Into White (18 page)

“Thanks for remembering,” I replied. “Why does it have to be so hard?”

“The why lies in free will—the ability to choose which way to go and usually choosing…”

“Wrong?”

“No, Toya, never wrong. Very often the intention is spot-on. I've seen more commandments broken for the greater good than for frivolous reasons—murders to save loved ones, or theft to fill a child's hungry stomach. And in you, baby girl”—he tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear—“more pain lives within you than in most.”

I'd assumed everyone felt the way I felt. Hurt in the same ways that I'd hurt. I guess I'd assumed wrong.

“Your hurt pierces me.” He pointed to his right side. “Here.”

I slumped in my seat, dismayed. “But you've got, I don't know, billions of people to look after. People in real trouble. What makes me so special?”

He took a long, almost frustrated breath. “I never know how to explain such things. How about this: You're in a thrift store, searching for something special. You with me?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “If there's one thing I know, it's thrift stores.”

“Okay.” He rubbed his hands together as if he was onto something. “You're in the mother of all thrift stores, larger than any you've ever seen before and filled to the brim with unique things. Then, out of nowhere, a spotlight shines in the back corner. You walk toward that spotlight because you have to. Your closest confidantes tell you to stay away, but you can't help it. You know that you're passing other great things, but in your heart, you feel something special is waiting there in the light.”

“What's in the light?” I asked edgily.

“You.”

“Me?”

“Self-deprecating, self-conscious, confused you. Staring up at me with those lovely brown eyes, asking for the power to change your perfect, beautiful self into something that you were never meant to be.”

“Why'd you do it?”

“I've been asking myself that same question for many days now.” He smiled.

“What do we do now, then?”

“Trust in me. Josh will be taken care of when the time is right.” He glanced at the car's time display. “I have to get this car back to its rightful owner. And you”—he placed an index finger on my forehead—“back to the empty castle.”

*   *   *

Hampton wagged his large tail and almost licked my face off. With one quick movement, I snatched a tick from his stomach. He let out a quick cry, and then began licking my palm to say thank you. That tick must've been bothering him for a while.

The empty castle felt emptier than usual. I trekked up the stairs to my room and sat on the side of my twin bed. The brown spider that lived on my windowsill worked hard to create her evening masterpiece of a web. She was about a third of the way through, moving her eight legs with intentional chaos. I despised spiders with all my heart, and if she'd ever set foot inside my room, I wouldn't have hesitated to murder her, but behind the safety of the glass, I loved her. She was everything that I wanted to be: beautiful, independent, confident, strong, respected, intelligent, and fierce. Her body was the size of a quarter, not including the legs. All in all, for a spider, she was enormous.

“Jesus?” I turned around, but he wasn't there. “Jesus?” And nothing.

*   *   *

I woke to
Unsolved Mysteries
blaring downstairs. I skipped two steps at a time to join my family on the pillows. I stood on the fifth stair from the bottom, drinking in the view of my people. As usual, everyone got an oversized pillow to themselves. My designated pillow sat near the fireplace, awaiting my return. That episode of
Unsolved Mysteries
was the story about the ghost of Grace Brown. She was killed by Chester Gillette over a hundred years ago at the Covewood Lodge on Big Moose Lake, where she now haunted guests. One of my favorite episodes. When my weight shifted, the floor creaked beneath my feet. Alex's eyes never left the television. Mom and Dad, however, beamed at the sight of me.

“Toya!” said Mom.

“Hey, darling,” said Dad, chewing on the wrong end of an ink pen.

I took a seat one and a half feet to the right of Alex, enough room to give him adequate space, but closer than we'd been in a while. Even before the fight, Alex and I respected each other's personal space. As a family, we had an unwritten knock-before-you-enter, lock-the-bathroom-door-behind-you, never-hug-too-long-or-sit-too-close policy.

The phone rang.

“I thought the phone was disconnected,” said Alex. “Great job, Dad.”

Dad beamed with pride.

“I'll get it.” Mom popped up. “It's probably Evilyn. She hasn't been herself since some strange white girl took up for her in the park.”

I sank deeper into my pillow.

“Hurry back.” Dad waved the remote. “Grace Brown's ghost is about to take the lodge.”

“I know,” she replied. “Just a second.”

They exchanged a weird look. Well, not a weird look for a regular married couple, but certainly for them. It was a tender look.

Alex didn't seem to notice.

“Toya!” Mom yelled from the kitchen. “Some boy is on the phone for you!”

Dad and Alex craned their necks in my direction. I slowly made my way to the kitchen. Mom held the phone out and whispered, “Someone named Dontay?”

“Oh!” I went to take the phone from her hand, and she lifted it out of my grasp.

“Who is Dontay?”

“Dee-on-tay, Mom,” I pronounced, and then jumped for the phone.

“Well, excuuuuse me.” She made her way back to the pillows.

“Hey,” I said into the receiver.

“Hi,” he replied. “I got your number from Ms. Wade. You still have a house phone?”

“Yeah.” That was all I could say in response.

“Everything cool?”

“I never know what to say when people ask that. Is it a catchall, like how are you doing? Or should I really answer the question?” I knew I should've just said,
Yes, everything's cool
. But I had an irresistible longing to fill the dead space.

“Been a minute since I actually talked on the phone,” he said. “I prefer text.”

“I'm sure I would, too,” I said, somewhat embarrassed. “I think we're the last family on the planet without access to a cell phone.”

“It's cool, though. I like hearing your voice.”

I'm certain my heart skipped a few beats on that one, but I couldn't think of anything to say in response.
I like hearing your voice, too? You're not as horrible as I thought you were? You're actually quite great? Your name made the back cover of my notebook?

“Well, anyway,” he said, finally. “Can I pick you up tomorrow morning at ten?”

“Sounds cool,” I said, struggling to sound unaffected. “I'll be out front.”

“See you then,” he replied, also struggling to sound unaffected. “Bye.”

“Okay, bye.”

 

THE BAD SISTER

Mom and Dad turned the corner into the kitchen. They had been eavesdropping.

“What happens tomorrow?” asked Mom. “Your father and I have veto power.”

“Is this supposed to be a date?” Dad inquired with wide-open eyes and blue ink on his lips.

“At ten in the morning? Surely not,” I said, but they looked skeptical. “I mean, he didn't say it was or wasn't. I don't know. Should I call and ask him? How does it work?” I began pacing. “Oh God.”

Dad grabbed me by the shoulders. “Look, doll. If a guy calls the night before to make sure you're showing up, it's definitely a date.”

Mom did a double take. “Man! You been chewing on the front of an ink pen. Go wash up before you get lead poisoning.”

“Ah, woman.” Dad reluctantly stormed toward the downstairs bathroom.

Mom quietly watched him go. “Can we talk a minute?” Her voice softened.

I impulsively rolled my eyes. “Yes, Mom, can you make it—”

Before I finished my sentence, she was reaching for the car keys. “Come on before your dad sees.”

Mom couldn't drive a stick shift, but she wasn't going to let that stop her. We jerked down Beckman Drive in horrified silence, while she concentrated on second and third gears versus neutral and fifth. When we reached the top of Colossus, she let out a sigh of relief and rode the brakes all the way down, eventually veering into Edgewood Park and shutting the engine off without shifting back into neutral. “I hate this car,” I said.

“Me too, child,” she said, and we laughed together for the first time in a while. “Nice evening.”

The Alabama sky was streaked with a variation of ambers, darks blues, and purples. “Yeah, nice one.”

Mom watched a woodpecker jabbing a telephone pole. “I wonder what he's looking for this time of night.” We sat watching until he flew away.

“What's wrong, Mom?”

She still stared out her window, now watching a young white couple teach their child to play tennis. She cleared her throat for a little longer than needed. “Well, I just wanted to take a minute to say something.” She turned to me and reached her hand to my cheek. “You are so beautiful, baby girl.”

“Mom, what's going on?” I asked, starting to feel panic.

She eased her hand away. “Your brother's going away for a little bit. He didn't want you to know, but I couldn't let him leave without you two figuring things out.”

“What do you mean, going away for a little bit? When?”

“You know those letters?”

My heart did a little hop in my chest. “Yes, he's never told me what they are.”

“They're recruiting him.”

“Who?”

She turned back toward me. “Everyone, Toya. Harvard, MIT, Yale, Brown … all of them.” She couldn't hold it in anymore. The tears began streaming down her face.

Really looking at her, I realized she'd been holding on by a thread for a while. Her soft hair flew from her head like flames, streaks of mascara lined her cheeks, and her hand was shaking a little. I don't know why I hadn't noticed before. My mother was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“How is that possible? He's absent just as much as I am. He must be failing, too.”

“Your brother's not failing, Toya,” she said deliberately. “He's actually doing well.”

Come to think of it, I'd never asked him if he was failing. I'd assumed he was because I was. Even though he was absent as often as me, he'd chosen to push forward academically, quietly succeeding without making a fuss over himself. He could've bragged, but he didn't. He was dulling his own light so I wouldn't feel bad. He always protected me, even if he suffered for it.

“The letters aren't all he's been keeping from me,” I said, mostly to myself.

“He started e-mailing the schools last year. He had an idea for something.” She began shaking her head in confusion. “I don't understand it. It's way over my head.” She slipped a letter from her purse. “You read it.”

The paper was textured and off-white, with tiny speckles of gold hidden in the material, making it look more like fabric than paper. The burgundy emblem at the top left corner read
VE-RI-TAS
in three quadrants, with a white Harvard flag flying underneath the crest.

Dear Mr. Williams,

Thank you for sharing your comparison theory of social sensibility and terror management in impoverished communities. This illuminating model could shift the thinking of …

“Wait a minute,” I said. “He applied to these schools without telling me?”

“No, baby.” She placed her palm on my neck and began massaging slightly. “I think he was just sharing his thoughts with people who could understand them, and now they're recruiting him.”

I skipped to the bottom.

We would be exceedingly honored if you would tour the Department of Social Psychology within the College of Arts and Sciences, where we seek to understand human experiences and behaviors in social settings. We will gladly sponsor your trip …

I knew Alex was awesome, I just figured I was the only one who thought so. It had never crossed my mind that the rest of the world would ever recognize his awesomeness, too.

“When he was little, I had him tested, and he's a genius,” Mom said slowly. “Toya, he's a genius. A real natural-born genius. He's in the high IQ club that President Obama and Sharon Stone are in. I can't think of the…”

“Mensa?”

“That's the one.” She attempted to plug her flowing nostril with the knuckle of her index finger. “He never told us about the letters, because he knew we would encourage him to apply. He wanted to stay here, Toya.” She looked over at me.

“Why?” I asked, though I already knew.

“He didn't want to leave you behind.” She rummaged through the armrest for tissues and came up with a McDonald's napkin covered in special sauce. “But you've left him behind instead. I really can't believe it. I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No, I understand why. It's my fault. Well, your father's, too, but mostly mine.”

“What are you talking about, Mom?”

She looked at me like it should have been obvious. “I left you.” She broke down into the most violent
Braveheart
cry I'd ever seen from her. “Really, I was leaving your father, but I left you guys, too. I shouldn't have done it, Toya. He's not even all that bad. He is pretty disgusting with the coffee, and I hate the junk cars, and that empty castle is a pitiful waste of money. But he loves you. He loves Alex. And—”

“He loves you, too, Mom. He told me as much.”

“He did?”

“He did.”

She pulled me into a forceful hug. The parking brake poked my ribs and she squeezed my neck so hard it hurt, but I stayed there. “I'm so sorry I left. You deserve a better mother than me, you both do, and I'm so sorry.”