[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.At a traffic stop, I saw her reach over and stroke Ken’s forehead and hair, smiling at him, their matching faces made pink under the red traffic light.I could tell she was a kind woman.You could see it in the way she reached for her son and in the way he softened to her.Watching them, I felt like I did when watching a movie I’d snuck into at Loews Paradise; like at any moment I might get caught and asked to leave, my presence discovered as fraudulent.The basement in the family’s home was set up like an apartment.It had been Ken’s until he left for Brown; since then, his little sister Erica (who I was mortified to find out was exactly my age) had taken it over as her own, mixing Ken’s old philosophy books with her posters of environmental causes like “Save the Whales,” “Save the Trees,” and “Save the Children.” Erica and her mom had prepared refreshments and set them on a small table: a foot-long sandwich cut diagonally into slices and a selection of juice boxes.I changed into my sleep clothes in the upstairs bathroom while the group began a game of cards.My plan was to accidentally end up sitting as close to Ken as possible during the game.We would brush up against each other ever so slightly, by mistake, several times during the evening.I would pretend to be oblivious.When I could identify where he was sleeping, I would coincidentally fall asleep near his spot, prompting him to act upon the “vibe” we’d built all night.His lips would be soft as the inside of my cheek, silky.Looking in the mirror, I rubbed vanilla-scented shampoo into my dry hands and carefully spread bits of it throughout my hair with my fingertips: preparation for when we’d spoon together later.My reflection looked back at me: my brown/purple hair was waist length and wavy.I hoped Ken liked it.I wore no makeup, and I hated the way my face gave away how little I’d been sleeping—a few hours here and there on friends’ couches and in hallways.Four small silver hoop earrings ran up each of my ears, and my eyebrows were thicker than I wanted them to be.My sleep pants were jogger’s sweats decorated by a cartoon skull embroidered on the thigh.Underneath, I had on a pair of Carlos’s old boxers.Ken’s mother had loaned me a T-shirt of Ken’s for the night, three sizes too big.The night played out in front of me like a first evening in some foreign country whose language I could not understand.We sat on sleeping bags along the basement floor, in a circle made for storytelling.Kat, Anna, Steven, Jeremy, and Ken talked about things totally unfamiliar to me.“Rich people,” Daddy would have called them.I didn’t know if they were rich, but it quickly became clear that they were different from me.After all, in the ghetto, by no means do we talk about things like different types of cheese.No, sir, we do not go on about the distinctions between Brie, Havarti, and Gorgonzola.In the ghetto, we buy one kind of cheese, and that is American.We get it when we ask the bodega man for “a dollar ham and a dollar cheese” wrapped in thick waxed paper and handed to us on the day the government check is cashed.And in the ghetto, we do not talk about backpacking through Europe (wherever Europe is).However, in the ghetto, we do talk about the block that we live on and the blocks surrounding the block we live on: “Did you hear about the shootout on Grand Avenue? They got Milkshake! He dead!” “Yo, on Andrews Avenue Mrs.Olga’s selling piraguas out of 1C again? They a dollar cheaper than Mrs.Lulu’s! She got coconut!” Other countries and cultures were never discussed at home.In fact, anything farther than our own block, and the blocks surrounding it, was just a vague concept.So when Ken shared with us that he had managed to find a way to travel to Cuba last summer with a youth group, I asked, “Why, is it hard to get to Cuba?”“Well, given the embargo and all.yes,” he said.I nodded stupidly, as though I’d somehow misheard him.My heart jackhammered.Embargo? This was probably something they teach you about in high school.I hated feeling like I should know something that I didn’t.Sometimes it was easier just to be quiet.And then there was the topic of college.All of them compared campuses, dorms, professors, and plans for graduate school, using words like fellowship, thesis, and registrar.What was graduate school, exactly? Was that different from college? Because if I graduate from high school, then I can go to college, so maybe college was graduate school? But that couldn’t be it, because they were already in college.I made the most casual face I could make, a face that said: “I know what you’re talking about, why wouldn’t I?” And while I didn’t get it at all, this idea of college did begin to interest me.Their excitement was part of it, but above all, it was their belonging with one another that really got me interested.It was the way that college seemed to make you fit in with people whom you had never even met before, gave you things to talk about.And then the question struck me: Could I go to college? Even if I didn’t know where Europe was, or the difference between Brie and Havarti, could I have what they had? Ma left school after the eighth grade, and Daddy dropped out too.But could I go to college?“Anything else to drink?” Ken asked me, touching my forearm unnecessarily.My heart raced again, my cheeks flushed hot.“No thanks, I’m good.”“Okay then,” he said, smiling.Ken tossed a pillow onto a particular sleeping bag and leaned back.Anna declared that “her song” was playing and raised the radio volume, flipping her ginger-colored hair.Four Non Blondes’ “What’s Up” blared through the basement.“Wicked!” she yelled.Anna and Kat became a chorus, singing along.Ken laughed and looked around [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]