THE SPOON STOPPED AT THE TIP OF MY MOUTH when he stormed in. He didn’t knock or nothing, just came in like he did and the look on his face meant something bad came down. Something bad always came down when he looked at me that way.
“How many times I tell you cartoons rot your brain? I don’t care if they got it rolling for two hours and dress ‘em up with swords and guns and beards, still rots your brain,” he said, turning off the TV.
I set the spoon in my beans and pretended the TV was on to be on. The DVD player hissed and I knew to turn off the TV whenever I heard his steps but my mind was in the air from the Miyazaki flick. It started to snow but I couldn’t see with my head down. I had a feeling from the light hitting the wood the night was blue and the sky was white.
“You got to be entertained, don’t you? You all skinny but your mind is obese how you feed it. Ever think about giving that mind a little run around the block? A little burn of silence?”
What he didn’t know was I got enough silence at night when I couldn’t sleep or at school where nobody talked to me.
“Oughta entertain yourself by listening to your music when your homework’s done. You’ve been listening to the playlist I made?”
“Yes sir.” I hadn’t done my homework. I hadn’t listened to his playlist, either.
“You need to be listening to it,” he said. “Hear the stories in them songs real well. They got something to teach you, something you can’t get from books and cartoons so learn from ‘em, let ‘em flow inside you, let ‘em shape you. It’s gonna be all the black you got left after what I’m about to say, you hear?”
“Yes sir.” That was his thing. His thing was to tell me I’d be less black if I didn’t act on what he said. He had me listening to Sam Cooke and James Brown and Gregory Isaacs and Curtis Mayfield and Prince. Prince was the only one I got into. I listened to him for hours. I liked his sound. I liked his words. I liked his look. I liked how he didn’t care what anyone thought, but my daddy said that’s not what the music teaches you. “If that’s got you all into it, he ain’t teaching you right,” he’d say. “It don’t teach you to wear heels and eyeliner like you confused.”
I wasn’t confused and only confused at what he was saying.
“This came in the mail today,” he said, flashing an envelope. “Look up, boy.”
I looked up and didn’t see no envelope, just my daddy’s big eyes shooting down at me. He had sawdust on his cheeks, a tear in the shoulder on his grey jumpsuit, and nuggets under his eyes. He looked too tired for anything physical and that was fine by me.
“Came from your mama’s attorney. Says because you’re eighteen next summer, you don’t gotta be under anyone’s roof. She’s been trying for a while now. I’ve been fighting her behind your back but you can’t keep winning year in and year out. Sometimes you lose and take the beating. It ain’t a knockout, you just done fighting. So she got you now while she can and she gonna try to mold you in her own way.”
My face softened, my head dropped. My heart got hard and started to hurt.