Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

“What’s funny?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

Thanksgiving week was unfurling as a highway of decidedly bad turns. I could feel Maggie’s growing regret at having invited me home, or more precisely over my having accepted that invitation. However, on some level, or even a particular level, my presence was serving a desired end, namely to upset her parents. She had to know, and I’m certain she did, that even the simple matter of dark skin would be a cause of consternation for her parents. I came to imagine them as Ward and June Cleaver. I recalled my mother happening upon me watching that television show one afternoon. It launched her into such a fit of hysteria that I was afraid she might become pregnant again.

“How dare they put that propaganda on the television?” my mother barked. “But of course that’s what the box is for, isn’t it? Here is my black son sitting here in his black neighborhood watching some bucktoothed little rat and his washed-out, anally stabbed, Nazi-Christian parents.”

“There’s a brother, too,” I said, being six or so and not really understanding the tirade.

“Oh, a brother, too. I see him there, an older lily white acorn fallen so close to the tree. Turn that crap off. No, leave it on. Study the problem, Not Sidney. Soak it in.” With that she marched off to make cookies.

Sadly, even my innocent satirical private and lame joke soured quickly as I played out the possible meanings of all the words; Beaver was an unfortunate way to refer to Maggie.

“What are you thinking?” Maggie asked while we sat at a particularly long red light.

“I was thinking about the faces of the animals in your father’s study,” I told her. It was a lie, but one of my better or at least quicker ones. My mind did then move to the poor dead beasts. “They all look so … so … surprised.”

“I never liked that he has them,” she said. It sounded like an attempt to settle into my camp or at least on my side of the river. Then she said, to obliterate that naïve notion, “But they’re already dead. He didn’t kill them. And you shouldn’t be so judgmental.”

“I didn’t mean to be.”

“My father has gone through a lot to get where he is. From dirt poor Alabama to Yale.”

“That’s impressive,” I said.

“It’s very impressive. My father is one of the biggest and most successful lawyers in DC.”

“Wow.”

The family home of Maggie’s sisterlike friend Lydia was little different from Maggie’s own. Except that the décor was more pronouncedly gold than red, and the accents were blue, every bit as garish, yet somehow as ugly. Lydia was sitting in an overstuffed chair when we entered without knocking. Two other women were seated on the sofa. All three rose, and the four women hugged and squealed in a way that seemed like fun, but made for harsh music.

“This is Not Sidney,” Maggie said. “This is Lydia, Jasmine, and Sophie.” She pointed to each woman in turn and I nodded to each, making eye contact only to have it broken by them. The women, all similarly sized and lightly complected, paused as they regarded me, leaving a tiny empty space in time that led me to my antecedent remark about their skin color. I was becoming, sadly, irritatingly, horrifyingly observant of skin color and especially my own.

“Let’s sit down,” Lydia said.

We did. I sat between Lydia and Maggie on the sofa, and the other two women sat across on a love seat.

“Where are you from?” Lydia asked me.

“I live in Atlanta,” I said.

“But Not Sidney’s from Los Angeles,” Maggie said.

Sophie sat up. “I love LA.”

“Well, I haven’t lived there since I was eleven.”

“And you’re at Morehouse,” Lydia said.

I nodded.

“What’s your major?” from Sophie.

“Philosophy, I guess. It’s not clear.”

“Are you in college?” I asked them.

“Tufts,” Jasmine said.

“Smith.” Sophie.

I looked at Lydia.

“Howard,” Lydia said, flatly.

“That’s here in DC, right?” I asked, more to make conversation than anything else.

“Yes.”

“So, tell us about Atlanta,” Jasmine said to Maggie.

“There’s not much to tell. Spelman’s okay. Classes are okay.” Maggie smiled at me. I wondered how Maggie’s answers were influenced by my presence. I imagined them asking about the guys at Morehouse and Maggie telling them how many cute ones there were or weren’t.

But before the conversation could fail to get going, the doorbell chimed. Maggie knew, Maggie’s friends knew, and I knew that, according to the rules of bad drama, according to my evening’s apparent and particular adherence to a steady and predictable awkwardness, Robert was at the door. Brotherlike Robert, five eleven, trim and fit, handsome and appropriately shaded stepped into the room. I could picture the insane mothers of these insane women sneezing out dating advice between sessions on the stair machine and the treadmill, “Light not white, girl, light not white.”

Robert shook my hand and seemed friendly enough as he gave me the once-over. I suppose I was doing the same. He paused at my name.

“Then what is your name?” he asked.

“My name is Not Sidney,” I said.

“Not is a part of Not Sidney’s name,” Maggie said.

“Knot, with a k?” he asked.

“Not with a k,” I said.

“That’s what I said,” he said.

“N-O-T,” Maggie said.

“Sidney?”

“Not my name is not Sidney. My name is Not Sidney. Call me Not Sidney.” Though he was the one being dense, I was the one in the middle, feeling stupid, trying to explain the unexplainable. And for no good reason.

We sat and the children’s song ran through my mind, “Fly’s in the buttermilk, shoo, fly, shoo.”

They talked and laughed about old times. I learned that Robert was a business major, a member of some fraternity, and already had a summer internship lined up with Stanley Morgan or Morgan Stanley. Then Lydia brought up the old days in Jack and Jill and they all laughed.

“What’s Jack and Jill ?” I asked.

“It’s a club, an organization,” Jasmine said. It was a rather uninformative and mysterious answer.

“It’s a club for children,” Maggie told me.

“What kind of club?” I asked.

“A social club,” Robert said. “For cultural and social enrichment. It was started in nineteen thirty-five in Boston.”

“Nineteen thirty-eight in Philadelphia,” Maggie said.

“I stand corrected.”

“Who gets to be in it?” I asked.

They looked at each other. “You have to be sponsored by someone who is in it or who has children in it or was in it,” Sophie said.

“And then you have to meet other criteria,” Robert said.

“What criteria?” I asked. “Is it for black children?”

“Yes,” Jasmine said. But it could have been any one of them speaking, as they had all blurred together for me, even Maggie.

“What criteria?” I asked, again.

“There’s a whole selection process,” Maggie said.

I could see I was getting nowhere, so I shut up.

“So, do you play any sports?” Robert asked me.

“No,” I said.

“Robert’s on the lacrosse team and the swim team at Dartmouth,” Lydia said and watched me closely.

“I’m not a very good swimmer,” I said.

“Do you play golf?” Robert asked.

“Never have.”

The room was fairly quiet, but not in an interesting way. Sophie finally said something to Jasmine who said something to all of them and then they were chatting again and, this time, with no pretense that I was to be kindly included. Instead, I was kindly excluded and I felt somewhat happy about that. I had a sneaking realization, however incapable I was at articulating it, that my presence was essential to them, not in some singular, specific way, but in a broad and pervasive and insidious way that none of them would or could understand or acknowledge.