Brother and the Dancer. Keenan Norris
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California, so we are an important institution on campus and in our many diverse communities. Although the minority population is increasing, our population as African-Americans on campus is shrinking. Dropout rates for African-American students are increasing, 35% now. GPAs and other academic indicators are trending distressingly. I’m one-eighth, Granddaddy is St. Lucian, or whatever you call it, so I know the intimidation, the real isolation of the black experience at the university. But that’s where MSU comes in and saves academic lives.”
“Coo’,” Erycha said, cutting Kai off.
“Ballet?” Touissant asked.
“Yeaaah,” Erycha sighed, “Yeaaah. What about you?”
“You’re a ballerina,” he said, evading the question. “Tell me more.”
She didn’t seem to notice his dodge. “Ballet,” she began, then paused self-consciously, as if choosing her words more carefully than she knew she should. “I’m tryin. Tryina get on pointe, so it’s all about the shoes right, the ballet shoes. Cain’t be on pointe without ’em. But they cost.”
“But you need them, so you’ll get them.”
“Hopefully you’ll be correct. But they cost.” She looked away at the sun or something. “And somebody went an’ stole my old pair so it’s not like I can just be payin for the same thing twice, na’mean?” Her fierce eyes came back to him. “What about your struggles, though, that’s what I wanna hear about.”
Right then, a white kid who Touissant recognized from the guided tour appeared in their view. His shadow fell across the stone bench and rippled along the heat waves above the concrete like risen black water. “What’s up, you guys.” He smiled.
“Hey.”
“Heyyy.”
“I hope I’m not interrupting something.”
“Nah.” Erycha shook her head. She tucked her arms in against herself and smiled up at him: “What’s up?”
“Yeah. Um, I think they’re about to get into the next thing, whatever it’s gonna be. Anyway, you guys were way over here, and I didn’t think you’d hear so . . . ”
“Thanks.” Touissant nodded. He tapped Erycha’s knee and stood.
She stood slowly, unfurling herself in elegant little sections. She moves with real grace, he thought, like every dancer I know.
They started back toward the center of campus. The white kid was talking, making background vocals to Touissant’s thoughts. The white kid said that he had noticed how the MSU girl and the guy with the red, black and green beads had both so rudely interrupted Touissant and Erycha’s conversation and how people could really get on your nerves when they did shit like that. Terrible, truly. Especially agenda people, people with gender and racial agendas. As far as the white kid was concerned, there should be no unions or alliances or fraternities or sororities or group identities whatsoever. He was an individual, he said, and individuals didn’t conform. All organizations and groups were formed by conformist minds, he told them, especially the organizations and groups founded on college campuses.
These were the kinds of things a white kid would say, Touissant thought. The kind of things whiteboys had been telling him for years. Probably why he had never had a white male friend. His mind wandered to the late lunch he was supposed to have with his parents and with his sisters, who attended USC and were in town only briefly. There was no getting around the commitment. He would either need to take his chances on running into Erycha later, or interrupt the whiteboy and invite her to lunch right then.
Erycha’s hands opened and closed upon an imaginary razorblade. Her weapon was back at home, where she left it whenever she went to colleges and other safe places. Now she wished she hadn’t taken Touissant’s invitation. His family’s refined voices scared her more than any thug: listening to his mother and father and twin sisters speak with all the smooth and intellectual grace of the world, she knew that she wasn’t close to ready for college. It was too much of a leap, too much of a change. Her body didn’t bend quite right when she danced, her words didn’t sound sophisticated when she spoke.
“Do you like the campus?” the first sister asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did you consider any private universities?” the second sister wanted to know.
Erycha noted the USC sweatshirts that both twins sported. Their enviable chests made each letter stand out as if embossed upon the fabric. They had both highlighted their hair Trojan red, which more than hinted at their preference in the private vs. public question. She had seen both these girls before, locally, though she couldn’t fix a time and place to the twins. She figured they were dancers like herself, probably better dancers than herself. Maybe she had seen them dance, maybe wished she could hold a position the way they held themselves and wished she could move as they moved.
“I was always wantin to be here,” she answered, neglecting to mention that Riverside was the only university that pledged to pay her way for four full years. “Ever since I was lil,” she added. “Little.”
“Where are you from?” The mother asked, light and sharp at the same time.
Erycha answered that she was from Highland and thought she noticed the woman’s expression brighten a little.
“We live over by the new church. Where’s your parents’ house?” the lady asked.
“Round there,” Erycha lied. “We live nearby,” she said more properly. “East Highland’s so small, right?”
The lady laughed and nodded.
Erycha stole a quick glance at Touissant. He looked stunned, or hurt, as if it mattered that she had lied to his momma. She knew that lying went contrary to every book of rules from the Bible to the Student Catalog handed out during orientation and was obviously wrong before God, but doubted that it mattered before Mrs. Freeman. Better to just tell the lady what she wanted to hear. That she had two caring parents, that her life was good and getting better.
She kept on lying to Mrs. Freeman and her husband all lunch long: yes, she’d always loved all forms of dance, especially ballet. She had never lost faith in her talent, had always been supported by her folks, had always made a way out of no-way, like black folk know how to do, she quipped. She played her black card in just the way she knew boojie black people like their black cards to be played, displaying it in order to describe her pride, determination and success, but never her poverty, anger or loneliness in a world full of black folk who never gave a damn about her unless she was braiding their hair or spreading her legs. She even loved writing about dance, she told the Freemans. She was so committed to it, she might get a PhD in the field one day.
Mr. and Mrs. Freeman seemed to like all this. The twin sisters smiled at Erycha with twin precious approving gazes. Touissant just seemed bewildered by everything he was hearing; his fork stayed in his mouth the whole meal.
Erycha started to realize just how good a liar she could be. So good she didn’t have to think about the lies before she said them. All she had to do, in fact, was say anything that she wasn’t actually thinking. Her true thoughts were a little too strange for public disclosure. All lunch long, she stayed thinking about Josephine Baker. Queen Josephine, the baddest lil black girl dead or alive. What would Josephine do if she were ever tricked into lunch with a bunch of boojie black folk? Would she figure a way to gloriously devastate the ceremony and expose the class struggle beneath the bed of lies being told? Would she manipulate the young man who was trying so hard for her? Or would she be the nice girl, smile, do right, say right, and save the real talk for another time? Josephine might do just about anything. After all, Erycha had read where the woman once walked her cheetah along the Champs-Elysées. A black girl controlling a big dangerous cat. Everybody staring her way. Erycha knew that it would take some doing before she could bend nature and folks to her will like that.
She