CHAPTER TWO
“WHAT THE HELL’S WRONG with you, Kollie? I’m only trying to help.”
The air was damp and cold the next morning, as Kollie and his sister waited for their bus to school. Angel had asked him if he needed to copy yesterday’s geometry homework, and he’d responded by putting on his headphones and pulling up his hood.
The sun was just coming up over the horizon, and languid heat might roll up behind it or maybe it would snow. For the millionth time, Kollie thought that he would never understand the weather in this country. There was no rhyme or reason to it, which was why he always opted to wear jeans and a hoodie. He could be sure to be more comfortable than uncomfortable during the day, no matter what happened.
Angel called the outfit his “uniform”—or his “armor” if she was trying to piss him off. He never bothered to tell her that if anything was armor, it was his headphones.
“Here comes your purse,” Angel said as Lovie rounded the corner on the other end of the block.
“Handbag,” he said, and then he sighed. Why could Angel never quite get Liberian idioms right? Their mother called anyone, especially children, who hung around someone too much a “handbag,” which was how Angel saw Lovie.
“Whatever. Fuck you, Kollie,” Angel said, and put in her earbuds. The fact that Lovie was Kollie’s girlfriend irritated his sister so much that Kollie actually noticed. Actually Angel had introduced Lovie to Kollie, and the two girls used to be close, until Kollie and Lovie started dating.
“Good morning, Sweetie,” Lovie said as she neared the stop. She was wearing tight jeans that showed off her wide hips and substantial butt, and a bright white T-shirt with sparkles. Lip gloss and a new bobbed wig completed the look.
“Good morning-oh.” Kollie pushed down his hood and headphones and forced himself to smile at her. They had been together three months and he was tired of her, but didn’t know how to tell her. And he knew he couldn’t get away with ignoring her like he did Angel. Like the rest of his life, it seemed easier to ride it out until something better came along. Something like Sonja.
“Yeah, hello, ma,” Lovie said to his sister. Unlike Angel, Liberian English expressions—like calling all female acquaintances “ma”—came to Lovie without a second thought.
“Yeah, good morning,” Angel answered back, then deliberately looked away from her.
Lovie turned back to him. “How everything? What news? You good?”
“Yeah, fine,” Kollie said.
Lovie looked at Kollie for a second, like she was going to ask if he was okay again, and he wished more than anything he could put his headphones back on. But then she smiled and dug something out of her backpack. “Lowell said this top-of-the-line-oh.” It was a Bose Bluetooth speaker. Her older brother worked at Best Buy, and often got special deals on merchandise. Lovie had a small gap between her front teeth that he had always found endearing, especially when she smiled shyly like she was doing now. “I got it cheap-cheap,” she said. “I knew when I saw it, it was perfect for your room-oh.”
His other speakers had busted last week, probably from too much use. He had to have his music pumping whenever he was home, no matter what he was doing. It was just that simple.
“You my black diamond-oh,” he said, and he almost meant it. He had had two other girlfriends before Lovie, and none of them did half the stuff for him that she did. She cooked him both burgers and bean soup with fish and cow, helped him with his homework on occasion, and had even cleaned his room once. Lovie didn’t freak out about sex, either, and was pretty much down for whatever. She was a good church girl, showed up every Sunday with her family, and memorized line and verse, but the meaning—especially the dire warnings about the effects of fornication on the soul—seemed to go in one ear and out the other. Which Kollie knew he ought to appreciate.
Lovie leaned over to give him a quick kiss on the lips, and he let her.
Angel snickered beside them. Kollie knew she thought all of this was nonsense, that Lovie was wasting her time and energy on him. Angel called herself a feminist, which as far as Kollie could tell meant that she hated men but wanted a penis. She certainly hated their father enough.
The bus rumbled in the distance. Kollie sighed at the thought of another day at school. Lovie was texting, so he put in his headphones and started pumping the P-Square. The bus stopped, Angel got on, then Lovie, then him. Lovie expected him to sit by her during the ten-minute ride to school.
“Hey, bro, wassup?” Saah said as he walked by the first front seats. He held out his hand, and Kollie slapped it.
“Yo, wassup, Comrade?” Kollie said back, dropping his headphones to his neck but leaving the P-Square playing.
“How everything, Comrade?” Mardia asked, seated next to Saah.
“Yeah, fine,” Kollie answered, taking a seat behind them, next to Lovie. Mardia and Saah lived a few blocks west of him, and played with him on the soccer team. Their mothers also frequently cooked large platters of Liberian food together for community gatherings, either at their houses or at church.
“The weekend good-oh,” Mardia said as the bus pulled away from the curb. “I don’t know why it need to end with this school shit.”
Kollie smiled wryly.
Saah smacked his friend lightly on the arm. “Man, the weekend been done for a whole day now. Today Tuesday, Mardia.”
Mardia hit back. “I know that. I just talking about how there never enough time in this country to relax-oh. No wonder the people so wack.”
Kollie shook his head. Mardia was right, of course. Everyone here worked all the time and went to school when they weren’t working. All the adults, anyway. The Liberians threw their own parties on the weekends, which started at ten and lasted until three or four in the morning, but then they had to get up a few hours later for church or work wiping old white people’s butts at the nursing home.
Up ahead, the gray institutional face of Brooklyn Center High School got larger and larger in the front windshield. It looked like a prison, with its blank concrete walls and tiny windows.
“Yo, Comrade, how you doing-oh?” A teasing voice boomed from behind them.
Kollie felt his fist tighten.
“Yes, very well, Comrade. ’Cept the shit I got for lunch came out of my mother’s asshole-oh before she put it in my lunchbox,” the voice continued.
Someone snickered.
This was how it was most mornings, riding in with the black kids who sat in the very back of the bus, smacking their gum and talking shit about everyone, like they owned the whole fucking vehicle. The guys had do-rags covering their heads, and the sickest Nikes on their feet—Kollie had even seen a few of them with the new LeBron Soldier Xs. Don’t concern yourself with them, his mother had told him since the very first day they had seen the black Americans in the neighborhood. They are not serious, and they don’t have culture. That is why they act that way.
“Seriously, did y’all smell that rank green shit Saah brought out at lunch yesterday? I swear I saw a fish head in it. A fucking fish head, y’all! Isn’t that, like, a violation of state health laws or something?”
More laughing. One of them was almost on the floor, he was laughing so hard. The old white dude who drove the bus was watching them in his mirror, smiling.
“Nigga, you wrong for that. You just wrong.”
Saah looked from Kollie to Mardia and shook his head. It’s not worth it, is what that meant.
The bus pulled into the school parking lot, behind a row of others. Kollie felt sick. He couldn’t wait to get off.
“I’m serious, man. That shit was disgusting. Take that African shit back, ’cause we eat real food that ain’t been taken from the dumpster here. For real.”
The bus driver pulled the brakes and then opened the doors. Everyone stood up and started filing out.
Kollie closed his eyes. They have no culture-oh, he could hear his mom saying again.
Clark slapped Kollie lightly on the back of his head as he walked past him. Kollie jumped.
“Seriously, though. What the fuck is wrong with y’all? How can you eat that greasy, stank soup every day? Don’t it make you wanna vomit?” he said, turning to look straight at Kollie.
Beside him, Lovie grabbed his arm. Kollie looked back at her, and she gave him a muted smile. He knew what she was trying to do. Even though he resented it, he relaxed his fist, which had been steadily rising to his chest.
“Pussy,” Clark said as he walked away.
Kollie’s backpack slammed against the back of his locker so hard that the rattle reverberated down the hall. People turned around to look at him, which pleased him. The hall monitors were not really awake and moving in full force yet, so he was still relatively safe from what he and his friends referred to as the Agents of Discipline. He looked sideways and saw Sonja walking down the hall with her girl Aisha. Aisha was Sonja’s best friend, and she was Kenyan, although she had lived in America since fourth grade. Sonja was wearing a thin purple dress, which somehow managed to look fly and casual at the same time. The dress wasn’t tight or so short that she’d get a dress-code referral, but somehow still she made Kollie’s testicles ache. Sonja was like that, though—a chameleon who didn’t seem to be governed by the same laws as everyone else.
He caught her eye and nodded at her as she passed. He tried to look as nonchalant as possible. She nodded back, training her gold-flecked, dark brown eyes on him. He thought he also detected a small smile, but he could have imagined it. Then the moment was gone, and he was staring at the back of her legs, listening to the faint swish of her skirt as she passed. He felt his penis harden and turned back into his locker as calmly as he could, so as not to draw any attention. The dead bird by the side of the road this morning. The growing crack in the sidewalk outside the house. The dirty dishes Ma was too tired to wash last night. Thinking of these things, which were the dullest he could conjure, always seemed to bring his body down a notch and back to normal. Today was no different, and after a moment, he slammed his locker door shut and began walking to room 237. He held the tilapia and red sauce with rice his mother had packed for him in his right hand, and at the garbage can in front of room 235, he threw it in.