Friday Black Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The Finkelstein 5

  Things My Mother Said

  The Era

  Lark Street

  The Hospital Where

  Zimmer Land

  Friday Black

  The Lion & the Spider

  Light Spitter

  How to Sell a Jacket as Told by IceKing

  In Retail

  Through the Flash

  Acknowledgments and Love

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH

  Copyright © 2018 by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  hmhco.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Adjei-Brenyah, Nana Kwame author.

  Title: Friday black / Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

  Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018006635 (print) | LCCN 2017061489 (ebook) |

  ISBN 9781328915139 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328911247 (trade paper)

  Classification: LCC PS3601.D49 (print) | LCC PS3601.D49 A6 2018 (ebook) |

  DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006635

  “Things My Mother Said” was first published in slightly different form in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, September 2014.

  “In Retail” was published in Compose: A Journal of Simply Good Writing, Fall 2014.

  “The Finkelstein 5” was published in slightly different form in Printers Row, July 2016.

  Cover design by Mark R. Robinson

  Cover images © Getty Images

  Author photograph © Limitless Imprint Entertainment

  v1.1018

  For my mom, who said,

  “How can you be bored?

  How many books have you written?”

  Anything you imagine you possess.

  —Kendrick Lamar

  The Finkelstein 5

  Fela, the headless girl, walked toward Emmanuel. Her neck jagged with red savagery. She was silent, but he could feel her waiting for him to do something, anything.

  Then his phone rang, and he woke up.

  He took a deep breath and set the Blackness in his voice down to a 1.5 on a 10-point scale. “Hi there, how are you doing today? Yes, yes, I did recently inquire about the status of my application. Well, all right, okay. Great to hear. I’ll be there. Have a spectacular day.” Emmanuel rolled out of bed and brushed his teeth. The house was quiet. His parents had already left for work.

  That morning, like every morning, the first decision he made regarded his Blackness. His skin was a deep, constant brown. In public, when people could actually see him, it was impossible to get his Blackness down to anywhere near a 1.5. If he wore a tie, wing-tipped shoes, smiled constantly, used his indoor voice, and kept his hands strapped and calm at his sides, he could get his Blackness as low as 4.0.

  Though Emmanuel was happy about scoring the interview, he also felt guilty about feeling happy about anything. Most people he knew were still mourning the Finkelstein verdict: after twenty-eight minutes of deliberation, a jury of his peers had acquitted George Wilson Dunn of any wrongdoing whatsoever. He had been indicted for allegedly using a chain saw to hack off the heads of five black children outside the Finkelstein Library in Valley Ridge, South Carolina. The court had ruled that because the children were basically loitering and not actually inside the library reading, as one might expect of productive members of society, it was reasonable that Dunn had felt threatened by these five black young people and, thus, he was well within his rights when he protected himself, his library-loaned DVDs, and his children by going into the back of his Ford F-150 and retrieving his Hawtech PRO eighteen-inch 48cc chain saw.

  The case had seized the country by the ear and heart, and was still, mostly, the only thing anyone was talking about. Finkelstein became the news cycle. On one side of the broadcast world, anchors openly wept for the children, who were saints in their eyes; on the opposite side were personalities like Brent Kogan, the ever gruff and opinionated host of What’s the Big Deal?, who had said during an online panel discussion, “Yes, yes, they were kids, but also, fuck niggers.” Most news outlets fell somewhere in between.

  On verdict day, Emmanuel’s family and friends of many different races and backgrounds had gathered together and watched a television tuned to a station that had sympathized with the children, who were popularly known as the Finkelstein Five. Pizza and drinks were served. When the ruling was announced, Emmanuel felt a clicking and grinding in his chest. It burned. His mother, known to be one of the liveliest and happiest women in the neighborhood, threw a plastic cup filled with Coke across the room. When the plastic fell and the soda splattered, the people stared at Emmanuel’s mother. Seeing Mrs. Gyan that way meant it was real: they’d lost. Emmanuel’s father walked away from the group wiping his eyes, and Emmanuel felt the grinding in his chest settle to a cold nothingness. On the ride home, his father cursed. His mother punched honks out of the steering wheel. Emmanuel breathed in and watched his hands appear, then disappear, then appear, then disappear as they rode past streetlights. He let the nothing he was feeling wash over him in one cold wave after another.

  But now that he’d been called in for an interview with Stich’s, a store self-described as an “innovator with a classic sensibility” that specialized in vintage sweaters, Emmanuel had something to think about besides the bodies of those kids, severed at the neck, growing damp in thick, pulsing, shooting blood. Instead, he thought about what to wear.

  In a vague move of solidarity, Emmanuel climbed into the loose-fitting cargoes he’d worn on a camping trip. Then he stepped into his patent-leather Space Jams with the laces still clean and taut as they weaved up all across the black tongue. Next, he pulled out a long-ago abandoned black hoodie and dove into its tunnel. As a final act of solidarity, Emmanuel put on a gray snapback cap, a hat similar to the ones two of the Finkelstein Five had been wearing the day they were murdered—a fact George Wilson Dunn’s defense had stressed throughout the proceedings.

  Emmanuel stepped outside into the world, his Blackness at a solid 7.6. He felt like Evel Knievel at the top of a ramp. At the mall he’d look for something to wear to the interview, something to bring him down to at least a 4.2. He pulled the brim of his hat forward and down to shade his eyes. He walked up a hill toward Canfield Road, where he’d catch a bus. He listened to the gravel scraping under his sneakers. It had been a very long time since he’d had his Blackness even close to a 7.0. “I want you safe. You gotta know how to move,” his father had said to him at a very young age. Emmanuel started learning the basics of his Blackness before he knew how to do long division: smiling when angry, whispering when he wanted to yell. Back when he was in middle school, after a trip to the zoo, where he’d been accused of stealing a stuffed panda from the gift shop, Emmanuel had burned his last pair of baggy jeans in his driveway. He’d watched the denim curl and ash in front of him with unblinking eyes. When his father came outside, Emmanuel imagined he’d get a good talking-to. Instead, his father stood quietly beside him. “This is an important thing to learn,” his father had said. Together they watched the fire until it ate itself dead.

  It was crowded at the bus stop. He felt eyes shifting toward him while pocketbooks shifted away. Emmanuel thought of George Wilson Dunn. He imagined the middle-aged man st
anding there in front of him, smiling, a chain saw growling in his hands. He decided to try something dangerous: he turned his hat backward so the shadow of the brim draped his neck. He felt his Blackness leap and throb to an 8.0. The people grew quiet. They tried to look superfriendly but also distant, as if he were a tiger or an elephant they were watching beneath a big tent. A path through the mass opened up for Emmanuel.

  Soon, he was standing near the bench. A young woman with long brown hair and a guy wearing sunglasses above the brim of his hat both remembered they had to be somewhere else, immediately. An older woman remained sitting, and Emmanuel took the newly available seat beside her. The woman glanced toward Emmanuel as he sat. She smiled faintly. Her look of general disinterest made his heart sing. He turned his hat forward and felt his Blackness ease back to a still very serious 7.6. A minute later, the brown-haired woman returned and sat beside him. She smiled like someone had told her that if she stopped smiling her frantic, wide-eyed smile Emmanuel would blow her brains out.

  “The fact is, George Wilson Dunn is an American. Americans have the right to protect themselves,” the defense attorney says in a singing, charming voice. “Do you have children? Do you have anyone you love? The prosecution has tried to beat you over the head with scary words like ‘law’ and ‘murder’ and ‘sociopath.’” The defense attorney’s index and middle fingers claw the air repeatedly to indicate quotations. “I’m here to tell you that this case isn’t about any of those things. It’s about an American man’s right to love and protect his own life and the life of his beautiful baby girl and his handsome young son. So I ask you, what do you love more, the supposed ‘law’ or your children?”

  “I object?,” says the prosecuting attorney.

  “I’ll allow it, overruled,” replies the judge as she dabs the now wet corners of her eyes. “Please continue, counselor.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor. I don’t know about you all, but I love my children more than I love the ‘law.’ And I love America more than I love my children. That’s what this case is about: love with a capital L. And America. That is what I’m defending here today. My client, Mister George Dunn, believed he was in danger. And you know what, if you believe something, anything, then that’s what matters most. Believing. In America we have the freedom to believe. America, our beautiful sovereign state. Don’t kill that here today.”

  The bus was pulling in. Emmanuel noticed a figure running toward the stop. It was Boogie, one of his best friends from back in grade school. In Ms. Fold’s fourth-grade class, Emmanuel would peek over at Boogie’s tests during their history exams and then angle his papers so Boogie could see his answers during math tests. In all the years he’d known Boogie, he’d never known him to dress in anything but too-large T-shirts and baggy sweats. By the time they were in high school, Emmanuel had learned to control his Blackness; Boogie had not. Emmanuel had quietly distanced himself from Boogie, who’d become known for fighting with other students and teachers. By now, he’d mostly forgotten about him, but when Emmanuel did think of Boogie, it was with pity for him and his static personhood. Boogie was always himself. Today, though, Boogie ran in black slacks, shining black dress shoes, a white button-up shirt, and a slim red tie. His dress combined with his sandy skin squeezed his Blackness down to a 2.9.

  “Manny!” Boogie called as the bus pulled to a stop.

  “What’s good, bro,” Emmanuel replied. In the past, Emmanuel had dialed his Blackness up whenever he was around Boogie. Today he didn’t have to. People shuffled past them onto the bus. Emmanuel and Boogie clapped palms and held the grip so that, with their hands between them, their chests came together, and when they took their hands back, their fingers snapped against their palms.

  Emmanuel said, “What you up to lately? What’s new?”

  “A lot, man. A lot. I’ve been waking up.”

  Emmanuel got on the bus, paid his $2.50, then found a seat near the back. Boogie took the empty seat beside him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, man. I’ve been working lately. I’m trying to get a lot of us together, man. We need to unify.”

  “Word,” Emmanuel replied absently.

  “I’m serious, bro. We need to move together. We got to now. You’ve seen it. You know they don’t give a fuck ’bout us now. They showed it.” Emmanuel nodded. “We all need to unify. We need to wake the fuck up. I’ve been Naming. I’m getting a team together. You trying to ride or what?”

  Emmanuel scanned the area around him to make sure no one had heard. It didn’t seem like anyone had, but still he regretted his proximity to Boogie. “You’re not really doing that Naming stuff?” Emmanuel watched the smile on Boogie’s face melt. Emmanuel made sure his face didn’t do anything at all.

  “Of course I am.” Boogie unbuttoned the left cuff of his shirt and pulled the sleeve up. Along Boogie’s inner forearm were three different marks. Each of them was a very distinct 5 carved and scarred into his skin. After it was clear Emmanuel had seen, Boogie smoothed his sleeve back down over his arm but did not button the cuff. He continued in a low voice. “You know what my uncle said to me the other day?”

  Emmanuel waited.

  “He said that when you’re on the bus and a tired man is kinda leaning over beside you, using your shoulder like a pillow, people tell you to wake him up. They’ll try to sell it to you that the man needs to wake up and find some other place to rest ’cause you ain’t a goddamn mattress.”

  Emmanuel made a sound to show he was following.

  “But if he’s sleeping on his own, not bothering you, it’s supposed to be different. And if that sleeping man gets ran up on by somebody that wants to take advantage of him ’cause he’s asleep, ’cause he’s so tired, everybody tries to tell you we’re supposed to be, like, ‘That’s not my problem, that don’t got a thing to do with me,’ as he gets his pockets all the way ran through or worse.

  “That man sleeping on the bus, he’s your brother. That’s what my uncle’s saying. You need to protect him. Yeah, you might need to wake him up, but while he’s asleep, he’s your responsibility. Your brother, even if you ain’t met him a day in your life, is your business. Feel me?”

  Emmanuel made another confirmatory sound.

  Two days after the ruling, the first report had come through. An elderly white couple, both in their sixties, had had their brains smashed in by a group armed with bricks and rusty metal pipes. Witnesses said the murderers had been dressed in very fancy clothes: bow ties and summer hats, cuff links and high heels. Throughout the double murder, the group/gang had chanted, “Mboya! Mboya! Tyler Kenneth Mboya,” the name of the eldest boy killed at Finkelstein. The next day a similar story broke. Three white schoolgirls had been killed with ice picks. A black man and black woman had poked holes through the girls’ skulls like they were mining for diamonds. They chanted “Akua Harris, Akua Harris, Akua Harris” all through the murder, according to reports. Again, the killers had been described as “quite fashionable, given the circumstances.” In both cases, the killers had been caught immediately following the act. The couple that killed the schoolgirls had carved the number 5 into their own skins just before the attack.

  Several more cases of beatings and killings followed the first two. Each time the culprits screamed the name of one of the Finkelstein Five. The Namers became the latest terrorists on the news. Most of the perpetrators were killed by police officers before they could be brought in for questioning. Those who were detained spoke only the name of the child they’d used as a mantra to their violence. None seemed interested in defense.

  By far, the most famous of the Namers was Mary “Mistress” Redding. The story was, Mistress Redding had been detained wearing a single bloodstained white silk glove over her left hand, once-sparkling white shoes with four-inch heels, and an A-line dress that was such a hard, rusty red that officers couldn’t believe it had originally been a perfect white. For hours, Redding answered all of the questions with a single name. Why did you do it? “J. D. Hero
y.” He was just a child! How could you? “J. D. Heroy.” Who are you working with? Who is your leader? “J. D. Heroy.” Do you feel any remorse for what you’ve done? “J. D. Heroy.” What is it you people want? “J. D. Heroy.” Redding had been caught with a group that had killed a single teenage boy, but there was a train of ten 5s carved into her back that trailed down to her left thigh, including one that was dripping and fresh when she was caught. According to reports, several hours into an advanced interrogation session, a single sentence had escaped Mistress Redding. “If I had words left in me, I would not be here.”

  Emmanuel remembered how the news had reported the bloody phenomenon: “Breaking this evening,” said one anchor, “yet another innocent child was mercilessly beaten by a gang of thugs, all of whom seem, again, to be descendants of the African diaspora. What do you think of this, Holly?”

  “Well, many people in the streets are saying, and I quote, ‘I told you they don’t know how to act! We told you.’ Beyond that, all I can say is this violence is terrible.” The coanchor shook her head, disgusted.

  The names of each of the Finkelstein Five had become curses. When no one was around, Emmanuel liked to say the names to himself: Tyler Mboya, Fela St. John, Akua Harris, Marcus Harris, J. D. Heroy.

  “This is just the beginning,” Boogie said. He pulled a small box cutter out of his pocket. Emmanuel almost made a sound, but Boogie said, “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna use it. Not here. I haven’t gone all the way—yet.” Emmanuel watched Boogie as he rolled up his sleeve for the second time and, with a practiced precision, used five quick slashes to cut a small 5 into his left arm. The skin split into a thin red that gathered, then rolled down the side of his arm.

  Boogie reached over Emmanuel and pulled the yellow cord. There was a bing sound and the STOP REQUESTED sign went bright. The bus slowed in front of Market Plaza.

  “I’m gonna hit you up later, Manny. We’re going to need you.”