in Global Literatures trying desperately not to look like we’re not looking at each other. She is different now. Her skirts and shorts are shorter now and she wears more makeup. Rowan tries not to look like he’s looking at her and Adam teases me after class. Dude you should totally hit that, you saw her cross and uncross her legs, it’s like Basic Instinct, he says, you know the movie with Sharon Stone. He likes movies so I nod and smile as we walk and he bounces. Rowan pulls fraying threads from the bill of his Princeton hat, but he says nothing. I want to hate him but it’s a waste of time. He wouldn’t give a fuck anyway.

I text Meredith with my Nokia, cycling through letters and numbers with excruciating slowness and I hope she knows this means I’m serious. She doesn’t respond. I call Meredith after class but she ignores me. During my free period I walk up Wisconsin Avenue to the drugstore to look for blank greeting cards and Dum Dums. An older white woman with thinned gray curls and wrinkles badly covered by too much makeup rings me up. She smiles at me when she scans my items and while the register beeps, she says, I know it’s spring when you boys start coming here with your blazers looking for candy. In my day, the boys gave us flowers. I smile and swipe my card quickly. I hope she’s worth it, she says with a wink. My father thinks all white people in service jobs are stupid, bitter and mean, but she seems perfectly normal, maybe a little sad.

I draw stick figures in comic book squares on every available surface of the greeting card. They talk about when we were younger and we killed time doing silly things like staring directly into the halogen bulbs at the base of the Cathedral and then stumbling about blinded by faith, Meredith said. I drew all the waiting after orchestra for our parents to come while Lonnie the Bahamian security guard asked us, ya parents coming soon? I leave it on her sports bag during practice. Is it too late to say I’m sorry, I write. Meet me after practice in the meadow, I text, but Meredith doesn’t come to the meadow, not after fifteen minutes, not after the street is empty and all the boys have gotten into their cars and gone home, leaving me standing in the perfect grass, alone.

There are still colored streaks in the sky when I leave. The sunset shimmers in the windows of the Russian embassy and the storefronts lining Wisconsin Avenue so that the whole city looks like stained glass. OJ loved evenings like this when the world seemed perfect and he would drive us home playing underground hip-hop, rapping along softly while tapping his thumbs against the wheel. But he hasn’t been here for some time and normally he is too busy to talk on the phone. I know that my parents have told him nothing of the last few months, my mother out of concern for me, my father for shame, both because OJ needs to focus if he wants to become an orthopedic surgeon, and my issues are an unwelcome distraction. I dial his number and listen. Somewhere in New York, “Call Tyrone” plays and my brother either ignores it or is busy. His half-Nigerian girlfriend gifted him the ringtone. She is also a medical student so my mother is willing to overlook her whiteness. She called my mother to wish her a Merry Christmas. She texted me too. They go to church on the Sunday mornings they aren’t in the hospital. I cut the phone before it goes to voice mail. No, he wouldn’t understand.

There is a part of me that wishes Sportzone would burn down, leaving nothing but a sticky mess of rubber soles and melted mannequins with blistered and charred skin, but the only one capable of incinerating problems is God and almost everyone who matters in my life tells me that God is not on my side. I know I should go home right away, because that’s what is expected of me, that’s what OJ would do, what good sons do. There are normal things that normal people do at normal times, I heard my father tell OJ once when he called a girl his girlfriend. OJ was thirteen, so he sat in the front seat of my father’s car. I was seven so I sat in the back like I wasn’t even there. I played with the straps on my backpack as we sped home. OJ squirmed like he wanted nothing more than to leave right then, forget the cars and moving vehicles driving by. His fingers slid against the silver door latch, then under it as his hand tensed to pull it back, but he let it go. I don’t fight battles I can’t win OJ tells me when I complain about our parents. It makes life less difficult.

I park beneath a dogwood tree on Thirty-Second Street. Its smell immediately fills the car. Someone on the girls’ track team called them “cum trees”—she said their blossoms smell like semen. I wonder how many people put our noses to that dip between our index fingers and thumbs that night. The name stuck and now dogwoods make me think of sex. Thinking about sex is normal, Reverend Olumide says, but certain kinds of sex are not. Pray for strength. Pray for deliverance. Petals fall from the tree when I shut the door. A light breeze shakes more loose. The car will be covered with them by the time I get back, but there are no other parking spots. I’m out of options.

I hesitate at the glass door to Sportzone while the mannequins watch me with their hands on their hips and brand-new running shoes on their feet. Inside bright fluorescent light floods over sportswear neatly folded on industrial metal tables. Different shoe styles climb the wall on small wooden shelves arranged by brand, purpose and pattern: darks at the bottom, light colors at the top. Their distorted reflections shimmer in the high-gloss concrete floor.

A lone salesgirl with a microphone earpiece and a soccer player’s ponytail leans on a compact stand with an iPad for checkout. She looks at me, briefly less bored but also trained well enough to know that my purchasing power is not worth adjusting her perkiness level. How can I help you, she says. I scan the store but there is no one else inside. I can’t remember much from my first time inside except for the colors and the cold air forced down with a hiss from the exposed vents above. I just, I wanted to take a look at some running shoes, I say. Knock yourself out, she says. I do need new shoes. My current pair are less malleable after their session in the washer-dryer, but I have been afraid to ask my parents for money. I don’t want to ask them for anything. I lift a neon-blue trainer with red reflective stripes from its platform and turn it over—one hundred and eighty dollars. Everything in the store is thirty percent off, a voice says. I freeze like I have just stepped on a glass shard. He is shorter than me and he has a fresh shape-up, well-oiled so the sharp line of brushed-forward hair contrasts sharply with his brown skin. I swallow at his confused smile. Focus. But that smile. But those eyes. Focus. He has seen me, really seen me and still his gaze is insistent. Do I smell, yes I smell, but he has already smelled the worst of me. This is torture. What beauty, a solid frame of sculpted arms and broad chest made all the more broad by his fitted black golf shirt, collar popped. Focus. On what—straight ahead to his face? But those lips. Say a prayer to slow this fast-beating heart? But his strong, delicate hands. To wet this dry mouth? But the soft slope of his nose. For deliverance? You’re back, he says now settled fully into his smile and this secret familiarity. Feeling better?

He has such a wicked smile, with perfect teeth and just the right amount of arrogance. I feel the shoe slip from my sweaty hands as my legs grow weak. Well, you came to the right place for shoes, he says. How much running are you planning on doing? Here, have a seat and maybe I can help you find something.

Then shoeboxes surround us as he talks to me about running. He says his name is Damien and that he studies dance at Howard University but he wants to move to New York to dance with Alvin Ailey. I don’t know what that is but I nod all the same. He watches me as I walk around the store weaving through the metal tables with a different style of shoe on each foot. He asks me how they feel but I can’t feel anything at the moment. Like I’m floating, I say. Which one, he asks. I point to the neon-blue shoe with red stripes even though the instep feels narrow. Good, he says, trust your judgment. He squats down in front of me to probe for space between my toe and the front of the shoe. You don’t want it to be too snug so your feet can expand the more you run. If you’re sure, I can get them from the back, he says as he scans the shoe with his phone. You can pay Lisa up front.

The blond-haired girl looks at me with greater interest when I approach, my debit card already in hand. I hope you found what you were looking for, she says, with a wide smile. I nod as she swipes my card and swivels her iPad so I can sign. My mother will ask me about the price, then she will ask me if I think money falls from the sky like manna. When I look at Lisa, I can breathe freely again until Damien returns with the box and a smile. Thank you, I say as I back away from him towards the door. Out on the street the traffic has thinned, but an older man in a Mercedes convertible plays Bob Dylan really loud, buses lumber past and a young woman in bright yellow shorts and pale legs jogs by. She is so skinny that her knees buckle outwards as she moves. No, the world has not changed.

Someone taps my shoulder. Damien stands in front of me holding a small white square of paper that flutters with the evening breeze. You forgot your receipt, he says, extending his hand just as a car approaches from behind, setting his body aglow. My fingers touch his fingers as I take the paper. I see that he feels me. Thank you, I say again, and also for the other night. Don’t mention it, he says. Have a good night. Then he is gone.

I hold the paper as I walk back to my car. No, the world has not changed, but my arms quiver. I unfold it before I unlock the door. His number floats across the white strip and I realize the smell of dogwoods doesn’t bother me.