A Small Lesson on Loitering

When my mom tells me this, I’m seventeen and impatient and yessing her for the car keys. She does this often—holds me here, hostage, in the kitchen, between the dinner table and door—but I’m just trying to hang out with my friends, and my eyes are aimed on those keys, and her eyes are watching me—staring as if afraid to let go. A fear cements her like she knows what I don’t. Mom—an inquiry and an imperative. It’s just a couple friends, no drinking. She wears worry in her eyes, and it’s always there before I leave; it’s deep and distant, like she’s considering something she doesn’t want to. She can’t even sit there comfortably, un-crossing and re-crossing her legs.

What’s wrong, Mom? I don’t think anything is actually wrong, but she wants to talk to me, so I sit, slouching like a scarecrow. The keys clank on the glass table. She says—you know it’s different for you than your friends; you know that, right. She slumps her shoulders to match mine. Listen, honey. It’s different for you—I finish her statement—because I’m black, right. But not really—not like her. I’m just a brown kid with curly hair, and I confuse people. What are you—as often as a greeting. And my mom tells me what I am every day.

She’s tired and her scrubs are wrinkled, but her hair is neat, the color of dark licorice, and she smells of perfume and antiseptics. This is how I recognize my mom, beautiful and yet, broken off and somewhere else. She reaches her hand out to touch mine—did you know your grandmother’s uncle was handsome like you. She dabs her finger in my chin dimple. He was a little older, but was funny and cute with your grandmother, teased her and bought her things. But on a Saturday in Alabama when he was walking downtown and doing nothing much but chatting and gossiping like young kids do, a group of men, police officers—she stops to find the story.

It’s not that she’s forgotten, but it hurts to tell it. I can see it in her face—how her brows shift and her lips tighten. My mom is a strong woman, not physically, like muscle and brawn, but she’s resilient—a poor black girl from Newark who joined the military at nineteen and didn’t come back; she became a nurse, and now was a Major in the Air Force. But this story shakes her. He was so charismatic—she chokes on the words and looks like when describing him, she’s describing me. Our hands are back together, and she rubs her thumbs hard on my knuckles. She releases her clasp—the police charged him with loitering; because back then, if you were black on a Saturday night and not home and were in the streets, you were breaking the law.

My mom has been telling me these stories all my life—about my history, my family—pass-me-downs, from her mom and her mom and her mom; and sometime before that, a language that wasn’t ours. But these stories are how my family created people—how we buried them—how they were resurrected—how you could breathe life into someone just by remembering a name, making whole their body—and then telling their story. She told me about my great great grandfather, a slave in Mississippi, and my one uncle who marched in Selma, and about the sit-ins and protests and all the things my people did for me. But my hands were typically in my pockets wrestling with lint.

It’s summer now, and the cicadas and crickets are singing, There’s a break in the blinds and the moon slides in. I’m sitting at the table with my mom, and my friends are waiting, and I’m wondering if it was night like this—if my grandmother’s uncle was just like me; so I imagine him: his black skin in a bright yellow open-collared shirt, showing his chest, and his pants might have been rolled up, his ankles bare in brown oxfords; I imagine him singing a song from the radio, and he sounds like Nat King Cole. His hair is parted, and he smells like sandalwood. He sees friends at their homes, on their porches, and calls out their names, smiles and strolls on. He can hear the cicadas and crickets too, but they sound different in Alabama. He’s happy, and plans to join the army soon, just after he makes his girl his girlfriend. And in between the chorus and verse, a police car spotlights him.

My mom is afraid as if she’s always afraid of what hasn’t happened. It’s frustrating because I think I know everything. To me, these are just stories, things of the past. And I say—Mom, that was forever ago. It’s different now. Mom, Mom, look at me. No one even thinks I’m black. She blows breath like smoke from her nose. We’re both resting on our chairs, studying each other. It doesn’t matter. You’re black enough. And what about your friends. You think they’ll get in trouble too; you think they’ll have the same consequences. This is because my friends are white. She pauses; the fan above the table is spinning. Even the insects outside break, and it’s almost silent, just an electrical hum. And then she continues—your grandmother’s uncle was killed that night, in his holding cell. They beat him to death. She quickly covers her mouth, like she’s snagged her tongue. And this time when I imagine him in that daffodil-colored shirt, it’s bloodied—dots and red smears. His handsome face is bruised and broken and a black that is unrecognizable. His body is crumbled in the corner, and the suspended light bulb buzzes a bug and flickers, and those three men, whoever they were, are laughing in the distance.

My mom’s fear has surfaced. She’s a mother of a black boy, and no matter how much lighter I am than her; I’m still black and in danger. And she believes it’s not a matter of if, but when. She knows she can’t protect me but hopes these stories will.

There’s a pain that comes with parenthood, and now I get it. I’m thirty-two, and when my daughter is seventeen, I don’t know what I’m going to tell her. I’m watching black people die on television today. They aren’t actors; this is not a movie. I’m watching cities burn. And I understand just how my mom felt—how fear is visceral and tangible, and it sits like an acid in your belly.

__________

Davon Loeb is the author of the lyrical memoir The In-Betweens (Everytime Press, 2018). He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers-Camden, and he is an assistant poetry editor at Bending Genres and a guest prose editor at Apiary Magazine. Davon writes creative nonfiction and poetry. His work has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and one Best of the Net, and is forthcoming and featured in Ploughshares Blog, PANK Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Mauldin House, JMWW, Barren Magazine, Split Lip Magazine, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. Besides writing, Davon is a high school English teacher, husband, and father living in New Jersey. Currently, he is writing a YA novel. His work can be found here: davonloeb.com and on Twitter@LoebDavon.