Black Card. Chris L. Terry
I was finally black again. I sat on my bed, waiting for proof. Gray smoke oozed under my bedroom door and through the crack where windowpane met frame. The popping of needle on vinyl started so loud that I rubbed my thumb across my fingertips, expecting to clench the sound. A grimy hip-hop beat kicked in, with distorted drums, bass that rolled a pencil across my desk, and a half-measure loop of a soul singer wailing.
I steeled myself against the hurricane, pushing toes against floor, elbows against knees as I leaned in and bobbed my head short but loose, striking that tenth-grade balance of icy cool outside and whirring inside. I jumped when Lucius kicked the bedroom door open. His baggy jeans made a flag-in-the-wind snap as he stomped his boot. A black hoodie covered the top half of his face, but not his sparse goatee or the zit under his right cheekbone. I watched in silence, averting an identity crisis with every word I didn’t say, every gesture I didn’t make.
The door slammed shut behind him and he stepped to the middle of the small room, a husky specter floating in the sickly light. He jabbed his chin at me and I stood to face him, thumbs in my hoodie’s kangaroo pocket, shoulders and head back, equally ghoulish.
“You had a big day, bruh,” he said, his voice deep and rough for a teenager, cutting through the hip-hop beat.
I nodded.
“Let’s see the highlights.” He stepped to my right and pointed at the closed door. A beam of light shot through the opening between my curtains and a countdown flickered above the doorknob, 4-3-2-1. Lucius crossed his arms and we stood side-by-side on the scuffed floorboards, watching the makeshift screen.
Part one
Black-and-white footage of me in a polyester PE uniform, standing on a gleaming wood floor. My eyes widen in surprise when a basketball lands in my hands, then I seem to push it away. The camera follows the ball’s arc across the paint and through the net. Quick pan back to my face shifting into a sunny grin as I hit a three-part handshake with another kid and hustle off-camera.
“A’ight,” Lucius said. “You was lucky to hit that shot, but the daps at the end sealed the deal. I’m glad we been practicing.”
I nodded and said, “Me, too,” then kept my head moving with the beat. We turned back to the door.
Part two
A montage of me standing at my school bus stop with a slim backpack slung from one shoulder, slouching at a desk in class, and sprawling alone on my grandparents’ couch, watching TV. In each shot, my eyes sparkle, my nose wrinkles, and I bring the top of my right fist to my mouth like I’m rocking an invisible microphone.
“Now that’s the way to laugh,” said Lucius. “We don’t cheese. They don’t need to see our teeth. This ain’t a slave auction.”
I did a purse-lipped smile, then flipped my hood up over my head, too.
Part three
Me on my bed an hour before, cradling a phone on my shoulder. The music in the room quiets to forefront the staticky voice of one of my old friends up north whining, “I can’t understand you! Did you just say you wanted to ax me something?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Lucius ran his eyes over my pale freckled face and kinky red-brown hair. “Your mixed ass might not really look like us, but the least you can do is try and sound like us.”
I smiled again, agreeing silently.
Lucius punched my shoulder, then we repeated the handshake I did in PE, finishing by bumping chests to fists. Lucius stood back. The music cut out and the light grew angelic and bright. I sat on the bed as he swelled his chest and spoke with the gravity of an award presenter.
“I know you been having your doubts. You were black by default growing up around those white folks in the suburbs, but this move changed a few things. You finally got around us brothas and realized them rap tapes didn’t make you black.”
He pointed to my dresser, where hip-hop and alternative rock cassettes mingled freely in a plastic rack.
“Think about how far you’ve come,” he said. “The basketball players in your history class stopped clowning you for asking why they call each other ‘shorty.’ You stopped wearing that Beastie Boys T-shirt you got at the beach.” He shook his head sadly at my Raggedy Andy–looking ’fro. “If only we could get you to a barber on the regular.”
I smiled sheepishly and touched my hair, my blackest feature.
“Still,” Lucius continued. “You realized that dropping the ‘g’ from ‘skateboarding’ didn’t make it any less white boy—” He held a palm up. “Now, I know, you been showing me these skateboard magazines. And they got some brothas in there. But it doesn’t go down like that here in Richmond, V-A. We old-school Down South. ’Sides, you gotta know the rules before you break ’em.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes, and used my heel to nudge my skateboard further under the bed.
Lucius continued, hands joined inside his hoodie pocket, “I know you been going through some ‘tragic mulatto’ nonsense since you got here, feeling like no place is your place. But I see you working hard, and it’s starting to come natural.” Lucius paused, watching me whip fist to mouth a second too late to cover my grin, then said, “That’s why I’m finally presenting you with this.”
Triumphant horns blared as Lucius slowly drew his right hand from his pocket, thumped it on his heart, then held a wallet-sized laminated card up next to his face. A heart-swelling soul song kicked in and I craned forward.
BLACK CARD was written on the front in gold, diamond-encrusted capital letters. I reached for it, grinning, so happy to be a real brother. But Lucius pulled it close to his chest. “Hold up.”
He turned my Black Card over in his hand as the music faded out.
“Brotha,” he said, and sized me up.
I puffed my chest and ran my tongue across the front of my teeth.
“I hereby bestow you with this Black Card. Carry it with you, as proof that you’re one of us, because . . .” He squinted and started to read from the back of the card, “This card entitles the brotha or sista who bears it to all black privileges, including but not limited to: Use of the n-word, permission to wear flip-flops and socks, extra large bottles of lotion, use of this card as a stand-in for the Big Joker in a spades game, and, most important, a healthy and vocal skepticism of white folks aka crackers aka honkies. To be renewed in five years, upon evaluation.”
He nodded reverently, then pressed the card into my outstretched palm. His voice shook when he said, “Do well, brotha. Do well. Smoke the biggest blunts, kick the illest rhymes, and even when you’re out rollin’ around on that skateboard, remember that this,” he folded my fingers over the card before taking his hand away, “is yours.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you,” and held the card for a moment before standing and slipping it into my pocket. It warmed my thigh.
The light went back to normal, but my room had a new type of sparkle. The unmade bed by the window was now part of a lineage of black people’s unmade beds, the ball of colorful skateboard T-shirts on the floor by the closet were just like any black person might have. I smiled, satisfied. The world was starting to make sense.
Lucius put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Y’all havin’ mac ’n’ cheese for dinner?”
I pushed his hand off. “Nigger, we already ate. Always tryna—”
I could feel him freeze, so I turned. He squeezed the front of my hoodie into his fist. “It’s