And It Begins Like This. LaTanya McQueen
mother grew up in a small unincorporated community near the Virginia border.”
“Oh really? Where?”
To make things easier, I tell him one of the nearby towns. “Yanceyville,” I say, then broadening my answer to tell him the county. “It’s in Caswell County, up near the Virginia border.”
Even those I’ve met from North Carolina often don’t know of where I mean, and so I say all this expecting him to nod and then move on as so many others in the past have done, but instead he holds my gaze. “I know Yanceyville,” he says. “I know it well. My father preached there when I was a child.”
“So did my grandfather,” I say. “When was this?”
“During the 70s.”
“So around the same time. Do you think they knew each other? I mean, they would have had to, right? They must have. We’re not talking about a big city here. They were both preachers to the same community.”
“Yes. They probably did.”
The coincidence of this, of two strangers coming together in such a way, will keep me wondering, and also the meaning, if there is one, behind the odds of such a thing happening.
“I’ll ask him when I can.”
"Your father’s still alive?”
“Yes.”
I know now this will bond us in a way nothing else ever would. We are two black people in academia, that alone would have been enough, but now there is the possibility of the connection between our ancestors. He says we are kindred, and the antiquatedness of the word makes me want to laugh, but I know he’s right.
The bar is crowded now, forcing us to sit even closer together, the act forming an intimacy among strangers.
He waves for the bartender and asks for Hennessey but the bartender shrugs and says they don’t have it. This doesn’t surprise me. We are in a college town, after all, a world of watered-down whiskey and cokes and vodka tonics. He pauses, then tells the bartender he’ll have to think a moment longer before deciding what else to order.
“I know it’s a stereotype to drink it,” he tells me later, “but whatever. I like the taste. I am who I am.”
He gives a self-conscious laugh after this that lets me know despite what he says he too deep down is battling the same insecurities.
We never escape it, I think, this fear we are conceding to our depictions, to the world’s assumptions and misconceptions. Our past is always there, coming to define and redefine who we are to each other.
“You want to go to another bar?”
“No, we can stay here awhile longer,” he says, and watches as I slowly sip my tequila.
We’re both quiet now, and in the silence he shifts his weight on the barstool. His hand touches my knee in the process, an accidental transgression, and even though it should not be on my mind I can’t help but think of the image of the two of us to an onlooker. I wish I could say that I am not suddenly ashamed, that I do not blush or turn to look and see if we are noticed. As I glance around the room, I try to remind myself that we are just a couple in a bar having a drink, and that if one were to turn and look they would only see two people, each of them cautious and fumbling, who are continuously learning how to be.
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