Blacker Than Thou

It always happens the same way. My heart quickens in my chest, and I blink several times in rapid succession. I jerk my head around desperately looking for any sign that I haven't erred, and as always, no such marker appears. Now I can feel my blood beginning to boil, and my armpits becoming itchy as I begin to perspire. For some foolish reason I've taken several steps away from the door, into the abyss so there will be no hasty get away.

 “Maybe no one will be in the hallway," I find myself thinking hopefully but the muffled din beyond the door is fraught with student voices, reveling in the fact that the period is over. If I leave here, I will certainly be shamed.

Suddenly, a whoosh of air washes over me as a young man with huge earphones opens the door and brushes by me. Without a thought, he breezes to the sink, washes his hands, and exits, bopping to his music the whole time. I had nearly shouted in despair at the sound of the door, but now I begin laughing. How is it that I never notice the urinal in the corner of this dark dreary place? Why do I have any doubt at all as to where I am when just below the mirror is a not-so-crude drawing of a busty naked woman. Is my short-term memory so frazzled that I had already forgotten that the word “men” is written on the door I entered through? As I close the stall door behind me, thermos in hand, I turn pensive. The woman’s bathroom across the hall never smelt this bad…

I started my day with a cup of ginger tea, with lemon and whiskey. It's something about the combination of flavors, acidic, herbal, and alcoholic that allow me to get through my day job at Terrell Ligon Charter School, where I am a writing coach. My students love me because they think I'm “real." They appreciate the swag in my step, and my ability to converse in the language of the latest 2 Chanz single. They adore my unapologetic afro, and comment that the edge-up I get every 10 days is “fresh”. My colored shoelaces and inexhaustible supply of sneakers impress them, as does my flawless ability to alternate between Standard English and the most thug of rhetoric. Even the fact that I broadcast that I'm a Taylor Swift fan seems to impress them, as though in being able to admit it, I cement my negritude. I am blacker than thou.

 But on the toilet in the men's bathroom, as I unscrew my whisky tea and take a long draught in the first floor boy’s bathroom, I feel the weight of my deceit. Of the prep school and Ivy League education my parents and I both received. Of the Upper East Side apartment that I live in, in a building owned by my grandparents…but my privileged guilt is not why I’m here.

It’s Sylene Marlo. She had come into my small office on the 1^st floor looking exhausted. She had been crying but, between sniffles, had taken out her English literature essay. Her clenched jaw warned me that she was in no mood to chat, so I resolved to ignore her obvious pain, and took out my red pen to review the paper. She was an emotional creature, and the two of us had played out this scene many times before. 

 Her essay structure was pristine and her analysis was detailed and nuanced. In fact, the only mistake, an understandable confusion of  “affect” and “effect,” I could hardly blame her for as it was one that writers with thrice her experience sometimes made. In fact, just as I was about to address the grammar mistake, she took a pen from my desk, and fixed it herself.

“You really have a gift, you know that,” I said to her, trying to peek through the gloom that made her caramel skin appear almost gray. “This is excellent. Really Really Really great.” My nostrils could smell the rose and vanilla and all things sweet emanating from the girl, and, for a brief second, I remembered…  

“Is there anything else Mr. K?” she asked, her voice steel. Her hazel eyes, reddened and swollen from crying, locked eyes with mine.  

“Sylene…what’s wrong? You know you can talk to me. Whatever it is, we can fix.”  Slowly though, dread began to work its icy fingers up my spine.

Sylene had taken a deep breath as though she were about to answer, but just stared ahead.

“What happened Sylene. Please, I want to help you,” I began again, “Come on girl, we’re FRIENDS!”  I tried to smile brightly.

“My Mom won’t sign,” she blurted out, and abruptly went silent. “Ain’t gonna be no abortion.” Her eyes began welling up with tears again.

I immediately jumped up and raced to close the door but was arrested in place.

“DON’T,” she whispered.

“Did you…Does anyone know?”

“No,” she said, cutting off my uncharacteristic stutter.   

He felt as though he were suspended from reality; and stared stupidly at her. Even when she cried she was so beautiful. He said something he could not remember as he slowly, handed back her term paper. As she left his life forever, she closed his office door. 

Alone in the boy’s bathroom, he finished the thermos and felt his head begin to swim. He had failed.