A few moments after I walked in, I realized that “historic location” meant “old as hell.” The kitchen had a stained porcelain sink and no dishwasher, and when I opened the top of the tiny gas stove, there appeared to be twenty years of grease caked on the burners. The hardwood floors were scarred, and there was only one tiny air-conditioning unit in the living room; it rattled and kicked out dust when I turned it on. When I saw the ancient radiators, I had a feeling it’d be bad in the wintertime. And to be on the safe side, I’d need to visit a hardware store and purchase boric acid to sweep in all the corners, before I was rewarded with roaches.
I heard my dead sister’s voice in my ear.
Now, what did you learn from this experience? Lydia asked.
“I learned never to trust some fucking pictures in a university mail-out.”
That’s right, baby, she said.
I held out my hand and pretended Lydia was there to give me five. Then I turned my palm down, this time on the Black-hand side.
There were two linebackers living in the house across the street from me. Big, fine, pea-fed boys, their skin gleaming in the tank tops they wore. They walked slowly, as if it took effort to cart that much prettiness around. They were sophomores, both from Louisiana. Eddie Thibideaux was Creole and shy with dark-blond hair. He had better manners than Mike Corban, a brown-skinned honey who gave me hound-dog glances, saying he liked him some older women. But the day I moved in, they rushed to help me unpack the car, though it was July in full blast. As a gesture of gratitude for their help moving, I cut up and fried a whole chicken and baked biscuits for Eddie and Mike, which they dispatched in around ten minutes.
The next week, Mike showed up begging for a meal. Eddie peeked from their doorway, hopeful, and then disappointed, as his teammate ran a slew-footed jog across the street, shaking his head. But they were generous, too: Mike would knock on my door, inviting me over to share their five large meat lover’s pizzas, just delivered.
“Have some, Miss Ailey? It’s gone be real, real good.”
I would wave him out of the doorway as he reassured me that I didn’t need to be on no diet. I was thick and super fine in the right places.
Other than athletes, there were very few brothers on campus, and even fewer in the graduate programs. Scooter Park was tall and slim, and other than my neighbors, he was the finest Black man walking around North Carolina Regents University. A lean runner type, he concealed whatever muscles he had under his rotation of business suits. My first semester in Acorn, we met at the annual Black graduate students’ association reception, two weeks after classes had begun.
I almost hadn’t gone to the reception: my social awkwardness had returned with a vengeance, along with my homesickness. That year, there was a heat wave in North Carolina, and each morning I urged myself to get out of bed and face the day. Telling myself my ancestors had been through worse summers than this, and I should get up and take a shower, with my twenty-first-century, lazy self. I’d turn the water to lukewarm, just enough to clean the funk off, because hot would make me sleepy. Or make me a coward.
The night of the Black graduate reception, I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, chanting self-affirming mantras at my reflection. I could survive without my family and my college roommates, the only non-kin girlfriends I’d ever had. I was twenty-eight years old and a grown-ass woman. And look how captivating I was in my red linen dress （with girdle underneath） and Italian leather pumps （that I’d bought on sale）。 My courage lasted about twenty minutes, around the time I drove up to the multicultural center. I made the mistake of using the wrong entrance and ended up right behind the refreshments table. Worse, when I entered the room, I forgot to catch the door, and it shut with a loud bang.
Dr. Charles Whitcomb, associate graduate dean and full professor of history, was in the middle of his remarks, and everyone looked back at me, glaring. Then someone else arrived, using the same entrance, but I feigned concentration as Dr. Whitcomb told our gathering that we were “the future of the African American race,” even when I felt a tap on the shoulder. At the second tap, I turned around and a tall brother leaned down.
“Hi, I’m Scooter Park.”
Small wisps of warm air hit my cheek. The wing tips were shiny, the suit a lightweight gray, and the tie a nearly matching shade in silk. He was a darker version of Denzel Washington, his cheeks smooth-shaven. I felt myself stirring, even after I saw his wedding band, and while Dr. Whitcomb continued to give his racially uplifting remarks, Scooter and I whispered to each other. We played the “Which Negroes Do You Know?” game and found out his aunt and my father’s mother were in the same sorority. Like me, Scooter had attended a private high school, though his had been a boarding school in Massachusetts.