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Dear Blackhole,

 

         You’re allowed to change. This is, without a doubt,  the truest thing I can say about human free-will. Now, the question is whether you will change.

          SaRa sat in front, on the other half of the benched table, sipping her coffee bean drink and picking at the white table paint that had begun to rust at the metal fleshed beneath. I listened to the turning over of car engines and the hums of drink refrigerators that took up space in the small café. I had become accustomed to these sounds, the coolness of the bench against the underside of my thighs, and even the feeling of the mood winds that swept from SaRa. Too often had we been together in the seated positions; listening to the same noise, understanding the same tension. 

         This discussion had grown. We had raised it for so long- nurtured it repeatedly with solutions and clothed it with care. At this point, it could easily take care of itself. We had simply had it for too long.

        She spoke, “I mean, is it so hard to believe that I may be worth loving? What is her problem, you know.”

        The last of her statement was said in acknowledgment of my mindset. I did know.

Like I said, I had heard this from SaRa for long enough to be over it. She talked about this woman so many times I could ghostwrite a book about the Black philosophy of Vivica Brown.

It would have three parts:

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Part 1: Uplift the Minority: Establishment of the Black Right:An old tales-tale description of the Black community and how it should continue to encourage “our” Black children to be more than another stereotype. Prove to the White kid beside you that you deserve to be there because they believe that you don’t…..

“Break the Black mold. “

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Part 2: My Black is Pro: Standing alongside your community is the only way for us to survive or advance in this world because no one else will stick with us. Giving a definition to the Black prosperity.

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     Part 3: Don’t let these foreign “hoes” take our Beautiful Black Kings: It’s clear. Stick with your own. Once they get a taste of something new- they throw you back as the failed Choco-experiment.

 

    Of course, in her predicament, SaRa wouldn't find my thought funny but they held such a truth that I had to smile. 

      “I do know, girl. So, what are you gon’ do?” I held my hands up in defense when her eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. “I mean this is the fifth time now. Are you gon’ break up with Jerome or not?”

       Her shoulders fell in defeat but her face contorted into a blank expression that screamed,  really?’.

      “Yah, 죽을래?* That is nowhere close to being helpful. Stop being a butthole.”

       Her right eyebrow rose in a threatened question and her lips parted, rounding as if to say ‘Try me if you want to’.

         I felt a quick smirk appear at the corner of my lips and my shoulders slightly shook with humorous laughter at the thought of her attempting me. 

         Her arms swung up in the air dramatically and landed on the peelings of the table-another motion of giving up- as her face fell to the lap created by the folds of them. I focused my eyes on anything but her to find a piece of calm. Behind her right shoulder, the cafe door stood open to the pedestrians quickly passing through sidewalk chaos. The door itself was peeling from old age- leaving white shavings on the ground. 

       This is some mess I didn’t need to hear from her. The day she chose to flirt with Jerome was the same day I told her that the road she was going down was nowhere close to safe. No road is , really, but this particular one was lit with specifically made stop signs that read, ‘TURN THE HELL AROUND!’ AND ‘THIS IS THE BLACK THAT YOU CAN GO BACK FROM….RIGHT NOW! RUN!’.  It wasn’t going to get her anywhere. 

        It couldn’t be helped though. Since she had moved from Gwangju, she had gotten it into her head that the only way she could experience real America to the full was to try everything- especially those things that she had been warned against. Jerome, in essence, was an experiment- one that I couldn’t stop.

          I could even replay the hypothesis verbatim:

       “Lisa, is it just me, or is that guy looking at me?” She whispered rather loudly as we waited for the bus to take us from Beverly and Wilton Place to Wilshire and Normandie Avenue.

Following SaRa’s pointer finger, I allowed my eyes to shift through the many persons that surrounded us and caught a glance of the guy in the corner of the bus’ pavilion. His legs weren’t long but stout. It was clear that there was muscle from the hamstrings to the thighs. The pale, faded jeaned material that clung to his legs had found a way to cling to even the folds of his ankles. 

          My eyes didn’t even make it to his face before Sa Ra jumped up from her seat beside me to march up to him- full frontal. It’s possible that her body flew as high as it did because gravity just wasn’t being quick enough in catching a hold of her. 

         She walked to him in full confidence and, although I couldn’t hear much of anything from their lips, I could tell that he was soaking up every last drop of what she said. His eyes watched hers with enthusiasm; the lips of his parting inch by inch as if she was building up anticipation for something completely to his benefit. They were full lips, definitely, and as I examined the entirety of him I realized that his person was beautiful in light umber skin. 

        In my peripheral vision, I noticed a swift movement. Sa Ra’s body had begun to move with the enthusiasm in umber’s eyes. 

        I quickly ended my examination of him.

        I chuckled to myself now. I had gotten over being sad for my friend about ten months ago- well after their first meet the parents day. 

        Did I fully understand why Ms. Vivica hated Sa Ra? I mean, there could easily be something that my friend had done to come off the wrong way to the woman. The easy answer is that Sa Ra’s skin, eyes, and hair didn’t meet the standards of Jerome’s mother.

       What point is there in lying? 

       Sa Ra had taken on a beautiful golden shade, monolid-moon-shaped eyes waved pitch-black hair that touched her back and a small, compact body since birth. 

       There wasn’t much she could do about those things. 

        And if we are being real with our easy answer: the fact that Sa Ra is Korean presented an entirely foreign set of rules and standards for this pro-Black woman, who had prepared the entirety of her Black prince’s life to accept a Black princess. 

       I knew the answers that no one wanted to accept, especially in the Black community. 

       How could I not when I have been dealing with the same perspectives?

       I hadn’t told Sa Ra about Hwi. I figured she would get irritated at the fact that I had stepped outside of the box she believed I had been raised in. The truth of the matter was that I had never been inside a box. I simply understood the thoughts of my community down to the insecurities of it. Those understandings were what I explained to her often- our second grown child. I also wasn’t afraid of being blatantly outspoken with those Afrocentric ideas that I had been raised to accept and breathe; even if I don’t agree with them. And although I was 1,663 miles away from my family’s influence, these were ideals that remained as stench on me.

          Hwi had listened to me talk this way too.

          It used to irritate him to no end that I always found ways to direct our conversations to how smoked my almond skin looked next to his sand tone. 

          “Yah, 하지마!*”

           His whiny sound and humorless chuckle caught me off guard the first time he interrupted. I was in the midst of a rant about how some other chick had been staring at us as we sat inside In-N-Out. The prickling sensation I could feel from her stare at the side of my face could be likened to the tips of someone’s nails sliding across my skin- not leaving any remains of a scratch but a shadow of disgust. I could have sworn he felt it but….

        “Aish, 미치겠어*.Do you want to be with me or not?”

        My body shuddered at the question. My body feared his thoughts. How could you say that?

       “Of course, I want to be with you! I wouldn’t even talk to you if I didn’t. You know I don’t waste my time on stuff like that.” My voice took on a pitch of franticity but my face continued to be calm. 

       “That’s the problem, Li. I’m not stuff. That isn’t my species. That’s neither one of us. If we have to worry about everyone else’s looks every time we are out then we’re allowing them to treat us like stuff- exhibits.” His hands flew up at the word “exhibit”.

        I sat back in his car seat staring at his profile. The tips of his onyx hair had frayed- giving him a shaggy look for bangs. His eyebrows found a way to contradict the exasperated tone that he used to speak to me; they lay evenly curved around closed half-moon-shaped eyes. His face had become soft and the only sign of irritation I saw was the chewing of his full bottom lip; it had begun to turn red where his front tooth would land. Every bite down was an enabler of his right dimple. I noticed, too, that his chest rose and fell frequently- he was holding back.

I remember feeling pained by the moment. The way his head laid back against the car’s seat displaying the length of his neck, his rounded Adam’s apple, and the stress vein right beneath it. Right now, I can remember being in a hypnotized state- touching the end of the vein-and him scrunching up his shoulders and chin to hide all of those details from me. 

      We both laughed; and it was as if we had never started the conversation.

      He knew that I was all in for us to progress to something that surpassed just speaking to each other every night- laughing and crying together. He had known for well over six months  and I had known too.  This was something that I truly loved about us; our ability to read each other comforted me. In a way, it found ways to heal my mind and heart from past misreadings. It allowed me to feel confident while we walked from Ajilon to the bus stop and rode to my place where he would drop me off with a ghosted, small kiss on the forehead. And like this, we had grown into a habit of liking each other but never truly finding a solution to our biggest problem of being together- being watched.

        SaRa shifted again in front of me causing me to look away from the door’s entryway. This time she lifted her head and looked at me with a resolved facial expression. She opened her mouth to speak, “Okay, I-“

       She was interrupted with a startle. On her left stood an elderly woman with a hunched back and floral linen pants. Her knees seemed weak and her hands seemed to shake while holding up her body against a, seemingly, feeble cane. She had found a way to be close to SaRa’s face, yet, I could still see the deep valleys of the Korean mountains in her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were pitch Black. Her lips were scrunched in a pout; the right corner’s tip pushed back in the reflection of a dimple. 

       She had placed a hand on SaRa’s shoulder that was being held together by clear blue veins and rounded, long nails. 

      “깜짝이야!*” SaRa’s jump shocked the older woman. “네, 할머니*?”

      SaRa had shifted her body and began to speak to the elderly woman with a gentle tone but the old woman had her eyes trained on me as she spoke. 

    “Why are sitting here with this Blackie-allowing her to talk to you that way? Did your mother teach you any better? Get away from her- there are plenty of other young, Korean girls that you can speak to.”

Settled.

     SaRa had risen from her seat by the end of the elderly woman’s first rant. Her eyes remained bowed to the old woman while trying to speak to her gently. 

    “할머니...” SaRa’s tone was urgent. 

      Me? I just sat and stared directly into the woman’s eyes. 

      She began her second rant. “Aigoo, she is scary. Look at how she glares. Worthless blackie. That dark skin...Aigoo. Poor blackie.”

         This. I had been reduced to this- a nigga and harshly abused by melanin. Rage filled my mind:

      The hell did she say?

       What the f-? Who the-? Why the-?

       She gotta be senile or drunk or-

       Where did she come from?

       Where does she think she is?

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Thoughts that would get me nowhere filtered my mind, and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I had never had them before.

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        SaRa, get your people before she gets her feelings hurt. I don’t care if she is your Grandmama, Mama, or aunty.

 

        I yelled this in my head- playing out how I would be staring at the old woman as I yelled these exact words to my best friend of four years. In my head, I was stepping closer to the woman while SaRa stood between us- my hands and fingers were emphasizing the fact that I was going specifically to the elderly woman with the cane. 

      “할머니, we are sorry if we interrupted you. We didn’t mean to interrupt you. Forgive us. We are so sorry.”

       SaRa, my friend of four years, apologized profusely on my behalf. 

       At her set of words, something slithered across my heart. It tightened, grinding itself as an engravement to the organ. I snapped out of my settled, numb state. 

       My neck snapped in her direction.

       “Excuse me. Say that again, please.” My voice had grown hard and patient. The woman had begun to step back with wide eyes. I hadn’t realized that had stood up until the woman began to quickly move back while beating on her chest.

         “Aigoo.Aigoo. She is gonna hurt me.” She had to take on a dramatization of fear- egging me on to touch her so that she could scream and shout for safety. 

          I had lost complete interest in her.

         SaRa began to panic- begging the old woman to calm down. Her hands made a rushing sand sound as she rubbed them together as if praying to God that the woman would settle her pounding and breathing. SaRa’s bows began to become deeper as she urgently begged the woman to calm down. She even hesitated to stop the woman from beating her chest but that only made the woman beat with a harder, quicker pace. 

        I felt my heart light on fire insight of the entire image. Before I knew it, I was beside SaRa; pulling her away from the elderly woman. I moved her out of the old woman’s view so that she could only stare at me.

      “What the hell are you doing? Stop. You don’t have to beg her for anything. Neither one of us did anything wrong. She isn’t your Mama.”

       I didn’t yell or scream my words. I just said them with a tone of certainty as I stared at SaRa. She had become stoic but quickly brushed my arm away. Without a second glance, she walked around me to the older woman and commenced her redundant apologies. 

      This time she told the woman that we would leave and that we were sorry for making her uncomfortable. She kept bowing and the old woman continued to speak as if we had strangled her, “Aigoo. Aigoo.” 

      Pound after pound against her chest.

      My heart fell. I could feel my eyes tighten and my nose fill with something. My face had begun to twist as I listened to my best friend beg for herself. 

       A hand wrapped around my own in one swift moment tightened and hanked me forward. My heart raced as I tried to get a glance of a face but could only see the back of ahead. The neck was a white sand color and the hair laid in black contrast to it. The arm was so familiar - it’s veins and elbow indention I have accounted to memory. 

       We were out the door of the café and trudging down the sidewalk in a rush. The smells of roasted garlic and fermented rice-wine flowed from every other opened glass shop door. The smells were there one second and evaporated the next. It was as if we had an urgent event to get to but were incapable of running. It wasn’t until we hit the corner that the grip on my arm became relaxed. Suddenly, Hwi yanked me around to his front and, just as quickly, yanked me to him. My right cheek landed on his chest and my eyes only had a view of the teal of his cotton shirt. 

      His fingers filled my scalp; the engraved prints slowly caught and released different strands of hair and grazed my scalp. His arms wrapped around the top half of my back. The instant I inhaled his scent a shower of sobs and tears fell from me onto Hwi’s shirt. From what I could see his shirt turned a dark green in every spot that my tear fell.  He began to rock us from side to side-stuffing his face into my hair. I could have sworn there was something wet hitting the center of my scalp.

      And like that, we stood where, I assumed, was the center of the sidewalk. 

     “괜찮*? Hmm? You have to answer me.” He spoke in a rush giving me no chances to answer. I had begun to settle; long enough to realize that Hwi’s heartbeat was quick and unsteady- hard.

      At some point, I had wrapped myself around him and had fleshed myself to his lean body. Breathe.

      “I want to be with you more than anything I have ever wanted in my life but I don’t kno-“

       He spoke over me, “Stop it.”

       His voice was so sure and determined that I felt it vibrate through me. We didn’t settle anything. He just held me and wanted me to hold him back. And I guess at that point that was all that mattered. 

 

Sincerely, 

Lisa…..

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