Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“I see your impersonations haven’t gotten old,” Uncle David points out ruefully.
“I’m not the one getting older,” Dad points out, pulling off his apron and draping it over his chair.
“You sayin’ someone else is?” Momma challenges from the head of the table.
“No ma’am, we’re all here stayin’ young,” Dad says, grabbing his apron to wipe the sweat from his brow real quick before putting it down again.
“Amens” erupt around the table at that, and when silence comes over us—Dad still standing at his seat—we all find one another’s hands, form a chain, and bow our heads.
“Dear Lord—”
“Remember to keep it short so the food doesn’t get cold,” Aunt Clarissa whispers.
“Hush, now,” Momma hisses. Then, her voice syrupy sweet, “Go on, baby.”
I watch Dad open one eye to glare at Aunt Clarissa, who’s already looking up at him, eyes wide to push her point. Then he glances at me and winks.
“Actually,” he starts, still looking at me, making the hair rise on the back of my neck.
Please don’t. Please don’t. Please don’t, I chant in my head.
“Why don’t we let Clarity pray? That way it’ll be short and sweet like her—”
“Hey,” I whine when everyone begins to laugh. “I’m not that short.”
As the table regains their composure, Momma and Dad both look at me. Momma’s smile is warm, and Dad’s raised brows are expectant.
I know I don’t really have a choice, so I relent. “Let’s bow our heads then,” I say, keeping my voice even enough to pretend I’m not low-key scared right now.
I guess God decided I’ve avoided him enough.
I take a deep breath and glance around, glad everyone’s eyes are already closed. I catch the old plastic chairs by the back door, the same ones Momma and I used to sit in when she taught me Bible stories, discolored from time.
Just focus on when Christianity was me in this backyard, getting soaked by the sun, listening to Momma recite scripture to me, coloring Bible scenes with markers. When it was me finding my own way to God.
I close my eyes and bow my head. My mind slows down, my chest opens up, and I breathe a little easier despite my anxiety.
“Dear Lord, please bless this food and all the hands that came together to prepare it so that it may nourish our bodies. Ame—”
“And I would like to add,” Dad cuts in, evoking a chorus of moans and chuckles from around the table. I, blissfully hidden from view with everyone’s eyes still closed, break out in the biggest smile.
“That you please bless our dear matriarch, Selma Jones, and her late husband—my father—William Jones,” Dad continues. “Please bless this house, and every person at this table. Keep us in your heart as we embark upon this upcoming year.
“We pray for Clarity to get accepted to the colleges she applies to: University of Pittsburgh, Princeton, Kenyon College, Temple University, and Ohio State. We already know that your will is what will be, that you have a plan for her and everything she will become, and we are excited and grateful to you, God—”
Dad makes sure to mention every member of our family, and we join him in a collective “Amen.” I open my eyes and take in the fact that I did not combust. Though I guess I don’t actually believe that was one of the possible outcomes.
That at least when I bowed my head, in the space God fills in my spirit and my heart, I wasn’t met with darkness and silence.
I’m not cutoff.
Dad and Uncle David set to work at the head of the table, spooning portions and passing plates down, making sure everyone is taken care of.
“Clarity, what do you want? You gotta tell your dad so he can fix you a plate,” Momma says, nudging me.
Everyone gets their plates, and a few people move around, Aunt Clarissa asking if I might let her take my mom so they can continue catching up. Momma moves down to the end of the table so she can sit with her sons, leaving the seats on either side of me empty.
And like clockwork, I soon find myself flanked by my cousins, Stephanie and Jeremiah.
“You really think you’re going to get in to Princeton?” Stephanie asks, shaking her head, already answering her own question. In the same breath, she shoves a spoonful of steaming baked beans in her mouth.
“Steph, why you always gotta be a pessimist. That’s why ain’t nobody tryin’ to date yo teachin’ ass—”
“Ain’t nobody here tryin’ to date her optimistic ass either, so let me talk,” she snaps at her younger brother, spearing some of her mom’s famous collard greens.
“Well,” I say, seeing as they’re both chewing and I finally have a chance to talk, “hi to you too. And Princeton isn’t my first choice.”
“Why not?” Stephanie asks, flinging some of her box braids over her shoulder. Nothing and nobody ever gets between her and a good meal, not even her own hair. “And why waste the money on the application if you don’t care?”
“I care. It’s not my first choice, but it would still be cool to see if I get accepted. I think it’s important to reach for something. You didn’t have any reach schools?”
“I didn’t see it as reaching so much as me applying to the places I belong,” Stephanie admits.
“This idea of reaching is stupid, no offense coz. But if you truly believed that’s where you’re supposed to be, then it wouldn’t feel like a reach.
And that mindset—that maybe you’re not worthy—is the reason you’re not going to get in—”
“Shut up, why you gotta bring the whole vibe down. This is supposed to be a cookout,” Jeremiah whines.
Stephanie rolls her eyes, her gaze landing on me as she starts to crack up.
“You really gonna do me like dat, Clarity?” Jeremiah asks when I start to laugh at him with her.
“Anybody who doesn’t know they should touch up their fade and clean that hairline for their grandma’s birthday is someone Imma do like dat.”
“Ayyyyyeee,” Stephanie says, tapping her feet on the ground. “She called you out.”
“Hey, hey, now. I was busy, okay? No disrespect to the matriarch,” Jeremiah says, imitating my dad’s prayer voice at the end.
“I’m sure she’s just happy you’re here,” I say.
“Heck, I’m happy to be here,” he says, leaning forward and picking up his fork. He digs into the potato salad, chewing for a few seconds before talking with his mouth full. “This is the sh—”
“The what, Jeremiah Jones?” Momma asks, coming up behind him. I didn’t even see her come back this way.
“This is the good stuff, Momma,” he says, fighting to chew the rest of his food.
“That’s right,” she says, weaving her fingers into some of the curls on top of his head. “When’s the last time you greased your scalp? Didn’t I teach you better than this?”
Stephanie and I look at each other, just about ready to burst.
We soon fall silent, chewing our food. The brown sugar in the baked beans is heavenly, and Dad’s beef burgers with his homemade mayo are juicy to perfection.
Stephanie unlocks her phone and starts scrolling through Instagram. I know looking probably counts as eavesdropping, but her phone is face up on the table without any kind of screen guard.
The first picture she stops to look at is one of some girls dressed in red for a Temple football game. I’m guessing they’re her friends, because she likes the picture and types out a comment I can’t read.
“How’s Temple?” I ask.
Steph doesn’t look up from her phone but nods in acknowledgment while she finishes chewing.
“It’s cool. Gentrified AF, but nice. I get to see a lot of Philly.”
“Is there really a place called the Gayborhood there?” I ask, quickly shoving a huge spoonful of sesame-glazed haricots verts into my mouth.
Stephanie glances up from her phone, her brows set in a hard line that makes me nearly choke on my food. Was that too forward?
“What do you know about the Gayborhood?” she asks, blinking at me. Her fork is poised over her collard greens. She makes no move to spear any more food, which means I have her most absolute undivided attention.
Is it really so out of pocket for me to talk about anything gay?
“I, uh, saw something on the news about it,” I say, reaching for my burger to occupy my hands.
Stephanie glances at Jeremiah, who is diligently splitting his attention between his phone and his food.
“It’s a real place,” she tells me, stabbing at her greens. “There are rainbow crosswalks and street signs, gay bars and shops—some of the best bars in that part of the city to be honest.”
“Have you been?” I ask, keeping my tone light. As much as I want to keep my eyes glued to her face, to read her reactions line by line, I pretend to care about scooping up a spoonful of baked beans so that I appear casual.
“Yeah, I’ve been. Just because it’s called the Gayborhood doesn’t mean only gay people can go, Clarity,” Stephanie teases, chuckling.
I laugh a little with her. “How am I supposed to know?”
“You could come visit me, you know?”
My eyes shoot to her, immediately catching in the web of her gaze.
Her eyes are a deep brown, lined to perfection and accented by expertly applied eye shadow.
Stephanie has always been one of the prettiest people I know.
With her eyes locked on mine, no amount of challenge or kidding simmering in the black of her irises, I can tell her invitation is genuine.
“You should come. Especially if you’re going to apply there. I can give you a campus tour, and if it really means that much to you, I can take you to the Gayborhood.”
“We don’t have to go to the Gayborhood,” I say, maybe a little too quickly. “I mean, it’s not like I’d be allowed into any bars—”
“But still, you shouldn’t apply to a bunch of schools you’ve never been to,” she chides. “Plus, my friends love the Gayborhood, so there’s no getting out of it.”
“They love it?”
“Given that half of them are gay, yes, they love going to a place called the Gayborhood. It’s a safe space for them. Philly is pretty open that way, you know? You’d love it.”
Me? Why does she think I, me specifically, would love it?
“I don’t know if I’d need to go there though,” I say, pushing my greens around with my fork.
“Why not? If you’re going to come see Temple, you might as well see more of the city. Temple is in the city. That’s one of the cool things about the campus. The class buildings are mixed in with everything else.”
“Okay, that’s pretty cool,” I relent, letting out a breath.
Of course, what I don’t admit is that Temple isn’t in the lead for me, not compared to the University of Pittsburgh.
I relax when Stephanie pivots to talking about Old City and how Philadelphia is a place filled with real history, from the buildings to the Constitution, and the culture and community.
She thinks I’d like it for more than just the Gayborhood, which—even if I don’t go to Temple—I definitely want to visit someday.
Half her friends are gay. Which means maybe she wouldn’t care if she found out I am too.
A little while later, with the sun beginning to descend, I help my dad go around the backyard lighting torches and plugging in the string lights that he and Uncle David hung last summer when Momma expressed that she wanted to enjoy sitting outside more.
A canopy of fairy lights brings a layer of mystical warmth to the backyard, and we all gather around the long table again—now cleared of the aluminum tins of food and dressed in a fresh purple dollar store tablecloth.
We sing “Happy Birthday,” Momma’s face illuminated by the candles on her cake.
Maybe it’s a little selfish or self-centered of me, but something about looking around at everyone eating the cake that I made, feeling happy and finding peace, makes me want to stay in this moment.
There’s so much love here, it carves a mark of wanting inside my chest. A deep longing for Hannah.
I wish she were here, sitting in a chair next to me.
I wish she could taste my famous cake and lean back in her chair, belly full of good food—food made with love and family in mind, food for the soul, as Momma would say.
And she’d feel this energy buzzing around us, the hum of the histories of my family.
Her knee would lie to the side, touching mine, letting me know she’s here and keeping us connected as we listen to stories. The funny, endearing history that reminds me that I am—in fact—part of something bigger than me, my mom, and my dad. That I’m never alone.
There is a way for me to bring her into my family. Maybe not explicitly, where everyone is on the same page about what we are to each other, but in the same way that Kristen can come around, that any friend of mine can come over and meet my parents… Hannah could meet them too.