I’ve been waiting for this night my whole life. Maybe even before I was born. My father, Dr. Kofi Sankofa Jones, tells his followers that we choose our lives while we’re in the spirit world. We choose the time and place to be born. We choose our family and parents. And therefore, we choose our race. So, according to him and everybody else in the Movement, I begged to be Black.
But I swear on all my African ancestors that I didn’t ask to be this Black.
I’m the only daughter of a Black nationalist revolutionary freedom fighter. At least that’s what my father calls himself. This afternoon, there’ll be about three hundred of his followers gathered in the First African Presbyterian Church. He’s presenting his final lecture, called “There Is No Table,” before he serves time at a correctional facility.
I’m in the back of the church as the Young Warriors, the teen boys of the Movement, place pamphlets onto the pews. I’m holding a stack of those pamphlets in my hand that showcases my dope graphic design skills with the Movement’s logo—an M in the middle of a black silhouette of Africa—but no one ever notices that. They read about the Movement’s history and my father’s bio. Dr. Kofi Sankofa Jones is the great-grandson of Garveyites and his father was a Black Panther. He had me write that up. He never mentions my grandmother—a strict Baptist who’s been trying to get me out of the Movement since the day my mother died four years ago.
We’re not Christian, but the Movement rented this church for the lecture. My father says that as liberated Black people, we’re not supposed to believe in a white Jesus, a white god, or any white savior. Still, it’s the only place that would host us because they believe half the stuff my father says.
I’m wearing a pair of Chuck Taylors along with my usual ankle-length denim skirt deconstructed from an old pair of jeans from a thrift store. My feet hurt from standing all day. This morning, I spent four hours in front of the Old Navy on Chestnut Street handing out flyers for this lecture to any Black person walking by. My best friend, Kamau, was with me, but he stood on the opposite corner. We get more recruits that way.
I could hear him from across the street reciting his spiel with a big, bright smile. “Do you know who you are, brother? Do you know your history?” He made eye contact and stepped closer to the stranger. “Well, history is our story, and Dr. Kofi Sankofa Jones will tell it like it is!”
His hype is way more convincing than mine. Not one person took a flyer from me. A man who recognized me even blurted out, “Your daddy needs to pay his taxes, Nigeria Jones!”
I shift my weight from one foot to the other to ease some of the soreness just as someone touches my shoulder. It’s Kamau, and he’s wearing his signature Young Warriors custom-made red dashiki and black pants. “Geri, I put your bag under the blue minivan in the parking lot,” he whispers.
“Is the book in there?” I ask.
“The Great Gatsby,” he says.
“Jeans and a wig?”
“Shredded at the thighs just like you wanted and blond ombré!”
“Ombré?” I whisper-yell, turning my whole body to him. “I didn’t ask for all of that, Kamau.”
“Trust me. It’ll look good on you,” he says.
“Fine. Then did you pack deodorant? And not the chemical-free stuff we usually wear, ’cause I’ll be sweating like a hog under that wig.”
“Even better. Antiperspirant. The kind that gives you cancer,” he says with his eyes moving about, making sure no one is watching us.
That joke stings, but I don’t tell him.
When Kamau is around the Young Warriors, his whole body changes from when he’s around me. He raises his chin, pokes out his chest, and tightens his fists like the rest of those boys. He’s supposed to be a warrior for his people—that’s why his parents named him Kamau, meaning “silent warrior” in Kikuyu. I’m the only one who knows that Kamau is a lover, not a fighter.
My father named me Nigeria because it’s the richest country in Africa. I guess his dream for me is to be like an oil-rich country on a third-world continent. But trying to jack poor people for all their paper is the last thing on my mind. Unlike my father.
“Thank you,” I say, looking around as well. It’s no big deal that we’re talking to each other. But it’s a big deal that Kamau is helping me plan my one-night escape.
“Awww! Nigeria and Kamau!” Mama Afua sings as she approaches us. She’s the eldest member, who, at sixty-two, knows how many times the Movement has tried and failed to be a sovereign people like the Amish, or the folks down in Texas, but Black and with more sense. “Geri, don’t you worry. You know we’ve got your back while your father’s away. And Kamau will take care of you. How long until the wedding? Y’all turn eighteen in a few months, right?”
Kamau puts his arm around my shoulders, pulls me in, and kisses my forehead. I wrap my arms around his thin torso. We’re supposed to be boyfriend and girlfriend.
“You’ll be the first on our guest list, Mama Afua,” Kamau jokes, and I pinch his side.
Kamau and I were homeschooled together along with the eight other children our age who were born into the Movement in the same year. Homeschooling us was the Movement’s way of reaching back for something old, traditional, and maybe African. Public schools were closing all over Philadelphia, and charter schools were full of young white women from the Midwest thinking they could change the world and save the poor Black kids.
So our entire schooling, from the age of five up until now at seventeen, was within the four walls of my father’s house on Osage Avenue. There, we ate vegan breakfasts of oatmeal and almond milk, cubed tofu and brown rice for lunch, and on the days we memorized the names of all the Black freedom fighters dating back to the uprising on the Amistad, and even Mansa Musa, ’cause my father says Black history didn’t start with slavery, we were allowed one organic vegan sugar-free lollipop from Whole Foods.
The very best days were when we got to visit the zoo—not to pet the animals, of course, but to protest. The Movement didn’t believe in keeping animals in cages, much less eating them. A few members would stand outside the Philadelphia Zoo chanting and shouting and singing for the freedom of all living things: Black people, native people, disabled people, immigrant people, tree people, and animal people.
A couple of years ago, on one of those seasonal trips to protest at the zoo, Kamau leaned toward me and asked, “But what about the freedom of gay people?”
“What about it?” I repeated, holding a picket sign that read If You Can Name Them, You Can Free Them!
“What’d they ever do to us? We’re not oppressed by them,” Kamau had said. His freeform locs were tied into a bun on top of his head. His T-shirt, with the words “Black and Green,” hung loose over his thin frame.
“Right!” I said. “There must have been plenty of gay people in Africa.” We’ve been having this conversation since we were twelve. In that moment, I tried to make Kamau feel better, even though Kofi Sankofa has never mentioned anything about gays in his lectures. But with all that talk about preserving the traditional Black family and bringing more Black babies into the world, Kamau made his own assumptions. And those discussions with my best friend always ended with the words “Such bullshit.”
Kamau doesn’t let go of me until Mama Afua limps her way to the front of the church. And it takes her a while because of her bum knee.
“She was the one who snitched on you the last time,” I whisper to Kamau. “You think she knows something about what I’m doing tonight?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she does,” he says. “She must’ve already read it in the cowrie shells and sage smoke, or the ancestors must’ve whispered it to her. If that’s the case, they’re the snitches.” He flashes me one of his half smiles and walks away to help the Young Warriors with the setup.
I shake my head as I watch Mama Afua scold Kamau for not draping fabric over the crucifix on the pulpit properly. That’s how the Movement has managed to keep us teenagers in line. We’re led to believe that the Movement’s elders’ eyes have eyes, and their ears have ears. So being disrespectful in any way, openly questioning the Movement’s philosophies, or even tasting a piece of bacon is never an option. We can’t even listen to trap music because my father says it’s the white man’s way of helping us to enslave ourselves with an endless cycle of celebrating sex, violence, and drugs.
But Kamau and I have been secretly poking holes into this thing since we were twelve: when my mother got sick. We question, Google, fact-check, smirk, and roll our eyes at just about everything the Movement says and does, even though the mastermind is my father. And Kamau managed to fool them for a whole weekend when he went to New York City for a party, until Mama Afua figured it out. She read it all over his face, smelled it on his breath, and saw it in his eyes. Still, there was one thing they haven’t figured out about Kamau. And that’s how I knew that the elders of the Movement are just like everybody else. They’re not magical. And they can’t keep us trapped in this life forever.
With each passing minute, my breath shortens and my heart races. I have to pay attention to the time and keep a poker face, as Kamau says. He’s done this before, and even though he got caught, he thinks I can pull it off since I’m Kofi Sankofa’s daughter and all. No one would expect it from me. But I’m sweating and my hands are clammy.
Soon, some members will be coming in with their children and my job is to usher the little ones down to the basement, where the Sisters in Sisterhood, the teen girls of the Movement, will have a kente-cloth-covered table full of vegan food and keep them engaged with songs and games while their parents listen to Kofi Sankofa’s lecture. The Movement is organized in that way. Everyone has a role, a job. Everyone looks out for each other. Kofi Sankofa always reminds us that this is our little three-hundred-member African village in a big white city.
I keep an eye on the doors in front of the church and behind the pulpit, even though the Young Warriors are part of the security team. There’s no telling what type of people my father will attract this time. Some of his former students from Temple University usually came through, if they were not part of that petition to kick him off the faculty for spreading hate speech. Usually, it was longtime followers of the Movement who came from all over the East Coast, or newbie high school and college kids after they’ve binge-watched all his YouTube videos, especially his most popular lecture, “A Seat at the Table.”
Word on the internet was that my father had gone soft. He used to travel all over the country lecturing white folks on how they needed to not only make room for Black people at the table, but they had to give up their seats. They couldn’t hold on to their power and only give us a little bit. They had to let it go completely so we could make all the decisions around this proverbial table. Then he raised the bar by telling Black folks to “Get Up from the Table and Flip It”—to overthrow power and not seek it for themselves,
But now they were saying that my father was having an existential crisis with all this “there is no table” mess. He said that the best way to handle white supremacist bullshit was to not only get up from the table, but walk away and forget it was even there in the first place.
And just as my father said he was done fighting white people, they finally got him for tax evasion. They couldn’t lock him up for spreading “hate speech,” inciting riots, and telling hardworking people to leave their good-paying jobs because he says they’re like modern-day plantations. Getting him for not paying taxes was a way to shut him up for a while.
But people are still coming to hear him speak about how he hates what white people have done all over the world. He doesn’t trust them, neither. And as his daughter, I’m supposed to be his most supportive follower. But all Kamau and I keep saying to ourselves is, Such bullshit.
Plus, I have my own dreams, especially since finding out that I got a perfect score on the SATs when I took them three years ago.
I want to go to college—a really good one like Columbia University—to study paleontology. And deep down in my heart, I really like white boys, especially an older one named Dr. Ross Geller—a paleontologist and young Columbia graduate. Thinking of Ross and how cute he is on that old TV show Friends is the only thing to keep me from bailing out on my friend. Kamau made me promise that I would do what he did—live out my dreams for one night. Only for one night. And then we both could start planning our Great Escape, he calls it. We both have less than a year before we turn eighteen and we can do whatever the hell we want, including leave the Movement for good.
My father manages to fill the whole church, and it’s standing room only with all the wooden pews packed with warm Black bodies. The audience applauds and cheers when he makes his way up to the pulpit to the sound of djembe drums and the sight of raised fists. Dr. Kofi Sankofa Jones, in his long, graying locs and shimmering white-and-gold embroidered boubou, only has to raise one hand to silence the audience. Then he shouts with a deep, booming voice into the mic, “Power to the people! The Movement is ours, the path is clear, and our freedom is near!” Then he leads his followers to begin the opening song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
This is my cue to meet Kamau in the parking lot of the church. Before I leave, I take a look at all the people who’ve come to hear my father speak—all brown faces, some smiling, some pissed, and everything in between. They’re here because they want freedom from oppression, and they think my father will lead them to some kind of promised land. As for me, I just want freedom, period. And it doesn’t involve my father or no promised land. I discreetly make my way out of the church and around to the parking lot. My heart is beating so fast, I might as well be a walking djembe drum.
Kamau is standing near the blue minivan. He motions to where he hid my bag. I kneel down to retrieve it and hoist it onto my back. When we’re finally facing each other, we both take a deep pranayama breath just like we were taught in yoga since we were toddlers.
“You ready to have the time of your life?” Kamau asks, pursing his lips and trying to hold in a laugh.
“Stop making fun of me, Kamau,” I say.
“Are you sure you don’t wanna check out that ball I went to? Even if you don’t like it, just take all that good fun and put it in a paper bag for me. Better yet, a video and some pictures will do.”
“You know I would if I had more time. And are you sure you don’t wanna come with me? We can still get a bus ticket at the last minute.”
“No, Geri. If I leave tonight, I’m never coming back. I’ve had enough of this bullshit. We gotta do this right. Save some more coins, say goodbye without saying goodbye. You know? And please, I wouldn’t wanna go sit in no café just to read a Dead White Man book and . . . assimilate. Or whatever the hell you’re trying to do in there.”
I exhale deep and look up at the warm, late-afternoon sky. My father’s shouting can be heard from outside even with the giant AC system blasting from the church. He’s going on and on about not ever needing the white man’s help and how we’ve got to do this or that on our own. “Weren’t you trying to assimilate in that vogue ball, Kamau?”
“I wasn’t trying. I fit right in.” Kamau does his dance, flinging his wrists from side to side, perfecting his tutting and clicks.
I turn around to glance toward the church’s back door, making sure no one sees him doing this. No one knows that the party Kamau went to was a kiki. A vogue ball. And when he turns eighteen, he’ll be competing to join a house in New York City—House of Ninja or House of Xtravaganza, hopefully. He’s that good. But his parents would disown him if they knew. The Young Warriors would turn their backs on him.
“Okay, it’s time for you to bust the hell up out of here, Nigeria Jones,” Kamau says, and I cringe.
“Don’t call me that,” I say through clenched teeth.
“It’s your name, girl. Claim it!” he snorts. “Okay, fine. What you want me to call you now? Becky? Once you put on that wig, you’ll have all the good hair.”
I roll my eyes hard at him and sigh. “Where’d you put the bus ticket?”
“Front pocket along with your wallet, your cheap-ass phone, and some cash,” he says, and extends his arms out at me to give me a hug. “I’m a text and a phone call away. The bootleg revolutionaries in there will be at this all night, so I’ll cover for you. You weren’t feeling well and you went home to sleep. And since I’m there, they won’t suspect a thing. You wouldn’t go running off to anywhere by yourself. Especially not to New York City. Perfect plan.”
“Perfect plan,” I repeat.
“Okay. The return ticket is for midnight on the dot. So you got seven hours, Blackerella. If the Ross of your dreams shows up, make the first move. But don’t go up to nobody’s dorm room or apartment no matter how much they know about Tyrannosaurus rex. And since you wanna have this white-girl experience and all, please . . . I’m begging you . . . do not get white-girl wasted.”
“Oh, shut up, Kamau!” I shove his shoulder, laughing.
“And don’t forget that Harlem is one subway stop away. Just get to 125th Street and ask the closest brother selling incense, shea butter, and your father’s books and DVDs for help if you need it.”
We hug each other one last time, and he holds me even tighter. “You are so brave, Becky Jones,” he says. “I don’t get you, but we’ve always been the two unicorns up in this place.”
Kamau watches me as I leave the parking lot and discreetly pass the closed bright-red front doors of the church and walk to the corner of West Girard and Belmont Avenues to catch a cab to the Greyhound Terminal on Filbert Street.
But I end up at the McDonald’s on North Broad Street instead. I’m here for two things: the bathroom mirror and a bacon double cheeseburger. Kamau suggested that I try it. If I’m doing this one-night-of-fun thing, I might as well go all out.
I’m in the bathroom tucking my shoulder-length locs beneath the blond ombré wig. It’s dark brown at the roots and blond at the ends—as if I’d been a brunette and wanted to be like the girls who have more fun. I have to admit, there’s something about the wig against my deep-brown skin that makes me look neater, almost. Nicer, even. I smile different smiles in the mirror and practice saying my name with different voices, tones, and codes. Geri. Geri? Geri. But never, ever Nigeria.
I change out of my skirt and into the pair of jeans Kamau put into my backpack. I’ve been wearing skirts my whole life because the Movement believes that young women like me should protect our womb energy. Jeans are stifling. We need to keep the “portal of life” free and clear for all those new Black babies coming into the world. I don’t even want babies. As usual, all of that nonsense is bullshit.
I think of throwing the skirt into the trash, but I have to be on the midnight bus back to Philly and play it cool. I have to be Nigeria Jones, the princess of the revolution, when I return. Like Kamau said, we have to plan this right.
I step back away from the mirror to take a good look at myself wearing a regular white T-shirt, torn jeans, and a messy wig. I look . . . regular. I push back some of the hair behind my ears like I’ve seen the girls on Friends do. Rachel has the prettiest hair, but still, she isn’t smart enough for Ross. I wonder if Ross would approach me if he saw me sitting by myself in Central Perk.
But my phone pings in my backpack and a text from Kamau reads, Don’t forget the bacon double cheeseburger and a Coke. Live a little!
You just got out of the Movement jail yesterday and you’re talking about live a little. Whatever. I’m on it! I text back with a series of food emoji and a smiley face.
So I take a window seat on the five-o’clock Greyhound to New York City and pick apart the bacon double cheeseburger. I nibble on the bacon and burger and savor every single salty, oily morsel—the white man’s mass-produced plastic food, as my father calls it. I’ve been a vegan my whole life, except for the times Kamau and I secretly had ice cream, had pizza, or had mistaken a hamburger for soy.
But I spit out the last bit of bacon into the paper bag. I can’t finish the rest, not even the soda. So I eat the fries and sip my water. My stomach disagrees with my taste buds.
When I reach into the bottom of my backpack for my book, I discover that Kamau has packed his tablet. On it is a sticky note with a password to a Hulu account. “So you can watch your stupid show,” it reads.
My heart leaps and I squeal on the inside. “Thank you, best friend,” I whisper. In no time, I’m logged on, and even though I’ve seen every episode of every season, I decide to watch my favorite ones to prepare for this trip. I’m on the episode where Ross and Rachel are breaking up. “She doesn’t appreciate him,” I say as I put in my earbuds.
The older Black woman sitting next to me scoots over and closes her eyes.
“What do you see in those white boys, anyway?” Kamau asked me once.
“The same thing you see in them,” I said. But he assured me that he doesn’t like white boys. He likes the Jaden Smith type—Black boys who look like him, I guess. I wonder if the Movement would be more tolerant if they knew I liked white boys or if they knew Kamau liked Black boys. My father sees everything in Black and white. There’s hardly anything or anyone in between. Or if he ever did mention Asians or Latinos, it was to remind us that they’ve never experienced the transatlantic slave trade. According to him, Black people are the most oppressed people in the world.
I pause a scene where Rachel and Phoebe are having a heart-to-heart, place the tablet on my lap, and hold my head in my hands. Friends was the only TV show Mama watched when she was sick. It made her laugh a little and let her take her mind off things. But my father disapproved, of course. He did of anything that had to do with white folks’ nonsense.
The thing about my father’s way of seeing the world in black and white is that there are no gray spaces. Everything is a fight. Black against white. White against Black. And while I didn’t grow up surrounded by actual walls, my father’s ideas and words have created an invisible wall.
So I have to break past the fact that even though I got a perfect score on my SATs and could’ve gotten into an Ivy League by the time I was fifteen, my father said that I couldn’t let these white institutions capitalize on my genius. He had me take that test to prove something, to show off, to make his point. And it did. But I had my heart set on Columbia. I dreamed of going to the most remote places on this earth to dig for old bones, older than people. Before humans and their stupid ideas. Before hate. Maybe even before love, too. Dinosaurs just existed. No lectures, no books, no language. No world-conquering Europeans and no defeated everybody else. Just those powerful, unrestrained creatures roaming the planet.
I sit back up in my seat, hold my head high, inhale, and push my blond ombré hair behind my ear. Tonight, I’m not the daughter of a Black nationalist revolutionary freedom fighter. I’m a freshman studying dinosaur bones and geology. And since there’s no actual Central Perk anywhere in Manhattan, any café near the university will do. I’ll be relaxing on a warm Saturday evening in May just as finals are over, and be immersed in classical literature about white people and their problems, while sipping on my iced latte.
I end up watching three episodes by the time the bus pulls into Port Authority.
The number one train takes me to Columbia University. All these memories start to swim around my head as I stand on the crowded train headed uptown—the times I’d come up to Harlem with my parents to buy fabric from the Senegalese shops and Black books, incense, shea butter, and oils from the street vendors. And on a few occasions, my father would lecture at the historic National Black Theatre on Fifth Avenue and 126th Street. I’m told that he once sold out seats for a lecture at the Apollo Theater when I was a toddler. That was about fifteen years ago, when the Movement was at its height. But fifteen years have passed and nothing has changed. The people who believed in every word my father was preaching, their lives didn’t change. Philly didn’t change. This country didn’t change. But everything changed for me when Mama died, ’cause I realized that the Movement couldn’t save her. And I decided I needed to be in control of my own life.
More people squeeze into the train car at Eighty-Sixth Street, and I can’t unsee what I’ve been taught to see by my father—the differences in people, how polished or poor they are, the look on their faces, what kind of phones they have, how they speak and what they talk about. Who has more and who has less. A young Black guy, maybe a little older than me, has on giant headphones, nods his head, and shouts out the words to his rap every so often. Three white women are huddled around a pole giggling and talking. They could be Rachel, Phoebe, and Monica. An older Black woman, Latina maybe, is sleeping in her seat—head tilted back, mouth open, eyes weary even while they’re closed.
“Can you move your bag?” an Asian man says to me.
I take off my backpack, place it on the floor in front of my feet, and hold on to another pole. My phone buzzes in my bag, but it’s way too crowded to reach down and take it out. We’re all squeezed onto this train as if it’s the end of the world. I wonder how we’d act toward each other—all of us: Black, white, and everything in between—if this train stalled right in this tunnel. I wonder if we’d all help each other and love each other for just a moment, and disprove everything my father has built his life on: that white people are hell-bent on destroying the world and everyone in it. Then my own life—with all that homeschooling, vegan diet, homemade clothes, and books upon books about Black everything—would’ve been for nothing. And maybe Mama’s death could’ve been prevented. She would’ve trusted white doctors instead of trying to green-juice and kale-salad away her cancer.
The train’s doors are about to close when I notice the stop for Columbia University. I squeeze my way off just in time, and the train speeds out of the unbearably hot station. I rush up the stairs and out of the subway with all the other people headed toward Broadway—college students and professors, maybe.
The warm early-evening air wraps around me and I stand there for a moment gazing up at the architecture—the tall, wide buildings that look as if they’ve been there since the beginning of time. But not in the time of dinosaurs, of course. They didn’t kill trees to build cities. My father says that this is the white man’s idea of civilization: destroy to build, build to destroy. Still, out of the rubble of destruction—the bowels of white supremacy, he calls it—ideas are born.
I can’t get him out of my head. Two hours and a hundred miles away, Kofi Sankofa’s words bounce around my mind as I make my way to the café on Amsterdam Avenue.
There isn’t another brown face in sight as I walk down the two blocks. No one makes eye contact. No one seems to notice me. My hair brushes against my shoulders and the back of my neck the way my locs do. This wig is a layer of protection, a disguise. Even if someone looks my way, it’s not really me they’re seeing.
The café will be my spot for now. I’ve seen the pictures online, studied the menu, and read the Yelp reviews.
“Why can’t you just go sit in a café near U. Penn?” Kamau had asked. “This’ll be your one night in New York City and that’s how you want to spend it?”
He didn’t understand at first, but Kamau is the only person in my life who knew that it all started with boy bands, just like for any other nine-year-old girl, I guess. White boys were like forbidden fruit because I’d heard how my father called them the devil, the Destroyers. First it was Justin Bieber, then the boys in One Direction, every single last one of them. The Jonas Brothers, the cuties from Big Time Rush, and once I realized that I preferred them a little more mature, Shia LaBeouf. Until the day I sat with my mother while she was in bed watching a nineties TV show where white people were not sitting around plotting the annihilation of Black people—they just talked about nothing at all in their big New York City apartment.
Later, I would hide in my room under the covers with a borrowed tablet or my cheap phone and laugh at all the friends’ nonsense. I liked Phoebe the most. Rachel annoyed me. And I fell in love with Ross. He was the one who got me into paleontology in the first place. He was the one who got me to dream about Columbia University and sitting in cafés reading literary classics.
The place is crowded and the ice-cold AC make goose bumps rise on my skin. Still, I play it extra cool and smile. Before I even get a chance to take in the whole scene, the white boy behind the counter asks how I’m doing.
“Iced latte with regular milk and a cupcake, please,” I immediately say. I’ve been practicing.
There are no Black people here, just like I expected. But no one is giving me looks that make me feel as if I don’t belong. My father has protected me from those looks my whole life. I’ve never been the only chocolate chip in the batch, ever.
A couple gets up from a small round table near the counter and I immediately grab the empty seat. Before I can even settle down, the white boy comes over with the latte and cupcake.
“I’ll be right here if you need anything,” he says, flashing me a bright smile.
Something warm settles in my belly and the goose bumps disappear. I keep my eyes on him, and he glances back at me, still smiling. He doesn’t smile that brightly at the other people in front of the counter. He’s no Ross, for sure. He’s taller. Wider, even, with a head full of dirty blond hair, almost like my wig. He’s wearing a plain black T-shirt with a simple illustration of a spaceship. I can talk about space, too. Dinosaurs, space. Same thing. If he’s not a paleontology student, then he’s a budding astronomer, for sure. Astrophysics, maybe. I’m cool with that.
He quickly looks my way again, and this time, I smile back and wave. I actually make the first move, just like Kamau told me to. He waves back and smiles brighter this time. I look around the place. No one notices my budding love affair with the white boy behind the counter. No one cares.
I watch him closely as he serves the customers, makes small talk, and glances at me, still smiling. The warm feeling in my belly turns hot. And if it wasn’t so cold, I’d definitely be sweating under the wig. I take a sip of the iced latte, which makes me colder, and I bite off a piece of the cupcake. I have to text Kamau that I found him—the Ross of my dreams.
I reach behind me for my backpack and grab nothing but cool air. I touch both my shoulders and my back. Nothing. That hot feeling in my belly quickly solidifies and my whole body feels like it’s collapsing under its weight. Slowly, I check my lap to see if my backpack is there. Then the floor. Then I look up toward the counter. Nothing. Everything around me—the voices, the laughter, and even that white boy’s bright smile—all come to a stop.
I left my bag and everything in it on the train.
The tall glass of iced latte is half full now, and a quarter of the cupcake is gone. I don’t have any money to pay for this.
It’s only wishful thinking that makes me check the pocket of my jeans for my phone or some cash. Still nothing.
“Shit!” I say out loud.
The white boy glances over at me. His smile has faded.
And as if someone turned up the volume really loud, I can now hear the exact words from the voices around me. The clinking of knives and forks, the swinging door, the grazing chairs on the wooden floor, and even the tiny seconds of silence. My breath and heartbeat are louder, too.
Harlem is not that far away. I could walk there and find someone selling my father’s books and DVDs. I’d have to tell them that I’m Nigeria Jones, daughter of the Black nationalist revolutionary freedom fighter from Philly. I need money for a bus ticket home, that’s all. I’d have to answer questions when I get back. My father would make me promise not to pull this ever again while he’s away, or else.
I don’t want to lose you like I lost your mother, he’d say.
I’d be going back to the life I didn’t ask for—the one that I didn’t choose while in the spirit world.
Kamau would get in trouble, because of course he got me to do this. And there goes his plan to live the life of his dreams. Our plan.
“You want anything else?” the white boy asks as he smiles down, as he wipes his hands on a white towel. His eyes are ocean blue.
Blue-eyed devil—I can hear my father’s words echo in my mind.
My throat is so tight and dry that I can’t find the words to say yes or no. So his smile is completely gone now and he walks away. He doesn’t look in my direction again.
Still, the voices get louder and louder as I think of how to leave this unpaid-for latte and cupcake behind. There are people by the door and the white boy would definitely notice me leaving without paying. And he’d call me back in. Everyone would turn to look at me, and of course the Black girl with the fake hair couldn’t pay the ten bucks. Of course she’d try to break out of here.
Your very existence is a crime, I hear my father preach.
I’ve never been in a closed space with this many white people. So I watch their faces the way I’ve watched Friends. Kamau wanted me to get into Living Single instead. They did it first, he said. But they were too familiar. So with each new episode of Friends, I felt as if I’d solved a mystery about white people. My father talked about them too much. I needed to understand them, step into their lives, and maybe get a taste of all that freedom and power. But Ross, Rachel, and the crew weren’t trying to take over the world.
I make eye contact with one of them in this café. An older man. He doesn’t turn away and neither do I. He’s not smiling and he purses his lips. And for the first time since being in here, I know what he’s thinking. So I turn away and drop my head.
They want nothing more than to see us wiped off the face of this earth, I hear my father shout.
I can say that I’ve lost my bag. I can just get up and walk away and flip my middle finger on the way out. My mind races with all these possibilities, but it’s as if my body doesn’t want to lose my seat at this table. This is where I want to be. I’ve gotten this far. This is where I belong.
So I take another bite of the cupcake, a sip of the latte, and try to remember the plot to The Great Gatsby. I read it when I was thirteen, right after my mother made me read The Bluest Eye before she died, and for the same reason I started watching Friends on my own.
You’re already ten times as good, I hear my father whisper.
I inhale and try to savor this moment.
You take all that genius, stay right here, help your people out, and build our own damn table! I hear my father say.
The white boy keeps glancing my way, but I look in every direction but his. I can’t help but feel other eyes on me, too, and the voices have quieted a little, almost whispering.
Your body is free, but your mind is still enslaved! I hear my father yell.
“Is this seat taken?” a white girl asks.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the white boy watching closely.
“Is this seat taken?” the white girl asks again, louder this time. She leans in closer to me, her hair hanging over my latte and almost grazing my cupcake.
I don’t answer. So she takes the chair anyway. I call her Rachel in my mind.
I don’t need your help and you’re gonna have to kill me first before I let you take my daughter away, I hear my father say to the people from the Department of Human Services. They’d come to take me away months after my mother died. They said my father wasn’t feeding me well and wouldn’t allow me to go school. But Mama Afua had gathered all the elder women in the Movement and they squeezed into our living room forming a protective shield around me and dared those people to come take me away.
I sip and eat slowly as I watch the white boy wipe his hands on the white towel again. He’s looking in my direction, but he’s avoiding my eyes, even as I stare at him. He comes around the counter, not smiling, and he starts to make his way toward me.
I take another sip, slurping up the last bit of ice water through the straw. I push my hair back behind my ears. My hands are shaking. I don’t know if it’s from the cold or from something else.
He’s in front of the table now and I look him dead in the face, not smiling. My body is tense, my teeth are chattering.
He leans in slowly, glancing down at my empty glass and the last piece of cupcake before I take it, put it into my mouth, and chew it slowly, savoring the sweetness while staring up at him.
“Do you need anything else?” the white boy asks.
I slide off the blond ombré wig, letting my locs drop down over my shoulders, and place it on the table next to the empty glass and small plate of cupcake crumbs. I close my eyes for a long second and exhale. I shake my head no and watch the boy walk away with the glass and plate, and leave me alone.
I sit back in my seat and let myself settle into this moment. I’m miles away from home with no money, ID, or phone. I’m the only Black person here.
But then it dawns on me that except for a minor setback, I pulled this off. I actually pulled this off.
I look around and catch his eye. Then I raise my hand to call the white boy back over to my table.
“I’ll get another one of those cupcakes, please,” I say with a smile.