Hold Love Strong (25 page)

W
e filled the sun-soaked gymnasium, every shade of brown face, every age, every medical condition. It was a mass arrival into an inadequate space. Hundreds of people, two by two, four by four, siblings stretching as far as four generations back. Drug dealers, construction workers, line cooks, city employees; pastors and deacons; salesmen and administrative assistants, security guards, entrepreneurs, deliverymen. I put on the cap and gown that smelled of mothballs and past graduates. Ms. Hakim pinned a white carnation on my chest. A school administrator shouted through a bullhorn, demanding that all families and friends sit in the back while we, the few hundred who were to graduate, the few hundred who were just half of those I started ninth grade with, crammed into the front rows. Families and friends who did not get chairs stood in the back of the gym. Those who could not fit in the back stood along the walls. And those who could not be squeezed in, those who could not find a square foot of floor to stand on, streamed out of
the heavy steel doors and spilled through my high school's hallways.

Names were hollered. Signs were held above heads. Cameras clicked. Flashes popped. It was hot. Two industrial fans hacked at the air, pushing the steam of our scents, our body odor and our perfumes, about the gymnasium. A scratchy rendition of the national anthem played over the loudspeakers. I stood beside Yusef, Titty, and Precious, the only other members of my crew to be graduating on time. I lowered my head and thought about my family, about my grandmother and uncle and aunt and Eric and Donnel. Then I was consumed by one thought: my mother. I had done everything in my power to eradicate her from my life. The pictures I had of us I had burned. The last gift she bought me for Christmas, the New York Knicks T-shirt, I had thrown in the trash. And I'd thanked God she was dead. Hundreds of times. Thousands of times. I'd walked to school with the thought and sat in class with the thought and went to sleep with the thought echoing in my head. But this was not what I thought about when the national anthem played. Instead, I imagined my mother singing, her mouth busted ajar by a rare, incredible, and uncontainable sound that could only be caused by the sudden collision of joy and triumph. Cherrie had let me listen to the tape of my mother singing, and I had listened to it over and over again. Chills spilled up and down my spine. I became aware of a lesson that had riddled and tormented my subconscious, a lesson that possessed the potential of guaranteeing my survival, that would perpetuate my ability to continue forth, to hope with even greater force, and to fight, to defend myself, my honor, my family when it was jeopardized. I knew then that regardless of what I did and regardless of time, I carried my mother just as I carried everything. That is, she was not a weight nor a thought, nor an object, a stone I lugged about or dragged and pushed. Rather, she was my composition, the integral integration of me, and, like Ever and all that occurred in Ever, no matter what I did or thought, no matter where I was or would go, I could not nor would I ever be able to strip or rip her being from me.

I
was in the prison's visiting room, encased by lifeless green walls and steel bars. Donnel walked in. I rose to my feet. I stood as tall as I could stand. I had stayed up all night writing him a letter, sitting at the kitchen table, scribbling and crossing out words and thoughts. The sheets of loose-leaf were in my back pocket. We embraced, said what's up. I was leaving for Brandeis in three days.

“You ready?” he asked me.

My mind went blank. My voice was gone, entirely stripped from me. Thank God, I had it all written down. I reached into my back pocket. Everything I wanted and needed to say was on those pages. I looked at them. I looked at Donnel. His eyes filled with wet.

“I wrote you a letter,” I said, handing it to him.

He took it, looked at it, sniffed, dragged his arm under his nose, and blew a sigh from puckered lips. He fought against who he truly was. He would not let me see him cry. I hated the sight. He handed the letter back to me.

“Go on,” he said. “Read it to me.”

He was the one who carried me when I was weak, who cleaned, protected, and spoke on my behalf when he too was a child. He had been my father and grandfather. Without him, what would I be? An object? A ball? A brick? I inhaled and exhaled. I cleared my throat. I couldn't do it. My hands would not even open the letter.

Suddenly, Donnel lost all patience. “Put it there,” he said, pointing at the chair.

“D,” I said.

“Put it down,” he demanded. “Drop it and go.”

I put the letter on the chair. I turned around.

“Abraham,” he said, his voice shivering like his throat was holding something he couldn't hold anymore.

It took all of my strength to stop. But I was too weak, too sad, too scared to turn around.

“You go up there and be some kind of doctor or lawyer or something,” he said. “It's a beautiful thing. College, nigga. But write me, you know what I'm saying? And be strong, throw that motherfucking hand up when you got something to say. And don't never forget I got you, nigga. Understand?”

M
y grandma woke me, shaking my shoulder, whispering, “Abraham, baby, Abraham. Open your eyes. It's time. I got to go.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, the features of her face cloudy, a silhouette the only thing my groggy eyes could see, so it was not the sound of her voice but her scent, that amalgamation of cocoa butter and faint hot comb that made me know she was really there and I was not dreaming.

“Abraham,” she said, whispering my name so as not to wake my uncle asleep beside me, or Eric asleep on the floor when she saw that my eyes were adjusting to being open.

Then as if she were blinder than I, so using her sense of touch to memorize the construction of my face, she laid the flat of her fingers on my lips, then gently pressed them against my cheek, my forehead, over my eyes, on my nose, my chin.

“Abraham,” she whispered again. “I been waiting and praying and
hoping so damn hard I don't know what to say. I don't know if I should hug you or kiss you or say don't never look back, don't never stop.”

My sight cleared and I could see the struggle on her face, how she was tortured by my leaving, torn between feeling proud and feeling abandoned. She lived her life for me; for her children and her grandchildren; us, her family, we Singletons whom she loved unconditionally. And because the same was true for me, because the intensity of her hopes and prayers and her speechlessness were equaled by mine, and because what stood before me—college!—was nothing I could imagine, I took a deep breath.

“Grans,” I began.

She held up her hand to stop me. “I don't want to hear it,” she said. “Not now. Just don't go losing yourself. Man walked on the moon but he ain't never become no alien.”

She would not let me see her cry. That morning had to be a celebration. She leaned over, and with all of her might, taking a deep breath and exhaling through her nose, consuming as much of my scent as possible, injecting herself, her boundless bravery into me, she kissed me not on the forehead or cheek or on my chin, but between my eyes.

She reached down and touched the side of my face once more. Then she stood.

“Now, stop holding me up. I got to get to work,” she scolded.

She walked to the door. Quickly, I sat up in bed.

“Grans,” I said.

She stopped, but she did not turn to face me. “Abraham, shhhh,” she said. “Save it. And don't go forgetting your keys. But I ain't letting you in until Thanksgiving. So don't get no ideas about it being too hard, or that you're homesick. You in college now. I ain't taking no excuses.”

I
sat on the couch. A rap video was on TV. A young man talked about those who braved history by his side, those who trumpeted him and loved him like a brother no matter what he thought he had to be. I was nervous, scared. A part of me never wanted to get off that couch. A part of me wanted to leap and run so fast my velocity would propel me from the ground, lift me and keep me in flight. A collegial brother. A university student. What did it mean?

Above me, family photographs hung on the wall. Beneath me, the couch, battered and wobbly, had a phone book under its broken front leg. On the coffee table, there was some mail, flyers, and a plant in a clay pot, Sharry Baby, chocolate oncidium, those orchids that smelled like chocolate that my grandma loved most and that Mr. Goines brought over the previous night when he came to say good-bye to me and a quick, purportedly innocuous hello to my grandma. On one side of the couch were my uncle's basketball trophies. On the other side, a full garbage bag, my backpack, and my grandma's floral print suitcase,
fastened by a belt and two shoelaces tied end to end, were packed with my belongings.

My grandma's bedroom door opened and my Aunt Rhonda, half asleep and wearing a white bathrobe, shuffled into the room.

“Abraham,” she said, sounding relieved. “What time's your bus?”

“Ten thirty,” I said.

It was eight thirty.

“Ten thirty?” she said. “Well, you better get going. You know you can't trust the trains. Anything can happen, and you can't miss it.”

She dropped her eyes to the floor and thought about my departure. I looked at the television and did the same. I was aimed in a polar opposite direction from Donnel, as if I were to live and he were to die. Or maybe it was vice versa, I to die, he to live. I had no idea where I was going. That is, everything I knew about Brandeis was two-dimensional, in text and pictures, bulletins and brochures. So I was leaving not just family and friends, but all I knew to be real and true about people and the world. And I knew how my absence was affecting everyone, how it amplified Donnel's absence.

My Aunt Rhonda lifted her eyes to the TV. She watched the rap video for a moment.

“I wish you could take your cousin,” she said. “Do Eric some good to get out of Ever.” She paused. “Shit, I wish you was taking me.”

She took a deep breath and left the wish hanging between us. Then, looking over her shoulder, she shouted: “Eric! Abraham's leaving! Come say good-bye!”

She looked back at me. She took a deep breath. And with that breath she pushed a weak smile onto her face.

“Quick,” she said, opening her arms. “Come give your aunt some love.”

I rose from the couch, crossed the room, and wrapped my arms around her body.

“C'mon,” she scolded. “Hug me like you mean it.”

Taking another deep breath, my aunt hugged me the way she wished to be hugged, squeezing so tight my ribs bowed. I equaled her embrace.

“There you go,” she said. “We so proud of you. I know Jelly is just shining up in heaven, bragging to anyone who'll listen, telling all those angels and saints to check you out, her little Mister Man. You gonna do great. I just know it.”

The bedroom door opened and Eric, wearing a stretched-out wife-beater and mesh shorts, and still half asleep, walked into the room. My Aunt Rhonda stopped hugging me and stepped back.

“I'm gonna take a shower,” she said. “Let you two have your goodbyes.”

She went into the bathroom. Eric rubbed his eyes and scratched his chest, and then he looked at me, slowly up from my feet to my face.

“You leaving right now?” he asked, his surprise and sleepiness making him sound disgruntled.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You got money for the bus?”

“Grans gave me some.”

“You got enough?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”

“You sure?”

“I'm sure.” I said.

“So you going right now?” he asked.

“In a minute,” I said.

Eric digested my answer. His eyes dropped to the floor. The shower turned on. He looked at the bathroom door. Then he swung his eyes to the television. I put my eyes on the TV too. For a few moments, we stared at it, exuding no emotions, making no facial expressions, never changing our postures.

Then Eric said, “Hold on.”

He hurried back into our room. A drawer opened, slammed closed, and he came back out, holding something behind his back.

“D told me to give you this.”

Eric's hand came from around his back. It was a wrinkled envelope. He held it out to me and waited for me to take it. So I did. The envelope was too thick and its contents were too heavy to be a letter.

“Open it,” he said.

I held one side of the envelope between my index finger and thumb and shook it so the contents would shift to the other side. Then I tore the side of the envelope open and blew in it. Inside was a stack of money. I pulled it out. They were all one hundreds, five thousand dollars' worth. I looked at Eric. He smiled. Then the smile left his face and his eyes filled with a force, a piercing truth that couldn't be kept in.

“It's for books and stuff. And if you want to get Kaya something. But D don't want you wasting it on bullshit.” The smile returned to Eric's face. “He said if he finds out you're fucking around he'll kill you.”

I
walked down the stairs. For no clear reason, I didn't think about taking the elevator. It was as if someplace deep wanted to discuss my progress with each step, each landing. I was going to live at Brandeis, in the North Quad, Scheffres Hall, on the first floor, in room 118, with a young man named Cole Monroe, a brother from Selma, Alabama, right where, he later bragged, Martin Luther King started walking to Montgomery, protected by federal troops and backed by twenty-five thousand followers. I was from a place where most didn't get a glimpse of their innate human potential. Yusef and Titty weren't going to college. Precious wasn't going either. And Cleveland and Jefferson were working in a warehouse stacking pallets in the back of flatbed trucks. This was the effect of Ever, that even the strongest and most courageous and most blessed of us, even the most confident and willful, even the most brilliant were infected with a dangerous degree of self-doubt, that damn dankness that infiltrated bones. In worst-case scenarios, it caused us to aim ourselves at self-
destruction. In best cases, we fought and clawed and used that seed to fuel our refusal to fail.

I began to cry. And not just a little. And not just weeping. But silently, and with my head down so much water rushed out of my eyes and ran down my face it was as if I was an ocean, and my eyes were holes in my dam. I walked across the dim lobby this way. I shouldered open the steel door.

Outside, the morning was Eden, clear blue sky. I walked along the concrete path. My grandma's suitcase was in my left hand. The garbage bag of my other belongings was slung over my right shoulder. My backpack was on my back. Inside of it were pens, pencils, the cassette tape of my mother singing, her old diary, the Qur'an my uncle had given me before he left for work earlier that morning, and some family photographs. In one of my front pockets were my keys. In the other was the fat envelope of money. I'd said my good-byes to my friends the previous night, and after we talked about growing up together as we sat on the concrete bench by the basketball court, Kaya and I said our good-byes on the roof of my building. She cried. She had accepted a scholarship to Hunter. She was staying home. I kissed and whispered how much I loved her into every part of her body that my lips graced.