It started with my fingernails. In the checkout line at the grocery store, as he rang up my groceries, the teller said, with a half smile, “You got some long nails, man.” I looked at my hands and I looked at him, and him being Black and me being Black, took it as one of those moments where he was asking a question without asking a question. No malicious intent. Maybe even trying to help. Possibly low-key flirting?
But me being in my twenties and easily shook by anything that referred to the body I hated, anything that wasn’t overtly positive and affirming, said, “I know. I’ve been so busy with school I didn’t even notice.” And went home, unloaded groceries, cut my nails short.
In an airport in a different line, I took off my shoes to put on the conveyor belt and a big man with a Southern accent says, “I see you got your pink socks on. Guess the rest are in the laundry, huh? I been there, for sure.” His wife stood next to him, smiling Southern sun.
I like pink. I kind of love pink. It was early, and I said without thinking, feeling both of their eyes on me, “I didn’t even notice they were pink when I put them on.” And when I reached my destination, I took them off and threw them in the trash. I looked down at my feet. Ugly. I cut them off too. Vaguely I remember something about cutting off the feet of escapees, but I turn on the TV and the Golden Girls are on. So.
That Thanksgiving, when Grandpa is sitting on his recliner and everyone has left the house to go shopping on Black Friday, we watch football. Well, he watches football while I read a book. Just us. It’s nice.
I’m going to tell him. I’m in love, his name is Anton, and we are engaged.
The commercial comes on, and he asks, as if reading my mind, “So when are you going to settle down with a nice girl and get married? Can’t play the field the rest of your life.”
Everyone else knows, but no one has told Grandpa. No one could look in his eyes, at that sad look he has even when he’s smiling. No one wanted to dampen that feeling of pure love that comes from the way he looks at you. A strong man who survived World War Two and the Korean War. A soft man who cries at the end of every Pixar movie. At the end of the animated shorts, too.
Flashback to that look of primal terror on his face, when he had a stroke at Aunt Maddy’s funeral. His black suit, his white shirt, his hand reaching out for help from the pews.
I have to tell him now or I will never tell him. I say, “I need to focus on my career right now. Don’t worry. I’ll find someone soon.”
He settles back in his chair, nodding and chewing his cud, as I try to think of the neatest way to cut out my heart without making too much of a mess, and where would I put it? I could ask Rob or Marcus. Definitely Marcus, he would know.
Familiar, sorrowful, yet beautifully written.