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“You seem really tense.”
Before I could respond, Mississippi governor Lincoln “Link” Oswell could be seen approaching the podium wearing a navy-blue suit with a white shirt and red necktie, salt and pepper hair combed back. Cameras flashed and low murmurs of conversation could be heard as he lifted his head and looked into the camera. Beside me, I felt Brooklyn lean forward.
“Good evening and thank you all for being here,” Governor Oswell began. “As you all know, there is new voting legislation that has landed on my desk, and there has been much speculation regarding my support of this bill. Tonight, I hope to clear up any misinformation that has been disseminated up to this point.”
He cleared his throat and took an obvious breath before continuing. “I would like to share a story with you all, a story about me. I was born in rural Mississippi to Rosalee and Dunbar Oswell. I lost my parents in a house fire when I was seventeen. The only reason I didn’t perish in that same fire was because I was out courting the prettiest girl in the county, a girl who would become the mother of my first child.
“My parents were good people who faced many hardships and much loss while trying to raise me, their only child. They were proud, devout Christians who fought hard for a right that all these years later is still in peril for their people, my people, black people.”
The room erupted in chaos at this obviously white man’s words, his revelation. I felt Brooklyn’s eyes on me, so I turned to look at her, answering her unasked question. “He’s my father. I know you can see the resemblance.”
“I can…but the governor of Mississippi? Your father is thegovernor of Mississippi?”
“Yeah.”
“And that man is…black?”
I nodded.
The chaos on the screen calmed and my father continued, “Yes, I am an African American man despite my appearance. I am black, born to fair skinned black parents. My oldest child, a son, is black. The children of my marriage are biracial. I owe it to my people to do what I should’ve done long ago—embrace my heritage and honor my parents and all they suffered for me to have a better life. So with this in mind, I will be issuing a veto for this new bill that I believe will only serve to further disenfranchise black people,mypeople.”
He left the podium amid shouted inquiries about him deceiving voters about his race, and I found myself staring at the screen with tears filling my eyes as a Mississippi number popped up on my phone, but I couldn’t answer it. Instead, I let Brooklyn pull me into her arms and I cried, with little Bailey wrapping her arms around me too.
I awoketo Brooklyn shaking me, sat up disoriented as shit. I’d fallen asleep on her couch without even realizing it. Sitting up, I looked around the room. “Where’s Bailey?”
“Gone to bed,” she said. “You wanna get in my bed?”
“You know I don’t want Boss Lady to see us shacking up.”
“Her father is married to her grandmother. I don’t think you sleeping in my bed will do too much more damage than that.”
“True, but still. Ima head to Sharla’s. I’ll see you in the morning, baby.”
She pouted and I was just about to take my words back when a knock sounded at her front door. The clock on her TV told me it was after midnight.
“You expecting someone?” I asked. “That Jamaal nigga, maybe?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. What I’ma do with him when I got you?”
As she walked to the door, I said, “Don’t open that! I’ll get it.”
Ignoring me, she peered through the peep hole and said, “Yeah, you should get it.”
So I did, opening it and finding myself face to face with my father.
CHAPTER30
VANN
“What are you doing here? How’d you know where to find me?” was how I greeted him.
“V,” he said.
I should have known.
Scratching his forehead, he asked, “Can I come in?”
“It’s not my place, I can’t—”
