Girlfriend: Ta-Nehisi, what sort of girls do you like?
Ta-Nehisi: I like light-skin girls.
There must have been a gasp, but I was young and must have missed it, because my next image is postconversation, sitting in the car with my mother staring at me, the car unstarted. Her eyes were power drills, and though she herself was a shade from yellow, she was a patriot of a broader Africa.
Little boy, don’t you ever say anything like that again. You can have your little eyes on whoever you want, for whatever you want. But you remember that these little black girls are somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister — your sister, and someday, somebody’s mother, and when it comes down, the white man won’t take time to make distinctions. You need to check yourself, little boy.
I didn’t get it right away, was even angry at first, but then days piled on to weeks and then on to months, until a shame came over me, and I understood. So by now I knew that “you’re pretty for dark-skin girl” was a hate crime that Ebony probably had to fend off before. We talked reading and politics until the teacher sat her down, and throughout it all she smiled and giggled, and for the first time since Callaway, I was down with someone who was both Knowledged and free.
I watched her in the halls over the following days. I was down with no one here. I talked little out here in the county school — I didn’t even fuck with bucolia like that. I fed myself on my own myth. They were Snap to my Chill Rob G. I was the West Baltimore original, while they just played the part. But their girls, with their wrap skirts, sundresses, and wide-leg jeans, were exotica. She was a duchess among them. She stood out amid the dime pack — the ones who got their hair done monthly and touch-ups on the midweeks. She wore it wrapped or all pulled back into a French roll with blue glitter or curly bangs hanging down the front. They dressed like it was all a fashion show. They dispensed smiles and laughter, as if from a box of exquisite chocolates, with none to spare. All of them except Ebony. She was always laughing.
And she was Conscious. She was president of the cultural enrichment club, a black student union, but in deference to Woodlawn’s nonblack 30 percent, no one called it that. I started going to meetings, mostly still just playing the back but occasionally piping up to interject a minor suggestion. We became closer this way, began to talk after health class or at the public library after school. I got the math in my usual, flicted way. Sidled with homework help, which of course, I did not need. I just wanted to see her alone, where all the grinning would belong to me.
In the dance studio, the sound of my djembe was forming.
That year, with all the adult drummers gone, we held it together.
After classes, I’d take my djembe out into the garage and practice until my muddy sound was cleaned. It was not the song of morning birds but still clearer than that old muffled groan. And I got better as the year went on, until finally I could play my own solos and lead the dancers in class down the floor.
Nothing short of religion can explain the molten feeling I derived from it all. Amid my failure and sudden parental abandonment, drumming was like a séance, a very loud séance — the drums, song, and dance whipped us into fury. You could hear us yelling over the roar as the currents of older gods rolled over us, and when fully on, we played in such unity that we were joined — all of us played our own part with our own sound, but we were one.
At night I went further, soaking goatskins in my parents’ basement and shaving off the hair. I’d place them between three rings and affix this tightly to the top of a wooden djembe shell. With mountain-climbing rope, I’d tie the top rings to a smaller ring at the drum’s belly and give it a day to dry. Then the next night I’d pull the rope with a stick and pliers until the skin was so tight over the drum that it felt like wood, and when you tapped it, the chained undead wailed out from under the Atlantic.
I had never done anything like this before. At first it all looked so impossible, and now that I’d been washed and baptized, drum solos I once marveled at now looked like three-year-olds banging at buckets. Then there were the djembes themselves. I built them not by parental edict, not under threat, but because of my own native yearning. This was a giant step toward seeing more. Across the country our elders were battling the shades that shrank our minds and abbreviated our world. We thought the corner was cool, but more than that we deeply believed that we could do no better, that this tiny parcel was all we deserved in this world of sin.
I was exposed at Lemmel. To be a black male is to be always at war, and no flight to the county can save us, because even there we are met by the assumption of violence, by the specter of who we might turn on next. I was ravaged by the plague of my fallen old town and reengineered. They took my wings, handed me a blade. I lost so much of myself out there. My dreams shrank into survival and mere dignity and respect. But in my djembe, I found art and my lost imagination, and now from heavy hands to making a drum sing — what more was out there? How far did it all really go?
That year, the Mecca sent me a letter. Kelly had graduated. Kris was still there. Bill was hanging on. I had long ago given up, and though I now felt I might actually become something, I was resigned that the Mecca was out of reach. But the old temple was hurting. Children of the integrated class were now gunning for white people’s ice. I had done well enough on my PSAT to attract their attention, which apparently did not extend to my grades. They invited our family to a dinner, along with a pool of other black potentials. I walked into a ballroom filled with round tables and black kids seated with their parents. They served us three courses and the usual parade of speakers vouching for the great esteem of the Mecca. The university president stood last, and his were the only words that stuck with me. His topic was the ubiquity of Howard across everything from dentistry to architecture to education. Anywhere you go in the world, he told us, you can find one of us.
Afterward in the car, my parents asked what I thought. It was okay, I guess. It didn’t seem all that. Truth was, I was covering. I was convinced that over my high school career was so marred that I’d never really be considered for admission. So I covered with apathy. Dad went ballistic—
Boy, this is an opportunity, and the best you can do is sit back there and mumble and shrug your shoulders?
I should have taken heart from Big Bill, who through it all had found his way in. Of course, he was now alone. He stopped checking in with Dad, though Dad lessons and words were now working harder on him. He’d come to Howard with cartoon ideas to gird him against failure. Only the weak, with their fucked-up jump shots, off-brand kicks, and feeble arms could thrive in class. That was his defense, because he was sure that he could not make it himself. But now broke, flunking, and on the verge of an escort back home, he confronted the truth. There were brothers here like him, paladins of the streets, who swore to the same codes, and yet they were getting over. What would be his defense now?
He still could not see the merits of scholarship, independent of all else. But he loved the life, the parties, the herb sessions, the controlled independence, and the waves of Jennifers for as far as he could see. He could go back home and invest in his old ties. He could work in the district and spend his lunches and off days with an empty book bag, perpetrating on the yard. But inside, he was not a half stepper. If it was going to be school, then it would be all the way. It was time to play his part.