Osei nodded, though he wasn’t sure who Sonny Jurgensen was. He must be a Washington Redskins quarterback. O would have to find out more about them if he wanted to get along with these boys. Himself, he preferred baseball, but there was no team in this city.
He was saved from having to reveal his ignorance of the local football team by a group of girls coming over to the table. The loudest of them insisted on Casper coming to watch her jump rope, shamelessly dancing in a way that was funny and embarrassing at the same time. Among the girls was Dee’s friend Mimi, whom Osei had spoken to during morning recess and who seemed friendly. Her cheeks were flushed, as if smeared with something, and her braces glinted. Her bright red hair would have been much remarked upon in his grandfather’s village. White skin was a surprise anyway, but coupled with red hair—well, that was devilish. “C’mon, Blanca,” she said softly, pulling on the loud girl’s arm. “We’ll lose our turn with the rope.” She glanced at O and grimaced, which made him smile at her.
“Blame Casper,” Blanca retorted. “He’s the one who’s taking so long!”
Casper sighed in exaggerated exasperation and shrugged at Osei as Blanca pulled him away.
He hadn’t invited Osei to join him, probably thinking he was doing him a favor: what boy would willingly watch a group of girls jump rope? However, the moment he was gone, the atmosphere changed. With Casper as his guardian Osei had been safe, and had started to relax, maybe too much. The boys left were sporty and popular enough to hang out with Casper, but not confident without him. It felt to Osei as if those sitting with him at the table all moved an inch away, literally and figuratively, so that once again he was the outsider. Jokes about Joe Namath had not been enough to save him. Now he had to put his guard back up.
Duncan, the boy who sat across from him in class, was studying him again. When Osei looked straight at him, his eyes slid away. “Can I ask you something?” he said.
“That depends what you ask.”
“How do you wash hair like that?”
It was the sort of question O knew well. White people liked to ask a lot about hair care. Also, did black people ever get tanned or sunburned? Were they naturally better at sports and if so, why? Were they better dancers? Did they have better rhythm? Why didn’t black people have wrinkles? Back before his mother made him get a haircut and he had a decent Afro, sometimes when Osei was standing in line, the girls behind him would reach out and touch his hair in wonder, then wipe their fingers on their skirts. He couldn’t turn around and do the same to them or they would have shrieked and he’d get in trouble. He would have liked to touch their hair—a white girl’s silky-smooth long hair was a novelty every bit as curious as his bushy Afro was to them. He’d briefly touched Pam’s hair before he’d broken up with her, but running his hand over Dee’s head during recess was the first time he’d touched a white girl’s hair properly. Even then, hers was in braids, so he hadn’t had the true experience. When she came back from lunch he was going to ask her to take it out of the braids so he could feel it loose and get his fingers tangled in it.
“Hey, did you hear what I said?”
“What?” Distracted by thoughts of Dee’s hair, O had forgotten to answer Duncan’s question. “Oh. I just use a shampoo that has coconut oil in it.”
Duncan wrinkled his nose as if at a bad smell. “Oil. Doesn’t that make it greasy?”
“Not really.”
Duncan looked unconvinced. Osei stood; he would rather be out on the playground than trapped in his seat, trying to explain African hair care to a white boy.
For a second he thought of telling Sisi about it after school and laughing over how the same questions about hair got asked whether you were in London or Rome or Washington. But then he remembered: Sisi wouldn’t be home for him to talk to.
She had been devastated when their father was posted to Washington, and had begged her parents to let her live at a friend’s house in New York until the end of the school year. Sisi was growing cleverer at getting what she wanted: she didn’t ask right away to be allowed to remain in New York for two more years to finish high school. Osei knew that was what she was plotting, though, as he listened on the extension, holding his breath so she wouldn’t hear him as she talked about her plans with her friends. “Black is beautiful,” she always signed off by saying.
Sisi was so persuasive that their parents agreed to her staying with a friend’s family in New York for the remainder of the school year while the Kokotes went on ahead to Washington. Osei wanted to tell his parents what he knew about her activities, but had decided to speak to her first. One night, just before the family was due to move, he came and sat on the end of her bed and watched Sisi in front of her dressing table, tying a silk scarf around her hair and applying cocoa butter to her face and arms. He had come to her room with the intention of begging her to move to Washington after all. “You can make friends with people there who take African names and wear African clothes and talk about black liberation,” he was going to assure her. What he was thinking was: Don’t leave me alone with our parents. What if I need someone to talk to? Aren’t I as important as pan-Africanism or Black Power? He was all ready to speak—had even opened his mouth—when Sisi gazed at him in the mirror with amusement and said, “What is it, little brother? Have you come to borrow a toy, perhaps? You can have all of them,” gesturing at a shelf full of redundant dolls and board games.
“Forget it,” he muttered, and stalked out, ignoring her calling after him, “Wait, Osei. What is it?” When she tapped on his bedroom door, he shouted, “Go away!” and turned up his radio. It was easier to be angry at her condescension than to tell her what he really thought. Now he wished he had opened the door, or at least said something to his parents about what she was up to.
In DC he missed her terribly, even in her new radical persona, especially now that she was only a dot at the end of a phone line. The night before his first day of school they’d talked briefly on the phone, but Sisi had said little of consequence and had called him “little brother” again. “I’ll be taller than you some day,” he’d interrupted. She ignored him, and asked stupid questions about the new apartment. He noticed she asked nothing about her bedroom. He knew now he would not be able to share with her whatever happened to him in his new school—what other kids said and did to him, the everyday moments that constantly reminded him he was different from them and which all added up to a growing feeling of alienation.
Osei had ended the call abruptly, blurting out, “Black is beautiful, or so you say,” deliberately emphasizing it differently from her. He’d slammed down the phone on Sisi’s squawk.