As the choir winds down, everyone is flushed and primed for Pastor Price, who lumbers up to the cherrywood pulpit. The imposing figure of Christ looms behind him, but even Jesus himself is no match for Pastor Price. He’s divinely exultant in his vibrant purple robes, his dark skin gleaming against the rich fabric, the lines of his strong jaw clenched as he prepares to give his flock the holy word.
“It’s a beautiful morning to praise the Lord, ain’t it!” Pastor’s baritone thunders up to the rafters. He hasn’t aged a bit since I was a kid, even though he must have rounded seventy. He’s led this church for more than forty years, and in that time has become the de facto leader of all the Black churches in Philly.
Daddy sometimes grumbles that Pastor likes the limelight a little too much. Momma will counter that even outside of the church, he’s doing God’s work, and so what if that means he doesn’t mind a crowd or a camera. He’s earned his stripes as a civil rights crusader and still has the scar up his arm from being beaten with a baton during Freedom Summer. Then she’ll remind us about how he’s “friends” with Obama. I don’t know about that, but Obama did visit one Sunday when he was on the campaign trail in 2012. Of course people here still bring that up every chance they get. Gigi loudest of them all. Apparently, our future president complimented her hat. When she’d told him he should get Michelle one just like it, Obama had winked and said he didn’t know if his wife could pull it off nearly as well. Or so the story goes.
As Pastor calls on the crowd to accept the Holy Spirit, my phone buzzes in my pocket.
“Don’t you dare,” Momma murmurs, barely moving her mauve-painted lips. Suddenly I’m seven years old again and about to get a slap on the thigh for not paying attention to the word of the Lord. Back then, when she scolded me, I’d bury my face deep in her armpit to hide my shame but also to be as close to her as I could. I fight the urge to do this now, to remember what it felt like.
I allow myself the quickest peek at the phone. Jenny. Again. I wish she’d leave a voice mail. I need to know what she’s going to say first, to figure out how I feel. Especially after she went on TV shouting that her best friend was Black. On one level, it’s such a laughable cliché—Me, a racist? Some of my best friends are Black—but, on a deeper level, it gnawed at me. Here I was worrying that I was the one betraying her by covering this story, and then she goes and uses our friendship and my “Blackness” as a shield, a defense. It brought back something she’d said years ago that I’d decided to let go since we were having such a good time and I didn’t want to rock the boat. I was home from Northwestern on my first winter break, and she and I went club-hopping on Delaware Avenue. We were beyond excited to be together again following our first and longest time apart since we were five years old. I wanted Jen to notice that I was different—three months at college and I already felt more sophisticated and grown. But I was also scared she wouldn’t notice, and that that would mean I was the same ole Riley after all. But Jen was too busy gushing about two new friends she’d made, fellow waitresses at Fat Tuesday. She talked about these girls with the breathless infatuation of someone with a new crush. “They think it’s so cool that my best friend is Black.” Jenny rolled her eyes as she said it, but it was still clear that it was some sort of weird badge of honor for her, like I was a trendy accessory—otherwise why mention it at all?
That first semester away, I had met more than a few white girls who were too eager to claim me, who were proud of themselves for going to college and getting themselves their very own Black friend, checking off all those freshman-year experiences—get a tattoo, hook up with a senior, meet people “different from you.”
I’d been thinking about this when I’d called Gaby last night. Ironically enough, she and I had become instant best friends in college by bonding over “these white girls” our first week on campus. We’d been in an endlessly long line at the bookstore when Gaby caught my eye and smirked at the girl in front of us whining loudly on the phone to her mom about how she should have been allowed to bring her car on campus and how her roommate said she didn’t like the matching comforters she’d picked out and wanted to “do her own thing.” It was the first thing Gaby ever said to me, leaning in with a stage whisper. “Man, oh man, these white girls with their tears and flat asses and rich daddies.” Never mind that Gaby comes from one of the wealthiest families in Jamaica. She told me that point-blank within five minutes, without even a sliver of humility. “Oh yeah, I’m hella rich, but it doesn’t matter, you watch, everyone here is going to think I’m a poor little island girl.” They did. As we inched forward in line, she went on an animated tirade about how she wasn’t going to get fat in America like all the tourists she saw spilling out of the cruise ships in Montego Bay. It was clear from the jump that this girl had a lot to say about everything, and she’d warned me, proudly, that she was “one of those people who tell it like it is.”
Our entire college experience was four years of her telling me about myself, recognizing some unrealized potential in me to be cooler than I was. I showed up at Northwestern a shy, nerdy brown girl from Philly who’d never had sex, wore hideous khakis （cuffed!）， and knew exactly one reggae artist: Bob Marley—and Gaby made it her mission to change all that. （The khakis were the first thing to go, my virginity next.） I didn’t mind being Gaby’s project at all. Actually, I loved it; I was all too happy to have someone else be responsible for turning me into the adult version of myself. So I latched on to her, right then and there, and she became—and still is—my anchor, the person I can count on to tell me how I feel even when I’m not sure myself. That’s exactly what I hoped she’d do when I called her last night. She’d cursed and muttered in patois as I told her every detail.
“So Jen’s husband just mowed this kid down? Here we go again with this shit. What does she have to say about it?” She sucked her teeth dramatically when I told her I hadn’t really spoken to Jen about it yet and related the comment Jen had made to reporters.
“Excuse me. No! ‘My best friend is Black’？ That’s some Don’t Do 101 shit. You’ve got to call her out on that BS, Riley. How could she not know that’s a fucked-up thing to say?”
Good question. But I didn’t call Jen out, just like I hadn’t all those years ago. I didn’t have it in me—the thought of opening this door was overwhelming. I’m just relieved Jen didn’t mention me by name on camera. If Scotty knew I was friends with the wife of one of the cops involved, he likely would have taken me off the story. For a split second I had considered telling him, but I couldn’t risk it—there was too much at stake.
I should have known better than to think I could escape Jen and the shooting while in church, because of course Pastor Price opens the service by talking about it.
“Our hearts are heavy this morning. One of our young brothers is fighting for his life over at Jefferson Hospital.” Each syllable vibrates with emotion, conjuring a somberness that permeates the air, as thick as the scent of White Diamonds, the perfume all the older ladies favor.