When he was young, his father told him that black people didn’t like water because they were brought over on slave ships. What did a black man want to swim for? The ocean floor was already littered with black men.
Marcus always nodded patiently when his father said things like this. Sonny was forever talking about slavery, the prison labor complex, the System, segregation, the Man. His father had a deep-seated hatred of white people. A hatred like a bag filled with stones, one stone for every year racial injustice continued to be the norm in America. He still carried the bag.
Marcus would never forget his father’s early teachings, the alternative history lessons that got Marcus interested in studying America more closely in the first place. The two had shared a mattress in Ma Willie’s cramped apartment. In the evenings, lying on the mattress with springs like knives, Sonny would tell Marcus about how America used to lock up black men off the sidewalks for labor or how redlining kept banks from investing in black neighborhoods, preventing mortgages or business loans. So was it a wonder that prisons were still full of them? Was it a wonder that the ghetto was the ghetto? There were things Sonny used to talk about that Marcus never saw in his history books, but that later, when he got to college, he learned to be true. He learned that his father’s mind was a brilliant mind, but it was trapped underneath something.
In the mornings, Marcus used to watch Sonny get up, shave, and leave for the methadone clinic in East Harlem. It was easier to follow the movements of his father than it was to watch a clock. At six thirty he got up and had a glass of orange juice. By six forty-five he was shaving, and by seven he was out the door. He would get his methadone and then he would head over to work as a custodian at the hospital. He was the smartest man Marcus knew, but he never could get completely out from under the dope he used to use.
When he was seven, Marcus once asked Ma Willie what would happen if some part of Sonny’s schedule was to change. What would happen if he didn’t get the methadone. His grandmother just shrugged. It wasn’t until Marcus was much older that he started to understand just how important his father’s routine was. His entire life seemed to hang in this balance.
Now Marcus was near the water again. A new grad school mate had invited him to a pool party to celebrate the new millennium, and Marcus had, hesitantly, accepted. A pool in California was safer than the Atlantic, sure. He could lounge on the chair and pretend he was just there for the sun. He could make jokes about how he needed a tan.
Someone yelled, “Cannonball!” sending a cold, wet splash onto Marcus’s legs. He wiped it off, grimacing, after Diante handed him a towel.
“Shit, Marcus, how long we gon’ stay out here, man? It’s hot as hell. This some Africa heat right here.”
Diante was always complaining. He was an artist whom Marcus met at a house party in East Palo Alto, and even though Diante had grown up in Atlanta, something about him reminded Marcus of home. They’d been like brothers ever since.
“We ain’t been here but ten minutes, D. Chill,” Marcus said, but he was starting to feel restless too.
“Naw, nigga. I ain’t about to burn up in this damn heat. Let me catch you later.” He got up and shot a small wave to the people in the pool.
Diante was always asking to go to school events with Marcus and then leaving almost as soon as they arrived. He was looking for a girl he’d met at an art museum once. He couldn’t remember her name, but he told Marcus that he could tell she was a schoolgirl, just from the way she talked. Marcus didn’t feel the need to remind him that there were about a million universities in the area. Who could say the girl would end up at one of his parties?
Marcus was getting his Ph.D. in sociology at Stanford. It was something he would never have been able to imagine doing back when he was splitting a mattress with his father, and yet, there he was. Sonny had been so proud when he told him he’d been accepted to Stanford that he cried. It was the only time Marcus had ever seen him do it.
Marcus left the party soon after Diante, making up some excuse about work. He walked the six miles home, and when he got there he was sweating through his shirt. He got into the blue-tiled shower and let the water beat over his head, never lifting his face up toward it, still scared of drowning.
—
“Your mama says hi,” Sonny said.
It was their weekly phone call. Marcus made it every Sunday afternoon, when he knew his aunt Josephine and all the cousins would be in Ma Willie’s house cooking and eating after church. He called because he missed Harlem, he missed Sunday dinners, he missed Ma Willie singing gospel at the top of her voice, as if Jesus would be there in ten minutes if she would only just summon him to come fix a plate.
“Don’t lie,” Marcus said. The last time he’d seen Amani was his high school graduation. His mother had dressed up in some outfit Ma Willie had given her, no doubt. It was a long-sleeved dress, but when she lifted her arm to wave at him while he crossed the stage to get his diploma, Marcus was almost certain he could see the tracks.
“Humph” was all Sonny replied.
“Y’all doing good over there?” Marcus asked. “The kids an’ ’em all okay?”
“Yeah, we good. We good.”
They breathed into the phone for a bit. Neither wanting to speak, but neither wanting to hang up the phone, either.
“You still straight?” Marcus asked. He didn’t ask often, but he asked.
“Yeah, I’m good. Don’t you worry ’bout me. Keep yo head in dem books. Don’t be thinkin’ ’bout me.”
Marcus nodded. It took him a while to realize that his father wouldn’t be able to hear that, and so he said, “Okay,” and they finally hung up the phone.
Afterward, Diante came by to get him. He was dragging Marcus to a museum in San Francisco, the same one where Diante had met the girl.
“I don’t know why you sweating this girl, D,” Marcus said. He didn’t really enjoy art museums. He never knew what to make of the pieces that he saw. He would listen to Diante talk about lines and color and shading. He would nod, but really, it all meant nothing to him.
“If you saw her, you’d understand,” Diante said. They were walking around the museum, and neither of them was really taking in any of the art.
“I understand she must look good.”
“Yeah, she look good, but it ain’t even about that, man.”
Marcus had already heard it before. Diante had met the woman at the Kara Walker exhibit. The two of them had paced the floor-to-ceiling black paper silhouettes four times before their shoulders brushed on the fifth pass. They’d talked about one piece in particular for nearly an hour, never remembering to get each other’s name.
“I’m telling you, Marcus. You gon’ be at the wedding soon. Alls I gotta do is find her.”
Marcus snorted. How many times had Diante pointed out “his wife” at a party only to date her for a week?
He left Diante to himself and wandered the museum alone. More than the art, he liked the museum’s architecture. The intricate stairways and white walls that held works of vibrant colors. He liked the walking and the thinking that the atmosphere allowed him to do.