AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 9
Prince’s Park was the largest verdant space in Whitewell, slapdab in the middle of town; so big that it also served as the divider between west Whitewell and east Whitewell. West Whitewell was where our campus was, complete with sprawling suburban gated houses, artisanal coffee shops, cat cafés, and yoga studios owned by white people with blond dreadlocks.
In west Whitewell, there were literal limits to how many Black kids they allowed in a club, although they obviously never made this explicit, having the decency to pretend that it was because they were overcrowded. These clubs were full of hip-hop and white kids that rapped along to it—but when faced with too many real, breathingBlacksthat weren’t confined to a consumable form of entertainment for them, they panicked.
There needed to be justenoughniggas (Kendrick said it and therefore, so could they) in the club to make them feel cool, enough dotted around, so they couldfeeldiverse. Enough Black guys for white girls to say, “Everyone tells me I dance like a Black girl.” Enough Black girls for white guys to proclaim with Jägerbomb-spiked breath that they ain’t ever kissed a Black girl before, like you were the lucky one, something likeThePrincess & the Frog,except the Black girl would remain the exotic curiosity and the white guy would feel transformed into something elevated, somethingunique,perhaps a little dangerously deviant. They needed just enough Blacks in the club to make them feel cool. Too many Blacks, however? That was going too far. Too much Black would make them feel too white.
East Whitewell—or Eastside—was where Aminah and I went to do the bulk of our grocery shopping: bell peppers, scotch bonnets, plantain, okra, rice, cheap packs of ramen to inhale during brutal all-nighters (ramen so bad that it could be used to plaster into broken ceramics. We saw it on TikTok. Somehow, this didn’t stop us). Eastside is where we got our hair supplies, where aunties, carrying swollen blue plastic bags with leaves sticking out of them, spoke loudly in Yoruba and Twi, Urdu and Gujrati. Eastside was the place where Aminah and I took turns to go to the Jamaican shop and order, faced with straight-faced “We nuh ave dat,” till Ms. Hyacinth served us whatever she wanted to serve us. And Eastside was the side of the park where the basketball court was.
It was far too far. At least a twenty-five-minute walk. It was atrek.And we had been walking down the plush park path as a foursome, Aminah and I on one side, Kofi and Malakai on the other, but at some point Aminah and Kofi had drifted ahead and together, leaving Malakai and I to hang back awkwardly behind. Technically, we could have just caught up with them and disrupted our discomfort, but that would mean severe cockblocking and apparently neither of us were that selfish. So, we’d been walking in excruciating silence for the past five minutes, the only noise being our shoes crunching on autumn leaves, kids squawking in the background, and our friends’ bizarre mating ritual up in front. I guessed it was up to me to make it bearable. The labor of a Black woman in this society really is unending.
I inhaled a brisk gust of fortifying air and looked up at Malakai.“Okay, uh, I guess I should say I’m sorry for the whole drink thing. Actually, Iamsorry. It was embarrassing. I moved mad. My bad.” I surprised myself by meaning it.
Malakai shrugged and shot me a small smile. “Thanks. I kind of deserved it, though. I was being a dick.”
I laughed, half-surprised “What?No.”
Malakai kicked at some leaves and rubbed the back of his neck in what was an obscenely sexy move. “I was being shitty. I knew it. I’m sorry.” His eyes searched mine, as if he needed me to know he meant it.
I glanced away from him because his eyes’ knowing focus made me uncomfortable, lasering through my skin. “It’s cool.”
Malakai cleared his throat. “Look, uh, full disclosure? Dr. Miller sent me some of your work. Your writing on pop culture and society and that essay on, like... what was it? The distillation of Missy Elliot’s contribution to Black feminism? Where you dissected her music videos? That was mad.” His face broke into a shadow of the playful smile I’d seen the other night. “Actually, I was kind of pissed at how good it was. Then I listened to more ofBrown Sugarandthatmade me even more pissed.” He laughed. “You were right. About a lot of things. And, even if I didn’t agree... I just think you have a really interesting perspective. A cool voice.” He paused as if catching himself and cleared his throat. “I just thought I’d tell you that. She sent it to me. She’s been talking about you to me—without ever mentioning your name—since I transferred at the beginning of the year. I got kinda jealous.”
“Why, you got a crush on her?” The main function of the question was to distract myself from the fact that Malakai liking my work elicited a bloom of pleasure in me.
Malakai laughed and rubbed his chin. “Don’t you?”
“Obviously. She’s fine as hell.” I made eye contact with a terrier, waddling along with its owner. “Thank you, by the way. For saying all that. About my work, I mean.”
“Trust me, if I could have chosen to not like it, I would have.” His voice was bone dry. It struck against me, eliciting a spark.
I clamped on my grin and, glancing up at him, admitted, “I watchedCuts.”
Malakai’s gaze snapped to me. “Is this where you tell me all the ways you hated it as rightful punishment for my behavior?” He was joking but he wasn’t, his eyes softened with gentle wariness.
“Not gonna lie, I was kind of disappointed.” I paused long enough for the curve in Malakai’s lips to collapse infinitesimally. “Disappointed that I didn’t hate it.... It was good. Really good. Which sucked for me, obviously, because I fully planned on going back to Dr. Miller like, ‘I thought you said this guy was smart?’”
Malakai was staring at me, his smile sloping out wide now, rubbing the back of his neck again. He needed to stop it. Not only was it infuriatingly cute, it also drew attention to how thick, firm, and muscular his arms were. Seeing them reminded me of when they were wrapped with my palms, satiny and sturdy and warm beneath them. Was I ovulating? I needed to check my period app. I blinked at him. “What?”
“You fucking with me?”
I stared at him, trying to assess if Malakai really cared about what I, a virtual stranger who had shit-talked him on the radio, thought about him. Unless his game was so ultraevolved that it included insecurity as a disarmament tactic in its package, his need to know seemed real.
“Malakai, if I wanted to fuck with you, I would fuck with you.”
A lady pushing a designer stroller shot me a pointed look, like we weren’t in a public place. We were still in west Whitewell after all. I rolled my eyes.
“I think you know that much about me by now. Like, it’s almost causing me physical pain to say this to you.” I faked a dainty sneeze. “Oh man. See? I think I’m allergic to being nice to you, actually.”
Malakai laughed, a surprisingly delightful, loud bark of a laugh. Theair around us was cool but the force of his bellow seemed to push it up a couple degrees. “Thank you. Seriously.Cutsgot me into my course. I sent it with my personal statement.”
“What made you want to make it?”
“That barbershop is owned by a man I call Uncle K.”
“Ah. Super K’s Kutz,” I said, recalling the name I saw emblazoned on the storefront in bold white italics against black gloss.
“Right. I kind of half grew up there. Uncle K and my dad were old friends, from when they first arrived in England. My dad moved to Naija for work when I was seven, but before that he used to bring me along for his trims, then he took me for my first cut.” Malakai dropped a half-swaggering smile. “Couldn’t tell me shit on the playground on Monday.”
