Chapter Eleven
 

He heard from Whitney less and less. Jamal sensed relief in himself one second, panic another. It was a ticking time bomb, the truth. Just a matter of time until it lit the sky.

College was a safe haven. It was everything he thought it would be and more. Gone were the days of hard stares and slurs. He didn’t have to watch for wayward feet trying to trip him or the random spit ball aimed at his head. He was just one of the art majors, one of those “out there” kids that had their own parties and lingo that kept them tight in a protective bubble. He had never felt so secure, except for when he was young, and his mother was still alive.

He had already done two art shows. The second one was the curtain he pulled away from his heart. He displayed the notebook pages of his mother he had amassed all these years.  

“A quiet cruelty. So vivid. You can see it in the way her eyes are closed,” a girl in his Drawing II workshop had said. Her name was Amaya, and Jamal thought she was an idiot.

“Sure,” he jovially offered because he had a glass of champagne in his hand, and nobody had called him the N-word.

He saw Denise on campus sometimes. She wasn’t like high school Denise at all anymore. Each passing day ate away at her. Even from far away her hair seemed oily. He noticed her scratching at a zit in the Union when he was headed to the bookstore for more shading pencils. Every time her eyes met his, her radar accused him of being a fraud. He’d hurry past her, worried some sort of red alarm would start whooping above her head.

I don’t owe her anything. I don’t owe anyone anything, he would think in his dorm room, sitting at his desk and stabbing his pencil into a fresh, blank book. Then he’d look down and see his son’s face in the etches.

Jamal cried. He was in a single dorm room this year—luck of the draw, but it never seemed lucky. He’d think about his tears streaming hot and wet down his face and silently scream at his non-existent dorm mate, do you see me? because for all the times he had been seen and punished for it, it never felt like how being known should.

“I see you, Jamal,” his father would say on the phone. Jamal didn’t even have to say anything; somehow that man knew the shame in his heart.

“What’s that crazy talk, Pops?” he’d speak into the receiver, brushing off his vulnerability.

“You’re working real hard, son. But I see you, I love you regardless.” Jamal could feel the warmth in his eyes wanting to spread down his face, and he cursed under his breath.

“Well, thanks. Means a lot. Hey, me and the boys are gonna head out, get some pizza. We’ll talk soon. Love you, Pops.”

He swallowed down his frustrations as he heard his father say goodbye on the phone. There were no boys, just the budding truth Jamal had stumbled over at the age of ten. He was not like the others.

Nobody had ever known except Denise. Not even his mother. He wasn’t sure about Franklin. Of all people, Franklin was the sort who seemed to have a sixth sense. But he never said anything outright. He just loved Jamal until all Jamal could feel was guilt.

He knew what it looked like. He had trapped some girl into having his kid so he could get the world off his back. Black and an artist in Arkansas was bad enough. But a black gay artist? He might as well speed up the process and find a lake to drown in. 

But it was something more than that with Whitney. She was no cover story. She was someone he knew he needed to protect. She was so small and fit so perfectly in his arms, he sometimes wondered if his body and his brain had somehow gotten things all wrong. Because his heart? All it knew was love.

There were splinters though. He’d catch himself with his head against the car window or looking out the back glass door at Franklin’s house, still waiting for the final piece of the puzzle. If he were honest with himself, he knew what he was waiting for. For God to make him straight.

“Anyone catch your eye?” Denise had said when they had first stepped on campus last year, and she was still the high school version of herself. He had shouldered her off and pointed to a flyer for A Christmas Carol tryouts. But her words still pierced his skull.

In the past two years, there had been a few. Random names and faces because Jamal would never get too close. It was like buying the match and swearing you’ll never use it, only to watch your whole house go up in flames.

There was something inside him that was wrong, all wrong. And on the one hand he wanted to run away, to go figure it out. But on the other was his son’s beautiful face.

He loved Travis just as much as Whitney, maybe more but in a different way. Travis was small and slight, but there was something fierce about him that he didn’t get from his mother or father. Jamal knew it was most likely some wayward farmhand gene from Marge’s side of the family. For all that woman’s faults, at least she was good with his kid. But he knew what she thought about him, about them as a couple. And even though he fully understood the truth in it, it was no picnic to have to hear.

Regardless, they were a family. A horribly dysfunctional, barely glued together family. Jamal was truly grateful for that, his heart brimming with gratitude as Fall break was around the corner. He tried to ignore whatever was inside of him that insisted on pulling everything apart.