What did you learn tonight? she asked.
That Jesus was black, I replied.
What? The rector told you that?
No, a kid in class.
Jesus was the son of God. God’s representative. He was Jewish. And it doesn’t matter. Damn negroes want to make everybody black.
It wasn’t a black kid. He was a white boy. I think he’s from Port Yooga.
I never seen white people in our church. Besides Rector Byron, of course.
Maybe they go to the eight-o’clock service.
Look, don’t you pay attention to foolishness. Learn about the church and God and don’t listen to people talking nonsense. White boy or negro.
I looked over at my father and noticed the slim smile on his lips. He didn’t raise his eyes from the newspaper, so it was hard to tell whether he was grinning at us or the funny pages.
I was just teasing my mother. Wanted to see what she had to say. But watching her reaction, I figured anything that annoyed her so much was worth believing in.
Alana Spencer. The name bounced around my skull after that first class and much of the next week. Imagining her became a nice mechanism of escape, especially in church. My mother often caught me staring into space when I was supposed to be singing or praying. You are the one who has to account for your soul, not me, she often whispered in between songs, and it was always loud enough for people around us to hear and give us strange looks. I wondered why Jesus would care if we sang songs in his honor. Why it mattered that we dropped to our knees like the naked women in the Cinemax movies I stayed up on weekends to watch. The need for praise seemed like a black trait. But then I figured that was a ridiculous thought.
I found myself again along this path of thought in confirmation class as the rector spoke. I looked at Alana. She glanced over at me.
You okay? Tomás asked.
What?
Like you want something, but you’re afraid to ask. His brother laughed the laugh of a sidekick. Tomás continued: You keep staring over at my cousin.
Tomás! Alana called. Her brown turned a reddish color. I felt a shudder or something in my core. I didn’t speak. I wanted to punch Tomás in his gut.
Are you all paying attention? the rector asked. My life had made me a master in the art of misdirection, and there was the rector making himself a target.
Yes. Yes, we are, Your Supreme Highness, I said, giving him a salute and a slight bow. Not a single classmate offered even a chuckle.
If you’re done, Robert, we can go on, the rector said.
Wait, I replied. I have a question. A serious question. You said when we reach the altar, you’ll ask us a series of questions to answer in front of the congregation, right?
Yes. Do you accept Christ? Do you believe in His Father? That sort of thing.
What if I say no?
Well. The rector paused. Well. Um. You. Ahh. I mean, it’s… Robert, do you plan to say no?
No, I said. I’m just curious.
Because if you plan to say no, we can talk after—
Your Highness. Rector. I’m just wondering—
At that moment the rector called for a bathroom break and we all shuffled outside.
It would be my moment, I figured. If I could just get Alana alone. She stood in the hallway underneath White Jesus with her cousins on either side of her like holy bodyguards. I felt like cracking Tomás in the face and whisking off with his cousin. That’s how my father said his father met my grandmother. Granny said that was untrue, an exaggeration, but her smile told all. My grandfather was some kind of gangster, and his son hated gangsters. Gangsters leave nothing for their families but hurt and bullshit, my father once told me. I didn’t know if that was true, but goddamn they get the girls. There was none of my grandfather in me — I had never met him — and too much of my father. I wondered what he would do to pull a girl like Alana. Probably sink into himself and hope she noticed the quiet dignity of his hard work. Sink too deep and you find the path of destructiveness my father walked and then wrenched himself from with nothing but the force of his own will and Jesus’s hand.
I was paralyzed. Had no clue how to proceed. What would Jesus do? Earlier we had gotten the rector to admit that Jesus ran with whores. Jesus got bitches! Tomás said, and then grew quiet and embarrassed when his cousin frowned at him. Standing there watching Alana from the corner of my eye, I tried to imagine what Jesus had said to woo that young slut, the first nun. Which witty parable he spouted. I had no parables.
When the rector called us back in, he reopened the session with a prayer. Everybody bowed their heads. I kept mine raised and focused on Alana.
The wispy hairs that curled on the back of her neck. That was the first image I recalled when I was in bed that Sunday after my parents turned off the hallway light. I always waited for darkness beneath my door before I eased down my pajama pants and pulled up the image of Alana’s hair and some from Cinemax and an imaginary one of Alana straddling me and a hug I experienced in the school hallway and the feeling of a butt I grabbed at school that last week, the girl, my friend, yelping in shock and then chasing me through the halls, squealing in a laughter that was more embarrassment than pleasure, but at the time I had the formula flipped and I laughed and ran with joy, looking back to see the movements of her breasts beneath her T-shirt and the girl became Alana and Alana became as naked as a woman on Cinemax and all became as white as Jesus up there on his high cross looking down at me in pure disgust and judgment and I closed my eyes; I was drowsy and disoriented as if his blood had mixed with mine, and soon all became black, Jesus black.
Teachers called during dinnertime. Or just before it. Or just after it. There was a time I didn’t think I’d make it three consecutive dinners without the sharp trill of the phone stopping time. Ms. Baker had a way of fooling me. She used a sweet voice for the phone, not that buzzard voice she spoke with in class. And she would call my parents by their first names, no Mr. or Mrs. Is Robert there? she’d say. So I would then happily hand the phone over to my father not knowing it was all a setup. And there would be laughter causing me to ease back into a state of relaxation and calm. In the old days, as soon as the phone returned to the cradle, the smile on my father’s face would fall away, replaced with a sneer, and he’d speak in his deep rageful monotone: Go to your room and take off your pants. And I’d sit in my room shaking and sweating, waiting for my father to turn up with an old, ratty belt in hand.
When the phone rang the Monday night before confirmation, I was on guard. It was sometime after dinner. I snatched the phone from the cradle and played with the tangled cord. I breathed deeply and took on the heaviest voice I could manage.
Brooks residence.
Who do you think you’re fooling, big head? It was my sister.
Ms. Baker be calling here like she got nothing better to do with her time. She don’t like me. I got to protect myself.
How about protecting yourself by doing your work and not causing any trouble? That too hard?
Shut up.
I’m tired of you already. Put Daddy or Mommy on the phone.
What if they don’t want to talk to you?
Boy!
Hold on.
I took the phone from my ear and made to find one of my parents, but Alana flashed before me, a bright blinding vision. I had just been reading about angels appearing before Jesus, Mary, the disciples. Illuminated messengers spurring the ordinary to take their place among a heavenly pantheon. They came with solutions to impossible problems. I put the phone to my ear. Hey, Big Sis—
You again? I thought you were getting Mommy or Daddy.