Just have a blast with your boy! And if you're not too tired after you party hearty, give 'im a vote!
I wish I had pictures of us getting out of that sedan because our faces were a dead giveaway that something was up.
In fact, the whole way over, Maurice kept teasing us about it. He even said almost the same thing her doctor said about how he was going to have to go find himself a "real fly tux for this wedding" real soon, probably.
But see, we were in that early stage that everybody kind of remembers and misses. You can tell by how they react to it when they see you in it. It takes them back to their first loves, those ones that sort of hover above all the rest like angels and can't be tarnished no matter how the whole thing went down.
I remember Mike talking about this girl she knew who sort of did her wrong in high school, but she remembers everything they did and how she felt and gets all lit up in the face when she talks about it because it was when she realized she was gay but also when she decided that it wasn't as scary as everybody made it out to be because if you really loved somebody you got really, really brave and would take on the world to keep it going.
I don't think everybody goes that far the first time. Mke's braver than most. But it does make a deep impression that makes you smile when you think about it. Everyone usually does smile, anyway. In my experience.
They smile and say something like, "Oh, man. Mary was her name. Wow, that girl. Wonder where she is right now?" And you can feel them floating back to those happy days for a minute.
So I knew it was amazing, that "first love experience." But I'd never had gotten all twitter pated before. And I'm quoting Bambi now, so you know we had it bad.
It was on a totally different plane, this thing with Kendall. Like all my circuits were buzzing. She'd just look at me and I'd get all...whatever. No, seriously, what do you even call that feeling?
Okay, no, not horny. It's different than that. You just know this is some serious soul music you're dancing to. And I wasn't quite ready for it, but at the same time I was starving for it, deep down somewhere. Couldn't get enough of that smile. The looks she gave me. Like she'd been starving, too.
Luckily, when we got to Mount Calvary, it seemed like everybody was sort of twitter pated. Not like me and Kendall, just over the holidays I general. All the little kids were running around squealing cause they couldn't wait to get to that rink.
And the adults were full of good cheer as they say in those old carols and whatnot. I didn't feel any of that tension that you get sometimes when church people are running something. No jealous or envious glares, nobody looking like they couldn't wait to find somebody to bitch about somebody else to.
Don't even front. You know that Christians can be the least Christ-like people on Earth in certain situations. Even on Sundays. At first, that was the only thing I enjoyed other than the choir which can jam, let me tell you. It's all I can do to keep still once they turn up full tilt.
So I'd focus on all the gossip and back biting going on in those pews, to keep myself respectful. It amazed me how mean spirited some of them could be, right at the foot of The Cross, right? And then have the nerve to throw their hands up and shout, "Thank you, Jesus" when the shouting started.
But that night, they were genuinely behaving like Jesus told them to. And that's the part about Christmas that I love even if it used to be a kind of sad time for me even before it became really sad for me.
We knew we weren't going to get what other kids got. But the feels were still there in the air. People seemed happier and nicer. And we needed all the "nice" as we could get.
Reverend Dawkins was handling the festivities that night. There were a couple of pastors and a few deacons who handled the "head man" duties for things because it was a huge church. THE church, for Black folks in town. They'd say it with pride, members would, if you asked them what church they went to.
That's a big question in Tucson, among the Black folks. It tells them everything they need to know, the church you go to. Or they think it does.
Dawkins was the younger of the pastors, sort of in training to take over when the old man left. He sort of looks like one of those Black guys on TV. A sportscaster or a game show host. Very handsome, lots of teeth, perfect voice for it, too. Not the deep bass like the other pastor, but smooth jazz radio style, you know? The ladies loved it.
he was glad handing loud and proud as people headed into the skating rink. And all the little mommies headed right for him, with their kids in tow, so nobody could accuse them of flirting or anything. Didn't fool anybody, of course, but you were supposed to act like it did.
When he saw me, he lit up like one of the decorated trees and said, "Well, God is good! How you feelin', Bae Boy? You look fine."
Even at church I couldn't get away from that name. Aisha's fault. Totally.
I shook with my good arm—I'd put the other in a sling once Kendall and I got in the sedan—and said, "I feel fine. Glad to be back—this is Kendall, by the way."
He gave Kendall a wink and said, "Hearts will be broken tonight! But it's good to see 'im. We were afraid he wouldn't make it this year."
Kendall smiled and said, "The decorations are amazing!"
And I hadn't actually noticed, but they really had laid it on thick. Maybe too thick.
All ten big pine trees they'd planted in two rows that ran down either side of the building had those nets of lights laid on them. So did the cactuses and whatnot. And there were all kinds of Santas, nutcracker soldiers, reindeer, elves and illuminated candy canes and things hiding in bushes or setting right along the walk way and the front lawn.
There were even some of those moving statues that little kids kept running up to and then screaming and running away from, on purpose, whenever they did their thing. That really cracked me up. They were having a blast, the little ones.
So the Reverend said, "Oh, the ladies got the Christmas spirit this year for sure. We had a little extra to spend for once, so they went all out!"
A whole bunch of little guys nearly ran us over right when he said that, but a couple of them turned and said they were sorry while still running.
And Kendall said, "I remember when I used to get excited about Christmas."
"You don't now?" I asked her.
"I will this time," she said.
And the Reverend gave us the same smile everybody else had been and said, "Well, I think I'm gonna sneak on away from here right about now. Go get them skates on and show 'em how it's done, son! Waitin' for you in there!"
And as he left to greet some other folks, she said, "Life of the party, huh?"
"Yeah, we clown up a storm in there, me and the gang."
"Well, I've never even put on skates before. Just so you know."
I took her arm and headed us down the walkway on the right side of the center—the rink was a separate building behind it.
"It's not rocket science," I told her. "I'll get you all strapped in. Used to be harder to get them done up, but there's Velcro ones now. If you wanna go inline, I mean. Depends."
"There's a difference?"
"Inline's sort of easier, but I can't dance on those ones. Not as well, cause I learned on regular ones. Real beat up ones, too, so I actually should be able to handle damned near anything."
We didn't even get in the door hardly before Mike came stomping over and said, "We were sure you'd blow us off tonight."
Kendall said, "Why?"
And Mike winked at her and said, "You!" and then took off toward the area where you actually skate. Cat was out there with Aisha, and there was this huge crowd of mostly men following behind them for obvious reasons.
But they'd sort of covered up really well, in these big sweatshirt sort of things. Pulled down off one shoulder, but that's all the skin you could see.
Kendall and I laughed, though, because they were getting down to that "More Bounce, to the Ounce" song, and for sure they had enough bounce for everybody. Kendall cracked up just watching them go round with all those guys rolling right behind them.
They waved to us on their way past and I gave them a Moonwalk, their signal to reverse. Which was hilarious, because they backed it right up into the dudes and everybody in the rink laughed their asses off. Except maybe the girls the guys had come to the rink with. But everybody was kind of used to us by then, so they didn't get as jealous as all that anymore.
"Okay, now I'm definitely intimidated," Kendall said. "I can't even skate forward, let alone backwards. Michael Jackson style."
And then all these little kids came skating up to the little wall thing, barking at me.
And the DJ goes, "Big Dawg in the house! Bae Boy, where your skates at?"
So then all the guys in the rink start barking, too.
And I said to the kids, "Oh, man, is this what you've been waiting for? Lemme get laced up, okay?"
I got Kendall a good seat right by the little barrier wall and picked out some skates right quick so we could do the big "entrances" we always did. And DJ Mac barely gave me time to even get my skates on before he hit "Atomic Dog."
We call it the Grand Entry, like at pow wows. Only it's men first, then the ladies. Don't get weird, it's just because the pastors go out as the "good will ambassadors," to show all the other men, especially the older ones, it's okay to let their hair down for once. If they get a woman pastor someday, it might reverse. Who knows?
So anyway, for our entry, all the men line up in a big bunch at one of the gaps in the wall and when "Atomic Dog" goes on, we skate out and go around a couple of times together barking and stomping and carrying on. And then we make a half circle and people battle for a while. Like B-Boys do, but on skates.
He played that song and "This Is How We Do It," to let us clown for a good long time, too. You should've seen Kendall's face. Most people don't know that this kind of skating even exists, all the stunts and whatnot. She was totally blown away.
And she stood up and whistled through her fingers when the girls "attacked" on "Freak Like Me." It's that song where the girl says, "We can 'woof, woof' 'til the break of dawn." So that's their way of barking back at us, only they roll around us being all flirty and whatnot.
Their second song was, "Lose Control," by Missy Elliott. And I swear, they killed it, the young girls who knew all the New School moves. They did the whole "blue hoodie" dance sequence toward the end of the video, too. Dope as hell--everybody ran from the refreshment stand and the parking lot to see it.
And then my girl Aisha tore up that Ciara song "Get Up," doing damned near all the moves except the twerk thing she does down on all fours, because...well, it was church not The Club.
She sort of looks like Ciara a little bit, too. And that woman can work on some skates. It's unreal. But she grew up at that rink, back when it was still a Catholic school and they would open it to the brown kids who didn't have anywhere else to go on weekends.
That's why the church bought the building, in fact. The old Catholic school had been part of the hood for decades, feeding and taking care of the locals even though they weren't Catholic. A whole lot of Black kids went to their school, even, because their parents felt like it was safer than public.
Aisha went to the rink on weekends to be safe from the men who messed with her when she was home. At the rink she could be just some kid who loved to skate to the music. They didn't play the kind of music she loved, not all of it. Not 'til the Baptists bought it.
But she was free there. And she learned how to make skates do things they probably weren't supposed to do.
She came and got me and the other two so we could finish the song together. And I checked out Kendall then, especially. Because that's the ultimate test. Women react all kinds of ways to me and the girls. Mostly with suspicion or at least a low grade form of jealousy that eventually flares up.
Kendall's eyes--totally different. She stood there laughing and clapping and bouncing up and down. I think more than anything she wished she could be out there with us.
So when they played Luther Vandross, "Never Enough," that has the perfect beat for skating, I put her arms around my neck and her feet on my feet—she was like a feather--and danced her around the rink with me, the way those fancy ice skaters do it.
I felt like Jack in that Titanic movie, holding onto her while we "flew." You never saw such a smile as the one on Kendall's face. And the tears in her eyes just melted my heart like a flame melts candle wax.
I was the one flying. She was holding me up. And all I wanted to do, for however long I had her, was make her feel like that all the time. And she knew it. I could tell she did. That's what the tears were about.
So I swooped and swung and spun us—real carefully—until the very last note. So when I skated us off, she leaned into me and said, "Do we have to stop?"
"Just for a little bit, okay? So you're not tired."
"If I died right now it wouldn't bother me," she said. And I think I know what she meant.
But I said, "It'd kill me, though."
And she touched my face and said, "That's why I'm not going to. I promise, not for a while, okay?"
I knew what that meant, too. And right then, looking into her eyes, I believed she could defy death if she wanted to. For me.
But I said, "Don't promise. Just enjoy stuff with me."
She nodded and sort of looked all around the rink and said, "If this is what you guys do all the time, I think that's all I'll be doing. Enjoying stuff."
"Christmas is insane for sure. It's party time all the time. But we'll take that slow, too."
"Please don't change on account of me."
Her eyes got all sad when she said that.
But I said, "I'm gonna change a lot because of you. But it's all good, right?"
"God, I hope so."
"Trust me. Want something to drink? Or, wait—they have raspados. You know what they are?"
She didn't, poor baby. Culture gap. So I had to get her one. They're shaved ice with all kinds of flavoring and ice cream in it. Sometimes Carnation or coconut milk, too—it depends who's making it and what their specialties are.
She had two, that little skinny thing. The girls sat with us and laughed watching her inhale them like she hadn't eaten for weeks.
"You ain't gon' be able to put her on yo' feet like that for long," Aisha told me.
So I elbowed her and said, "More bounce to the ounce, right?"
Catherine almost shot raspado juice out of her nose when I came with that. And she laughed at herself and said, "So elegant!"
"You'd be elegant no matter what you did," Kendall told her. "I really hate you. Actually, I hate all three of you."
"Girl, you don't hate nobody. Lookit that sweet face," Aisha told her. "I ever catch you puttin' paint on it, I'll spank you good."
Home free. I knew it right then that they were in love with her, too. Didn't know why. Or care.
I just gave Aisha a hug and said, "I'll spank her, too."
"Oh, well, you might wanna put a lil sum sum on there just for the fun of it, then," Mike teased her.
And Kendall tilted her head and said, "I'm...not sure...I'm following..."
That made all three of them laugh. And I gave Kendall a little one-armed squeeze and said, "It's...grown up stuff. Just let it go."
And then her eyes lit up. And she said, "Oh, that kind of spanking. Bring it on, son!"
And Aisha said, "Uh, oh. She got some freak in there, Bae."
"Not really," Kendall told her. "But I have to admit, he wakes it up sometimes. The little bit I've got."
"Well, that's our cue," Cat said, rising from the bench.
But I said, "I wish. But I gotta go start packing up those boxes. That whole upstairs room is full. And the storage trailer."
"Colton, your arm is still healing," Cat said.
"He been out there doin' his thing all night," Aisha said. "Damage done, pro'bly."
"I didn't move it hardly at all."
"How you gon' thow boxes wit it, though?"
Kendall stood and said, "I'll help. I've just been sitting here, mostly."
"Girl, sit your little bitty butt back down. Y'all can drive when they take 'em out on Christmas morning. They got all these people here can thow toys in them boxes."
"But he's looking for me, the Reverend," I said.
"Well, I'll tell him he will just have to wait," she said, stomping off on those skates.
"Hey! Look who came," Kendall said.
It was Wyatt, with some of the Black kids from school, actually. And teachers, too. I'd never seen her there before, but I had seen the others with her. Including most of the kids.
I waved to her and we headed over.
"What's up? Glad you came," I told her.
And she said, "Well, I got drafted. They all wanted to skate, mostly, though. I'd no idea it was such a local legend, this event."
"Well, it's good timing, cause I need to talk to you about something."
Wyatt got this look, so I said, "Yeah, that. So...what are you doing over the holidays?"
That look got a little confused then. So I said, "Witnesses. You have to have four."
"Witnesses for..."
"Mexico, we have to go to, her and me. No age thing there, to get hitched. But you have to be there for three days, and you have to have four witnesses. I'm thinking you, Joie and maybe a couple of her peeps."
"Kylie," Kendall said. "Trust me, she'd do anything that would make Ellen crazy."
"You think?"
"What are you two doing?" Wyatt said. Sort of laughing, though.
But I didn't get to answer because suddenly there was this huge stampede and a lot of shouting and shoving and screaming.
And I heard some guy say, "Mother fuckin' Klan outside, yo! Les' go!"
I told Kendall, "Stay put, you hear me? Wyatt—"
"I've got it," Wyatt said, as I went skating off with a whole bunch of other dudes. And man, when we cut through the community building, there was all this weird, nasty smelling smoke coming in from outside.
And when we got to the front of the center, I saw all these people running around slapping at flames with their jackets of anything else they could lay hands on. I dumped some presents out of a big laundry bag and started slapping it over the flames that had flared up in a whole line of bushes and Texas Rangers.
You could smell all the chemicals burning, from the decorations and all. It was like we were in the pits of Hell out there. All the trees looked like giant torches on fire.
I got the bushes and a couple of Texas Rangers entirely out, but they'd been burnt pretty bad. During the winter, they dry out a lot so they went up like kindling. But some other people got a garden hose and started on them and the trees nearby, so they were probably going to wake up again in the spring.
Made me a little dizzy, all the flailing around. So I stopped for a breather and I saw some white guys being wrestled down by church people. The white guys were yelling all kinds of crazy shit at them about them being the children of "Ham" or something—I know that story. That Ham was evil and cursed to have "black" kids, is how they told it.
But it's bullshit. The Bible never said that. Read Genesis, and you'll see it never said anything of the kind. But they wanted to believe it, a lot of the ones like these ones. And they'd got it into their heads that they didn't want Black folks trying to even be Christians or something. That's what it seemed like they were saying. Blaming Black folks for bringing on the end times or some shit like that.
Reinforcements came when all these cop cars came screaming down the street. Some of the cops leapt out and grabbed some of the guys who were stomping on the white guys with their roller skates. The rest started yanking sooty faced white guys into the vans that came behind them.
"They had them damned tiki torches," one of the skaters yelled. "Come all the way over here to fuck up er'thang!"
And one white cop shook his head and looked around at all the destruction.
"What's this country comin' to?" he asked.
And a Black woman who looked exhausted and wet from all the water hoses and whatnot shook her head, gave him a pat on the shoulder, and said, "Lord knows, baby. Only the Lord knows..."
But the cop didn't believe it. He just looked really, really sad.
The Fire Department made sure there wasn't any fire damage to the building at all and did the best they could with all the trees.
But then I heard this guy screaming, "Fuckin' nigger lovin' traitor," as the cops were dragging his ass away.
And that's when Wyatt yelled, "Bodie! Trey!"
And I didn't see who she was yelling at, but she ran right after them and so did I. Only they got lost in the chaos. And I was starting to feel kind of weird, too. So I bent over and put my hands on my knees.
And Wyatt came and leaned down to check on me.
"Is it your chest?"
I waved a hand and said, "Just...lemme rest a sec."
While I leaned like that, I saw all these feet surround me. And heard Aisha say, "Bae, seddown on the ground now. Jus' sit on down."
And I felt a hand on my back and knew it was Kendall's just by the way it rubbed me. So I looked up at her and said, "I just got winded. My lung's probably still kinda jacked up."
Aisha said, "Y'all get outta here now! Maurice!"
And she ran off to find the car while Cat and Mike knelt down next to me and felt my face to see if I had a fever or anything.
"He should go to Emergency," Kendall said.
"Oh, no. No way I'm doing that. No more hospitals, thanks."
"She has a point, Papi," Mike said. "Just to be on the safe side."
"You really should," Kendall told me. "Just humor me, okay?"
"I gotta get my shoes," I said. I'd forgotten I still had skates on. I think we all had.
"I'll get them," Mike said. "Kendall, you and Cat get him to the car, okay?"
Cat helped me up and looked me in the eyes.
"You're pretty woozy, Papi. I'll meet you there. Just go!"
"C'mon, those boxes still have to be packed up and everything," I told her. "And you know they're going to get 'em all ready now just to show those bastards they're not scared."
Aisha ran back and said, "He right there on Santa Rita. Y'all gon' walk over there—take it slow. Lil girl, don't let 'im talk you outta this, you hear me?"
"Oh, I won't," Kendall said. "And I hope everything's all right after this. For the children."
"We ain't gon' let nobody take this night away from us, baby girl. Jus' watch my boy for me."
"I'm going, too," Cat said. "I'll call you as soon as I know what's what."
"Yeah, I'll be over there soon as I can," Aisha said.
"Would you guys quit it? I just overdid it a little bit!"
Aisha kissed my cheek and said, "Gone over there and quit arguin' wit people!"
And she gave us a shove and headed back toward the community center where they seemed to be trying to make sure the presents hadn't been ruined. There'd been so much smoke and fire hoses tear up everything, too. But the presents were upstairs and in a trailer out back, so I wasn't too worried.
"I'll be right behind you guys," Cat told us, rushing off to get her own shoes and things.
So Kendall threw an arm around me and said, "Can you walk just a little ways? I can see the car from here. Hold onto me."
"Lookit you, bein' all maternal," I said.
She smiled at me and said, "Do you have any idea how amazing it is to be the one helping someone for a change? Especially this particular someone."
I wanted to say something funny or snarky, but things were starting to spin around again. So I held on and let her lead me to Maurice.