Into White (11 page)

I, however, could find chic treasures among all the junk. I liked the idea of clothing with a soul, so I imagined historical facts about my finds. For instance, a pink knee-length skirt may have belonged to a 1950s Southern housewife who vacuumed in high heels. Or a crisp white button-down may have been worn by Condoleezza Rice for a DC job interview; she was, after all, from Alabama. I felt for ol' Condie. Smart, educated, powerful, but black and Republican. Black Republicans got so much crap for being black
and
Republican. Deanté called Condoleezza a sellout, an Uncle Tom, a traitor to her race. I had never met a black Alabamian proud of her success—a shining example of black support for you.

“No, Mom. I don't feel well.” I felt fine, but I didn't want to deal with thrifting with a middle-aged black woman. Too many stares to deflect. It was for her protection, really.

“Okay, but Lovelady's having an early-bird sale. Everything's fifty percent off.” Any other day that would have gotten me; I was a sucker for a bargain. I had vivid dreams of a comfortable house filled with places to sit, places to eat, utensils to eat with. Every now and then, I spent the thrifting cash Dad gave me on things for the house, and then they'd always turn up missing, or broken. As a result, I focused on the decor of my bedroom, which was shabby-chic cozy.

“I'm sick, Mom.” I hated lying to her.

“Please come with me. I need your help picking the good stuff.” She sounded pitiful and relentless. I had to go for the jugular.

“Why don't you call Aunt Evilyn?” I shouted before burying my head in the pillow. It was one of the meanest things I could say to my guilt-ridden mother.

There was a long pause from downstairs. I imagined Mom's head hanging low with shame. I imagined her sick with the kind of guilt moms get when they leave their kids home alone for necessary twelve-hour shifts. I imagined her shattered.

“Can I come?” Alex said from his room. Sweet Alex.

“Praise Jesus. We can stop by the pawnshop on the way.” If the thrift stores were mine, pawnshops were Alex's. Alex dashed down the stairs, leaving Dad and me alone in the empty castle.

I tried hard to go back to sleep, but it was no use. I spent about an hour picking my outfit for the party later that night. I had no clue what people wore to parties. In movies, it ranged from satiny dresses to jeans. The athletic token black character would arrive late in gym spandex and tennis shoes, yelling, “Where da party at?” while the white kids laughed and high-fived their hilarious, eternally friend-zoned buddy, never once considering him or her a love interest.
The Real World
was the worst. It never failed, the black roommate was immediately categorized as BFF-material, or loud and obnoxious, or comic relief, or all of the above. Only the exceptionally beautiful black roommates were given the time of day romantically. Meanwhile, mediocre-looking white roomies were cuddled to sleep by handsome college guys with muscles. MTV casting directors made black kids want to be white without even realizing it.

In the end, I settled on an orangey floor-sweeper maxidress with little fabric rosettes lining the top. Orange didn't pop against my white skin as it did when I was black, but the dress fit flawlessly, so I went with it.

Afterward, I joined my dad on the living room pillows. I noticed he still wore his holey sneakers.

“Did you go out?”

He looked down and chuckled. “I went for a walk,” he said before kicking off his dirty shoes in the middle of the living room floor.

“What's with the midnight walks, Dad?” I asked. “They've been more frequent lately.”

It was as if he'd been waiting for someone, anyone, to ask how he was doing.

“I just don't understand it.” He clasped his face in his palms. “I try, Toya. I do try. Maybe my idea of trying is different from the next man's, but I do try.” He jumped up to begin pacing the living room. “I bought her this big house in the suburbs. I work like a dog to pay for this thing.” Hampton let out a knowing huff of air. “Sorry, buddy. I work hard, I mean. It's never enough! This is my first day off in two weeks. No. Seventeen days. I try every day, and still she despises me.” He sank back down on the largest pillow across from me. “You're smarter than me. Tell me. What am I doing so wrong?”

I didn't have enough words to explain all the things that my father did wrong. I didn't know how to tell him that he'd crushed my mother's dreams the day he bought the empty castle. All she really wanted was to stay at home and homeschool us, but he was too consumed with the status of Edgewood to notice such things. And not to mention his moping around the house, spilling coffee, and leaving the seat up. All in all, he was a flaming-hot mess, but I couldn't hurt him. Even if I told him, he was in no state to hear the truth about himself. I took the coward's way out.

“She'll come around, Dad.”

A slight smile brightened his scruffy face. “You really think so?”

“Sure,” I lied. “Oh look,
Independence Day
is on.”

And then we watched one of my father's all-time favorite movies for the thousandth time. I'd always been fond of Will Smith. He didn't curse or act a fool in public. No visible gold teeth or spinner rims on his car. Just a clean-shaven regular guy who happened to be black.

“Hey, doll, your mother told me that you and Alex are having trouble.” He lowered the volume of the television but didn't press mute. For Dad, that meant genuine concern. Television served as one of his only true pleasures in life, and he turned it down for
nobody
. The mute button was reserved for death or loss of limb.

“You two talk? I didn't know you and Mom did anything except fight.” I immediately regretted saying it. He would mull that one over for at least a month.

He muted the TV. Uh-oh. “We've really done a bang-up job being there for the two of you, huh? We're a mess.” He smiled, and I smiled right back.

“You guys do your best.” I wasn't puffing smoke; I really did think that.

“So what's up with you and Alex? You're buds, always have been,” he said. I watched Vivica's boobs slow-bounce away from the alien invasion. I had to give it to her, she was cute in her day. Lately, though, she pumped herself up with too much filler; cheeks, lips, butt, all of it. “All right, then, when you're ready to talk, I'll be here.” He put the sound back on just in time for a Will Smith one-liner. If there was an Oscar for one-liners, Will Smith would have a mantel full.

That Saturday, TNT's
Men Who Love Movies
series showed back-to-back blockbusters. I sat there for hours soaking myself in digital testosterone side by side with my dear dad.
Independence Day
followed by
Die Hard
, followed by
Die Hard with a Vengeance
followed by
Braveheart.
Of the four,
Braveheart
was the one that made me cry like a newborn. I knew I'd get the post-cry dry headache; I couldn't help myself. The death of Mel Gibson's wife was bad enough, but the bagpipes, oh dear God, the bagpipes. I never knew bagpipes could be so depressing.

I hugged Dad and went to my room. Hugging my father was like hugging a statue; he never, and I mean never, hugged back. I could feel his love, but he had real trouble expressing it in conventional ways. His love was expressed by working overtime at the Police Dispatch to afford the empty castle, and by bringing home dollar packs of Little Debbies. I'd eaten so many Pecan Swirls by the time I started high school that the sight of them made me gag, but I could never tell Dad.

When I peered into the bathroom mirror, my eyes were bloodshot and puffy, cheeks rosy and tear streaked. As Toya, I would have looked disgusting. As Kat, I looked adorable. Just then, Mom and Alex walked in the front door, laughing and tittering at their pawnshop hop. Jealousy dashed across my chest. I was usually the one laughing and joking with Mom, not Alex. I was usually the one laughing and joking with Alex, not Mom. I felt the two of them slipping through my fingers. Jealousy was a ridiculous emotion. I had publicly disgraced my brother; so shouldn't I be happy for him? Mom and Alex joined Dad in front of the TV while I got ready for the party. After makeup, hair, and shaving, I slipped into my maxi and walked downstairs in the middle of
Rocky
.

“Ooh. You look pretty for eight o'clock at night. Where do you think you're going?” Mom tapped her fuzzy pink house shoe on the hardwood.

“I was invited to a party for the first time in my life.” I figured they would have a harder time saying no if I was already dressed. “Can I go?”

Dad turned down the TV. “Why don't we just go to GC as a family? Since you're already dressed and everything.” GC was the Williams family's nickname for Golden Corral, the nicest restaurant we could afford. The servers hated to see us coming, since we never left a tip. Mom had developed a strategy to avoid tipping: clean our own table, and say thanks over and over. Even when I was cute and little, I knew it never worked. Thank-yous and less crap to wipe wouldn't feed the waitresses' kids.

Headlights beamed into the living room, and the twins' horn honked twice. “My friends are here! Can I please go?”

“So you just assumed we would let you go? Or you planned to pressure us by getting dressed up and calling people to get you?” asked Mom.

She got me. “Uhhhh…”

The horn honked five more times. “Who are these friends anyway? If they know what's good for them, they'll stop honking that horn,” said Mom.

She was right, they were foul for that. “No, Mom. They are such sweet girls. They don't mean it, I promise.”

Alex let out a nose-snort snicker from the kitchen. “Alex. Get in here,” Mom shrieked. Alex emerged, Debbie cake in hand. “Who are these friends picking up Toya?” she asked. He shrugged. I heard a car door open and slam. Oh God, one or both of the twins were coming to the door.

I panicked. “Please, Mom. They are going to see the house. Please, they can't see.”

Dad pulled himself from the pillows. “She's right,” he said. “We don't even let the pizza man past the porch. Just let her go.” Dad would rather send me off to some random party than let another human being witness how empty his castle was. Not the pizza man, Jehovah's Witnesses, Girl Scouts, even the cable guy. When the cable went out once, Dad made the technician stand on the porch and yell instructions on how to fix it. We got a courtesy call the next day, telling us to call the 1-800 number if we had any more problems, and they'd walk us through it over the phone rather than roast in the Alabama sun.

“Okay,” Mom said.

“Thank you!” I shot past them.

“Wait,” Mom said. I had almost made it. “Alex is going with you.”

I was horrified, and it must have shown, as Alex dropped his head. “I don't think she wants—”

“I couldn't care less what she wants,” Mom interrupted. “You both go, or no one goes.”

Hampton was barking up a storm. Amera or Amelia had to be close. “Okay, let's go.” I snatched Alex's hand and drug him through the door. He was wearing a faded yellow Montgomery Biscuits baseball T-shirt with knee-length cutoff blue jeans.

Amera took one look at Alex and said, “Uh,
no
.” She turned and walked back to the car.

I followed close. “They said that I can't go without him.”

“I would not be caught dead hanging out with you,” Amera said, looking Alex up and down.

He stopped. “You don't even know me. And you…” I caught the disappointment in his voice, but I didn't dare look directly in his face. I looked at the trees, the dirt, my shoes, his shoes, her shoes (cute cobalt-blue Mary Janes), anything but his disappointed face. “How dare you let your new friend speak to me like this? If God is testing you, you're failing miserably. I don't want to go to your stupid party. I'd rather walk Hampton,” he said while untying him. “Get yourself back at a reasonable time or I'm telling Mom.” He disappeared into the pitch-dark woods behind our house.

“Loser,” Amera called after him. “Let's go.”

In the car, Amera gave Amelia the play-by-play. She called Alex every curse word known to man, but she didn't bring out the
N
word, which I took as an improvement. I wondered how far into the woods Alex had wandered. There was no path back there, and wooded vines created thick brush at the base of the longleaf pine trees. Hampton would protect him, but not in the way he needed protecting. I shouldn't have allowed him to venture into the woods alone.

“What's his deal, anyway?” I realized Amelia's question was directed to me. “Hello?”

“Oh,” I replied. “I don't really know him.”

“You live with him.” Amera removed her seat belt to turn and glare at me. “You must know something.”

I panicked. Even though I hated the twins, this was my first party ever and it felt like a massive moment in my life. I didn't want to blow it. I didn't want to come off as a concerned sister, because that wasn't my role anymore. No matter how sad it made me, I couldn't be Alex's shield. I was Katarina the powerful. Katarina the beautiful. Most important, Katarina, the girl who fit perfectly in the backseat of their Bug.

“He's a loser” came out of my mouth. And then, “He collects quarters like a child, and he wears shirts with ridiculous sayings on them.”

They laughed, encouraging me to continue.

“Worst of all, he steals food from grocery stores,” I added, matching their chirpy up-speak. “It's pathetic.”

“That
is
pathetic.” Amera rebuckled her seat belt as if satisfied with my tirade.

Somewhere deep down, I suspected that moment would come back to bite me. Hard. I shook off the dread.

Amelia changed the subject. “So, Kat, it turns out Josh likes being dissed, because he can't keep your name out of his mouth now.”